Chapter 8: Conversations at Midnight
Disclaimer: Definitely not my creation. ‘nough said.
A/N: Ok… I know there was a looong wait for this chapter, and I’d just like to apologize to everyone who’s emailed me telling me to hurry it up! I really do appreciate everyone who reads my story, and I can’t thank you enough. But, on the bright side, school is almost over and summer will hopefully bring much more writing time!
I hope you enjoy Chapter 8!
Over the next few days, Ginny’s situation failed to improve much at all.
She had been released from Madam Pomfrey’s meticulous watch after a couple more doses of the vile, purple potion, but her stay in the Hospital Wing had been flooded with far more confusion than she would have thought possible. Malfoy hadn’t returned after his brief (yet slightly catastrophic) visit, leaving his parting words to linger in her mind, festering away and getting nowhere.
Ginny tried not to think about him. She really did. But even when she was surrounded by friends, reading get-well cards and hearing about Filch’s latest crusades against Peeves, her eyes would sometimes flicker over to the door where he had stood, as his words echoed tauntingly inside her head. She even gave Hagrid quite a scare when he came up to the Hospital Wing after classes, only to find her shouting insults at the wall during one of her more vivid memories. After he left a box of homemade pumpkin cookies on her table (which she secretly slid under the bed for the house elves to throw away later), she could have sworn she heard him questioning Madam Pomfrey about possible head injuries.
And, as if annoying Slytherins and inedible cookies wasn’t enough, she soon realized that not even a shattered bone could stop the constant avalanche of schoolwork that seemed intent on burying her alive. While Hermione had offered on more than one occasion to bring her assignments down to the hospital, Ginny, being the dedicated student she was, bluntly refused.
Something she rather regretted now that she found herself slouched in an armchair in the common room, once again flipping aimlessly through one of her textbooks.
The sounds of scratching quills and crackling logs on the fire seemed magnified a dozen times before they reached her ears, and she groaned loudly as her thoughts scattered away from her yet again. She had been sitting in the same place for over three hours. Herbology, Charms, History, Potions…She doubted if she could even tell the difference anymore. And it was getting so late! Most of the other Gryffindors had wandered off to their beds ages ago.
Dragging her heavy eyes away from the book in her lap, Ginny let them scan the room instead. Sure enough, she was one of the last students remaining downstairs at this time of night. A few seventh years were still scribbling away at their studies, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione were sitting at their usual table in the corner, bent over what had to be an awfully intense game of Wizard’s Chess. Ginny started to turn back to her textbook, summoning up every bit of willpower she had to do so, but something about the looks on her friends’ faces held her back.
The two boys were seated at opposite ends of the board, staring hard at the enchanted stone pieces, as Hermione watched from behind An Encyclopedia of Egyptian Runes. It was typical enough at a glance, but as Ginny continued to watch them, it was obvious that their concentrated expressions had nothing to do with the game. Harry, who would usually sit in silence and quietly contemplate ways to avoid his inevitable loss to Ron’s chessmen, was whispering rapidly to the others. His hands darted through the air in front of him as he spoke, obviously getting more and more agitated by the minute. Ginny noticed that although Hermione’s book was propped wide open in front of her, she had yet to lower her eyes to its pages. Instead, she was listening intently to Harry’s whispered rant, shaking her head slowly from side to side as if to gently disagree with whatever he was saying.
The fire gave another enormous pop, and Ginny’s knees jerked, sending her semi-forgotten textbook tumbling down to meet the carpet. She picked it up hastily and shot a furtive glance around the room, her heart thumping loudly in surprise.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione had stopped whispering, and were watching Ginny cautiously out of the corners of their eyes. Her suspicion flared higher than ever at this abrupt secrecy, but she managed to keep her wandering eyes in her lap, where they roved distractedly over the typed words in her book.
It was clear that whatever it was they had been talking about was not meant for her to hear. A pang of annoyance mingled with her more-than-budding curiosity, and she gripped the edge of the armchair with one hand, fighting to keep from looking up at them again. The black letters on the page she was staring at seemed to blur, and she focused on them harder, determined not to let her nosiness get the best of her. She trudged through word after word, forcing the letters into her head and not comprehending a single one.
