Chapter 14

Allegra and Hermione found a compartment alone on the train when they boarded.

"Is Cormac coming to sit with us?" Allegra asked Hermione, she had Crookshanks in her lap and was stroking his ginger fur with a smile on her face.

"Oh, I hope not – probably," she sighed. "I'm sorry for the PDA when he gets here, I don't want it. I hope he's allergic to cats."

"I'll try not to vomit," Allegra said. Hermione smiled apologetically. "Are you going to get him anything for Christmas?"

Hermione shrugged, "I think it's too late, and I'm at a complete loss for ideas. I'll just do something simple like sweets, or – I wonder if he'd think something muggle was quirky?"

"Maybe, I don't know him any better than you do."

They both turned to look out of the window at the passing Scottish countryside.

"Your dad is going to meet you at the station, isn't he?"

"Of course, and don't worry, if he wasn't a bunch of aurors were on stand by to take us home."

"Good, though I hope he doesn't get attacked by teenage boys wanting autographs."

The door flew open and Cormac and two of his friends appeared in the doorway. Allegra moved her things off the seats beside her reluctantly, so they could sit down.

After an hour of PDA and repetitive quidditch talk, Allegra couldn't take any more.

"Hermione," Allegra blurted, leaping to her feet. "I'm going to see the Slytherins."

"What?" Hermione squeaked.

"I won't be long," Allegra smiled, not feeling as sorry as she should, and departed the compartment as quickly as possible.

It took about ten minutes for Allegra to find Draco and Blaise. The first thing she noticed was that Pansy wasn't there. The second was Blaise smiling sheepishly a her.

"Alright Crazies?" she asked cooly, taking a seat beside Blaise.

"Yeah, sorry for being weird last night, I was imploding."

Allegra patted his leg. "That's okay. But you -" She looked at Draco, he was watching her with a hint of a smile. "You have some explaining to do."

"I think I should skip the explaining and just tell you I am very, very sorry. I'm sorry for not going to the party with you – that was a mistake, and I'm sorry for turning up attached to Filch."

"I think we should leave it at that," Allegra nodded, not wanting to press for more information since she actually knew from eavesdropping on Draco's private conversation. "So, appart from crappy home lives, are you looking forward to Christmas?"

"What are you getting me?" Draco grinned. "I always get you awesome presents."

Allegra looked down at the bracelet she was wearing and smiled, it meant a lot to her. When she looked up Draco was still smiling at her.

"I'm not sure yet, for either of you, but they'll be good, I promise."

Allegra was sure she was lying. How the hell was she going to do her Christmas shopping when she wasn't allowed outside? She had a horrible feeling she either wouldn't get out at all and would have to send her dad out with a long list, or do all of her shopping in a muggle shopping centre. "You both have to get me something good, Blaise – you're up against Draco, and Draco – you need to top yourself from last time. Also, Charlie's upped his game, so tough competition this year."

"Ah, the good looking Weasley," Blaise said. "My constant rival."

"Brown hair, works with dragons, seems to be adventurous and handsome. You have a thing for him," Draco added.

"I do not!"

"Yes you do," they both said.

"No, we've known each other since I was a toddler!"

Draco raised an eyebrow. "You haven't kissed him, you mean."

Allegra gasped, huffed, crossed her arms and legs and looked out into the corridor in defiance. That wasn't true. Well, it was true that she hadn't kissed him but she didn't fancy him either.

"In fact," Blaise said with a grin, "with your best friends, you've kissed –"

"Stop! Don't say anything else." Allegra turned to glare at him, and he smiled mischievously.

"Fine, I won't say it." But Blaise was smirking as though he already had.

Allegra got back to Hermione an hour after she had left, and as soon as she stepped into the doorway, Hermione was out of her seat, pushing Allegra back out.

"We'll be back in a minute!" Hermione called over her shoulder.

"What?" Hermione pulled Allegra down the train.

"I can't stand it. And I think I remember you saying – although I must be wrong – that you wouldn't be long." She shot Allegra a glare, but didn't stop towing her along.

"I wasn't long," Hermione looked at her sternly. "Not really, in our length of a life time…" Hermione tutted and rolled her eyes. "Where are we going, exactly?"

"I think it's time you collected Harry," Hermione said. "We don't have long left on the train, and you need to be together when you get off. Cormac might leave too…"

Harry seemed rather relieved to leave, since they found Lavender all over Ron, and Hermione and Cormac's public displays were put to shame.

Ron, however, was not pleased.

"Harry, you don't need to go yet."

"They're right though, mate, I ought to go now. It's not like I won't see you in a few days." Ron just turned his glare on Hermione, but this time she really didn't seem to care. In fact, she seemed to be wearing a smug smile. When Ron pushed Lavender's hand away from his knee subconsciously, Allegra understood why.

Allegra fell asleep for the last hour of the trip, only waking up when the noise of excited children disturbed her.

"You sleep talk." Cormac was the first to speak to her. He hadn't left when Harry arrived, much to Hermione's disappointment, he merely recycled his conversation with Allegra about quidditch on Harry.

"I'm aware."

