A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed! “Gigantic hugs all around- Loved hearing from you guys! And Happy New School Year to everyone… As if, hehe.
And now, on to the chapter!
Draco, despite his usual ability to control his emotions, felt positively anxious as he ventured further down the roughly cut stone stairs leading deep into the castle dungeons.
Classes had resumed their tedious march, and he had made sure to take his time packing up his cauldron and ingredients in Potions earlier that day. Once the rest of the sixth years had collected their things and exited the classroom, the buzz of their voices growing quieter as they climbed out of the damp underbelly of the castle, he had presented Dumbledore’s note to his professor.
When Snape had informed him that he was to come directly back to the dungeons after dinner, Draco hadn’t thought much of it. Unlike most of his classmates, he wasn’t afraid of the Head of Slytherin House any more than he was afraid of his own shadow.
Even if he often found himself wishing the greasy-haired professor would bathe once in awhile, for his students’ sake, if not for his own.
But as the day wore on, he had begun to feel an unfamiliar sensation welling up in his throat, which grew larger and more menacing with each passing hour. He realized that he had absolutely no idea what would be expected of him now that he had officially joined “the good guys”, and began to feel like he had signed up for more than he would be able to handle. He sat through History of Magic, fervently scribbling down a timeline of Goblin civilization, only to realize at the end of class that he had left whole centuries blank, while his mind detached itself from his quill and dwelled upon the approaching meeting. His Arithmancy notes suffered the same fate, and by the time he made it to his last class, his head was spinning with so many panicked bursts of thought that the hedgehog he was meant to be transfiguring ended up in pieces all over Professor McGonagall’s classroom.
Even though he had received zero marks for the day (he was sure McGonagall would have given him a score in the negatives if she could), his current state of mind refused to let something as insignificant as schoolwork interfere with his situation. And this attitude was another mysterious occurrence in itself.
Although he would rather be eaten alive by the Giant Squid than willingly put himself in the same category as, say, a certain house elf-loving Mudblood, doing well in his classes had always been a top priority. He was a Malfoy, after all, despite recent developments in his position in the war. Letting his grades slip was not something his pride usually allowed.
Of course, neither was fraternizing with Gryffindors. Especially those that also happened to be Weasleys.
Draco Malfoy was not the kind of person to feel grateful towards anybody, but ever since his emotional meltdown in the bathroom, he had found himself quite appreciative of the youngest of the copper-headed clowns.
Hence the scarf that was currently residing in his book bag.
He wasn’t completely sure why he had picked it up in the first place. At the time, it had just seemed irrational to leave it sitting on the booth for someone else to find, the red and gold strands of yarn clashing horribly with the magenta cushions. He knew very well that this was a weak explanation, as he really couldn’t care less about whether or not that idiotic café was color coordinated, but it was the best he could come up with without entertaining several very frightening notions.
And so, the scarf had remained with him for no rational reason. Unfortunately, it had brought with it an assortment of unwanted thoughts about its owner.
He had never before regarded her with anything less than contempt and abhorrence, speaking only to remind her of his superiority. She hardly even registered in his mind as a Pureblood, and what with the way her family lived who could blame him? The Weasleys had been marked as blood traitors for years, as clearly as Potter was marked as The-Boy-Who-Sodding-Lived.
Nevertheless, he caught himself thinking about her more often than not, a realization that troubled him constantly. He could hardly make it through the first ten minutes of each class without letting his mind wander away from whatever incantations or theories he was supposed to be learning, and settle on the annoyingly persistent, sugar-crazed girl. It was pathetic, really. He had gone from being perfectly in control of every aspect of his life, to feeling like he was an amateur on skis, tumbling haphazardly down a snow-covered slope.
If there was one thing he hated, it was being powerless.
He sighed and hesitated in front of the door to Snape’s office, running his fingers through his hair. It would be impossible to delay going inside much longer without a good excuse, and he had already wasted enough time at dinner, eating his meal as slowly as was humanly possible. Lowering his hand to the doorknob, he pushed his anxiety to the back of his mind and stepped inside.
