Prelude to an Affair

Book One

Chapter One: In Its Simplest Terms

Love.

In its simplest terms, it is just a four-letter word. Like other words of similar letter make-up, when expressed it can evoke laughter, pleasure, pain, anger, and virtually any wave of reaction.

Reaction.

That is what he sought from her. His one true goal was to simply get a rise out of her. All it took was a sneer, a smirk, a penetrating gaze full of pure, unadulterated hate reaching across to her from the other side of the room, unseen by the unobservant eye. But she saw. She reacted. She always reacted. She would never disappoint.

Disappointment.

His life was full of it. No one could ever measure up in his eyes. Like his father, he was trained to regard and judge others for their worth, or lack thereof. For him, no other but himself had merit; no one could impress him, but she could. She, the littlest of Weasels, somehow impressed him, or rather impressed upon him. He was never really quite sure why—she garnered no adulation, no regard, no sympathy. She did, however, elicit one thing from him:

Fascination.

He was simply fascinated with her. This captivation was not to be confused with admiration for, to him, she represented everything unholy and unclean. But she fascinated him nonetheless. Often he would just gaze at her when he thought she wasn't looking. Little did he know was that she was always looking for him.

She, in turn, never quite understood why she did, why she had to watch him. It surprised and often frightened her—his gazes, his stares. What shocked her most of all was that sometimes, just sometimes, when he looked at her, his stormy grey eyes were void of hate, and she felt her hatred for him slowly ebb away.

Hatred.

It was obvious to anyone who knew them that they hated one another. If you were to run into them by chance in the halls or observe them interact (or not interact) with one another, you would assume that there was nothing between them but just that. However, there was more to be said and seen than what was observed by the casual third party—so much more.

Intrigue.

He remembered the first time he saw her, floating shyly at her brother's side. He watched her get Sorted with a sneer on his face. She was small, mousy, and common. Not much had changed since then. She wasn't exceptionally pretty, but she was far from hideous. In fact, what made her stand out was what made her both enticing and repugnant at the same time: the Weasley-red hair and freckles.

Obsession.

He didn't think much of her back then, but the fact that he thought of her at all made her special, to him. When he saw her come back from the Chamber of Secrets unscathed, he knew that she was different. When he saw her return to school in the following years, changed and no longer infatuated with Potter, he felt relief and annoyance. When she blasted him with a spell that knocked him seven ways from Sunday, he felt desire.

Want.

Now, she seemed to plague his mind. This petite waif with bright red hair, honey-coloured eyes, and cinnamon-dotted freckles had quickly begun to haunt his dreams at night and slowly crept into his waking thoughts. Regrettably, there was no more denying these lingering, pestering thoughts. He wanted her.

Desire.

She remembered the first day she saw him—he had frightened her. He would sneer at her in a way that one would often mistake for a scowl. His high, ineffectual attitude, his pretentiousness—these were all attributes that made him unique. These same 'attributes' distanced him from everyone else—that is, except from her. She hated these things about him, yet she was attracted to them as well. In all honesty, he amazed her. His demeanour, his appearance: they created a compulsion within her.

Need.

She had never seen a man so beautiful. When she first met him, he was only a boy, but handsome beyond imagination. His hair was a shock of white-blond; his complexion was milky white. His eyes were a dark mercury-grey, hiding great depth and danger. His outward expression carried about an air of dignity and independence, but hidden deeply within she could sense his need for intimacy.

Pride.

Yet, he relentlessly pushed her away. She, of course, reacted. When he mocked her, she cried; when he threatened her, she cringed; when he teased her, she broke. It seemed as though she had no backbone, but she was proud and determined. To add a flavour of irony, they both shared this similar attribute. But after Tom, after the Chamber, Ginny no longer felt afraid. She had faced her ultimate fear and lived. Draco was no longer a threat, but he was the bane of her existence, and he could unravel her resolve with a smouldering gaze and an errant tug at his lips. That damn patented Malfoy smirk would become her Achilles's Heel. Over the years, however, her fear of him would rapidly grow to hate; her hatred would eventually turn into annoyance; finally, it would evolve into something else that was much more startling: lust.

