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Chapter 11 – Kitchen Duty

The massive white kitchen was bustling with hundreds of house elves, who were magically directing endless streams of dinner scraps like multi-coloured rivers flowing high in the air into large waste bins lining one kitchen wall. The bins appeared to be eating and digesting the scraps; occasionally one rumbled or let out a loud burp, and toxic gasses shimmered briefly in the air (accompanied by a deadly smell), before quickly dissipating.

Malfoy looked faintly nauseous, but Hermione, who was used to the kitchen after sneaking into there many times before on her S.P.E.W crusade, ignored proceedings in favour of greeting the few house elves she had managed to successfully befriend. The others kept well back, watching her mistrustfully as they set about their individual tasks.

"So this is where you ended up."

Malfoy had regained his composure, and leaned comfortably against the wall, gazing at Dobby with distinct amusement crossing his features.

"Not even affiliated with a respectable wizarding family, but working for that muggle loving fool Dumbledore. I knew you were pathetic, and had no respect for your magical heritage, but I never suspected even you would sink so low."

Dobby straightened, his eyes flashing.

"Dobby is a paid elf sir! Dobby doesn't have to answer to the likes of you any more!"

"Paid?" If possible, Malfoy's sneer deepened.

Hermione glared at Malfoy, and turned to face Dobby who looked close to tears.

"Ignore him Dobby," she said firmly. "What would you like us to do?"

"Hermione," squeaked Dobby, brightening considerably, "I would like you to meet Dobby's friend Macy!"

A second house elf materialized out of thin air next to Dobby. "You called?" she squeaked.

Macy was smaller than Dobby, and for a house elf she looked almost pretty. Her large ears were delicately pointed and pierced with tiny silver bells dangling from their tips. Her vivid green eyes were even larger and more luminescent than Dobby's and she wore a tiny bracelet of more silver bells around one delicate ankle.

"Macy will be helping Dobby supervise Hermione and Draco with the kitchen tasks!"

Dobby beamed. " Macy is Dobby's best friend! Macy has left her family like Dobby has and come to work for Professor Dumbledore! Macy likes socks too!"

Macy bashfully plucked at her neatly starched Hogwarts pillowcase, smiling bashfully, her eyes downcast. Dobby was staring at Macy with a misty eyed expression similar to the one he usually bestowed upon Harry. Malfoy was gazing at Dobby with a look of utter revulsion.

"I think he likes her," Malfoy sneered in the direction of Hermione, speaking as though Dobby wasn't even in the room. Hermione glared at Malfoy repressively, but Dobby beamed, happily oblivious.

"Dobby does like Macy. Dobby likes Macy very much!"

"Well I can see why," said Malfoy sarcastically, as Macy covered her enormous luminescent eyes with a squeak of delight and peered out at Dobby from between splayed, wrinkled fingertips.

Dobby was now gazing at Malfoy with a slightly warmer expression. "Dobby is here to instruct Mister Malfoy and Hermione on the tasks they are to complete, and then Dobby and Macy will act as supervisors for the next two hours. Detention will finish at 10 o'clock, and then Mister Malfoy and Hermione will go straight to their common rooms as curfew is 10:30pm. If Hermione or Mister Malfoy have any questions they can ask Dobby or Macy."

Hermione beamed at Dobby. "I'm looking forward to it Dobby!"

Malfoy rolled his eyes, and then rolled up the sleeves of his robe. Hermione looked at him in surprise—this practical gesture and all it implied seemed extremely out of character for Malfoy. "What needs to be done?" he said.

Dobby indicated for them to follow him, and scampered towards the far corner of the kitchen where a group of gigantic black ovens were emitting sinister bursts of black steam. Macy disappeared with a loud pop. Hermione, distracted, hurried after Dobby while Malfoy followed at a more leisurely pace.

"Where's Macy gone?"

"Macy carries messages for Professor Dumbledore," Dobby was struggling to open a wooden cabinet that seemed determined to retain its contents by keeping its doors tightly closed. "She comes and goes when he calls, or when the other teachers need a message carried."

The cupboard door had finally burst open and was spewing its contents violently onto the stone floor, missing Dobby's head by centimetres as he had hurriedly leapt backwards out of the way. The contents appeared to be strangely misshapen pieces of wood, but even as they hit the floor, weird moaning noises were issuing from them and they appeared to be vibrating ever so slightly.

