Draco shrugged. 'Not so much. I really just wanted to be alone.' He checked himself at her expression. 'It's all right — I was getting a bit lonely. Sit down.'
Ginny bit her lip. She knew she should go back inside — she had told Seamus she was going upstairs to get another cloak, as she was cold, and she wasn't sure how long that excuse would hold her. 'All right,' she said.
'Just for a minute,' and she sat down, as far away from him as she could, which on the tiny bench wasn't very far at all. 'I'm glad you're better,' she added, conversationally. She saw him begin to smile, and added quickly, 'Harry was really worried, and he's been so down lately…'
'Uh-huh,' said Draco neutrally. 'He seems better though, doesn't he?'
'I suppose…well, you could see into his head if you really wanted to, couldn't you? You tell me.'
'I probably could,' he said. 'But I wouldn't.'
'Why not?'
Draco shrugged. 'I respect his privacy.' He tilted his head up to look at the sky, his eyes thoughtful. His silver hair streamed starlight. 'Or maybe I just don't want to know what he's thinking.'
'Don't you trust him?'
'Of course I do. But you can't always control what you think. What you dream about, what you want. If you could, there would be no need for such a thing as self-restraint.'
Ginny shivered, and Draco moved closer to her, as if on instinct. She wondered if he realized how close they were sitting. 'Harry has plenty of self-restraint,' she said, in a voice that sounded thready to her own ears.
Draco looked at her, almost as if he were surprised. 'No, he doesn't,' he said.
'Of course he does! Think of the things he's done. What kind of self-control it must have taken to bring Cedric's body back to school — when he knew what he was facing — and when he was in the Chamber of Secrets, with me-'
'Right,' Draco interrupted, a bit irritably. 'Thank you, I can do without a rendition of Harry's Potter's Greatest Hits.'
Ginny glared at him.
'I'm not minimizing anything he's done,' said Draco, his voice slightly distant. 'There isn't anyone braver, or more determined — in a reckless sort of Gryffindor way. But that doesn't necessarily translate to the kind of self- control I'm talking about. He doesn't hide what he feels. He never has been able to. You wouldn't know — you've never tried to manipulate that easy emotional access. I have. I've spent years trying to hurt him. Let me tell you, with Harry you always know when you've scored a hit and really injured him. His whole face breaks apart. Everything about him crumples up like he's been kicked everywhere at once. It's — '
'Heartbreaking,' Ginny interrupted.
Draco looked at her with narrow eyes.
'No, I'm not still in love with Harry,' she said, answering the unasked question. 'And I'm not sure I ever really was — but I used to spend a lot of time watching him. I know exactly what you mean.'
Draco kicked at a piece of gravel with the toe of his boot. 'Maybe you do,' he said. 'Anyway, that's what I meant. Harry can't hide things like that.
He's as transparent as glass. Come on, when did you figure out he was in love with Hermione?'
Ginny felt herself flush. 'My fourth year,' she said quietly. 'Maybe my fifth — I wasn't here that year, but I saw them all over Christmas at the Burrow. I remember Hermione was teaching Harry how to put together a wizarding Christmas tree, and I saw him watching her while she was spinning a web of lights over the branches. I saw the expression on his face and I just — knew.' Her throat closed up with the remembered pain of it. Not just her pain — she had also felt for her brother. Later they had talked about it, and he had said he had always known, but she often wondered if that was true. He had shocked her with how well he had taken it, when it happened. Maybe a little too well. 'What about — what about you?'
'Oh, last year,' said Draco, with an offhanded shrug. 'It would have been earlier, but I was a bit blindsided by that whole her-dating-Weasley thing -
oh, sorry. Your brother.' He grinned, a white flash in the darkness. 'Harry was looking at her in Potions class when he thought she wouldn't notice.
Staring at her as if she was water in the desert. So obvious, really. I recall catching the look and thinking, 'Aha. He's besotted with her and he's too stupid to know it. Wonder how I can use that?'
Ginny shook her head. 'That's really grotesque, you know. And how did you?'
'How did I what?'
'Use that.'
'I didn't. The Polyjuice thing happened before I got a chance.'
'Poetic justice,' said Ginny, firmly.
'What?'
'You heard me. You were going to use the fact that Harry loved Hermione against him. And then…' Her voice trailed off before she wandered into the dangerous territory they had agreed not to discuss. 'What an awful thing to do that would have been.'
'I agree,' said Draco, his voice clear and hard as glass. 'And there's something else bothersome about it.'
'What?'
'Well, I can't have been the only person who's had that idea.'
'That idea?'
