White Bird on a Silver Thread

Chapter Two: The Age of Gold

Do you still remember our Age of Gold?

Full of bright hopes and brighter dreams:

Shattered moonlight and splintered rainbows

- The Age of Gold

The days at Hogwarts had begun to take on a pattern as time went by. Like the turning, twisting kaleidoscope held against the light, it was more than a simple thing of color and shape. It was a moving, changing pattern of classes and Quidditch and friends, and a little bit of anxiety, too.

The five friends moved their way through the days, while each day, in its turn, moved the week ahead a notch until they could only think, amazed: Eight weeks? Surely it had not been eight weeks already?

It was November. The world had burst into color in the past month, and was now fading. The skies were gray and wind winnowed, and the days were growing shorter and more melancholy - days full of fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the leafless trees. Tempests stripped the leaves from the trees and heaped them along the lakeshores. The sunsets became red and murky, flaming in smoky crimson behind the mountains. Sometimes the wild blackness of great autumn storms filled the nights, followed by dank, wet, streaming nights where the wind whistled in the firs and pounded fitfully on the castle windows.

Those days were, perhaps, however strangely, Ginny's happiest in all her life. Nothing could dampen her spirits - not the terror Death Eaters had wrought on her world, not the list of the names of the dead that daily grew longer, not the increasingly difficulty of her classes or the horrible weather that she was obliged to practice Quidditch in. For her, it was one of those transition periods that occurs in our lives, periods that have nothing whatsoever to do with time itself - periods in which a year can seem but a day and a day as long and as eventful as a year.

She fairly sparkled with joy. All the old restlessness that had troubled her brother had gone from her eyes. Life was good. Every morning when she awakened the new day seemed to her like some good fairy who would bring her some beautiful gift of joy.

No, Ron ceased worrying about his little sister. She was more alive and more spirited than she had ever been.

He should have been pleased; he should have accepted her happiness gratefully and without question. But weren't her eyes a little too bright? Wasn't her voice too merry, her step too light, her laughter too quick?

What had wrought this change in her?

Maybe it was Jennie, he thought comfortingly. The other girl was so charming and winsome and delightful, it was inevitable that she should make those around her happier just by smiling at them.

But deep in his heart, Ron was afraid this wasn't true.

**************

Breakfast. Terry Boot sat at the Ravenclaw table, Jerry Lewis on one side and Padma Patil on the other. Jerry was all agog with some weird news in The Daily Prophet, but Terry couldn't bring himself to listen. There was always weird and terrifying news in the papers these days, deaths and panic and havoc wreaked by Death Eaters, and Terry had discovered the ostriches' trick - what you can't see, you can't fear. His eyes fell instead on the Gryffindor table.

He spotted her instantly. Dressed, as usual, in a scarlet cloak, her curly red hair falling in smooth unbroken waves past her shoulders. She looked tired, as though she hadn't slept properly in a long time, but when she caught him looking at her, she smiled.

He smiled back. Padma, who had sharp eyes and a great deal of feminine curiosity, said, "Oooooooh. You fancy her, don't you?"

Terry blushed.

*************

Hermione's nose was buried in the Daily Prophet. She prodded Harry anxiously without looking up from the papers. "Harry," she hissed. "Dementors have abandoned Azkaban! Vampires and werewolves are congregating, and beasts long thought extinct have been sighted."

"Good grief," said Ginny blankly. "How horrible." She shuddered. "What do you suppose it is?"

"Voldemort, of course," said Harry, sounding wearily resigned. Ron flinched. "Don't say that name!" he hissed, but Harry ignored him. "Three years ago, Voldemort said that he would make allies of the dementors. And in my dream, he asked if his armies were ready. I can only guess that vampires and werewolves will be joining him as well, shunned as they are by the general public. It's a good thing Madame Maxime and Hagrid were able to persuade the giants to join us or things would be worse than they are now."

"But if the dementors have abandoned Azkaban," said Jennie slowly, "doesn't that mean that all the prisoners have escaped?"

"Exactly," said Harry, in the same tired tone. "And all the Azkaban prisoners were Death Eaters. They're back with Voldemort. We knew this was going to happen. It was only a matter of time."

Jennie shivered visibly and let out an exclamation. "And Voldemort - will Voldemort spread to all corners of the globe?"