"Fairy wood!" said Dobby cheerfully. "Tonight and for the rest of this week we are feeding the ovens! Normally this is Winky's job, but Winky is booked into a magical maladies detox program for mystical creatures at Professor Dumbledore's request. Watch Dobby now!"

The oven nearest to them let out an almighty belch and its door swung open, emitting a gush of black steam interspersed with blue sparks. The moaning coming from the fairy wood increased, and they were now vibrating so hard they were inching across the floor in a disorganized pattern. Dobby picked up one of the smaller pieces and inched towards the oven door with it, clearly struggling to maintain his grasp on it as it was now shuddering violently and emitting a high pitched screaming noise. As the oven door swung open, he threw it in, and the screaming and billowing steam was cut off abruptly as the oven made happy munching noises and the door stayed open, swinging slightly to and fro of its own accord like a strange appendage.

Hermione was gazing at the oven with some trepidation, but Malfoy nonchalantly strode forward, grabbed a large piece of fairy wood, wrestled it under control – the muscles in his arms tightening – and threw it from a distance into the next oven just as its door swung open, with perfect aim. The oven burped and gurgled happily, its door now hanging open and swaying happily in a non-existent breeze.

"Very good Mister Malfoy!" Dobby squeaked happily.

Determined not to be outdone by Malfoy, Hermione deliberately went for the largest piece of fairy wood in the pile. If Malfoy could do it so easily, how hard could it be? Unfortunately, the situation quickly deteriorated from there.

-o-o-o-

Malfoy had rarely been so entertained during all his time at Hogwarts than when watching Hermione Granger trying to feed the kitchen ovens. While Dobby doggedly went for the smallest pieces of wood and the closest oven, clearly with a realistic assessment of his own strength, Hermione went straight for the biggest piece of wood in the pile.

Malfoy was not unused to outdoor activity and strenuous physical exercise, and his arms were well built up after years of playing Quidditch (although he played Seeker at school, he had always played Chaser at home, and liked to keep his skills sharp at both positions). Unbeknownst to most of the school, he actually enjoyed a hard physical workout on occasion. It took his mind off things; the pressure of studies, family expectations, his arranged marriage with Pansy, house politics, the situation – still haunting his every sleeping and waking hour. For a little while he could release his rage and helplessness without holding back. He could embrace the black howling void that was always inside of him without risking detention or worse for his pains. He courted destruction to escape his own personal hell.

Thus he was pleasantly surprised by the task they had been assigned; he'd originally suspected they would be required to wash dirty dishes – the very thought made him shudder in disgust – dish washing was a servant's job. However, he was even more surprised by Granger's reaction to it. She was a scrawny thing, and he knew for a fact she took no interest in sports. She had been ridiculously easy to dunk in the lake, so easy, in fact, that he suspected she had little to no body muscle at all. He'd have thought Granger would know her own strength better, being the know-it-all that she was. Apparently, he was wrong.

Malfoy watched in amusement as Granger struggled with the largest piece of fairy wood, which was vibrating violently and uttering a high pitched squealing sound not unlike a stuck pig. Granger's face was beetroot red, and she knelt panting as she tried to push armfuls of frizzed up hair out of her face without success (her hair tie had burst in the process). In what he could only assume was sheer frustration at being thwarted – something he knew she was not used to when it came to school tasks – she kicked the fairy wood, hard, and then howled as though she had kicked solid stone, hopping up and down with little moans of distress.

It was the funniest thing he'd seen in weeks, perhaps even funnier than watching Granger singing in the dining hall. Thinking about the embarrassment on Granger's bright red face as she stood singing on the Gryffindor table, and the current blotchy red of frustration staining her cheeks now, he could not help but compare Granger's face to a that of a large tomato, albeit a tomato sprouting ludicrous amounts of frizzy brown hair instead of a stalk. A small chuckle escaped him, and then soon enough he was bent over double laughing his head off for the second time in two days.

He stopped rather abruptly when he spotted Granger reaching for her wand.

-o-o-o-

/I order you not to hex me./

Straightening up, Hermione caught sight of Malfoy watching her warily with a highly amused expression in his grey eyes. This increased her annoyance several fold and she had a sudden urge to punch him hard in the chest.

"I wasn't aiming at you, ferret, I'm trying to do the task we've been assigned! Focus on your own fairy wood, you twat!"

