Author's Note: Massive apologies to readers for the long hiatus! Explanation will come at the end of the chapter. And now without further ado—

Chapter Thirty-five: Young Death Eater

Alysia Moody tried to pry off the tight grip around her throat futilely, screaming for her parents only to hear a gargling sound escape her lips. The jarring taste of blood choked her to tears and unearthly lights began to swirl around her. She thought she heard her parents calling her name. She thought she saw neon colored butterflies in the air. Her consciousness was quickly slipping. And just when she about gave up, an overwhelming rush of oxygen surged through her, as if she were suddenly free. She was free. And she was falling.

The back of her head smacked against the hard marble floor.

The world was spinning again, and not because of a lack of oxygen now, but because her head was still pounding from the impact. She might have cracked her skull, she thought, but only after she'd come to and dared to open her eyes finally. Bellatrix Lestrange had released her, she realized. There was no respite to think why though, as the Death Eater grabbed her by the collar again and tore off the back of her dress to expose her bare skin. Alysia had no fight left in her to resist. The spiteful woman dropped her foot onto the girl's back too, digging the heel of her combat boot in until the child released a muffled cry of pain.

Such humiliation, and yet Alysia could only think about how cold the frosty marble floor felt through the flimsy fabric of her dress. It was torture against her bruised stomach and bloodied cheeks. Something was screaming inside her head to run. To be strong. To just GET UP. Get up and go. Run, baby. RUN! She thought that it sounded like her mother's voice, but she could not bear to move a muscle any longer. Lying on the floor now, Alysia could see her barely conscious parents through her half opened eyelids, immobile as she was on the floor. Her feeble breath was raspy against her lips; each gasp throbbed against her throat. She wished that the damned witch would just get it over with. Just kill her already. Let it end.

Reading the child's thoughts, Bellatrix broke into a fit of laughter.

"You thought I was actually going to kill you?" she howled through hysterical tears, as if the idea had never crossed her schizophrenic mind.

And then, with a fittingly bipolar switch, she went quiet and added solemnly. "You're so naïve, child. That one-eyed scumbag can't have it that easy."

Alysia didn't understand how her death could possibly be easy on Uncle Tor—

"Uncle Tor!"

It was just any other sunny afternoon a few years ago, when Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody—or for her, Uncle Tor—appeared in her family's backyard without notice.

"You shouldn't be playing out here," he had said with his usual scorn, barely pausing to greet his young niece first before reprimanding her. Alysia stopped mid-embrace and grimaced, an expression that would have resembled him more if not for his bizarre glass eye.

"But daddy said it's safe here. You put up the protective charm with him, didn't you?"

So suppose it wasn't really any other sunny afternoon. Suppose Death Eaters had already broken out of Azkaban and were roaming free, hungry to hurt veteran Aurors involved in the last war and anyone related to them.

"And what do I always say?" Mad-Eye rebuked, pinching her cheek. Alysia made an impudent face, mouthing his favorite phrase at him as he said it out loud to her in return. "Yes, young woman, constant vigilance! Don't come running to me like that. What if I'm an impostor?"

But Mad-Eye's give away made the young girl laugh. "You're the only person to ever call me a young woman, uncle. Besides, even with Polyjuice potion, they'd need to steal your glass eye to pass off as you."

This was before Barty Crouch Jr. had kidnapped the Auror to impersonate him at Hogwarts, and an impostor of her invincible uncle had seemed ridiculous to Alysia back then. She held up the book she'd been reading for him to see.

Making Drafts and Potions, it said.

Mad-Eye raised an eyebrow as he took the thick hardcover from her small hands. Flipping through the pages confirmed his suspicions that the book was quite beyond his niece's age.

"Ally... six-year-olds don't usually read their parents' old school books."

"I'm eight," Alysia corrected him quickly, but he dismissed the trivial difference with a wave.

"I was fairly certain that they don't teaching something as advanced as Polyjuice Potion in a beginner's book," he said with that same suspicious frown locked between his eyebrows, unable to find the pages on Polyjuice ingredients. "And might I add... that it is not that difficult to get your hands on glass eyes these days in Knockturn Alley," and he rolled his own glass eye upwards to study her face, which was followed by the skeptical comment, "...or pose as eight-year-olds."

Alysia giggled at that.

"They can't fake the weird blue glow!"

"Weird, you say?"

