Our Winter

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Chapter 4: Lust in the Afternoon

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It was half past one and she had no indication that Draco remembered their date, let alone intended to show up for it.

Not date, she corrected herself shakily. It is not a date. You are his servant and he basically summoned you here. It is most assuredly nothing like a date. And she most certainly wasn't going to think about how haunted his eyes had looked yesterday, nor was she about to start worrying over how much power his father seemed to have over Draco's state of mind. No, not her, certainly not.

Running a nervous hand through her hair, Ginny wondered, since she was all alone out here, just who she was trying to convince.

The lake was gorgeous, even though the sun insisted on hiding behind a cloud. There was a crisp, delicious chill to the air that seemed to pervade late springtime in England. Even though it was Saturday, Ginny wore her robes to combat the weather and, if she was honest, afford her a layer of protection against Draco.

That boy had certainly gotten under her skin. If only he were in her line of sight. Maybe she'd misunderstood him. Instead of meeting him for lunch, perhaps she was supposed to bring lunchtime food to him at dinner. No, it was obvious he'd forgotten. Of course, she'd been late, having only gotten there at quarter to one. If he'd intended for her to meet him at precisely noon, it was possible he'd been here on time, and then, when she was so atrociously late, he'd assumed she was an idiot who couldn't keep track of time and left.

This was all Ron's fault.

She'd slept in that day for the first time in weeks, having been exhausted from days of foregoing sleep to eliminate any possibility of having another of those disturbing dreams. That, coupled with examinations and doing Draco's Herbology homework on top of her own (not to mention the SEWING) and Ginny was ready to collapse most days. Today, however, having gotten ten whole hours of sleep in a row, she'd woken refreshed and fairly buzzing with anticipation over the coming day.

After a quick trip down to the kitchen to fetch a basket full of goodies, Ginny had run back up to the tower to get her Herbology texts. Having Draco's undivided attention out by the lake seemed like a perfect time to get in some tutoring -- it was secluded, so no one would find them there, and if they did, they could pretend they were just having a romantic rendezvous. Which we aren't, she hastened to assure herself. Of course we're not, she shot back (somewhat snottily), because I'm bloody alone out here and I really don't do anything for myself, romantically speaking.

Once back inside the tower, however, her older brother had appeared, wanting to know just where exactly she thought she was going with the picnic basket made for two. After trying to throw him off the scent with a lame story about her new friend, Ezra ("I just saw Ezra," Ron said icily, "and she's going to have an awfully hard time having lunch with you when she's busy shoving her tongue down Seamus Finnigan' throat."), but Ron would not be dissuaded. Finally admitting to her tutoring session with Draco had only increased Ron's resolve not to let her out of the tower. She only managed to free herself by resorting to emotional blackmail -- "If I don't get help in Potions, I won't get top O.W.L. scores and it will break mum's heart. Do you want to be responsible for that?"

It really was quite a miracle that she'd managed to keep the whole thing a secret from Ron for as long as she had. The whole school was buzzing about Draco and Ginny, but all the students who knew Ron best, his fellow seventh years, were more interested in studying for their N.E.W.T.s than they were in spreading gossip about Ron's clearly insane little sister sitting with those shifty Slytherins. Plus, Ginny thought that everyone was a bit afraid of Ron brutally murdering the messenger in this case.

The sixth years seemed to have no such fear and were certainly gossiping like ninnies, Ginny had to admit. At least they hadn't begun in earnest until Ron's little outburst at dinner the other night. She'd been passed at least a dozen different notes during classes, ranging from "Are you MAD?" to "What's Draco really like?" to "Is it true he keeps shrunken, transfigured Hufflepuff first years locked in a little cage by his bed?"

The latter had been handed down from a terrified looking first year Hufflepuff in the halls. Ginny's favorite note had been from a Ravenclaw fourth year. "So then, is Malfoy as good in the sack as that bint Pansy Parkinson told the whole school he was?" That particular missive had made Ginny blush a deep scarlet and the Ravenclaw girl had just flashed her a conspiratorial grin. Ginny had wanted to chase after her and yell that it wasn't what it looked like, but she was sure denying it so vehemently would only make it seem all the more true.