Suddenly Malfoy's face lit up, as though in sudden comprehension, and a truly evil smile spread across his face. Knowing that whatever thought process going on to cause that smile could not be good news for her, Hermione gulped in apprehension.

/I order you not to hex me… now or ever./

Damn. She'd been hoping Malfoy wouldn't correct that oversight. Never mind, she fully intended to spend every spare waking minute in the library from tonight onwards until she had figured out how to escape Malfoy's curse. Hexing Malfoy was just light entertainment and it distracted her from the real problem at hand. Fortunately any strange absences or extremely prolonged library sessions would just be put down to her usual study crazed behaviour.

Resolutely ignoring the now snickering Malfoy, she aimed her wand at the offending wood and thought carefully about which charm would be most effective. Deciding upon the levitation charm, she had just moved her wand to cast it when Dobby stuck his soot blackened head out of the far oven that he'd been prodding with a large pair of fire tongs.

"No! Hermione mustn't!"

Reluctantly, Hermione lowered her wand, glaring in frustration at the wizard wood that now was emitting a sound that most closely resembled a sinister deep-throated cackle.

"Fairy wood is magic, Hermione. Dobby forgot to tell you. Any magic used upon it rebounds upon the wand holder. Dobby is so sorry! Dobby has failed Hermione as Hermione's supervisor."

Dobby looked so crestfallen that Hermione made an effort to rearrange her features into what she hoped was an encouraging smile, although inside she was seething with a combination of fury and shame that she was failing so badly a simple kitchen task which Malfoy had easily managed, and that Malfoy was there to witness her struggling with it.

"Don't be silly Dobby, you've shown us what needed to be done and it was my fault I didn't follow your instruction."

Suddenly there was a loud crack and a single piece of crumbled parchment floated gently down from near the ceiling. Dobby literally leapt into the air, snatching it and scanning it quickly. His face suddenly lit up with a beaming smile and turned a horrible blotchy pink, which Hermione assumed must be a blush.

"Macy wants to meet Dobby in the elves' common room!" Dobby squeaked, "Dobby must go! Hermione and Mister Malfoy will continue feeding the ovens and Dobby will be back soon!"

He disappeared with a loud crack that didn't quite cover the loud gagging noise coming from Malfoy's mouth. For once Hermione didn't rise to the challenge, instead looking distracted and slightly disapproving.

"Shouldn't he be staying here to supervise us? That was very irresponsible of Macy."

Malfoy shrugged. "Who cares. You take everything way too seriously Granger."

Suddenly he was uncomfortably close to her. So close, in fact, she was finding it difficult to breathe. She looked up into his face and saw that he was grinning wickedly.

"What, Malfoy?" she snapped, uncomfortably aware of the close proximity of their bodies—especially after recent events.

He reached out a hand, for what purpose she could only guess, and she quickly pre-empted him; grabbing his hand with her own and intending to pull it aside.

However, the moment their hands touched she felt a sudden warmth where their fingers met and her whole body went limp as she drifted into what she could only describe as a warm haze. She had intended to wrench his hand down and away, but instead she found their entwined hands slowly drifting downwards as both squeezed tight in a sort of miniature struggle for domination, their knuckles white tipped and their fingers intertwined. She was staring at their hands to avoid looking into his face, but almost against her own will she felt her face turning inwards and upwards to his, and what she saw in his darkened grey eyes rooted her to the spot.

"What are you doing to me?" he hissed raggedly, and pushed her away suddenly so that she stumbled and almost fell.

While she was still trying to collect herself, he strode over to the fairy wood she had been previously wrestling with and wrenched it off the ground, staggering to the nearest oven panting little breaths of soot in anticipation of its forthcoming meal, and threw the squealing fairy wood inside.

Watching Malfoy bent over, panting, with his hands on his knees as the oven roared in appreciation, Hermione for possibly the first time was lost for words. For an instant, when their eyes had met, she had felt this deep sense of connection as though underneath the layers of hostility, prejudice, opposing values, and house pride, they were suddenly laid bare to each other. She could find no words to describe it, and she wasn't sure she wanted to. He was Malfoy; Slytherin prick, bigoted asshole, enemy to her, Harry, and Ron. A tiny voice inside her said that he had been set upon his path of prejudice and intolerance by his extremist upbringing, and house ties and bad influences had only exacerbated his distorted perception. However, she quenched that voice with a firmer one of her own that said he had had plenty of exposure to better role models during his time at Hogwarts, and in the end he had made his own choice to be who he was no matter how strongly influenced or brainwashed his upbringing had been.