As Jennie had grown up in Malta, which knew nothing of Dementors and had barely been touched during the War, she did not share the same paralyzed fear of the Dark Lord with her Hogwarts counterparts, and nor did she have as much knowledge.

"Of course," said Ron, patronizingly. Ginny was reminded strongly of Percy. "You-Know-Who will take over the world if he isn't stopped."

Jennie shuddered as she thought of her beautiful island home taken over by some evil, heartless British maniac. What if he made the weather as horrible there as it was here? "But how can he be stopped?"

"I don't know," said Harry bleakly. "I don't know."

*************

At the Slytherin table, there was covert rejoicing at the latest news. Draco Malfoy sat like a statue, but his mind was whirling in circles, in a pattern, the same questions repeating over and over. Always so many questions, he thought tiredly. Always questions and never an answer.

It was his seventh year. Once he graduated in June, he had two choices - join the Dark Lord, as so many of his fellow Slytherins were going to do, or betray them.

And Draco Malfoy, son of Lucius Malfoy, once ringleader of Death Eaters, was not sure he would choose the former.

How could he be loyal to a master that had so callously wrecked the framework and foundations of his life? How could he be loyal to a master that had burned his family home to the ground, that had murdered his father and destroyed his mother, that had brought his very world crashing down around his ears until he had nothing left but the ruins at his feet, ruins he couldn't even pick up and rebuild with?

His father had been loyal, and look what had happened to him.

Was there no freedom to be found in this world? There was always something that bound you to the earth when you wanted to fly. White lark, he thought, wearily. White bird.

Unconsciously, he sent out a prayer to the woman in his grandfather's painting.

Lady, what should I do?

*************

Blaise Zabini wondered what was going on behind those slate gray eyes. As always, Draco's face was entirely expressionless.

"What are you thinking of, Draco darling?"

Draco turned his blank eyes to the girl nestled at his side, and his features smoothed over. "Graduation," he answered, with perfect honesty. "Post-Hogwarts life."

"Not much question there, hmm?" she asked, her trilling, musical laughter filling the air. "We all know what we're going to do." She winked. Draco gazed at her coldly, unsmilingly. Blaise was used to this, and refused to let herself become unsettled. It must be another male thing.

************

"Can anyone tell me what the Rommalb is?" Professor Ashley paused a minute, her eyes sweeping the classroom, before saying, "Mr. Potter, if you please." She gazed at him expectantly out of her deep gray eyes.

The new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was a favorite among the pupils, even the Slytherins - perhaps because she had not been a Gryffindor. Augusta Ashley had never gone to Hogwarts at all, but had instead graduated from Mount Morningstar, a small, elite island academy for the children of extremely wealthy European aristocrats. It was whispered that her father was a duke, and that she was only teaching as a favor to Dumbledore. She was both very young and very pretty, and some of the seventh year boys had been quite taken with her; after all, she couldn't have been a day over twenty-one. Everyone in the school liked and trusted her, with the exception of Blaise Zabini and Draco Malfoy. Blaise didn't like her (how dare someone come in and be almost as beautiful as she?), and Draco didn't trust her.

Unlike Snape or McGonagall, who were perfect martinets, she never tried to keep order in her classroom. But she kept her students so busy they had no time for mischief. Her methods of teaching were so unconventional that her pupils felt at first as if she had stood them on their heads.

Harry answered her question easily. She, after all, did not grill him like Snape or ask impossible questions like McGonagall. "A fearsome monster that awaits men around the dark corners, through dark doorways, in the blackest hours of the night. Few can survive looking upon it. Shadowy and shapeless, it can only be tamed by a Mage."

"Excellent. Five points to Gryffindor - yes, Neville?"

"What's a Mage?" asked Neville.

Hermione's hand shot up.

"Yes?" Professor Ashley arched a delicate eyebrow at Hermione.

"A Mage," reeled off Hermione, "is a witch or wizard that possesses great powers of the mind."

"Excellent. But can you tell me what these 'powers of the mind' are?"

"Well, telepathy with other Mages is one," she recited. "The ability to look into other's memories. Also, control over animals."

Professor Ashley favored her with a dazzling smile. "Very good. Five points to Gryffindor."

Hermione turned pink.

"Homework," said the professor, and Ron groaned inadvertently. She rarely gave homework. She smiled merrily at him. "Oh come, Ron! I promise you it shall not take long. Let me see - research the chimera. A paragraph will suffice. Have a good day, class, you may leave early to lunch."

