Crepúsculo

Crepúsculo

Chapter Seven:

Scylla and Charybdis

She had kissed Malfoy. She had kissed Draco Malfoy purposefully and willingly. That would have been bad enough, but she'd liked kissing him. There were so many things wrong with this that she didn't even know where to start thinking about it.

There was a perfectly viable explanation for why she'd kissed him in the weaponry room yesterday morning. She'd been trying to distract him while she recovered her wand, and it had worked, hadn't it? He'd been so busy trying to ram his tongue down her throat that it had never occurred to him that what she was looking for in his pants was her wand.

But going to him in the tower last night? She couldn't think of a single explanation for it other than temporary insanity. She'd completely lost her mind. What part of going to the tower--going looking for Malfoy--had seemed like a good idea, she didn't know. And once she got there, she hadn't been able to control herself at all.

She simply couldn't wrap her mind around why she'd done it. She knew it wasn't that she was possessed because she knew perfectly well what she'd done. It was more that she'd known exactly what she was about to do and been unable to prevent herself from doing it, no matter how bad of an idea taunting Malfoy and kissing Malfoy had been, because some deep and clearly self-destructive part of her didn't want to prevent it. This small, mutinous part of her wanted to taunt and fight and kiss Malfoy. Scarier: this part of her actually wanted Malfoy.

Ginny Weasley had had some bad ideas before, and she'd done some pretty stupid things, but wanting Draco Malfoy any way other than dead came close to topping off the list. There was absolutely nothing good about Malfoy. He was pale and pointy and blond. He hated Gryffindors, Muggleborns, and especially Weasleys. His father was a Death Eater and he showed every sign of becoming the same.

And yet she wanted him. Insanity was the only explanation, because if she were sane she would have killed herself before considering, even for an instant, the possibility that she wanted Draco Malfoy.

When she'd woken up this morning, she'd hoped that all of it was a dream: that she'd wake up and find out that she hadn't gone to the weaponry room yet, that she didn't have her wand. There had been no swordfighting and certainly no kissing and her life would return to being normal and predictable, which was exactly what she wanted. Draco Malfoy was so far from what she wanted that they didn't even belong in the same country.

It had been stupid of her; of course it had been no dream. Her wand had been on the nightstand when she woke up, which she might have been able to ignore, had Draco Malfoy not ambushed her on the way to breakfast, pulled her into one of those seemingly ubiquitous hallway alcoves, and shoved his tongue down her throat.

"What the fuck are--" Ginny tried when he finally pulled away, but as it turned out Draco had only wanted to take a breath. He shut her up rather effectively mid-sentence, and the moan that escaped her a few seconds later was hardly going to help her prove that she was an unwilling participant in the events of the morning. It really wasn't fair of him to grab her this early. She hadn't come anywhere close to a pot of coffee yet, and it was commonly known that she couldn't be held responsible for anything she did before she got at least three cups of coffee in her system.

She was nursing her fifth cup of coffee in the Great Hall right now. She was lucky she'd left Gryffindor Tower early this morning; otherwise Draco Bloody Malfoy might have made her miss breakfast. She was going to be late for Transfiguration as it was, but she wasn't about to leave the Great Hall before she finished this cup of coffee and possibly another. It was entirely Draco Malfoy's fault that she needed all this coffee, and he was the one who'd made her late for breakfast, so really wasn't it his fault that she was going to be late for Transfiguration? Clearly, yes.

Cora bounded up beside her just then. "Hey Ginny, we've got to go to McGonagall's class."

Ginny eyed the remaining half-inch of coffee in the bottom of her mug. She was definitely going to need another cup of coffee. She threw back what remained of Cup Number Five and reached for the carafe. She poured Cup Number Six and held the mug to her face, inhaling the aroma of hot caffeine. Coffee was amazing. So was the mug that held the coffee, and the carafe that had held the coffee, and the Heating Charms that warmed the carafe, and the house elves that made the--

"Ginny," Cora said, "how much coffee have you had?"

"Not nearly enough."

"Really."

"It's okay," Ginny said, taking a long and blissful gulp. "I'm nervous. It's calming."

"Coffee's not calming, Ginny," Jeremy said, appearing out of nowhere. "It's a stimulant. That's why you drink it to wake up."

