Breaking All the Rules

Chapter Twelve

Breaking All the Rules

Letting Go

~*~~*~~*~

Ginny walked along the corridor for the umpteenth time that day on her way to the kitchens for something to eat. Blaise's employees seemed to be on strike because she hadn't seen them since she got there. She continued walking, passing all the photographs on the walls. Countless faces she didn't know smiled and waved up at her, some were covered in mud and some were in their uniform on the island. Then she came to a space. The photo that hung there was the same one that Draco had taken and ran downstairs with hours ago. She had no idea why he had done it, but now there was a plan of some sort to get Girard off her back for good. They weren't telling her anything though.

She came to the stairs and begun to descend them, holding onto the banister so she wouldn't slip in the dark. She continued to wonder about Draco, he still hadn't told her why she wasn't 'painlessly dead,' right now and she was beginning to form her own theories. This morning had been quite different for her. She had woken up in an alleyway, been taken to his home and given clean clothes to wear. She had almost been killed, for the second time, and then found out that she was marked by her husband. Since then, she had been taken to an island of mur- assassins and almost been killed for the third time before reaching here and finding out that Draco had saved her, yet again, instead of doing his job.

Then they had shared quite an intimate moment before waking up with not much of a memory of it and with more shock than she could handle. Draco calling it all a big mistake was not helping things either. She shook that off and turned down yet another corridor into the kitchen.

It wasn't that much of a mistake, sure it was sudden and it wasn't their fault but, it wasn't totally Blaise's fault either. She had asked him for something to relieve her stress, he had probably just taken it the wrong way.

Though it did relieve a lot of tension.

She shrugged and peered into the fridge. Food of all sorts was piled on different shelves. She chose the middle shelf and investigated the contents of one white container. She opened it and found leftover chicken and placed it on the counter. She delved deeper to find a clear container of potatoes. She made an appreciative face and placed it on the counter next to the chicken. Getting a bowl out of a cupboard, she put the kettle on and went on a scavenger hunt for a cup and any place beverages in the form of tea bags might be kept.

Ten minutes later, she sighed into a hot meal and a steaming cup of tea. Pure bliss for an empty stomach.

"Having a nice time?"

She jumped and spun around to see Blaise walking in rubbing sleep out of his eyes. She sighed in relief. "You scared me."

"Sorry, I couldn't sleep." He peered at her bowl. "What you eating?"

"I found some chicken and potatoes in the fridge."

"Hmm. I do believe they were left over from George Waltman. Now he was a mark to be reckoned with. I had to get really creative with him." He checked in a cupboard for anything that didn't have to be cooked.

Ginny suddenly became quite wary of what he meant by 'left over from...' She put the spoon down.

He turned to her and laughed. "Don't let my job ruin your appetite. I don't think you've eaten all day."

She frowned. "You had to say that didn't you? I'll never look at chicken in the same way after this. It'll always be saying to me, "I came from Georgie! I came from Georgie!" she smiled picking up the spoon.

"It doesn't seem to bother you now."

She shrugged. "I guess I'm too hungry to care."

He pulled out a packet of cream crackers and searched for a jar of jam. Plunking himself down on a stool, he proceeded to scraping the jam on the crackers and eating them whole with a contented, "Hmmm," each time.

"How did you do it?"

He frowned. She could tell he wanted to say, "Do what?" but couldn't because his mouth was full.

"You said you had to get creative with him. I'm curious," she shrugged.

Blaise swallowed. "You really want to hear this?"

"Can't you tell already? You are an empath right?" He nodded. "Well, why do you have to ask?"

He smiled narrowing his eyes. "Fine, well Mr. Waltman was not exactly what you would call... a law abiding citizen, especially to the wizarding world. He was, as I recall from his schedule, a friend of the man I had to cross out to day. They were in business together a few years ago." Ginny listened intently to the story as she spooned food into her mouth.

"Go on."

He smiled. "Well, he kept on getting away. Like Girard kept getting away from Draco. I didn't like it, not at all. In the end I knew that if I was going to get this man I wanted it to be memorable, you know, just to say I finally did it. He was a wizard in a muggle world so I used that against him. He had one of those." He pointed behind her. "A contraption to toast your bread in as opposed to the usual grill over a stove. His muggle girlfriend was a bit of a ditz, so I used that too. I'm very adaptable when it comes to those things. I notice everything."

"Why am I not surprised?" she smiled. "Well, how did you kill him? Get to the good part."

