A Night the Stars Didn't Shine

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It's gonna be love

It's gonna be great

It's gonna be more than I can take

It's gonna be free

It's gonna be real

It's gonna change everything I feel

It's gonna be sad

It's gonna be true

It's gonna be me, baby

It's

gonna be you, baby

It's gonna be.....

It's

gonna be love

~ `It´s Gonna Be Love´ by Mandy Moore

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Ginny´s Side: You Understand Me

Ginny looked at her painting that she had hung on the wall beside her bedside with harsh eyes. It was the painting of the man in her dreams, her mysterious groom. It was also the painting that Draco has said looked like him. Her face contorted in a scowl, her face became flushed, and her heart sped up.

`He´s wrong,´ she thought. `It does not look like him. I don´t know want to know what he was thinking!´ She clenched her hand angrily into a fist so hard that her fingertips turned white and the surrounding area, a bright pink.

She pulled on a pair of gray leggings and a long heather gray skirt with a slit that led up to her knees, grabbed an old cream colored V-neck blouse and a black thermal vest that Hermoine had given her for Christmas. She yanked her arms into the sleeves and hastily zipped it up. She almost ripped her white sock that she pulled onto her feet in rage, and she brushed her hair, bewitching the straight red locks into a twisted, braided bun.

Jumping off her scarlet and gold bed with a start, Ginny stormed out into her common room, slamming the wooden door to the sixth grade dormitories behind her loudly. It was comfortably warm from the roaring fire, even on the top of the small stone bridge; the Gryffindor common room´s fire always seemed to be roaring. Ginny stood up at the top of the stone stairs, looking down, hands resting on the banister. Her classmates, Emilie and Louise, sat on the couch, their procrastinated Holiday homework spread on the coffee table in front of them, books piled tall on either sides of the couch.

"Ginny!" Emilie waved at her enthusiastically, looking up from a piece of parchment that contained more blotted out words than anything else. She placed her peacock quill back into the black inkwell.

Ginny smiled weakly and gave a half-hearted wave back. Her mind was still preoccupied on Draco. She had been thinking about him a lot for the last week. She didn´t know why, random thoughts like `I wonder what´s Draco doing right now´, and `Draco would sketch that scene, I´m sure´, and the most frequent thought, `I wonder what´s in that bloody sketchbook that he always carries around.´

Louise looked at Ginny, eyebrows raised in questions and smirk on her lips. `That´s a look that Draco wears a lot,´ she thought instantly.

"Emilie, don´t try talking to her now; she´s thinking about Malfoy," Louise said, then giggled a little. Ginny sent her friend a sharp glare. "What makes you think that?" she demanded.

Emilie smiled understanding. "Come on, Ginny, surely you can´t think that we´re that thick." Ginny sniggered. "Oh really? Well... what about the time we said that we were going to make Ron red as his underwear and you went and got a pa-"

"Ginny, as you can see, that´s totally off topic!" Ginny giggled again. "You´re thick, Emilie. Admit it."

Emilie glared at Ginny with violent eyes and sent her telepathic death threats. "Who needs enemies when we´ve got friends like you?" she asked Ginny sweetly. "We see you in the Great Hall, you sit all by yourself and all you do is stare at him. And we see him smirk at you, and you get all red, like you are now. But we don´t blame you. We all think that he´s good-looking too," she continued calmly and solemnly. Louise nodded enthusiastically. "You guys would make such a cute couple." She sighed jealously, looking longingly at the fire. "That´s so Romeo and Juliet-ish. How romantic," she melodramatically placed a pale hand over her forehead and pretended to faint onto the padded armrest.

"This is Draco Malfoy here! You blokes are forgetting that this is Mal-"

"Oh please, Ginny, get over it. Feudal enemies are so overrated." Louise rolled her eyes in a very obvious sort of mannor.

"I most certainly will not!"

"Ginny, relax! Get over yourself! Everyone knows you like him."

Ginny gaped at her friend´s accusation. Her cheeks burned and her heart pumped loudly. Draco; he was making her do this. He was making her cheeks red and her heart beat faster and her words stutter. Just then, she experienced a déjà vu moment that made her feel very odd. Before, that had been Harry. Now it was... Draco?

No!

There was something wrong with that!

She couldn´t like Draco Malfoy.

Emilie looked at Ginny´s face worriedly. "Well... not everyone knows, but a good number..."

He was pure evil from his hair roots down, except for the whole sketching thing.

"A good number? And this number wouldn´t include Ron, would it?" she asked cautiously.

For as long as she could remember, his gray eyes would glare at her, his lips would be in a hateful smirk, and a rude sneer would exit them. Except now, he´d just stare at her, and smirk a little nicer, and maybe even complement her.

