Hey, everybody. So… this fic is now so old that it is incompatible with TWO books' worth of cannon. Heh. Er… sorry. Wordcandy continues to take up the lion's share of my free time, and I'm not much good at updating that, either. Anyway, once I've finished this version of "Wednesday's Child", I'm planning to clean everything up, do my best to incorporate some (but not much, obviously) cannon authenticity to it, and submit it to Mynuet's site. Until then, we're just going to continue charging along willy-nilly, ignoring anything Rowling has published since 2001, okay?

As always, thanks so much for the kind reviews and encouragement. They truly mean a lot to me.

Chapter Fourteen

Draco sprinted around the corner and skidded to a halt, perfectly horrified at the sight in front of him. A small, hunched man was crouched over Ginny's unmoving body. He was staring up at Draco with abject terror written across his rat-like features.

"…Lucius?" whispered the man, fear in every syllable, squinting at Draco in the dim light. "What are you doing here? My God, is it time? We're attacking? Already?" He whimpered. "Why- why was I not told? Is… is the Dark Lord displeased with me?"

Draco's Slytherin brain was moving at a million miles an hour. The man had clearly mistaken him for his father, and there had to be a way to turn that to his advantage. Unfortunately, he couldn't seem to take his eyes off of Ginny's body long enough to come up with a brilliant plan. Her face was deathly pale, her short hair a puddle of dark copper on the flagstones. Was she dead? How could he tell? And how could he get rid of the wizard standing over her? "Yes," he said slowly, keeping his head bent so the man couldn't get a better look at his face. "It's time. Um… you'd better leave. Th-they need you right outside the Hogwarts gates." His brain scrambled for a detail vague enough not to be immediately contradicted but realistic enough to make his story plausible. "Potter's being a problem." There. That one was pretty much a given.

And it worked. With another moan, the man seemed to disappear inside his cloak. Draco dragged his eyes away from Ginny long enough to watch as a small, dark shape scuttled across the floor and disappeared through a hole under a tapestry. The moment the intruder had left, Draco practically dove for Ginny. She wasn't moving, and she didn't appear to be breathing, but that told him exactly nothing. She needed help, that much was certain. Kneeling, Draco hoisted Ginny over his shoulder in an awkward fireman's lift and charged hell-for-leather in the direction of the hospital wing.

He didn't even take the time to think of a cover story to explain what he was doing with an armload of unconscious Weasley.

It was the first truly unselfish thing he'd ever done.

ooooo

It was fifty-six seconds before Draco Malfoy was going to burst into the hospital wing, and Madam Pomfrey's day was going along swimmingly. At long last, her most disturbing patient, a small Ravenclaw forth year named Sebastian Hertford, had woken up from the curse-induced coma that had left him unconscious and perfectly immobile for weeks. This was good news for both Sebastian and Alastair Woodley, the other student that had been delivered to the hospital wing with an identical curse hovering over him. Sebastian's small room in the corner of the hospital wing was crowded with Hogwarts staff, and Pomfrey was bustling around her patient, force-feeding him chocolate, and shooting out peremptory commands left and right. She was enjoying herself hugely- there was nothing the Hogwarts mediwitch liked better than bossing people about.

All of that was about to change, of course, when Draco showed up. But he wasn't there yet, so she was still having fun. (This, boys and girls, is what we call "blissful ignorance".)

"So," McGonagall said, smiling rather grimly at the boy and attempting to conceal her impatience. "Tell us what happened, then."

"Well…." The little Ravenclaw hesitated, biting his lip. He looked faintly green around the gills and ready to cry. "It's not very clear, I'm afraid, Professor. I… I think I remember seeing a rat. And then there was a man… and then there was a flash of light and I don't remember anything else."

"What did the man look like?" McGonagall was trying, only semi-successfully, to avoid falling into full-on interrogation mode. "Did he say anything?"

"Don't hover over the boy so, Minerva," Madam Pomfrey said authoritatively. "He needs his re-"

It was at this point that Draco burst into the hospital wing, shouting for help, and Madam Pomfrey's afternoon began to take what would soon become a drastic turn for the worse.

"My heavens-" she began, charging toward Ginny Weasley, "what did you do, Malfoy?"

"I didn't do anything, you stupid cow!" Draco snapped, sliding Ginny off of his shoulder and onto a hospital bed. "I found her like this. Just- just fix her, do you hear me? Fix her."

Pushing the boy aside, Madam Pomfrey began a hurried examination, waving her wand over Ginny's body. "Hmm. Nothing broken, no internal bleeding. She's not breathing, but she's not dead, either.…" She began to move her wand in the complicated maneuver that would allow her to diagnose a curse. "The same as the others," she muttered, as a green wisp of smoke rose from Ginny's chest as she ran her wand over it. There was nothing to be done. Sighing, Madam Pomfrey began to whisper the spells that would keep Ginny's body clean and healthy during the weeks it would take for her to wake up. After she'd finished, she straightened up, freezing as she saw the expression on Draco Malfoy's face.

Well. She had no idea that Malfoys could look like that.

Wonderingly, she tried to explain, to help- anything to take that incredible expression off of his face. Her mind spinning, Madam Pomfrey spoke with unusual gentleness. "Er- she'll be fine, Mr. Malfoy. It's the same as the others- one of them just woke up a few minutes ago. Miss Weasley will be like this for a few weeks, but then she'll be up and about again."

Draco just looked at her for a moment. Then, haltingly, he began to speak, his voice hoarse. "There was a man in the corridor- I think he was a Death Eater. You should warn the oth-"

And then, with a tremendous crash, every window in the hospital wing shattered. Alarm bells wailed, and people began to scream.

