Three months had passed. Ever since that moment at Spinners End, Chris and Bellatrix had stayed at the house there every weekend. He would apparate there after lunch on the Saturday, and come back to the castle on the Monday night. It was at the point where Chris even kept some of his things at the house. He was starting to wonder if he was in love with her. Nevertheless, the three months passed, and Chris, Aurora and Patrick were on the Hogwarts Express, heading back to school after the Christmas Holidays. Chris had continued to frequently see Bellatrix over the weeks they had off of school. His trunk loaded onto the train, Chris walked down the carriages of the train, his cat Nidalee in his arms, looking for the compartment where Aurora and Patrick were sitting. Eventually he found them, and sat next to Patrick, closing the door behind him. He placed Nidalee down on the seat next to him, and she curled into a ball, purring gently.

"Alright mate, good Christmas?" Chris said to Patrick, happy to see him again. Patrick looked back at him, smirking.

"So how's this new fancy lady of yours then mate? I presume that's why I barely heard from you all Christmas…" he replied, trying to make Chris feel awkward. Chris however, shrugged the comment off.

"Ha. She's alright…" Chris said idly. "I'm more interested in seeing what you think of the new Quidditch strategies I've been devising over the break…"

"Oh do we really have to spend the whole train ride talking about bloody Quidditch?!" said Aurora, screwing her face up in the progress. Chris looked at Patrick, and as if they'd read each others mind, both said the same thing at the same time.

"Oh, sorry Rory…"

But to Chris's luck, the change in subject seemed to have made Patrick forget about the topic of Chris's new girlfriend. The trio spent the rest of the train journey catching up on the various things they'd gotten up to over the holidays, with the small exception of Chris and Bellatrix's blossoming relationship. Eventually, the train pulled up at Hogsmeade station, and the students made their way to the castle.

The next day, lessons began again. Chris woke up afresh at 8am, in preparation for his first class, Defense Against the Dark Arts, at 9.30am. Chris dragged himself out of bed and into the shower. After he had finished showering, and spiking his hair up in customary fashion, he picked up his bag, and walked down to the common room, where Patrick was waiting for him. Aurora didn't take Defense Against the Dark Arts at NEWT level, so the two left the common room alone. The arrived at the classroom, and strode in, taking their usual seats in the middle of the classroom. Their professor strode into the classroom after them, Professor Stephen Merrythought. He was the son of former Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher Galatea Merrythought.

He stood at the head of the class, and welcomed the students back from the Christmas break. Defense Against the Dark Arts was Chris's best subject, by a considerable distance.

"Good morning class. Welcome back, welcome back. This morning, a special lecture will be given by none other than the most famous Wizard of our time, Harry Potter!" the professor exclaimed, proudly. In through the door to the classroom came Harry Potter himself, settling at the front of the class.

"Good morning everyone, and thank you for inviting me, Professor Merrythought." Harry said. He scanned the room, glancing over every student. However, when his eyes met Chris's, he stopped suddenly. He had met Chris several times before, praising him on his superb duelling and control of magic. However, this time there was something different. His eyes lingered over Chris for a few more seconds, and he clutched his scar, a slight pain shooting through it.

"Is something wrong, Professor Potter?" Professor Merrythought asked, uncomfortably. Harry broke his eye contact with Chris, and took his hand away from his scar, the pain dissipating.

"No no, I'm fine Stephen, thank you for asking. Just a bit of a headache this morning…" he said hastily, reassuring the Professor. Chris was slightly disconcerted by this, was it just a coincidence that Harry Potter was looking at him when he felt the pain? She shuffled awkwardly in his seat, trying not to make eye contact with Harry again.

Harry continued with the lecture nevertheless, delivering an engaging and informative discussion on nonverbal spells. At the end of the lesson, everyone was packing up their things and filing out. Harry however, walked over to Chris and Patrick's desk.

"Chris Iverson, isn't it? Can I have a quick word in private please…" Harry said to Chris. Chris looked at Patrick, who nodded at him, before leaving.

"Of course Mr Potter…" Chris said tentatively, slightly worried. It was definitely Chris that had caused the pain in Harry's scar, seeing as Harry now wanted to speak to him alone. All of the other students left the classroom, followed by Professor Merrythought, leaving them alone. Chris watched the door close behind them, before turning around to Harry. To Chris's surprise, Harry drew his wand and charged at Chris, grabbing his collar and placing his wand at the side of Chris's head. Harry cast a spell that would reverse the effects of Polyjuice Potion, suspecting that someone was impersonating Chris. When this didn't work, Harry let Chris go, and sheathed his wand.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Chris shouted, in shock. Harry looked back at him, cautiously.

