The Watch

Chapter Six

Desire Merry-Go-Round

There's something burning inside of me

Something I can't fight

Something I can't see

My dreams, my hopes, my fantasies

I keep on wanting, wishing

Desiring them to be real

Even though I know it'll never happen

Causing my heart only pain to feel

Yet I go on from this desire

Painstakingly waiting

No more defeat

Maybe one day my life can be

Be complete

It's an unbounded desire

Never ending

Everlasting

I keep on wanting, wishing

Desiring them to be real

Even though I know it'll never happen

Causing my heart only pain to feel

If only it wasn't a dream

Go away hopes and fantasies

I don't need you any more

No need to toy with me

Play with someone else

It's an unbounded desire

Never ending

Everlasting

And I can never find myself

No, never find myself

Copyright 2002 Silent Dreamer (FictionPress.Net ID:299626). All rights reserved. Distribution of any kind is prohibited without the written consent of Silent Dreamer. http://www.fictionpress.net/read.php?storyid=1086338

'Dad I have your medicine.' Virginia Weasley hurried into the room, throwing off the hood to her cloak. Her father convulsed with a fit of coughing, appeared not to have heard her.

'Bloody lot of good it does me,' Arthur Weasley declared when his racking coughs had dies. 'Waste of hard earned money. I'd rather have a parchment for my article, but I'm cursed with an unhelpful daughter who...' Another fit took him, and he hunched over the narrow bed, his white head quivering with the spasms.

Ginny was to use to the reproaches to be upset by them. 'You know the doctor said you must have the medicine,' she said calmly, shaking the small bottle that had cost three of their precious galleons. 'The doctor concocted the potion stronger this time.' She uncorked the bottle and carefully measured a dose in a small tin cup.

'Here, Papa.' She came over to the bed, holding out the cup.

Arthur glowered at her, his eyes sunken in his hectic cheeks. 'It's this damn coal smoke,' he grumbled. 'If we had a decent wood fire, I wouldn't have this cough.'

'There are no logs in London,' Ginny said patiently. At least not for the kind of money that we have.' She bent to support his shoulders, holding the cup to his lips.

For a minute it looked as if he was going to refuse the medicine; then, with a muttered 'Hell, I'm not about to die yet, child,' he straightened abruptly, snatched the cup from her and drained it.

Ginny hid her relief, since it would only exacerbate his ill temper. The medicine contained a hefty dose of dragon's bone and it would bring him some much-required sleep as well as quiet the cough. In fact, it would bring them all peace and quiet for as long as he slept.

She set the cup on the table with the medicine bottle and bent to plump his pillows and smooth the covers. 'Can I bring you anything else?'

'Parchment,' he said, lying down again with a little moan of weakness that he couldn't conceal.

'If I buy parchment, I must pawn Dante's Inferno,' she pointed out. 'And you can't work without that, I have to go to work tomorrow, anyway, as we're down to our last five galleons.'

A look of distress crossed her father's eyes, and his air of petulance faded, replaced for a moment with an expression of dismayed bewilderment. Then his eyes closed.

Ginny moved softly away from the bed to the hearth, still huddling in her cloak. A small fire burned, and she added a few more coals. It was extravagant, but the day was so bitter and ice crusted the inside of the windows. Most of the time her father didn't really comprehend his own part in bringing them to this situation. But then there were moments like just then where he would deliberately turn away from the understanding and from the mental distress it caused him. He had so few inner resources for dealing with poverty and deprivation. It was true he'd never had to go without anything in his life before-but, then neither had she, being the youngest and a girl, she was doted on.

She blew on her hands and muttered a warming spell and watched the meagre orange flame. The noxious fumes of the sea coal thick in her lungs. But at least they had a fire, unlike the majority of their neighbours, shivering in icy garrets and cellars. By those standards Arthur, Ron and Virginia Weasley were rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

The sound of his breathing, rasping but deep, came from the bed, and Ginny relaxes, wondering how to spend the few hours of blissful solitude. At the Burrow she would have curled up with a book, or played the keyboard in the music room, or walked by the dam.