Draco's hastily concocted lie, the one that had seemed so plausible to the man in the corridor, had come true.

The Death Eaters had come to Hogwarts.

ooooo

All the teachers had long since rushed out, wands drawn, curses ready at their lips. Pandemonium was everywhere- screams and hexes echoed through the corridors. Draco was left alone with Ginny in a small room in the Hospital Wing, staring down at her. He was thinking furiously. He thought about how cold his house in France was, and everything his parents had ever taught him. He weighed the worth of that against the feeling of Ginny Weasley's lips, an evening spent helping her with her potions homework, and the omelet that he'd never successfully made. He considered the two groups that were fighting so desperately all around him, and wondered which one was going to fight with more passion.

Sighing heavily, his mind made up, Draco rolled up his sleeves, drew his wand, and walked out into the corridor, locking the door behind him. There was a battle to fight, and now that he had chosen his side he felt that he really owed it to the Malfoy name to make his stand in a truly spectacular fashion.

ooooo

Eighteen days later, Ginny Weasley woke up to a comfortingly familiar sight- Hermione Granger reading a book beside her bed- and a truly wicked headache. "Owww…" she moaned, hands coming up to cover her eyes. "My God, what happened?"

"Oh, good, you're awake," Hermione said, closing her book, marking her place with one finger. "Well, you missed out on quite a bit, really. The big battle happened, and we won. Voldemort's dead. Don't worry," she added hastily, as Ginny's mouth dropped open, "Everyone survived intact." Hermione thought about the veracity of what she'd just said for a moment and winced a little. "Well, mostly intact." She thought about it a moment longer. Hermione was a very honest girl. It was a constant affliction to her. "Well… everyone survived, anyway." She gave the younger girl a slightly strained smile. "So… never mind about that! Hey," she continued brightly, "how would you feel about a chocolate frog?"

Ginny tried to process this. She failed. She tried again, hoping that more specific question would lead to more comprehensible information. "No, I mean why do I have this splitting headache?"

"Oh, that," Hermione said, relieved to have a question she could answer without any prevarication. "Well, we don't know everything, but it seems that Peter Pettigrew was sneaking into Hogwarts to spy for Voldemort. You and the other two students that were knocked out seem to have run into him, and he cursed you so you wouldn't be able to say anything. I imagine the headache is a side affect of that."

Ginny tried opening one eye, decided that it hurt too much, and covered them up again. "Er… Hermione? What happened to Malfoy?" She could practically hear Hermione's eyebrows shoot up, and tried, rather lamely, to improve matters. "He was, um, sort of around when I…." She trailed off.

"Well," the older girl said, clearly struggling to suppress a flood of rather awkward questions, "Malfoy was the one who brought you here, apparently. Actually," continued Hermione cautiously, eyeing Ginny's prone form, "Malfoy's been one of the biggest surprises of the past few weeks."

Ginny peeked at her through her fingers. "How so?"

"Well, during the battle he risked his life to save two Hufflepuff first years and Neville Longbottom," Hermione said slowly. "No one can understand it. I mean, I would have bet good money that Draco Malfoy would have been the first to welcome the Death Eaters with open arms, but apparently he just appeared out of nowhere and started firing curses left and right."

Ginny's heart was beating rather loudly.

"Although I can't say that fighting on our side has improved his disposition any," Hermione continued, her expression souring. "Neville screwed up his courage two days ago at dinner and went over to the Slytherin table to say thank-you, and Malfoy shouted something about not doing it for him, turned poor Neville into a wombat and flounced off. It turns out that wombats don't have any bladder control, did you know? And it took us simply ages to get the curse off him. So no one else has been willing to ask Malfoy any questions about what changed his mind about fighting for the Death Eaters."

"Hermione?" Ginny whispered, her voice very small. "Could- could you get Malfoy for me?"

"No way," Hermione said, shaking her bushy head. "I told you, that wombat curse is nasty-"

Ginny lowered her hands, but her eyes remained downcast. "Please? It's… rather important."

Something in her voice must have convinced Hermione that she meant it, because, heaving a sigh, Hermione set down her book and got out of her chair. "Ginny, I don't know why you want to talk to Malfoy, and I suspect that I don't want to know," she said suspiciously. "I'll get him for you, but first- promise me that you're not going to do anything stupid."

"I promise."

"And that this won't get me or you or anyone- well, anyone other than Malfoy- into trouble."

"I promise."

"And that you'll never, ever tell Ron that I brought Malfoy here to see you."

"I promise."

There was a pause, and then an even bigger sigh. "…fine, then."

ooooo

Fifteen minutes later, Hermione returned. There was a long-suffering look on her face. Draco Malfoy was right behind her, his face unreadable.

"Well," Hermione said, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, as though she were hoping for some kind of divine intervention. "Here we all are, then. Ginny, you wanted to talk to Malf-"

"Go away, Granger," Draco ordered, never moving his eyes from Ginny's face.

"Honestly-"

"Er, sorry, Hermione," Ginny interrupted quietly. She was staring right back at Draco, her face just as unreadable as his. "But could we have a moment alone?"

Hermione looked pained. "You remember everything you promised?"

Ginny assured her that she did.

"I'm going to regret this, I know I am." Hermione said, shook her head, and walked out of the room.

Draco and Ginny stared at each other for a long moment in silence. Then they both spoke at the same time, and then they simultaneously stopped talking. There was another long silence, and then Draco gave a little huff of pure irritation, walked across the room, bent his head to Ginny's, and kissed her.

TBC

One more chapter, guys, and then an epilogue! We're almost done! Woot!