The Other Tower

The Other Tower

Ginny Weasley was walking down a long corridor in Hogwarts. It was well after curfew and yet she walked in the middle of the hallway towards her destination, not sure whether or not she wanted to be caught. Someone was waiting for her and she wasn't sure if she wanted to make him wait or not.

As she passed through the charms corridor she glanced at the walls, adorned with moving pictures and suits of armor. They were beautiful, but they meant very little to her. Filled with six older brothers worth of stories she had expected Hogwarts to be perfect. What she got was something less than that. The school hadn't become the second home to her that it had to each of them. In fact, she almost feared the place.

At that very moment she was taking a route to the South East Tower that was nearly double the time it would have taken her if she had just been brave enough to walk on the first floor by one stupid door that had one stupid sink behind it. She shuddered to even think about. She wasn't brave enough to make that journey. Even now in her fifth year she avoided Moaning Myrtle's toilet. Some Gryffindor I am, she thought as she made yet another right turn.

Her first year had changed her more than she would have hoped or her parents could have ever guessed. At eleven, children were supposed to make mistakes. That was an accepted fact in society. Kids were supposed to scratch their knees and blow up a cauldron or two. They were supposed to fall into the lake and get loads of detentions, at least in her family they did. She, of course, had to be different. As if befriending the darkest wizard in history wasn't enough. She had almost killed a number of students, a cat, and herself- not exactly the average mistakes.

It scared her so deeply and with such forced that she had never been able to fully trust a stranger again. She tested and prodded new people until she felt sure they weren't there to hurt her. Or at least I had tried to protect myself, she thought as she turned the final corner. She would be there in a matter of minutes.

Ginny wasn't coldhearted. She was still the same optimistic, loud talking girl that her family knew so well, but she was a bit more cautious, a bit more Slytherin. Neither of which were things she wanted to be.

She didn't have many friends and of those few (if any) were very close to her and none of them knew of her part in the incidents during her first year. No one other than her immediate family knew anything more than that she was taken to the Chamber of Secrets against her will. She didn't think she could face the school if they knew what she had done.

She included Harry in her immediate family now. He was really one of her brothers. The twins had taken to treating him just as they did the rest of the family. In fact they actually sent him even more gifts from their joke shop than they did to her, to Ron, Harry had always been a brother and always would be part of his family, and Bill and Charlie were laidback enough to simply accept a new brother into their lives.

Her father looked after Harry with a mix of fascination and duty, just as he did the rest of his children. Her mother had taken Harry on as a personal project, sending him sweaters at Christmas, worrying about him constantly, and hugging him hello and good-bye every time he visited. It seemed appropriate to Ginny that Bill and her mother had come during third year to be Harry's family for the Triwizard Tournament. Percy was the only one that even seemed to remotely have a problem with Harry (whether that stemmed from jealousy or devotion to a Ministry that was ever distancing themselves from Harry, no one was quite sure).

Ginny too had come to think of Harry as family. Her feelings for him were complex, probably too complex for her to think about on simple walk but they were what occupied her mind as she reached the door that she should have walked away from but didn't.

She didn't adore Harry. She wasn't in love with him. She wanted to understand him and knew that she never would, so she was kind of frustrated with the whole thing. He was even more cautious than she was. She watched him, though, as he went to classes and played chess with her brother. He had saved the world when he was one, the Philosopher's stone when he was eleven, her very own life when he was twelve, and the Defense teacher when he was fifteen. Ginny had seen or heard about it all. She was almost like a celebrity up until third year when everything had gone wrong. Cedric had died and somehow Harry was considered cursed by everyone for having found information proving the return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

Ginny shuddered, thinking about the face that flew into her mind every time He was brought up. She saw the smile that tried to convince her everything was okay and the eyes that told her it wasn't. She saw his deceptively handsome face as he took her on a journey through his sad life captured in a diary. And then she saw his face turn into the thing that the Boggart turned into whenever it was near her.

