Rediscovering Emotions

Draco followed his former Professor, numb. Not from the cold, although the weather was unseasonably chilly for June. Nor from the effort he had spent in running for five straight days and the resulting exhaustion in his legs. No, the numbness came from inside. He felt as though his life had no more purpose. He'd wasted the year. He'd failed. Draco had spent his entire sixth year at Hogwarts working toward one goal. Killing Dumbledore. And help to get his fellow Death Eaters into the school.

His fellow Death Eaters. Draco's mouth twisted into a wry smile. He'd been so proud to join them. He was still proud to be one of them. But he'd failed utterly. They were unlikely to be his fellow anything before the week was out. Voldemort would kill him. First he would torture him, then he would kill him. Draco didn't have a choice. But he was so numb inside that his prospects didn't bother him like they once would have. Like they probably should have. No, Draco didn't feel anything about his fate. He didn't feel at all.

"We're here." Snape had stopped abruptly. "Inside, let's go." For the first time, Draco looked around and attempted to get his bearings. To his surprise, they were actually in a city. London, unless he was mistaken. Squinting, he could see a street name off in the distance. Grimmauld Place. Before he could discern more, Snape had hauled him inside by the collar.

Two weeks later, Draco still couldn't believe what had happened to him. He, a Death Eater, son of Lucius Malfoy, one of the most loyal servants of the Dark Lord, was in the custody of the Order of the Phoenix. It had never been put in those terms, they were supposed to be hiding him. But Draco didn't want to be there, and the house was a prison to him. He still wasn't sure how Snape had convinced them to take him in. Draco certainly hadn't said anything particularly repentant. He did his best not to talk to any of them, but if he had to, he kept his remarks as short and scathing as possible.

Fortunately, very few people were around the house at all. Even fewer bothered him. That was fine with Draco. He was still trying to figure out how to get out of the house. It seemed like every time he got anywhere near the door, one of them appeared out of nowhere with a cup of tea or something. Draco was fairly sure there was some sort of Alarm Spell that he hadn't found yet. Of course, he didn't get any time to examine the entryway, as they always pulled him away too quickly. He was forced to content himself with making plans for getting back to the Dark Lord after he got out.

Against his will, Draco was starting to learn some of their names. Soon, he wouldn't be able to think of them in his mind as just 'them.' They'd become Tonks and Kingsley and Bill. Of course, he'd already known Lupin and Mad-Eye. And that horrible Muggle-lover, Arthur Weasley and his wife. Their even more horrendous offspring visited occasionally. The twins took particular delight in seeking Draco out and trying to get a rise out of him. They rarely succeeded. Draco kept himself bottled up so tight, he thought he might snap. Numb. His only thoughts were of getting out and redeeming himself in the Dark Lord's eyes. Or getting the death he knew he deserved. Either option was preferable to his current state of affairs.

Then one day, Draco heard a new voice downstairs. A younger voice. A feminine voice. Almost unconsciously, he drifted down to the landing. It had been so long since Draco had seen a girl that her voice seemed almost like music, despite the fact that it was raised in obvious anger. At least, that's how it seemed until he caught a glimpse of shimmering red hair and realized who the owner of the voice was. Ginny Weasley. Daughter of the one family that Draco truly despised. A blood-traitor. Someone completely unworthy of his time and attention. He was sure she was a spoiled brat anyway. Draco turned and flew back up the stairs, embarrassed to have been staring.

*****

Ginny was furious. Not only had three of her closest friends left on some insane quest to help Harry defeat Voldemort, without even saying a proper goodbye to her, but she had been forced to leave the Burrow and come live at Grimmauld Place for the rest of the summer. Her prospects were dark. After the breakup with Harry, she had closed her emotions off. All except anger. And she was making sure that everyone knew how she felt.

"I hope you all know how insanely unfair this is! I am just as bloody capable of taking care of myself as Ron, Hermione and Harry! You let them go off on some damn...quest...or whatever they're calling it, but I can't even stay in my own house for the summer!"

"Ginevra Molly Weasley!" Her mother was seething. "Do not speak to me in that way. I've done nothing to deserve it! Your father and the rest of the Order decided that this was best for you. Now take your trunk and get upstairs! I don't want to see you again until you can speak to me like the adult you claim to be." Ginny flounced upstairs as best she could with a large trunk behind her, holding her righteous anger around her like a cloak. Dragging her trunk into her old room, she turned to flop on the bed and brood for the remainder of the day. Unfortunately, her bed was occupied.

"What the hell are you doing on my bed, Malfoy?" Ginny vaguely remembered some mention of Draco Malfoy in all the Order discussions she had overheard. She supposed that somewhere she had picked up the knowledge that he was staying at Grimmauld Place. It hadn't been at the forefront of her mind, though, and seeing him lounging on her bed, casually reading a book, infuriated her to no end.

Malfoy was one of her least favorite people in the world, and she barely even knew him. He was smug, pretentious, and as everyone had found out at the end of the year, downright evil as well. Once, a friend had asked her why she judged him without getting to know him at all. Ginny had been surprised, because no Gryffindor ever 'got to know' a Slytherin. That was enough. On top of everything else, he was the son of Lucius Malfoy, the man who was largely responsible for the hell that had been her first year of school.

