Author: Sharlene/mynuet
Title: Over Time: First Friends
Rating: R (adult situations, language)
Summary: An answer to the "Over Time" challenge for Gushue.com, it tracks
Ginny and Draco from the forming of a friendship through ten years. All
sorts of changing pairings, including mild mentions of slash, but the
happily ever after ones are D/G and R/H.
Disclaimer: All your base are belong to us. Intellectual property rights
are another matter.
Chapter One:
Confessional. Ginny and Draco get together and share boy/girlfriend
stories over wine/pot/dark chocolate/some hallucinogenic potion.
Your choice.
Required item: Underwear.
Required phrase: `And boy, was I sore the next day!'
Draco's Seventh Year:
It was all Neville Longbottom's fault.
If he hadn't gotten so flustered over creating a solid purple mass at the bottom of his cauldron instead of the runny blue liquid Snape had ordered, he wouldn't have phrased his letter declaring endless love and asking for a date in quite the...inappropriate...way that he had. Then Ginny Weasley wouldn't have choked and gasped in the middle of potions class, or burned her fingers stuffing the parchment into the flames under her cauldron before Snape could grab it and read it to the class. Ginny thought singed fingers were a fair trade for being spared humiliation so total that she would have had to dye her hair and live as a muggle. Still, it was definitely Neville's fault that she got detention.
Not that Neville's crimes ended there. No, he was so unnerved when he realized what he had written, he had turned and attempted a dead run to the potions classroom. This ended up being prevented by his running full tilt into Draco Malfoy, who was, to say the least, not pleased. That McGonagall rounded a corner at the exact moment the Slytherin cast a nasty hex could also be laid t the unfortunate Neville's door; she had been looking for him to escort him to meet with his grandmother in Dumbledore's office. This was not, in Malfoy's opinion, sufficient punishment, and he plotted revenge even as McGonagall declared that he would be serving detention. The only thing that kept the plans from being for Neville's painful demise was that the detention would be served with Snape.
He had not counted on being stuck with the littlest Weasley, scrubbing cauldrons by hand as Snape rushed off to deal with some emergency, probably caused by Longbottom if trends continued. He had definitely not counted on the purple mass in Neville's cauldron tuning into a gas as it came in contact with water.
"Malfoy? What's that?" Ginny had heard a soft whumf and seen Draco disappear in a cloud of magenta smoke. It drifted towards her and she started to cough as it entered her lungs. "I don't feel so good."
"That's funny, I feel great." Malfoy gave her a grin that could only be described as goofy.
Ginny looked at him owlishly. "You do?" She seemed to think for a minute, then broke into a grin. "It does kind of tingle, doesn't it?"
"Malfoys don't tingle." He gave his best attempt at his normal sneer, but broke into a decidedly undignified giggle. "Or if they do, they never admit it."
This was the funniest thing Ginny had ever heard. Her laughter was infectious, and Malfoy joined in. After several minutes of laughing, they were leaning on each other, which was all that kept them from sliding to the ground. Ginny managed to catch her breath enough to gasp, "Ew, ferret cooties!", which just set them both off again.
Even in an altered state, laughter can't last forever. Draco's stomach growled and that seemed to be the signal for them to settle down. He threw his scrub brush at Neville's now-empty cauldron. "This is ludicrous. I'm going to boil Longbottom for soup. And his ruddy toad."
"I might just help. It's all his fault I'm stuck here." Ginny hiccuped and swished a cloth half-heartedly around the bottom of a cauldron while staring at Malfoy fixedly.
"What?" He wobbled a bit as he tried to stare back, but had trouble focusing.
Ginny blinked several times. "Is your hair growing?"
He reached up and ran his hands through it. "I don't think so." He pushed his hands through his hair again, slowly. "Feels weird, though. It's not soft enough."
Without further ado, he dunked his head under the faucet that had been open to pour water into a dirty cauldron. Ginny shrieked with laughter again, but stopped when he stood up, looking sulky, and said, "It's nice and soft now."
"I'm hungry." Ginny dropped her washcloth and started fumbling through her clothes.
Draco shoved his wet hair away from his face, only to stare fixedly at his hand. After a few seconds he shook his head and visibly pulled himself together. "Dinner was ages ago, no chance of getting food at this hour."
"Hah! Shows what you know." Ginny finally remembered why she was digging through her pockets and pulled out her wand. A swish and a flick and a few words later, the room was spotless - and bare.
"Where did all the cauldrons go?" Draco's hand was still moving, as if the scrub brush he has picked up was still in contact with something.
