Harry and Hermione vanished with a wave, and Ginny went to follow them. But a light touch on her arm made her pause. She turned and saw Draco looking down at her, a bright mischievous sparkle lighting his eyes. 'Wait a second, Weasley,' he said. 'I want a word with you.'
Flip. She felt her heart turn over in her chest, and mentally frowned at herself. It was just Draco — there was no point getting all worked up just because he touched her arm — well, all right, everyone got all worked up over Draco, which was even more reason that she shouldn?t. It wasn?t fair that he looked as good as he did, either, as if the clothes he wore had been made expressly for him. Oh, all right, they probably had been made expressly for him. Wasn?t that what having a lot of money was all about? Of course no amount of money could buy hair like that, or eyes that color, or cheekbones you could cut paper with….that was just luck, or genetics, or some terribly unfair combination of the two…
Draco was waving something in front of her eyes. With a certain amount of difficulty, she focused on it. It was a small, red-bound book. In fact, it was the book she had given him the week before, for his birthday. A Genealogy and History of the Hogwarts Founders, by Fabianna Patters-Brown.
'Interesting gift,' Draco said. 'I wasn?t sure why you gave it to me until I got to the bits about Benjamin Gryffindor — really a crashing bore, he was — and I kept coming across mentions of a certain mysterious red- headed girl who kept appearing and disappearing in his camp. That wouldn?t have been you, by any chance, on one of your oh-so-secret time travel missions? Back in time to find the perfect boyfriend?'
Ginny snorted inelegantly. 'Ben? The perfect boyfriend?'
'Why not? Tall, dark, handsome, dead for a thousand years so he won?t cramp your style, and just like all the rest of you Gryffindor types he walks around like hes got a ten-foot Giant pike stuck right up his — '
'Draco, this is pointless.'
'I disagree. Its entirely pointy.'
'Why?'
'Well,' said Draco, sitting down on the edge of his bed, 'its occurred to me that theres a bit of a mystery about this Ben Gryffindor chap. Hes got an Heir, right, but no wife, and no…attachments reported. No girls in his life really at all, just hangs about with his cousin Gareth — nice-sounding fellow he was, too.
But then theres this red-headed vixen who keeps popping in and out of young Benjamins tent like she lives there…and how long were you there really?'
'Wait a minute. Are you asking me if I?m Harrys great-great-great grandmother?' Ginny demanded, too stunned to sputter.
'Well, if you put it like that…' Draco had the grace to look slightly abashed.
'How do you know,' Ginny demanded, 'that I?m not your great-great grandmother? Gareth was awfully cute, too.'
Draco looked astonished. Ginny took a few seconds to savor the moment. It was not often that she was able to render Draco speechless. Finally, she laughed. 'All right, fine,' she admitted. 'As much fun as this has been…I?m not your great-grandmother. Or Harrys. I never met Bens son, or whatever woman was his sons mother, and as a matter of fact…' at which point she leaned in quite close and whispered something very softly into Dracos right ear, something that made his eyebrows fly up like wings and his mouth quirk into a sly grin.
'You?re kidding,' he said.
She shook her head. 'I?m not.'
'Well, well.' He bounced up to his feet, the grin never leaving his lips. 'The things you don?t learn in Professor Binnsclass.' His eyebrows drew together. 'And for that matter, there's something else I was wondering.'
'What?'
'Well, I thought you got your bright idea about going back into the past because of the Gryffindor army that disappeared. But when Ben went back home, he took his army with him. Where did they all go?'
Ginny shook he head. 'Oh, Draco…That's a long story, and I have to run…at this rate I?ll be half-dressed when the party starts.'
Draco leaned back on his elbows. ' I really see no problem with that.'
Ginny cut her eyes sideways at him, and turned to go, but he held her back.
'Shall I walk you down the stairs?' he asked.
'What?'
'Its tradition,' he said. 'Guests enter the ballroom in pairs and are announced at the foot of the stairs. Its always been done that way.
Harry will go down with Hermione, Sirius with my mother, Bill with Fleur, and so on.'
She just looked at him steadily, long past the point where any ordinary teenage boy would have started shifting from foot to foot.
Draco just looked back at her, impassive, a small smile teasing the corner of his mouth, the long blue-gray eyes unreadable as always.
It was odd, she thought, that he reminded her not so much of Gareth but of Ben, somehow — they had the same inner stillness, the same flickering expressions that came and went and left no mark behind, like wind across water.
'Its tradition,' Draco said again.
'You said that already.'
'Well, the essence of tradition is repetition.'
'All right.'
'What?'
'All right. I?ll meet you at the top of the stairs in — '
