Repercussions

Having ingested my usual quantities of firewhiskey in an attempt to ensure a little peaceful sleep, I was lying in bed, an arm thrown over my eyes, when I heard a hesitant knock at my door. I wondered who it could be: Millicent would just have bashed the door down with her usual subtlety, and, this early in term, most of the boys were too concerned by my worryingly establishment status as a new prefect to bother me.

'Yeah?'

I was really quite astounded to see Ginny Weasley poke her ginger head around the door.

'I didn't know they let you lot down into the dungeons.'

'Um,' she said, edging round the door. 'I... well...' Abruptly, she burst into tears.

'Oh, for heaven's sake. Come in, or you'll wake up the rest of us.'

She shuffled in and hovered at the edge of my bed. I waved her down, uncomfortably aware that I wasn't wearing very much under the bedclothes. 'I suppose the marvellous news of the Gryffindor/Slytherin alliance has reached you, then.'

Ginny looked up at me, tears suspended on her eyelashes. 'Yeah.'

'Look, you fell in love with a woofter. It happens. You usually don't realise before it's too late, and certainly not before it gets seriously embarrassing.' I caught myself, reluctant to admit to Weasley that I was in precisely the same position as she was.

'Well, I just... I thought... Why didn't he say anything?'

'Oh, look. They never do. They don't think, or, if they do, they think you're better off not knowing. Men never think anything through, and queers are no better.'

It was becoming rapidly apparent that Ginny... that Weasley had no idea of how to behave in the bedroom of someone she barely knew. I sat, paralysed, as she shuffled up the bed and collapsed next to me, her red hair streaming across my pillow. It wasn't ginger at all, not really. More like the colour of drenched fox, shot through with strands of dark and light.

'What the hell am I supposed to do? I knew he liked boys, a bit, but I didn't think he'd ever... find anyone. He was, I don't know, my gay best friend. We used to hold hands, and hug all the time, and we'd hang out, but now I just don't have any kind of a place in his life at all. He doesn't need a fake girlfriend when he's got a new boyfriend.'

Good lord, it's amazing how events in Gryffindor Tower just pass you right by. I had no idea that Potter was out at all, let alone playing gay best friend to half of his house. 'Look, that happy snuggly business only lasts for as long as they're not getting laid. I'm sure it hasn't even occurred to him that he's taking something away from you - you satisfied a need for him, and now someone else is doing it instead.'

She stifled a sob. I was at least half cut, and I was finding it remarkably difficult to concentrate on what I was saying. She smelt of cinnamon, and there were tears dripping from the sharp line of her jaw.

'What are you doing down here, anyway? I'm sure there are plenty of daft bints to cry over in Gryffinor Tower.'

She bit her lip. 'They just think I'm being stupid. They think I'm an idiot for loving him, but it's not like I can turn it off, is it? They don't understand.'

I felt obliged to retain some dignity at this point. 'What, and you think I do?'

'Well, yeah.'

Bugger.

'I've seen the way you look at Malfoy. I bet you feel exactly the same, don't you?'

I snorted dismissively at this alarming perceptiveness and attempted to change the subject. 'Bollocks. Besides, you know Purebloods won't stand for that kind of thing - they never have. He'll probably marry you anyway, and you'll just have to put up with it. Affairs on the side, and so on. Plenty of women do it: at least with Potter it'll be boys rather than direct competition.'

I was even more surprised when Weasley dissolved into noisy tears across my pillow and mostly across me. 'But that's even worse,' she gulped out.

'Merlin's balls,' I muttered, slinging an arm around her shoulders. 'Oh, don't cry. You know our lot have to carry on the tradition,' I reiterated, mildly appalled that I was grouping that herd of Weasleys with my family. 'There aren't enough of us left for men to neglect their responsibility.'

Ginny hauled herself up on one elbow, spraying that hair across my shoulders. 'Do you want that?'

'What do you mean?'

'Look, you're plainly in love with Malfoy. Tell me you'd be delighted for him to reluctantly father some pureblood kids on you and then run off and pick up men whenever he gets out of the house.'

'Fuck off, Weasley.'

'Oh, hit a nerve?' she opened bloodshot hazel eyes at me wide.

'Look, fake girlfriend, fake wife - whatever. That's the pay-off. You both get the social respectability, and you amuse yourself for the rest of the time.'

'Is that right?' she asked, sliding in closer. 'And how do you amuse yourself?'

I looked at her, sprawled against me, her red hair flowing across and around. 'There are ways. It all works out in the end,' I replied, raking a hand through her hair.