"It's calming," Ginny snapped. She considered for a moment and added, "Wiseass," for good measure.

"You're delusional," Cora said clearly.

"What are you nervous about anyway?" Jeremy asked.

"I'm not nervous," Ginny said. "You're making me nervous, hovering over me like this." She was perfectly aware that this didn't actually make a bit of sense, but she was hoping that Cora and Jeremy hadn't been watching her coffee intake so she could pretend that this was Cup Number Three rather than Six and claim her usual pre-caffeine insanity.

"Hey, Ginny?" Cora said. "Sorry to make you more nervous, but Transfiguration started three minutes ago."

"Shit," Ginny said. She downed the rest of Cup Number Six and sprinted after Cora and Jeremy.

-----

Sadly, it turned out that Jeremy was right about the coffee: Ginny was anything but calm during Transfiguration. She was so jittery she couldn't pay a bit of attention to McGonagall's lecture. Maybe she did need to cut back on her caffeine consumption...

But no. This jitteriness had nothing to do with the coffee. Well, the coffee might have had something to do with it, but the main culprit was clearly Draco Malfoy.

She seemed to be blaming him for most everything this morning, but really, why shouldn't she? He and his family had been behind pretty much every bad thing that had ever happened to her, and she was perfectly justified in blaming him for everything that had happened to her so far today. It was, for instance, entirely his fault that she'd kissed him this morning. And last night. And every other time.

Kissing wasn't a solo activity, though, and while she could claim reluctance or some other legitimate motive for most of their previous encounters, she couldn't pretend that what had happened last night and this morning had been anything other than perfectly mutual. She was good at misconstruing the truth; it had long been one of her greatest skills, at least since she'd arrived at Hogwarts (as a child she'd been convinced that it was impossible to lie to her mother), but there was no use pretending that the truth was anything other than what it was: she wanted Draco Malfoy. She could claim that it had been temporary insanity last night and pre-coffee lack of judgment this morning, but now she was in Transfiguration with six cups of coffee in her system; it didn't get much more rational than this, and yet she still wanted him.

She could say he'd cursed her; she was under the influence of Love Spell; she was using him in an effort to beat him at his own game, whatever that game might be. She could say any of those things, but that wouldn't change the fundamental problem: she wanted Draco Malfoy. She wanted him and as far as she could tell he wanted her, and this was amazing and awful in too many ways to consider.

Suddenly someone--it must have been Jeremy--jabbed her hard in the side. Ginny looked up quickly and realized that McGonagall was staring right at her. "Um, could you repeat the question?" Ginny said lamely.

"I asked, Miss Weasley, if you could tell me the most common mistake students make when attempting to transfigure magical creatures into non-magical creatures?"

Ginny hadn't a clue. Next to her Jeremy was hissing something under his breath, but Ginny didn't want McGonagall to catch him helping her so she fielded a guess. "They forget to remove the magic?"

"Actually, yes." McGonagall looked as surprised as Ginny felt. "Demagification is the technical term for it, but Miss Weasley is correct. Most non-magical creatures are not equipped for the inherent magic found in..."

When McGonagall was far enough into her lecture that she wouldn't notice, Jeremy whispered, "Nice recovery."

"Lucky guess."

"It made sense, though." He might have said more, but McGonagall was looking in their direction and she wasn't deaf, either. Jeremy fell silent.

Ginny managed to take notes for a few minutes but then her attention wandered again. She had been lucky that Jeremy was there to keep McGonagall from catching her daydreaming. It was just so hard to concentrate during McGonagall's lectures, especially lately. McGonagall wasn't a particularly boring teacher--she certainly had nothing on Professor Binns when it came to putting students to sleep--but it was just so hard to keep her mind on Transfiguration. She knew it was O.W.L. year (how could she forget, when Hermione had already posted her study schedule from last year on the common room board? According to this schedule Ginny was already three weeks behind on her studies, despite the fact that it wasn't yet November and the exams were in June.) but how Jeremy could manage to pay attention during McGonagall's class, she didn't know...