Ginny looked around, feeling vaguely like she should be concerned about the complete lack of deskosity in her surroundings. "I don't know... But wherever they are, they're clean, so we can go eat."
A smile like a sunrise burst onto his face. "Wicked."
Draco thought that tickling the pear to get in the kitchen was brilliant, and had to try it himself before they went in. Ginny admired the way he managed to get the house elves to take them to a small parlor and provide them with enough food for a regiment without spending an hour explaining, as she always seemed to. They agreed that Neville Longbottom was due a horrible revenge, despite their evening having turned out to be fun. Gradually the colors and textures all around them started to become less fascinating, and they focused more on talking.
"What's your deepest, darkest secret?" Ginny's head rolled backwards as a wave of dizziness flowed over her.
"Weasel, if I told anyone, there wouldn't be a point to it being the deepest and darkest." Ginny snorted at this, or possibly at the spoon he had balanced on his nose. "Anyway, you go first. Tell me your somewhat deep, mostly dark secrets and I'll tell you mine."
She mulled this over but couldn't find a flaw in his logic. "Fair enough. Um, I kissed Hermione once."
The Malfoy dignity was nowhere in sight as Draco spit out the butterbeer he'd just been drinking. "You and the mudblood played tonsil hockey? Please tell me there are pictures."
"We did not! And why pictures of a pair of thirteen year old girls pressing their lips together would interest anyone, I haven't the foggiest." Ginny waggled a chicken leg at him menacingly. "Your turn."
"No, I want to hear more about this kissing business." He took a bite of the chicken leg as it went past his face and then looked at her expectantly. "Forbidden passions in the halls of Hogwarts, eh what?"
Ginny snorted. "More like Hermione's obsessive drive for perfection. She wanted to make sure she'd know where the noses go and all, so she wouldn't muck up her first real kiss." Ginny frowned as something filtered through. "And don't call her that word, it's not nice."
"I'm a Slytherin. If we're nice, we lose house points." This sent Ginny off into peals of laughter again, and Draco thought idly that the sound was quite pleasant.
"No more messing about, it's your turn to tell a secret." She had stopped laughing and started flicking peas into the fireplace.
Draco thought for a minute. "I want to bone Pansy Parkinson."
Ginny rolled her eyes. "That's about as big a secret as my wanting to someday marry Harry Potter and have his children." She took a swig of butterbeer as he sputtered, then cut him off with, "Tell me a real secret, like who your first--"
"Millicent Bulstrode. She dragged me into a broom closet and had her wicked way with me. I could barely walk afterwards, and boy, was I sore the next day." Draco grimaced at the memory and then snickered at Ginny's horrified expression.
"I had been going to say kiss." She threw a bread roll at him in disgust. "You realize I'm never going to be able to look her in the eye again."
He caught the roll and bit into it. "Oh, please. It's a natural activity, Millicent's technique aside. Everyone--" He broke off to look at her bright red face. "What am I saying, of course you haven't. Probably saving yourself for marriage."
Ginny looked morose. "Between my brothers and the underwear issue, I'll probably die a virgin."
Sensing the fun mood was dissipating, Draco tried to think of something that would make her feel better. "Come on, Weasley, you're not that bad. I mean, if you weren't a Weasley and completely not my type, I'd fuck you." After a few moments of being stared at in disbelief, he couldn't help fidgeting. "What? Can't I say something nice without being stared at like a zoo animal?"
"Don't be nice, Malfoy. You're really bad at it." Ginny laughed again and the air in the room seemed light again. "Anyway, you haven't seen the underwear in question. It could be marketed as birth control."
"So why wear it?" He shrugged and started digging around the wreckage on the table for a full bottle of butterbeer.
Ginny growled, "Because, you great looby, that's all my mother will buy for me. And it's not like the youngest Weasley has any money to go out and buy her own knickers."
Draco rolled his eyes. "Well, the solution is obvious, isn't it? Don't wear any."
Ginny turned this thought over in her mind and couldn't seem to find a problem with it. "You're right."
"Of course I am." Draco shut his eyes against a sudden feeling of vertigo. The next thing he saw when he opened his eyes was Ginny standing in front of the fire with a great deal of white cotton and elastic in her hands.
She threw it into the flames and raised a fist in the air. "As God is my witness, I'll never wear granny knickers again!"
"Very touching, Miss Weasley, but perhaps you would care to explain why the entire contents of my classroom consist of a scrub brush and what appears to be one of your shoes?" Snape's voice cracked through the room and startled Ginny into falling down with a thump. Draco cackled and Snape's attention turned to him. "And you, Mister Malfoy. Do you have anything to say?"
