Ginny clapped her hand over her mouth, staring. It was Draco, very evidently Draco, looking much as she had seen him last, although now he looked vexed.
'Did you have to scream?' he hissed.
'Did you have to scare me half to death?'
Draco looked affronted. 'I knocked!'
'Yeah, on the window!' she hissed. 'Why couldn't you come to the door like a regular person?'
'I didn't want to see the rest of your family. I wanted to see you. I was waiting for you to be alone. Now are you going to let me in or not?'
Ginny looked at him uncertainly, but his words echoed in her ears: I wanted to see you. She reached out and pulled the window all the way up, allowing him to climb inside. He crawled over the sill and landed on his feet, straightening up slowly. Ginny stared at him in surprise. For someone who usually looked so neat, he was surprisingly disheveled, his hair messy, dirt and mud on the knees of his jeans. There was even a long rip across the front of his dragonhide jacket. And to top it all off, he had a cut lip and a black eye that was already beginning to turn five shades of the rainbow.
Ginny goggled at him. 'What happened to your face? Did you get in a fight?'
Draco reached up and gingerly touched the corner of his eye. 'You wouldn't believe me if I told you.'
'Try me,' said Ginny.
Draco grinned and looked as if he were about to make a snide remark, when they both heard the sound of a step in the hallway, and Ron's voice calling: 'Ginny?'
He heard me scream, she thought, turning to Draco — who reached out and seized her shoulder, and then there was a sudden whirl of movement and the next thing she knew she they had rolled under the enormous overstuffed sofa, and she was lying on her back with Draco on top of her, his legs intertwined with hers, his hand covering her mouth. He needn't have bothered; she was too astonished, and too winded from being thrown suddenly to the floor, to even think about making a noise. She could feel Draco's heart banging against hers. Her gaze flicked up, fastened on his: she saw anxiety as well as amusement in his eyes before he glanced away.
The living room door opened, and Ron came in. All she could see of her brother were his shoes, which crossed the room quickly to the open window. She could picture Ron looking at it, puzzled, wondering… 'Hey!' he called again. 'Ginny! Where are you?'
Draco's body tensed against hers as Ron turned away from the window and came to stand in the middle of the room. He was standing so close to the sofa under which they were lying that Ginny could see where one of his shoelaces had been broken and retied.
Feeling suddenly guilty, she closed her eyes and turned her face into Draco's shoulder. She could smell the material of his jacket — it smelled unnervingly of Charlie — but under that, he smelled like soap and blood and cold night air. It was a very boy sort of smell, and it made her a little dizzy.
'Ginny!' Ron called again, sounding exasperated. 'Look, I know you're around here, I heard you. Are you still hacked off at me about what I said at breakfast?'
A strand of Draco's silvery-fine hair fell across her face, tickling her mouth and nose, making her want to sneeze. She tensed, and Draco pulled back from her ever so slightly; she could see the corner of one gray eye now, the smooth plane of his cheek, and the glitter of gold chain against his throat that was the Epicyclical Charm.
'Ginny!' Ron called again, then sighed. 'All right, fine, be that way,' he snapped, and she saw his shoes moving away as he crossed the room into the kitchen. She began to move out from under the sofa, but Draco's grip tightened on her arm, and she heard him whisper, 'Wait.'
A moment later came the familiar sound of the kitchen door slamming. Ron had gone out into the garden.
Ginny twisted her head to the side so that she could see Draco properly. He was looking down at her, his expression serious but his gray eyes dancing. 'Now you can move,' he said, not whispering but speaking softly. 'If you want to.'
All the little hairs on the back of her neck seemed to prickle, and she shivered all over, whether from the look on his face or simply from nerves, she wasn't sure. 'Of course I want to move,' she whispered back, 'you're crushing me and your stupid belt buckle is digging into my leg.'
Draco looked down at her with limpid, innocent eyes. 'How do you know that's my belt buckle?'
'Very amusing.' Feeling herself blush, she broke their eye contact and wriggled out from under him, and then out from under the sofa. She stood up, brushing lint off her jeans, and glared as Draco crawled out after her — irritatingly, he managed to make even wriggling out from under an overstuffed sofa look both graceful and intentional. Although when he stood up, she was happy to see that quite a bit of lint had attached itself to his coat.
Looking at him sidelong, she said, 'Do you want to come up to my bedroom? We can talk there.'
'No,' said Draco witheringly. 'I want to stay here in the living room and wait for your six brothers to come home, find me with you, kill me, and make trendy yet tasteless beaded curtains out of my lower intestines.'
Ginny rolled her eyes. 'All my brothers except Ron aren't here anyway. And my parents are in London.'
'Well, I wish you'd told me that before. If I'd known it was just Ron, I'd have snuck up behind him and whapped him over the head with my broomstick, and then we could have talked freely.'
'You would not have-' Ginny began automatically, then shook her head. 'Okay, it's you, so maybe you would have. But I don't want to think about it. Now be quiet and follow me.'
To her surprise, Draco was obedient, following her silently up the stairs and down the hall to her bedroom. Once inside, she shut the door quickly behind them and flipped the lock. 'Luminesce,' she whispered, and the dark room lit with a soft glow.
She turned and looked at Draco, who was glancing around, looking vaguely dumbfounded. 'So,' she said to him quickly, before an awkward silence could descend, 'are you going to tell me what happened to your face, or not? You look horrible.'