She ignored her uncle's offense. "And they can't pose as me, unless they're my size," she reasoned from what she just learnt in the book. "So I'd have to be another child, or a house-elf." She counted the possibilities on her fingers. "Or a dwarf—Do you have dwarf enemies, Uncle Tor?"

A smirk secretly crept onto Mad-Eye's lips when his curious young niece looked up at him with wide eye wonder. He wondered briefly if Alysia would be sorted into Gryffindor like her father and himself, or Ravenclaw like her mother for her intelligence. Naturally though, compulsive vigilance was quick to suppress his amusement.

"Child, I have enemies everywhere," he said and cleared his throat, pushing her towards her house. "Now stay indoors and make my life easier."

Alastor Moody had watched over Alysia like she was his own. There would be no revenge more fitting for Bellatrix Lestrange, nothing more devastating, than to kill her in return for losing Evan—

An eye for an eye, right?

But Bellatrix only said again.

"It's too easy."

There was no malice. She was speaking from a simple truth that she'd learned many years since Evan's death: Memories of the dead fade in time. Her fondness for the boy was as strong as it had been, her resentment towards Moody fresh, but for all the pride she still felt for Evan Rosier, Bellatrix couldn't quite remember his handsome face anymore. His endearing brazenness and sarcasm had become barely a fickle of her imagination, the details impossible to recall.

Draco would've found a rare moment of empathy with Bellatrix if he could read the thoughts of a memory. Up until this trip through memory lane, his late father had become an idea, an intangible being he'd never be able to go back and understand, and our memories are often kinder than reality.

But she wasn't going to give Mad-Eye the chance of beautifying his niece like that. She wasn't going to let him turn it all into a distant memory, safely tucked away in the past. The Death Eater was determined to leave the tough Auror in a purgatory of pain and regret, one where he'd live to see the consequences of angering her for the rest of his miserable life.

She chuckled softly, looking down at the terrified child at her feet. Alysia felt a chill run down her back.

"You're lucky, dear," the Death Eater whispered; her words laced with sarcasm. "I consider myself quite the artist..."

With a deft hand, she flicked her wand, and a winding red line formed in the air above Alysia's bare back. It took a life of its own as it curled and twisted around itself into a ghastly elaborate shape. The young girl flinched from the tingling sensation that rose deep from within her skin, but she couldn't even squirm under Bellatrix's heavy weight on her back.

"Don't worry," Bellatrix chuckled again disturbingly, "this will hurt only a little."

Alysia hated herself for it, but she squeezed her eyes shut and prayed that the sadistic witch was telling the truth.

xxx

"Draco Malfoy."

The Dark Lord's voice had such gravity and smoothness, a nauseating pull that Hermione imagined to be dangerously alluring when he was younger and more handsome. Even now, in the memory, it was still bewitching for those who hungered for his respect, and though the older Draco didn't hunger it any longer, his blood ran cold nevertheless when that slithering voice called his name.

He had to remind himself: This is only a memory. I'm not seventeen anymore. The Dark Lord is dead. Dead and forever gone.

It would've been easier to stay in perspective if his younger self wasn't so hard to relate to. Teenaged Draco only turned slowly to look at his soon-to-be master. How sordidly phenomenal he had been already at compartmentalizing his feelings. His inner feelings were inscrutable from his features. Draco couldn't remember how he managed it; he'd frozen at Lord Voldermort's voice ever since he could remember, and he had remembered his younger self to be inexperienced, mortified, and exceptionally easy to read. He thought it'd taken him years to put up his front.

Nothing about whom he was seeing now, however, resembled the boy that had nearly fainted at the muggle home earlier in the memory. Draco would like to believe it was just a clever façade, a coping mechanism. But he knew too that whatever you pretended to be, you become, and self-preservation didn't excuse his shamelessness.

That thought brought a tinge of embarrassment to his cheeks. He'd seen enough. The macabre silhouette his aunt had etched onto Alysia's once spotless back was surely more brutality than Hermione needed to see to make her moral judgments about him and his company. He was itching to leave.

But Hermione said nothing. Didn't ask to stop. Didn't chastise him already. Draco nervously glanced at the woman he loved. Her silence was almost as disconcerting as his younger self's reticence.

I guess she meant it when she said she wanted to see things through.