Vigorously she scolded herself for bootless repining. It only made the situation worse and since this was now her life and it was unlikely to change, she'd do well to make the best of it. But it had become much harder to do since her adventure with the Ferret. Adventure- was that the word for it?

She gazed into the fire wishing she had more concrete memories of that night. She'd lost her virginity, and yet she only had the sense of a magical dream. The waves of pleasure that nibbled at her memory had no sharp or reality. She couldn't reproduce them because they had no reference to anything she understood. She knew only that a pair of slate grey eyes and a rich merry laugh accompanied her through the long night hours, and she awoke every morning with the sense of loss and acute disappointment, her body feeling alone and somehow wasted. The uselessness, the waste of her self in her present existence, overwhelmed her when she looked down the long, dark tunnel of the future.

Tea and toast, she thought with sudden inspiration. Not a terribly extravagant indulgence- a nursery indulgence. Ron would let her have some butter and she could make tea and toast bread and slather on the butter so it melted and soaked into the crisp toast.

Her mouth watering, she leaped up and took the kettle downstairs to fill it at the water butt in the yard behind the shop. Ron was kneading suet pastry on the kitchen table, his muscular fore arms bare, his hands caked with flour. He looked up and nodded a greeting.

'How is he? He was coughing all last night.'

'He's sleeping at the moment,' Ginny said. 'The apothecary made up some more medicine for him. Do you think you could get me some butter?' Ron had taken up the cooking after Molly had died. And was not half bad.

Ron shook flour off her hands and took a wooden paddle to the thick golden pat on a dish in the middle of the table, slicing off a generous wedge. 'Is that enough?'

'Thank you. Can I have some tea and toast.'

'Don't spoil your appetite. There'll be a nice steak and kidney pudding for dinner.' Ron returned to his suet. 'You'll have to break the ice in the water.'

Ginny went out into the yard, shivering despite both the spell and the cloak. She took a stone and cracked the ice of the water, making a hole big enough to dip the kettle, trying not to get her gloves wet as she filled it. Then she hurried back into the warmth of the kitchen and up the narrow stairs into her own chilly apartments.

Her father was still asleep. She put the kettle on the oven to boil and then threw off her coat, fetching a fur-lined wool dressing gown from the massive armoire that contained both their scanty wardrobes. She slipped the garments on over her thin gown and returned to the fire, where she speared a slice of bread on the toasting fork and then knelt to hold the fork to the spurting flames. Soon the delicious smell of toasting bread filled the room and she allowed her mind to drift back into the past to the warmth of nursery fires and the sweet taste of honey on her tongue... to the blazing fire of the burrow and the rich aromas of mutton and oyster soup...

There was a sharp rap at the door, and Ginny jumped, startled from her reverie. Ron, presumably. She bade the knocker to enter, taking the half-toasted slice of bread off the fork, burning her fingers as she turned it over to brown the other side.

'Something smells appetizing.'

Ginny dropped the toasting fork. The voice was so unexpected, and yet as she heard it, she realized how it had been echoing, an ever-present memory, in her mind since she'd last seen him. It was the voice that belonged to the dream and she had never thought to hear it again.

'You?' She stared at her visitor. He wore his own long hair loose around his shoulders. A high-collared cape cloak of dark broadcloth hung from his shoulders, opened to reveal a black turtleneck and black formal pants... Simple enough clothes, and yet in this plain room he looked as exotic as a tropical butterfly in an English meadow.

Draco bowed with a touch of mockery. 'Yes, Miss Weasley. At your service.' He glanced towards the bed and closed the door softly. 'Your father's sleeping?'

'He's sick,' she replied still on her knees before the fire, still to astounded to absorb this visitation. 'But he won't be awake for several hours.'

The lid of the kettle rattled vigorously as the water boiled, and she reached automatically to lift it off the hob. 'Would you like some toast and tea?'

It struck her as a ridiculous offer even as she made it, but she could think of nothing else to say. She was over poweringly conscious of her of the wool of her dressing gown, of the tattiness of the fur edged cuffs. Five years ago it had been the most elegant garment of her wardrobe, and it was the one piece of luxurious clothing she hadn't sold after the catastrophe, because it was warm and practical. But it was now no longer luxurious or even particularly warm as the fur lining grew thinner and flatter with continued wear.

