'You came after me,' he said, and there was now a hard edge of anger to his voice, although his mouth still smiled. 'Isn?t that cute.
In a stupid sort of way.'
She felt something inside her shrink. 'You?re not glad to see me.'
'No. Did you really think I would be?'
She raised her chin. 'Yes.'
'Why? If you met your best friend in Hell, would you be pleased to see them?'
Unsure what he meant, Ginny stared at him, feeling a chill pass over her.
He stretched out a long leg, and shoved one of the smaller footstools towards her. 'Well, if you aren?t going to go away, why don?t you sit down and have a drink with me. We can hang out. Tell jokes.
Wait for the apocalypse.'
'Jokes?' Ginny echoed faintly.
Draco leaned his head back against the chair. The firelight threw the hollows under his eyes into relief, the angle of his cheekbones, painting his face with its own colors of gold and darker gold. Making him almost hurtfully beautiful to look at. Certainly, something inside her hurt. 'Sure. Jokes. For instance, how many Malfoys does it take to change a lightbulb?'
She stared at him as he held up a finger.
'Just one. But in the good old days, a hundred servants would change a thousand lightbulbs at our slightest whim.' He grinned mirthlessly, sliding down in the chair. 'One of my fathers, that one.
Maybe you have to be a Malfoy to think its funny.'
Ginny wrinkled up her nose. 'You?re drunk,' she said, suspicion crystallizing into certainty.
'I am not,' he said in injured tones, brushing back the silver-fair hair that was falling into his eyes. 'I?ve only had four Mai Tais and they haven?t afflicted me at all.'
'You are,' she snapped. 'Look at you. You haven?t even asked me how I got here.'
'That would presuppose an alternate universe in which I cared.'
'I used a Time-Turner,' she said shortly. 'Its a long story. We came through time into the adamantine cell to get you and Harry.'
'Only,' he said softly, 'I wasn?t in the cell.'
'Oh, yes. You were.'
He sat back. The lovely lazy half-lidded eyes looked up at her thoughtfully. 'You were there? Just now?'
She nodded.
'You said we,' he remarked. It was a question.
'I came with Ron. And — Hermione,' she added, a bit reluctantly, knowing the effect this might have on him. She saw the pupils of his eyes dilate slightly, his hand tensing on the edge of the chair. But other than that, his reaction was minimal. 'We were under the Invisibility Cloak.'
'Really.' There was a secretive faintly wicked inner brilliance to his eyes that unnerved her. 'An invisible peanut gallery. And I never guessed. I must have looked fairly stupid to you.'
'No.' She suppressed a shudder. 'Stupid? You didn?t look that.'
'So you came to rescue Harry,' he said, flatly. 'Why aren?t you busy rescuing? What is this? Coffee break? Thought you?d come by and say hello?'
'We came to rescue both of you.'
'But as you see,' and he leaned back, managing to indicate with a single compact gesture of his hand the room, the fire, the empty glasses on the table, 'I don?t need to be rescued. I?m just fine.'
'Just fine? You do not seem just fine to me.'
He sat forward with a sudden violence that surprised her. 'Were you watching, back there in the cell? Did you see me?'
'I saw you.'
'Did you see me slice up Harry? Your beloved Harry, who you?ve had a crush on for six years now? Did you hear what I said to him?'
Ginnys voice was steady. 'I saw you cut him by accident. I saw you say a lot of things you didn?t mean.'
'How do you know I didn?t mean them?'
'I just know.' This, she knew, sounded unconvincing. She raised her chin defiantly. 'I know more about Dark magic than you think I do. I can sense when people aren?t acting of their own free will. You weren?t.'
'Wasn?t I?'
'Why do you keep answering me with questions?'
'Am I answering you with questions?'
'Now you?re just trying to annoy me,' she snapped, irritably.
'Yes, I am,' he said. 'And behold my success.'
She glared at him. He had sunk farther into the depths of the armchair, and was regarding her with a
