The Hours Between, by Jade Okelani

"Malfoy! Weasley! That is the very last straw!"

That's how it began. Or, really, that's how it ended. And you know what they say, every ending is the beginning of something else; every time a door closes, God opens a window. I'm not sure God really had anything to do with Ron Weasley, though; and I'm positive that He had nothing to do with Draco Malfoy. Unless . . . do you think cursing the day he was born counts?

But I'm getting distracted. You're really not interested in my personal grudge with Malfoy. Not that it's really all that much of a grudge; in the grand scheme of things, it's probably more like a friendly rivalry. Except for the friendly part.

That day, though; I really felt for the guy. I felt more for my best friend, but considering Ron was being the kind of arse we normally called Malfoy, I wasn't feeling all that charitable toward him.

Professor McGonagall was seriously irate, leading Ron and Malfoy to detention by their over-sized ears (wand misfires are a lot more common than most people think, especially when you're talking about Ron's wand - you mean "Age a thousand years" and end up with "A surplus of giant ears."), haranguing them the entire way.

We've (Hermione and I) told Ron again and again that he shouldn't let his short temper get him into too many duels, especially considering his wand isn't all that reliable even in the relatively safe class environment. Malfoy just seems to push all of Ron's buttons, and every couple of weeks, they're sure to be found after school, squaring off on the Quidditch field, or just outside the Forbidden Forest, wands raised in "silly testosterone induced bouts of teenage hormonal angst. Prattish boys."

At least, that's what Hermione says.

Professor McGonagall really let them have it. They were "expressly forbidden" to use their wands outside the classroom. She even put a hex on them so they wouldn't work right outside the castle. It seemed to do the trick, too. Malfoy kept to himself, and Ron kept with us. Until that day at lunch.

The whole thing is really Lee Jordan's fault, anyhow.

Almost a month had gone by without Ron and Malfoy facing off. We'd almost begun to believe the worst of it was behind them; that Malfoy would go back to his snide comments, Ron would continue to imply Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle were engaged in some sort of disturbing sexual farce, and Hogwarts would run as smoothly as ever.

And then Lee transfigured the cutlery and it all went to Hell.

"In this corner we have the underdog, Ronald Weasley, who appears to be sharing a blood pudding with his sister, Ginny. What can we divine from this strict training regime? Does Weasley feel overconfident?" Lee was using a transfigured serving spoon as an announcer's microphone. It managed to carry his voice quite well around the Great Hall.

"Hey! I am not the underdog," Ron protested loudly.

"You don't even know what he's blathering on about," Ginny insisted with narrowed eyes.

"No, but I'm not about to let him go around calling me an underdog, am I?" Ron answered reasonably. Well, reasonably for Ron.

"What are you on about, Lee?" Hermione asked, sharing a meringue with Harry.

"The big fight!" Lee declared, leaping up on top of an empty chair. "Between Gryffindor," he indicated the table he was crowing at, "and Slytherin!" He sort of hissed the 's' in Slytherin. Everyone decided that it was a good dramatic choice on Lee's part.

"Get down off that chair before you fall down," Hermione scolded Lee.

"What fight?" Harry wanted to know.

"I have it on good authority that, yesterday afternoon, between Potions and Transfiguration, a gauntlet was thrown down by one Ronald Weasley, and accepted by none other than . . ." Lee paused for dramatic affect; the results were mixed this time on whether it was successful. The Hufflepuffs ate it up, but the Ravenclaws thought it overdone. "Draco Malfoy!"

Draco looked up from his dessert, nonplussed. He cast a lazy gaze around the room, the corners of his mouth turned up into the hint of a smirk. "Afraid there won't be a duel," he drawled. "My father taught me never to take advantage of an opponent who was so inferior to me in every way." That, and Professor McGonagall had warned Draco and Ron that if they were caught dueling again, the consequences would be both severe and unpleasant.

"He's such a ruddy little toad," Hermione commented casually.

"Hmm," Ginny agreed blandly. At least, they all assumed she agreed.