It seemed as if the whole world was still for a moment before Draco stood and stretched to his full height. In the tone of a Malfoy born and bred, he said haughtily, "The golden Gryf triplets are right, sir. You do look exactly like a vampire who didn't quite finish changing back from a bat."
Ginny dissolved into hysterical laughter and, after seeing the expression on Snape's face, Malfoy joined in. After a moment, Snape walked stiffly to the fireplace and threw in a handful of powder. "Pomfrey!"
A few seconds later, a harassed looking Madame Pomfrey was poking out of the flames. "What of earth is the matter, Severus?" She looked around the room and said, "Oh, dear. They are all that?"
"And went into hysterics." Snape's declaration was somewhat unnecessary, as Pomfrey could see the still giggling pair.
"Bring them to the infirmary. I'll notify Minerva and Professor Dumbledore."
Snape's glare at the two students would have put a basilisk to shame. "I presume the two of you can still manage to propel yourselves about, since you are here instead of in my newly empty classroom. Start walking."
"We're going to get expelled!" Ginny was whimpering and crying as they walked down the hallway, her freckles standing out garishly against her dead white skin. Draco patted her awkwardly on the shoulder before his eyes rolled back and he dropped to the ground.
Ginny screamed and sobbed on Draco's shirtfront until Snape cast a muting charm on her. "He will be fine, Miss Weasley, no thanks to your caterwauling."
Nothing more was said as they went to the infirmary, the unconscious Malfoy floating behind them like a helium balloon. Ginny continued to mutely cry in panic as she held Malfoy's hand and watched Snape confer with Madame Pomfrey, Professor McGonagall and Dumbledore. Draco was lowered to a bed and the attention of all the adults turned to Ginny.
"Can you tell us what happened, child?" Madame Pomfrey's voice was gentle and Ginny burst into fresh bursts of hysterical, silent tears. The nurse glared at Snape and he removed the charm, leaving Ginny to burst out with, "And it's all Neville's fault!"
Pomfrey and McGonagall gasped, and Snape looked pleased. Dumbledore just smiled faintly and said, "Just for clarity, my dear, perhaps you could explain everything that has happened, tonight, including Mr. Longbottom's involvement."
And so Ginny started babbling, going over every detail while still holding onto Draco's hand for dear life. As soon as she described the purple solid and the magenta smoke, Madame Pomfrey bustled away and came back with two vials. She poured one down Malfoy's throat and handed the other one to Ginny as soon as she was done talking. "Drink up, dear. Everything will be all right in the morning."
Ginny obeyed and found herself drifting off to sleep, hearing snatches of conversation. "Completely accidental...Longbottom producing one of the strongest illicit...Where are my desks?"
The next thing she heard was rather a lot of groaning and cursing. "Shut it, Malfoy, some of us want to sleep."
"Weasley?" He turned sharply towards her voice and bitterly regretted it. "Holy fuck, I'm dying."
Ginny groaned as a truly painful amount of sunlight assaulted her eyelids. "Consider yourself lucky. I think I might pull through."
"We didn't... I don't think... What happened?" Random images were tap dancing through his skull, but the most worrisome one was of Weasley holding her underwear. He couldn't seem to find anything else in his brain to connect it with.
"I think that adding water to Neville's cauldron made whatever was in it some kind of drug." Ginny pushed herself to a seated position and winced. "Incidentally, if you ever get anywhere with Parkinson, let me know if those knockers are real or not. There's a pool on in Gryffindor and I could use the cash."
"Hopefully I'll be able to tell you before you catch cold, prancing around with no knickers on." Draco pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed. While he was glad that his memory had returned, bringing with it the blessed knowledge that nothing had happened, his father would be rolling over in his grave if he'd heard Draco talking to a Weasley. Well, if he'd gotten a grave. His mother would have an apoplexy at his speaking so this way to a girl, but he couldn't bring himself to care.
She laughed, though, so maybe it was all right. "I can't bring myself to regret that. It deserved to burn."
Draco Malfoy then had a brilliant, ludicrous, completely barking mad and yet fun thought. "So, you want to be friends?"
"I guess we already are." Ginny seemed thoughtful for a moment, then a decidedly evil smile crept over her face. "Just think how many people we can piss off in one blow."
Draco's stomach rumbled and he saw by the clock on the wall that breakfast was currently being served in the Great Hall. With considerable effort, he pushed himself to his feet and smoothed down the front of his hopelessly wrinkled robes. "Shall we start now, then?"
