Hey guys! Finally I can update. You have to forgive me, because I'm just so stressed, besides tomorrow I'll have to pass an English examination at University and therefore I'm quite busy with studying. I hope to be able to update sooner the next days, as you all were accustomed to it before. Anyway, I'd love to hear from you and about your honest opinion! Please tell me everything you want to critizice and in the better way, praise. Hope you all still stick with me and enjoy it! ;)

Lots of Love!


"Just take this. It will keep you safe."

Harry said and pulled out the little bottle of Felix Felicis and handed it to Ginny who took a little sip out of it. Alanis looked curiously at the little phial filled with golden liquid, that Ginny just swallowed down and let her sour expression brighten up a bit.

Ron glared adversely at her and Alanis didn't bear his gaze. Even one day after he got steamed up about Alanis he had not been calming down a bit. But Snape had already warned her that in the worst case she really had to cope with losing her friends, if it just made it possible for Snape's and at least Dumbledore's plan to work out.

But how to bear the loss of her friends, if her heart had already been ripped apart of her duty to abandon her feelings for Draco Malfoy?

Alanis quickly tried to shoo away her thoughts about Draco, but since the last night there was nothing on her mind than him, as she worried deeply about him being summoned. How far had his punishment gone? What did he just have to bear because of her?

Would he inevitably surrender to rationality and his will to survive and break away from her?

With every second she felt more and more disengaged from him, as if the halcyon days, the short and rush period they shared had long been bygone and her memories just seemed to fade, to blur like dreams, so far away and out of reach.

How to retain which is not tangible?

How to preserve what could just be held inside the heart, to make it stop leaking?

After Hermione took of the liquid luck Alanis and she reached out for it, but Ron pulled her back roughly.

"No! She doesn't deserve anything of it!", he cried, snatched the vial away from Hermione and swallowed the whole remaining liquid with one quick gulp.

"Ron!", Hermione cried out angrily and even Harry looked upset, but Alanis shook her head sadly.

"It's okay. Maybe Ron is right and I really don't deserve it. I won't need any luck to amend for what I've done. I will prove myself being worthy for you all.", Alanis said and the four looked quite embarrassed at her and Hermione gave her a faint smile, while Ron surreptitiously wiped his mouth.

"I'll have to go.", Harry said finally and Hermione and Ginny embraced him, while Alanis stayed on the sideline, knowing that it would not be the right thing if she forced Harry to say goodbye to her too.

"Alanis."

Harry suddenly grabbed her arm and led her into a warm embrace. Alanis tensed, but Harry didn't let her go.

"You fight for love, Alanis. Even if that moron is connected to it, I know that you fight for the light. That's the only thing that matters. ", he whispered in her ear.

Alanis just embraced him as well and buried her face in his shoulder. She was so thankful that Harry seemed to forgive her. But who else than Harry Potter would better know what love made people doing, after his mother sacrificed herself just to save him?

"Hurry, Harry, Dumbledore will be waiting.", Ron grunted and Harry detached from her, giving her a smile, patted Ron's shoulder and left the common room.

As soon as Harry had left, there was just an awkward and oppressive silence between them.

Now they had to inform all the other members of the DA to start patrolling the corridors and take their own positions.

Alanis was happy that she managed that Harry entrusted her and Hermione the observation of Snape. She'd not tell them that Snape was as much involved into the whole thing and that they were even acting according to Snape's plan.

Harry's reaction, after the assassination, the deep and increased hatred for Snape, who would henceforth just be known as the cold-hearted murderer of Albus Dumbledore, would just be so important to make the whole wizarding world believe that Snape was entirely on the dark side and betrayed the Order.

She pulled the Galleon and tapped it with a very odd feeling in her stomach.

What are you doing?

But there was no response.

How much she would give if she could be with Draco!

She would have given her life just to look in his face once more.

But Draco would leave after this was all over, would go back to Malfoy Manor and would try to live on, hopefully not forgetting to whom he should really belong to.

When would that war be over? Would Alanis ever be able to wake up, just feeling the warmth of Draco beneath her? When would she finally be able to call him hers entirely?

She feared that that day would even after the war be so far away from them.


The Cabinet howled as if it sensed danger and dark powers and refused to let those horrible men pass.

Draco slowly backed away.