Besides, that had been the day after she'd had her dream, and the remnants of it forced an inherently honest bone in her body to protest at the fabrication. Perhaps it wasn't exactly what it looked like, but Ginny was beginning to fear it was pretty bloody close.

"Boo," a voice whispered near her ear.

Ginny jumped and spun around to find Draco uncomfortably close to her. "Idiot," she muttered, smacking his arm for good measure.

"Don't, you know how those little pet names make me blush," he murmured.

"Stupid git," she said sweetly.

"Brat," he chuckled, and it almost sounded affectionate.

"Is that all you have to say for yourself?" she asked, placing her hands on her hips.

"Harpy?" he offered with a raised eyebrow.

"You're late," she informed him. "I've been here for over an hour." A slight fabrication, but he certainly didn't need to know that.

"That's hardly my fault, is it?" he noted. "We never set a time and it's still a reasonable hour to be having lunch."

"Yes, except that the rest of the school has already eaten lunch. At noon when everyone knows they're meant to."

"Well what do you want me to do about it?" he asked, sounding somewhat aggrieved.

"You could at least apologize, couldn't you?" she pointed out, exasperated.

"Look, what good would my apologizing do, really?" he said, sounding very logical. "My saying 'I'm sorry' wouldn't turn back the clock so you weren't waiting here for over an hour -- which, actually, seems a little sad, doesn't it? -- and it certainly won't put you out of this foul mood."

"You won't know unless you try, will you?" she said, then frowned. "And hey! It is not sad! It simply shows a certain level of commitment. We had plans."

"We still do," he said, throwing up his hands. "What did you bring for lunch?"

Ginny narrowed her eyes, studying him closely. She knew very well that he'd intended her to meet him at noon because Draco always took lunch at noon. It was like a preprogrammed response drilled into him from a tender young age. Yesterday he'd seemed almost . . . vulnerable. And now here he was, actually arguing with her instead of ordering her to be quiet. There was obviously something wrong and it was weighing heavily on him.

He looked so tired, she realized, as she looked him over again. His robes were slightly wrinkled, as though they'd been slept in (or not slept in, as the case might be), and there were dark circles beneath his eyes; they were almost obscenely black against his pale skin. His hair wasn't as perfectly combed and slicked back as it normally was, and she was reminded again of her dream, of the lightly tousled Draco who'd made her head spin and her toes curl and all those other ridiculously silly things she'd always wondered if she'd ever feel for someone who was right in front of her, attainable.

Draco wasn't attainable, though, she reminded herself again. And she didn't even want to attain him! Oh, stupid subconscious trying to destroy my sanity.

"What?" Draco asked nervously, glancing down at the front of his robes, no doubt wondering if there was something on him.

Oops. Apparently, her perusal of him had gone on for far too long.

"Cold chicken," Ginny said, kneeling down on the blanket she'd brought and beginning to remove food from the basket, "biscuits, marmalade, crackers, salmon and Brie. With some sparkling cider to drink."

He raised a slightly suspicious eyebrow at her, but didn't push the issue of why she'd been staring at him, for which she was grateful. They ate in a mostly comfortable silence, only breaking it with easy, noncommittal chatter about the weather, or how delicious the food was. Draco had two modes, Ginny was beginning to discover: irritatingly loud or deathly quiet.

When he was loud, it was usually because he was shooting his mouth off, posturing about arrogantly, things like that. Loud Draco was the Draco most of the school saw and the one that instantly turned Ron into raving lunatic, even though Ron was fairly loud himself. They were different kinds of loud, though. Ron was loud in a jovial, life-of-the-party way; Draco was loud in a booming voice, look-at-me-because-I'm-so-important way.