And so they both quietly watched on, as young Draco walked towards the Dark Lord dutifully, ready to receive his initiation. But the young Slytherin didn't get there quite so smoothly. His show of disrespect towards Bellatrix earlier had apparently rubbed her husband the wrong way. As Draco walked pass him, the hulking Death Eater punched the boy in the stomach, hard. Young Draco made just the slightest retching sound from the sudden attack to his abdomen, staggered backwards, and then spun around immediately to his uncle, wand raised and ready to retaliate. He showed the slightest hint of surprise when he found that Rodolphus was already gone from his side. The man hadn't even bothered to give him a second look; he was already at his wife's side.

Only then did young Draco notice that something was wrong with his aunt. Bellatrix was long done with the Moody child, but her chest was heaving laboriously, as if she'd just cast a particularly exhausting spell. Her wand arm was hanging in mid-air. She looked strangely shell-shocked.

Draco noticed that her usual cackle of victory had been missing, too. Did she somehow forget to laugh? This was the triumph she'd been waiting for years. Yet she was so... quiet.

When Rodolphus asked her what was wrong, she came to suddenly, and quickly shrugged him off.

The message was clear: Bellatrix Lestrange needed sympathy from no one, not even her husband. He knew better than to push further.

Taking her dismissal as a signal, Rodolphus threw Alysia's incapacitated parents over his shoulders and turned towards the stairs to the basement dungeons. "You take the child," he instructed simply. Not once did he look back.

It was up to his wife now.

It was always up to her.

Young Draco stared absently at the couple, as Bellatrix finally picked up the unconscious child and followed suit. Blood trickled off Alysia's sides and stained Bellatrix's long, thick dress, leaving a sordid trail of red stain on the floor. Young Draco wondered if he was hallucinating. The child's soft-looking skin seemed to still quiver in agony—but wasn't she dead? She must be. He felt something falter inside him, something that couldn't digest the depressing combination of his dispirited aunt and the scarred child, that reminded him of another very recent moment he'd felt this way, and that something dislodged in his throat. He tried to suppress it, fast—

"DRACO."

Lucius' piercing glare was suddenly right in his face. Looking up, young Draco realized that his father had moved to his side without him noticing, and the Dark Lord's seemingly intrigued stare from across the room quickly came into focus.

What a mistake to make when it was almost over.

Before he'd let himself ruminate on the Moody child again, young Draco nodded and walked pass his father, moving towards the Dark Lord. His stride was calculated. Hurried, but graceful, betraying no hint of his earlier unease. Just an apologetic urgency, nothing more.

The Dark Lord didn't show his impatience either. Not yet, anyway. He did raise an eyebrow in amusement, however, at Draco's sudden promptness. No sooner did the young Slytherin arrive before Him, the boy was already raising his left arm from underneath his robes, unbuttoning the cuff of his long-sleeved shirt and rolling it up.

Presumptuous, Voldemort snickered privately to himself. He made no gesture to begin. Sliding deeper into his marble throne and straightening his spine against the back, the Dark Lord studied his newest recruit's face with new found curiosity, his hand idly stroking Nagini's smooth scaly head on his lap. He pondered loudly in his mind whether the boy was worthy.

Lucius heard his master's thoughts and lowered his eyes to the floor subtly. Everything from here on hung on Dark Lord's conclusions, but the silent anticipation was unbearable. As far as he was concerned, his shameless son was positively trying to get them both killed by reacting to Rodolphus' petty provocation earlier. Lucius had an admittedly horrid temper, so much so that he'd compiled a mental rulebook of things he shouldn't react to in public, and the Lestranges were definitely on his list.

Rule Number 3: "Ignore The Bumbling Hulk. Laugh Off His Hostility."

Now, Lucius was not particularly good at following his own advice. But in case you were curious, Rule Number 1 was "Do Not Cross The Wife" and Number 2 was "Pretend My Lord Does Not Intentionally Broadcast His Inner Thoughts."

As of now, Lucius was trying his best not to cringe even as a familiarly pungent smell began to fill the room, suggesting that servants had brought in a cauldron of specially brewed tattoo ink for the initiation.

He couldn't help but vividly recall his own initiation from almost three decades ago. Not many Death Eaters would look back to that particular moment with fondness, even if it had made them proud. The process was painful, and young Draco wouldn't be the first to cower at the sight of the potion, if he had. The boy only closed his eyes coolly.