"Loudly. You had a conversation with Calvin about squirrels."

"Calvin?"

"Exactly." He gave Allegra a look as if to say, 'what is wrong with you?' and then kissed Hermione goodbye.

After Allegra and Harry had said their goodbyes to Hermione, they found Mike waiting for them on the platform. A number of small boys were nearby, glancing at him and whispering. Mike didn't seem to have noticed, and seemed much more excited about seeing Harry again.

"Harry! Good to see you! Right, we'd better be off – don't want to hang around anywhere with the both of you, let's go!" He offered each of them an arm and after giving them a moment to gather all of their things together, apparated from the platform.

They appeared in the entrance hall of Allegra's home with an echoing pop.

"Here we are," Mike smiled, releasing the teenagers. "Pick whatever room you like, Harry, and tell Cassia what your favourite pudding is, she'll almost certainly be able to make it for us."

"Thank you, Mike."

"Why do the guests get the best treatment?" Allegra said.

"Because they're guests," Mike smiled.

"I'm practically a guest!" Mike didn't look convinced. "Fine. Come along, Harry dearest, we have decorating to do. See you at dinner, father."

Mike rolled his eyes.

Harry followed Allegra obediently up to her room, and barely ten minutes had passed since they had dropped their bags when Harry said: "Can we talk now?"

Allegra ignored the question for a moment and started decorating the tree in her room. It was charmed to look almost black, and she was going to cover it in silver and light blue tinsel, ornaments and lights. She dug into the first box and released the fairy lights, which floated up and in and around the tree.

"Sure," Allegra nodded, finally committing herself to the inevitable - actually surprised Harry had kept a lid on it for this long, and paused to get a music channel up on the television so they could listen to Christmas songs.

"I want to talk about what happened last night, with Malfoy," Harry said, as if Allegra hadn't known what he was going to say. He sat down on the wooden chest at the end of her bed, a ballerina dancing on his palms, her silver skirts twirling and filling the space around her. She held on to the string attached to her head to keep it out of the way, as if it were her silver hair.

Allegra concentrated on getting a glass unicorn to stop wiggling long enough to hang it on the tree accurately, and then turned to look at Harry.

"Okay," she breathed, glancing back to see the unicorn galloping on the air. "I think he's a Death Eater."

Harry looked briefly surprised, and then stood to hang the ballerina. "I'd guessed that, Ali." He hung it high as he could, and it carried on dancing.

"He doesn't want to be one, though, Harry. He doesn't have a choice."

"What do you mean he doesn't have a choice? How do you know he's not just told you that to keep you on his side?"

"Because he didn't tell me. He won't tell me anything about it, Harry. Why else would I have been following him?"

Harry shrugged and Allegra focused on hanging a mirrored ornament so she wouldn't fall into the tree.

"Didn't you hear Snape?" Allegra said. "Voldemort is going to kill him and his parents if he doesn't do something."

Harry looked like he hadn't paid too much attention to that detail.

"He must know about me being a Mentalist, if he's a Death Eater. They wouldn't be doing a very good job if not every Death Eater knew as much as they can about the both of us."

"That's a comforting thought," he grimaced.

"I know." Allegra agreed wholeheartedly there. "But he must know. Snape said he'd been learning Occlumency; he must be keeping the fact that me and him are friends secret that way."

Harry pulled a face.

"He's had hundreds of opportunities to capture and or smite me, Harry," Allegra said, trying her best not to sigh and roll her eyes, this argument was not new ground. "I think we can rule that out."

"Smite?" Harry raised an eyebrow.

"It's a fun word," Allegra shrugged. "Anyway, I've been thinking about this constantly, and I don't think he's going to stab me in the back."

"Alle-"

"I don't, Harry," Allegra said sharply.

Harry sighed and rubbed his face.

"Just don't get too comfortable," he told her. "For you know, Voldemort could get into his head and use the Imperius curse on him to get you. Just keep your wits about you. I know I can't stop you trusting him but I can ask you to be careful."

"I will – I am," Allegra said, still sounding stubborn and defensive. "So, we are pretty much certain that he's a Death Eater, and Voldemort has told him to do something, otherwise he and his family will be killed."

Harry nodded, "Any idea what that something is?"

Allegra shook her head, "None. I don't want to know."

"You don't want -?"

"Look, if we find out what it is, we'll have to do something to stop him. I know that. If we stop him, Voldemort will do something drastic." Harry made a deep growling noise. "I know you don't like it Harry, but that's how I see it. Also," she added hesitantly, "we have one other part to this whole problem."

"Right, what's that?"

"I think Blaise may have gotten himself into a pickle, too."

Harry actually looked vaguely moved by this statement. He didn't hate Blaise – Blaise was tolerable – and he'd been Allegra's friend longer than she'd been Harry's.

"You think the same as Malfoy?"

Allegra shrugged and pulled a long piece of silver tinsel from the box. "Well, if Ron or Hermione was in that much of a dilemma with their lives at stake, we'd both join them to help, wouldn't we?"

"Ah," Harry looked down at his feet. "I want to know what his role in this is."

Allegra nodded, but they couldn't do anything until they were back at school.