That wasn't the Draco Ginny was beginning to feel something for, though. Quiet Draco was so unassuming, had so much going on behind his eyes, Ginny wondered if Loud Draco wasn't -- at least partly -- an act. An old suit he put on because no matter how old or ratty the clothes got, they were still familiar and comfortable and when you needed to feel secure, it was easier than shopping for something new and more attractive.

Draco's old suit was obnoxious and bigoted, closed-minded and insufferably full of himself. Once, that had summed up Draco's rather two-dimensional self nicely. After the time they'd spent together, Ginny was sure that wasn't strictly true any longer. Over the years, Draco had grown, and while he hadn't gone through a stunning caterpillar-into-butterfly metamorphosis, he'd certainly developed a third dimensionality.

After nearly ten minutes of monosyllabic responses and snotty grunts as Draco's only participation in their conversation, Ginny decided to take matters into her own hands.

"So what's wrong with you, anyhow?" she asked, then winced at her tone. That had emerged perhaps a tad harsher than she'd intended.

If her tone bothered him, Draco didn't show it.

"It's nothing," he said easily, wiping each of his fingers individually with a white linen napkin.

"Nothing doesn't hurt so much," Ginny insisted. He glanced up at her and she could hear the silent warning: Don't press me.

"It's just my father," he said. And leave it at that was more than implied.

"What about your father?" she pressed. Weasleys had no common sense. Loads of courage, but absolutely no common sense.

Heaving a sigh, Draco tossed his napkin down.

"Is there anything I can do to make you drop this?" he asked wearily.

"You could order me to," she said, chewing on her lower lip.

"Fine," he said. "I order you to drop this."

Ginny nodded, chewing all the more on her lip. She began picking at blades of grass beside her, her gaze caught up in Draco's. He was watching her so carefully, measuring her up. Does he find me wanting in some way? What did he see when he looked at her? Too much red hair, more freckles than skin, hand-me-down clothes (vintage, really; she had no sisters and they once belonged to her mother or, when she was really unfortunate, Percy), a Weasley through and through. The Malfoys hated the Weasleys. She couldn't even remember why at the moment.

"What about your father?" Ginny burst out. She'd really tried not to, but she'd felt like she was going to explode.

"Do you know what the word `order´ means?" Draco asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Draco," she said softly, saying his name out loud for the first time since he'd told her to, "I just . . . I'd just like to help you. If I can." A half smile tugged at her mouth. "Any slave girl worth her salt would do the same."

He almost smiled. Then he seemed to remember what they were talking about and became serious and upset again.

"He's just going on about my future again," Draco said with a sour expression on his face. "Talking about all the great things I'm going to do; things I don't particularly want to do."

Ginny nibbled on her thumbnail. "Evil things?"

"Lots of things," Draco said vaguely, exasperation beginning to color his voice.

"You sound a lot like my friend Ezra," Ginny declared.

Draco managed to scowl and roll his eyes at the same time. "Don't go comparing me to one of your friends, brat."

"She won't tell me about her awful future, either," Ginny continued, undaunted, "even though I'm sure Ezra would feel better if she'd just get it off her chest."

"Yes, and does Ezra find your pathetic plays at subtlety as embarrassing as I do?"

"Ezra does not," Ginny answered primly.

"Oh, I´m sure she does," Draco said with a sly grin, "she's just trying to spare your feelings."

"Lucky we don't have to worry about you doing that," Ginny said sarcastically.

"I do what I can," Draco declared modestly.

~

"Woman, if you don't let me have at least a minute's peace between hammering these useless facts into my skull, I'm going to toss these books and you along with them right into that lake."

"I don't know how you expect to learn this if you won't study," Ginny insisted, growing extremely fed up with his almost constant complaining. "It's like you're not even trying to read the assignment."

"It's pointless," he insisted, throwing his text book aside.

"It is not," Ginny said firmly. "You who are so big on Potion-making and how brilliant Professor Snape and his 'art' is," she said mockingly, "should appreciate Herbology a lot more than you do."

"Who says?" he snapped.