But Lord Voldemort recognized feinted calmness when he saw it, and his opinion of Draco briefly leaned towards the negative. He hadn't forgotten, though, that the boy had the surprising gall to challenge his aunt's Legilimency earlier. The Dark Lord admitted to himself that Bellatrix had not known humility in a long time, and it was rather pleasing to see a young recruit finally overpowering his most adept servant, albeit in just one instance.

The room was suddenly filled with the most prominent Death Eaters, apparating into existence in twos and threes. It seemed that the young Malfoy heir's initiation had been the chief gossip for months. Not too surprising, considering how it was common knowledge that the Dark Lord would only bother to personally initiate a new recruit if He intended for them to join His innermost ranks - the Dark Alliance. The rest were mere foot soldiers in His eyes.

Rodolphus and Bellatrix had returned too, young Draco surmised from the footsteps that came up from the basement. He wondered briefly where the Moodys were taken, but intervened his inner voice before it could start asking what would happen to them now.

The Dark Lord finally spoke.

"You have demonstrated strength and worth tonight, young Malfoy..."

The watching crowd went silent immediately. Only then did young Draco open his eyes, though he did not meet Lord Voldermort's pale yellow gaze just yet.

"Honoring Death Eater traditions, I shall grant you the Dark Mark as proof of your allegiance..." The ancient wizard's voice trailed away into Parseltongue as he dipped his wand into the viscous liquid in the bubbling cauldron. Through his lowered eyes, young Draco saw the forbidding solution slowly enveloping the Dark Lord's wand.

"Are you ready?"

The question seemed to have come out of nowhere within the illegible serpentine tongue his master-to-be spoke, but young Draco took his time to calmly look up and meet Lord Voldemort's fixed gaze. Neither fear nor admiration showed in the boy's stony grey eyes, only a vacant stare that conveyed nothing—no life, no fire. The longer Draco took to respond, the more the elder wizard contemplated the insane possibility that the boy would decline.

It would be a first.

Lucius Malfoy clenched his jaws very subtly, careful not to make a noticeable sound despite his growing anxiety. The tension swept across the hall, with even Nagini sinking into silence at Voldemort's feet. Young Draco's lips finally moved.

"I am, My Lord."

There was no doubt in his voice.

Lucius let slip a sigh of relief before he could quite hold it in. Satisfied enough, the Dark Lord smiled and flicked his wand in movements reminiscent to the ones Bellatrix had made earlier, over Alysia's bare back.

"MORTEMSCHARA!"

Releasing a dreadful glow across the room, the viscous liquid shot from Voldemort's wand, deep into Draco's skin and sealed their contract for good.

xxx

"How was it, Lucius? How is our son—Draco, does it sting?"

The initiation scene had dissolved. They were at the Malfoy Manor now.

Narcissa pulled young Draco into a flustered embrace before they had quite made it through the front entrance. The older Draco smiled a small smile, remembering how her over-the-top maternal protectiveness hadn't seemed as endearing back then. As expectedly, his younger self cut her off with a wave of his hand.

"Mum, I'm fine," young Draco said tersely.

Narcissa didn't let up, encouraging again, "At least take off your coat, hun." She took Draco gently by the shoulder and swept a wedge of snow off his soaked outer cloak, onto the floor.

"Will you show your mother what you got today?"

"Cissy," Lucius interrupted, clearly annoyed by her obvious avoidance to call the Dark Mark by its name. "It's not like he's just got a new broom from Diagon Alley or something, for Merlin's sake." He closed the front door behind him with a slam and urged their son into the house, allowing the boy to escape his wife grip and slip pass her into the corridor. "Just let the boy be."

Narcissa's soft motherly features were quick to snap into the death glare that Lucius hated so much. "You were twenty-five when you bawled your eyes out after YOUR initiation, Lui. Would you've preferred if I'd left you alone back then?"

How Lucius Malfoy would allow anyone, even his wife, to chastise him so thoroughly was a mystery. Draco was sure this was one of the only times he'd seen his father actually blush.

"Now, woman..." Lucius began. Despite his slow, calm speech, impatience was bleeding from the way he addressed her. "You make him sound like some sort of victim, even though he'd been so brilliant at—"

She waved him off before she had to hear the gory details. Narcissa had opted out of being present at Draco's initiation for a good reason.

"YOU make him sound like a happy volunteer," she returned, pointing an accusatory finger in his face, "while if I remembered correctly, YOU were the one to force him into this."

"That is entirely unfair!" her husband now protested with his arms in the air.

Young Draco began to quietly move away from his parents while they were still not paying attention to him.

