I was reading my emails, and discovered all these reviews for something I'd forgotten all about - a fanfic! And I thought it was proabably a bit bad of mean to leave it hanging when people wanted to see how the story ends...so here's something I knocked up in an hour (no joke!) so please excuse me if there are loads of mistakes! If you like it I'll finish the story, if not I won't!

Disclaimer: none of this belongs to me, except possibly the plot, and probably not even that.

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. - W. J. Bryan

They were both of them too busy that first day to do anything than wonder, and wait, and pretend to be happy to see their friends again, and to be nothing more than reluctant to start lessons again, just like everybody else. By the time it came to seat themselves in the Great Hall for the start of term feast, Ginny was squirming in her seat in impatience. She could feel the ebb and flow of Draco's emotions like the tide of some great sea, dark and tempestuous on the edge of her consciousness. It made her restless, and she picked at her food with little appetite and wished that the time would pass quickly so that she could meet Draco – her heart beat faster at the thought – and confront him.

Cass and Colin exchanged significant glances and looked furtively over at the Slytherin table in avid curiosity – but not looking too hard, in case Malfoy would catch them looking, and sneer. Ginny was grateful that they were sympathetic enough not to quiz her; she felt she could barely form coherent thoughts at the moment, let alone sentences.

She let her gaze fall once, and once only at the Slytherin table, and found an answering silver regard waiting for her. In that moment, she said: Tonight, at nine in the Owlery. And that was all. She didn't dare risk saying more; she didn't want him to feel how tense she was and question her before she was ready. And to think she had been so happy just a few short hours ago, pinking with happiness with the knowledge of his gift, and what was even more wonderful, of his love! If only, she thought desperately, if only there were no such thing as a Deatheater! If only she had never even heard there was such a thing! If only she had never set eyes on Draco Malfoy – but no, not that. Never that.

--

Draco brooded over a goblet of pumpkin juice, wishing for the first time that it was something stronger. Firewhisky, perhaps. It might give him the courage to do what he knew he must do. He had decided what to do. He must tell Ginny the truth – the whole truth, not just little bits of it. If she was going to understand the situation and the danger, she would need to know the whole story. He suppressed a shudder, imagining the pity in her eyes as he told her of his childhood, the wonder and incomprehension when he struggled to explain his relationship with his parents.

Pansy Parkinson leant across the table to him, deliberately pressing herself against the edge of the table to give him a good look at her generous cleavage. "And what do you think, Draco?" she asked breathily, batting her eyelashes. Idly Draco twirled the stem of his goblet, gave her breasts a cursory glance out of habit, and shot her a smouldering glance for the sake of the effect he knew it would have on the infatuated girl. She looked at him like a spaniel gazes at its master, and he smiled tightly to himself in satisfaction. His ego would take all the massaging it could get, today! He was sure that Ginny would do her best to puncture it later.

"I agree with you of course, Pans," he said lazily, enjoying the look of irritation that flashed across Blaise's face. He had no idea what they had been discussing, but it was a fair bet that Pansy had just said something ridiculous, and Blaise was looking to Draco for support in crushing her.

The dark-haired girl simpered in pleased surprise. "I knew you would," she cooed, shooting Blaise a venomous look. "Of course there's no such thing as goblins! They're just old men who have been so vile, that their looks have changed so that they are as ugly on the outside as they are on the inside." Her tone was triumphant. "That's what my nurse always told me, and she never lied."

Draco's shoulders immediately began to shake with repressed laughter as he fought to control his mirth. "You're perfectly right," he said, the merest hint of laughter in his voice. "And Professor Binns, of course is wrong, and so are all of the historians whose books we read. The world has been cruelly misled by a – a race of evil-minded old men." A smile threatened to twitch at the corners of his mouth, but he suppressed it and looked at Blaise. There was something of their old comradeship in that look; a mutual understanding that said yes, this girl is silly, and we are clever and together we can make her know it!

And Blaise leant over with a gleam in his eye that Draco hadn't seen for months and gravely added "I'm sorry I doubted you, Pansy. In future I shall always refer to you rather than to respected scholars."

Pansy pinked, in pleasure, and looked down modestly. But then something seemed to occur to her and she brought her head up sharply, gazing at them with suspicious eyes. "You're making fun of me!" She looked from one boy to the other, her voice quivering in indignation.