"Let's." And the equally rumpled Ginny put her hand in the crook of his elbow before following him to breakfast.
Chapter One:
Confessional. Ginny and Draco get together and share boy/girlfriend
stories over wine/pot/dark chocolate/some hallucinogenic potion.
Your choice.
Required item: Underwear.
Required phrase: `And boy, was I sore the next day!'
Draco's Seventh Year:
It was all Neville Longbottom's fault.
If he hadn't gotten so flustered over creating a solid purple mass at the bottom of his cauldron instead of the runny blue liquid Snape had ordered, he wouldn't have phrased his letter declaring endless love and asking for a date in quite the...inappropriate...way that he had. Then Ginny Weasley wouldn't have choked and gasped in the middle of potions class, or burned her fingers stuffing the parchment into the flames under her cauldron before Snape could grab it and read it to the class. Ginny thought singed fingers were a fair trade for being spared humiliation so total that she would have had to dye her hair and live as a muggle. Still, it was definitely Neville's fault that she got detention.
Not that Neville's crimes ended there. No, he was so unnerved when he realized what he had written, he had turned and attempted a dead run to the potions classroom. This ended up being prevented by his running full tilt into Draco Malfoy, who was, to say the least, not pleased. That McGonagall rounded a corner at the exact moment the Slytherin cast a nasty hex could also be laid t the unfortunate Neville's door; she had been looking for him to escort him to meet with his grandmother in Dumbledore's office. This was not, in Malfoy's opinion, sufficient punishment, and he plotted revenge even as McGonagall declared that he would be serving detention. The only thing that kept the plans from being for Neville's painful demise was that the detention would be served with Snape.
He had not counted on being stuck with the littlest Weasley, scrubbing cauldrons by hand as Snape rushed off to deal with some emergency, probably caused by Longbottom if trends continued. He had definitely not counted on the purple mass in Neville's cauldron tuning into a gas as it came in contact with water.
"Malfoy? What's that?" Ginny had heard a soft whumf and seen Draco disappear in a cloud of magenta smoke. It drifted towards her and she started to cough as it entered her lungs. "I don't feel so good."
"That's funny, I feel great." Malfoy gave her a grin that could only be described as goofy.
Ginny looked at him owlishly. "You do?" She seemed to think for a minute, then broke into a grin. "It does kind of tingle, doesn't it?"
"Malfoys don't tingle." He gave his best attempt at his normal sneer, but broke into a decidedly undignified giggle. "Or if they do, they never admit it."
This was the funniest thing Ginny had ever heard. Her laughter was infectious, and Malfoy joined in. After several minutes of laughing, they were leaning on each other, which was all that kept them from sliding to the ground. Ginny managed to catch her breath enough to gasp, "Ew, ferret cooties!", which just set them both off again.
Even in an altered state, laughter can't last forever. Draco's stomach growled and that seemed to be the signal for them to settle down. He threw his scrub brush at Neville's now-empty cauldron. "This is ludicrous. I'm going to boil Longbottom for soup. And his ruddy toad."
"I might just help. It's all his fault I'm stuck here." Ginny hiccuped and swished a cloth half-heartedly around the bottom of a cauldron while staring at Malfoy fixedly.
"What?" He wobbled a bit as he tried to stare back, but had trouble focusing.
Ginny blinked several times. "Is your hair growing?"
He reached up and ran his hands through it. "I don't think so." He pushed his hands through his hair again, slowly. "Feels weird, though. It's not soft enough."
Without further ado, he dunked his head under the faucet that had been open to pour water into a dirty cauldron. Ginny shrieked with laughter again, but stopped when he stood up, looking sulky, and said, "It's nice and soft now."
"I'm hungry." Ginny dropped her washcloth and started fumbling through her clothes.
Draco shoved his wet hair away from his face, only to stare fixedly at his hand. After a few seconds he shook his head and visibly pulled himself together. "Dinner was ages ago, no chance of getting food at this hour."
"Hah! Shows what you know." Ginny finally remembered why she was digging through her pockets and pulled out her wand. A swish and a flick and a few words later, the room was spotless - and bare.
"Where did all the cauldrons go?" Draco's hand was still moving, as if the scrub brush he has picked up was still in contact with something.
Ginny looked around, feeling vaguely like she should be concerned about the complete lack of deskosity in her surroundings. "I don't know... But wherever they are, they're clean, so we can go eat."