"And I really don't want to bring this up," Lucius could be heard raving, meaning that he did want to bring it up, "but even that hulk noticed that Draco's been seventeen for a long time. You knew that He's wanted our son since June—"

"And still eight years younger than you were back then, no less!" Narcissa screamed back with matching hysteria, which was no doubt a Black family legacy. Anyone can see her resemblance to Bellatrix Lestrange now.

Even as Hermione and Draco turned the corner with younger Draco, they could still hear her, "You could've made up an excuse for him!"

"And what excuse could this be?" Lucius' voice cracked.

"Told him our son was too much of a coward if you had to."

"How could I POSSIBLY say something so shameful?"

"Even Bella was against it—"

"Your dear sister was just looking down on our boy, darling."

"Don't patronize me, Lucius Malfoy. Thanks to your little request, we have another Death Eater in the family now, and he's become even more withdrawn into his own little world!"

There was something awfully intriguing for Hermione to realize how much Narcissa Malfoy had abhorred the idea of Draco becoming a Death Eater from the start, considering her public image.

"There is absolutely nothing wrong with Draco learning Legilimency and Occulmency from your sister," Lucius was saying now. "He isn't a child anymore—"

"So he could become one of you," his wife spat words like they were poison.

"They're important self-defense—" Lucius defended, only to be cut off again.

"Yes! From the likes of you! And don't you dare tell me that it wasn't the main reason why you learned them too. So that pure-blood-wannabe won't hear your thoughts. And now Draco's thoughts! You and your Death Eater friends might fool everyone else into thinking that you adore that crook unconditionally, but you don't foo—"

Lucius' blow on her face came so suddenly, Narcissa might have missed it if not for the pain. The younger Draco stopped in his tracks at the sharp sound and turned around at the end of the corridor to see what happened too.

The slap across his mother's cheek left a gash of blood that was quickly turning into a hideous bruise. Narcissa had dropped quite a bomb of her own though. Calling Lord Voldemort a "pure-blood-wannabe" was a blasphemy, only second to calling him a "mudblood." Hermione was fully disturbed too by the underlying racism that didn't even spare Lord Voldermort. Lucius Malfoy was expectedly incredulous, shouting raving threats at his wife for her audacious irreverence.

Yet Narcissa only stared back at him with a fierce, tearful glare, refusing to apologize. Her deep blue eyes reflected an inner strength that the older Draco knew even the cruel Dark Lord had respected in the years to come. For the youngest daughter of the Black family never became a Death Eater officially, even though the Dark Lord had extended his invitation to her after Lucius' initiation. Narcissa had explained her allegiance to Him in simple terms back then: Lucius' allegiance was her allegiance. If He had Lucius' heart, He had hers too. And then she politely, but firmly, refused to have ink drawn on any part of her immaculate porcelain skin. That was all.

She hid no secrets behind Occulmency, so the Dark Lord took her word for it and has never questioned it since. Not until Lucius Malfoy passed away.

Back in the memory, the Malfoy couple of over twenty years stood facing each other, fuming silently. It felt like a long while until Lucius' tense shoulders finally slumped in defeat. For all his anger issues, the proud man couldn't fault her for that motherly determination that defined her being. Narcissa knew that her husband loved her that much. He rarely said it out loud though.

He rarely apologized too.

"I'm sorry," Lucius could be heard saying, down the corridor from where young Draco was. "Love, I didn't meant to hit you so hard, I just... we just... Could-have-been's won't help us, you see."

His wife looked like she wanted to argue otherwise, but her lips only trembled briefly before she pursed them and turned her stinging cheek away. In a painfully soft voice, she answered, no longer looking at Lucius in the eye.

"Say that to our son."

The older Draco and Hermione couldn't hear Lucius' reply if he had one, nor could they see whether Lucius looked up to seek for his son. Young Draco had gone up the stairs and closed the door to his room behind him. Absently, the teenager sat down on the edge of his bed, making no gesture to remove his cloak or his boots. Water from the melting snow slowly soaked the thick carpet at his feet. If he had to break down and cry, this would seem to be the appropriate time.

It wasn't exactly a scene the older Draco wanted Hermione to see, nor did he quite want to relive it now. He might have blocked out the memory from his own mind, but the pensieve surely hadn't.