If he could, he would have let the Cabinet swallow the deatheaters up inside it and make them disappear for all time. But the only one who could have done that was Alanis.

Draco's steps and the tumescent howling of the Cabinet echoed through the whole room as if they predicted foreshadowed calamity and mischief.

He bumped into a table and an old globe fell to the floor, but Draco immediately grabbed it and held it tight in his arms. As he looked down on it he saw his thumb pointing at Norway.

How much did he wish to just grab a broomstick and fly miles and miles away, just to escape everything, just to be alone and left with his existence.

All he wanted, was to be with Alanis. All he wanted was to live with her, to be with her for all time, to inhale her breath, to hear her heartbeat, to feel her body pressed against his, to feel her being alive just in order to be with him.

Merlin, he desperately wanted to look in her eyes again, get lost in them and just love her.

He gently put the globe back and listened to the still howling Cabinet and he felt himself shudder just as if coldness veiled him. Even if he just didn't have to fulfil his task, even if Snape took over the burden to become a murderer, he felt so weak and afraid.

The Dark Lord in person had healed his wounds and erased his pain to make him able to sustain his mission. But even if there weren't any marks left, Draco still suffered.

He was beaten, tired and fainthearted.

Why couldn't he just revive his old personality, the reckless, invidious and snotty Slytherin prince? Did his fate ultimately have particular plans for him?

The door of the Cabinet was slowly pulled open and the strong figure of his aunt Bellatrix took the first steps out, right onto the floor of Hogwarts castle. On her face there was an evil and mostly pleasured smile and she waved her wand as if she already thirsted to curse innocent people. She breathed in deeply as if she had to assure herself that it really had been the castle that she just invaded.

After her followed the werewolf Greyback, the Carrow siblings, Gibbon and that ugly blonde and tall deatheater Rowle. He was the maddest of all of them, even more dangerous than Fenrir Greyback who had a special taste for children's blood, but Draco knew Rowle's lust and habit to lose himself in the fieriness of combat, to become a berserk which longed for death and destruction.

How the hell could he have let it through that such people invaded the castle?

"Well done my dear Draco!", his aunt chanted with a malicious voice and Draco could her the desire within it. Desire for blood. It was even worse than the bloodthirsty gaze and growl of the werewolf on her side.

Draco backed away and hid behind a bookshelf, quietly making his way through the narrow paths between the walls of hidden things, escaping from the group of deatheaters. They would know that they had to find their ways to the Astronomy tower.

But Draco wanted to be faster. He had to face Dumbledore alone first.

Otherwise he wouldn't even have the strength to take the steps up to the tower.

Draco grabbed his wand and closed his hand around the galleon in his pocket. It gave him the feeling that a little piece of Alanis was still with him.

But now everything began.

It's time to play his part.


Alanis leaned her back on the cold stone walls and let her foot make circles into the dust on the floor. It was just unbearable to wait. She grew more nervous with every single minute.

"I'm so sorry, Alanis."

Alanis looked up at Hermione who looked at her, eagerly biting her lip and finally crooking her lips in a faint smile as Alanis raised her eyebrows questioningly.

"I never understood what it must take from you to do this. Dumbledore has given you the most difficult and demanding task he could have ever chosen, because deep feelings of yours are connected with it. I should have supported you, not push you away from me.", Hermione said quietly and ashamedly kneading one of her brown curls."I should have known that the whole situation was even more serious than I thought. There was just the childish insufferable know-it-all within me, who wanted you to behave the way she thinks best. I just overlooked your deep and intense bonds to Malfoy, I ignored the gravity of your connection."

Alanis' smile faded away at Hermione's words. She'd never realized how good it was to have her, to be able to rely on a friend who fully supported and understood her. Even if those close friends were just humans and ruled by their own sentiments and attitudes.

Alanis had missed that particular Hermione so much.

"I'm so happy that you tell me that Hermione. I'm just glad that you don't damn me and break off our friendship like Ron did. To have the dead certainty that there are still some people who accept me as the person I am, gives me new strength.", Alanis answered and wrapped her best friend up in her arms, rubbing her back.

Hermione rested her chin on Alanis' shoulder and Alanis could feel the corner of her lips on her cheek, lightly touching it and curling up in another sad smile.

"I adore you.", Hermione whispered.