"I left the gas on and stuck a newspaper in the toaster. He walked in seconds later just before the house exploded."

Ginny's mouth hung open. He laughed. "I told you, you wouldn't want to hear it." He got up to retrieve another jar. This one had a brown substance in it.

"That's...that's..."

"Horrible, murderous, totally dis-"

"Ingenious."

He stopped. "What?"

"How would you have thought of that? How did you know?" The questions kept coming in that same flabbergasted way before she settled with an easy, "Wow." She dropped the spoon in the, now empty, bowl.

"I didn't think you'd have that reaction."

"I may have only been hanging out with you for a day but it feels like forever. I'm very adaptable." She smiled and took her bowl to the sink. "Plus that potion you gave me today really helped." He smiled as she watched him knowingly.

"I thought you were crying your eyes out over committing adultery. That's what Draco said anyway."

"What Draco saw was me in shock of doing something when I was still in the frame of mind that I was married. He's been avoiding me ever since thinking it best that way. After hearing the theme of what you said that you saw in my head, I don't think that way anymore. Unless you want to fill in the details." She watched him but he just shook his head. She shrugged, if it was that bad she wasn't sure she wanted to know anyway. "I want nothing to do with Girard. See," she said pointing to her finger, "the ring is no longer a part of me. Neither is Girard. Call me a changed woman." He watched her in silent admiration. "I better go to bed. I'll see you in the morning." She patted his shoulder and made for the door.

"Here, don't forget your drink." He handed her the near empty cup. She drained it and placed it to join the bowl. "And be careful walking past the living room," he added with sudden inspiration. The same inspiration he had had in the park earlier today. She turned at that and frowned.

"Why?"

"Draco's asleep in there." She nodded and turned to leave again leaving a smiling Blaise behind.

***

She didn't know how long she had been sitting there but it felt like a really long time. He had stirred a number of times, probably feeling her there, but he didn't wake up. She sat with her back against the coffee table reading what he and Harry had been writing down for hours after she went to bed finally. Tomorrow they were going to visit her family and begin to sort out this Girard mess. Perhaps they would finally let her know what was going on.

He stirred again and her eyes went over the page to him lying on the long sofa. 'If he's going to wake up why doesn't he just do it already?' she thought to herself after being startled, again.

Her eyes went back to the page again. There was a story of some sort written here and she was trying so hard to figure out why it sounded so familiar. The title of it was, 'Girard's going to pay,' something she was sure was both Harry and Draco's doing. She smiled at it again and read through the words.

"James Thomas, who's he?" She read on to find that she was a witness to a brutal interrogation. Under this were the words, 'not proven James Thomas was killed.' Why did she know that name? Continuing down the page she found out that she was beaten badly before 'Blaise exited here.' Blaise had told them this? She shook her head countless times trying to figure it out before shrugging it off and putting the pages back on the table behind her.

She knelt over Draco's sleeping form, surveying how he breathed silently and how his chest barely moved at all. He looked so peaceful when he slept, as if everything she had ever learnt about him today had never happened. But they had, and he seemed happy with it if anything. She wondered how such a big change could come over the boy she had met and begun to like in school.

She hadn't really talked to him that much, just a few short and forgettable encounters that didn't mean much. Apart from her brother's constant chattering and Harry's remarks she hadn't seen much of him at all. Until her sixth year when she had found him lying down by the lake. She didn't even know that was his hideaway too. She had had to sneak out, he was a prefect so it wasn't all that hard for him to leave after curfew. When she had first found him she had tried to sneak away. Sure he seemed asleep but she wasn't stupid, Malfoy or not he was a prefect and that meant loss of house points.

And she had lost them, quite a few in fact but after that and after he found out that she could run pretty fast for a girl, they got on pretty well. Very well actually. For the last three months of him being in the school they had talked a lot about everything and nothing in particular. It was mainly just the enjoyment of company. For him. For her, on the other hand, it was torture. This new friendship was great but that's all it was to him, a friendship. And she had wanted more from the second week onwards. He never got it though, and when the war begun just out of her seventh year, he was gone and she hadn't seen him since until yesterday night.

She swept a lock of hair from his face to tuck it behind his ear with a smile. She bit her lip, debating whether or not to kiss him. It's not as if he would know, he was asleep. As she brushed back his hair, a hand came to her wrist and held it tightly as a wand was secured at her throat.