'If you have a second fork, I could toast it on my own,' Draco said, throwing off his cloak and taking a seat on the stool. 'I hope this isn't your dinner, it seems very insubstantial.' He had taken in the threadbare condition of the clothes she wore, when not out on CV business, but he was more aware of the oval beauty of her face, the lambent tawny eyes, the thick, rich rope of hair hanging from her shoulder.

Ginny passed him a second fork. 'We board one of the Creevy houses,' she said with a touch of hauteur, carefully measuring tea into the pot and pouring on the boiling water. She didn't add that they ate only when they could afford to pay at least 10 Knuts. Today they had it, but tomorrow she would have to venture into London's West End to raid the pockets of the rich for the CV. Just the thought of it, made her sick with apprehension, so she chose not to anticipate the terror.

'I see,' Draco said neutrally, spearing a slice of bread and holding it to the fire. 'Do you skate?'

'Skate?' It was such a non sequitur that she almost laughed out loud, 'on ice?'

'Is there another kind of surface that is good enough to skate on?' He turned his bread on the fork, raising his eyes to her flushed, startled face.

'I used to skate on the dam outside the burrow every winter as a child,' she said passing him a thick china cup of tea. 'Why?' It was quite ridiculous to be kneeling before the fire sharing nursery tea and discussing winter memories of her childhood. And yet, paradoxically, it felt natural.

'Well I thought we might amuse ourselves skating this afternoon,' he answered, blowing on his tea in a very un-Draco like manner. 'The Serpentine is frozen, and everyone who can beg or borrow a pair of skates is out there.'

'Unfortunately, I can do neither,' she said with constraint. 'Skates don't seem like a particularly useful item when it came to packing up and leaving The Burrow.'

'Your family home?'

'In Northumberland.'

'You must have been use to the winter cold.'

'It was a different kind of cold from London's. This is damp and bites to the marrow,' she said. 'I'm use to a dry bright cold.'

He buttered his piece of toast. 'I have two pairs of skates in the Mercedes. One will definitely fit your feet.' He took a bite, licking butter from his lips with an appreciative nod.

Ginny nibbled her own toast, forcing herself to recapture reality. An invitation to go skating on the Serpentine belonged in some other world; it had nothing to do with this dank, freezing room and her father's stertorous sleep and the prospect of Ron's steak and kidney pudding for dinner, followed by her own chill garret bed as soon as the light faded. Electricity and fires after dark were a luxury they couldn't afford.

Draco leaned over, caught her chin, and wiped away a smear of butter with his thumb. 'Well what do you say?'

'I can't leave my father.'

'You've done it before, and you can do it again. I'm sure your oblivious brother and ummm his, partner Harry will be able to look after him. Besides I have a proposal to make to you... one that I hope will be to a mutual advantage,' he said carefully, a slow smile perking at the side of his lips.

'A proposal?' In the light of their past dealings, Ginny could think of only one kind of proposal he might term mutually advantageous. Her eyes narrowed, their golden glow fading to be replaced by a cold glitter. 'And exactly what would that be?'

'I'll explain later.'

'Oh, please skip the ceremony Draco.' Her voice was dangerously low, her eyes icy slits. 'I'm sure I can hear it here as well as anywhere.'

Draco stood up. 'No, I don't think so,' he said in a habitual fashion. 'It's pretty complex.'

Ginny jumped to her feet, two bright flags of colour flying in her cheeks. 'II already told you Malfoy; I'm NOT for sale. Maybe you thought I would be flattered, grateful even...' She gestured with expressive contempt at the room. 'But I'm so sorry to ruin your delusion. I want absolutely nothing to do with your proposals.'

'Even if you were for sale. I doubt I would even take a second look at you,' he returned coolly. 'I can assure you I've never had to pay for sex.'

'Get out!' Ginny commanded with low-voiced ferocity. 'You may believe that whatever happened the other night gives you the right to insult me, but the truth is you're a stupid ferret fuckwit who's life is ruled with his dick!'