Jeremy. With all the thinking she'd been doing about Malfoy, she'd completely forgotten about Jeremy. Specifically, she had forgotten that Jeremy was her boyfriend. Wanting Draco Malfoy would have been plenty big enough of a problem on its own, but the fact that she was already dating Jeremy was going to complicate things, to put it mildly. If he found out there way anything other than enmity between her and Draco Malfoy--

But he hadn't found out yet, had he? The whole mess with Draco and her current relationship with Jeremy had started pretty much simultaneously, and in the nearly two months since then Jeremy hadn't noticed a thing.

Rather, Jeremy hadn't mentioned a thing. There was a difference. Jeremy knew her better than almost anyone, probably better even than Cora, but there was much that Ginny did not share with him and she had to assume that he did not tell her everything, either.

If he knew about her and Draco, though, he wouldn't be able to hide it from her. Jeremy was overprotective of her, more so than ever since they'd started dating again. He wouldn't come to her and ask her what was going on; he would go to Draco and curse him into oblivion first and ask questions later. No matter what Draco tried to say, he'd assume Draco was lying.

She was going to have to make sure Jeremy never learned about Draco, that was all. It shouldn't be too difficult. After all, hadn't she been doing it for two months already?

-----

Draco grabbed her again just before dinner and pulled her into Classroom Eight, one of the unused ground floor rooms. He shut the door with one hand while he snaked the other around her wait and slid his tongue inside her mouth. This was the part, she knew, where she was supposed to protest. Always before she'd known when to tell him to stop, and while he hadn't necessarily listened to her, at least she'd said something. At least she'd had the thin excuse that she had, in fact, protested, even if she was doing it for the excuse alone.

But why protest? What reason was there for her to fight against this, when Draco's tongue in her mouth and his slim, hard body against hers was exactly what she wanted? There were many reasons, actually, that giving in was a horrible idea, but the lone reason for it was good enough to trump them all: she was going to do it anyway, no matter what. She was strong, yes, but not strong enough to fight herself and Draco both. This was a battle she would not be unhappy to lose, which made resisting the inevitable nearly impossible.

She curled her tongue around Draco's and pressed against him. She'd done this before, of course. She'd done it without meaning to and she'd done it when she did, but always she had done it against her will or with some motive other than merely wanting this. Not so now.

Draco smiled against her mouth, and she couldn't help smiling back. She knew what she was doing. She knew, too, that she could not escape this. She did not want to.

-----

Ginny didn't go to dinner. She and Draco didn't stay in Classroom Eight too long; dinner wasn't even half over when they left. She could have used some dinner, too, since she'd forgone food in favor of lots of coffee that morning and her stomach was unhappy about being a meal behind, but there were more important things to consider at the moment, and they were named Jeremy Hayden.

She was going to have to break up with him. She didn't like the idea of doing it, but it needed to be done. She'd been able to date Jeremy and deal with Draco all this time because she'd convinced herself that what she was doing with Draco wasn't anything, really, that it didn't matter. Not so anymore. She didn't know when the balance had shifted. Maybe it hadn't shifted. Maybe it had been like this all along and she'd been deluding herself until just now.

Whatever the reason, she couldn't do this anymore. She'd made her decision, or maybe it had been made for her; it didn't matter which. Either way it had been made and either way she had to break up with Jeremy. Completely aside from the fact that she'd been dating him for two months, he'd been one of her best friends since third year. She might have been able to string along a random boyfriend--Michael Corner came instantly to mind--but she couldn't, wouldn't do it to one of her best friends. He'd be devastated, and she knew perfectly well that their friendship might never recover, but she had to do it.

She had to do it, and she had to do it now, before she actually thought it through and realized what it would mean. She consulted the clock in Classroom Nine (she'd ducked in here after Draco had left to go to dinner). Jeremy should be leaving the Great Hall sometime in the next fifteen minutes. She headed to the exit marked by the statue of Bathsheba the Birdbrained and waited. Sure enough, Jeremy and a few other Ravenclaw sixth years walked out five minutes later.

"Hey Ginny," Jeremy said, clearly surprised to see her. "I was wondering where you were at dinner--Cora said she hadn't seen you since Charms."

"I didn't feel so good," Ginny said. It wasn't precisely a lie, although the jitters in her stomach had had a lot to do with the positioning of Draco Malfoy's hands and exceedingly little to do with any actual sickness. "I'm fine now, though," she added. "Listen, Jeremy, I need to talk to you."

"Go for it."

