The Watch

Title- The Watch

Chapter Three

It's a damn cold night

Tryin to figure out this life

Wont you take me by the hand

Take me somewhere knew

I don't know who you are

But I'm with you

Whys everything so confusing?

-Avril Lavigne

Miss Weasley's appetite was undiminished even by her current situation, Draco reflected in some hilarity, carving another slice of mutton for her as she heaped roast potatoes onto her platter and reached for the bowl of onion sauce. Her skin was now carefully hinted with pink from the warmth and the food and wine. While she offered no conversation, she seemed relaxed for the first time since she'd crossed his path that morning, as if she'd come to some acceptance of her situation.

Ginny Weasley picking pockets at Tyburn for the fun of it. He sipped his wine, regarding her closely through half closed eyes. Presumably she was no stranger to hunger and cold, despite the fact she was a Weasley, and being poor was imbedded in their blood stream. However, it was never a Gryffindor who stooped that low, always a Slytherin.

Maybe she worked for the CV as an undercover agent. In that case, in some odd way, she might be working through Lucius, but that wouldn't make much sense. If she knew about it she would have given it away. More like she was told to pick the pockets of people at Tyburn to find some information for the CV. His gaze rested on the serenely beautiful specimen opposite him-such innocent beauty concealing the talents of a successful thief and devil knows what else. He'd already seen evidence of a lethal temper. She and Lucius...What a pair they would make.

His long fingers idly stroking around the rim of his glass suddenly stilled as the idea rose fully formed in his mind. He sat quietly, allowing it to grow and spread its wings. His most brilliant inspirations came to him in this way and had done so since childhood. He knew to leave his mind free reign to examine potential problems, abandon certain possibilities, until lighting upon the perfectly plotted arrangement.

A slow smile spread over his face, but his eyes were terrifying in their icy aloofness. It would work. But how to sell a scheme like his own to a woman who didn't fit any recognizable mold? What motives would capture her? She was to some extent an adventuress and maybe, therefore, open to a profitable venture. But was she a free agent?

'Tell me...' he broke the silence so suddenly that she jumped; spilling ruby drops from the wineglass she was carrying to her lips. 'Tell me why you happen to be working the crowd at Tyburn.'

Ginny frowned dabbing at the stain on the pristine white cloth with her napkin. She'd been rather surprised he hadn't asked earlier. 'I work for the CV. I do what they tell me to pay the rent and put food on the table.' She forked another potato from the dish.

Draco leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankle. 'Do you live by yourself?'

'No, with Ron and dad.' Draco pushed the bowl of cabbage towards her. She nodded her thanks and took a large spoonful onto her plate.

'What were you doing at Tyburn for the CV?'

'I don't consider that your business,' she replied icily.

'No, its not.' He leaned forward to refill their glasses. 'Nevertheless I'd like to know.' His smile was suddenly coaxing, inviting, his voice quiet, his eyes no longer arctic but the gray of a soft dawn.

Since the disaster Ginny had had no one to talk to, no one to share her desperate struggles or to listen to the fierce bubbling rage of helplessness, except for her brothers. But they all had someone outside the family to talk to. She'd fought along with her brothers to keep her father from menial work, biting her tongue when the urge to heap angry recriminations on his head had become almost overpowering. She could say nothing to him because he didn't understand their situation. He had no idea they were poor, no idea of the means she was forced to adopt to keep them from starvation. The invitation to speak of the unspeakable suddenly became irresistible. Draco may even understand some of it, even if he was a Malfoy.

She pushed her plate away.

'My father use to work for the Ministry, clever in his own ways, but a fool in the ways of the world, if it wasn't for mum,' she stated. 'And since her... her death, he has drawn even further into his books. He sees and hears nothing outside his texts. Three years ago we had a sizeable fortune, enough to keep him and Molly in comfort, only-only he fell among the death eaters.'

She looked bleakly across the table. 'If there was someone else there it wouldn't have happened, but everyone else was visiting an aunt or elsewhere. While I was gone, two death eaters Apparated into his confidence and persuaded him to invest in a Muggle mine in Transylvania. Needless to say, the mine didn't exist.'

'I see,' he said neutrally. There were thieves and rogues in every level of society. 'So your father lost everything.'

