(This snippet takes place in the interim period between DS and DV. It’s a flashback that I cut out later.)

--Cassie

Later, Ginny would not remember why she had gone into the garden. It might have been that she had heard a noise in the shrubbery, a scratching at the windowpane. It might just have been that it was stifling in the house and she wanted to get outside. It might have been that she was bored, with Ron and her parents off at a Puddlemere United Quidditch game and not likely to be back until after supper. It might have been the fact that she hadn’t heard anything from Draco - not a letter, not even a postcard - for over a week that was making her restless, but she didn’t want to think too hard about that.

It as even hotter outside than it had been in the kitchen. Irritably, Ginny kicked her way through the choked weeds by the back door, seeking the sparse shade offered by the gnarled trees that lined the garden walls. She stopped in front of the largest one, by the gate that led through the back fields to Ottery St. Catchpole. She'd often climbed the tree when she was younger, but she doubted it would hold her weight now - and now she had clothes she didn't want to ruin, which she'd never had when she was a little girl. She looked down at her white linen blouse and flowered skirt ruefully, then reached up a hand to test the strength of the lowest bough --

"Hand up?" said a breezy voice behind her. She spun around.

Draco was standing against the wall, in the dark shade-space between two trees, his broomstick leaned up against the stones beside him. He was all gold from the summer, pale gold skin and bleached salt-white hair, threaded through with darker strands of gilt. White shirt and jeans, scuffed black boots. The scar on his cheek stood out pale against his brown skin. In his hand he held a bunch of flowers, also gold: yellow buds and blossoms, stems the pale green-yellow of champagne. He looks like one of those candies wrapped in gold foil for Christmas, Ginny thought mischeviously, good enough to eat.

"Trying to get your hands up my skirt, Malfoy?" she said teasingly. "No, thanks."

"A Malfoy does not try," Draco said. "He either suceeds, or triumphs."

Ginny squinted. "What does that mean?"

"I'm not sure,” Draco admitted. “It’s from The Malfoy Family Code of Conduct.” He pointed towards the gate with his handful of yellow roses and Ginny saw that their stems were tied with a ribbon. "Walk with me?"

Heat had dried the grass to the coarseness of coconut matting. It crunched as they walked, dust coating Ginny's sandals, rubbing the grit between her toes. She wondered why Draco had come, and wondered how long it would take for him to get around to giving her the flowers. "So what are you doing here?" she asked finally, as he helped her over a wooden stile. She dropped down to the other side and turned to face him. "Don't tell me you were just in the neighborhood."

"I was on my way somewhere," he said, landing lightly beside her. "Then I thought of your garden. It seemed a pleasant place to spend the afternoon.."

"You're lying," she said, laughing.

"Unfortunately," he said. "Wretchedly unpleasant place, your garden. More gnomes than flowers, and the pond is positively brackish. I'm sure it's breeding disease."

"You didn't come here to talk to me about the pond."

"I suppose not, although if you wind up with malaria you'll have only yourself to blame."

Ginny stopped and faced him, arms folded. "Cough it up, Malfoy. What are you doing here?"

He paused and looked at her quizzically. "Couldn't I just have wanted to see you?"

She jerked her chin towards the bouquet in his hand. "With flowers? Or were those for my mum? You needn't bother about trying to make a good impression, you know, it's far too late for that."

She saw him glance at the flowers, almost startled, as if he'd genuinely forgotten them. She wondered uneasily if she were pushing him too much; maybe she should just let him say what he wanted to say in his own time. "Right, the flowers. Your powers of observation never cease to -"

"Oh, stop it," Ginny interrupted, tension making her snappish. "I'm not in the mood for sarcasm. Or poetry quotes."

"I know some interesting mathematical formulas."

"Draco."

"I don't see what's wrong with poetry," he said, looking injured. "It says everything we want to say, but better."

"You've never seemed to have much trouble expressing yourself without it," Ginny said, then relented. "All right, if you came all the way here to recite poetry at me, I suppose that's all right. It had better rhyme, though," she added, and grinned at him.

He didn't return the grin. His eyes were searching her face and there was a strange look in them, a sort of pained and bitter amusement. He reached his hand out then, and traced the curve of her cheekbone with his fingers. Her knees went, instantly, the way they always did when he touched her. "I haven't got any poetry for this," he said. "I came because I wanted to see you, a last time."

Ginny put her hand over his, twining their fingers together. He lowered his hand from her cheek and they stood, hands interlaced. She had been so close to him only very infrequently, but he seemed a million miles away. "A last time?" she said. "But I'll see you in a week or two - for school. Has something happened?"

"I don't know," he said, and laughed shortly, under his breath. "But I can't risk it. 'My stars shine darkly over me - the malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours - therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone: it were a bad recompense for your love, to lay any of them on you.' There, there's your poetry. Shakespeare, if you're interested, though it doesn't rhyme."

Her heart had begun to pound. "I don't understand. There's something terribly wrong, isn't there? Draco, tell me what it is. Has something happened to Harry? Has -"

The corners of his mouth were curled up, but not in a smile. "Nothing has happened to Harry," he said. "I left him quite happily flying practice loops in the back garden. I came because I wanted to see you - actually, to be more precise, I wanted you to see me. I wanted you to look at me one more time the way I -"

"I see you all the time," she said, quietly. "When I hear someone call out my name and I turn around, thinking its you - in the movement of shadows, I see you, and when I close my eyes -"

"No," he said, sharply, and let go her hand. "I shouldn't have come." He started to turn away, then stopped. "I'm sorry," he said, "for disappointing you. The fault is mine. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."

"You haven't," she said, "disappointed me."

"Not yet. But I will," he replied, and turned again, and walked away from her. She watched him go, through the hip-high dry grass that was the same bleached gold color as his hair. She glanced down, not wanting to watch him disappear, and saw something glimmer in the dust at her feet. It was a yellow petal. She bent to pick it up, and found it heavier and harder than she would have thought, its edges rounded. It had turned into a Galleon. Puzzled, she closed her fist around it. She would wonder for a long time, before he told her, who that fistful of gold coins was really for.