No wonder everyone loved her.

*************

The first thing Draco saw when he rounded the bend in the path that led to the lake was Augusta Ashley sitting on a rock by the shore. At first he meant to turn back, but it was too late; she had already seen him. She beckoned with a slim white hand, and Draco, feeling foolish and a little apprehensive (he prayed fervently that he had did his homework), went to her.

"Draco," she said, rising from her seat, slender, graceful, beautiful, her dark hair blowing around her hair and her eyes gray like the lake. So beautiful - the exact kind of a beauty he loathed most in a woman, a beauty that was too poisonous to be true. "Draco Malfoy."

There was something about the way she uttered his name that made Draco tense. She sensed it, and smiled.

"You're afraid of me, aren't you?" she asked, her soft voice gentle. Draco shook his head wordlessly.

"Think of it." She laughed wryly, though Draco could see nothing funny. She lounged back on the rock, the wind blowing freely through her long unbound hair. Draco's eyes began to ache with her beauty. "We're related, you and I," she said.

She's mad, he thought, trying to back away, but held firmly in place by her piercing gaze. Nothing she says has any real logic behind it.

"You're so young," she said, and her eyes were suddenly dark and sad and old, as if they had seen everything a long time ago, and found value in nothing. What has she seen that makes her eyes like that? wondered Draco. "You're so young," she said again, her lips twisting into a wistful smile. "Everything is so simple when you are seventeen. How well I remember! You're still new, still untouched, and everything lies ahead of you like the summertime, warm and shining."

New? he asked himself. Untouched? Oh no, Professor, how wrong you are.

"So young," she repeated, her eyes fixed on the wide expanse of the lake. "You have no idea as yet how it all happens. You take one step and then another, and before you know it you're running down a strange road, not knowing how you got there and not knowing where you are going."

"But I know," said Draco, half to himself. "I know."

"Do you?" she asked softly. She turned to him, and her eyes were unfathomably deep and inexplicably tender. "Do you?"

*************

There was something about the Prefects' Meeting Room that Hermione did not like. It was located on the very top story of the castle, and its ceiling was made of a single sheet of glass, so that the sky was visible. The walls were stone, not brick, and on these stones were carved strange and wonderful pictures - pictures that told stories of love and conquest and war. The table where the prefects met was long and rectangular: rather like banquet tables of old. Hermione, who was Head Girl, would sit at one end, and Draco, the Head Boy, at the other.

Today the sky overhead was cloudy and gray. Hermione was making Draco run this meeting - "You never do any work, Malfoy" - and she was reclining comfortably in her seat. The prefects, all looking bored stupid, were seated at the table as well. Draco, however, was noticeably missing.

When five minutes had gone by and he still didn't appear, Hermione got up and stalked to the head of the table. "Since it appears that Malfoy refuses to grace us with his presence, we shall begin." She slammed the gavel down on the wood block with unusual force. "This meeting is called to order at 3:05 PM on Monday, November 27^th, 19 --. All members present save for Head Boy Dra - "

The door swung open and Draco Malfoy strolled in. "All members present," he amended pleasantly. Hermione glared at him and hissed, "You are late, Malfoy."

Draco shrugged elegantly. "Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all. Hermione threw the gavel at him. He ducked, took his place at the head of the table, and Summoned the gavel back to him.

"Right. Where were we?"

"All members present," said Hermione impatiently. "Maybe you should try coming earlier next time."

"All members present," repeated Draco dutifully, and banged the gavel.

Ernie MacMillan raised his hand. "I move to table the minutes."

"I second that," said Jade Lewis.

Draco banged the gavel. "Table the minutes," he ordered the secretary, Jerry. Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Prefect reports?" he asked, banging the gavel again.

The head prefect of each house - Ron, Pansy Parkinson, Terry Boot, and Susan Bones - read out their reports. Draco banged the gavel.

"I move to approve the budget for this year's dances," said Mandy Brocklehurst. Draco banged the gavel.

"I second that," said Colin Creevey. Draco banged the gavel.

"All in favor?"

Twenty-four voices recited, "Aye." Draco banged the gavel.

"All opposed?"

Silence. Draco banged the gavel. "The budget was passed," he said (banging the gavel).

"I move to amend requisition number 593," said Ginny. Draco banged the gavel.