Ruddy little toad or not, Draco had certainly decided subtlety was not to be in the cards for him. The insults he directed toward Ron had steadily increased in recent months. Ron's hostility toward Draco, too, had gone on the rise around the same time.

"That why your father spends so much time training his Death Eaters?" Ron wondered in a deceptively innocent

tone. "You're so inferior he doesn't want to risk you blowing up the whole world while you're trying to pray to your dark lord?"

"Ron," Harry warned in a low voice.

"Really," Hermione agreed, looking like she was seconds away from giving Ron a full-blown lecture.

"Careful, Weasley," Draco warned, sliding his chair back from the Slytherin table. He lazily made his way toward the Gryffindor table, looking disgusted. "You don't want to start bringing our families into this."

Harry thought they'd already brought their families into it many times before, but wisely kept his mouth shut. A wary truce had manifested itself between he and Malfoy after the incident a year ago when they'd both been stranded in Muggle London. That truce seemed to extend to Hermione, whom Draco had not made a single disparaging remark against since, but not to Harry's other best friend, Ron. (Though Harry secretly believed this was due more to Ron's blind seething hatred toward Draco than anything else.) It's hard to be nice to someone who'd like to see you dead.

"It's tradition," Lee continued. "Everyone knows that every five years at Hogwarts always brings about a duel between two houses. Last time, it was Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff; Slytherin and Gryffindor are due a go. It's great fun, lasts the rest of the year."

"Shut up, Lee," Hermione hissed.

"Miss Granger wants you to stop egging us on," Draco noted.

"Please, Ron," Hermione actually begged. "Be the bigger man."

"Yeah, Weasel," Draco sneered, "be the bigger man."

"That's it," Ron declared, pushing back from the table. Harry and Hermione gave identical sighs of defeat. "You've called me weasel for the last time, Malfoy."

"To the field of honor!" Lee cried.

You can see where this is headed. I tried to stop him, really I did. But talking sense to Ron is an awful lot like talking sense to a blast-ended skrewt; not only does the skrewt not care, you're rather likely to get stung for your trouble.

Hermione says Ron and I enable each other. She also thinks we should spend more time trying to improve ourselves instead of getting into trouble all the time, but she's been going on about that for years. Personally, I don't think she's serious. If she didn't like us the way we were, I doubt she'd still be hanging about.

"Mr. Potter, I do hope this has some relevant bearing."

Er.

"Moving right along - are we to understand that Mr. Malfoy challenged Mr. Weasley to a duel?"

Nope.

"Then why-"

That's just it, you see. There was no challenge. Lee made it all up so he could get his grudge match between Slytherin and Gryffindor. There's all sorts of tension bubbling up between the houses, you see. We're always a few seconds away from meltdown as it is. Ron and Malfoy hating each other like they do - convenient, is all.

Plus, you know, there was the thing with Ron's sister.

"Malfoy," Ginny hissed, slapping his hands as they fondled her hips. "Anyone could see us here!"

"Don't care," he mumbled, reattaching his mouth to her neck.

Draco Malfoy was not the first boy Ginny Weasley had ever kissed. He wasn't even the second. But whenever he pressed his lips to hers, she literally couldn't remember the names of the boys who'd come (no pun intended) before him.

"I care," she whispered, threading her fingers through his hair. She intended to push him away, but ended up holding his head closer. "If one of my brothers finds us-"

"They won't do anything to you," he assured her with a laugh, licking her throat like a vampire searching for a vein. It made her toes curl and she arched her neck back to give him better access.

"It's not me I'm worried about, you arrogant git," she muttered, pulling his mouth up to hers. "If," kiss "they" smack "find" slurp "us." She framed his face with her hands so that he was forced to look her in the eye. "It's Draco Flambé."

"Your idiot brother couldn't actually hurt me," he scoffed.

"He could if Fred and George held you down," Ginny snapped.

"Not a very noble way to go about beating someone, is it?" Draco noted sullenly.

"Ron isn't really the noble type," Ginny pointed out dryly.

