Abigail had seated herself under a birch tree, facing the body of water. She leaned back against the bark of the tree, her pale neck exposed to the warmth of the sun and her eyes closed in apparent tranquillity. Even as we came closer, she remained in that position, and her voice revealed nothing more nor less of her tranquillity when she said, "oh, kill me now," by way of greeting us.

"We come in peace," Ron spoke first, as he was the one least affected by his guilt.

"Can we join you?" I requested, making it sound less like one as we weren't taking no for an answer.

She gave no responses in the negative, so we settled ourselves down on the grass around her. Hermione seated herself shoulder-to-shoulder with Abigail under the tree. "I've missed hanging out with you. Not just recently, but, the last few years, too."

Hermione had earlier cautioned us not to press her into 'the big talk' if we were going to do this the right way, so Ron and I only sat there and waited.

"So did I. There aren't many properly intelligent people who care to talk to me."

It was silent for a moment. Ron soon decided to move to Hermione's side and rested his head on her lap. Abigail's apparent peacefulness was getting to me, too, and I decided to lay in the grass at her other side.

I heard Abigail sigh as if in defeat. Finally, she spoke, "when it was found that the prolonged use of silverware would poison the body, my family's trade almost went bankrupt."

I was confused at this, and I was sure Ron and Hermione were too, but we decided to just stay quiet and listen.

"My grandfather saved the business with his ground-breaking found. He formulated a coating that eradicated the poisoning problem entirely. It was then decided that the occasional research should benefit us greatly. By the time my father inherited Silvercraft, it was thought there wasn't much he could do to bring the company any further; it was already quite successful.

"But, it my opinion, he was the most accomplished of us Silversmiths. He crafted the most beautiful works of art I've ever seen, and he was very generous about his knowledge and skill at crafting silverware. Before anything else, I was taught to use magic to craft silver, my father mentoring me on it alongside my mother. I remember how fascinated she was with it.

"But she wanted to take it further, and she sought for and found other uses for it. Dark uses. She became obsessed. Her last contribution to the field had been an unfinished research on one such use, before she became mad and fell off a cliff."

My eyes snapped open, and I looked up at her then with furrowed eyebrows. Ron had blurted out, "what?" in disbelief, and Hermione had stopped in the middle of stroking his hair.

"Just checking if you had fallen asleep."

If she hadn't sounded so serious, I might have laughed. We went back to listening with our eyes closed.

"But she did die leaving an uncompleted study on something not strictly light magic. At least it wasn't, before my father took it upon himself. I guess I could say that he turned her Dark Arts work into something more like Defence Against The Dark Arts. It was this last bequeath of my family's legacy that finally got me into this puddle of Troll bogies."

I felt her shifted, and looked up again to find her finally opening her eyes. Her blank, lightless eyes.

I propped myself up on one arm, trying to listen closer. We were all looking at her now.

"You asked where I've been the last few years, Hermione," she stated, observing something in the grass before her.

"Yes?" Hermione urged her to continue.

"My parent's final collaboration had caught some unwanted attention. It was my big-mouthed sister's fault. My father was forced to flee, and I wasn't safe anywhere but with him. But as it turned out, I wasn't safe anywhere, period.

"They caught us. We managed to go as far as halfway around the world but they caught us."

I couldn't stop the onslaught of memories of the conversation in the piano room, particularly the part about her having sworn allegiance to Voldemort. I was going to ask who 'they' were, but decided that she was going to tell us if we just keep listening. I straightened up as Ron and Hermione did the same.

Steadily, Abigail brought her arms forward and pulled back her left sleeve. It was not a sight that we hadn't expected, but we still couldn't help gasping at it.

Abigail bore the Dark Mark.

"It doesn't matter where I've been the last few years, Hermione. This is all I have going for me, and I know better than most what this Mark is doing to Malfoy. Which is why I'm going to assure you one last time: I don't make promises that I can't keep."

There was a moment of silence, during which the tension built up to an unbearable degree. I was not shocked to hear myself screaming, "BUT YOU WILL NOT KEEP THIS ONE!"

Abigail responded with a look of utter incredulity on her face. I noted that that was the most emotion I've yet seen her manifest, and I actually deflated a little.

She found her voice quite quickly, "now that's what confused me; why you were all so eager to 'stop me'." She actually indicated the quotation marks around 'stop me'.

"It's because it's not right!" Hermione spoke up.

"Because it's wrong!" Ron had voiced at the same time.

Abigail held up both hands, her Mark glaring at us where her sleeve had been rolled up.

"No. It's either because you know more about my task than I do, or that you have got the wrong idea."

I blinked. I blinked again. It took a while for her remark to start making any sense at all to me. After a few minutes, it made complete sense, and my friends and I seemed to be shaken out of our stupor as it did.

We never did found out what her task that involved Malfoy was, exactly. Until now.

"Here, I'll show you."

Abigail took up her wand and touched its tip to her Mark. She muttered something before pulling the wand from her skin. To our amazement, the Dark Mark was pulled off with it, now glittering silver on the tip of her wand. She flicked and sent the silvery thing crashing onto the grass.

It only bounced back from the ground and onto her forearm, and simply turned back to how it was before. I frowned, not understanding.

"If I had flicked it on another's Dark Mark, mine would pick it up like a magnet of sorts and I end up bearing both the Marks, while the other is free to get on with their life. My father used to call what we were doing as 'harvesting' Dark Marks."

I realised that that was all very well and everything, but "why did Voldemort have Death Eaters who harvest Dark Marks?"

Abigail blinked at me curiously before I saw comprehension dawn on her face.

"My father was performing darker tasks than this for the Dark Lord, obviously, Harry. This was something he did without the Dark Lord's consent. I stayed by his side the whole time, learning how he did it. In his deathbed, he assured me that the Dark Lord will perish, and that's when I promised him that his personal mission will be seen through. I am going to harvest all the Dark Marks."

Hermione mused aloud, "so one loose end… One last target… You've come back for Malfoy's…"

"That's actually …brilliant." Ron finally broke his silence.

"Yea, bearing the Dark Mark doesn't work in favour of oneself anymore these days. They actually never did. I don't want that for Malfoy. I'm going to give him his second chance. That's why… I'm going to see this through."

It was actually brilliant. But Abigail seemed nothing else than absolutely dejected at the prospect of it all. I could only make guesses, so I did.

"What are the side effects?"

Abigail looked up at me then, smiling sadly. I didn't think it was possible to look sad while smiling, but that's how she looked at me.

"They fell ill, afterwards, mostly. But only for a few days."

I had to press on. There had to be better reasons for her feeling so conflicted about the task. "And?"

"And when they wake up, they didn't remember ever having met the harvester at all."

I thought on this a moment longer.

When Abigail had fulfilled her promise, Malfoy would be rid of his Dark Mark. People would eventually stop saying things about him behind his back, or to his face for that matter, and would stop trying to send him off to Azkaban. People would stop discriminating against him for the Mark. Malfoy would eventually, finally, find his place in the new world.

Malfoy would also forget all those things I had heard him tell Theodore the teddy bear: about a friend he had met during the earlier days of his darker life, from whom he had learnt that it was alright to admit having weaknesses, in whom he had found a companionship truer and more sincere than his other friends.

What other friends did he have than Abigail? That Theodore Nott was beyond horrible.

So Abigail would consent to losing that friendship, to give Malfoy his second chance.

And now I understood why there were no promises she made that she won't keep.

[Author's Notes]

I got lazy towards the middle. Hence lengthy monologue from my OC. I never liked doing that. But meh.