There was no reason, no explanation for why Draco and Ginny suddenly felt the way they did. The sentiment of hatred, the only rational feeling, still existed. But what of this unspoken attraction? Both became resigned to their fates, not knowing why they felt such conflicting emotions. In an ideal world, they could live their lives day in and day out with these errant thoughts only troubling their seemingly carefree teenage minds; however, nothing in life ever runs so smoothly. Their thoughts could remain just that: thoughts—never acted upon, never fulfilled. Destiny, it seemed, had other plans…

xXx

As the Wheel of Fortune turned, Ginny found herself in Potions class in the dungeons. She was serving detention for Snape because she had told him to kiss a toad when he tried to belittle her in class. Even though he was no longer the Potions professor, she believed that her having the best marks in the subject truly irked him. When he couldn't torture Harry or her brother, Ron's little sister was the next best thing. So, here she was dusting bottles and re-labelling them all under the watchful eye of the most annoying and least auspicious man she had ever come to know: Draco Malfoy. He was there to make sure she properly labelled and catalogued all of Snape's (now Slughorn's) potions, but the blond was far more interested in watching the redhead herself rather than what she was doing.

She felt his gaze on her back, and she couldn't resist rolling her eyes and placing her hands on her hips, letting out a protracted sigh.

"Take a picture, Malfoy. It'll last longer!" she snapped, glaring at Draco, giving him an I'm-not-patient-enough-to-deal-with-your-shit-today look.

She went back to dusting off the phials and affixing labels to them as the blond Slytherin snorted in the corner, bringing his feet up onto the desk.

"I'd rather take a picture of something that is a little more pleasing to the eye, Weasley," he replied, smacking his lips distastefully. "I'm not one to take snaps of circus folk." He sneered at her and then looked back down at his lap where he had placed his book, beginning to read.

Draco stared at his History of Hogwarts textbook and bit his lip in keen concentration. He had been trying to focus on the words, but his mind kept wandering back to how seductively sexy Weasley looked in her one-size-too-small shirt and pair of torn Muggle jeans, her hair swept back into a high ponytail. She was chewing her lips with a pained expression on her face. Suddenly, she began humming to herself, bending down to pick up the next case. Draco looked up and suppressed a moan as she exposed a nice view of her arse to him.

"That's incredibly distracting," he commented dryly, referring more so to Ginny's bending over than to her humming, though he would never let on. He wanted nothing more than to stroll up behind her, bend her over forcefully, and have a go at her, but she was a Weasley, and she was serving a detention. It would be improper and oh-so-naughty.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Malfoy. Did you want to request a song?" she asked, with a sardonic grin twisted on her face and an eyebrow cocked whimsically in the air.

What cheek. How he'd like to snog that cocky grin right off her face and knock her down a few pegs.

"Are your parents alcoholics?" Draco asked so suddenly and seriously that Ginny stood up, startled.

"What?" she asked dumbly. No one had ever asked her such a question before.

"A-l-c-o-h-o-l-i-c? Take to the drink, yeah?" he queried facetiously, sporting his own cocky grin as he crossed his arms over his chest.

"I know what an alcoholic is, you prat! And no, they are not. Why do you ask?" She impatiently tapped her foot on the ground.

"I just figured that only the drink could have prevented your parents from shipping you straight off to the Americas or killing you outright. I mean, Weasley, do you ever shut up?" A small, satisfied grin tugged at his lips.

Ginny fumed and threw the rag that was in her hand onto the floor, storming over to the desk.

"Temper, temper, Weasley!" Draco tsked, waddling his finger in the air as she approached him.

His expression changed when she reached over and grabbed him by the collar, dragging him up, over, and across the top of the desk.

"I'll show you temper, Malfoy!" Ginny growled, as Draco's startled expression quickly turned into a lustful one.

No one had ever manhandled him like that. Her daring, her impetuousness, her strength—he could not take it any longer. He saw the fury in her eyes, and he felt the need to crush her, to break her just a little.

Draco pulled himself up and straightened his robes. In the process, he brought his arms up underneath hers and shoved her hands off his collar. He then grabbed her by her thin shirt and lifted her up over the desk onto his lap. As he tugged her over, he heard a rip and felt his hands pull away the fabric of her top.