There was a moment of stunned silence; then Draco started to laugh, his rich merry laugh sending the dark shadows scurrying into the corners like bats escaping the light. 'Well, that's telling me!' he declared. 'What an impressive vocabulary of insults you have Virginia.'

'Get out!' she repeated, folding her arms glaring at him with an intensity of loathing.

'No, I don't think so.' He glanced around the room, and his eye fell on the armoire. 'You will need your cloak and boots. The one you were wearing at the Mermaids Tavern will do.'

He strode over to her wardrobe. Ginny bounced across the room in his wake, grabbing his arm as he moved to open the door. 'Will you listen to me?'

'With the greatest pleasure, once you start to say something sensible,' he responded equably, freeing his arm and opening the door. 'But so far you've only prated arrant nonsense. Now let me repeat... now listen carefully.' He drew out her cloak. 'I have a proposal to make to you, one that involves no buying or selling... Put this on... One that I trust will work to our mutual advantage.' He bent and lifted out her boots.

With an air of great satisfaction, as if he'd just found a treasure trove. 'Now hurry and dress, while I go and explain to your brother and Harry that you will not be back until after dinner.'

'No... Wait...'

He paused at the doorway and turned with an air of exaggerated patience. 'Now what?'

Ginny stared at him, at a loss. She was rarely at a loss and didn't like the situations at all. 'You can't just takeover like this,' she said finally aware of how lame it sounded.

'If I don't, my dear ma'am, it's clear that nothing will be accomplished,' he responded. 'Join me below stairs, please. I trust it won't take you more then a couple of minutes.'

He was gone, pointedly leaving the door slightly adjusted. Ginny chewed her lip, glancing at the still-sleeping figure in the bed. The medicine and done its work well; and she knew that when he awoke, her father would be groggy and disorientated. Ron could look after him perfectly well until she returned, and she would be able to pay her from the proceeds of tomorrow's expeditions.

If Malfoy wasn't going to propose that she become his whore, then what could he possibly have in mind?

A weak ray of sunshine crept through the grimy window, falling across her face as she stood in indecision and confusion. And suddenly she knew it didn't matter what he had in mind. Whatever it was, it was going to alter her present circumstances in some way.

And the sun was shining and the Serpentine was frozen and there was a long afternoon to be spent outside this drear prison.

She threw off her shabby dressing gown. Flinging the cloak around her shoulders, she slipped quietly from the room, closing the door gently behind her, and then ran down the stairs, unable to control a surge of exuberance that seemed to belong to some long-ago and half-forgotten person.

Draco was talking to her brother, to her surprise, at the foot of the stairs as she jumped down. Her brother was looking gratified, and Ginny caught the glint of silver in his palm.

'You go and enjoy yourself with Vlad,' Ron said, winking. 'Dad'll be fine with me and Harry. I'll leave the back door unlocked for you just in case you come home late,' another broad wink.

Ginny winced, but an attempt to deny the construction the woman was putting on the circumstances would be pointless. She wouldn't be believed, and, indeed, how should she be? What more natural than for a young woman down on her luck to accept the friendship of a member of the Ministry? No one would think less of her around here- in fact quite the opposite, until they found out who 'Vlad' is...

She followed Malfoy out into the street, where his car stood. He opened the door for her and then followed her inside, and within ten minutes they'd left the mean streets behind and were driving through the city toward the Strand.

'You shouldn't have given my brother money, he'll be so angry once he finds out who you are,' Ginny said.

'Of course,' he agreed affably. 'I just thought it would be easier for him to let you out with a complete stranger, little Weasel.'

'I'll pay you back, I expect to have money again by tomorrow,' she said a little stiffly.

'Going picking again, Virginia?' He raised his eyebrow.

'I do what I have to,' she retorted. 'You of all people should understand that.'

'Who said I didn't? You keep jumping to conclusions,' he complained.

Ginny was silent for a minute, then said, 'I can't help jumping to conclusions when everything is shrouded in mystery. What is your proposal, ferret?'

'All in good time,' he said, turning through Stanhope gate into Hyde Park. The park was crawling with people, cars, riders, and pedestrians strolling through the crisp air engaged in the vital society business of seeing and being seen.