'Yes, but his friends appear to be doing very well,' she said bitterly. 'They survived the war and now live among the rich in the high of the ministry, and now inhabit the Burrow. They lent him money with the house as security to meet the original cost of his investment. Needless to say, they were very sorry when they were obliged to foreclose.'

Her mouth was tight, and he read murder in her eyes. 'The bastards allowed him to take his books. But any bet they didn't even need them.'

Silence fell, broken only by the spurt of flame as a piece of green wood caught in the hearth. A log shifted, and Draco rose from the table to mend the fire. He knew what she was thinking. 'You don't dream of revenge?' he raised an eyebrow.

'I might dream about it,' she said, 'but I live too close to reality to indulge in a fantasy. I try to make as much as I can, and when things become impossible...' she shrugged and sipped her wine. 'Why then I turn to my brothers.'

He turned to the table. 'Do you care for some Stilton with Bessie's apple pie?'

The change of subject was a relief, breaking the intensity of the last ten minutes. It had been a strange sensation to speak aloud the seething fury and to express the hatred she felt for the men who had ruined her own life as ruthlessly and indifferently as they'd ruined her father's. But she felt oddly comforted by Malfoy's attention, by the knowledge that he understood and certainty that he didn't judge.

'What about you?' she said suddenly, 'What brought you to the road, Lord Lucifer?'

He cut into the latticed pastry of the apple pie without replying for a minute. Then he said offhandedly, 'a piece of the past... a near death experience.'

'A near death experience?' Ginny looked at him in astonishment. 'How could a misunderstanding turn you into a thief?'

'In the same way that your father's lack of understanding turned you into what you are.' He slid a piece of pie onto a plate and passed it over to her.

Ginny hesitated, unsatisfied with this reply but sensing that it was all she was going to get. The confidences seemed to be flowing only one way. She shrugged and dug a spoon into the round of the Stilton, placing a creamy blue streaked mound on her plate beside the pie. There was no point neglecting a good dinner just because her confidences weren't reciprocated.

'Will your father and Ron be worried about you?' Her companion took a forkful of his own pie.

'What do you think?' she demanded. 'When people are abducted, don't they usually leave worried people behind?'

'How worried will they be?' Draco asked steadily.

Ginny sighed. There seemed little point in exaggerating the situation; the highwayman wasn't going to suffer any guilty pangs, anyway. 'He's not always aware of me,' she explained. 'His grasp of the past... is not very acute to say the least... he tends to live in the past. Joan and Ron will look after him, and they'll assume I've taken shelter from the storm somewhere.'

He nodded. 'I'll return you home in the morning, if the storms gone.'

'That's so nice of you,' she said, not expecting the irony to make much of a dent, but she had been forcibly reminded that her virtue this night was totally dependent upon the good faith and moral principles of Malfoy.

As she'd expected her companion was unmoved by her tone; in fact, he barely noticed it in his own exultant absorption. His long slender fingers traced the diamond cuts in his wineglass, the firelight catching the amethyst signet ring, the green and silver colors refracted by the glass. Ginny Weasley could be the perfect accomplice for his long awaited vengeance, and she had laid out for him the perfect motive to persuade her to join with him. He guessed that the promise of her own revenge would be more potent than an end to her financial difficulties, but the latter would be added incentive.

However, he was convinced she wasn't ready for the proposal yet. She was devious of a kind, but he sensed that her commitment to the dark realms beyond the law was not yet wholehearted. For all her hardships, she hadn't touched the desperation that pushed a man inexorably over the edge...

Ginny suddenly felt cold as if a draft had touched her back. Draco was looking at her across the table, but he wasn't seeing her. His eyes were as blank and flat as polished slate, and there was no expression on his face. She wanted to speak, to say or do something to break the dreadful mask like intensity as he sat gazing upon some grim internal landscape, but words wouldn't come to her lips. Then his features came to life again, and his gaze became once more alert, once more recognizing her as his eyes rested shrewd and assessing on her countenance. And the silent assessment was almost as unnerving as the blank stare as before.

Draco was thinking that before Ginny Weasley would embrace their joint vengeance, she would need something to bind her to him, to make her see herself differently, to see herself as a woman who could perpetrate a deadly confidence trick on the vanity and twisted complacence of those who'd injured them first. He could see one obvious way to move her across the border into his dark world, to break the fragile chains of virginity.