‘There go my chances of scraping a few OWL’s,’ she thought begrudgingly, her lips twitching in a sort of sardonic grimace. ‘At least Fred and George will be proud.’
She made it halfway down the page in this gritty fashion, before hearing someone sit down in the chair facing hers.
“Oh. Hi, Hermione.”
The bushy-haired girl smiled back at her, and Ginny couldn’t help but notice a certain tightness in her expression. “Hello, Ginny. Goodness, you’ve been sitting here for a while. How’s your studying coming along?”
“Fine…” she replied slowly, not taking her eyes off her friend’s face. It was a well-known fact that homework was Hermione’s motive for living, but for some reason she didn’t trust this particular inquiry. It was a bit too casual. It reminded her of the times she used to stall before telling her mother about her latest exam scores, talking about the weather, the garden gnomes, the laundry…anything but the real reason for the conversation.
“Well, that’s good,” Hermione went on, staring into the fire as Ginny continued to watch her suspiciously. “You must have a lot to make up after being in the Hospital Wing. Wouldn’t want to fall behind.”
Ginny nodded, her eyes still narrowed in caution, but didn’t answer. An uncomfortable silence stretched out between them, growing longer and thicker by the minute as neither of them ventured to break it. There was evidently something going on that Hermione was reluctant to talk about, and Ginny was sure it must have had something to do with Harry’s whisperings. She shifted slightly in her armchair, trying to get a glimpse of him and Ron without drawing their attention, wondering if they too were in on this…whatever it was…
“Ginny?”
Her eyes snapped hurriedly back to Hermione as she broke the silence, startling Ginny away from her perusal of the common room. “Hmm?” she answered innocently, trying not to look like she’d been pondering her friends’ obviously secret conversations.
Hermione took a deep breath before continuing. “Are you…Have you been alright lately?” she asked, glancing nervously between the youngest Weasley and the fireplace.
“What do you mean?” Ginny said, her forehead wrinkling deeply in confusion. Had all that pointless small-talk about homework been a prelude to simply asking if she was alright? She had almost started to expect that someone had died from the look on Hermione’s face, let alone all the frantic whispering they’d been so intent on over their chess board.
“Well, you know,” Hermione continued, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “I mean you haven’t really been acting yourself lately. You space out in the middle of conversations, and the way you disappeared that time at Hogsmeade… Everyone’s noticed it, and we just started wondering…well, wondering if there’s something going on. Maybe something you don’t want to tell us about.”
‘Oh no, Hermione, there’s nothing going on,’ Ginny thought bitterly to herself, biting her tongue to keep the words from spilling out. ‘It’s just that I’ve been spending an unusually large amount of time in the company of one of You-Know-Who’s narcissistic, tremendously annoying ex-supporters, that’s all. Oh, and possibly developing a strange assortment of feelings for him. But it’s nothing to worry about, really. You can run along and tell Harry and Ron to stop speculating now.’ She was sure it had been those two who had sent Hermione on her little interrogation. It was just like them to interfere like that, with absolutely no consideration for her privacy. Just typical.
But of course, she couldn’t say any of that out loud if she valued her friends. The whole “Death-Eater” aspect might turn out to be a little more than they could handle.
“No, Hermione,” she sighed instead. “It’s nothing like that. I’ve just been really busy lately, with all this homework and studying…and I haven’t been sleeping too well either. It’s probably just stress, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”
Hermione opened her mouth to answer, looking anything but convinced. Sensing that the conversation was about to take another hazardous turn, Ginny cut her off before she could reply.
“But you know, you are right about one thing,” she said with as much enthusiasm as she could rally, snapping her textbook shut on her lap. “I have been sitting here for ages. I think a change of scenery would probably help me concentrate on this.” She waved the book in the air. “I definitely wouldn’t want to turn in a bunch of second-rate assignments, especially with O.W.L.s being this year and all.”
Knowing that there was no way on earth Hermione would be able to disagree with that, Ginny jumped to her feet and tucked her half-read, less than half-comprehended textbook under her arm. “I’m going to go sit by the lake for a while. Don’t wait up for me, okay?”