"I second that," supplied Terry quickly. Draco banged the gavel.

"Malfoy," said Hermione warningly, "If you don't stop banging that gavel you will find yourself sprouting purple pimples all over your nose." She waved her wand threateningly. "And don't think I won't."

Draco lifted his head and looked at her with an injured air before setting the gavel down. Ginny choked on her laughter and coughed.

"Are you ok?" asked Hermione, thumping her helpfully on the back a few times.

As movements were made and requisitions amended and passed, Hermione, satisfied that the meeting was finally running smoothly, allowed her mind to wander. She returned, of course, to her biggest problem - Harry's strange dream. Look as she might, she had not been able to find anything on something called Épé Muleac. Harry had not remembered much else from the dream, and it was vital that she discovered what the devil the Épé Muleac was. As far as she was concerned, the word muleac wasn't French, Italian, German, Latin, Greek, Mermish, Troll, or any other known language. And Épé could mean anything from daffodils (Dragonish) to boxer shorts (Atlantian) She did not even know what it was. A book? A wand? Purple boxer shorts? And what would Voldemort want with boxer shorts, anyway? She preferred not to think of Voldemort in boxer shorts, purple or no.

And it wasn't for lack of trying, either. She practically lived in the library, flipping through hundreds of ancient tomes and modern encyclopedias. Harry and Ron, worried about her health, would filch food from the kitchens and smuggle it to her.

Hermione's eyes wandered to the curious stone engravings on the meeting room wall. When she had asked Dumbledore about them, he had been amused. "Very strange things they are," he had said, sounding as though he were enjoying himself very much. "They appear differently for different people. Now, tell me what you see on the walls right now?"

"A battle," said Hermione, trying to discern the etchings. "Uh - lots of bodies. A great serpent on the ground and a winged lion in the air."

"Ah, yes, the Battle of Lambourne," he said. "I have seen that myself once or twice."

"What do you see now, Professor?" asked Hermione curiously.

"An engraving of the Founders," said Dumbledore.

"Really? What are they doing?" asked Hermione eagerly.

"Teaching," he had answered, but there was something about the way he said it that made her wonder if he was telling the truth.

The engraving was different this time, though Hermione was facing the same walls. Two witches and two wizards, but they were not the Founders. Hermione sucked in her breath as she studied the scene. Each was riding on a dragon. Dragon, thought Hermione, her eyes narrowing. Something nagged at the back of her mind. What was it about the dragons that tugged at her attention? It was like the whisper of a thought - something that buzzed in the back of her mind like a trapped fly frantically flinging himself against the wrong side of a screen door. There was something she knew.

She focused on the two witches. One carried a slim saber, the other a jeweled sword. Hermione bit her lip. Épé Muleac, she thought, and turned the words around on her tongue.

Oh, of course, she breathed to herself. Caelum Épé. Heaven Sword.

****************

Draco was very tired. His head throbbed unbearably. He had been obliged to spend the evening with his fellow Slytherins in the common room. Some of them weren't so bad: clever, amusing Malcolm Baddock, cunning Graham Pritchard, with his vast knowledge and his stories, and Morag MacDougal, who's biggest asset was that he was extremely reticent and seldom talked. Christina Montague and Charlotte Penhallow weren't such pills, either, as far as looks and intellect went. But Blaise had chattered incessantly all evening and he had nearly died of boredom. At last he had excused himself and gone to his dorm. Thank whatever gods there were that the Head Boy could have his own room.

It was furnished, of course, in deep green - green curtains, green rugs underfoot and furniture covered in green velvet throws. But there was a lightness, an airiness to the room that was lacking from the rest of the Slytherin dungeons. While everything else was oppressingly opulent and dark, his room was bright, comfortable, and tranquil - heavily influenced by the décor of Hedgerow. He had booted out the stupid canopy: he hated being enclosed in a tomb while he was sleeping; it made him claustrophobic.

Over his bed he had hung the watercolor of the Lady of the White Bird. Draco had taken to thinking of her as that. Sometimes, he would lounge on his bed and simply stare at her, wondering who she was, and what secrets her eyes held. Sometimes he would ask her things, though, of course, she never responded.

Tonight he lay sprawled on his stomach on the bed. He was wearing a silk green robe with twisting silver dragons embroidered all over it. In his hands he held a white jade pendant in the shape of a dragon, with two tiny emeralds for its eyes.

