And on the Eighth Day?

Chapter Four

Tuesday

Harry spent the morning trying to get to see the Headmistress but was informed that she was spending a few days away from the castle finalising the arrangements for the end of the week. He saw very little of Susan, for which he was grateful, and even less of Ginny, for which he was not. Ron was spending as much time as possible with Hermione and, as most of the rest of the school still viewed him with suspicion, Harry was left to wander around the castle on his own. One person who did seem to want to spend some time with him was Draco Malfoy.

He was lying on the grass next to the lake watching the clouds make their leisurely way across the sky when Malfoy caught up with him.

"There you are, Potter," he announced, sounding more like a child that had just found a lost toy rather than an adult exercising authority. "Didn't I tell you to stay away from Weasley?"

"Probably," Harry replied, not bothering to look at him, "but as she told you to stay away from her, I'm not sure it matters what you say."

Like a dog with a bone, Malfoy wasn't going to let it lie.

"You don't get it, do you, Potter?" he shouted, sounding even more like a child than before. "She's only playing hard to get, pretending to her blood-traitor brother and his Mudblood girlfriend that she wants nothing to do with me."

Harry sighed. He really didn't want to ruin his day by tangling with Malfoy but calling anyone a Mudblood couldn't be left unchallenged. As he rose to face the Slytherin, Malfoy continued.

"You wait until we've left Hogwarts; she'll move into the Malfoy Mansion straight away."

"Malfoy, the only reason she'd move into Malfoy mansion is if she buys it from the Ministry. It was confiscated to be sold as part of your parents' sentence. Remember?"

Malfoy was not to be dissuaded as to the veracity of his argument.

"It was stolen more like, and my solicitor tells me that I have every chance of getting it back."

Harry groaned inwardly. He really didn't need this, but like a yapping dog that kept nipping at his ankles, Malfoy wouldn't go away. The temptation to pull his wand and emulate Ginny by turning him into a ferret was immense.

"Malfoy, he'll tell you anything as long as your gold lasts. Once that's gone, he'll drop you."

"You just wait; I'll show you and all your traitorous friends." He began to walk away from Harry, obviously satisfied that his point had been made. Harry decided to let him go and was about to lie down again when Malfoy decided that he hadn't finished. "And stay away from Weasley," he called over his shoulder.

"Thrilling though this conversation is, you seemed to have forgotten one thing."

Malfoy stopped and turned to face him.

"And what's that?" he sneered.

"I'm not actually doing anything with Ginny Weasley." And that was his problem. He wanted desperately to be spending time with her but she, it seemed, had decided otherwise. "Not that it's any concern of yours if I was."

"Good, and make sure it stays that way."

Harry watched Malfoy strut away from him, imagining the smug look on his face. By the time he reached the common room, he'd have convinced himself that he'd put Harry in his place and would proceed to tell anyone and everyone how scared Potter was of him. Thankfully, most people knew otherwise and would ignore the Slytherin for as long as possible.

He lay back on the grass, propped up on his elbow, watching the squid sunning itself in the warm summer sun. Harry was troubled, not about Malfoy, but about a growing attraction to Ron's sister. He wasn't bothered by her reputation. It was obvious that most of what she said and did was an act designed to put a barrier between her and the rest of the world. No, it was the implication that she had been responsible for the death of several members of the Order. Ron hadn't been more specific and he'd made it plain that nothing had ever been proved, but if Ginny had been a Death Eater then Malfoy was welcome to her.

~*~

After their escapades the previous night, Harry served his detention on his own. He was met in the entrance hall by Hagrid who greeted him coldly before escorting him down to his hut.

"Don't want you wandering off with that Weasley girl again, do we, Harry?"

Harry wanted to reply that he wouldn't say 'no' to being able to wander off with her, but suspected that Hagrid had been telling rather than asking him.

Hagrid led him around the back of his hut where a large trellis table stood with a huge vat of wriggling slugs at one end and a similarly sized but empty vat at the other. In the middle was a long knife along with a pair of dragon-hide gloves and some goggles. The presence of the gloves and goggles did not bode well and Harry assumed that his job was to transfer the slugs from one vat to the other, doing something stomach-wrenching in between.

The slugs turned out to be Peruvian Fire Slugs, harmless to wizards unless you tried to do something terrible to them such as cut them open to remove their fire sacs, in which case they were extremely dangerous. Hagrid, as usual, had completely underestimated how lethal the operation would be to someone without a giant's skin and so Harry had to constantly dodge jets of flame as he went about his task.