“Oh…alright,” Hermione said, sounding only a tad defeated. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
Ginny nodded and blurted out a rushed goodbye on her way to the portrait hole. Climbing out into the corridor, she sighed gratefully, and let the Fat Lady swing shut behind her before hastening off towards the stairs.
In her hurry to leave the common room, she failed to notice a pair of curious green eyes following her as she disappeared through the door.
There was a fairly bright moon shining outside the castle that night, bouncing off the surface of the lake and gazing back up at its twin from beneath the water. The misty light kept the dirt path from disappearing into blackness, and Ginny followed it away from the castle, slowing to a stop as she neared the edge of the lake. Sitting down on a rock along the shore, she pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them tightly, whether to ward off the chilly night air or her own thoughts, she wasn’t sure. Her textbook lay forgotten on the ground as she turned the same events over and over in her head, feeling like she was getting farther from anything resembling a solution every time.
How many times was it now that she’d lied to her friends? Was tonight the fourth? The fifth? She must have lost track somewhere along the way, a notion that made her heart slip another guilty notch. What’s more, it was Hermione that she had lied to, someone who she’d long considered as close as she’d ever get to having an older sister. Hermione had been the only one to treat her little obsession with Harry with any sort of respect, minus the numerous taunts and jokes she’d endured from nearly everyone else.
Somehow though, she couldn’t exactly see her former confidant reacting to the current situation in the same way.
An involuntary grimace crossed Ginny’s face as she imagined the results of such a conversation. It would no-doubt be so full of fights, curses, and the occasional severed body part, that a bit of untruthfulness between friends was starting to seem rather idyllic. Assuming she didn’t crack from the pressure, keeping the truth a secret would likely prove the best way out of this mess. No one need know about the electricity that danced up and down her spine whenever she spotted Malfoy in the halls, or that hated voice in the back of her mind that had attacked her in Madam Puddifoot’s.
And it wasn’t as if they would have bought any of it, anyway. Even she had trouble believing that a Weasley and a Malfoy could be anything but horrible to each other, and she’d been a witness to every second of it. While her memory disagreed, her mind was set firmly behind a fortress built from experience, cannons aimed and ready to fire on any platinum blonde peacock that got too close. Or at least that’s how it should have been, if Malfoy hadn’t had to go and be his usual irritating self.
Running a frustrated hand through her hair, Ginny let out a sharp huff and frowned angrily out at the lake. All of this because she’d walked past a bathroom at the wrong time! If only Professor Flitwick had given them homework that day, instead of allowing her the time to wander around the halls like that.
But then…if he had…she would never have realized how different Malfoy was from the way they all thought of him. They were spot on in believing that he was a stuck-up, spoiled excuse for a wizard, of course; but evil? Was he really on the wrong side of this war? Could she believe that the same boy who had cried in her arms on the bathroom floor was prepared to torture and kill innocent people? No. No, not even if she tried, she couldn’t. She had seen him decide to turn spy for Dumbledore, and if he believed him, then so would she.
A chilly wind blew across the grounds and lifted Ginny’s hair as she continued to stare out at the lake, watching ripples skate across the surface and not really seeing them. They grew as the giant squid raised a tentacle sluggishly into the air for a moment, before sinking silently back into the black water. The ripples ceased as it dove deeper into the lake, and Ginny sat motionless on her rock, too lost in her own mind to notice. With her chin propped up on her knees, she let her eyelids drift slowly downwards.
*snap*
Ginny let out a gasp as a sharp noise sounded from behind, and her legs shot out from under her. One of her shoes caught the edge of her textbook as she turned, sending it tumbling off the rock and into the lake with a splash.
“Gin, relax! It’s just me.”
Raising her eyes to the owner of the voice, she recognized the darkened, bespectacled figure, and let out a grateful breath of air.
“Oh,” she replied, swallowing her surprise and urging her heartbeat to slow down. “Hi, Harry. I’m sorry; you just startled me for a second. I guess I…Oh! Oh, no!” She glanced frantically around, having just noticed the disappearance of her book. Leaning out over the edge of the rock and seeing nothing but murky water, Ginny let out a moan of disbelief.