"They go hand in hand, don't they?" Ginny pointed out. "All the ingredients that go into Snape's precious formulas are exactly what Professor Sprout is trying to teach us about."

"I don't need to know how they work, as long as I know that they do," Draco said.

"You really believe that, don't you?" Ginny asked, sounding flabbergasted.

"'Course," he answered, shifting uncomfortably.

"It doesn't matter to you at all, then, where something comes from, what it's made of, how it got to you?" she pressed. "Just so long as it works?" She was near tears now, but she would be damned if she'd let it show.

"What's wrong with that?" he asked testily.

"Nothing," she snapped. "Absolutely nothing."

Internally, she was seething. This was exactly why Ron was so worried about her spending time with Malfoy, exactly why Draco and Harry hated one another so much. Their intrinsic belief systems were so deeply opposite that it was a miracle they didn't repel each other like polarized magnets. Could she have been so blinded by her mounting attraction (and she was willing to admit that there was a mounting attraction) for him that she'd manufactured reasons to view him as something other than the mean-spirited boy they'd known for years?

"It's obviously not `nothing´ when you've got a blast-ended skrewt up your arse about it," he pointed out reasonably.

"Fine," she snapped, leaping to her feet. She tossed the apple core she had in her hands at his head and he just barely ducked in time. "You want to know what's wrong? It's you. It's the way you see things, the way you assume you know everything. You look at me and all you see is a little gutter rat Weasley, too poor to afford new clothes, something to . . . God, you don't even pity me, do you? You disdain me and anyone else who doesn't meet your awful, narrow-minded criteria. You're a bigoted, nasty boy--"

"Are you quite done?" he asked in an icy voice, jumping to his feet as well.

"Not even close!" she yelled. "You're so smart. Everything comes so easily to you, you've got everything, you never have to worry about security or whether you'll be able to help your family keep from losing their home! You're so smart," she repeated around a sob, "and you're so ignorant. How can anyone that smart be so ignorant?"

"I'm not smart," he snapped. "Not the way you think."

"Right," she sad sarcastically, "and you make better marks than almost anyone but Hermione because you're so stupid--"

"I make better marks than almost anyone but Hermione because I've got a eidetic memory," he admitted angrily.

That brought her up short for a moment. "Then . . . then why have you done so poorly in Herbology?"

"It's not . . . I don't remember things I read, or see," he said, his voice strained, his posture hostile as they glared back and forth at each other. "But when I hear something I remember it perfectly."

"You don't pay attention to what Professor Sprout says," Ginny said, her tone reflecting her sudden enlightenment. "And he never gives us the entire lesson aloud -- he always makes us look it up for ourselves."

"Just wait 'til your seventh year," Draco mumbled. "He assumes you've been listening for the entire six years prior and stops talking almost altogether."

"Why on earth didn't you tell me this before?!" she burst out, furious again.

Draco seemed taken aback. "What the hell are you mad about now?"

"We've been going about your tutoring all wrong," she said, as though it were obvious. "I've been having you read . . . good God, no wonder you're so bloody moody."

"I'm moody," he said incredulously.

"Sit back down," she instructed, resuming her seat and grabbing up the textbook he'd abandoned.

Dumbfounded, Draco sank down to the ground with her, warily watching her. Ginny pretended not to notice, and silently congratulated herself for putting him so off balance. It was becoming frighteningly clear to her the power Draco could have over her if she started liking him, feeling for him, any more than she already did. Given their forced proximity for the next three weeks she was sure there would be nothing she could do to keep these feelings from developing; but she could control just how balanced the power between them was.

It was hopeless, anyway. She didn't actually think anything would ever seriously happen between them, at least not on Draco's end. What she'd said to him a moment before might have been harsh, but that didn't make it any less true. While he might be amused with her, even tolerant of her, he still saw her as nothing. Less than nothing. A Weasley. She was so far beneath him that, from his perspective, she must look no bigger than an ant. Which only meant she had to be exceedingly careful in regards to her own feelings in this arrangement.

"Professor Sprout likes to make sure you've done the reading," Ginny said aloud, "so we're going to start with One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi and work our way forward."