'Excuse me for a moment, Miss Weasley.' He rose from his chair offering a courtly bow before leaving the room.

Unnerved, Ginny abandoned her pie and propped her elbow on the table, resting her chin on her palm. She gazed out of the window. It was pitch-dark and the pane was crusted with snow. From the tap room below drunken voices rose in a raucous chorus of some ribald song, and there was clatter as a chair went over. There was an edge of menace to the noise. A sense of whatever order was maintained could at any moment be plunged into anarchy. Draco's haunt was definitely not a good place for a woman alone.

Ginny pulled a sketchpad out from a drawer, sat down on the table, and drew a picture of Draco. The paper didn't seem big enough to accommodate his size. She smiled at that fanciful notion. He was just a wizard. Her wizard. The likeness was remarkably well done, she thought, though she refused to put a frown on his face. She'd captured his ice man stance, too, with his muscular legs braced apart and his hands settled on his hips. His hair flowed down behind his neck. Perhaps when she reached her home she could do a proper sketch of him.

There was a scratching at the door, and Tabitha's head popped around. 'Should I clear away now, miss?'

'Sure.' Ginny rose from the table and went to warm herself by the hearth. There was renewed chorus of shouts and crashes from below. 'What's going on?'

'A fight or summat,' Tab said, piling crockery onto a tray.

'Are there no women here except yourself and Bessie?'

'No miss... leastways, not unless they brings 'em in.' She carried the laden tray to the door, adding matter-of-factly, 'they does that oftentimes.'

'But what about you? Where do you sleep?'

'Me, miss?' Tab looked surprised at the question. 'I sleep with Bessie over at the washhouse ... 'ceptin' when Ben wants 'er of a night. Then I sleeps by the kitchen fire.'

No room in those sleeping arrangements for an extra female.

'The fires been kindled in Luke's bedchamber for ye, miss, when y'are ready to retire,' Tab said cheerfully following the thrust of the discussion, balancing the tray on her raised knee as she opened the door. 'An' there's an electric blanket on, so it's all snug.' She beamed as Ginny murmured a faint thank-you, then left, banging the door behind her.

'Do you prefer rum or brandy punch?' Malfoy returned in a few minutes, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. 'Bessie's bringing the makings to the bedchamber so we can have a nightcap.'

'It's too early to sleep,' Ginny said hastily.

Draco mobile eyebrows lifted. 'Its past eight, and I, for one, was up at three this morning.'

'So was I. But I'm still not tired. You can sleep, but I'll just stay here by the fire.'

'No, I don't think so,' he said in the tone he'd been using the whole day. 'You're my responsibility now, and you shall spend the night behind a locked door, with yours truly.' As if in orchestrated punctuation, renewed shouts and crashes came from downstairs, interspersed with the sound of breaking glass.

Ginny shivered. It seemed as if she had no choice.

'Come,' he said holding the door open.

She brushed past him, conscious of her bare legs beneath his robe. She felt small and vulnerable beneath the voluminous robe, totally without the means to defend herself.

His hand was in the small of her back, urging her down the passage way and around the corner, away from the sounds of the taproom. 'It's much quieter at the back of the house,' he said casually, reaching over her shoulder to open the door. 'Oh, good! Bessie's left the both brandy and rum for the punch. Any preference?' He pushed her gently ahead of him into the room and closed the door.

'Brandy,' Ginny said numbly, watching as he closed and locked the door with and iron key. Impassively he removed the key from the lock and slipped it into his own pocket. He could not be expecting anyone in this house, where it was obvious he was a friend and honored guest, to break into his room at night-so the lock was, by deduction, to keep her inside.

'You'll find a bathroom behind the screen.' He indicated a worked screen in the corner of the room. 'While you refresh yourself, I'll prepare the punch.'

The room was large and warmed by the fire. There was a deep armchair with elbow pieces by the hearth. Malfoy was busy with his punch, considerately removing his attention from her, and she hurried behind the screen, grateful for the amenities it concealed.

When she emerged, her companion was grating nutmeg onto the contents of a silver punch bowl. The air was sweet with the scent of warmed brandy, oranges and lemons, cinnamon and nutmeg. Involuntarily, Ginny yawned, realizing how tired she was. Her eyes darted longingly to the deep-feathered mattress on the bed. Perhaps Draco would let her sleep on the bed and he would take the chair.