“Oh God… McGonagall’s going to kill me!”
“Of course not,” Harry laughed, stepping towards the edge of the lake and pulling his wand out of his robes. “Look, we’ll get it out of there in no time.” He pointed his wand at the water and screwed up his eyes in concentration.
“Accio Textbook!”
Ginny’s soggy, dripping homework broke the surface of the lake like a swimmer who had run out of oxygen. Harry stretched out his hands and caught it easily, before sitting down on the rock beside her and muttering another spell under his breath.
“See, this’ll be as good as new in a minute,” he said, glancing at her and grinning as he siphoned the water off of her book with the tip of his wand. When it was dry again he handed it back, and, careful not to let their hands touch, Ginny took it and thanked him quickly, hugging the book to her chest.
For a moment neither of them spoke; just stared at each other as the wind continued to swirl quietly around the two of them.
Harry cleared his throat a bit awkwardly. “So, er, what are you doing out here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Ginny answered, raising her eyebrows. “I don’t see Ron and Hermione though, so I’ll guess you’re not out trying to save the world again.”
Looking like he didn’t know whether to laugh or take offense, Harry settled for a kind of idiotic grin instead. “Well, you’re right about that part,” he said, before dropping his strange expression and going on. “I just saw you leave the common room and I thought you looked a little stressed out or something. That’s all.”
“Right…” Ginny replied slowly. “And the fact that you and Ron sent Hermione to go and question me has nothing to do with this, I imagine?”
Harry blinked at her in guilty surprise, looking like a child caught stealing cookies before dinner.
“Was it that obvious?” he grimaced, avoiding her eyes. Ginny nodded a bit sympathetically and he sighed, running a hand through his already ruffled hair. “We just want to know what’s going on with you. And we figured if you were going to tell anybody it’d be Hermione, so I convinced her to do it for us.” Ginny opened her mouth to speak, and he held up his hand to stop her from interrupting. “I know I should have just asked you myself, but it seems like every time we talk you’re off in a different world, and I don’t know why that is! It’s like you don’t even care about us anymore.”
“Harry!” Ginny exclaimed, taken aback by his words. “How can you say that? I don’t just stop caring about people overnight! You know me better than that.” She paused and took a deep, silent breath to calm herself. “You guys have been my best friends for years, and I’m not about to forget that because of a little extra pressure. I’m just…having a little trouble sorting everything out right now. I’m not sure how I fit into what’s been going on in my life, and I””
Ginny’s voice broke off mid-sentence as Harry put his arm around her shoulders, very unexpectedly in her opinion. She tried not to let her muscles stiffen too obviously.
“Um, Harry? What are you doing?”
He took a deep breath before answering.
“Ginny…” He began, trailing off as he looked down at their legs dangling over the shiny surface of the lake. “If you’re having feelings like that, you should tell us. There’s no point in keeping it all bottled up. We are your friends, no matter how many secrets you keep from us. We want to help you. I want to help you.” Ginny bit her lip, knowing what was coming next. “I”I care about you.”
‘There,’ she thought to herself. ‘He’s finally said it.’ She felt numb, somehow, not at all the way she used to imagine herself feeling in the event that Harry would confess his feelings to her. It surprised her, actually. Even after all the time that had passed since she had last looked at him with adoration and not-so-secret obsession, she thought she might at least feel something. Pity, sympathy…even regret. But there was nothing.
“Harry…”
She hesitated, not quite sure what to say. When the right words failed to appear on her tongue, she shrugged her shoulders uncomfortably instead.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” she said, as Harry’s arm slid back down to his side.
“What do you mean?” He looked puzzled, but Ginny had a feeling he knew exactly what she was referring to.
“I just...don’t. When you say you care about me, I think it’s different from the way I care about you.” She had been speaking with her face turned away towards the darkened horizon, but now shifted and looked back into the eyes already focused on hers. “I’m your friend, Harry. I love being friends with you, and I don’t ever want that to change.”
It was Harry’s turn to break their gaze, as he glanced down to study his intertwined fingers. For another long moment they sat in silence, but when he looked back up from his lap, a ghost of a smile had found its way to his lips.