A smile like a sunrise burst onto his face. "Wicked."
Draco thought that tickling the pear to get in the kitchen was brilliant, and had to try it himself before they went in. Ginny admired the way he managed to get the house elves to take them to a small parlor and provide them with enough food for a regiment without spending an hour explaining, as she always seemed to. They agreed that Neville Longbottom was due a horrible revenge, despite their evening having turned out to be fun. Gradually the colors and textures all around them started to become less fascinating, and they focused more on talking.
"What's your deepest, darkest secret?" Ginny's head rolled backwards as a wave of dizziness flowed over her.
"Weasel, if I told anyone, there wouldn't be a point to it being the deepest and darkest." Ginny snorted at this, or possibly at the spoon he had balanced on his nose. "Anyway, you go first. Tell me your somewhat deep, mostly dark secrets and I'll tell you mine."
She mulled this over but couldn't find a flaw in his logic. "Fair enough. Um, I kissed Hermione once."
The Malfoy dignity was nowhere in sight as Draco spit out the butterbeer he'd just been drinking. "You and the mudblood played tonsil hockey? Please tell me there are pictures."
"We did not! And why pictures of a pair of thirteen year old girls pressing their lips together would interest anyone, I haven't the foggiest." Ginny waggled a chicken leg at him menacingly. "Your turn."
"No, I want to hear more about this kissing business." He took a bite of the chicken leg as it went past his face and then looked at her expectantly. "Forbidden passions in the halls of Hogwarts, eh what?"
Ginny snorted. "More like Hermione's obsessive drive for perfection. She wanted to make sure she'd know where the noses go and all, so she wouldn't muck up her first real kiss." Ginny frowned as something filtered through. "And don't call her that word, it's not nice."
"I'm a Slytherin. If we're nice, we lose house points." This sent Ginny off into peals of laughter again, and Draco thought idly that the sound was quite pleasant.
"No more messing about, it's your turn to tell a secret." She had stopped laughing and started flicking peas into the fireplace.
Draco thought for a minute. "I want to bone Pansy Parkinson."
Ginny rolled her eyes. "That's about as big a secret as my wanting to someday marry Harry Potter and have his children." She took a swig of butterbeer as he sputtered, then cut him off with, "Tell me a real secret, like who your first--"
"Millicent Bulstrode. She dragged me into a broom closet and had her wicked way with me. I could barely walk afterwards, and boy, was I sore the next day." Draco grimaced at the memory and then snickered at Ginny's horrified expression.
"I had been going to say kiss." She threw a bread roll at him in disgust. "You realize I'm never going to be able to look her in the eye again."
He caught the roll and bit into it. "Oh, please. It's a natural activity, Millicent's technique aside. Everyone--" He broke off to look at her bright red face. "What am I saying, of course you haven't. Probably saving yourself for marriage."
Ginny looked morose. "Between my brothers and the underwear issue, I'll probably die a virgin."
Sensing the fun mood was dissipating, Draco tried to think of something that would make her feel better. "Come on, Weasley, you're not that bad. I mean, if you weren't a Weasley and completely not my type, I'd fuck you." After a few moments of being stared at in disbelief, he couldn't help fidgeting. "What? Can't I say something nice without being stared at like a zoo animal?"
"Don't be nice, Malfoy. You're really bad at it." Ginny laughed again and the air in the room seemed light again. "Anyway, you haven't seen the underwear in question. It could be marketed as birth control."
"So why wear it?" He shrugged and started digging around the wreckage on the table for a full bottle of butterbeer.
Ginny growled, "Because, you great looby, that's all my mother will buy for me. And it's not like the youngest Weasley has any money to go out and buy her own knickers."
Draco rolled his eyes. "Well, the solution is obvious, isn't it? Don't wear any."
Ginny turned this thought over in her mind and couldn't seem to find a problem with it. "You're right."
"Of course I am." Draco shut his eyes against a sudden feeling of vertigo. The next thing he saw when he opened his eyes was Ginny standing in front of the fire with a great deal of white cotton and elastic in her hands.
She threw it into the flames and raised a fist in the air. "As God is my witness, I'll never wear granny knickers again!"
"Very touching, Miss Weasley, but perhaps you would care to explain why the entire contents of my classroom consist of a scrub brush and what appears to be one of your shoes?" Snape's voice cracked through the room and startled Ginny into falling down with a thump. Draco cackled and Snape's attention turned to him. "And you, Mister Malfoy. Do you have anything to say?"