"Now why would we do a thing like that?" Draco's amusement was obvious now, and she bridled. He looked away as she started to let them know, furiously, exactly what she thought of them, and his gaze fell as if by accident on the Gryffindor table. On one Gryffindor in particular.

As if feeling the heat in his look, she turned her head towards him and her voice rang in his mind as familiarly as his own. Tonight, at nine in the Owlery. Her tone was as serious as he had ever heard it, and he turned away as the awareness of everything he had to say to her rose up in him once more.

Pansy, taking his troubled face as a sign that he had taken her admonishments to heart for once, cried out in triumph. "Let that be a lesson to you Draco! You take me for granted, but just because I've always loved you doesn't mean I always will. You should be nicer to me!"

Her words disturbed Draco not because he gave a damn what she thought of him, but because they made him think of Ginny. He knew that she would always love him, knew it as a fact, immutable and unchanging. And that was because of the curse. But he also knew instinctively that the curse would not make her like him, or respect him. Was he going to forfeit her friendship if he told her about the Malfoys and the Dark Lord? He felt almost nauseous at the thought, and then despised himself for feeling it.

Unconsciously, he tossed his head, his aristocratic lip curling in disdain. Well, not matter what this curse had made him, he was still a Malfoy! And if he had the courage to tell her the truth, and the temerity to look her in the eye as he did it, why that made his as strong a Wizard as any and she would be a fool not to respect him for it! He felt a heady rush of the old Malfoy pride. Nothing had changed, after all.

Nothing, and everything.

--

At nine in the Owlery they stood apart, hugging their robes to themselves against the cold of the January winds that came to bite at their white lips and pinched cheeks. Ginny looked at the floor, unwilling and somehow unable to meet Draco's glance.

He broke the silence first. "I owe you an explanation," he said simply.

"You're not wrong!" Heat suddenly flooded back into Ginny's cheeks. "I've catching bits of your thoughts all day. You're – you're a mess."

Draco hesitated, wondering what to say.

"It's because of what happened at Christmas, isn't it?" the words came out in a rush, accusingly. "You wish you hadn't come. You wish you hadn't given me that horse. You wish you hadn't said – said that you loved me." Her words dropped to a whisper and her eyes stung with hot, shameful tears.

"Oh Merlin, Ginny, is that what you think?" Draco ran a hand tiredly through his hair. "It's not that. It's pretty much the opposite of that in fact. It may be conclusive proof that I've gone mad, but I'm actually pretty please to see you again, Weaselette."

She smiled weakly with relief, and slid to sit down , feeling the burning cold of the stone flags through her robes. "What then? Don't fob me off, Draco I've been on edge all day down to you and if this explanation isn't good I'll pull your hair out strand by strand!"

He rolled his eyes and sat down next to her, putting his arm round her shoulders. "I know you've been worried." He took a deep breath. "You've probably been worried because of my family's reputation. Because you think I'm a Deatheater."

He felt her shudder as he said the word. "Well you're half right," he said, trying to keep his voice calm and matter-of-fact. "It's true that my father is Deatheater. My mother – well, she loves my father. She loves his totally, and she joined the Deatheaters unquestioningly because that was what he wanted, and she'll do what he thinks he would want her to, for love of him. It's her love for him that rules her life, and when I was little she tried to make me feel the same way."

He felt giddy with the strangeness of telling her what he had never spoken aloud before, giddy with a strange liberty and vulnerability. He licked lips that were suddenly dry, cleared his throat that was suddenly tight and close.

"It never worked as well as she wanted it to," he continued. "My father – well, he's everything that you'd expect a Deatheater to be. He's ambitious. He's so ambitious he'd do anything for power. And he's proud. People joke about the Malfoy pride, but it's true, we are, and him most of all. He doesn't just want power, he believes he deserves it. So yes, he's a Deatheater and close to the Dark Lord. And yes, he wants me to follow in his footsteps. I've known that as long as I can remember. And of course, my mother wants what he wants."

Ginny's eyes were wide and dark in the half-light as she gazed up at him, hardly daring to believe that this was Draco Malfoy, baring his heart to her.