He had been named for it. He had always been told that he had been born with this white jade dragon in his mouth - that when the nurse had borne him, kicking and screaming and filthy, to be washed, this ornament had fallen out of his mouth. It was a miracle that he hadn't swallowed it and choked to death before he was an hour old.

It had continued to be a puzzle in the Malfoy household; no one, it seemed, could tell them what it meant if one was born with a jade dragon in one's mouth. His grandmother, who had always been more superstitious than the rest of the clan, had insisted it was his 'life root' - meaning that Draco would live only so long as the jade dragon remained intact. She had put an Unbreakable charm on it, strung it on a thin gold chain, and hung it on his neck. Lucius, who after all was her son, had humored her, thinking she was merely growing senile and must be indulged. So Draco had worn it every day of his life since the second hour of his birth.

Draco held the dragon pendant up so that it caught the light of the flickering candle. In the strange, eerie half darkness the emeralds gleamed, and the dragon seemed to come alive. Draco played with it until he heard the clock in the common room striking eleven. Silently, he slipped out of the dungeons, skillfully avoiding any detection from his housemates, and climbed the fourteen flights of stairs to the North Tower.

******************

Draco sat down on the window ledge of the North Tower. Winter had set in abnormally early this year - tonight was the first snow, and it was not yet December. He threw open the shutters. The delicate snow settled in his hair and on his robe, freezing him. He wanted it to freeze him. He thought of the empty grave in the Malfoy plot of the old cemetery. Lucius Malfoy had not even had a body left to bury when Voldemort had been through with him.

At first, during those first warm, sun-filled days at Hedgerow, he had thought that surely, if he was patient, this longing inside of him would go away. And so he had been successful in the fashion of the bereaved, going through the grim rites and rituals dry-eyed, stony, doing all that needed to be done and carefully allowing no thought to enter the mind beyond the necessity of the moment. But he had not known that emotions are not like muscles; they do not grow stiff and atrophy without use. He could not forget what had happened.

He was surrounded by lies. His whole life was built on lies. What was the truth about life? he wondered wearily. How could it be found? Was truth, then, only a matter of viewpoint, each person twisting and turning it to suit his own purpose? He did not even know the truth about himself. He had been lying to himself, all those years, his whole life and way of life based on a dream.

The door opened, and Ginny slipped in. They did not speak. Their very silence was companionable. Since he had usurped her seat by the window, she took his at the desk. She studied him for awhile, gauging his mood. Seeing that he was in a bitter, unhappy state, she remained silent and set to drawing. She wanted very much to know what troubled him, but she refrained from asking, understanding that he would tell her if he wanted her to know.

To Ginny it seemed as though she were living two lives these days, as distinct from each other as if she had possessed a double personality. In one, she went to her classes; she studied diligently and painstakingly and took a natural pleasure in her high marks; she laughed with Jennie and ate her meals and did all the normal day to day things that we all take for granted.

The other life was spent in this gray old northern tower, where the wind whistled on the window and the minutes dropped by like gems and the stars seemed so close that you only needed to reach out to catch one. There every night she met Draco Malfoy, and they garnered hours of quiet happiness together.

Ginny's pencil moved across the paper very quickly. A beautiful chatelaine beneath a pointed arch, leaning on the parapet, chin in hand. A cavalier galloping up out of the distant countryside on a black charger. A lady on a lounge, with an opened letter beside her, gazing dreamily at the moon through an open window half-veiled by a crimson curtain.

She had been sketching quietly for some time before Draco spoke at last, somewhat distantly, as though his thoughts were very far away.

"I used to think it was bad when it rained," said Draco, his eyes fixed on the bleak landscape underneath him. Ginny froze, a sense of foreboding stealing over her. She wondered apprehensively what he was going to tell her. "I would hear the wind pounding on my window, and think of Father, and I wouldn't be able to stand it. But it's worse now when it's snowing. It's so cold. Father used to come in after I slept to make sure I hadn't kicked off my covers, to make sure I was warm. He didn't know how to show affection, but I know he loved me in his way. When it rains, it seems as if the sky is crying. But when it snows the world seems so merciless. Father wouldn't mind the rain, but the snow . . ."