"When you say 'start,'" Draco began hesitantly.

"Abyssinian shrivelfig," Ginny interrupted loudly, "is a Potion ingredient that requires peeling..."

And she continued reading the entire encyclopedia of magical herbs aloud to him as the sun changed positions in the sky. When she got to Devil's Snare (a creeper that fears fire and likes damp, dark environments) she'd just hit her stride and felt she could read all night if necessary. Once she came to puffapods, however (fat pink pods with seeds that burst into flower if dropped), her jaw had begun to ache, her throat was scratchy, her voice hoarse, and her vision was getting a bit blurry.

Tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, Ginny set the book aside and took a sip of sparkling cider, scrunching up her nose at the warm, flat taste. She took out her wand and mumbled an incantation to turn it into water and drank the entire glass greedily. As she reached over to pick the book up again, she was surprised to feel Draco's hand cover her own. Her startled gaze flew up to his.

"That's enough Herbology," he said softly.

"But we've another three hundred herbs and fungi yet," she protested weakly.

"I think I've learned more than enough for one night," he said.

"How am I to know you've really retained any of it?" she asked suspiciously.

"Try me," he offered with a wolfish grin.

"Devil's snare," she said.

"Creeping plant that likes damp, cold areas; would probably take well to the Slytherin dungeons if it weren't for all the lit torches."

"Puffapods," she said quickly.

"Fat pink pods," he answered just as fast, "just don't drop them or you'll get a lot of ugly flowers."

"Some memory," she declared, impressed.

"I have another task for you."

"What?" she asked warily.

"Close your eyes," he ordered gently.

"Why?" she asked suspiciously.

He rolled his eyes. "Just do it, brat."

Taking a deep breath, she shut her eyes and tried very hard not to tense every single muscle in her body. She felt his breath against her chin and nearly jumped out of her skin. When he pressed his mouth to her jaw, she did jump a bit.

"What are you doing?" she whispered, her eyes shooting open.

"You've been reading aloud for hours," he pointed out.

Glancing around her, Ginny realized that it was dusk, the sun having already disappeared behind the hills that isolated Hogwarts; made it seem like someplace that existed far away from the rest of the world. Draco's hand still rested over hers and he was still close enough that she felt every breath he took puff over her face.

"Your jaw must ache," Draco continued.

"It does," she agreed, scarcely aware of what she was saying.

"I've got an old home remedy for little aches and pains," he said. "Something my mum used to do for me."

"Oh?" she croaked.

A half grin slipped across his mouth. He pressed another kiss to her jaw, this time, closer to her ear. Her eyes shut of their own volition as he threaded his fingers through her hair and pushed it out of his way.

"Kiss it 'n make it better," he muttered a second before his lips found hers.

~

Whatever he was going to say originally, whatever hurtful, casual brush-off he was going to offer me, I just couldn't handle it. I just know that if I'd heard him dismiss it as nothing, if he'd laughed at me I would have simply expired right there on the spot. So I struck first.

"I'm not having sex with you," I'd blurted out. "I know we agreed to possible tasks of a sexual nature, and that's fine, really, but I just can't . . . do that with someone I'm not in love with."

"You know, us agreeing on rules at all -- I don't think that works for me," he said in an icy calm voice. "I mean, you're my slave, aren't you? That implies a certain level of control on my part."

"Please," I begged. I feel so ashamed now at the way I begged him then. At the time, I felt nothing but terror that he wouldn't listen. "You can ask me to do anything, I'll do anything that you want, but please don't ask that."

Then, he left. Just left. I must have stood there for twenty minutes, hugging myself like a ninny before I finally snapped out of it, magicked the picnic mess together and headed back to the castle. The confrontation with McGonagall was blessedly short and by the time I got up to the tower, everyone else was already in bed. Except for Ron, who'd fallen asleep sitting in a chair, no doubt waiting up for me. I crept passed him and crawled into bed fully dressed, shedding only my robe.

~