Draconis: A Satire

Chapter Two: The Jonas Brothers

Thoughts of Malfoy’s inexplicable kiss, for the most part, left Ginny alone. It was as if it had been a dream, one of the ones which you think about very hard when you wake up so you don’t forget it, and yet you don’t actually think about it afterwards. But sometimes, it sneaks up on you just when you least expect it: “What is this breakfast in comparison to a meal on the Starship Enterprise?” Or, in Ginny’s case, “How can I put my toothbrush where Malfoy’s tongue’s been?”
These thoughts were rather unsettling, so Ginny tried to ignore them. It wasn’t that hard to distract herself, because the train back to Hogwarts left today. She had to track down that accursed winter cloak and all three of her pointed black hats – the winter cloak Ginny could understand, but the hats? Only first years actually wore those. Some called first-years “pointies” because of how distinguishable they were by those hats. It was one of those ideas that Muggles got about witches (and wizards) that didn’t turn out to be true at all.
Thus distracted by these trains of thought, before she knew it Ginny was embracing her parents good-bye and getting on the train to Hogwarts. Oh, joy, Hogwarts.
Four months ago, that statement’s sarcastic spin would have been much less sinister than it was now. Back then, Hogwarts was a threat only as an alternative to the dreamy days of summer – besides, Hogwarts was sure to be safer than the family home of multiple members of the Order of the Phoenix, not to mention the occasional dwelling of Harry Potter himself.
Unfortunately, she had turned out to be ridiculously wrong about that.
The moment she stepped back inside the Great Hall on September 1st, Ginny had known something was wrong. She wasn’t sure, thinking about it now, what her strongest indicator that something was wrong had been. Was it Snape in the headmaster’s position at the High Table? The presence of two new faces alongside him that distinctly reminded her of the Lestranges? No, no: It was the ridiculously smug expression on almost every Slytherin’s face.
Or maybe it was the peculiarly high amount of pointies sorted into Slytherin. Then again, those things were probably related. (Not to mention that the Slytherins themselves were probably related.)
Ginny didn’t know why so many Slytherins were outright sinister, but it seemed to be a fact. They weren’t all mean, but there was something about them – very few of them regarded Ginny kindly. She didn’t quite understand it. Some of them had to get into that house on basis of personality, and not just blood, right?
Ginny said something along these lines to Luna while they were walking to a shared class together, but her only response was “Sinister meant left once. Three of the six Slytherins I’ve gotten to know somewhat well are left-handed.”
Ah, Luna. Her friendship had become more precious than ever to Ginny during that horrible first term, and she found herself appreciating Neville more. The Carrows were torturing the three of them left and right, but the D.A., Ginny liked to think, was even better than it had been back when Harry, Ron, and Hermione had been running it. All three of them were teaching instead of just Harry…
Harry. Ginny straightened up in her seat. Something was wrong about how she thought that. After a moment, she recognized that it was the lack of emotion she felt at saying his name inside her head. The usual strain of her heart, mental sigh, and pleasant tingle were entirely missing. Her beautiful memories of the time during her fourth year – the year where she tried to fall out of love with Harry and then fell in love with him again – were suddenly rather blurry in her mind, and the recollection of fifth year, where her status as “Harry Potter’s Girlfriend” involved less contact with him than she’d had the previous year, was becoming oddly clear.
Ginny’s mindset about Harry was normal this time yesterday, so something had to have changed between then and now. Maybe it was—
“Ginny! There you are!”
She looked up to see Neville and Luna, he with a grin and she smiling slightly, as she always did. “Neville! Luna! I’ve missed you!”
“Oh, it’s wonderful that you’re still alive,” Luna said. “I was worried for a moment that the Heliopaths had burnt you over the holiday. How ironic that would have been…”