"Can we maybe go somewhere else?" She gestured vaguely at the hallway.

Jeremy nodded. "My room?"

She really didn't want to do this in Jeremy's room. She didn't particularly want to do it at all, but since it couldn't be avoided she wanted to go somewhere neutral. Common sense told her that no matter how he took the news (and she didn't know how that was going to be; she'd never broken up with him when the breakup was anything other than completely mutual, let alone when it seemed to be coming out of nowhere) breaking up with him in his dormitory was a horrible idea. You could never be certain that no one was listening to your conversations in the dormitories, no matter how careful you were.

"Maybe somewhere else?"

Jeremy nodded. She knew he was just as aware of the drawbacks of dormitory conversations as she was. "I'll catch up with you guys later," he told the Ravenclaws who'd been waiting for him. They winked and left, all of them undoubtedly convinced that when Ginny said she wanted to talk to Jeremy she really meant she wanted to snog him senseless. That should have been the truth.

"Where to?" Jeremy said.

"One of the empty classrooms, maybe," Ginny said. She headed back towards Classroom Eight, but found Peeves inside, gleefully redecorating the walls with a can of lime-green paint and his favorite swear words. Maybe not. She and Jeremy both knew from experience that where Peeves was, Filch was sure to be close behind, so they vacated the area as quickly as possible. Not quickly enough, though.

"I hear him, Mrs. Norris. Peeves is around here somewhere, and when we find him..." Filch's voice was coming from just around the corner.

"Quick," Ginny hissed, opening the first door she saw. She and Jeremy dove inside just in time to avoid being seen by Filch. They hadn't actually done anything against the rules, but that wouldn't matter to Filch; being anywhere near the classroom Peeves was vandalizing would be more than enough to prove their guilt. What exactly they were guilty of, Filch would neither know nor care.

Ginny peeked around the doorway to make sure Filch and Mrs. Norris were gone (the growl of "PEEVES!" a few seconds later confirmed this) and only then did she and Jeremy exhale.

"We should probably get away while we still can," Ginny said.

Jeremy looked around the room. "You wanted to talk somewhere away from the dormitory, didn't you?"

Ginny followed his gaze. The classroom was certainly deserted enough. "We don't want Filch to catch us, though, either."

Jeremy locked the door. "As long as we're quiet, we'll be fine." He sat on one of the dusty desks. "So what did you want to talk to me about?"

Ginny swallowed. "Us, actually."

"Us," Jeremy repeated. "What about us?" He looked at her expectantly.

She swallowed again. "Yeah. About us..."

"Yeah?"

She met his gaze. Oh no. He was giving her the big puppy-dog-eyed look. He probably didn't even realize he was doing it. Every time she called him on the puppy dog look he claimed he didn't have one, and she was fairly certain he thought he was telling the truth. Green-eyed seventeen-year-old boys weren't supposed to be able to look like puppies, but Jeremy Hayden could do it just the same.

Forget the puppy dog look, Ginny told herself sternly. Ignore the fact that he looks exactly like some sort of eager, floppy-eared retriever and when you tell him you're breaking up with him he's going to look like you've kicked him in the stomach.

"Listen," she said, even though she knew perfectly well he was already listening, "we've been dating for nearly two months now."

"Yeah," Jeremy agreed.

"And I know that's kind of a long time."

"Yeah."

She had absolutely no idea where she was going with this. You have to break up with him, she told herself sternly. You can't string him along like this. Michael Corner would have deserved it, but Jeremy doesn't. Don't even think about not breaking up with him.

He was going to look like the saddest, most abandoned puppy in the entire world. But she still had to do it.

"And this might kind of seem like it's coming out of nowhere," she began. But I think we should break up. No, that wasn't decisive enough. But I'm breaking up with you, maybe? But I have to break up with you? All of these were going to lead to the same unanswerable question: Why? Why would she suddenly end a seemingly flawless relationship with a cute boy who was also one of her best friends? The relationship didn't just seem flawless; it really was flawless. Except for the slight problem that Ginny was currently involved with someone else.

Technically, though, she'd been involved with Draco first. He'd attacked her on the Hogwarts Express before Jeremy had kissed her, hadn't he? This, of course, was bullshit, and she knew it.

"This might come out of nowhere," Ginny said again, stalling for time.