She rubbed her arms and tried resolutely to ignore the sudden cold and sense of loss she had felt when Malfoy had shoved her away from him.

-o-o-o-

Having finally collected his wits, Malfoy got on with the task, furious at himself. For an instant there he had felt… well, it didn't matter what he'd felt because he sure as hell wouldn't feel anything like that again towards Granger! He didn't know what the hell was wrong with him, but he figured maybe he was just overtired and needed a good hard workout (oven feeding would provide nicely) and a long nights rest before he would feel like himself again. He pointedly ignored the little voice in his head insisting he must be either falling for Granger or having a very bad and extremely prolonged nightmare, and turned to the much preferable activity of antagonizing Granger instead.

"I suggest you start with that one," he said bluntly, pointing to what appeared to be a very tiny baby piece of fairy wood that was making very soft giggling noises, "and work your way up from there IF you manage to get that one into the ovens before detention is over."

Granger squared her shoulders and marched straight past him with her nose in the air, clearly intending to maintain a dignified silence. It would have been much more effective if it hadn't put him in mind of a mini McGonagall, causing him to snicker under his breath as in two much longer strides he passed Granger and snatched the medium sized piece of fairy wood she had intended to pick up from under her nose. He casually slung a second smaller piece of fairy wood into his arms also, and he strode over to the second oven leaving Granger fuming in his wake.

They worked in silence for what felt like hours, but in reality was only an hour and a half until Malfoy finally checked the planets on his grandfather's watch, confirming the time to be 10:05pm. Dobby still hadn't shown up, and Malfoy wondered if he was still going at it with Macy, but quickly banished the thought to avoid mental images too horrific to be allowed. Briefly he entertained the idea of lying to Granger and telling her he was going to the restroom, leaving her to continue working until after 10:30pm and hopefully get caught by Filch on her way back to the Gryffindor common room, but his heart just wasn't in it. Maybe he needed some R&R… maybe he needed Pansy… in his mind an image of a girl in lingerie swayed provocatively, her back to him, her curly brown hair falling to the small of her back… wait… Pansy had black hair…

"Snap out of it Malfoy," Granger said firmly, clearly noticing he had been staring blankly at the wall for over five minutes, his arms dangling loosely at his sides. "We're in detention to work, in case you've forgotten."

He shook his head, furious at himself for allowing Granger to invade his sexual fantasies again. "Detention is over you stupid mudblood," he snarled, "It's past 10 o'clock, unless your muggle parents were too stupid to teach you how to tell the time."

He saw her eyes fill with tears and felt an unaccustomed but sharp twinge of guilt. That was it, he was going to bed with or without Pansy, and the mudblood could make her own way back and hopefully get caught by Filch in the process, he thought savagely.

"I'm off," he said abruptly, and strode quickly out of the kitchen, slamming the red door behind him.

-o-o-o-

Hermione was beyond exhausted. As she stood outside the portrait of the Fat Lady and hazily tried to dredge up the password from the depths of her memory she reflected that going by tonight kitchen duty for the rest of this week was going to be hell. She wasn't having much success at remembering the password and the Fat Lady was beginning to stare at her suspiciously, when an unlikely savoir in the form of Parvati Patil appeared beside her.

"Oh no, please not this again," Hermione mumbled under her breath, desperately racking her brains for the password she knew was in there somewhere.

Fortunately at that moment Parvati was temporarily occupied with trying to readjust her Gryffindor scarf to conceal a rather prominent love bite on her neck, and didn't hear her.

"So," said Parvati cheerfully, having finally desisted with the scarf and now fixing Hermione in the headlights of a laser beam stare. It was remarkable how much her voice sounded to Hermione like the crack of metal on metal, or the iron bars of a cage door swinging shut. Too much imagination, that was her problem, thought Hermione. She struggled to pull her tired thoughts together.

"So what?" she said, a bit weakly.

"How was detention?" If Parvati's stare had been like a laser beam before, it was nothing to what it was now.

"Fine, great, whatever," mumbled Hermione. "Could you please tell me the password? I seriously need to sleep."

Parvati rested one taloned hand—wearing Busty Boysenberry nail polish today, Hermione noted absently—on Hermione's shoulder, in what was clearly intended to be a caring personal gesture.