Any attempted conversation with Hagrid was fine until he asked where Ginny was.

"I'm only gonna say this once, Harry, and then I'll keep my peace: that Ginny Weasley is bad news; stay away from her."

Trying to get Hagrid to expound upon on his statement was a waste of time. The Care of Magical Creatures teacher wouldn't change his mind until someone in authority - and who he respected- expressed a different opinion. Instead, Harry cut right to the chase.

"Do you mean that she was a Death Eater, is that what you're trying to tell me?"

"I didn't say nuttin'. But take heed, jus' 'cause she's Ron's sister don't mean that she's to be trusted, that's all."

Harry was starting to get annoyed by all the warnings he was been given to stay away from Ginny. They were offered without much evidence to support them other than the fact that she could swear like a navvy and hated Hermione.

His detention over, Harry left Hagrid with his bucket of slugs and set off towards the castle. He still couldn't shake the feeling that that something wasn't quite right. There was a bigger picture that he was failing to see, but couldn't work out what. His usual response to such a puzzle was to dump the unconnected information on Hermione and, in a manner worthy of the fictional wizarding detective Hemlock Jones, she would piece it all together for him. But if I can't use Hermione, then perhaps....

He ran up the west tower to the Owlery, and scribbled a quick note before attaching it to Hedwig.

"He won't have a reply for you, girl, not yet anyway, so come back quickly. I might need you again soon."

As he wandered down the stairs of the tower he made another attempt at trying to solve the conundrum he'd uncovered. He'd thought he'd started to get somewhere when he was in McGonagall's office. But he'd then been distracted by the way McGonagall had been treating Ginny and the elusive key to it all had slipped away. With any luck, he would get a reply to his owl in the morning, and then things might become a bit clearer. He decided that he still needed to talk to Hermione. Not for her to display her forensic brilliance, but to find out why there was no love lost between her and Ginny.

He looked up and saw that, rather than returning to his common room, he had returned to the main entrance. You keep hanging around like this, Potter, and she's going to think that you're as bad as Malfoy.

He was about to turn around when he saw Ginny coming up from the Potions dungeon. For the first time since Harry had known her, Ginny really smiled. It wasn't a smile at the expense of someone else or at someone's misfortune. It was a smile that spoke of enjoyment from being in another person's company and it was a smile that he had no trouble in returning.

"So what delightful task has Slughorn had you doing tonight? Eating his crystallised pineapple? Addressing invitations to the Slug Club's end-of-year bash?"

They were now standing close enough to touch each other, but the barriers between them hadn't come down completely and their hands fiddled nervously with their robes.

"Nothing so delightful. I've spent the evening crushing up beetles. And you?"

"Slugs, Hagrid had me gutting fire slugs."

She nodded as he spoke, but then a nervous silence settled upon them.

"So why are you up here?" asked Harry, determined that things wouldn't peter out. "Isn't your common room close to the potions classroom?"

"It is, but it's also home to Malfoy and Parkinson, two people I do not want to spent time with."

"What's the matter?" he grinned, "Pansy after your throne?"

It was a measure of how far they'd come that he could make a comment like that and it raised no more than a smile from her.

"No, she's upset because I've been cavorting with a Gryffindor." Her smile widened. "Chance would be a fine thing."

"Really?" asked Harry, raising his eyebrows. It was another of those moments when he thought about taking the Manticore by the tail and kissing her, but before he could, she'd dampened his ardour.

"Calm down, Potter, I'm only talking about things relative to the Neanderthals found in the Slytherin common room." She laughed, but it was a nervous laugh which led Harry to hope that she was struggling as much as he was. Unsure of what to do next, he shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, and studied the patterns made by the tiles on the floor.

"So what are you going to do now?" After spending the day frustrated by the lack of answers to his questions, and with no more than a few minutes in her company, he was certain that the evening was going to end in disappointment. Ginny had other ideas.

She smiled mischievously. "I'm going to go for a swim."

"In the prefects' bathroom?" He'd been in there in his fourth year, but not since. There were rumours about what the prefects got up to in there in the evening, but given the charms scattered around the castle to try to prevent sexual activity amongst the students, he thought the tales far-fetched. Unless, in her Slytherin deviousness, Ginny had found a way around such things.

"No, in the lake, want to come?"

It was not the answer he had expected, and by the look on her face she seemed to know this.

"You're mad. It's dangerous in there; I know, I've been down to the bottom of it."

"Exactly, but round the edge it's fine. Come on, Potter, don't be such a wet blanket."