Ginny's eyes were stricken as she dropped her pencil and gazed at him. She wished she could find some way to reach him, understand him. Looking at him, at that clean-cut profile, she didn't know why she cared. She only knew she did. There was something about Draco Malfoy that seemed vulnerable, and yet, at the same time, she knew she was a little afraid of him, knowing that he was unpredictable, knowing that she couldn't trust him. Words aren't good enough, she thought. There should be some other way for people to communicate with each other. Words have to be interpreted, translated, and their meaning can be twisted and distorted so that even the simplest of phrases can arouse different emotions in different people.

She took a deep breath. "Malfoy," she said, softly. She stood, and walked toward him, laying a light hand on his arm. "Don't think of it anymore."

"Don't think of it?" he asked, and laughed bitterly. "Every day of my life I try to forget. Every day I try to pretend I never had a father. Pretend there was no Malfoy Manor. But . . ." he trailed off, at loss for words. "But I can't forget. Can you understand?"

He was asking her to understand. Ginny swallowed, unable to look him in the eye. Instead, she lowered her gaze to the jade pendant on the gold chain that he wore at his throat. What was there to understand? she wondered, as the jade dragon winked its emerald eyes at her. Where must she go and what must she do and in what dark, hidden cavern of the soul and mind must she probe so that she finally knew not only herself, but also love and time and her place within it all?

"You are saying," said Ginny at last, her words hesitant and her gaze flickering back up to his face, "that you can't cut seventeen years out of your life without pain."

"How do you bear an unbearable thing?" he whispered, the wind blowing his fine, straight, pale strands of hair across his forehead as he gazed unseeingly out the window.

Ginny shook her head, looking out into the cold black night. "You can't," she said. "You can't, but you do."

**************

Blaise Zabini was sitting quietly by her window. It opened out onto the lake, and she could see the drifts of snow falling on the half-frozen lake. Draco had slipped out again tonight, as he had been doing every night for several months. She knew where he went; she had followed him one night some weeks ago. She knew he was meeting with that Weasley girl. She did not care. There had been others; it was not as though the insipid redhead was the first. And nor, Blaise knew, would she be the last. But in the end, he would come back to her; he always did.

Loath as she was to admit it, she loved him. Oh yes, she loved him, his smile, his eyes, even that arrogance that made you want to punch him. And she feared for his safety. They had warned her not to tell him. They had told her that he was not to be trusted anymore. Not since Lucius Malfoy's death. No one knew for sure where his loyalties lay.

So unwillingly, she had consented. She would not tell him, she had said, though what it cost her was more than she was capable of giving.

Blaise was no fool, though her tongue might have been hung in the middle. She was always watching the world with those clear, far-seeing eyes of hers; she knew the male species, and she despised him. You can think of her as a sort of man-eating lioncelle, you see. She was beautiful, acquisitive, sanguine, hot-tempered, demanding, impulsive, promiscuous - all the proper qualities of a man-eater. She had eaten many men, and they had all become nonentities once she was through with them - nothing but a shadow of what they had once been; living no life except within the vitals of her, the devourer. But she had never had any control over Draco, and perhaps it was because of this that she loved him in her own twisted way.

Silver light streamed through her window. A calendar for the old year lay on her desk. It was opened to the last page. And the twenty-sixth day was circled in blood red.

*****************

Winter set in vigorously during the last fortnight of the term. Palms of frost began to cover the castle windows. The nights were long and starry and cold. The pale fires of the Milky Ways burned. More snow came, and the lake froze over beyond the white, imprisoned landscape.

Hermione went on her annual rampage of studying, and abandoned researching Harry's dream for the time being. Most people, however, seemed more worried about finding a partner for the annual Christmas Ball than about the semester finals (due to the popularity of the Yule Ball some years ago, Hogwarts had initiated its very own Christmas Ball, and these had been great successes).

It was the last week before the end of the term. Ginny sat curled up in front of the Gryffindor common room, reading of White's Arthur. Her heart was full of sadness. The story of the Round Table always filled her with sadness, because she knew that ultimately it was to be doomed. She knew that though Arthur loved his people and his Table and his Queen, he was cursed in the end.

"Oy, Ginny!" called Ron, who had been playing chess with Harry in a corner of the room. "We're going to go skating. Want to come?"

Ginny jumped at the chance. She felt she would stifle if she stayed a minute longer indoors. "Sure."

"Get Jennie, too," said Ron, pretending to be nonchalant.

Ginny grinned. "Ok."

