Ginny yawned widely, not bothering to cover her open mouth, no matter how unladylike it seemed. Her first day of classes seemed to stretch endlessly ahead of her. Her next class was potions with Professor Slughorn, a portly old man with an obsession with choosing students who, in his opinion, would be successful. He was also, annoyingly, head of Slytherin house, and therefore had the honor of being the leader of the part of the student body that usually housed those with the most disgustingly high opinions of themselves.
As Ginny breezed out of a very odd Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, she pondered the class. Their professor had given a presentation on the importance of supporting each other. “Love is the best defense,” he had said, “and the only true one. No number of protective spells would ever be as valuable.”
Apparently Harry doesn’t agree, Ginny thought wryly as she strode briskly towards the dungeons. I wish he had been here to hear that. Her thoughts were interrupted by a solitary figure approaching her on her left. The odd part, though, wasn’t even that he was now level with her and walking along next to her, the truly peculiar thing was that he appeared to be talking to her. That meant that it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.
“So I think the lesson was completely useless,” Draco was finishing as Ginny peered at him with a mildly annoyed expressions. He rolled his eyes. He seemed to do that often. Maybe he couldn’t find any other way to express all that emotion. Ginny almost rolled her own eyes at her conclusion. Malfoy never seemed to have any emotion. “Honestly,” he went on, oblivious to Ginny’s puzzled look, “What was he even going on about?”
Ginny was frustrated with his attitude, so she decided to right his rather misguided thoughts. She’d had enough of his indifference.
“Love, Draco!” she snaped, to Draco’s astonishment, “and acceptance and toleration and support!” she continued, spitting her words out all in one breath. Draco lowered his eyes and looked up at her meekly. Ginny scoffed.
“And don’t look at me that way! You know all that was important, and I know you’re not too thick to admit it to yourself. He almost sounded like”” Ginny suddenly stopped herself, searching his face for the reaction she had come to expect. She was disappointed if she thought she would find anything there. His expression betrayed nothing, his gray eyes cold and unreadable. Ginny bit her lip, silently cursing herself for her own carelessness.
“Draco, I….” Ginny tried, testing the use of his first name to see if she could get him to talk to her then. He looked beautifully sad, like a sculpture, almost, as frozen and unyielding as unmoving stone. She felt a sudden wave of pity for him then. He had to force himself to cope with the turmoil he had brought upon himself. She reached out to him as they walked, her fingertips brushing his sleeve. He looked at her as if surfacing from a dream, then shifted his gaze to his arm where her hand had been a moment before.
“It’s nothing,” Draco insisted coldly, a cloud passing over his features as he and Ginny descended the stairs to the dungeons. They walked the rest of the way in silence and took seats on opposite sides of the room with others from their own houses.
At one point, she stole a glance at him and found him staring moodily ahead of him, absently twirling his quill in a circle on his desk. As she watched, he glanced over in her direction and she whipped her head back to the front of the room right as their eyes met. Breathing hard, she fastened her gaze to the chalkboard, where Slughorn was dictating ingredients to a stubby piece of white chalk.
As the class prepared their cauldrons and ingredients for their potions, Ginny spared Draco one last glance. He was carefully unstopping his flask of snake venom, the corners of her mouth turned up in a small smile. Ginny was startled. It was a perfect, gentle smile, and somehow Ginny knew that Draco had no idea it was there.
When, at long last, the day came to an end, Ginny decided to take a walk around the near grounds after finishing a light supper. The most recent set of rules prohibited most exploring, but there were places around the grounds the studentswer frequent. As she strolled along the path leading to the lake, she thought about Harry and his mission. What was he doing at that very moment?
Ginny had a feeling Harry’s newest journey wasn’t as simple as jumping out from behind a bush and Avada Kedavraing Voldemort. All of the secretive complications of his quest were frustrating to her.
Ginny bit her lip, desperately pushing Harry’s familiar smell and taste out of her mind. Kissing him had been like finally finding perfection, but he was gone now and would want her to live her life without him. Wouldn’t he?
Draco had been having a taxingly stressful dinner with the Slytherins, who expected him to make some joke about Harry or astound them with his sarcasm and wit. Draco, however, was the type who didn’t astound”or do much of anything else, for that matter”on command. Unless it was his father doing the commanding, but he, too, seemed to have faded away like a memory seldom awakened.
So Draco, too, had left the Great Hall for the grounds and solitude. Now he was alone and free to become hopelessly lost in his own thoughts. As he wandered, he remembered his father and thought about their frustrating relationship. His father had wanted Draco to become what Draco had been the previous year: a servant. But had Lucius wanted Draco to be so afraid? Draco knew in his heart that his father would have seen that as weakness.
As he grew older, Draco had always wanted his father to be proud of him and had always seemed to fall short of those expectations. He was tired of always trying to live up to what his father thought he should be. He was ready to be himself, if only he could discover who that was. But was he really ready to let go of his past?
Suddenly Draco, who hadn’t really been minding where he was going, smacked straight into a figure standing staring out at the lake. She, who had been just as unsuspecting as he was, toppled over, and they both landed in the soft grass.
“Hello, Draco,” gasped a surprised voice from underneath him. It could belong to only one person.