"What I was really getting at," she said in a low voice, "is how was detention with Draco Malfoy."

"Same as any other detention," said Hermione irritably.

"Uh, huh." Parvati looked sceptical.

Hermione had had enough. "Look, Parvati, there is nothing going on between Malfoy and I. Nothing. Got that? Comprede vous? Now please tell me the password before I give in to the temptation to hex you. "

"Fine," snapped Parvati. "Don't think that I don't know what's going on. If you don't want to share, then I'll just have to find out another way!"

"The password," gritted Hermione.

"Homunculus," said Parvati coldly.

The common room door swung open and Hermione quickly climbed inside before Parvati, who was doing a final rearrangement of her scarf, could say anything more. Spotting Harry and Ron talking in low voices in the far corner by the window, she hurried towards them, ignoring the stares and whispers that followed her across the room.

"Any luck with Dumbledore?" she asked hopefully.

"Nope," said Harry gloomily. "Said he appreciated our concern, but fully trained Aurors are already doing all they can, and there's nothing that can be done from school."

"So we asked him if we could at least help with research, you know, You Know Who's last known whereabouts and stuff like that, but he said that information was confidential and he couldn't share it with students," gritted Ron.

Hermione sunk into an armchair. "I can't think of what else we could do, short of leaving school to hunt him down ourselves…" she said slowly.

"Yeah," said Harry, "but not much point in doing that when we have no intelligence is there? We may as well go on a backpacking trip across Europe for all the good that would do."

The three of them sat glumly for a while, staring at slowly falling snowflakes in the night sky outside the window.

"Harry," said Hermione abruptly, "Can I borrow your invisibility cloak and map tonight? I wanted to go to the library to do some revision for our Charms test tomorrow". When Harry said nothing, she added reassuringly, "We'll talk more about the hostages tomorrow, I'm sure we can come up with something."

"Yeah, something as little as having no information and not knowing where to go or what to do when we get there hasn't stopped us before," added Ron, grinning a little.

"Yeah sure," said Harry, coming to and blinking a little behind his glasses as though emerging from being deep in thought, "take them Hermione."

"Thanks."

Leaving Ron looking a little miffed at being ignored, Hermione hurried up to the boys' dormitory.

-o-o-o-

Slamming the door to the boys dormitory and ignoring the muffled shout of indignation from Zambini who had his curtains drawn and was most probably entertaining some girl, Malfoy threw himself fully clothed onto his bed and stared a while at the rough stone ceiling.

Granger, Granger, Granger. It seemed all he could think about these days was Hermione Granger. He was beginning to wonder whether it had been a mistake to put the Esprite Autorite curse on her. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time; have a laugh, take his mind off things for a while. Now it was all backfiring on him. Not only was he exhausted all the time with the effort of maintaining the curse—too exhausted to even use the damn thing mostly, but his brain seemed to have become saturated with images of Granger in lingerie, Granger laughing, him kissing Granger, him doing more than kissing Granger, Granger pushing that bushy mop of hair out of her face while focussing on a spell in class. It was like a highly resilient bacterial fungus, spreading through his brain despite all his efforts to destroy it.

He groaned aloud and ran his hands roughly through his hair and across his face, letting them fall heavily back onto his overly lumpy mattress (he would have sworn the mattress had somehow mysteriously become much more lumpy overnight, and normally he would have complained to Dumbledore about this straight away, but right now a lumpy mattress was the least of his problems).

He'd initiated the curse to take his mind off his problems, and now he found he had more problems than he could handle. Not only that, but he just hadn't thought the whole thing through. He couldn't take the curse off Granger without some serious retribution on her part, but the longer he held the curse on her the more exhausted he was getting.

Basically, short of killing Granger there was no way out of the whole mess. So he was screwed, because last summer he'd found out killing wasn't so much to his taste after all…

He was standing in a forest clearing, well away from the nearest muggle dwelling, some distance into the woods. Heavy layers of damp leaf litter crunched underfoot as he and his father walked slowly towards the edge of the clearing, where a figure was slumped at the base of a tree.

As he drew closer he could see the figure was an old woman, he dress torn and stained with dried brownish blood, her arms and legs slashed all over with knife wounds. She was slumped with her head at a strange angle, as though her neck had been broken, but as he drew closer still he could muffled wheezing noises coming out of her mouth. She was still breathing.