"I just have something worth to fight for.", Alanis said quietly and suddenly she felt the galleon growing hot inside her pocket and she quickly pulled it out.

It begins.

"Draco let them in. You should inform Lupin and the others, Hermione.", Alanis said and hoped that Hermione would really consider doing what she suggested. She just had to get rid of Hermione to be able to tell Snape that Draco now needed him and not let Hermione see this.

Alanis felt a sudden ache in her heart. Hermione just apologized, took one step further to get back to their old friendship and Alanis just responded to her with lies and betrayed her another time. When would she be able to be honest to everyone around her?

Would she ever be even able to trust even her own actions?

"I'll do it.", Hermione said to Alanis's relief and quickly paced down the corridor, her head of hair waving over her shoulders.

Alanis just leaned herself back onto the wall again and listened to the fading claps of Hermione's eager steps and breathed in heavily. Then she turned around to the door of Snape's office.

Now the time was right to move.

Now there would just be that ultimate task left and she would be free.

She would lose Draco, but gain freedom of not having to abide by tasks, missions, but just her free and own will.

She was free in every sense.

Alanis knocked quietly on Snape's door and stepped in cautiously. She discovered Snape already putting on his cloak and grabbing his wand from the table, as if he had known that it was time for him to join Draco at the Astronomy tower.

"It's time to go.", she said and Snape looked up at her, snatching up his cloak and taking some slow steps towards her.

He nodded and pursed his lips in an amused smirk, but his eyes began slowly glistening with restlessness and another very dark glint, that made her taking some steps back.

"Your mind is uncontrolled, overflowing, blatant, such a chaos of swirling emotions, that it was hard not to miss it.", he said coldly and Alanis looked down in her lap. He'd always thought her being a stupid little girl and his attitude still didn't change. Even if Snape accepted her being in love with Draco and accepted her being worthy to be with him, he still abominated and questioned her.

But suddenly she her chin was lifted and he looked directly into her eyes. His grip around her chin was surprisingly gentle, but unbearably peremptory. She flinched and was so surprised at the almost intimate touch of the potions master.

As she looked back in his eyes, she felt that he dived deep into her mind and she even didn't refuse him. She just surrendered to his intense gaze, his touch, and let him enter her without mistrusting him. She completely lost herself in that dark eyes, that even warm eyes, that seemed to veil her in a supporting warmth and solicitous empathy.

She just relaxed, let him dig around in her mind, even not really realizing how much of her emotions she let run over him willingly. She just let him see the whole extent of the feelings of her heart.

"I envy you."

Snape's voice was nothing more than a low whisper, but sharp and pointed. But as soon as those words reached her mind, he let her go and took a step back, still penetrating her with his intense gaze, his words still hovering in the air and barely fading.

Did she just hear what she thought to hear?

Did Severus Snape really envy her?

She suddenly felt a chill ran down her spine as she was filled up with sudden affection for that man.

He had to be a most tension-ridden and miserable man for all his life. He'd just been a puppet and there was no way for him to escape from that fate. Even if the time would come when that horrible war was over and Harry might have defeated Voldemort, Snape would just suffer from his contentious past and unfavourable prejudices.

Alanis sensed that something had broken him and that Snape was still suffering. Suffering from something that made him really envying her.

Alanis just looked at him, stood still and suddenly realized how much more Draco should appreciate that he was supported by such a great man. This most adorable man was perhaps even some better kind of a father to Draco than his own had ever been.

Snape curled his lips up in a faint smirk to encounter her most discombobulated but vacant expression and then, in a very graceful movement he bowed his head and congeed to her.

But before Alanis could even collect her thoughts, Snape rushed past her and left the room, a gentle breeze touching her face, as his cloak fluttered touching upon her legs.

Alanis shivered, her chest tightened and her body tensed with a new sense of delight and acceptance that she never ever felt before.

She hated Severus Snape before, but at that moment, at his words, there was just adoration within her and a much better feeling that let her know that Draco would be safe.

Hope.

There was no one on this earth who could have better helped Draco but Snape.

Alanis smiled to herself and slowly walked out of the room, carefully taking one step after another as her heart beat faster with lightheaded excitement.

At last, even in the worst situation a man could ever be, hope never died. Therefore she would hope for a better future, a future with Draco beside her.

And to achieve that, she would fight.

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