“You all right?” said a voice at her elbow. It was Charlie, looking concerned and a little rumpled. She wondered if it was just something about being a teacher: they all seemed to wind up looking as if they’d been crumpled up and left to straighten out on their own. Charlie’s hair was rumpled and his tie creased, but his expression was bright and cheerful. “You look a bit confused. Where’s your boy?”
It took Ginny a moment to realize he meant Seamus. “Oh, he was called away at the last minute. Family thing,” she said, vaguely.
“That explains his sudden dash from the wedding,” said Charlie. “And why you were dancing with Draco —“
“You haven’t seen him, have you?” Ginny asked. “Draco, I mean.”
“He was talking to Albus,” said Charlie slowly. “And then, I think, he went upstairs — it looked as if he stopped to say goodnight to Sirius and Narcissa, so I’d guess he probably isn’t coming down again.” He paused at her expression. “Is that bad news?”
Speechless for a moment, Ginny glanced around the room again, as if Draco might reappear, despite Charlie’s words. She saw Ron and Blaise, seated in a corner, their heads close together, Harry and Hermione dancing, Sirius and Narcissa, hand in hand, laughing with Professor Lupin by the ice sculpture. She lifted her chin. “Not bad news, no,” she said. “I’m glad you told me.”
Charlie looked baffled. “Hey, if you—“ he began, but by the time he got to the end of his sentence, she was already walking out of the room.
“Hiding up here, are you?”
“I’m not sure one can be said to be hiding, precisely,” he said gently, “if one is in one’s own room. At the very least, it’s not a very effective method of concealing oneself.”
“I didn’t say you were hiding from me,” she said, crossly.
Draco’s eyebrows went up. “Then who…?” His mouth curled at the corners. “I see,” he said. “You mean I’m hiding from myself, don’t you?
Now that’s insightful. Really, you can just see right through me like a pane of glass, Ginny Weasley.”
She shook her head. “What did Dumbledore say to you? You weren’t acting like this before.”
“How do you know I talked to —“ He broke off and shrugged. “I doubt it’s old Albus,” he said. “I think it’s far more likely that I’m sobering up. I apologize if I was inappropriate. I tend to get flirtatious when I’m drunk.”
“You weren’t drunk. I didn’t see you go near the punch table all night.”
Draco only looked at her as if he were waiting for her to say something worth replying to. She felt herself flush.
“And you weren’t inappropriate,” she said. “This is what’s inappropriate, this stupid pretense of yours that I don’t care about you and you don’t care about me.”
“I never said that.”
“You don’t have to. You know just how to behave to drive me away.
You’ve been doing it for a year, pushing me away but never quite far enough — it’s like you’ve sawed away at this tie between us until there’s only the thinnest thread left, but you can’t quite bring yourself to cut it entirely, can you?”
He looked up at her through heavy-lidded eyes. “Can’t I?” he said.
“I think if you could have,” Ginny said slowly, “you would have, already.
You can’t stand letting yourself love someone because you think it’ll destroy you both. That’s why loving Hermione was so perfect for you. You could never have her. And Blaise, you didn’t love her at all. Which was cruel, you know, but I suppose in your backwards way you thought you were being kind. And me—“
“And you?” Draco was standing up very straight now, looking at her, his affected disinterest having vanished. His face was shut, making her think of a locked box whose plain design left no clue as to what was contained within. Over the months she had dreamed all sorts of things into it, and perhaps opening it, she would find she had been entirely wrong about its contents. But at least she would know. “What is it you want to hear?” he asked, musingly, and very calm. “The ugly truth or the beautiful lie?”
“I want the truth. That’s all I ever wanted from you.”
A sharp laugh escaped him. “Oh, now, that isn’t true. There’s nothing pretty about the truth, Ginny, especially about me. It’s all prickly bits and sharp edges. Try to pull it out of me and you’ll only wind up with cut and bleeding hands.”
“Then I’ll make it simple for you,” she said. “Say you don’t love me.”
For the first time, he seemed caught off guard. “What?”
“Say you don’t love me,” she said. “If it’s true, say it. I know you wouldn’t lie.”
Draco looked as close to nonplussed as she’d ever seen him — as if she’d asked him suddenly the answer to a deviously difficult Arithmancy problem while he was in the middle of doing something else. “Ginny…”
“The truth won’t hurt me,” she said. “Really, it would be a mercy, either way.”
“Maybe I don’t have an answer,” he said.
Ginny’s hand went to the front of her dress. She drew from the bodice of it her wand, and pointed it at him. “Then I’ll Veritas you,” she said. “I’m taking this out of your hands, Draco. That should be a relief to you — shouldn’t it?”
He had taken his hands out of his pockets, reflexively, as if he meant to ward off her spell. He had his head down, looking at the wand, but when he raised it, she saw that he was starting to smile — a smile of wry relief, the same sort of look she’d seen on his face once after an especially hard Quidditch match, a look that said that the battle had been hard fought but there was some joy, perhaps, in at least knowing that it was over.
“I don’t want to love you,” he said.
