First time uploading. Hope you like it!

Disclaimer: I do not own HP or any of its wonderful characters.

A/N: This was originally written in Hebrew, so there may be some grammar mistakes. :/

Enjoy! xx

The first time was at the ball in fourth year. Draco was leaning on the wall casually, his arms crossed and his face empty from emotion. He got rid of Pansy after sneaking an indigestion potion into her pumpkin juice, and was now glancing at the dancers with boredom.

Granger was dancing with Victor Krum, looking horridly happy. Potter and Weasley were abandoned by the Patil twins – Draco watched them sitting alone looking grim next to the table with big satisfaction – and he quickly turned his eyes the other way when they landed on Hagrid and Madame Maxime. Some things just shouldn't be legally possible. Merlin, think about the children.

Looking for something else to focus on he found the young Weasley and Longbottom dancing clumsily at the edge of the crowd. The Gryffindor boy looked like he was under Petrificus Totalus and now someone found it funny to move him around in motions that hardly looked like dancing. Draco found himself feeling bad for the Weasel, which in her bright mint dress and her flaming hair reminded him, more than anything, of an exotic bird struggling to get out of a cage.

He shook his head. He was feeling bad for her in a superior way, of course. The girl didn't have much luck in her short life – six hot blooded savages as brothers, two muggle-loving parents, and a house the size of a Fire Whisky barrel to contain them all. He almost amused himself with the idea of asking her to dance – just to give her a short moment of happiness in her miserable life, and mostly to see the look on her brother's face – but the song changed, and she took the opportunity to slip away from Longbottom and disappear between the dancers with what looked like a mumbled apology.

Fourteen-year-old Draco shrugged in feigned indifference, but his head insisted on painting the tip of her dress, before she vanished completely between a red Durmstrang cloak and a soft silk dress from Beauxbatons, as a flash of feathers a moment after soaring.

The second time was at Gryffindor's victory party. Draco, in his mud filled Quidditch uniform, was sulking his way to the Slytherin common room – or actually, just sulking around the castle, looking for something to take his anger out on – when music snuck into his ears from the end of the corridor.

A hint of curiosity crossed the dark cloud that surrounded him, and Draco found himself walking quietly to the classroom that was out of use for ages; when he got close enough he noticed, through the open door, the colors of red and gold. He almost turned his back that moment when he recognized the song in the background, and when disbelief filled him he couldn't stop himself from casting a Disillusionment Charm and stepping silently into the room.

It's not like he got a chance to watch Gryffindor girls dancing to Britney Spears every day (as muggle as she was, her songs were, well, pleasant to most teenage boys, wizards or not).

Draco went to the corner, finding a great observation point on the clear space in the middle of the room, that was full with excited Gryffindor girls and a few boys that looked surprised by their own good luck. He meant to lean back and enjoy the view when an upset voice was heard from his right.

"Come on, Mione. I'm not a child!" the Weaslett said angrily. Draco's grey eyes focused on her tight shirt that ended very highly above her jeans' waistline, which wrapped her thighs all the way down to her thin ankles.

"I'm not going to get you fire whiskey, Gin. Sorry. Half of your brothers are in the room." to the redhead's raised eyebrow, the bushy-haired girl added: "Besides, you're underage."

"Fine!" Weasley lifted her nose, and Draco felt a bud of appreciation rising within him. He has never seen anybody standing up to Granger like this. "I don't need to get drunk in order to dance." and with that she crossed the room to the center, dragged Dean Thomas to the improvised dance floor and started to – oh. oh.

The Weasel... knew how to move. And she, the way she put it, was definitely no longer a child; the year that passed has left her full in all the right places – he couldn't help but noticing, after all, with the way she grabbed Thomas' hands and put them on her hips...

Commanding himself to peel off the floor, Draco made it out of the room mere seconds before the Disillusionment Charm dissolved.

The third time was too embarrassing to admit to anyone but himself. Weasley grabbed his hand and led him to a clearing that was full of light and shadows that blended into one, and when she danced between the spots of fire and the darkness of the night Draco couldn't do anything else but to stare; like a moth caught in the light and now had no choice but to keep moving towards what will be the death of him.