"I'm sorry Chris, I thought someone was impersonating you. It might be nothing, but I sensed something when I first saw you this morning. You're giving off a lot of dark energy, Chris…" Harry explained. Chris looked at Harry as if he was going mad.

"Harry, what? You know me, you know I'm not like that!" he stated, still shocked. Harry paced the room slowly, before stopping in front of Chris again.

"Chris… Is there anything I should know about? Have you been in contact with a dark wizard recently?" Harry asked, sounding concerned.

'Oh, nothing major. I've only been having sex with a Death Eater who also happens to be my girlfriend…' Chris thought to himself. There was no way he could even think about telling Harry that bit of information.

"No Harry, I've just spent all of Christmas at home with my family, you know, my muggle father and non-magic siblings? And my mother who doesn't have a single bad bone in her body." Chris replied. Harry thought that this was oddly defensive, but he knew Chris and his family, and took his word. He had no reason not to believe him.

"Okay… Maybe I just got my wires crossed. You can go now." Harry said, smiling at Chris. "Oh, and don't be too hard on Gryffindor in a fortnight, they're only young as a team…" he joked, referring to Quidditch.

"I'll try to go easy on them!" came Chris's jovial response. He picked up his bag, and left the classroom, rushing to the Great Hall to catch up to Patrick.

Harry however, was still slightly concerned about what had just happened. He pondered for a few more moments, before deciding to do a little more digging. He left the classroom five minutes after Chris, and began walking towards Professor McGonagall's office. He strode there with some urgency, not even stopping to return the greetings of several students who recognised him. He knocked sharply on the door to the office. A voice on the other side of the door invited him to come in.

"Ah Mr Potter! How wonderful to see you again!" Professor McGonagall said to him, beaming. Harry walked up to her desk, and shook her hand.

"Just a quick favour to ask Minerva. I'll pop to the Great Hall for lunch where we can catch up, but for now, I need to know who Chris Iverson hangs around with, you know, his friends." Harry said quickly.

"That's a very specific ask, Harry… What do you need to know this for?" Professor McGonagall replied, curiously.

"I just wanted to ask them something about Chris. There was something different about him when I saw him earlier." Harry informed her.

"Nothing serious, I hope?" the Professor asked.

"I shouldn't think so, just double checking something."

Professor McGonagall looked at Harry, trusting his word.

"Very well, if you head over to the Ancient Runes corridor now, you'll find a girl in the final year class called Aurora Twycross. They're very close." She said.

"Thank you Minerva, I'll make sure I catch up with you at lunch!" Harry said courteously, before turning on his heel and leaving the room. He walked back the way he came along the corridors, before arriving outside the classroom in question. He waited outside for ten minutes, before the bell went. Another minute and the students began to file out.

"Excuse me, is there an Aurora Twycross here?" Harry called out to the group. Aurora, who was chatting to another Ravenclaw girl, looked over to him.

"Uh, I'm Aurora?" she said, perplexed. Harry looked her in the eye and smiled reassuringly.

"Hello Aurora, I'm Harry, Harry Potter. Could I have a quick word?" he said, walking towards her. Aurora was slightly taken aback, but had no reason to decline.

"Umm… Sure?" she replied with a hint of confusion. She said her goodbyes to her friends and followed Harry back into the classroom. She walked over to the desk where she had been sitting and put her bag on the vacant chair. Harry walked over to her, trying not to seem intimidating.

"Aurora I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about your friend Chris Iverson, if I may?" Harry said politely to her. Aurora paused for a moment, sucking her bottom lip. What could he want with Chris?

"Umm… What would you like to know?" she said timidly. She was a very shy girl, especially around people of Harry's stature. Harry collected his thoughts for a second.

"Has there been anything different about Chris recently?" he asked her. She wasn't really sure what to say to that, they'd just come back from Christmas break, and she hadn't really spoken to him. Thinking about it, that was quite unusual. The three of them normally had quite good contact over school holidays. She twiddled her pink locks in between two of her fingers, and looked blankly back at Harry.

"Umm… Not really… We've just had Christmas break, and the only thing was that he didn't really contact me. I think he found a new girlfriend or something…" she said quietly. Aurora found this quite awkward to talk about, as she had always had lingering feelings for Chris. Harry found this intriguing to say the least.

"Oh really? Is there anything more about that you can fill me in on? Do you know this girl?" Harry asked, interested.

"Oh… No, I've never met her, I don't even know who she is…" she replied timidly.

"Is he normally secretive about his relationships?" Harry quizzed. Aurora paused again, going slightly pink in the cheeks. She felt quite uncomfortable talking about Chris behind his back.