'Come to the fire.' His smile was inviting as he ladled punch into the goblet. 'Taste this and see if it needs anything.'

It seemed pointless to resist the comforts offered in this cozy prison. Ginny sat in the big chair, curling her toes onto the gleaming brass footrest, and took the goblet. 'Plenty of nutmeg,' she pronounced after a judicious sip. 'But perhaps a touch of cloves.'

'Oh damn, I forgot the cloves.' He unscrewed a twist of paper and dropped a pinch of dark ground spice into her goblet. 'Better?'

She sipped and nodded, 'it doesn't taste like cloves much, though.'

'Oh these are a very rare variety,' he said, drinking deep from his own goblet before taking off his coat and sitting down to remove his shoes.

When he started to undo his shirt, Ginny realized he was undressing for bed... right there in the middle of the room... right in front of her eyes. He was unfastening his pants. She stared mesmerized as he pushed them of his hips. Candlelight flickered on his broad bare chest, and her eye moved inexorably downward, following the trail of his six-pack, down from his navel and into the waist of his black boxers that molded his hips and legs and clung tightly to the bulging shape... She choked on her punch, turning her head away, eyes streaming.

Draco, however, appeared to not notice. He crossed the room to a deep cherry wood chest. Ginny wiped her eyes with her fingertips, but she couldn't stop herself from peeking through them, gazing at the hard-muscled shape of his buttocks clearly outlined in the drawers as he stood with his back to her at the armoire. He took out a black silk dressing gown and slipped it over his bare torso before disappearing behind the screen.

Bloody hell! Ginny pressed a palm to one flushed cheek. He hadn't seemed to give her a thought. He'd undressed casually as if he was in a room with a prostitute. But at least he didn't remove his boxers in front of her. It was a small comfort. She took another gulp of her punch, and to her astonishment a little giggle developed in her throat. If she was totally honest, she'd enjoyed it. As fascinated as a rabbit in the eye of a cobra. What the hell was happening to her?

Another wave of tiredness washed over her, but there was a tingling sensation in her body, and her toes were curling on there own accord. She felt both tired and strangely expectant. She walked over to the bed and tossed the cover aside and lay down. The air inside the room cooled considerably during the night, and Ginny woke up shivering. She tried to pull the quilt up around her shoulders, but the blanket was caught on something quite solid. When Ginny finally opened her eyes she found the cause. The blanket was tangled up in Draco's long, naked legs

He was sleeping next to her.

She almost had a heart failure. She opened her mouth to scream. He clamped his big hand over half her face.

'Don't you dare make a sound,' he ordered.

She pushed his hand away. 'Get out of my bed!' The command came out in a furious whisper.

He let out a weary sigh before responding to that command. 'Ginny, you happen to be sleeping in my bed. If anyone's going to be leaving, it will be you.'

He sounded sleepy to her, and mean. Ginny was actually comforted by his callous attitude. She guessed he was so exhausted he only wanted to sleep, and her virtue was therefore still safe.

'Fine, then I'll go sleep with Tabitha,' she announced.

'No you won't,' he answered. 'You aren't going to leave this room. If you want to, you have the option of the chair or the floor.'

'You're naked,' she blurted out.

'And that means what?'

She wanted to hit him. Her face turned away from him but she could still hear the laughter in his voice. 'Your embarrassing me, on purpose.'

His patience was at an end. 'I am not deliberately trying to embarrass you,' he snapped. 'This is just how I sleep. You'll like it, too, once-'

'Oh, God,' she said on a groan.

She decided she was through with the stupid conversation. She scooted out of the side of the bed. It was too dark inside the cabin to find a blanket. Draco had kicked one of the covers of the bed, though. Ginny grabbed it wrapped it around herself.

She didn't know how long she stood there glaring at his back. 'Why cant I have a separate room? Its not like we're married. How hard is it to charm a door, for gods sake?'

He heard every word of her whispered tirade. He held his smile when he said, 'You're a quick learner bride.'

She didn't know what he was talking about. 'And what is it you think I've learned so quickly?' she asked.