"We've got Harry for that."

"I'm noble," Draco declared.

Ginny laughed in his face. "You are not. Besides, I wouldn't love you if you were noble."

"You don't love me now," he argued, somewhat disagreeably.

"No, but I still sleep with you," she pointed out reasonably.

"What if I wanted you to love me?"

"You don't," Ginny assured him with some confidence.

"You only started shagging me in the first place so you could throw it in my brother's face one day when he least expects it."

"Well, yeah," Draco admitted without guile. "But that's just . . . I mean, like you said. That's just how it started."

"How it started and how it's going to end," Ginny stated firmly. "You don't love anyone, Malfoy. I wonder if you even love your own mother."

"I love my mum," Draco declared hotly.

Ginny grinned. "And bloody easy it was to get you to admit it to me, too."

A predatory gleam entered Draco's eyes and he pushed her back against the wall of one of Hogwarts' many dark, secluded hallways. His mouth was on hers in a second, and he quite literally stole her breath away, without aid of magic, without anything more than the intensity with which he kissed her.

After a few long, blissful moments, they pulled back slightly, their foreheads resting against one another, their mingled breathing heavy and labored. Draco's fingers were gently combing through the massive red tangles that framed Ginny's face, and she swore that his hands were shaking ever so slightly with the force of how much she affected him. Ginny glanced up at him shyly.

"Well," she began in a whisper, "maybe I could love you just a little bit."

"Are you trying to tell us that this ridiculous feud began because Mr. Weasley's sister was dating Draco Malfoy?"No, of course not. Haven't you been listening? Ron didn't even know about Malfoy and Ginny yet.

"Then what, precisely, *did* start things, Mr. Potter?"

Dunno, really. Sport, maybe? Anyhow, Lee was constantly winding everyone up, and Ron and Malfoy really didn't put up much of a fight. They were real keen on beating each other senseless, I think. And since Professor McGonagall put that hex on their wands, they really didn't have much choice.

Lee called them 'Muggle duels' even though Hermione and I tried to explain that it was more like street fighting in London. Once a week, Ron and Malfoy would-

"Excuse me, Mr. Potter - are you trying to tell us that these 'Muggle duels' occurred more than once?"

Er.

"Mr. Potter?"

I thought - I mean, I just assumed, since you'd called this panel together that you already knew-

"This panel was called together because we discovered students milling about the grounds after hours, two of whom quite nearly killed one another. We were determined to get to the bottom of it, and I assure you, Mr. Potter, we had no idea this was a recurring activity."

Well . . . It is. Was. The whole school knew about it. It was sort of fun. Like a Quidditch match. Even got two impartial students to referee - Padma Patil and Justin Finch-Fletchley.

"The entire student body was aware of these 'Muggle duels'?"

Yes. Well, except we didn't tell Ron and Malfoy that they were called Muggle duels. Because, you know, they're both from sort of proud, old wizarding families, and they tend to shy away from anything Muggle related, and we . . .

"Yes, Mr. Potter?"

We didn't want them to stop. It was . . . well, it was a whole bloody lot more enjoyable than watching them snipe at one another. Even Hermione agreed it was probably best that we just let them go at it, get it out of their systems. Once the fights started, Ron and Malfoy started to get on fairly well during the rest of the week. They weren't friends or anything, but I'm almost positive that, had Malfoy caught on fire, Ron would have shoved him in a lake to put him out. That's something, right?

At first, the Slytherins refused to sit with the Gryffindors. Since the Quidditch field wasn't in use at night, half the school would trudge out in the grass, wet with condensation, foregoing the stands built to watch a match high in the air for hastily transformed blankets that hovered several inches off the ground. The Slytherins gathered at one end of the field, and the Gryffindors, separated by small factions of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw students, sat at the other.

The first match was watched with confused, wary silence. Only the Muggle-born wizards had ever witnessed two men beating each other senseless for sport. Some students declared it barbaric and beneath them, traipsing off the field in disgust. Most found themselves glued to the spectacle of Ron Weasley and Draco Malfoy taking shots at each other, for once, without speaking.

