A/N: This is the prequel to "Lady of the House". Before reading this, I STRONGLY recommend reading "Lady of the House" first, because that will help make the prequel click more. Plus, Lady of the House is only a one-shot and shouldn't take you very long to read. However, if you are adamant in reading this one first, it is completely understandable without having to read "Lady". That being said, enjoy, and please read and review!

The first time was a mistake.

In retrospect, Ginny supposed that she should've blamed Hermione. After all, if the bushy-haired Gryffindor hadn't been bemoaning the fact that Crookshanks had once again disappeared to the kitchen, Ginny wouldn't have volunteered to fetch the cat like the loyal Gryffindor she was.

Plus, Hermione's voice was really grating on her nerves, and she had wanted to have a legitimate excuse to get some peace, anyway.

It was because of this that Ginny found herself in the Charms corridors late at night, orange cat tucked away in her arms snugly. She was careful to tread softly on the pebbled floor, and she would've made it back to Gryffindor Tower safely if Crookshanks hadn't decided to give a large yowl that had sounded ten times louder in the dark than it would've been in broad daylight.

Ginny clamped her hand down on the cat's face, but it was too late. She could already hear Mrs. Norris's responding howl around the corner, which could only mean that Filch was steps away from finding her. Feeling Crookshanks jump out of her arms, Ginny did the only sensible thing and fled for sanctuary.

She found herself a side closet and slipped in, closing the door as quietly as she could.

"It's about bloody time you arrived," she heard someone growl in the dark, and it took her a second to process the fact that she wasn't alone in the closet like she'd originally thought.

"What?" she said in confusion, squinting in the dark to identify her unknown companion.

"Oh, bugger it all. It doesn't matter. Just shut up and come here," the voice said, and Ginny felt a hand reach out in the dark to yank her hips forward.

And before she could even raise a word in protest, she felt his lips closing over hers.

Reflecting back on the moment, she knew that the right thing to do would've been to push him away and send him off with a good hex. But in the moment, all she could think was that his sensual lips were invoking a sort of slow, burning heat in her stomach that neither Dean nor Michael had ever achieved. He navigated his tongue around the inside of her mouth skillfully, and she could hear a rumbling sort of sound building from her throat. It wasn't until his hand started inching her shirt upwards that she realized with a jolt that he was going to try and take her in the closet.

She pulled away from him, and she could hear him sigh in disappointment.

"Well, that was certainly an improvement from Marietta," the boy drawled to fill the silence. "I might just decide to keep you around, Greengrass, even if you are two years younger."

Something felt off about that sentenced. Ginny blinked and turned it over in her fuzzy mind for a minute as she processed this until she realized what was wrong. "What are you talking about? I'm not Greengrass. I'm Ginny."

There was a moment of silence, then light flooded all corners of the supplies closet, and Ginny was left staring into the all-too-familiar face of Draco Malfoy.

"Weasley?" he said in a stunned sort of voice that he quickly recovered from. "What the hell did you do with Astoria?"

Ginny adjusted her shirt and smoothed the wrinkles. "I have no idea where your beloved midnight twat is," she said crossly. "All I know was that one second I was running from Filch, and then the next I was kissing you."

"So, you just stood there without saying anything about it?" Draco said in outrage. "I just kissed a Weasley!"

"Yes, well, at least I'm better than Marietta, so you can't complain," Ginny retorted, feeling quite annoyed and offended.

Before he could come up with a biting remark, the closet door flew open, and a petite girl stood in the doorway.

"Sorry, Draco," the pretty brunette breathed. "Daphne saw me, and I had to get her off my back. You know how she'd feel if she knew about us."

Ginny scoffed. Daphne was Astoria's sister and had, apparently, had a fling with Draco Malfoy at one point in her life.

"Draco Malfoy, the biggest man-whore at Hogwarts," Ginny muttered under her breath. "Have fun with him, Greengrass. I'm going to bed."

She inched around the Slytherin girl, and stomped huffily toward Gryffindor Tower. Behind her, she could hear Astoria asking angrily, "What were you doing in here with her?"

"Shut up, Greengrass. This is all your bloody fault. If you'd only been here sooner, none of this would've happened," Draco Malfoy snarled in reply, and Ginny could hear him angrily storming down towards the dungeons.