If things had been different, she would have been part of this elegant throng, Ginny thought bitterly. She would have had her connections, made a good, convenient marriage, probably with Harry, if he hadn't turned gay and fell for Ron, and this would have been her world for life.

'I imagine your father lost his money before you could enter the Ministry circle?' her companion observed, again evincing that uncanny ability to come up with her thoughts.

Ginny shrugged. 'I probably wouldn't have liked it anyway.'

'Liar,' he accused gently. 'How old are you Virginia? Eighteen, nineteen?'

'Eighteen,' she answered dully.

'I doubt you'd have been happy with Harry, he's to convential and you're too fond of asserting yourself to be compliant.' Draco remarked, nodding his head as a lady waved at him from a path beside the road.

Ginny wondered if this was a compliment or a criticism, but it had a ring of truth. 'You seem to have a lot of friends for a wanted man,' she observed, adding tartly, 'A mind boggling amount in fact.'

He chuckled. 'But here, Virginia, I am no more a thief then you are a pickpocket.'

The car stopped at the bank of the Serpentine beside a small cement shed where a man was dispensing mugs of chocolate and chestnuts roasted over a fire. A group of teenage boys were swooping and dancing over the ice to the strains of 'Greensleeves' played by a troupe of Gypsy musicians.

Draco sprang down from the car, a pair of shiny skates in his hands. 'Allow me, Miss Weasley.' Standing beside the carriage, he deftly strapped the pair of blades onto her feet, then reached up and lifted her out. He carried her easily to the ice and set her down at the edge, his hands still at her waist until she got her balance. 'Tell me when you're steady.'

Ginny stood for a minute, getting the feel of the blades; then by way of answer she gave an exultant little chuckle. Turning out of his hands, she swooped away on a one-foot glide that carried her almost to the middle of the lake.

Spinning, she waved at him as he sat on the edge to strap on his own blades.

She reminded him of a phoenix released from a cage as she swooped over the ice, and he could hear her joyous laughter as he skated over to her. 'Isn't it wonderful!' Her eyes shone, her cheeks pinkened with the cold, her lips parted in a flashing smile.

A current of desire shocked him, jolting his stomach. He wanted her with an incontinent urgency he didn't remember ever feeling for a woman before. But he wanted her like this, awake and laughing, glorying in the purity of physical sensation, not responding involuntarily to the dictates of a sensual trance.

She caught his expression and the laughter dies abruptly, but her face remained open and alive, her lips still parted, her eyes still shining, but with a different light now, that matched his own. She glanced around the thronged lake with an almost desperate air, as if she too were in the grip of an urgent hunger that required instant gratification.

'Come, lets skate further along, away from the crowd,' he said his voice a husky rasp, cutting the invisible line of tension between them. 'I want you to listen to what I have to say without interruption.' He took her hand, drawing her around the lake to a less densely populated spot.

Ginny knew now that she was going to agree to anything he suggested. She was riding a tide of reckless inspiration like a piece of tumbling seaweed, and she would come ashore wherever the tide tossed her. She no longer knew how to define herself, knew only the ghastly present and the equally grim future it would spawn must be avoided. She must seize the lifeline offered her or drown in the mire of hopelessness.

'So?' she invited, doing a neat three-turn that brought her round to face him. 'What's your proposal Draco?'

'A marriage,' he said simply. 'A social deception that will enable you to be revenged upon the men who ruined your father and will enable me to be revenged upon my own enemy.'

Ginny's jaw dropped. Whatever she had been expecting, it hadn't been this. 'What do you mean, a social deception?'

'Well, of course I'm not suggesting we really go through a marriage ceremony,' he said, as if it were axiomatic. 'Only that we present ourselves to the Ministry society as a newly married couple. I have enough money to set up the enterprise, a good house, servants, and cars... And then we will exchange vengeances.'

The light and thunder had faded from his face now and his eyes were that arctic grey she'd seen before, his expression almost mask like. 'Who, who deserves your vengeance?' she asked tentatively.

'Think Grryffindor, a man... the man responsible for the misunderstanding that drove me to the road,' he said, his voice curt, 'you can guess all the minor details. All you have to do is pick his pocket. The item you have to steal lies very close to his chest, so you will have to become intimately acquainted with him. If necessary, you will have to seduce him... I doubt it will be very hard. This man can be relied to covet another's belongings... A man who's vanity is so large that the attentions of a beautiful and desirable woman will sweep him off his guard.'