Awed silence wasn't normally the order of the day at Hogwarts, and it didn't last long in the dead of night on the Quidditch field. Soon, they began cheering for one opponent or another in the loudest whispers they could imagine. The whispers became loud, boisterous cheers the day Hermione discovered the Sound Siphoning spell. With a flick of her wand, she enclosed the Quidditch field in an invisible, undetectable bubble that, at night, would keep all noise from escaping.

Since this particular activity was against nearly every rule Hogwarts had, a funny thing happened. All of the houses began to work together, conspiring with their supposed "enemies" in order to thumb their noses at a greater foe - the authority every teacher in the school represented. Prefects were lulled into a false sense of security when all the students fled their common rooms at precisely bedtime, changing into their nightclothes without protest. The Head Boy and Head Girl were stunned at how precisely their guidance was adhered to.

Getting the right spells to everyone was easy. Like the paintings in the common rooms, they developed a secret phrase code at the matches ("Weasel vs. Dragon") and sent the most unsuspecting lot of students out to deliver the clouding spells Hermione, Draco, Blaise Zabini, and Hannah Abbott managed to cook up. Neville Longbottom, the Creevey brothers, Cho Chang, and Lavender Brown made the deliveries to groups of three, each with a different piece of parchment when, put together, formed a spell for masking their presence from the prefects. Fred and George coordinated the whole thing, adept as they were at getting around the school without being detected. Because he was in possession of the Marauder's Map, Hermione put Harry in charge of coordinating everyone's escape from the school at night.

The midnight hour where Friday became Saturday was when they gathered, and the brawls often lasted 'til dawn. Not the actual fighting, which was normally over in thirty minutes or so, but the spirit of the evening. Justin Finch-Fletchley, who refereed, also happened to take martial arts lessons during his summers at home with his parents. He held what he called a black belt, and was more than happy to show off his skills to all those gathered.

Nearly a hundred of them participated in these weekly games; nearly a hundred of them kept the tightest secret ever passed between the students at Hogwarts. The fights were not gossiped about in the halls or whispered about between suite mates late at night. Snacks brought to consume during the matches were privately bought (usually procured by Fred and George Weasley) and never supplied by house elves. Not only did Hermione not approve ("You are not going to put more work on the poor things! Haven't they got enough to worry about already, keeping up an entire castle and being an enslaved minority?") but house elves, though extremely loyal, were not known for keeping their mouths shut.

Draco and Ginny, who were already keeping a secret of their own, found not mentioning the matches easy compared to all the self-control both had exhibited by not holding hands in public, or stopping in the halls for a kiss. It was unthinkable, the idea of a Slytherin boy dating a Gryffindor girl. Especially considering the boy was a Malfoy, and the girl, a Weasley. It wasn't quite as dramatic or dire as Romeo and Juliet ("You'd never die for me, would you, Draco?" "I'd kill someone for you; does that count?"), but it certainly possessed the same classic undertones.

Lee Jordan brought his transfigured serving spoon and commentated for the matches in his usual robust style ("The idiot Weasley is gaining ground on the insufferable Malfoy, but we've seen Draco come back from the brink before!"), only now, he didn't have Professor McGonagall ordering him to display some sense of impartiality.

The almost-romance Harry and Hermione had developed in Muggle London ("Does it really count as dating if all we do is snog for hours, then go back to being chums?" "Snogging usually constitutes some level of deeper emotion than chums, Harry." "Pals, then?") began to spill over in their nights away from the castle. Without the pressures of school and wondering what everyone would think of The Boy Who Lived having a girlfriend ("I'm in the papers as your girlfriend enough as it is, Harry. It's bound to get bloody unbearable if we're actually seeing one another." "Did you just curse, Herm?" "Shut up and give us a kiss, Potter."), they found spending time snuggling and kissing in public was a lot more delightful than most people would lead you to believe.