'Where your place is,' he drawled. 'It took my dog much longer.'

Her scream of outrage filled the cabin. 'Your dog?' In one swift action she slapped him. 'I believe I'd prefer to sleep in the chair,' she said aware of her flaming cheeks.

'You'll be cold by the time the fire dies down. I don't think there are enough logs around.'

'I'll be warm enough,' she replied stiffly. 'If you don't mind letting me have a pillow, I will be totally comfortable.'

He shrugged and tossed the pillow next to him over to her.

She dragged the blanket over her and thumped the pillow behind her head, and tried to settle to sleep. But it was impossible. That curious unfocused excitement grew, together with the tingling in her stomach, which spread to her fingers and toes. But perhaps it wasn't unfocused. Perhaps it had everything to do with him, a few feet away from her. She gazed into the fire, trying to calm herself with the ruddy glow and the deep-blue undertones.

But as the fire dies, the room grew colder and darker, and she was still wide awake. Wide awake and freezing. So cold that deep shudders racked her body and all she could hear was the wind whistling round the now silent inn, rattling the ill fitting panes.

She looked towards the bed. Draco was a humped shape at one edge, sleeping tidily and deeply, judging by the steady rhythmic breathing. If she put the pillow down the middle of the bed, separating them, then maybe she could creep in without disturbing him and sleep on the farthest edge. She had to get warm. Even if she didn't sleep, she had to get warm if she didn't want to be frozen solid by morning.

Softly she got up, dragging the blanket around her shoulders, her feet like blocks of ice on the hard wooden floor. She approached the bed. Barely breathing, she lifted the feather quilt and pushed her pillow into the middle. The sleeper made no movement. Still holding her breath, she climbed up high onto the mattress and slid beneath the quilt, where she lay shivering, trying desperately to keep still but unable to control the violent tremors of her body, which seemed to rock the bed.

Gradually, however she began to warm up. She was acutely conscious of the form in the bed beside her, weighing down the mattress so she had to concentrate on not rolling down into the valley that separated them. But now she was hot, the heavy velvet robe twisted around beneath her in folds that took on the consistency of hard wood pressing into her flesh. Perspiration gathered between her breasts, trickled down from her armpits. And now those strange currents of restless excitement swirled more vigorously through her veins so that she could hardly keep her feet still, and strange half formed thoughts kept drifting into her mind, then sliding out again before she could keep a hold on them.

The robe had become an instrument of torture, enclosing her so she could barely breathe, setting her skin on fire. She wriggled out of it, forgetting in her desperate urgency to move only discreetly. The robe fell to the floor beside the bed, and she heaved a sigh of relief, conscious now of her body beneath the thin shift.

The strange drifting thoughts increased, twining like thick lazy serpents in her head, more sensations than thoughts, and her body was suffused in a deep, dreamy languor that overlaid the restlessness without banishing it. She was conscious of her body in a way she had never known it before. Her hands moved over the shape of herself, startled to discover that her nipples were hard, lifting to her touch. Her skin was warm and tingling as she passed her hands over her stomach, feeling the sharp points of her hipbones. Her thighs parted as her hand slipped between them, feeling the moistness of her core, a strange sensitivity; and the aching restlessness rushed upon her anew.

She stroked herself, slipping into a rich and sensual dreamland as the warmth crept over her and her body sank deeper into the feather bed. The twisting images in her head lost definition, and her eyes looked upon a soft pulsing landscape without form or substance that drew her onward to into the enticing glow.

She dreamed of a mouth on hers, of a kiss so light and delicate, it barely stirred the air. She dreamed that her hands were moving over a warm, powerful male body and she was inhaling the scent of skin, a scent that she knew but that was still not familiar, as it didn't belong to her. She dreamed that her own skin now touched the skin of the body beside her, that fingers caressed the small of her back, touched her breasts, swept down her form in long strokes that soothed the urgent restlessness but replaced it with a clearer sense of need. She dreamed that her lips were parted with a different kiss, one that took driving possession of her mouth; she heard little feline cries in the humid sensual darkness of the deep enclosing mattress, and she dreamed that they were her own. She dreamed joyous fulfillment that seeped into every cell of her body, that made her soul sing to wonder. She dreamed that every part of her body was lost in this other shape, that her limbs were joined with his, that as she dipped into the darkness of oblivion, and surfaced again into the warm glowing light of her dream world, she was intertwined with this other body. She dreamed moments of joy again, the long slow sleepy slide into infinite pleasure, before she slipped into the dim green glowing light of the sleep filled trance.