---

The threesome cheerily chattered for a few hours, breaking only for some sweets from the trolley and the complications when Neville tried to get Trevor to leap two meters and the toad ended up leaping off to only-heaven-knew-where-for-the-next-thirty-minutes.
After they sat down, Neville hunched over a little and his tone was serious. “Luna, Ginny, I think we should steal the sword of Gryffindor.”
“Hmmm,” Luna said absently. “That sounds a bit impractical. We don’t want to kill anyone—”
“How,” Ginny interrupted, “will we ever get inside the office without getting caught by Snape and getting more detention with–” she paused to shudder here “the Carrows? We’ll probably be in chains until the next holiday if we get caught.”
“Well,” Neville said, “I think we should go for it during the Seventh-Year Pub Crawl.”
Luna nodded in an oh-that-explains-it sort of way and started to stare absently out the window, but Ginny was shocked. “The Pub Crawl? What are you talking about?”
Neville blinked at her confusedly and Luna turned back from the window to look at her in a slightly disapproving manner. “The Pub Crawl?” she said. “You haven’t heard of the Pub Crawl?”
“Yeah,” Neville agreed. “Every year, the seventh-years go off to every pub in Hogsmeade and get as drunk as possible. It’s not like nobody notices this until they’re in their last year, or like Professor McGonagall would never approve.”
“We… have a Pub Crawl…” Ginny repeated skeptically.
“Uhuh…” Neville said. He was very confused now, and his statement seemed like more of a question. “There’s always been one.”
Ginny suddenly realized that she was very, very wrong – or else, something else was very, very wrong.
She suspected it was the same thing that had vanished away—
“Well, if it isn’t the Silver Trio!” somebody said from the doorway of their compartment. The three turned and looked to see Malfoy standing there. He scowled. “Although it’s more an Aluminium Trio.”
Youkisseddracomalfoylastnightyoukisseddracomalfoylastnightyoukisseddracomalfoylastnight, youkissedhimyoukissedhimyoukissedhim; and what’s more, you liked it, you little tart—
“Weasley? Weasley? Heavens, Loony’s rubbing off on you… Heh.”
That snapped her out of it. “Well, if she is, at least it’s not the only thing she’s capable of doing, unlike you.”
Malfoy frowned for the couple of seconds it took him to digest this, but then glared at Ginny. “Oh, that is such mature humor, you—”
Their gazes met, and for a single horrifying moment of silence, Ginny could have sworn that his eyes pulsed a bright, crystalline blue; then the moment passed, and they were the same drab gray color they had ever been.
“I think you made your point, Draco,” some unrecognized Slytherin behind Malfoy said, and he and the other boys with him left.
“I don’t think it was very nice for him to enter our compartment without asking,” Luna said.