There'd been something of an inter-house mating dance, as well. Dean Thomas had taken a liking to Cho Chang, and they'd been having rather public fights and make-up sessions for the past few weeks. Pansy Parkinson seemed to accept at long last that things between she and Draco weren't going to work out, and had begun flirting with, of all people, Neville Longbottom. Neville, for his part, seemed thrilled and terrified by her attention in equal measure.

Everything was going along swimmingly until Ron, embarrassed by his exceptionally poor final scores, called Ginny a "silly, irritating brat who doesn't know her own mind and is much too young to have any idea what sort of pressure" he was under when she tried to cheer him up.

"I'm not silly," she declared for the sixth time that night. "And I'm a year younger than he is. Under, even. He has no right to speak to me that way."

"Gin," Draco tried to interrupt gently.

"And I don't know my own mind!" she continued, building up to a grand tirade. "He's the stupid git who would have failed all his final exams if he didn't have Hermione to tutor him, or Harry to make him look so good!"

"Ginny," he tried again.

"Who the bloody fucking hell does he think he is, anyhow? I survived Muggle London just fine. I had no money, no wand - yeah, sure, I had you and Harry and Hermione with me, but I think I did okay. I'd like to see that berk survive five minutes without his stupid wizard world."

"It's your stupid wizard world, too," Draco pointed out dryly.

"Well, I don't need it near as much as he does!" she exclaimed with a stamp of her foot.

"When are you going to give me my 'well done for beating my stupid brother into the ground' kiss?"

"You think you've earned a kiss?" she asked impishly, her mood shifting gears almost instantly.

"Well, yeah," he said, thrown off by her sudden transformation from brassed-off little sister to coquettish vixen.

"Where do you think you deserve to be kissed?" she continued, wrapping her arms around his neck. They were standing beneath a giant oak tree just outside the Quidditch field. The moon was a sliver tonight and they could barely see two feet in front of them. Fortunately, they were much closer to each other than that.

"Here," Draco murmured, pressing a chaste kiss to her mouth. "And here," he added, brushing his lips over her cleavage. "And maybe," his hand dove beneath her robes to stroke the smooth skin of her lower abdomen, "if I'm really, really good," his fingers slid a bit lower, "here."

"I don't know," she said with a straight face, "you'd have to be awfully, awfully good . . ."

Then, his mouth was on hers again and she felt dizzy, and he must have sensed it, because her back was no longer pressed up against the rough bark of the tree, but instead laid out on the cool, soft grass. Her hands found their way to his hair, their favorite purchase, as he undid her robe and pushed it aside.

His mouth met her stomach in long, warm, open kisses, his tongue dipping into her navel just long enough to make her giggle out a moan. Her abdomen and ribcage were the middle ground, and Draco, unless he was feeling particularly greedy, usually left it up to her which way he went first. Since there was something incredibly primal and satisfying about watching him beat her brother bloody (thank God for Hermione's healing spells), Ginny had been more than ready for their assignation all night. She gently prodded his head lower and he took the hint immediately.

He played with her for a few minutes, adoring the tender flesh of her thighs with gentle, ghostly kisses that whispered and promised but, ultimately, did little more than tease. Her hips were restless, her bottom lip worn raw, the tiny little mewls that escaped her mouth desperate by the time he finally took pity on her, throwing her legs over his shoulders as he nibbled, licked, and sucked.

Her eyes opened wide and she gasped slightly every time he hit a particularly sensitive spot. He'd once told her those little gasps were like an auditory map that led him to all the places that pleased her best. Draco was an excellent student when he cared for the lesson, and he apparently cared very much for this lesson, because he'd learned it after only a few weeks of them being together. And, oh, how he practiced, practiced, practiced, even after he got it right, because if you don't practice, you lose it, lose how to do it, lose, lose, lose, and ahhhh, the stars were unusually bright for such a tiny moon and then there was nothing but stars, stars, stars.