"Normally no… He's normally quite vocal about such things." Aurora began to think of the moments before Christmas where Chris had seen Bellatrix's black smoke from his window. She wondered whether she should tell Harry about this. Conflicted, she kept it to herself.

"Ok Aurora, that's probably enough, thanks for your time." Harry finished, smiling at her. He paused for a second before starting to walk towards the door. Just as Harry was about to leave, Aurora's conscience got the better of her.

"Uh, Mr Potter, wait…" she said. Harry turned around and looked her in the eye.

"Yes, Aurora?" came his reply. Aurora felt very awkward, but she had to tell him. He wouldn't have come to find her if it wasn't important.

"There was something last term… He saw something out of the window of his dorm several times…" she nervously explained. This is what Harry had been after. He stood there for a moment, before walking back over to her.

"Do go on?" he said, deep in thought.

"He said he saw a sort of… black wispy smoke, by the edge of the Dark Forest. It made him late to a few classes, and one night he went out to investigate it. He said that nothing happened, it just repelled him if he came too close…" barely as those words left her lips, she felt awful on the inside. She had probably just created a whole pile of trouble for Chris.

"Did he say anything else about it?" he asked.

"No, just that… He didn't seem very interested in it, I don't think it was a big deal to him. Although he did start going home a lot more often not long after that…" she said. "Look, I'm not comfortable with this, I've told you all I know, umm, I have to go…" and with that, she snatched up her bag and hastily left the room. She got out of the classroom, and shut the door behind her. A tear trickled down her cheek, and she ran back to the Ravenclaw common room. She marched up the stairs to her dormitory, and threw herself onto her bed, drawing the curtains around her four-poster. She burst into a flood of tears, feeling awful about what had just happened.

Harry however, was still in the classroom, thinking.

'Something is clearly not right here… He sees a mystery entity, regularly starts going somewhere at weekends, and possibly uses a girlfriend as a cover story… I have to investigate this further.' He thought to himself. He decided that he'd stay in the castle for the week, and see if anything further developed.

Saturday rolled around, and Chris, Patrick and Aurora were sat in the Great Hall having lunch, as per usual. They had all finished their lunch, and Chris stood up.

"Right guys, I'm off home, I'll catch you guys tomorrow or Monday. See ya!" he said, and strode out of the hall. Harry, who was also having lunch in the Great Hall, saw Chris leave. He decided that he'd follow him and see where he was headed too. Sticking a reasonable distance behind, he walked after him right up until Chris arrived at the Ravenclaw common room. Harry took refuge in a classroom on the same corridor, looking through a crack in the door. Ten minutes later, Chris reappeared from the common room, with his bag over his shoulder. He started briskly walking down the corridor, and Harry resumed following him. Chris made it all the way to the front doors of the castle, along the grounds, and on the trail to Hogsmeade.

'Nothing unusual yet…' Harry thought to himself, continuing to follow Chris at a distance. Harry turned a corner into Hogsmeade, just catching a glimpse of Chris apparating. He knew that Chris had apparated somewhere, but there was no way of telling where. He would have to keep a close eye on the situation in the future, maybe try and track where Chris was going. He was sure he wasn't just going home, as he said he was. No one needed to go home every weekend when they were at Hogwarts.

Chris arrived at Spinners end, looking forwards to seeing Bellatrix again. He strode down the road, arriving at the door to the house they'd been using as cover. He checked around him, making sure no one was looking, and entered the house. Bellatrix was sat on the sofa, watching the television. Chris had never seen her do this before, she was still fairly evasive of muggle technology. He walked over to the sofa, dropping his bag to the floor, sitting down next to her.

"Television Bella? Didn't think that was your thing to be honest!" he expressed, still slightly surprised. She looked back at him, with a disgruntled look on her face.

"How can people watch this? It's total rubbish!" she said disapprovingly. She looked back at the television, before screwing her face up, moving back to look at Chris, who just laughed. He found the way she interacted with muggle technology adorable.

"Ha, you just get used to it eventually… I just end up watching it to pass the time more than anything, I don't actually like what's on it." Chris replied passively. He sat back into the sofa, relaxing. Bellatrix shuffled across to sit closer to him, leaning gently into him. Chris obliged, and placed his arm around her. Chris's thoughts suddenly turned to his incident with Harry Potter earlier in the week. He thought it was probably best to talk to Bellatrix about it.

"So Bella… Something, let's say, intriguing happened this week. I had an encounter with one Harry Potter..." he said slowly, not sure of how she would react to hearing of him again. He immediately felt Bellatrix tense up at the mention of his name.