A startled expression crossed Ginny's features as she landed on his lap with her shirt in his hands. Her arms flew up to her chest as she was only wearing a low-cut bra. The grey-eyed blond dropped the remains of her top to the floor and placed his large, cool hands on her sides. She jumped at his touch and looked down at him, wide-eyed.

"Where's this famous Weasley temper now?" Draco asked, grinning evilly at her reaction. "Why are you so speechless, Freckles?"

He looked her up and down with a tinge of captivated interest. She had a nice body, he had to admit, and it turned him on even more that she was modest about it. Ginny, in turn, stiffened, shutting her eyes tightly as he stroked his fingers along her sides. Her mouth opened slightly, and she let out a small sigh and shuddered. She felt his body tense underneath her, and her eyes fluttered open in surprise. She looked down into his eyes with childlike innocence then glanced down at his lap in confusion. She had felt something hard poke at her bottom while she was straddling his lap. He then shifted her weight on his lap with a grin and, in the process, drew her closer to him. His breath was on her neck.

"Still not talking?" he whispered seductively, a smirk still mockingly adorning his handsome face.

She opened her eyes languidly, as if coming out of a spell, and looked down into his cloudy eyes and growled. "Shut up, Malfoy!"

Draco was taken aback, but before he could retort, he saw a blur of tiny, pink hands reach down and grab his face, twining slender fingers through his hair. She lifted his head up violently towards her own and crashed her lips down onto his.

His reaction was immediate. As her small, pink tongue darted into his mouth, Draco quickly returned the fervent kiss and stood up with her still on his lap. He forcefully brushed away the papers on the desk in one swift motion and sat her down roughly, pausing only to reach back to tug off his robes. Ginny slipped her fingers out of his hair and reached down to his shoulders, aiding him. As his robes hit the floor, her tiny fingers deftly slipped into the waist of his trousers and began to tug him closer. Moaning, Draco felt her soft fingers rub against his sensitive underbelly then something hardened and rose. He had an itch that needed to be scratched, so he pulled Ginny on top of him, making her wrap her legs around his waist so that he could effectively grind into her. He pressed his hardness against her, making her mewl in pleasure.

.oOo.

"Mister Malfoy!" a voice cried, reaching into the recesses of Draco's mind. It sounded like Snape's. "You think you could stay awake for class? Tomorrow you have a test on what we covered today," Professor Snape announced, clearing his throat in an annoyed fashion. "I swear, sometimes you and Potter have more in common than you'd like to admit." The DADA instructor shook his head disapprovingly, a dissatisfied look plastered on his sallow face.

Draco stared back at Snape, blinking. He had fallen asleep in class! Everyone was looking at him in shock; some were openly snickering at him. His mouth snapped shut, but his eyes remained wide, if only for a moment. Draco Malfoy had had an erotic dream about Ginny Weasley!

Draco groaned to himself and buried his head in his hands as Snape turned around and continued his lecture while the Gryffindors and the Slytherins eyed the blond cautiously.

"Salazar, no!" he moaned, trying not to think about Ginny Weasley's sweet smelling hair and soft, rosebud lips.

.oOo.

"Miss Weasley!" Professor McGonagall hissed.

Ginny's head shot up from her desk. She had just been imagining that she and Draco Malfoy were snogging in the Potions classroom.

"Uhhh, yeah?" Ginny blinked, not quite sure if any of this was real.

It looked as though she was in Transfiguration class, but she felt that the dungeons, earlier, were real as well.

"Would you like to stay awake for class, or would you rather me fetch you a pillow?" McGonagall asked, a wry grin planted on her face.

Ginny blushed a scarlet-red. "Sorry, Professor," she whispered, trying not to look up as the rest of the class giggled at her.

McGonagall resumed her lesson, and Ginny tried to pay attention, but her mind kept reverting to her dream.

I was snogging Draco Malfoy! she screamed in her mind, burying her face in her parchment.

It wasn't the fact that she had been snogging Malfoy that upset her; it was the fact that she had liked it.

Oh Merlin!

xXx