"My mother isn't quite well," he told her with a catch in his voice. "Her mother – my grandmother – she went peculiar, when she got older. It runs in the family."

"Do you mean she's mad?" Ginny's voice was subdued.

"No!" the denial was fierce. "Not mad, just emotional, and nervous. She's had to deal with things no normal woman should, and her mind can't cope, that's all. It makes her look odd, I guess, to outsiders."

It sounded like madness to Ginny, but she kept quiet, wanting to hear the rest.

"It nearly killed her, when father was sent to Azkaban. I've never seen a woman so totally devastated as she was. And ever since then, all she's though about is making sure that everything is perfect for him when he gets out. I'm a part of that, obviously." He laughed, harshly. "Oh yes! Everyone's been laying their plans for Draco Malfoy. It's not just my parents, Gin. The Dark Lord himself knows who I am, and he'll expect me to join him when he calls me."

He stopped for a moment, trying to gage her reaction. The only sound was the soft swishing of feathers and the clicking of beaks. Draco gazed bleakly up into the darkness and tried to compose his thoughts.

"And I know you're wondering if that'd what I want – to answer the call, to join them. Isn't it?" He didn't wait for her to answer. "To be honest, I'm wondering that too. Because it's not such a simple choice as you might think."

Ginny shifted in his arms and made as if to speak, but thought better of it and just looked up at him, her face unreadable in the gloom.

"I'd like to think that I'm not..." he seemed to hesitate. "That I'm not evil. I don't want to hurt people, really. I can't see myself as a killer, or a torturer or anything that a Deatheater has to be. And I don't really think that a world the Dark Lord ruled would be one I'd like to live in, or one that I'd like to see you in.

"But I've been raised to it. I know that if I refused, it would kill my parents. It would be a total betrayal of everything they stand for, of everything they've brought me up to believe in. It would put their lives in danger, and mine. The Dark Lord doesn't tolerate traitors."

He swallowed. "And it would put your life in danger most of all. And probably other members of your family as well. It's only a matter of time before people start to realise what's happened with us."

"You know about the Order?"

Draco nodded. "I'm sure your family are all members."

"I probably shouldn't tell you, but yes. And I will be as soon as I'm of age." Ginny turned to him suddenly, her face set and her voice trembling with passion. "Draco, it kills me to hear you speak like this! Like it's normal! You've been raised to He Who Must Not Be Named, well I've been raised to the light! To everything that is good and worthwhile in life and I will stick to that and to my family not matter what! No matter what," she repeated fervently. "And I hope you aren't asking me to betray that, Draco. It would be like asking me to betray myself. It's part of who I am, to hate He Who Must Not Be Named and everyone who supports him."

"I know," Draco replied, closing his eyes against the pain. "But one of us is going to have to do exactly that, Gin. One of us is going to have to make that betrayal. Because there's no way we can live apart, I think we've established that by now. And the only way we can be together and – well, if not safe then at least in less danger – is if we're truly together. So we're going to have to make a choice."

"You'd ask me to betray everything I believe in? My family, who I love more than myself? For you?" Ginny's voice was harsh with

"Would you ask me to forfeit my honour, debase my oath of fealty, for you?"

They answered together. "Yes."

They sat in silence, each trying to push the dark thoughts away, concentrating on the physical things. The warmth of limbs, pressed together. The feel of hair tickling the soft skin of a neck. The inexpressible comfort of a pair of joined hands.

"I wish this moment would last forever," said Ginny softly. "Just being here, with you, alone. I wish that the rest of the world didn't matter."

Draco's lips twisted wryly. "I don't think there's such a thing as a perfect moment, Gin."

She lifted her face to his with a burning look in her eyes. "If there is, then this is it," she said fiercely, pulling his lips down to meet hers.

They kissed as if they could kiss their trouble away, as if the heat and the blazing passion of it could prevent the cruel, inexorable pace of time, ticking away the seconds until they had to make a choice. They kissed as if nothing mattered but each other, with desperate urgency. They would have kissed forever, if they could. But nothing could delay the inevitable and eventually they broke apart, lips red and smarting and eyes shining with emotion.

Draco took Ginny's hand and kissed it. She watched him, shivering to feel his lips grazing her knuckles, and shook her head like one coming out of a dream.

"This is what we're going to do," she said.

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