"It's almost dead already," said his father quietly. "The first time will be difficult, but afterwards it will get easier. You might feel sadness, or pity, but remember these creatures are less than animals—they are cockroaches contaminating the bloodlines of our ancestors, breeding and spreading across the earth like a foul contagion. It's a thankless task, but it must be done for the good of wizard-kind. We are the only ones who can carry out the deed. We are the ones who must continue Salazar Slytherin's noble work.

They had come to a halt. The only sounds in the clearing were the woman's harsh breathing mingled with the distant trills of birdcalls.

"Do it now Draco."

He turned to his father and saw he had his wand out, had it pointed at the woman, with his face twisted in loathing, yet cold as ice.

He looked down, and to his surprise he saw his own wand already out, pointing at the woman, his hand shaking violently.

The woman was rasping now, something sounding like words issuing from her mouth. Draco took a step forward, then another. Close up he could see the wreckage made of her mutilated body. He could see how her face was distorted in inconceivable pain. Something inside him was rising, faster, faster, bursting towards the surface.

The woman's mouth opened.

"…help…me…"

Draco fell to his knees and threw up violently. He couldn't stop—it was as though he'd been filled with poison and he must purge it from his body or perish. The vomiting went on, and on.

And his father was beside him, his hand on his shoulder. "Draco?" he asked, concerned.

And for the first time in his life, Draco Malfoy gazed up at his father with something remarkably like hatred in his eyes.

"I won't do it. It's wrong."

The memory shifted into the familiar dungeon of the dream…

He was staring into his father's horrified face, and the knowledge of what he had done was coursing through him like deadly poison.

"Draco, you must never tell a soul of what has happened tonight," his father was saying. "They'll kill you if they find out. They'll kill all of us."

He'd known from the instant he'd seen the body. Lying soaked in potion, mangled, hideous beyond all recognition. He'd known what he'd done, and the implications of what he'd done. He knew he was a dead man.

-o-o-o-

It was very late. Hermione had ceased checking the time ages ago, and was now on automaton, flicking through one counter-curse book to the next, muttering a steady pattern in her head; "not this one…not this one…not this one." Fortunately she hadn't found it necessary to cast a light to read by; it was a full moon and so she'd moved her stack of books and herself under one of the enormous library windows and was reading by moonlight.

Now the soft light combined with the gentle breeze and the warming spells she'd placed on herself and the cloak were making her pleasantly drowsy, but she was determined to stay awake and shook herself angrily as she found herself drifting off.

"…the Caput Capitis Vox Vocis curse… hearing voices….wake UP Hermione! The Caput Capitis Vox Vocis counter curse…the voices disappitate…voices…the Caput Capitis Vox Vocis curse does not allow for human control…the voices are derived from memory…from memory…from….memory…."

Suddenly she snapped awake, her head sliding off the heavy textbook she had been previously reading to land with a thump on the desk. Blearily, she sat up and rubbed at her eyes as her surroundings came back into focus. Very little time must have passed, as she had no recollection of falling asleep in the first place, and the moon was still full and shining brightly through the window. The library was dead silent and she was completely alone but she was filled with a sense of urgency, as though someone had suddenly and violently shaken her awake.

/Help…me…/

Malfoy. Great.

-o-o-o-

Once inside the now familiar wardrobe she paused to catch her breath and decide on the best course of action to take. She was just too exhausted even to be furious and just wanted to get the whole thing over and done with so she could go to bed. At least she was wearing clothes this time, she thought acerbically. After a few seconds quick thinking, she decided to cast the Interieur Bulle charm again as it had worked so well the first time she'd been forced to enter Malfoy's dorm (aside from Malfoy landing on her, which was really more of a bad luck thing than a magical error thing).

She moved quickly and silently to Malfoy's bedside and muttered the charm under her breath, noticing with some surprise that he was lying still fully dressed on top of the covers.

Steeling herself for the inevitable argument, she grabbed Malfoy's shoulders and shook him hard. He burst awake, gasping for air, and his hands clutched at her robe, yanking her down so that her face was inches from his.

"He's dead!"

-o-o-o-

And finally the plot is getting underway! I must say it's exciting to finally make some headway with writing the plot out after having it stored safely in my head all these years. Thanks again to everyone supporting this story. As always, reviews are much appreciated.