She ran past him through the doors and out into the darkness. With memories of the last time she'd disappeared of into the dark fresh in his mind, Harry ran after her, hoping that he wouldn't regret his decision later.

~*~

The waxing gibbous moon provided enough light for him to chase after her without having to light his wand. He followed her past the greenhouses and, apart from tripping up over a moving creeper on the edge of the vegetable patch, his journey was uneventful. When he emerged out onto the grass by the lake, he stopped and stared. She had reached the edge of the lake and had begun to pull off her clothes, flinging them to one side without a care in the world.

Decorum dictated that Harry hang back, but even as he did so, he was filled with the urge to join her. Her pale skin shone brilliantly in the moonlight and he found himself transfixed by the sight, drinking in her nakedness. She waved to him before she took off her knickers and ran into the lake, the agitated water foaming as she did so. Once her shoulders were safely covered by the water, his feet began to work again and he soon found himself with the water lapping at his feet watching her swim.

"Come on in, it's lovely." She ducked under the dark surface, emerging a few yards nearer, the water barely covering her breasts.

"I can't," he replied diffidently.

"What's the matter, can't swim?" She leaned back and kicked with her legs, exposing herself completely to his gaze.

"Yes, of course I can swim," he replied irritably, his discomfort increasing.

She stopped swimming and looked innocently at him.

"Well then, what?"

"You're naked."

"Well, I'm glad to see that you paid enough attention when you were with Susan to recognise a naked woman when you see one."

"Ha, ha, very funny, Weasley."

"So come on, in you come. Unless, of course, you've not got much that's worth seeing. I don't remember any stories doing the rounds of you being well endowed, so that could be the case."

Harry was tempted to call her bluff and join her. As far as he had been able to work out in the showers, he was certainly not lacking in that department. He was also fighting the urge to run in and pull her to him, clothed or not.

All day he'd battled with the desire he felt for her and the very real possibility that, until a few weeks ago, she was working for his death, and still might be doing so.

He felt a frisson of excitement at the thought of making love to someone who was out of bounds, possibly even the enemy, in a place where they might very well be discovered. The memory of her most intimate flesh, soft and warm on his hand, returned as his body responded.

His mind was made up for him when Ginny rose from the lake like Aphrodite, silver streams of water glistening in the moonlight as they cascaded down her slim body. Small lustrous rivulets travelled along her arms before dripping like freshwater pearls into the quietening water. She reached up and ran her fingers through her luxurious coppery mane, emphasising the swell of her breasts as she did so. And Harry's eyes devoured every detail.

She walked towards him purposely, placing one foot in front of another, accentuating the curve of her hips and drawing his eyes to the triangle of red at the top of her thighs.

Her eyes were dark with passion and her gaze was fixed firmly on him, daring him to run. He walked forward, signalling his intent, until he was ankle deep in the water. She responded by lengthening her stride. Finally unable to control himself, he discarded his robe and started to run. As they met, she launched herself into his arms, and they collapsed together into the shallows.

"No one must know," she gasped as he covered her body with kisses.

~*~

It was gone midnight when they finally made it back to the castle. They were greeted by Harry's Head of House, Nymphadora Tonks, who was sitting on the steps leading up to the main entrance. Harry pulled Ginny to him as an angry Tonks stood to greet them.

"I would have thought that you would have had enough danger in your short life, Harry, but it appears that I was wrong. How many people have to warn you about getting involved with that before you listen?"

Harry reached for Ginny's hand and he felt her slim fingers slip between his.

"I don't know, Nymphadora," he spat, "you tell me."

"I'm beginning to think that we could tell you until we're blue in the face; it doesn't seem to make much of a difference."

"The Order was always very good at telling me what I could and couldn't do."

"We kept you alive, Harry. Kept you safe."

He snorted with derision.

"Kept me safe? You had to move Headquarters every few weeks; the thing had more leaks than a sieve."

"It wasn't our fault that our security kept on being compromised," she said defensively. "Not when certain families had members with questionable loyalties."

She glared at Ginny and Harry didn't need to look to know that Ginny was itching to respond. Which, he thought, was probably what Tonks wanted. She was a skilled Auror and would have no problem defending herself, whereas Ginny would probably be badly hexed and expelled for attacking a teacher.

Anxious to avoid such a confrontation, he responded in kind.

"I could say the same about you, Professor. How many Dark wizarding families are you related to, two? Three? Four? "

It was a taunt that she had heard before, but Harry knew that it still rankled. She stiffened slightly but otherwise gave no indication that his barb had hit the mark.

"That's as may be, but no one ever questioned my loyalty."

