Love's Faithful Vow

Love's Faithful Vow

by Vagabond Spirit

Romeo

O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?

Juliet

What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?

Romeo

Th' exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine.

Juliet

I gave thee mine before thou didst request it!

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Rain dripped down the thick glass of the window pane as a sixteen year-old Ginny Weasley watched in silence. She traced the patterns of coursing water with her fingertips and admired the way the flickering torches on the walls cast an eerie outline of her shadow on the drapes beside her. After a moment of sedate reflection, she looked over her shoulder and spoke as though she was taking up an old argument. "But it is sort of like Romeo and Juliet, isn't it?"

Draco Malfoy, looking very dashing in his green V-neck sweater and Head Boy pin, just happened to be the only other person in the abandoned classroom. He glanced up from his book, a hefty volume entitled The Hill of Inconstancy by Roland Down, with a mild look of amusement. "Romeo and Juliet? You mean that stupid play you had to read in Muggle Studies?" He offered her a brief but contemptuous sneer before resuming his reading. "How very whimsical of you, Ginny."

The redhead pouted at her warped reflection in the window before turning around. Studying her boyfriend for a pensive second, she first turned as if to head for the desk where her own schoolbooks were piled, before she lowered herself gracefully to the floor and rested her head in Draco's lap as though that's what she had been doing all along. One hand automatically rose to finger a piece of his white-blonde hair in an absent but endearing manner, as a contented smile played across her face. Draco, completely unruffled by any of this, merely shifted his book out of her way and pondered why he'd ever let her convince him that she could play with his hair and get away with it.

They had been sitting like that for several minutes before Ginny again felt compelled to say something. "Well, I think it is. Our families hate each other. Our Houses hate each other. If Ron ever found out that I was seeing you-"

"He'd kill me? I'd like to see him try," Draco drawled, smiling in reflective pleasure at the thought of the freckled boy being expelled for attempted murder.

Ginny frowned, her fingers pausing in Draco's hair, and then she smiled also as her brown eyes took on a dreamy cast. Draco noticed, and said with a resigned sigh, "All right. What's that mind of yours contriving now?"

Ginny folded her hands at her waist and closed her eyes in reverie before answering him in a delighted tone, "Oh, I was just imagining you and Ron all dressed up in Elizabethan clothes, and going at it with stage swords..." She trailed off and mumbled something barely coherent that made Draco turn a shocked stare on her with wide and disbelieving grey eyes.

"What did you just say?" he exclaimed, not noticing that his book had fallen shut on the floor.

Ginny smirked up at him, a small trick she'd learned pissed him off to no end. It was like tossing his words back in his face, but better. "I said, you'd look good in tights," she replied, enunciating each word with infuriating clarity.

"Tights!" Draco shrieked. Okay, so it was actually more of a squeak. "Me? In t-tights?" he stuttered, staring at her in horror.

"Sure," she said matter-of-factly, snaking an arm out to playfully draw circles along his thigh. "You've got such delectable legs, Drakey. The girls would just eat them up."

Draco cringed after his initial shiver of shock at what Ginny was doing. 'Drakey' was Pansy Parkinson's insipid little pet name for him and he abhorred it almost more than he abhorred perfect Potter and his toadies. Potter. That thought sent his mind off on a tangent of poncy Gryffindor gits who lived merely to irritate him and his fellow Slytherins, which in turn made him grimace and crack his knuckles.

Ginny, experienced with Draco performing this annoying action at least once an hour, shook her head. Then a thought came to her and she very slyly said, "Don't you want to duel my brother?"

Draco looked at her in surprise, but that quickly faded to apprehension when he saw the strange look of eagerness on her face. It was times like this that he wondered how on this God-forsaken planet the two of them had ever gotten together. There were, of course, the obvious differences in family and House, but those were age-old rivalries born long before their time and instilled in them since childhood. However, there was also the difference in their dispositions. Ginny was a true Gryffindor at heart, brave as a lioness and willing to lay everything on the line for what she thought was right. Draco, however, was the epitome of a Slytherin; bred for the darkness, he was as cunning and ambitious as Salazar Slytherin had ever hoped his pupils could be. Why then did he value her opinion, the opinion of an enemy's, over his own housemate's? Why did he look forward to this time of day, when he could be with her, more than anything else in his life? Why did his eyes automatically seek out her flaming hair and freckles in every crowd? Why? Why, why, why? He wasn't sure if he could ever answer that question.

And what did he think? Didn't he want to duel her brother, if only for the satisfaction of seeing the Weasel cry? He looked down at Ginny and was recalled of the first time he'd ever seen her - that fateful day in Flourish and Blotts when she'd so vehemently told him to leave the perfect Harry Potter alone. And then the way she'd blushed as crimson as her fiery hair when he'd suggested that she was Harry's girlfriend...

"No," he said at last, shaking his head to get rid of his troubled thoughts. "I don't ever want to have to duel with Ron."

Ginny sat up quickly in surprise and stared at him, her normally soft brown eyes shining in exultation as they bored into him. "Why?" she asked, leaning towards him so that their noses almost touched.

"Why?" Draco echoed, scrambling for an answer. He couldn't possibly explain to her what he himself barely had a hold on in his mind. "Because... Because then I'd have to sic Crabbe and Goyle on your other brothers when they learned that I'd reduced 'ickle Ronniekins' to a bloody pulp, and I really wouldn't wish that on anyone." He began to babble. "Besides, even if your housemates are a bunch of puffed-up prats without a brain-cell between them, I don't want the whole lot of them out for my blood. That'd be like asking for an early death. I'm really not all that suicidal, you know."