“Neither do I,” he answered at last. “I don’t want us to ever stop being friends.”
Ginny stared at him in surprise, before a sense of incredible relief washed down over her shoulders. It seemed like a good third of all of her troubles had simply fallen into the lake beneath them, and as she realized this, a grin slowly appeared on her face as well. The feeling of freedom expanded happily inside of her, rising up and out into the night air, a sugary bubble of laughter escaping over the water. Bit by bit, the two of them began to feel more and more giggles expand inside of them, until they were laughing gleefully and wholeheartedly without any idea why. Their bodies shaking and eyes sparkling, they didn’t stop until Harry lost his balance and almost fell into the lake, avoiding a very wet fate only when Ginny managed to grab onto the back of his robes and re-stabilize him. Still with the occasional giggle, they settled themselves more carefully on the rock and pulled their dangling legs away from the water.
“Thanks for that,” Harry managed, catching his breath.
Ginny smiled at him. “Anytime. At least we’re even now, since you rescued my book.”
“Right. It’s great that you consider your homework as valuable as my life,” he laughed, and a look of mock annoyance appeared on Ginny’s face. Dodging a good-natured swat aimed his way, Harry hopped down off of the rock and landed on the long grass that covered the Hogwarts grounds. “Well…I’d better go back up to the common room. Wouldn’t want Ron and Hermione to think I’ve been out trying to save the world without them.”
“Definitely,” Ginny agreed, nodding. “I’ll probably follow in a minute; I don’t think the lake is a very good spot for doing homework after all.”
“Guess not. Oh, and Ginny?”
“Yeah?”
“Whoever he is…just tell him.”
Ginny nearly choked. “I”,” she stuttered, even while her brain felt like some of its gears were jammed in place. But Harry had already turned and started off towards the castle.
Draco steadied himself on his broom as he hovered behind a tree near the lake’s edge, his knuckles white from gripping its handle. It was taking every bit of will power he had not to yank out his wand and curse Potter from behind.
He had only come out this late to get a hold on himself, and with the night being so chilly, he never expected anyone else to be outside of the castle. Just a few laps around the lake on his broom to clear his head, and he’d be right back in the dormitories, along with the pile of homework accumulating on his desk.
Then, of course, the Weaslette had to show up and make a mess of it all.
It wasn’t really spying, what he had been doing. He was going to go and talk to her. Eventually. Well, at least until Potter came along and she got all googly-eyed and giggly. He reckoned it would have been fairly awkward to interrupt such a conversation (if it could even be called that). Which is why he was now hiding in a tree, fuming, feeling like the most pathetic case of idiocy the wizarding world had ever had the misfortunate to see.
“God, what am I doing…” he muttered to himself, squeezing his eyes shut to block out his tempting view of Harry’s back. He caught a glimpse of a bright red head rising from beside the lake and heading towards the school when he opened them, and watched its progress until it disappeared into the dark. His head was starting to pound in long, painful throbs.
It just wasn’t fair. He’d had enough of the youngest Weasley the moment they said goodbye that day outside the Great Hall; he was sure of it. There was no reason for him to dwell on their more and more frequent meetings, but he found himself doing it anyway. A shameful amount of his time was dedicated to thoughts of her, of what she’d said, of how she looked when she was laughing at breakfast the other morning… Add that to the fact that he was now being shunned by most of Slytherin House due to his little rescue on the Quidditch field, and he had to admit his life had been turned almost entirely upside-down.
And now there was Potter waltzing into the picture with his oh-so-suave ways.
Draco felt a cruel smirk tug at his lips as the image of the two of them sitting close together by the lake blared in his mind. The thought of how Potter had put his arm around her shoulders so…nauseatingly…made his skin crawl, and he let out a growl of angry frustration. Suddenly taking a ride around the grounds seemed anything but relaxing. Instead, he pushed against the tree’s branch with his shoes and launched himself away from the grounds, in the direction of the castle. The wind burned against his eyes and blurred his vision as he flew faster through the air, leaving the blackened lake rippling innocently behind him.