"Well... really the only people in this number is Louise and I."

Something was wrong inside him, she could feel it.

"That´s not everyone, Emilie."

And something wrong was happening inside her.

"I know..."

And it scared her in such away that she had never felt before.

"No, that´s not right!" she said shrilly, stamping her foot down on the cement. "Draco makes me mad! See, it started in the library when I saw..." Emily interrupted her. "See, you just called him `Draco´! And the library? You never told us about that! What happened there?" she asked, interested.

Ginny rolled her eyes. They wouldn´t understand the whole sketchbook thing. They would think that it was sweet, a cute little gesture. They might even think that it was romantic! And they wouldn´t understand her painting and it´s meaning. She was an artist, and Draco was an artist, he´d understand better than they would. She inwardly laughed; her brother´s archenemy would understand her better than her closest friends. Her cheeks grew redder as she realized what she had just thought of. Her brother´s, and her, worst enemy, understanding better what she was trying to tell her closest friends.

Emilie whistled loudly, and a few of the several students´ heads turned to look her way. "She must be thinkin´ something really steamy, Lou," she said, nudging her friend. Louise laughed.

"Thinking really steamy with who?" A deep voice came from the entrance to Gryffindor tower. Ron came in, hair wet and plastered to his bright red head. He was rubbing his damp hair down, snow falling in chunks on the carpet.

"No one," Ginny said quickly, looking at Harry, who was looking at her, thoroughly puzzled. Ginny was so embarrassed at what was going to happen that she didn´t notice her heart didn´t speed up, nor had she lost her ability to form words that contained more than three letters.

"Draco Malfoy," Emilie said at the same time, grinning at Ron. He gave his little sister a funny look. She mentally pleaded with him back.

"That´s not true, Emilie," Hermoine tisked, who was untying her gold and red scarf and dusting off all the powdery snow and unbuttoning her cloak.

~

Harry, Ron, and Hermoine had arrived yesterday from Egypt, days before the rest of the school had started filling in with students. Ron still had all this things scattered about the empty dormitory, things that needed to be put back. His girlfriend of a year, Hermoine, tirelessly worked to get him to put his stuff away, but he insisted upon a Weasley tradition to procrastinate. They had been outside, having a late snowball fight in the mushy snow.

~

"It is true," Emilie retorted defensively. "She even has a picture with him next to her bed. She painted it herself. It´s really good, Ron, you should see it." Ginny´s eyes widened to the size of saucers and she clasped her hands over her gaping mouth. Ron shot up the stairs and turned into the sixth year girls´ dormitory, slamming the door open. She cringed at the sound of as it rebounded off the wall. Harry and Hermoine looked at each other, unsure of what to do. They jumped the stairs after their hydrophobic friend.

"Harry!" Ginny yelled, "Tell Ron that it´s not what he thinks! It´s not Draco!" Harry gave her a confused look as she ran down the stairs. "Since when is it `Draco´?" he asked Hermoine quietly, baffled. She raised her eyebrows and shrugged, looking at the frantic Ginny, who was rushing noisily down the stairs.

"Where are you going?" Louise demanded from her spot on the couch. Ginny glanced over her shoulder as she clasped her brother´s loose worn black cloak around her neck. She could hear Ron yelling loudly in her room. "I am getting away from Ron the psychopath," she said, flipping his scarf, now dry, around her neck, and shuffling through the various pockets for a pair of gloves.

"And you´re taking his cloak because..." Emilie asked as she put the right glove on. "So he can´t chase after me!" she said, running to the portrait exit and pushing it out. She could her friends laugh as the portrait closed behind her, the Fat Lady huffing loudly.

She ran as fast as Percy´s old leather winter boots could carry her. She slowed down as she walked near the open and thoroughly deserted courtyard. She walked through the snow to the gate. Ginny closed it behind her and walked to the lake, which glistened and rippled in the moonlight. It had melted earlier, due to unnaturally warm weather yesterday and they day before, and the knee high snow had been reduced to ankle deep mush that occasionally refroze into powder overnight.

She took out her wand and melted a spot of snow. She sat on the hard ground and let the cool wintry spring air cool her red hot cheeks as she ran over what had just happened in her head. She had called Draco `Draco´ twice without even realizing it. She didn´t blush when she looked at Harry eye-to-eye, yet she always blushed whenever she thought of Draco.

`No,´ she thought firmly. `I cannot love Draco Malfoy. I just can´t! I can´t like his gray eyes, or his sneer, or for the way he talks to me, or...

`Oh my god. I´m falling in love with Draco Malfoy.´

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