She paused, staring at the door harder than before. Did she really want this? Did she really want to have to deal with another Slytherin? Yes was the only answer she could find. So she opened the door and began to walk up the stairs on the other side. She walked up them for a long time before reaching yet another door that she could still choose not to walk through.

Harry would never do this. Not to me and not to our family.

After third year Ginny had worked even harder than before to understand Harry. He was the boy that came over every holiday to stay with their family and found nothing wrong with their house. He was the boy that had fought Voldemort three times and survived. He was something of a mystery to her but he wasn't the one that held her heart. He was the one that held her life. She did not fully understand the requirements of a Wizards Debt but she knew that she had one with Harry. And she knew she didn't mind. She didn't love him but she trusted him completely and utterly.

She trusted him more than she trusted almost anyone else because it hadn't been one of her brothers that she had seen in the horrible chamber; it had been Harry. He was the one that had been covered in grit and disgusting other things just to save her.

So why are you here now? Again? Why not just go back to your bed and sleep? Forget the past month. Forget what you think you know. But even as she asked the question she opened the last door and walked in. The only thought rattling through her mind, because this is perfect and nothing else has been.

A boy faced the wall on the far side. He was apparently working on homework and didn't even bother to turn around to look who had come in. He continued to write quickly and efficiently. She went to the wall across from him and sat leaning against it, facing him.

"You came back?" he finally looked up, meeting her gaze and making her stomach clench because she something that looked like hope there.

"You knew I would," she said, her voice sounding rehearsed. She looked down, breaking the eye contact, and saw the parchment he had been writing on, with the words so beautifully pulled together and written. She looked back up at him and saw he had a stray eyelash on his cheek. She leaned forward to wipe it away. Her face came closer to his than she had intended. She was instantly uncomfortable upon noticing that, but Draco Malfoy seemed to think it an amusing situation.

"Are you trying to seduce me? I'll admit it would do wonders for your reputation, but I couldn't look anyone in the face after doing someone like you," his voice didn't even break as he gave her a long and blatant 'looking over'. She understood by now that he was joking but she also understood that she shouldn't laugh. That would make her more like one of his bodyguards than like herself. He just laughed coldly in response to his own joke and returned to the parchment.

Ginny leaned back a little more and let the steady scratching of the quill lead her thoughts to wherever they would go. By this time they had both accepted that they would be quiet for most of the time they spent together. Ginny never minded the quiet even if she enjoyed the talking much more. Ginny let her mind wander to questioning her reasons for coming back here.

Both Draco and Ginny had been running a little late getting to their last classes of the day. On her way to Charms, Ginny had crashed into Draco rushing off to Transfiguration. They normally wouldn't have gotten into any trouble, but Filch had seen the Draco's inkbottle shatter and nearly killed them both right then. He sentenced them to a weeks worth of detentions in the South East Tower a little over a month ago.

They had worked together for two nights without talking, just cleaning. On the third night Draco began asking her questions and by the time the week was over Ginny realized she would miss the strange Slytherin's conversation. So the next night she went back. She wasn't sure why and still wasn't, but upon opening the door she had seen Draco. Neither of them had ever mentioned their reasons for coming back, neither had to.

Draco looked up right then, and Ginny saw the briefest of smile on Draco when he had gone back to his writing but it caused her to instantaneously returned to her line of thought as she had traveled to the tower: Harry. She thought about the smile that he got whenever he won a match, the laughter that sounded in the common room when he got a letter from the twins, the way his eyes twinkled whenever he saw one of his good friends. The way his eyes would never twinkle for her.

She had never even tried to intrude upon the friendship between Harry, Ron, and Hermione. There was something special about it that made it untouchable. Even when Ron and Hermione started going out and Harry seemed to be alone more often than ever before, Ginny didn't go near him. She wanted him to trust her the way she trusted him. She didn't want to simply be the one that was there when his real friend weren't.

Her thoughts were brought back to the present as a hoot sounded in the enclosed space. She stared as Draco attached the letter to the foot of the bird and when it didn't move gave it a sharp tap on the head. Harry would never...

