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Ginny was wondering if there were any spells that could cause Draco to just drop dead. Other than the Avada Kedavra that is, which is something nice girls like Ginny don’t do. She’d even settle for one of those permanent sleep numbers... like sleeping beauty…

But then maybe it would be tempting to wake Draco with a kiss…

In truth, Ginny’s mind just wasn’t where it was meant to be… which was in potions, next to Luca. Ginny leaned dreamily over the bench, scratching the back of one calf with the laces of the other shoe… the boys at the table behind her, Benice and Diego, fumbled their test tube… it seemed that they were looking at Ginny from her most distracting angle.

Ginny, however, did not seem to notice the attention that she was getting. Instead, she picked up a quill and started doodling on a nearby piece of parchment. She drew a stick figure with a disproportionately massive head… she drew crosses for its eyes and a tongue lolling out at the mouth… this was a dead stick figure… this, it seems, was Malfoy.

Then, as though just drawing a likeness of the boy (and a bad one at that) was enough to summon him, he stepped into the class. This wasn’t his class, he was a year above Ginny. He stepped up to Snape and said, ‘Madame Pomfrey sent me to ask you to brew a valerian poultice, she’s run out.’

‘And she thinks I’m a pharmacist to be conscripted at her leisure?’

Draco just shrugged and leaned against a desk waiting to be dismissed. ‘Very well, Malfoy. You wait here, it won’t take me more than a few moments to put it together and you can take it back to her.’ Draco shrugged once more and started to look around the room as Snape began to make the poultice at his own desk. The class was supposed to be developing a potion to null smells…it was supposed to help if people were trying to escape hunters. Ginny couldn’t imagine being hunted, so she was paying very little attention to what she was doing. Draco’s glance began to sweep past her, Ginny had to use every ounce of control to remain leaning across her table in a casual manner, her skirt inching higher up the back of her thighs.

Do not look at Malfoy. Do not look at Malfoy. Do not look at Malfoy. Ginny chanted over and over in her mind. But to no avail, out of the corner of her eye she watched him.

Once he caught sight of her group of desks she expected him to dismiss her with a look of contempt. But, instead, as he cast his gaze over the room his head snapped sharply to stare in her direction. And the look he gave was one of absolute malice. His ice blue eyes, if it is possible, became even colder and he sneered in her direction. Ginny had been expecting some sort of dismissal, but the wild emotion and obvious hatred in his eyes gave her shivers. Moments later when the class ended, she hastily exited the room refusing to so much as look at Draco on her way out. But if she’d been observant, she would have noticed that it was not her that his cold glare followed out of the room, but some one else… two someone elses.

*****

Benice and Diego walked out of potions grinning. They were the last ones to leave the class and now they stood alone in the corridor. Benice nudged Diego, ‘Merlin! Those legs!’ Diego laughed and replied, ‘Did you see her underwear? Pink roses! What I wouldn’t do to have a pluck at those roses!’

Benice nodded sagely with a lascivious grin on his face, ‘The day the Weasley can afford to buy Ginny a decent length skirt will be a sad day for the male race.’ The boys erupted into laughter just as Draco stepped into their paths. They tried to step around him.

‘’Scuse’ said Diego as he tried to duck past Draco’s left shoulder, Draco slammed a hand out and connected with the wall, blocking off Diego’s exit.

‘Hey, Malfoy, you’re in the way.’ Said Benice.

‘I know.’ He replied as he shrugged out of his robe and rolled his shirt sleeves up.

The boys backed up a bit. It was no secret that Draco knew his way around a wand, but he’d also had some training in fighting without it. He was quite adept at hand to hand combat.

The two boys cast worried glances at each other trying to work out what they’d done wrong. Draco rolled his neck and lifted and dropped his shoulders a few times to loosen up. Then he smiled the coldest smile either boy had ever seen. ‘Ok, now I’m going to teach you a lesson about looking at things that aren’t yours to look at. From now on you keep your eyes front and centre.’

*****

Nobody ever really heard about what happened in the corridor that day, the battered and bruised Benice and Diego certainly never spoke of it. But, it became an unofficial Hogwarts law that never, ever, was a male to sit behind Ginny Wealsey in Potions. No matter how tempting the prospect was.

*****

A/N- yeah, a short one… but I just had to leave it in, I liked it… Draco defended Ginny’s honor!!! Too cute!