The dream was with her all night, her body moving through the strange landscape, ever new and more glorious waves of pleasure breaking over her as she adapted herself with such with such wonderful ease to the large powerful frame that both took from her in possession and gifted her with itself.

And when she awoke, her eyes opened onto washed out sunshine, and she was alone.

But the dream was still with her. Its threads still twined beneath her skin, its images, blurred now, still inhabited her mind. She lay burrowed in the feather mattress, bewildered and disorientated, conscious of a sense of loss as she tried to recapture the defined images of the night.

Her hands moved over her body. She was naked. But she had not gone to bed naked. The disorientation faded, but her confusion increased as the room took shape in the early morning light and her memory returned.

She was naked and her skin felt different: used, marked, in some strange and frightened way. There was soreness between her legs- not bad soreness, more a kind of warmed and satisfied ache. Tentatively, she touched herself. There was stickiness, and when she drew her hand away, she saw the smear of blood on her fingers.

Ginny kicked aside the covers and sat up. There was blood on the sheet and on the inside of her thighs...but not much blood and it wasn't flowing anymore.

It was three weeks before her next period. She lay down again, pulling the cover to her chin, and stared up at the light bulb. The ferret had raped her. But he hadn't. Nothing had happened that hadn't brought her the most exquisite pleasure. She had believed herself to be dreaming, but the evidence was overwhelming in favor of reality.

And reality meant consequences. She might have conceived a child. How had it happened? How could such a thing have happened? What had happened to her that she had allowed such a thing to happen?

Slowly, Ginny sat up again and took stock. She was alone in the room. The fire now burned brightly, and someone had scraped snow from the outside of the window so that a feeble ray of sunlight fell across the wooden floor.

Where was Malfoy? Her dream lover? If she wasn't so devastated, Ginny could have almost laughed at herself for such a whimsical fancy. What had happened to her? What had taken her into that fantastic world?

Her eyes fell on her clothes, neatly arranged over the chair by the fire. Her boots had been polished. At the end of the bed were draped her velvet robe.

'Friggin hell!' she muttered. There was nothing dreamlike about this morning.

The door opened. A booted foot stepped into the room. The door closed. Each sound unnaturally loud. Dreams and fantasy trances vanished into the woodwork.

Ginny turned her head warily. Luke/Draco walked over to her bed. Except that it wasn't Luke. Yes, it was the man of the night, but she didn't see the plain clothed man of yesterday.

'Who are you?' Her voice came out as a whisper. The highwayman was dressed in a business suit of crisp black, contrasting with the staunch white shirt.

'At this moment, Miss Weasley, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Markov, is at your service.' He bowed with a deep flourish, and as his hand moved through the ray of sunlight, the amethyst on his finger sparked fire.

Ginny's voice shook with angry confusion, banishing the lingering memories of joy. 'So yesterday you were Lord Lucifer the criminal, and today you're the Minister Markov. Do you have any other identities? Or have I met all your schizophrenic self?'

The slate gray eyes glittered and his voice was lightly humorous. 'All those that you need to know.'

'You told me you wouldn't take advantage of me ferret!'

'I did not take advantage of you.' His eyes met hers steadily.

'But I might be pregnant,' she said in a low voice, accepting his flat denial by default.

'No, Ginny, you don't need to be scared of that.' He sat on the bed beside her, reaching for her hand, his expression gentle, his eyes reassuring. 'There's a thing called condoms.'

'I know what it is you idiot! Did you use it then?' She stared at him.

He nodded. 'I wouldn't hurt you. Just believe that, I'm no murderer...yet.'

'So how did it happen?'

'You invited me. I have needs. You pushed me too far.'

Had she? It seemed impossible... and yet she had been willing, more then willing.

'I don't understand anything,' she said helplessly.

'There's nothing to understand. We had sex, as men and women do. And now you will get up, dress, eat and I will take you home to your wonderful Weasels.'

And it would be over. She would forget all about it. All about that tangling of limbs in limbo.

Maybe.