Hermione, Filch, and absent midnight snogging partners, Ginny thought. All legitimate excuses for kissing Draco Malfoy.

She managed to make it back up to Gryffindor Tower safely and slipped into her dorm quietly, listening to the deep breathing of the other girls until she fell asleep.

*

The second time was in detention.

As the head of Gryffindor House, Professor McGonagall had asked Ginny to supervise detention on a Saturday night in lieu of her Prefect duties, and she had grudgingly agreed, something she had immediately regretted as soon as she'd found out who'd had the unlucky misfortune to land themselves a Saturday night detention.

As it turned out, Malfoy had sent his transfigured chair knocking right into the back of Neville Longbottom's head during Friday afternoon's lesson, claiming that he'd wanted to see if it sounded as empty as it looked. As of now, Neville was still lying in the Hospital Wing, trying to recover.

Ginny glared at Malfoy as he came sauntering into the room

"Sit down, Malfoy," she said icily. Neville Longbottom had, after all, been a rather good friend of hers. "According to McGonagall, you'll be mopping the floor and wiping the desks. No magic allowed."

"Shouldn't this sort of thing be reserved for people like you?" he complained, getting the mop from the closet in the back.

"You should've thought about that before hitting poor Neville in the back of the head," she told him pointedly, refusing to take his bait.

"Oh yes, poor Neville," he sneered contemptuously at the name. "If you weren't so in love with Potter, I would say that you'd been practicing your snogging on Longbottom. I can't imagine anybody else who'd willingly kiss a Weasley." He angrily jabbed the mop into the bucket of water, pushing up his sleeves.

"I can't imagine anybody who'd want to kiss a Malfoy, either," she jeered. "If it weren't for your father's money, nobody would even want to touch you."

"You say that, and yet the little noises you were making last week seem contradictory," he taunted, throwing down his mop and advancing towards her.

She held her ground coolly. "You're sadly mistaken if you think I'm attracted to you."

His eyes flashed angrily, and she figured that nobody had ever tried to bring down his ego before. There was a tense silence between them as he stared into her eyes with a long, hard look. Then, as if he'd found what he'd been looking for, he pulled her flush against him, his face relaxing.

"I think you're lying," he smirked, and then reached down to cover her lips with his own.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Ginny knew that she should have pulled away in order to make her point, but her hormones quickly set fire to that train of thought. His lips were doing sinful things to her. Her body wanted to feel alive, and Draco Malfoy was doing a bloody wonderful job of it.

She grinded her hips against his and he slipped his tongue through the seam of her mouth. When she finally broke away to come up for air, she avoided looking at his face.

"It seems like I was right, after all," he said in a superior tone, and she groaned.

"Get mopping, you smug git."

*

After that, the excuses started building up.

The third time it happened, he'd been high off of his Slytherin victory against Ravenclaw, and she couldn't bring herself to ruin his moment.

The fourth time, he'd saved her from the lake after a silly dare, and she hadn't been able to resist giving him some sort of reward.

But soon, she had had no choice but to come to terms that she couldn't just explain away her feelings for him anymore, and she told him so. After that, their relationship changed. Often times after class, he'd pull her into some dark alcove and speaking would cease for a long time. Other times, she'd visit him in his room after dinner and ask if she could study there.

And without even knowing it, the two of them had eased into a routine, He didn't look at other girls, and she didn't flirt with other guys. Occasionally, they held conversations. He would tell her about growing up as an only child and being spoiled silly by his mother. She would talk about growing up with six brothers and being the only girl in the family.

It became so that if the fancy hit them, they talked. If it didn't, they would snog. When she couldn't sleep, she would spend the night in his room. When he was in need of company, he'd curl up against her back. When she finally made the decision for them to do it together for the first time, it was nothing like they'd ever experienced before.

And for a long time, it was like they couldn't get enough of each other. He became the one that chased all the other boys away from her mind, and she was the only female besides his mother that he'd ever come close to appreciating, though he was careful to keep that part a secret.

They did everything together for the majority of his seventh year, and the only thing neither even dared to mention was the impending war.

And that was what eventually brought everything crashing down.