A flute filled the night with a minor melody, that echoed in his head and lingered when the scenes before his eyes switched - Ginny leading him through the trees and biting her lips when she turned to look at him; Ginny standing underneath the forest foliage, barely dressed and implicating him with her finger to get closer; and over and over again the same Ginny next to the fire, her arms raised, her hips moving back and forth, her waist leading her in the same hypnotic, dizzying dance, that seemed to respond to the flames of the fire no less than to the enchanting melody flowing around them.

She looked straight at him with her big brown eyes and the dream escaped from his grip, faded like smoke between his fingers.

Draco couldn't go back to sleep for the rest of the night.

The fourth time wasn't an actual dance, but he couldn't help but to call it that. Five death eaters closed on the sixteen-years-old girl, that fought ceaselessly, her hair twirling in the air like a satin ribbon (he remembered a sight from a different life; colourful ribbons tied to a pillar at spring, and muggle children gripping the tip of each ribbon before his mother found him at the edge of the crowd and took him home. In the future he will answer to those who'll ask that he learned how to frown before he learned how to speak) – explosions and screams and the sound of crushing stones were her music when she shot hexes everywhere, almost damaging the armor he was crouched behind.

"That little bitch hit Rookwood!" called a feminine voice behind one of the masks, before letting out a surprised sound. The body collapsed forward and Longbottom nodded at Weasley before running ahead to another battle.

Yes, Draco found himself thinking. Don't interrupt her dance. Not again.

Her odds looked better than ever; Lupin and a purple haired woman joined the fight and helped her defeat the remaining three. He saw her smiling in triumph a moment before his aunt's figure loomed behind her.

"Ginny, careful!"

Too late, too late. She didn't stand a chance against aunt Bella -

He blinked, and in the next moment the woman was lying on the floor, her hair slowly fading to mousey brown.

Weasley screamed.

The werewolf shot a rain of hexes at Dolohov who appeared from the direction of the Great Hall, and Draco's heart sank in his chest. He knew they didn't stand a chance. Not against Bellatrix, now that Dolohov has joined her... unless –

The werewolf figured it out a second after he did. "Ginny, run! I'll hold them back – " a cut gaped in his arm, "Ginny, now!"

"Remus – "

"Go!" Lupin yelled. Ginny turned on her heels, ducked under Bellatrix's reached arm – the cage's door slammed helplessly; a flap of wings filled his head – and ran away. Draco moved between the sculptures across the wall, until the girl stopped, diving into her next battle.

And Draco watched.

The fifth time is entirely different. The choreography their joined bodies create together ascends all the others, even the one she danced back then in his dream, in the light of the bonfire and between the trees – maybe because this time he's a part of it, gripping her hips when she moves above him, flips her over and moves inside of her more and more until her fingernails leave deep scratches in him and his name leaves her lips as a loud cry for the last time. His fingers dig into her shoulder when he finds his release a moment after her, and the dance comes to an end.

It's late; the clock on the wall shows twelve, Draco mentions to himself when he rolls aside, both of them breathing heavily.

"Stay tonight," Draco says quietly while she rests her ginger head on his shoulder. He doesn't mention why: she knows his sleep is quiet only when she is there; that it's empty from bodies and blood only when his hand are wrapped around her thin waist. Even on the hardest nights he finds himself wondering how beautiful and fragile she can be, and yet so deadly.

Ginny smiles. "You got food and sex, and you only need sleep and Quidditch to be the happiest man in the world." pushing her hair from her face, she clings onto him underneath the covers. A comfortable silence falls upon them.

"I've been watching you, you know," he says suddenly. His voice is quiet, and his eyes don't meet hers. "All this time. From the Yule Ball in fourth year... you even managed to somehow sneak into my dreams. If I wasn't such a fool... I should've understood..."

Her thumb brushes his cheek downwards, to his bristles covered jawline. "When you jumped from behind that sculpture... for a moment I thought that you are going to kill me." she says quietly. "But then, something in your eyes..." a small smile decorates her lips. "You understood, eventually. That's what matters."

He returns a smile and accepts the gentle kiss she's pressing to his lips. While they continue speaking into the night, about anything and nothing at all, a small cloud of distress fades away from Draco's chest. Things seem to fall into place, and the weight of the mistakes he made gets lighter and lighter every day. Somewhere in an alternative universe the fourteen-year-old Draco asked Ginny to dance and kept all the cages away; but the girl in his arm pulls him to his current life, and he knows that an entire skyline to dance and fly in doesn't compare to a home.