The interior of the Potions Master’s office hadn’t changed much from the many times he had been called there for prefect’s duties, although several of the eerie-looking jars lining the shelves had been emptied, no doubt for use in some of the more unpleasant concoctions that Snape stirred up. The stone walls were still as dirty as ever, permeating the air with a moldy smell that reminded him of the time Goyle had over-watered his Herbology project and left it to sit overnight. A couple of spindly chairs”which he would rather not come in contact with, as they looked ready to collapse at any second”were placed side-by-side in front of an equally spindly-looking desk, currently occupied by a very irritated potions professor.
“You’re late,” he said, in the same emotionless voice that struck fear in the hearts of many of his students.
As years of favoritism had rendered Draco immune to such tactics, there wasn’t a hint of terror behind his voice when he spoke. “Sorry, Professor,” he answered politely. He knew how to handle Snape, and making excuses would only incense him further. Things were far more likely to end well if you kept your speech to a minimum.
Snape nodded curtly and, to Draco’s dismay, gestured to one of the chairs in front of him. “Dumbledore has informed me of your decision,” he said. “I trust he has already made sure you know what you’re getting yourself into, so I won’t waste time on that.”
Draco lowered himself gingerly into the chair, relieved to find that it was much sturdier than it looked. “Yes sir,” he began. “But, what will we be doing here?”
He doubted that he had been sent to see Snape just because he was the Head of Slytherin House. There was obviously another reason for this arrangement.
“Well, Mr. Malfoy, as we are both spies it would be sensible to collaborate in a situation such as this.”
It was a long moment before these words were able to penetrate Draco’s mind. When they did, they also managed to push everything he had ever believed about his potions professor out of their way, only leaving room for one mind-boggling fact that glowed like a flashing neon sign inside his head.
“You’re a spy?” he asked incredulously, his eyes widening in astonishment. This certainly wasn’t what he had been expecting. He had thought he’d be learning some sort of defensive magic or something, not partnering up with his professor.
“Fortunately for you, yes. I am a spy,” Snape informed him.
Draco felt his head throb as he tried to process this development. “But” How did you keep this from getting out?” he questioned. “I mean… Voldemort!”
“As skilled as the Dark Lord is in Legilimency, I am also quite an accomplished Occlumens,” Snape said, and surprisingly, there wasn’t an iota of immodesty in his voice. “But that is not important. What’s important is what we are going to do to postpone an attack on the school.”
Draco raised an eyebrow. “Postpone? Shouldn’t we be trying to prevent one altogether?”
“If that were an option,” Snape said bitterly. “The Dark Lord’s plans are set in stone. Anything more drastic than simply stalling his attack will raise more suspicions than we are prepared to deal with.”
A thought struck Draco, and he suddenly remembered the letter he had received and the cruel threats that had been woven into it.
“But I can’t tell Him my plan’s not working!” he replied, his voice rising several octaves in panic. “My father sent a letter and””
Snape cut him off before he could finish. “I know what Lucius wrote, and you needn’t fear for your mother’s life. You are going to tell the Dark Lord that your plan is coming along perfectly. You just need a little more time to complete it.”
Lying to the one of the most talented Legilimens ever to attempt taking over the wizarding world hadn’t seemed like a realistic option to Draco. He had seen what happened to people who walked down that path, and the images still haunted him late at night, forcing his eyes to remain open and stare blankly at the cracks on the ceiling of the Slytherin dormitory. He could almost draw a map of them from memory.
As if Snape could read his student’s mind (a concept that could technically be true) he answered Draco’s unspoken question. “I will, of course, be confirming your report, as He will see no need to search your mind if He believes I am being truthful,” the Potions Master said simply. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for you to have some training in Occlumency, however.” A grimace crossed his face at these words, as if he were remembering an unpleasant experience.
“Will you be teaching me, then?” Draco asked, wondering what Snape had against giving lessons in Occlumency. Perhaps he’d been forced to deal with an incompetent student somewhere along the line…
“I will,” Snape said, nodding. “Let us hope you will prove more capable than some of my past…pupils.” He spat the last word off his tongue as if it were a mouthful of spoiled milk.