"I'm reading, Weasley, isn't that obvious? Oh, I forgot, you didn't have enough money to learn to read as a child. Tragic." And with that, he dramatically licked his thumb and turned the page ostentatiously.

"This is my room, Malfoy. I know you probably think you own this place after being here for, what, two weeks, but you don't. I've had a horrible day, and all I want to do is lie down on my bed." Draco gave her a slow grin.

"Well, what's stopping you, Weasley? I like company in my bed." To her great embarrassment, Ginny blushed profusely. The fact that he had this effect on her only served to fuel her anger. She crossed her arms and fixed him with her worst glare, the one that could send her brothers running for their mother.

"Well, so do I, Malfoy. But not cowardly Death Eaters. So get out." Ginny saw a fleeting look of shock and respect cross his face at the audacity of the first part of her response, but it turned quickly to rage and pain as she called him cowardly. She was surprised that she had that kind of power over him, and quite delighted at the knowledge. Malfoy had opened his mouth to say something to her, and she glanced over at him, a polite expectant look on her face. He closed his mouth, slammed his book shut and stormed past her, deliberately ramming into her shoulder as he passed. Ginny suppressed her grin. She felt better for having won the verbal sparring with Malfoy. In fact, she felt almost pleasant again.

*****

Draco tramped blindly up the stairs, not knowing or caring where he would end up. He only knew that he had to put as much distance between himself and Weasley as he could. He was mortified to have been bested by a Weasley, and a girl, no less. He couldn't understand how she had known exactly what to say to break through the shell he had carefully built up around himself, and hurt him so much, and he was furious with himself for letting her, for showing weakness. He was a Malfoy. Malfoys weren't weak. They didn't feel.

Draco reached the top of the stairs, heaving for breath. Round one had gone to Weasley. Future rounds would not.

He was wrong. In the next three weeks, Draco and Ginny were thrown together more often than either of them would have liked, at meals and at random times throughout the day. They just seemed to gravitate to each other, despite the size of the old house. Draco was unpleasantly surprised to find out that Ginny was as good at the duels of words as he was, sometimes better. And after having found out his weak spot, she never even prodded it again. This worried Draco immensely. She had to be saving it up for something, but he didn't know what, nor did he know what to do about it when it came.

He'd tried in vain to find the same sort of weakness in Ginny, but to no avail. He'd thought it would be Potter, and still thought it probably was, but whenever Draco mentioned him, Ginny's face would simply shut down and she would make a casual remark about Harry having beat him at Quidditch, and that would be the end of the conversation. Draco had poked around a little, and knew that she and Harry were no longer a couple. He thought that she would be crushed and hurting, since she had been famous around school for her crush on Potter. As far as Draco could tell, Ginny wasn't happy about the situation, but she was taking it in stride. No matter how he poked and prodded her, he just couldn't find anything that would cause the kind of distress she had caused that first day.

Despite the new distraction, Draco was still doing his best to find a way out. Some careful eavesdropping had confirmed that there was indeed an Alarm Spell on the entryway, and that it applied only to himself and, at first, Ginny. It had given him great satisfaction to know that she was as much of a prisoner there as he was. However, it only took her a week to convince her parents that she wasn't going anywhere, and therefore the spell was both unnecessary and demeaning. Try as he might, Draco just couldn't figure out what the way around the spell was.

*****

In the next several weeks, Ginny enjoyed herself immensely, though she would never have admitted it to anyone, much less herself. Whenever she felt upset or angry about anything (usually when news of her friends came through or when she thought about her failed relationship with Harry), she sought out Malfoy, verbally assaulted him, and immediately felt better. It was, she mused one day while sitting in the library, better than any Pepper-Up potion she'd ever taken.

Ginny had learned, with her six brothers, how to deliver an insult properly, and how to avoid setting yourself up for one. And she was getting more practice with Draco than with all six of them combined. She supposed it was because it always distressed her a little to hurt her brothers, and she couldn't have cared less what Draco thought of her. Either way, she was making the best of being cooped up in the house. Having someone else around was helping her to deal with the breakup with Harry. Additionally, the prospect of Bill and Fleur's wedding in two short days was something to look forward to.

"Weasley. I see you've learned to read," said Malfoy snidely, walking over to the shelves and scanning them. Ginny glanced up from her book.

"Yeah, aren't you proud? I've been slaving over it for almost three weeks, and I think I've finally mastered it. Tell me, how long did it take you to learn, with all your expensive tutors?" Then, mimicking his own actions, she licked her thumb and delicately turned a page, giving a slightly bored yawn as she did so.

"Whatever. I just came to get a book, and then I'm leaving. Don't want to spend any more time in your company than I have to. You might rub off on me." He selected a book, stretching rather unnecessarily, in Ginny's opinion.

"Oh dear. Actually having some morals would really hurt you with your crowd, wouldn't they? Anyway, in two days, I'll be off at Bill's wedding for the weekend, so you won't have to worry about my rubbing off on you." Ginny avoided looking at him as she said this, so she missed the look of shock that crossed his face. She did see the look of delight that followed it, though. "I wouldn't be so happy if I were you. I'm getting out of here. You'll be stuck in this house with not even me for company." Following her parting blow, Ginny rose from her chair and drifted lazily out of the room.