Numeric

Ginny wonders if Draco Malfoy is really as bad as everyone says he is.

Because, for one, he really doesn't look it; he looks almost harmless, waltzing to his place at the Slytherin table, before breakfast is to begin. He pokes one of his bulky friends in the ribs with his sharp elbow and nearly misses getting egg all over his shirtsleeve. He sneers, and Ginny is absolutely sure that he blames the whole almost-mishap on his stupid friend.

She decides he really can't be, because every single image of evil she has imprinted on her impressionable mind doesn't involve someone like Draco Malfoy. Ginny thinks about Draco Malfoy and almost says his name aloud, quite randomly, but stops herself by imagining the look on everyone's face if she did.

Ginny has to stop herself from saying irrational things like that a lot. She doesn't know why, and what she cannot keep to herself and accidentally whispers, her brothers tease her mercilessly about.

What they don't realise is that Ginny wasn't always like this. She told everything to Tom, all of her secrets, and he unearthed them.

So now Ginny has trouble keeping her stupid mouth shut. She wants to tell Draco Malfoy that the two of them would get along, that it might even be something remarkable, but she's afraid that he'll say something about Muggle-loving Weasleys, and red hair, and her father's unlucky position at the Ministry.

Ginny agrees with what he would say, of course, but you usually don't tell someone that insults you that they're right. She supposes that she could tell Draco Malfoy that he isn't nearly as intimidating as he thinks he is, that he's rather plain, really, and that shocking blond hair doesn't do much for him.

Maybe it's his mouth that makes him look like a child, at sixteen. Ginny's fifteen, and when she tallied up their numbers in Divination, they did not match. "Good," she murmured to herself, and stuck the paper with all of her calculations about her future and Draco Malfoy in her pocket.

It stayed in her pocket, and she carries it around in there like a brand, only no one can see it or even knows it's there. It's burning her, though, and she always knows that it's there, pressing against her thigh through the layers of material. 'Draco Malfoy,' drawn down into simple numbers. 'Virginia Weasley,' all numeric, and when the two did not appear to be compatible, she tried Ginny, but that only made it worse.

She cannot sleep. She's been thinking about Draco Malfoy like he's a crush, and he very well might be one, with that piece of paper burning away in her pocket.

Ginny cannot sleep, it is the furthest thing from her mind, and so she takes refuge in the silent halls of Hogwarts. Brave, because she has not stolen Harry Potter's invisibility cloak, though she did think about it.

She walks, and she walks, and she walks, and she starts to feel a bit like a lost cause. "Martyr," she whispers to the dead hallway, to the sleeping portraits. She fingers the creased edge of the paper.

"What?"

Startled, Ginny's hand jerks out of her pocket like she was caught doing something unspeakable.

Draco Malfoy.

In all reality, Ginny might have expected Draco Malfoy to pop up sooner or later. Still, she cannot help the surprise. It's all so clichéd. "Nothing," she answers, ducking her head.

Draco Malfoy looks at her like she's a disgusting thing. She's not looking, so she doesn't see, and wonders what he's thinking. She hopes. "You shouldn't be out of bed this late, Weasley," he sneers.

"Neither should you," she says, and cringes at how very much like her brother Ron she sounds. That isn't what she wanted at all. "You're not a Prefect," she adds, her tone softer this time. More like Virginia, the Weasley That Couldn't And Didn't Want To Either.

He mutters something, and she remembers that Draco Malfoy usually mutters things like 'mudblood,' and 'scum,' and, once, 'cunt,' under his breath. She had to go look the last word up, and paled several shades when she did. The idea of Draco Malfoy saying something so horrid made her ill and attracted at the same time.

"I don't need to explain myself to you," Draco Malfoy snaps, though five seconds later, he does. "Do you see this?" he asks, pointing to a large gargoyle. "That's the entrance to my dorms. The Slytherin dorms." He puffs his chest out like a vulture when he says the word Slytherin, like it's something to be proud of. Ginny can't remember feeling proud about being a Gryffindor.

"I'm sorry, I'll go," she whispers.

Draco Malfoy says nothing at that.

"I wouldn't mind coming in," she blurts out, and he eyes her strangely.

Ginny takes off running down the hallway.

Draco Malfoy stays where he is as if he expects her to come back. She doesn't. He looks around at the walls, at the empty corridor, and imagines her slight form tearing off again.

There's a piece of parchment where she was standing, so he picks it up.

Ginny, however, only notices that it's gone the next morning when he hands it to her.