Ginny, who had been looking impatient throughout this garbled explanation, now merely seemed disappointed. "Bloody hell, Draco. You don't have to say it." She scooted away from him and picked up his book, assuming an unaffected manner, and very complacently opening the book up to its first page.

"Have to say what?" Draco asked, dodging her gaze, before realizing that she wasn't even looking at him anymore, she was staring at the book. He frowned, not used to being ignored, and ran a careful hand through his hair to put it back in place from where Ginny had mussed it. He really had to talk to her about that. Later, though. "Say what, Ginny?'

"Nothing, Draco," she replied absently, her eyes darting over The Hill of Inconstancy's pages in the swift manner of an avid reader. She pointed at the book and met his eyes in a momentary flash of teasing hazel. "This book is really quite fascinating. Where did you get it?"

"Professor Snape thought I should--Now hold on, Weasley. Let's get to the bottom of this. What don't I have to say?"

Ginny didn't answer. Her eyes darkened at the mention of her surname, but she otherwise did not appear as though she'd heard him. Draco gritted his teeth. If he didn't know how a female acted when she wanted something from him, then he'd tear out all of his beautiful hair by himself. The question was, what did she want, and could he give it to her?

He sighed and bit his lip, resigning himself to wheedling. "Ginnnnnnny..." he whined, managing a piteous look that would've melted the heart of the coldest gargoyle, and batting his long, blonde eyelashes at her. Girls always went crazy for Draco's eyelashes, but it seemed that Ginny wasn't just any girl, for she deigned not to look at him and went right on with her reading. Draco sat back with a frown, then decided to switch his tactics.

He moved around so that he was kneeling at her side, and smoothed her hair over her shoulder so that he could softly kiss her neck. When she didn't even shift under his touch, he kissed her again, and then again, raining kisses along her neck and onto her cheek until he finally found her lips - those delicious lips that reminded him in turns of rich French wine and chocolate truffles and powdered sugar. Kissing those lips was like trying to hold tequila in his mouth for too long, or having his hand too close to a flame, or... The list went on and on in his head. Draco could never find enough poetry for Ginny because she defied all the words and descriptions that he knew. She was everything that was right with the world, while he was everything that was wrong with it, and for that he both envied and loved her.

He loved her.

Pulling away breathlessly, he stared at her as though seeing her for the first time. Ginny only stared back, her cheeks flushed with color, and her eyes unnaturally bright. Draco's gaze was too intense for her to tear away from yet, the grey depths of his eyes billowing and stormy like a sea in the midst of a hurricane. "Ginny," he said, sounding astonished at his discovery. "I love you."

Ginny's reaction was far from what he expected. Her eyes gleamed triumphantly as she slowly smiled, her cheeks retaining only the faintest vestiges of pink from their impassioned kiss. "I know," she said simply. And then she very deftly pushed him aside, and picked up his book again.

"You know?" Draco suddenly erupted, his high cheekbones tinged red with anger, his eyes clouded with confusion. "What do you mean, you know?"

Ginny kept right on smiling, undisturbed by Draco's fit of emotion. He fumed and crossed his arms, turning his head away so that he was staring at her out of the corner of his eye. Finally he said in a grumbling tone, "You don't have to be so smug about it," which, if anything, only made Ginny's grin widen further.

Draco lowered his eyebrows and mumbled darkly to himself about the dangers of mixing high and mighty, self-satisfied Gryffindors with bemused and potentially homicidal Slytherins. Ginny merely flipped to the next page in the book, effectively ignoring him, but obviously listening with interest because she giggled when he began to think of more creative words to describe certain Gryffindors. He abruptly discovered that he too was smiling and couldn't help himself any longer.

"How did you know?" he asked, stretching out his legs and leaning against her shoulder. Ginny gave him a fond look and ruffled his hair, causing him to scowl and her to laugh.

"I told you already, Draco. Romeo and Juliet. We wouldn't be together if it wasn't serious." She closed the Hill of Inconstancy and smiled. "Besides, I knew what you were really trying to say with that pitiful excuse of yours for not wanting to duel Ron."

Draco grinned ruefully. "I just couldn't make the words come out," he admitted. "But I'd never hurt you for the world. In any way. And I know how much you love Ron." He grimaced a bit at that last part but didn't say any more on the subject. "But seriously, Ginny. Romeo and Juliet? Can't you be an optimist once in awhile?"

"What do you mean?'

"Well, they both die for their love. Do you think we're going to die because of this?"

"Now who's being a pessimist? That's not what I meant at all, you prat." She swatted his arm then kissed his forehead to take away the sting. "I was only referring to this deep and passionate love between us."

"Ah ha!" Draco suddenly shouted, causing Ginny to pull back in startlement, wondering if he'd gone mad. "I knew it!" he crowed triumphantly, pointing an accusing finger at her and giving her a lopsided grin. "You love me, too."

Ginny stared at him in astonishment, and then dissolved into giggles. "Of course I do, you idiot!" she cried, flinging herself on him in a bone-crushing embrace and covering him in kisses. "How could I not?" Draco's eyes flashed in relief and then he busied himself with showing Ginny just how much he loved her.

He let her muss his hair all she wanted.