Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Phantom of the Opera. Unfortunately. If I did, Harry would be dead, and so would the fop (aka Raoul) from PotO. Evil would rule all, and Draco and Ginny would be together. Or Tom Riddle and Ginny, I'm not picky. OK, done now.
There's really no excuse as to why I'm so late in posting. Really, there isn't. I have the whole afternoon most days to write or do whatever I want (from about 1:00 on), so I don't see why I haven't been writing this fic. Maybe it's because I've got no idea WHATSOEVER where this fic is going. I started this story because I wanted to join Harry Potter and Phantom of the Opera in a semicreative way, not because I had a brilliant plot idea. For that, I'm sincerely sorry, along with being sorry for taking so damn long to write this. I've had about half of this for a while, but hadn't finished until a few hours ago.
Ginny walked around the next day like a zombie. She was dead tired and frustrated to death with Draco (she couldn't call him Angel right then, could she?). Why did he have to be an arse? She pondered this during History of Magic.
"Hello, earth to Ginny," Meg said, waving a hand in front of Ginny's face. "The bell rang and you're still sitting there. Are you OK?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Ginny said, shoving her stuff hastily in her bag. "Just a bit tired."
Meg looked at her suspiciously. "You weren't sneaking off in the middle of the night again, were you? You know you're not supposed to."
"I didn't sneak off," Ginny said truthfully. Telling Meg that she was leaving, even if Meg didn't remember it, qualified it as not sneaking off. "Come on, we've got to go to Transfiguration."
The two girls ran to the Transfiguration classroom two floors away, and had just barely slid into their seats when the bell rang. McGonagall quickly set the class to transfiguring a canary to a pocketwatch and have it sing the time.
"Can you believe this?" Meg groused ten minutes later. "All I've managed to do is make mine tick. It still looks like a canary! I'm never going to get this."
"Me either," Ginny said, yawning. She couldn't concentrate with her fatigue going at full strength. "I'm so tired."
"Didn't your wandless magic teacher teach you anything like this?" Meg asked, brushing blonde hair out of her face as she attempted the spell once more.
Ginny shook her head. "Nope. My teacher didn't teach me anything like this." That was very true. Draco had taught her mostly curses and battle spells. Turning your opponent into a pocket watch wasn't exactly the perfect battle strategy. There was the occasional other type of spell, like the spell to light candles using only her hand, but that was basically it.
"Damn. Okay, again." Meg cast the spell again and the bird turned into a pocketwatch. It was a silent pocketwatch, but a pocketwatch all the same.
"Nice," Ginny commented. She cast the spell on the canary and it, too, turned into a pocketwatch. Only, this pocketwatch lisped out the time.
"Ugh, even you got it!" Meg groaned, while Ginny smirked victoriously.
"Ha," Ginny said teasingly. "Wait, is that an insult?"
"No, of course not. Now help me make my watch sing the time!"
Ginny laughed and corrected Meg's wand movements. Soon Meg's watch was singing the time in a high, pretty soprano voice.
"Much better than mine," Ginny observed, her laugh interrupted by a huge yawn. Meg giggled.
"How much sleep did you get last night, anyway? You've been yawning and zoning out all day!" Then Meg's eyes narrowed. "You found a boy, didn't you? You've been up late doing God-knows-what with him, haven't you?"
Ginny snorted. She couldn't help it, after the fight between her and Draco last night. They hadn't even been close to a couple or anything, and she didn't have a problem with that. "No, Meg, I haven't found anyone in that way. I just couldn't sleep."
They had to stop talking then, as McGonagall came to inspect their pocketwatches. She picked Meg's up first, the clock singing sweetly, and then Ginny's, whose was hoarsely whispering the time.
"Well done, Miss Giry," McGonagall said briskly. "Miss Weasley, you still have a fair amount to do. I suggest you two stop talking and you get to work on that clock."
"Yes, Professor," Ginny said, and as the professor walked away, added under her breath, "Scrawny old bat." Meg succumbed to the giggles but quickly stopped as McGonagall looked sternly in her way.
"So, really, why didn't you sleep?" Meg whispered as Ginny tried the spell again. This time it worked, much to Ginny's relief. She had been wondering whether or not she'd be getting extra homework tonight.
"I couldn't," Ginny answered.
"Why not?"
"I don't know." Then the bell rang. Meg looked curiously at Ginny as they gathered up their stuff.
"Why is that, I wonder…" Meg mused. "You haven't met any boys. You didn't sneak out. So what did you do, Miss Ginny?"
"Did it ever occur to you that I might just have had trouble sleeping?" Ginny asked, inwardly chanting don't make me lie, don't make me lie. She really hated lying outright to someone she loved, and she had managed as of yet not to totally lie, but if Meg kept pushing, she might have to. That was something to avoid.