Virginia heard the venom in his voice, and its chill slowed the blood in her veins.

'I have to seduce him?' she said slowly, struggling to grasp the implications of such a suggestion. 'You want me to have sex with your father?'

'Yes, if it should prove necessary in order to remove from his body the object I require to achieve my own ends,' he said with cold detachment. 'Somewhere on his body he carries at all times a certain very small ring, a ring to fit a baby's finger. You will have to steal that ring.'

'But how can you be certain he always carries it?' She looked at him with confusion.

He knew because he always carried his own. Lucius would obey the same Malfoy tradition- superstition some mught call it- that the ring must never leave its owners possession unless it was buried with him.

'I'm sure,' he said evenly.

And then, when he had the ring, Vladimir Shickacovick would step forward and present himself as Draco Malfoy, the legitimate owner of all Malfoy estates, thus with access to all of Lucius's dark arts equipment condemning him. Lucius would be destroyed, his pride in the dust, his influence ashes in the wind.

'You want me to have sex with him,' Ginny repeated slowly, seizing on this one aspect as at least vaguely comprehensible in this extraordinary conversation.

He looked at her, his eyes snapping into focus. 'In exchange for which I will engage to ruin the men who ruined your father, and I will engage to ruin the men who ruined your father, and I will return your home and fortune to you.'

'But how will you do that?'

'I'll explain later, when we have set the stage. But you may be assured that I will do it, and when our little play is over, you, your father and brothers will have your fortune and property returned to you.'

It was too much to absorb. Whatever scheme he might have for fulfilling his side of such a preposterous bargain, the whole idea was impossible to take in. How could she deliberately set out to seduce and fuck a stranger?

'And this... this marriage?' she grasped feebly at another loose end waving just beyond her comprehension.

'When we have no further use for it, then we will part,' he said easily. 'You will have what you want and I'll have what I want. We'll create some fiction to ensure that you can live the life you choose.'

'You'll have me act like a whore,' she stated flatly. It was suddenly the only simple fact that made sense to her. Draco was attempting to buy her as he would by a whore. But not for his own enjoyment- as a tool to accomplish his own purpose.

'Ginny, in this world liaisons are a common practice and women who practice them are not known as whores,' he returned. 'I would ask you to do what countless other women are doing, have done before you, and will do after you. Your mind and emotions aren't included in the task.'

And what about her father and her brother? Where did they come in tho this scheming? But, presumably, the Ferret hadn't given Arthur and Ron Weasley a thought. And at this moment even to Ginny, her family's role in all this seemed irrelevant.

Virginia turned away to hide from Draco, the confused responses chasing across her countenance. Her voice sounded stifled to her ears as she said, 'and what about us? Of this counterfeit marriage? Is that also to incur no involvement of the mind and emotions?'

He was silent for a moment, then said dryly, 'I doubt that.'

When she said nothing, but remained half-turned from him, he continued in a quiet matter-of-fact tone, 'but if you would prefer to play that part of my wife only in name, I think I could attempt to respect that.'

'Is that what you want?' Still she wouldn't look at him.

'No,' he said readily. 'No, I wouldn't.'

He put his hand on her shoulder and gently turned her toward him. His eyes were soft now, his mouth smiling. He cupped the curve of her cheek in his hand. 'If you enjoyed the other night, Gin, I swear to you, sweetheart, that it was nothing compared to what could be.'

Virginia swallowed, felt herself melting under the buttery warmth of his voice, the heat of his eyes, the lascivious intent of his words.

'We would have all that together, and we would be revenged upon our enemies. And we would make fools of everyone of the vain, posturing idiots who see nothing of the world that exists beyond the sugary confection of their own creation.'

Suddenly he laughed and the intensity was broken. 'Will you teach them a lesson, Gin?'