It seemed as if the whole world was still for a moment before Draco stood and stretched to his full height. In the tone of a Malfoy born and bred, he said haughtily, "The golden Gryf triplets are right, sir. You do look exactly like a vampire who didn't quite finish changing back from a bat."
Ginny dissolved into hysterical laughter and, after seeing the expression on Snape's face, Malfoy joined in. After a moment, Snape walked stiffly to the fireplace and threw in a handful of powder. "Pomfrey!"
A few seconds later, a harassed looking Madame Pomfrey was poking out of the flames. "What of earth is the matter, Severus?" She looked around the room and said, "Oh, dear. They are all that?"
"And went into hysterics." Snape's declaration was somewhat unnecessary, as Pomfrey could see the still giggling pair.
"Bring them to the infirmary. I'll notify Minerva and Professor Dumbledore."
Snape's glare at the two students would have put a basilisk to shame. "I presume the two of you can still manage to propel yourselves about, since you are here instead of in my newly empty classroom. Start walking."
"We're going to get expelled!" Ginny was whimpering and crying as they walked down the hallway, her freckles standing out garishly against her dead white skin. Draco patted her awkwardly on the shoulder before his eyes rolled back and he dropped to the ground.
Ginny screamed and sobbed on Draco's shirtfront until Snape cast a muting charm on her. "He will be fine, Miss Weasley, no thanks to your caterwauling."
Nothing more was said as they went to the infirmary, the unconscious Malfoy floating behind them like a helium balloon. Ginny continued to mutely cry in panic as she held Malfoy's hand and watched Snape confer with Madame Pomfrey, Professor McGonagall and Dumbledore. Draco was lowered to a bed and the attention of all the adults turned to Ginny.
"Can you tell us what happened, child?" Madame Pomfrey's voice was gentle and Ginny burst into fresh bursts of hysterical, silent tears. The nurse glared at Snape and he removed the charm, leaving Ginny to burst out with, "And it's all Neville's fault!"
Pomfrey and McGonagall gasped, and Snape looked pleased. Dumbledore just smiled faintly and said, "Just for clarity, my dear, perhaps you could explain everything that has happened, tonight, including Mr. Longbottom's involvement."
And so Ginny started babbling, going over every detail while still holding onto Draco's hand for dear life. As soon as she described the purple solid and the magenta smoke, Madame Pomfrey bustled away and came back with two vials. She poured one down Malfoy's throat and handed the other one to Ginny as soon as she was done talking. "Drink up, dear. Everything will be all right in the morning."
Ginny obeyed and found herself drifting off to sleep, hearing snatches of conversation. "Completely accidental...Longbottom producing one of the strongest illicit...Where are my desks?"
The next thing she heard was rather a lot of groaning and cursing. "Shut it, Malfoy, some of us want to sleep."
"Weasley?" He turned sharply towards her voice and bitterly regretted it. "Holy fuck, I'm dying."
Ginny groaned as a truly painful amount of sunlight assaulted her eyelids. "Consider yourself lucky. I think I might pull through."
"We didn't... I don't think... What happened?" Random images were tap dancing through his skull, but the most worrisome one was of Weasley holding her underwear. He couldn't seem to find anything else in his brain to connect it with.
"I think that adding water to Neville's cauldron made whatever was in it some kind of drug." Ginny pushed herself to a seated position and winced. "Incidentally, if you ever get anywhere with Parkinson, let me know if those knockers are real or not. There's a pool on in Gryffindor and I could use the cash."
"Hopefully I'll be able to tell you before you catch cold, prancing around with no knickers on." Draco pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed. While he was glad that his memory had returned, bringing with it the blessed knowledge that nothing had happened, his father would be rolling over in his grave if he'd heard Draco talking to a Weasley. Well, if he'd gotten a grave. His mother would have an apoplexy at his speaking so this way to a girl, but he couldn't bring himself to care.
She laughed, though, so maybe it was all right. "I can't bring myself to regret that. It deserved to burn."
Draco Malfoy then had a brilliant, ludicrous, completely barking mad and yet fun thought. "So, you want to be friends?"
"I guess we already are." Ginny seemed thoughtful for a moment, then a decidedly evil smile crept over her face. "Just think how many people we can piss off in one blow."
Draco's stomach rumbled and he saw by the clock on the wall that breakfast was currently being served in the Great Hall. With considerable effort, he pushed himself to his feet and smoothed down the front of his hopelessly wrinkled robes. "Shall we start now, then?"
"Let's." And the equally rumpled Ginny put her hand in the crook of his elbow before following him to breakfast.