"Of course not! That's boring. There has to be some other, more interesting reason for your insomnia."
"There isn't," Ginny said testily. Meg raised an eyebrow.
"Right."
Ginny rolled her eyes. "Meg, give it up. I couldn't sleep. I know it's happened to you before."
"I still don't believe you," Meg said firmly as the bell rang. "I'll find out what it was if it's the last thing I do."
"Meg, if you keep going on about this, it will be the last thing you do," Ginny growled. She gathered up her stuff and walked out of the classroom, leaving Meg to follow behind, deep in thought.
"So, Ginny, how was your day?" Hermione asked later that night.
Ginny shrugged, her mouth full of potato. She swallowed and said, "Can't complain." Even though there totally was a reason to complain. She was still pissed at her Angel – Malfoy, actually – and that made her in a generally bad mood. Meg was still trying to figure out what was wrong.
"Oh, good," Hermione said distractedly. Ginny rolled her eyes and turned back to eating. Obviously that had just been a formality; there were more important things to do than to find out about little Ginny Weasley.
"Ginny, could you please pass me the rolls?" Meg asked at the same time as two first-year boys and one first-year girl stepped up behind the redhead.
"Excuse me," one of the boys said. Ginny turned around.
"Yes?"
"Well," the boy seemed to be fairly nervous about this; he kept glancing at his companions. "I – we – we were wondering if you could show us some wandless magic."
"Um, no," Ginny said. "I'm sorry, but no."
"Please? I'd really like to see it," the girl pleaded.
"No! Now go eat your lunch."
Looking dejected, the three walked back to their places. Ginny turned back to face the table and saw several people looking at her.
"What?"
"Nothing," most of them muttered and they turned away. All except for Harry, Ron, and Hermione, whose heads had swiveled on their necks.
"Ginny," Harry started, "you still haven't told us how you learned wandless magic."
"Or who the angel is," Ron put in. Ginny rolled her eyes.
"There isn't an 'Angel'," she said. "I don't know where Meg got the idea in the first place. You know her; she's always making stuff up."
Meg gave an outraged squawk and smacked Ginny. "I do not! That note mentioned an Angel!"
"Maybe I made it all up. Maybe I wrote the note myself to get out of trouble."
"Maybe you didn't," Meg retorted. "It wasn't your handwriting. I saw it, remember? And you said you had never seen it."
"I wrote it with my left hand," Ginny lied. "And I lied."
"Oh?"
"Yeah."
"Let's see, then." That was Ron's voice, very serious.
"I can't," Ginny said. "My hand hurts. I banged it on the door frame this morning." Which was a complete and utter lie, but a necessary one. She hated lying outright to them, and knew that they were going to come and bite her in the arse sometime, but she would deal with that when it came.
"Your hand doesn't look hurt to me," Ron said. Ginny cradled her hand as if it hurt.
"It hurts, though. It's not my fault I don't bruise easily."
"Yes it is!"
"Ron, you're being stupid," Ginny said severely. "Can someone please pass me the rolls?"
"Hey, I wanted the rolls first," Meg whined, and the conversation about the Angel was over, much to Ginny's relief.
Below the floor, in a secret tunnel built by Salazar Slytherin himself – who not only built the Chamber of Secrets, but also built a series of secret tunnels below the floors, behind the walls, in the rafters, anywhere there was space – a boy (man, really) was walking on his way to the kitchen to steal some food when voices trickled down through the stone. He could hear bits and pieces of their conversation.
"There isn't an 'Angel'-" Ginny's voice said.
"-that note-" Ginny's friend Meg said, the rest of the sentence muffled by a large amount of stone. Draco Malfoy stopped where he was and tried to listen, interested.
"-wrote the note myself-" said Ginny.
Draco couldn't hear anything else for a while, and then smirked when he clearly heard Ginny say, "Ron, you're being stupid," and then something about rolls. Convinced that the conversation about him was over, he went on his way.
If he had waited just a bit, until lunch was almost over, he might have heard Meg ask Ginny about her wandless magic teacher, and if she had seen him lately. He might have heard Ginny shush Meg and whisper 'no,' and he might have heard Meg ask Ginny if she missed him.
If he had stayed, he might have heard Ginny murmur, "Yes," as if admitting it to herself.
But he didn't.
So there you go. only 5 pages, but it's longer than the other one by a few hundred words. I figured you guys would rather have a short chapter in a long while rather than an only slightly longer chapter in a longer while. Oh, and I suppose I should tell you to review. Maybe good reviews will make my headache go away. (hint hint)
-Kinz