His cheek rested against her belly, his head rising and falling with every breath she took. Her fingers lost themselves in his moonlight-silver hair, combing through it, soothing him like a child as she tried to remember where they were and who she was. In these moments together, it often took her some time to begin thinking again, but she always seemed hyper-aware of Draco, of who he was, of what he meant to her.

There were times when her thoughts were perfectly rational that she didn't fully understand what he meant to her; it was only in these moments, when her heart was so clear, that she grasped it. The fears that he would never - could never - love her back were distant and unimportant; the notion that he might tire of her eventually and find a girl without a moral code didn't bother her as much when she was flushed with the pleasure he'd given her, when she was dying to give him back just as much.

"Your brother's an idiot," Draco said at last. "A stupid twit who can't see how beautiful and smart and capable his sister is."

A smile curved Ginny's mouth. "You think I'm beautiful? And smart?"

"And capable, don't forget capable," Draco reminded her. "You would have made a smashing Slytherin."

"You would have made a lousy Gryffindor," she said honestly.

Chuckling low in his belly, Draco slid up her body until he was looking her in the eye. He kissed her lips lightly, then brushed their noses together. It was a sweet, whimsical gesture, and tears stung Ginny's eyes.

"Why are we spending our precious time together talking about my stupid brother?" she asked without rancor. Ron had left her mind a long time ago. Draco had a gift when it came to banishing all thoughts but those of him from her brain.

"No idea," Draco answered. "After all, I did just spend a great deal of time roughing him up for what he said to you."

"My hero," she murmured, pushing against his shoulders until he was the one lying flat on his back. "I think it's time you got your snog."

"Rather have a shag, actually," he said.

"Rather think you'll enjoy the snog more," she disagreed cheekily.

His robe was pushed to the side a second later and her full lips had enveloped the very head of his cock. Draco hissed out an ecstatic puff of air as her tongue swept around the circumference of his tip. She released him from her mouth, then went back down again for more, greedy for the taste of him.

Ginny was remarkably good at this. She'd gotten plenty of practice with him, but one day, in a fit of masochism, Draco had asked if she'd ever done this for either of her two previous boyfriends. She'd delighted him by saying no, initially, then proceeded to detail every other sexual act she'd performed instead. There had been hand jobs and the occasional dry hump, but she'd never let some fumbling git put his hand down her pants, or so much as take off her top for him.

Secure in the fact that she'd never done this for anyone but him, Draco found he enjoyed the act (not to mention her proficiency at it) all the more. His own natural fear of letting anyone close had caused him to push every girl who'd ever liked him away. Even Ginny, while they'd been stranded in Muggle London and he'd felt an intense attraction to her, had been unable to gain his trust.

At first.

He hadn't told her so yet (might never, given the degree to which his psyche was warped by his ever-doting father) but Draco found himself trusting Ginny more than he trusted himself. And good holy fuck, how he had started to love her.

That thing she was doing to him with her tongue, the way it sort of wiggled and prodded - ah, like that - was making it increasingly difficult to focus on how much he adored her, and he let his mind drift as he looked up at the sky. A cloud had drifted in front of the moon, yet the stars were twinkling even brighter than before. He still couldn't see much in front of him, but then again, he didn't really want to see anything besides Ginny, and he had no intention of letting her get further than the fabric of their robes permitted.

It was perhaps the greatest folly of his life that, when he came into the back of her throat, the image before him was none other than Ron Weasley, his face as red as his hair, something akin to murder in his eyes.

We were just going back up to the Gryffindor tower, you see. Hermione had tended to Ron's wounds, gotten him presentable for the rest of the school. It wasn't Ron's fault, really. I mean, how would you feel, if you were just walking along, minding your own business, and you stumbled across your sister, erm, doing . . . things to your worst enemy?

"Mr. Potter, are you aware that Madame Pomfrey has spent the better part of the last twelve hours repairing the damage Mr. Weasley did to Mr. Malfoy's face?"

Yes, ma'am.

"Tell me, Potter, do you approve of what Mr. Weasley did to Mr. Malfoy?"

No, sir.