‘Definitely holding a grudge,’ Draco thought amusedly, repressing a smirk while his professor forced his features into a more pleasant arrangement.
Which wasn’t much of an improvement, considering that he had never quite looked agreeable to begin with.
Draco watched as Snape shook his head to banish whatever loathsome thoughts he had been pondering and cleared his throat. “You will also have to continue to attend any meetings the Dark Lord calls,” he said, all traces of his previous lapse in control gone from his voice. “My position is such that I won’t be able to accompany you on all of these expeditions, so becoming proficient at closing your mind should be your main concern.”
“Yes, Professor,” Draco replied steadily, although walking into a Death Eater meeting with absolutely no back-up wasn’t something he was looking forward to.
“Very well,” Snape said shortly. “I will inform you of the times for our next meeting during class tomorrow. You are dismissed.” He turned to a stack of parchment on his desk and began shuffling through it, and Draco remembered vaguely that he had quite a lot of homework to finish before going to bed.
Sighing dejectedly, as at the moment he would have liked nothing more than to sink into peaceful unconsciousness behind the curtains of his four-poster, he stood and started towards the door. No matter how appealing his soft pillows and cozy emerald comforter sounded, he knew that the library was his only option if he wanted to lessen the amount of work that was bearing down on him.
“And Mr. Malfoy?” Draco paused and looked back over his shoulder at Snape, who had glanced up from his work. “Do try to stay out of trouble,” he drawled, fixing him with a firm stare.
Draco grinned. He knew that his Head of House would never admit it, but he did care about his students. He just had…well, unusual ways of showing it.
“Yes, Professor,” Draco repeated once again, before pushing the door open and stepping out into the corridor, not sure whether to feel relieved, or even more anxious than before.
Ginny felt her eyelids droop to half-mast for what had to be the hundredth time that day. She flipped a page of the weighty library book spread out in front of her and tried miserably to decipher the author’s words, succeeding only in sinking farther into the black abyss of boredom that she had been prey to since classes had begun that morning. Her thoughts formed slowly, and she massaged her temples as a dull ache started to pound behind her eyes.
Ginny sighed.
The past few days had seemed like something out of a different person’s life. She had almost let herself forget about the essays and spells that took up every bit of her precious free time. Now that the weekend was over, she felt like she was being thrust back into her own monotonous existence, completely devoid of mystery or adventure. Even a little angst would have been a welcome divergence from the endless hours of droning professors and late-night study sessions.
She pushed aside the many rolls of parchment and notes that had spread out over the table she had settled at in the back of the library, and dragged her half finished Transfigurations essay towards her. Dipping her quill in a pot of ink, she positioned her hand over the page and turned back to the book she had been puzzling over.
‘The decision to attempt a human transfiguration is an imperative one that should not be undervalued,’ she read. ‘There are copious liabilities involved with amending the exterior of an individual, many of which can result in permanent impairment to the subject, and may additionally prove terminal.’
Ginny felt her heart sink down to her toes. Copious? Impairment? She hadn’t a clue what half of those words had meant, a fact that didn’t do much for her already sulky mood. She took her hand off of the scroll of parchment containing her unfinished essay and let it spring into a neat coil, blots of ink where her quill had rested showing through the paper. Stretching her arms above her head, she shook her hair out of her face and yawned widely.
What she wouldn’t give for a warm bed and a couple of pillows. Heck, she’d even settle for a sleeping bag on the library’s floor.
Ginny rubbed her eyes in a vain attempt to rid them of their sleepy sting and pulled a stack of notes out from under several textbooks. Her eyes skimmed the pages, stopping occasionally when she came across a promising fact or chart, but her mind drifted slowly away from this soporific task and onto more intriguing matters.
She found herself reliving the events of the weekend in her head, shadows of her formerly concentrated emotions rushing back to her. It was as if there was a picture theater inside her head, and all she had to do was press play to conjure up flashes of her past. An image of her reading a letter on the bathroom floor shimmered in her mind, and she watched as her expression changed from that of curiosity, to a mask of shocked horror. Then she was grinning idiotically at Harry, a crimson lollipop clutched in her hand, as cheerful students milled around them. A door was swinging open in front of her, and an indescribable sensation flooded her mind as she saw herself walk unknowingly into the boys’ lavatory.