She ran to her room, threw her cloak over her shoulders and skipped down the stairs of her room, her white skates slung over her shoulder, and Jennie trailing closely after her.

"Are you coming, Herm?" asked Ron, watching in satisfaction as Harry's king surrendered to him. He threw a furtive glance over his shoulder to see if Jennie has seen his win.

She had. Her eyes were teasing and her smile warm as she winked at him.

"Sure," answered Hermione distractedly, who was bent over an open book at a table, looking harried. "I'll come down after you, ok?"

Harry stood up from the table and stretched before pulling on his cloak. "See you then," he said, turning to give her a last glance, and the four Gryffindors clambered out of the portrait hole.

The lake was frozen over beautifully, and the December sunshine was brilliant. Terry Boot, who had been skating with a few of his Ravenclaw friends, glided over and offered Ginny his arm. Ginny, who was quite fond of Terry, put her hand in the crook of his arm and away they went. Ron paired off with Jennie, while Harry began to skate alone rather forlornly, hoping Hermione would hurry up and join them.

"Careful and stay clear of the middle of the lake, it's not quite frozen," called Terry to Ron, Jennie, and Harry. They nodded, and went spinning off along the edge of the lake.

No one saw Hermione coming, some ten minutes. Eager to catch up with the others, who were far out on the opposite side of the lake, she struck out toward the smoother ice in the middle of the lake. Harry was morosely playing gooseberry to Ron and Jennie when some instinct made him pause. He turned just in time to see Hermione throw up her hands and go down, with a sudden crash of thin ice, a splash of water, and a cry that made all the other skaters stop, their hearts in their mouths.

Harry shot off in an instant, cursing himself for not bringing his wand. He was not a second too soon. He threw himself flat against the ice and managed to catch Hermione up by the arm before she was entirely submerged. Terry was already stumbling to the banks, searching for a stout branch, while Ginny and Jennie kept out of their way, knowing they would be of little help.

"Oh, hurry, hurry, hurry," prayed Ginny in a whisper, as Terry searched the shoreline, fear making his fingers clumsy. It seemed hours to her until Terry finally found a strong bough, and rushed to Harry's side, his face cut and bruised by a hostile bush.

Ron was also on his stomach at Hermone's side, slapping fiercely at one of the giant squid's legs, which was tugging at Hermione's waist, evidently unhappy with this intrusion on his winter's nap. Harry's mouth was set in a tight line. Hermione was remarkably self-possessed; she neither screamed, cried, nor went into hysterics, though she shivered violently and her lips turned blue.

Using the tree bough, the three boys were able to haul her out. She was light, but the icy water and her heavy skates and cloak weighed her down, and the squid seemed unwilling to let go of her. But at last she was out; they bore her to the shore, and after he had removed his skates, Harry picked her up in his arms and conveyed her to the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey nearly went wild at the sight of the shivering, dripping Hermione. She shooed everyone away, except for Harry, who refused to leave no matter what she threatened.

***************

The rumors flew around rapidly during dinner. It wasn't long before Draco had learned that Hermione Granger had fallen into the lake while skating. A glance at the Gryffindor table revealed that neither Potter nor Weasley were there; they were presumably waiting by her bedside. Draco calmly ate his dinner and endured Blaise's chatter all evening very patiently until eleven o' clock.

After Blaise had finally gone to bed, he slipped like a shadow through the dark, empty hallways to the hospital ward. He opened the doors. It was silent inside. Madam Pomfrey had already gone to bed, and by the sound of it, both Potter and Weasley had fallen asleep, too.

Hermione was lying in a pool of moonlight in the bed closest to the window. She was very beautiful in the half darkness. Her hair, still damp, was fanned out on the pillow. The blankets rose and fell with each quiet breath she drew.

Draco walked to her bedside and touched her cheek lightly. She stirred but didn't waken. After gazing down at her for a long time, he bent and kissed her forehead. Then with a last, lingering glance, he went up to the North Tower.

*****************

She was waiting for him when he arrived. It was seldom that Ginny arrived to the tower room before he did, but, of course, he was late tonight. She was sitting at the desk, drawing, and the floor was littered with scraps of parchment. He bent and picked up a crumbled ball of paper.

"Don't - " she began, but he had already smoothed out the sheet. He smiled at his own likeness. "This was good," he said, lifting his head to look at her. "Why did you throw it out?"