"By encounter, I hope you mean you practised the killing curse on him!" she said bluntly. Chris could see the anger in her face growing. He'd need to calm her down in order to have a sensible discussion with her.

"No Bella, I'm not interested in who he actually is, only what he wants with me. When he first laid eyes on me, he was discomforted by something. Then he thought that I was someone else, impersonating me. When that turned out to be incorrect, he asked if I'd been in contact with a dark wizard of witch recently… Obviously I told him no, but what the fuck?" he blurted out, with some concern in his voice.

"Could our relationship be, I dunno how to say it, leaving some sort of a trace on me?" he said curiously. He could feel how tense her body still was, the one person she certainly wouldn't want trying to track her down was indeed Harry Potter.

"I don't care, if he steps foot near me then I'll turn him to dust like his precious godfather!" she spat callously. She was never normally this uncontrolled around Chris's calming influence.

"Bella, please. I'm being serious here. If he gets even so much of a glimpse of you… Or if anyone does for that matter… I have a feeling he's going to continue snooping around me. Maybe we should not meet up so often, to see if it makes a difference." Chris suggested. Bellatrix gripped Chris's hand, lacing her fingers with his.

"I won't let myself be dictated to by that filthy half-blood!" Bellatrix spat, clearly incensed. "Why is it always him that has to try and ruin everything!" she stood up, and began to angrily pace the room. Chris quickly jumped to his feet, and walked over to her, putting his hands on either side of her head, looking into her eyes.

"Look at me, Bella. This doesn't necessarily mean anything yet. He's only suspicious of something. He doesn't even know what he's looking for. Trust me, if we keep things safe, it won't be a problem. Then once I'm done at Hogwarts in a few months, that's it. Done. Please, try to calm down a bit, for me?" Chris said to her, trying his very best to reason with her. However, she was difficult to reason with, brushing his hands off of her face.

"I don't care if he doesn't know anything, he's still trailing you and he's still interfering in MY life! Let's kill him. Come on. Let's kill him. Tonight. He'll be at Hogwarts. You can sneak me in. We'll do it together!" Bellatrix was talking quickly, maniacally. She really was irate, dangerously slipping back into her old ways. Chris had one last thing to try.

"Bella, please, let's be rational, calm down my angel…" he said softly. It was a tense moment for Chris. Bellatrix hated any semblance of pet names or corny emotion like that. But right in her core, it gave her butterflies in her stomach. She almost liked it. She would either respond really well or really badly. There would be no in-between. Lucky for Chris, it seemed to have worked. Bella brought herself to within an inch of Chris, and punched his chest.

"Fuck you… You can't call me that, you know you can't…" she said, her voice softening. "I'm just mad… I don't want to have you taken away from me. We've overcome a lot of obstacles these past four months, I don't want to have all that hard work undone."

She placed her head on his chest and put her arms around his waist. Chris reciprocated, and put his arms around her. He gave her a familiar gentle kiss on the top of her head, as he did all so often, stroking her black curls.

"I love you, Bella" he said softly, holding her close to him.

"And I love you, Chris" she said back to him, tightening her arms around his waist. This was the first time they'd admitted these feelings to each other. A wave of happiness flushed through Chris. He never wanted to let this lady go.

"Now, let's think about this. Maybe if we see each other every two or three weeks instead of every week. We can still keep in touch with owls. I'll bet you anything that the teachers keep a bit of an eye on me. I'll just have to be diligent. We'll get through this, I only have another few months left there. Let's focus on getting through that first." Chris said.

"Okay. I trust you, but if he continues getting in the way, I will see to him myself…" Bella replied, a hint of anger still in her voice, but she was calm now. Chris caught a brief glimpse of the street outside, noticing that it was now pitch black outside. It had gotten quite late.

"We should probably go to bed, Bella" he said softly. "It's been a pretty stressful day, we'll probably both feel better in the morning, come on."

He gently took Bellatrix's hand and started walking up the stairs to their bedroom. Chris brushed his teeth in the bathroom, before stripping down to his boxers and climbing into bed. Bellatrix soon emerged from the bathroom after him, taking her dress off and tying her hair back. As she moved towards the bed, Chris couldn't help but look up and down her body. Now that she had a place to live, and actual meals, she was more than just the skin and bones she used to be. Chris's eyes followed her slender legs upwards, around the curves of her hips, over her voluptuous breasts and up to her face. Chris smiled gently, utterly in awe of her beauty. Bellatrix shot him that sultry look she was capable of giving, before breaking into a smirk.

"You still can't keep your eyes to yourself, can you?" she said playfully, climbing on top of him. She kissed him passionately, before Chris took charge, rolling them both over so that he was on top of her…