She had become so preoccupied with this slide-show of her life, that she hardly noticed the steady dripping of ink from her quill that was gathering in a puddle on top of her notes, and was only shaken out of her thoughts when she heard someone sit down in the chair next to hers.
Glancing up from the notes she had been staring at blankly, she was met with a pair of grey eyes. “Oh,” she sighed. “It’s you.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” Draco replied dryly. “I’m sure you would rather I was your precious Potter.”
“No, I don’t wish you were Harry,” she told him, emphasizing her friend’s proper name. “And you didn’t disappoint, either. I’m just not in the liveliest of moods right now.”
That was definitely an understatement. The heavy workload that accompanied fifth year was not being kind to her, or her sleeping habits. Her reflection in the bathroom mirror that morning had shown her the light-purple marks below her eyes, sticking out prominently against her sallow skin, and even her freckles had seemed faded. If she had believed in Professor Trelawney’s loony teachings, she would have sworn her aura was oozing exhaustion into the air as they spoke.
“I can see that, Weaslette,” Draco responded, his lip curling as he let his eyes scan the heaps of parchment and textbooks littering her table.
Ginny set down her quill and scowled at him. “If you’re only here to irritate me I suggest you leave. In case you haven’t noticed, I have a lot of work to do.”
“Well, I won’t waste time then,” he said briskly, his voice taking on a more serious tone than the sarcastic banter he had previously been engaged in. “I just thought you’d like to know that I talked to Snape today.”
Ginny stared at him for a minute, a questioning look across her face.
“Why would I care that you…Oh!” she gasped, as sudden realization flooded her mind. She had completely forgotten about the note Dumbledore had written in his office. Merlin, that felt like so long ago. “What did you talk about?”
“Well, we decided that black wasn’t really his color. He debated about going into the blues and greens, but I managed to convince him that pink was more””
“Oh, very witty,” Ginny interrupted, her eyes narrowing in annoyance. “Must you make light of everything?”
His solemn pretense faded into a too familiar smirk. “Of course not,” he contradicted. “It’s just that I couldn’t help myself when you were sitting there looking so serious.”
“Maybe that’s because I was serious!” she exclaimed, earning a deathly glare from Madam Pince, who had taken to patrolling the aisles of the library for rule breakers. She looked seconds away from tossing the both of them out into the corridor. Lowering her voice considerably, Ginny continued. “If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I will hunt you down and when I do, there will be nowhere for you to run,” she whispered threateningly.
Hmph. As if he could ever escape a Weasley with a mission.
“You know, you really need to learn that violence is not the key,” Draco remarked. Still, he inched his chair out of reach of her legs. Apparently, the pain she had inflicted when he had stolen her tea in Madam Puddifoot’s was still sharp in his mind, even if he had found it rather hilarious at the time.
Ginny opened her mouth, intent on spouting more threats in his general direction, but he cut her off.
“And I was going to tell you what went on eventually,” he interrupted. “Have some patience, why don’t you.”
Ginny let out an indignant huff, but decided grudgingly that arguing would only get her further from her goal. “Fine,” she growled, fighting to keep her voice calm. “I’m being patient.”
“That’s more like it,” he said condescendingly, as Ginny’s cheeks flared red with the effort of keeping herself from trying to strangle the information out of him. “Now, where were we again?”
“You were going to tell me what happened in your meeting with Professor Snape,” she forced through clenched teeth. He had some nerve, pretending to have forgotten the reason for their entire conversation!
If you could even call it a conversation. It was more of just another opportunity for him to infuriate her.
“Ah, yes,” he said, a false look of remembrance on his face. “Good old Snape. Well, according to him, the only thing we can do is tell Voldemort that things are going just swimmingly.” Ginny’s heart leapt nervously at his words, filled with cold promises of danger and possible death. “Anything else would just make him suspicious and whatnot. Oh, and we’ll also have to””
He broke off abruptly, glancing at the worried look on her face. If she hadn’t been so distracted by the anxious flutters in her chest, Ginny might have noticed the suspiciously sudden halt in his speech.