"What about Potter?" Ginny looked startled. She hadn't meant to say that out loud. She looked back at the silver haired boy in front of her. He really is quite good looking. She thought, but that was before she saw the glint in his eye.

"He would never have hit that bird," she finished her thought.

"Ah," the Malfoy said, a look of comprehension on his face, "I remember now. You're obsessed with Potter. You sent that horrible thing to him in second year. Right before you almost killed Mrs. Filch and those other mudbloods and muggle-lovers."

She should have left the moment he said mudblood, but she had been having these late night meetings with him for almost a month now and though she was still shocked by his casual use of the word she steeled herself against visibly reacting to it. That was all he wanted and she knew enough to not give him that. Ginny almost replied when she suddenly did double take. Did he just say before I almost killed those people?

"What do you mean by that?"

"My father was the one that put the bloody book in your bag. Don't think he didn't tell me the whole story once I got home," he looked almost smug about it. Ginny was sure that the girl she had once been would have been horrified at his reaction. She would have gotten up and pronounced him unfit for her company. But that before the world had gone so terribly awry, before Colin Creevey's little brother had died and Sirius Black had been found innocent. That girl was the one that lived in the world where her brothers played Quidditch in their backyard and her mother made cookies for them daily. That girl was not the Ginny Weasley that sat in front of Draco Malfoy in the South East tower and understood his use of the word mudblood. This Ginny was the one that saw black letters proclaiming death come in the mail everyday and the recipients try to burn them before they opened themselves. She was the one that saw her beloved older brother Percy announce that he would no longer be a associated with his family in order to achieve his bigger goals. She was the girl that had come out of the Chamber of Secrets- a completely different girl than the one that went in. And in a strange way, this new Ginny was good friends with Draco Malfoy.

"You aren't as terrible as you like to think you are." Ginny said, smiling slightly.

"You think you figured me out Ginny?" he asked as he crept a little forward on his knees. She refused to move away, even as his face came within centimeters of hers. He continued in the same cool voice he always used. "People have been trying to do that since I got here. From that idiot Dumbledore to Minister Fudge to Professor Snape, all of them are convinced that I'm not all that I appear to be. They seemed to believe that my abusive father misguided me and that all I really want is to be good. They never considered was that maybe I wasn't that deep, and that I act exactly like I want to and they are wrong." His face was so close to hers that she could feel his breath on her cheek. She had to concentrate with everything she had to continue talking.

"You can't be-"

"Get a hold of yourself. You look like whore," Draco said, backing away from her quickly. Ginny looked down at herself and saw that her chest was heaving and that she was sweating slightly. She took only a moment to compose herself before she looked up again and met Draco's steely blue eyes. She managed to ask the exact question that she wanted.

"Was your father?"

"Was my father what?" he sounded bored and disinterested, but still remained talking to her when he could have left the second he had finished his owl.

"Abusive and misguiding," Ginny didn't know why she wanted, needed, him to stay there. She didn't know why she wanted him to sit with her until the sun came up and the war ended. She just knew that there was something simple about Draco's complexities that she found enchanting. Through each of their conversations he had let her leave first when she got too tired to continue. They had talked about a variety of things from classes to Quidditch, but they had never once mentioned their houses. They had never once brought up anything about why they continued to come to this tower during the night and talk. They never gave each other even the slightest sign during the day that they knew each other, but Ginny saw the slight changes that other people might have missed.

She saw the way he sidestepped to avoid stepping on her toes and the way that he carefully avoided being rude to the people around her. She also saw his smiles in the Hall as glanced at her across the tables, the ones that quickly disappeared when he saw her looking. Whether or not he noticed the changes in her, she didn't know, but she knew that she found herself trying to ignore the remarks that Ron made about him and even found herself getting angry at his words.