"No," shouted Ginny, unable to control herself any longer, "only your competence."

"How dare you?" snarled Tonks. "It was because of you that we lost Robards and Fletcher."

There it was; the accusation that no one else had been angry enough or stupid enough to say. If he got nothing else out of today, if his tryst with Ginny was as doomed as that of Romeo and Juliet, then he would have a starting point, somewhere from which to start his search for the truth. If only he'd sent his owl earlier, he might have an answer for the professor.

Ginny refused to be intimidated and carried on.

"Fletcher was a crook who was killed because he tried to cheat his fence. Robards grew over-confident and became lax about his security. He should have checked his sources before walking into another ambush."

Tonks seemed to take this piece of information as an admission of her guilt.

"You seem to know a lot about what went on for someone who wasn't a Death Eater." Tonks looked at Harry as if to ask what more did he need to know. Ginny started forward, and Harry tightened his grip on her, pulling her back to his side. She glared at him before returning to the attack.

"And you know sod all for someone who likes to pretend that she caused Voldemort's downfall."

Before the Auror could respond, Harry decided it was time to intervene. If he left it any longer then wands would be drawn.

"Tonks," he said more calmly than he felt, "if you're going to accuse someone of being a Death Eater, then you better have proof."

Ginny struggled out of his grip and took a pace away from him.

"Don't worry Harry; I've heard it all before. It used to hurt, but it doesn't now." From the tears of rage running down her face, the pain was as sharp and the accusation as wounding as the first time it had been made.

She turned to Tonks. "Don't worry, Madam Auror; I'm not going to bother your precious Boy-Who-Lived any more." She turned to Harry.

"It's been a brief but satisfying pleasure, Potter. I'm glad to find that you are more fingers than thumbs, but it appears that your minders don't like the company you're keeping."

She turned back to Tonks. "And don't bother asking the mangy old cat to expel me, I won't be back next year."

And with that she ran up the steps, leaving Harry and Tonks staring angrily at each other.

"Happy now?" Harry asked, angrier than he'd ever been. He wanted to run after her, but realised that by now she would be in her common room. And besides, he wanted to give Tonks a piece of his mind. Tonks was unrepentant.

"No, Harry, I'm not. The girl's a Death Eater; even my cousin doesn't trust her."

"Sirius doesn't trust anyone, Tonks, not even himself."

"This is different, Harry. Sirius may be a bit of a jack-the-lad but he was invaluable to the Order. If I remember correctly, it was he who found the locket that Regulus had stolen from Riddle."

And a fat lot of good it did us, thought Harry. The locket that they had placed such hopes in during the early part of hunt turned out to be a red herring.

"Yeah, but he also stood by and watched as McNair and Goyle ambushed the Order at Kings Cross. 'Not my war, Harry', I think is the phrase he used."

"I didn't say he was perfect."

"Something doesn't fit, Tonks. There's something I'm not seeing. Something isn't as it appears to be. I know you all think it's black and white, and you'd be happy if she were locked away, but I'm not buying it."

"There's nothing that doesn't fit, Harry. It is all as it seems, and if she's not coming back next year, then the school will be better for it. Why Albus ever made her a prefect, I'll never know."

"But that's it, Tonks, don't you see? Why would he make her a prefect if he thought she was a Death Eater?"

"Perhaps she hadn't become one by then?"

"Okay, why didn't he do something later if she'd become one? He expelled Crabbe, Goyle and Warrington when they did. And besides, she hasn't got a Dark Mark."

"And how do you know she hasn't got one?"

He knew she was trying to embarrass him, get him to stop, but his dander was up and he wasn't going to be denied. He still blushed when he responded but he didn't care.

"Because ... because I've seen her.... She hasn't got a Dark Mark, Tonks, and stop trying to change the subject. How could she be a Death Eater without it?"

"Perhaps Voldemort didn't think it necessary, perhaps he trusted her."

"Come off it, Tom trusted no one he couldn't control. Every Death Eater took the mark, even those still at school; it was a badge of honour to them."

"I'm sorry; she'll always be one to me."

"I'm going to talk to Hermione about this; she knows something, I'm sure."

"What makes you think that?"

"For a start, Ginny hates her guts, goes out of her way to insult her whenever possible. Plus, Hermione is the only one who hasn't told me to stay away from Ginny."

"Perhaps she's leaving it to everyone else to tell you."

"Not Hermione. If she thinks you're in the wrong she'll let you know. No, Hermione knows something about all this that she's not telling, and I'm going to find out what it is."