She looked behind her at the brightly clad crowd of skaters in their furs and velvets, secure in the knowledge that food and warmth and pleasure were theirs for the taking. She saw the children, barefoot in the frozen gutters, eyes sunken in their starved faces. The women sprawled in the mud, clutching an empty beer bottle to their breasts, the neglected babies wailing thinly on the ground beside them.

She and the ferret knew the other face of London. Crabbe and Goyle had ensured that she and her family would know that face intimately for the rest of their lives.

What Draco was proposing was preposterous. It was madness. But is it could work...? Oh, if it could work, it would be an adventure to challenge any fantasy.

But if it were necessary, could she cold-bloodedly seduce some unknown man?

For such a purpose and such an adventure? Yes, offcourse she could. The Virginia Weasley who would have reacted to such a prospect with revulsion had long lost her delicate sensibilities. They were a luxury she hadn't been able to afford for three years. Besides, it wasn't as if she were still a virgin. And for a woman who regularly risked her neck picking pockets for a living, simple seduction was nothing. It wouldn't put her neck in a noose... unless, of course, she was caught stealing the ring.

An icy shiver ran down her spine. In this scenario there'd be no crowd in which to lose herself.

But she wouldn't be caught. She was too good at it for that. Too deft and quick. She would not be caught. And when it was done... oh, when it was done, there was the promise of restitution and once again a future was worth having.

Draco watched as her thoughts flew across her expressive countenance, and he read them as clearly as if they were written on the pages of a book. He didn't need to hear her speak her agreement and said after a minute, 'Do you know the names of the men who robbed your family?'

'Men?' she said scornfully. 'Swine.'

He inclined his head in grave acceptance of this correction. 'Do you know the name of those swine.'

'Crabbe and Goyle, your goons.'

They're good friends with the vice Minister of Magic.' He said. 'I know them, as Vlad, but it shouldn't be hard to become good friends with them again. Do they know you?'

Ginny shook her head. 'I was away when they approached my father. He was out at the dam when they did the deed...' She shrugged.

'Good. Much better that they don't know you since Hogwarts, might be even better if they don't recognize you personally,' Draco said briskly. 'Come, you're getting cold. Let's skate back to the crowd. I'll show you the man.'

Ginny remained where she was for a moment. 'But what do we with my father and Ron while we're putting the world in its right position?'

'Ron could stay with Harry, as he would want to judging by their, uhh... circumstances. As for your father, I suggest we tuck him up safe and warm with his books,' the ferret said airily. 'Whatever you wish to tell him, I'll back you up to the hilt.'

Ginny knew perfectly well that her father and Ron wouldn't ask awkward questions in case he didn't like the answers, one of the implications of the War of the Dead. They'd both accept a change of circumstances with their usual insouciance, at least on the surface.

So there it was. A wild fantastic contract lay between them. Her life was about to change out of all recognition. And yet there was nothing to mark such a momentous bargain. Not even solemn words of acceptance.

He had taken her hand and was drawing her along beside him as they skated back to the wider area where the fashionable skaters congregated. She glanced sideways up at his face and saw no change. She'd half expected to see some demonic twist of satisfaction to his mouth or in his eyes, but he wore his usual expression of cool serenity with the little half smile of mockery playing over his lips.

'Over there,' he said quietly. 'Do you see the tall, slender man in the burgundy velvet cloak with the fair straight hair?'

'Near the tree?' Virginia looked sharply at her companion.

'Yes,' said Draco quietly.

What mystery was this? Ginny looked across the ice toward the man she was to seduce and rob. He was skating with marked grace, his willowy figure moving elegantly around his partner. He wore no hat, and his hair was a luxuriant river of white blonde hair, restrained at the nape of his neck with a scarlet ribbon. He was too far away for her to form any impression other than of fair grace and assured elegance.

'What is he to you?' she asked, unconsciously whispering.

'My enemy and father.'

Such a flat, bald declaration left no room for further questioning, but she tried. 'And you won't tell me how he has injured you.'

'It's not necessary for you to know that.'

Ginny was silent, continuing to gaze across the ice at the man who was the core of her misfortune throughout her teenage years. The hairs on the nape of her neck prickled, and a shudder rippled down her spine, but it was not the cold.

Excitement or apprehension, she didn't know. But then, the two were for the moment inextricable.