He was not kind to her in the conventional way, only in his own style. That was something Ginny had come to accept and even adjusted the conversation accordingly. He would be rude on purpose and jokingly say things that hurt. He explained to her once that he hated people that lied. He hated that people acted one way and thought a different way, so when he didn't like someone he said so. When he wanted to piss people off, he did. When he wanted to make people smile, he did. It was something that Ginny really appreciated. He was completely true to himself and that made him completely understandable and completely unlike her. She had never told anyone about how guilty she felt about letting down her family. She certainly never mentioned that there were days when she simply wanted to tear to roof off of the whole stupid castle. She was Virginia Weasley the only child that her parents didn't worry about. And that girl was completely different than Draco. Maybe that is why he keeps coming back. Maybe I confuse him. Maybe I want to confuse him. But why do I come back?

"My father never laid a single hand on me," Draco's eyes flashed.

"But he was never there for you either was he?" Ginny finished while he rolled his eyes.

"Like I told you before. I am not that deep. He was there for every dinner. He bought me every new broom and anything else that I wanted,"

"Was that enough?"

"Yes," he looked at her then and Ginny saw something in his eyes. "In a family as big as yours I am sure you were forgotten a lot more than I was. Weren't your brothers big shots here and aren't a couple of them making decent wages? Well except Weasley. There's really nothing special about him."

Ginny thought about that for a moment. It was probably true that her brothers were more interesting than she was. Bill and Charlie were famous at Hogwarts for being Head Boy and Quidditch Captain respectively. Percy was practically Minister of Magic already. The twins were making it big with their shop. That just left Ron and her and while she was sure that she wouldn't do anything that special, Ron was probably going to do something great.

"I was never forgotten. Yes, my older brothers are well known, but that never took away from me. And what you said about Ron isn't true," she looked at him steadily and this time she moved closer to him, but it wasn't the same way that he had moved. She scooted forward and looked shrewdly at him. "I think he is going to do something better than the rest of them. Maybe he'll even help Harry bring down You-Know-Who."

"Potter," Draco said and Ginny could almost feel his hatred and she had to restrain herself from laughing. Draco really is predictable. "Do you really love him?" or maybe he isn't.

"No," Ginny answered before she could stop herself. Why had he asked that? But she took the opportunity to poke fun at him and ran with it. "I am not that deep of a person Draco." She said and when she saw his slight smirk she continued.

"Harry was there for me when I was stupid and I'm grateful for that, but it's different now than it was then. He could never be the one for me. He's been through too much for him to waste time on me. What about you? Do you secretly fancy him?"

"You've caught me. I'm madly in love with Potter," Draco said sarcastically, just as Ginny knew he would.

"You're really predictable."

"But you haven't even seen my depths. How can you say that I'm predictable?" he continued sarcastically. He was moving towards her again.

"Maybe I don't want to," and his breath was back on her cheeks again. This time she concentrated on her own breathing. She would not give him the satisfaction twice.

"Then why do you come here every night?" he asked. And it was a very good question. One that Ginny couldn't answer for herself let alone him. She just shook her head and stared into his eyes- those enticingly beautiful and intelligent eyes.

"Well, I come here because I had hoped to eventually kiss you," he said and leaned forward enough that their lips were touching. With the contact Ginny felt the thousand explosions in her stomach and heard not a single thought that ran through her head. Her arms slowly twined around Draco's neck and she felt him reaching around her waste.

It was the type of kiss that could be shared with no one. They would never talk about this kiss outside of the darkness and closeness of this tower. It was the kiss that sent everything in Ginny and Draco's lives right out of and back into focus. And when they broke apart neither said a thing for a moment.

"I would be humiliated if anyone found out I'd kissed a Weasley."

"I'll never tell." And so they both got up and left together, both knowing that the other would be returning the following night and trying to figure out if that was what they wanted. They separated somewhere on the second floor as Ginny went down a level and Draco didn't.

Ginny touched her lips with her left hand softly. She was learning that maybe there wasn't anything more to Draco Malfoy than what he showed the world. But maybe that's enough, she thought as she walked right past the Moaning Myrtle's toilet without glancing once at it once.