'What else could I expect?' she mused as his eyes opened to her.

Suddenly, the hard stare softened significantly and he sat up. "Ginny? What are you doing here, I could have killed you." He pocketed his wand.

"Well, at least your job would be done."

He sighed and wiped his face with his free hand. "Don't joke about that, Ginny, I'm serious."

"So am I, could I have my wrist back now?" She looked down at her hand.

He looked at his hand; it was still secured around her wrist. He let it go and watched as she rubbed the circulation back into it. "Sorry."

She winced at it. "No problem, quite the death grip you have."

He smiled. "What are you doing here?" he yawned.

"I was watching you sleep after I went through all the things on the table. I was curious at what they meant especially since they were talking about me. I especially love the title." She laughed and stood up to sit next to him. "I wanted to say thank you."

"For what?"

"Everything really. I don't remember what happened but I remember waking up and feeling you next to me. Thank you for being there, and for this morning."

"Well you thanked me for that already." She raised an eyebrow at this remembering what had happened after she had said it. He caught on. "Not that. That was a momentary lapse of judgement. I'm talking about before." She nodded in understanding and just looked at him. If she looked at just the right angel, she could see the boy she once knew, the boy she had fallen in love with in school before he so unceremoniously disappeared.

He turned to her to see her looking at him strangely. "What?"

She smiled. "Nothing." She bit her lip, damn her indecisiveness.

"Nothing with you is ever nothing, Ginny, what is it?"

She shook her head again and kissed him. She captured and recaptured his mouth as they lay back on the chair straddling him as she lay on top of him before he stopped her and pushed her away.

"Ginny, have you, by any chance, run into Blaise tonight?" he enquired.

She sat up on his stomach and smiled knowing where this was going. "Actually yes I have. He handed me my cup of tea as I left the kitchen after a remarkable tale of how he 'crossed out' a man called George."

He frowned. "George Waltman?"

"Yeah, you know him?"

"Yeah, that was a few years ago, Blaise was really up for ki- you're changing the subject."

"I am not, you asked me if I met him and I said yes." She leaned forward on her palms, her hair fell over her shoulders and surrounded them.

"And he handed you a drink?" he said thoroughly ignoring the feel and sweet smell of her hair. She had washed it with some intoxicating scent and she was using it against him on purpose. He knew it.

"Yeah, my cup of tea," she said slowly as she leaned forward even more.

He narrowed his eyes and looked into hers seeing what he had seen earlier in the day. Desire. "I thought so. Ginny, get off me." He tried pushing her up.

"What?" she said resisting, "Why?"

He looked up at her in disbelief. How could Blaise have done this twice, was he trying to kill him too? "Because it's very likely that Blaise has slipped you something." He pushed her again but she wouldn't move, she just continued to smile.

"I doubt that," she said leaning down again. He went back with her to avoid her mouth. Why won't he just hold still?

He caught her face with his hand and pushed her back again as he sat up. "And why is that?"

She smiled even more. "Because I made it myself," she said pulling on the front of his shirt.

***

Ginny moaned softly in his ear at the burning sensation his hands left everywhere he touched her, if this was how it had felt this morning she was sorry she couldn't remember it. She had no idea what to expect, and found herself comfortably lost in his arms. Her face flushed red with the heat they created and her fingernails raked along his back as they moved in unison to each other. He watched her recording every movement of her face, every reaction of her body against his. Finally, they both collapsed and fell into a pleasurable slumber.

Later that night Draco awoke to a sick feeling in his stomach. He sat up and looked to his side to see Ginny asleep next to him. He rubbed his eyes in a vain attempt to get his brain to work logically and not be clouded by his heart. The one organ he had been trained to ignore for seven years straight. He had yet to work out how he had learnt it, trained with it and mastered it and yet she had some power over him to constrain that logic from making sense. He shook his head from these confusing thoughts and focused on her laying there, looking beautiful in the pale gleam of moonlight through the window.

The more he sat there, the more he fell and the more he fell, the more he convinced himself that he couldn't.

Eventually something would go wrong and she would be used against him and he'd have to choose. Either way she would be caught in the crossfire and he couldn't bear for that to happen. This couldn't go any further. He loved her, he knew it and most of everyone else in the house short of Potter knew it too. But it stopped here.

He couldn't protect her like this and he knew it. But he would just have to think about that in the morning. He lay back down and encircled his arm around her waist enjoying what he could while it was able to last.