---

They got to Hogwarts.
Of course they got to Hogwarts. What would stop them from getting to Hogwarts or pacing angrily in corridors after sunset on their way to the dorm? The thought was inexplici-
Wait. Inexplicable. What was that again…?
Youkisseddracomalfoylastnightyoukisseddracomalfoylastnightyoukisseddracomalfoylast—
“Shut up!” Ginny shouted at her mind. A nearby young student cried out and ran away rapidly, while Ginny scowled.
“Somebody isn’t very happy today,” a voice that was almost entirely unfamiliar said from somewhere behind her.
“Oh, really?” Ginny snapped as she turned around to see who it was. “Did you figure that out all by yourse–”
Her voice stopped. Her turning stopped. For a second or two, she even thought her heart stopped. Then her brain un-stopped and it occurred to Ginny that maybe the young man in front of her looked a little like Malfoy, but he was in reality the one who had kissed her last night. Huh. They were different people? That, if true, was relieving. Perhaps this would stop her mind from always going–
Youkisseddracomalfoylastnightyoukisseddracomalfoylastnightyoukisseddracomalfoylastnightyoukissed—
Damn.
“You just want to feel less emo, don’t you, Gin?”
Malfoy stepped closer to her, and a shiver ran down Ginny’s spine. But she needed to get a hold of herself. She took her wand out of her pocket. “What’s wrong with you, Malfoy? Bugger yourself out of here. Now!” Her wand shook a bit, but was firmly pointed at Malfoy. But why couldn’t she cast a damn hex already? She tried as hard as she could to say some incantation – think it, even, hard as that was – but couldn’t.
Malfoy laughed a bit and moved to her again, gently placing his hand on top of hers and moving it down to her side. The contact came with a spark of static electricity. “You see, Gin, you need somebody to sing. To lift your spirits. To explain to you that…”
“…That…?” Ginny found herself asking in spite of herself.
The wand fell onto the floor, forgotten.
“That…” Malfoy looked right into her eyes and grinned in the sexiest way she’d ever seen. “I’m hot!”
“Wait, what? No, you’re not!” Ginny backed away hurriedly. Why was she so scared?
“You’re cold!”
“What the—”
“You go around/like you know!”
“Know what—” Ginny was becoming concerned.
“Who I am!”
“Draco Malfoy, who else?”
“But you don’t!”
“That would explain a lot.” Damn, she was still held in place. Why couldn’t she stop this banter, pick up her wand, hex the living daylights out of him, and be on her merry way to bed?
“You’ve got me on my toes.” On the last word, Draco’s fingertips brushed against hers, and Ginny was inexplicably reminded of the time her fingers had completed a circuit of her father’s carrying at least a hundred volts.
“I’m slipping into the lava!”
“I wish—” She was almost letting herself slip into the routine: Take his musically-made assertion, find something witty or angry to say back, but don’t under any circumstances actually move, because that would mean moving, which she couldn’t seem to do.
“And I’m trying to keep from going under! Baby, who turned the temperature hotter?”
“You did not just call me that!”
“Cause I’m burning up, burning up…”
“Why…?”
Suddenly Malfoy took both of her hands, singing, “for you, baby.”
There was a brief instrumental (from where? Ginny wondered) with lots of headbanging, and then Malfoy said, “C’mon, girl!” and twirled her about by one hand.
“I fell!” he continued, taking her other hand again and pulling her back and forth, “so fast!”
“Yeah, right,” she weakly said.
“Can’t hold myself…” Malfoy paused to sweep her into his arms. “Back. High heels…”
“Not caught dead,” Ginny countered without missing a beat. For some reason, she couldn’t struggle out of his embrace. This whole body-not-responding thing was one of the strangest things she had ever felt.
“Red dress!”
“Doesn’t match!”
“All by yourself!”
“Yeah, you’d like to see that,” she snidely snapped.
“Gotta catch my breath!” Unexpectedly, Draco let go of her, and then put his hand on his heart as he continued to sing. “I’m slipping into the lava.”
“Oh, goodie.”
“’n I’m trying to keep from going under!”
“’n? That’s really classy.”
“Baby, who turned the temperature higher?”
“Not baby again…”
“’Cause I’m burning up, burning up for you baby!”
Malfoy suddenly fell into an irritating falsetto. “Walk into the room… All I can see… is you!”
“We’re in a hallway, not a room.”
“Oh! Staring me down… I know you feeeel it too.” He stroked her neck suddenly, and Ginny reflexively slapped his hand. She was starting to get bored and really wished that this would end already.
“I’m slipping into the lover!”
“Wait, did you just say—”
“And I’m trying to keep from going under! Baby, you turn temperatures hotter!”
“What was wrong with the old chorus?”
“’Cause I’m burning up – burning up! – for you, babe, eh!”
She must have blinked, because suddenly Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott were behind Malfoy, and… “We’re burning up in the place tonight,” Goyle rapped, “gotta sing it loud—”
“Gonna feel it right!” the other three Slytherins sang.
The world has gone batshit insane, Ginny thought with absolute certainity.
“Um, go on and dance, don't try and fight it; I’m… for real…?”
“And that's no lie!” Zabini and Nott shouted.
“Stop, drop, and roll.”
“Is the lame Muggle response.” Zabini said. Malfoy discreetly punched him.
“Keeps on burnin’ up more and more!” Goyle and Malfoy sang.
“Did a two-year-old write these lyrics?” Nott wondered.
“I got JB with me.”
“Wait, what the hell?” Zabini and Nott said together, suddenly ceasing to participate in the trendy dance moves.
“Now come on, boys, bring the chore-us around.”
“I'm slippin’ into the lava!” Malfoy sang.
“Uh…” Goyle said.
“And I'm tryin’ to keep from going under!”
He grinned beautifully.
“Baby, who turned the temperature hotter!”
“It’s almost over!” Zabini said to Nott.
“Cause I'm burnin’ up, burnin’ up for you, baby!”
“Burnin’ up, burning up,” the other two reluctantly semi-sang.
“For you, baby,” Draco finished.
And before Ginny had time to feel relieved, or realize that she could move again, he kissed her.
It wasn’t that surprising, this time. Ginny later figured she’d subconsciously been expecting it. However, she didn’t actually think that at the moment, as the only thought running through her mind was Dracomalfoyiskissingyoudracomalfoyiskissingyouyouareallowingyourselftobekissedbydracoeffingmalfoy…
This was going to become a problem if she let it go on.
Or if she didn’t.

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