"You're repeating yourself."

"I know."

Jeremy smiled.

No, Ginny thought, don't smile. Your smile is infectious and if I started smiling I'll never go through with this.

She needed to think, that was the thing. She needed time to think of a way to break up with him that wouldn't make him ask questions. Why had breaking up with him immediately seemed so important?

Jeremy was starting to stare at her. "You okay, Ginny?"

"Yeah, I--" I what? She panicked and blurted out the first thing that came to mind: "I was wondering if you wanted to come home with me for the holidays."

"What?" Jeremy said.

Ginny was thinking the same thing, but instead of doing anything logical she started talking. "I was just thinking that if you wanted to come back to the Burrow it might be kind of fun, since the Burrow's a lot of fun during the holidays, and my mum always loves having more people around since she had so many kids and now that we're gone so much she feels like she needs to have more people during the holidays and the more the merrier and--"

Jeremy stared at her for a long moment. "You want me to come to the Burrow over the holidays?"

"Well, if you don't want to, that's perfectly fine, too, of course," Ginny said. "I wouldn't want to take away from your time to be with your family, because Christmas is really a family sort of time, you know, and this is probably the last thing you want to do, since it's always so crazy around the Burrow, and I wouldn't blame you at all if--"

"Ginny."

"Yeah?"

"I'd love to."

"Really? Because I completely understand if you'd rather be by yourself. I would really rather be by myself sometimes during the holidays. It gets so crazy with all those people around and..." She was aware that she was babbling but she couldn't stop because if she did she'd have to think about what she was supposed to be doing. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. She'd chickened out so thoroughly that not only hadn't she broken up with him, she'd gotten herself into spending more time with him, and she was digging herself deeper into this mess with every word but she just couldn't seem to stop.

"Ginny?" Jeremy said. "Shut up."

"Right." An embarrassingly high-pitched giggle escaped from her mouth. She was going to have to kill herself before all this was over, she really was. "Shutting up now."

Jeremy kissed her, probably because he doubted she'd actually stop talking. It was a damned good kiss, too. Fuck.

Maybe this was okay, though. He hadn't asked any unanswerable questions, had he? And it wasn't like tonight was the only chance she was ever going to have to break up with him. She could do it later, easily. She needed time to figure out what she was going to say when she broke up with him, anyway. This was giving her that time, wasn't it? So really she was doing herself a favor.

Deep down she knew there wasn't going to be any way she could break up with Jeremy that wouldn't lead to unanswerable questions, because she knew perfectly well that if she didn't mention Draco she didn't have a single reason to break up with Jeremy. He loved her; she liked him a lot. She was attracted to him. He made her laugh. They almost never fought. Jeremy was everything she'd ever wanted out of a boyfriend, wasn't he?

And yet there was that lurch in the pit of her stomach when she thought of Draco. It felt like traveling by Portkey, and she'd never felt anything like it around any boy but Draco. She didn't feel it with Jeremy. This was why she had to break up with Jeremy, because she couldn't ignore that feeling.

Actually...it was why she had to continue to see Draco. Breaking up with Jeremy didn't actually have anything to do with it. Breaking up with Jeremy was the right thing to do, but it wasn't exactly necessary, was it? Draco knew she was dating Jeremy. He knew and it didn't seem to bother him. Jeremy didn't know about Draco, but even if she weren't dating him she most likely wouldn't have told him what was going on with her and Draco. It was the sort of thing that was meant to be kept secret, even from her best friends. The fact that she was dating Jeremy complicated things, but what she was doing with Draco didn't exactly affect him, did it?

Looking at it all from a completely different angle: would it really be better for Jeremy if she told him the truth? Hi, Jeremy, I've been two-timing you with my worst enemy. He's not exactly your favorite person, either. Hope you don't mind!

Even if she were vague about why she was breaking up with him, Jeremy knew enough that he might be able to put the pieces together. She couldn't let that happen. She couldn't let him tie her and Draco together. This needed to be kept a secret.

Jeremy would be so much happier not knowing any of this. Which was more important, knowing the truth or being happy?

Jeremy slipped his hand inside her shirt and moaned. The last thing she wanted was to make Jeremy unhappy. It was better to keep him in the dark than to do that. She was sure of it.

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