Ginny closed her eyes. "It is not enough to be merely good," she said, as though reciting something she had read from a book and then learned by heart. "I can never be satisfied with just being good. I must always seek the unattainable. All artists seek what they can never have, knowing that the image in their minds can never be truly captured but knowing just the same that they must always try. I must seek perfection even though I know I'll never find it." She opened her eyes again and looked up at him, tilting her head so that a few loose strands of hair fell across her cheek. "This one's better," she said, handing him the sheet she had been working on.

Draco drew in his breath very sharply as he looked down into his own face. It was faulty, of course, but it had life, spirit. He lifted his eyes to meet Ginny's, and gazed very intently at her. To have drawn him like that, she had to have known what was going on in his mind.

"Does it please you?" she asked hesitantly. He gaze held hers as he nodded slowly before turning and going to the window.

Ginny watched him for a long time. Draco Malfoy was much too sure of himself. He carried himself with arrogance, but there was also something too bitter in the thin line of his mouth, and the way his eyes remained somber even when he smiled.

She knew him well enough now to recognize the paradoxes he represented - warm-hearted, yet seemingly cold-blooded as a fish; restrained, yet thoughtlessly outspoken, well-bred, but reckless of his breeding, well mannered, yet indifferent to the opinion of his interlocutors.

He held a strange fascination for her that no one else in the world possessed. She felt it though she could not analyze it. Harry, now - she knew perfectly well why she liked Harry. It was just because of his Harry-ness. And Terry - Terry was a jolly, laughing, simple-hearted rogue you couldn't help liking. But Draco was different. Was his charm the allure of the unknown - of subtle knowledge - of a mind that had grown wise on darkness - of things he knew that she could never know? Ginny couldn't tell. She only knew that everybody tasted a little flat after Draco - yes, even Jennie. Draco seemed to satisfy some part of her subtle and intricate nature that would go hungry without him.

It didn't make sense. He lacked tenderness, he was a coward, he had more than a streak of cruelty. He stood for everything she feared and hated and despised. And yet she found his conversation amusing, his company enjoyable, his many moods always matched to hers. She realized for the first time that aversion and attraction ran side by side; the boundary line was thin between them.

Sighing, she stood and took her seat on the window ledge. It did not matter. Nothing mattered anymore. Outside, the snow fell thickly on the soft dark night.

*************

It had become a part of Ginny's days, these trysts with Draco Malfoy, part of the pattern. Each morning she woke, and went to class. In the afternoons she trained for Quidditch, and at night she would climb up seven flights of stairs to the North Tower. They were two people, Draco and her, two people contented, relaxed and easy. They talked sometimes, and they were silent sometimes, and they worked on homework together. Each day was the same and yet each day was different. That was the way it was when the days had a pattern. That was the way it was before the pattern was broken.

*****************

Things to ponder: Why the devil does Draco wear jade jewelry? (Ok, actually we know the answer to that. Let's rephrase that). What the devil is the jade dragon that Draco wears? Who were the four people that Herm saw on the Prefects' Meeting Room's walls? Why is Augusta Ashley all fishy and weird? What about the calendar in Blaise's room, why is the 26^th day of December circled in red? And finally, will Draco join the Death Eaters or not?

Come back for Chapter Three: Under the Mistletoe, in which we answer some of the questions (note the keyword there is some) and everyone runs around finding partners for the Christmas Ball. Everyone wears pretty clothes and everyone dances. Yep, even Harry. Ginny gets presents and Hermione discovers some stuff about the Heaven Sword. Though not in that order. H/Hr and D/G fans, your moment is coming up. And FYI, Under the Mistletoe will also be the last soap-opera chapter. The plot emerges in Chapter Four, and then everyone becomes too busy trying not to die to be angsty anymore. So hop on for the ride, my friend, I promise you a roller coaster!

Many thanks to Lavinia (thanks. Wait, did I just say that? Tehee), Anais (I've read some of your fics before, enjoyed them very much), rosemarygirl (all my love, your comments really helped me, I love stuff that helps me reflect on my writing! I hope this chapter meets up to your expectations), Mel*Star (runs off to check for OoF updates), and Unicorn Magic (I have a lot of Montgomery and Alcott references, kudos to you for discovering them! And rest assured, Ron makes it through Silver Thread unscathed) for reviewing.