“And that’s pretty much it,” Draco finished, rather lamely in her opinion.
Despite her recent annoyance, Ginny felt concern creep into her mind. “What do you mean ‘that’s it’?” she asked him, a frail tremor lacing her voice. “You’re talking about lying to Voldemort like it’s nothing.”
“It’s not like I’ll be on my own,” he said defensively. Officially, this was a lie, but his face showed no signs of dishonesty. “I said ‘we’, didn’t I? Snape’ll be backing up everything I say.”
Ginny bit her lip, still not convinced.
“But Voldemort’s bound to realize what’s going on eventually,” she reasoned. “He’s going to expect results if you tell him that the plan is working, and when he doesn’t get them…What then?”
“Look,” Draco said impatiently, ignoring her query. “I don’t have time to argue about this. Believe it or not, I have just as much sodding homework as you do, and I don’t fancy staying up all night to finish it.”
He stood up from his chair and turned to stalk off in the direction he had come, pausing to look back at her from over his shoulder.
“Almost forgot,” he muttered, reaching into his bag and pulling out a long piece of red and gold cloth. He held it out to her wordlessly, and Ginny stared at it in disbelief.
“My scarf!” she said, obvious surprise in her voice.
“You left it on the seat next to you,” he explained. Ginny made no move to take it from him, only stared with a curious expression across her face. “Well? Take it back, already. I’m not going to stand here all night.”
She reached out her hand and grasped the soft fabric as he held it, their fingers brushing against each other for such a fleeting moment that she would have thought she had imagined it if it weren’t for the warm tingles that were shooting up her arm. Goosebumps rose on her pale flesh, and she withdrew her hand quickly, the scarf still clutched between her fingers.
Draco took an involuntary step backwards. “Right. Well, I’ll see you later then,” he said quickly, not meeting her eyes.
She nodded, the sudden fuzziness in her brain preventing her from speaking, and watched as he turned and disappeared around the corner of the aisle. Pulling unconsciously at the threads in her scarf, she let out a ragged breath of air.
It confused her to no end how he could be irritating the life out of her one minute, and making shivers of electricity pulse through her veins at the next. Was this normal Malfoy behavior? Somehow, she doubted that doing favors for Gryffindors was accepted in the Slytherin society. She had always imagined that they had some sort of Slytherin Code of Evil, filled with strict rules forbidding things like kindness, or generosity, or returning lost items to their rightful owners. If there was indeed such a thing, he was definitely making several serious infringements.
She scoffed bitterly. ‘Well,’ she thought to herself. ‘It’s not like you’ve been acting much like you’re expected to either.’
It was true that many of her recent actions would have caused a significantly large upheaval if they were ever revealed to the public, particularly that of Gryffindor House. Rivalry and hatred ran so deep between the two houses that it would be close to impossible to justify what she had done. Malfoy had spent the majority of his six years at Hogwarts making life miserable for anyone who happened to get in his way, and it didn’t help that his favorite targets were the people she cared about most.
Ginny felt guilt weigh her down suddenly like a lead blanket, wrapping around her shoulders and threatening to crush her. She wondered if she was being selfish, associating with the enemy while her friends fell by the wayside. It couldn’t possibly be fair to go behind their backs like this after everything he had done to them.
But perhaps none of that mattered now. All the name-calling and hexing seemed to dim in comparison to the inescapable turmoil that was drawing nearer every day, and would soon envelop the entire wizarding world. There were far bigger things going on than inter-house rivalry and petty grudges.
That being decided, Ginny concluded that there was really only one rational solution to her dilemma. She would just have to put aside everything she had ever believed about Draco Malfoy, forgetting the last five years and all that had occurred because of them. They were on the same side now, and no matter how infuriating he could be, he was technically one of the good guys. She needn’t feel guilty about talking to one of those.
Getting tingly feelings for him, however…She might want to consider feeling guilty about that.
A/N: Please Review…