"Yet you yourself admit that you've spent the past three months meeting in secret to watch Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Weasley engage in this totally barbaric display."

Well . . . that was different. I mean, they didn't *mean* it, you know? Maybe the first time they did, but after that, it got to be . . . fun. It was just for fun. I'm pretty sure Ron meant it when he broke Malfoy's nose.

"Well, I think that will be all."

"Albus! You can't seriously-"

"Fifty points from each of the four houses for disobeying school rules and leaving the castle after dark."

"Albus, I understand you tend to be lenient with-"

"They've done nothing wrong. We have no rules about engaging in non-school sanctioned sporting events, which, if you take Muggle studies into consideration, was exactly what these matches amount to. Miss Granger, I believe, made that very argument herself. You are excused, Harry."

"That's it?!" Ron was in total disbelief. "Fifty points from each house? No suspensions? No 'don't beat each other up anymore' lectures? No 'we're informing your families'?"

"Hermione made a good case," Harry said, beaming at her so brightly that she blushed.

Ron glanced up at the doorway to the Great Hall. "Oh, bloody marvelous," he mumbled.

Harry and Hermione turned around in their seats and were unsurprised to see Ginny, her eyes darting fire (though not literally) at Ron, her hand firmly clasped in Draco's, who didn't look half bad considering Ron rearranged his face less than a day ago. ("Wanker never would have gotten so many blows in if you hadn't been giving me such a good . . . blow." "Do try to never say that to me again.")

There were mismatched tables everywhere. A group of Hufflepuffs were studying Divination over coffeecakes with a slew of Slytherins. A seventh-year Ravenclaw was playing footsie with a sixth-year Hufflepuff, and Neville Longbottom was holding hands with Pansy Parkinson at the Slytherin table.

Ginny led Draco to the Gryffindor table and urged him into a seat next to Harry, who she was fairly certain wouldn't try to kill him. Harry offered Draco as much of a sympathetic smile as he could manage. Ron glared at Harry, and Hermione kicked Ron in the shin.

"Ginny," Ron growled in a low, dangerous voice.

"Get over it, Ron," Ginny snapped loudly.

"But he's spent our entire time at school making my life miser-"

"Get over yourself," she added. "This isn't about you. Just like Harry and Hermione being in love isn't about you." She mouthed 'sorry' to Hermione, whose eyes had grown incredibly wide.

"What?!" Ron screeched, turning on Harry and Hermione. "You're in love?"

"You've seen us kissing," Hermione mumbled feebly.

"Kissing," Ron clarified. "I thought you were just messing around. I didn't know you were in love. That's just great. Now you're going to go off and shag and couple off and I'll have to make friends with Colin, 'cause God knows he'll never find a girl to fancy him."

"Hey!" Colin squeaked in protest.

"It's all right, Colin," Ron added, "I'll never find a girl to fancy me, either."

"That's not true, Weasley," Draco said kindly.

Ron looked up at him, shocked. "Th-thanks, Malfoy."

Ginny patted Draco's knee. "Well done," she murmured in his ear.

"I get a *big* reward," he murmured back.

"So, Herm," Ron said after a moment of silence, "just when did you and Harry become an item?"

"Er," Hermione stuttered.

"We'd prefer to keep it private," Harry said firmly.

"Yes," Hermione agreed quickly. "Private."

"Private," Ron snorted. "Like that'll last."

"They always start out wanting to keep things private," Draco agreed. "Look at Gin and me. Mark my words, Potter; pretty soon, you and Granger will end up spread out in the middle of the Quidditch field."

"Or maybe underneath a tree," Ginny added innocently.

Draco and Ron both laughed.

Hermione turned bright red.

Harry did, too, though he felt his and Hermione's humiliation was worth it for the look of camaraderie between Ron and Draco.

"Can't you just see it now?" Draco asked. "Granger gets frisky with Potter down in Diagon Alley and it ends up splattered on the front page of the Daily Prophet."

Ron guffawed. "'Witch and Wizard do the Wicked on Wednesday.'"

Almost worth it.

END