Gently, he touched Hermione's shoulder to gesture that it was time to go, but Hermione made no gesture to move. Draco had to admit that he never quite understood her insistence on returning to the pensieve again, especially after the many traumatizing revelations surrounding his initiation. But her focus was solely on the memory unfolding before them right now, and there was an intensity there that he didn't dare to disturb. Her silence intrigued him. Terrified him, too. She couldn't pull her eyes away from his younger self, and neither could he, from her.

Hermione didn't understand. There was no purgation. No catharsis. The teenaged boy's hands were still tightly clutched together in his lap, and he continued to stare emptily into the roaring fireplace, but he showed neither fear nor agitation, like he was both deep in thought and thinking nothing. It was as if he were truly emotionally stunned.

She didn't buy it.

Draco couldn't have been calm. Only a little over a week after this evening in the memory, when Draco had returned to Hogwarts for his last term in school, Hermione had discovered his Dark Mark inadvertently. He was furious then. Absolutely livid. That kind of emotion shouldn't take some nosey Head Girl to bring out of him so many days later. Something was missing.

Something must've happened between now and then.

As if he'd heard her thoughts, the younger Draco suddenly stood up and approached the fireplace. At first, he looked to be reaching for the coal poker, but the teenager surprised them when he reached onto the mantlepiece for a porcelain pot. It was filled with green dust.

With the resolve of a single-minded soul, young Draco threw the Floo Powder into the flames.

And then, with irreconcilable impassiveness the boy muttered, "Take me out of here."

"Anywhere."

xxx

The older Draco was aghast. He had no recollection of this new development. As the green blaze engulfed them, however, he just knew. He knew that they were about to open a can of worms.

Young Draco practically crashed through the fireplace of a pub diner he landed in, but nobody seemed sober enough to notice the just barely underage boy. Standing up, he discreetly moved through the loud drunks and skimpily dressed women, heading towards the exit. When he laid his hand on the door handle, however, a man came out of nowhere and shoved him aside.

"You're blocking the bloody closet," the middle-aged man slurred.

Young Draco raised a miffed eyebrow at the rude drunkard and the 'bloody closet' he so urgently needed to get to. Apparently he was looking for his broomstick.

"Come on," a gaudily dressed woman came into view, groaning impatiently as she moved in front of Draco. "It's not like you can ride that now," she said derisively to her drunken male company.

Her inebriated eyes swept across the handsome face she'd just pushed pass, and they narrowed in a suspicious daze, but Draco just ignored her. Trying to the exit again, he moved past her, but the brunette lightly pushed him back into the pub.

Apparently she had said something to him earlier, because she said, "Hey, I'm talking to you. Are you deaf, boy?"

That was when the man straightened up from the closet and grabbed hold of his girlfriend with a grunt.

"Are you a paedophile or what?" he said to her.

The woman in his arms looked incredulous.

"Excuse me?"

"I said," the boyfriend repeated with intoxicated confidence as he dragged a broomstick out of the closet. "Are you into young boys?"

He was about to finish some crude comment about not satisfying her in bed, but the woman had enough. To his foolish surprise, she slapped him in the face and stormed out of the door. Her man cursed loudly after her, leaving the pub too. As the door swung back to shut, he turned his head back to shout some obscenity at young Draco again, but the boy wasn't paying attention. Draco's eyes were at his feet, where the broomsticks had cascaded out of the closet with the man's departure, scattering all over the floor.

Someone that sounded like the pub owner shouted angrily from across the room, and Draco reflexively bent down, picking up a slightly beat up Comet 410. It was not a brand Draco and his wealthy family would buy, but a popular broomstick in those years nonetheless. For a moment there, the usually overindulged teenager looked as if he were going to clean up the mess, but something else sparked in his eyes.

It was the same heedless determination that he had shown at his fireplace earlier. A zombie-like blank stare with a purpose. Straightening up with the Comet still in hand, young Draco pushed the exit door open once more. The wind was chilly and it was snowing slightly, but he didn't seem to care. As soon as the door closed and blocked out the voice that was angrily shouting at him from behind, Draco mounted the broomstick, and, without a second thought, bolted into the darkness of the winter night sky.

Author's Notes, 3 November 2012: Cliff-hanger! I know, sorry, just wanted to get something out there for you guys, before I finish editing the last part of this memory sequence. It has been a long time since I've updated too, and I owe you an explanation:

My life made a number of significant turns in the past year and a half, including a live-in job that left me emotionally stagnant. It was hard to write about feelings, let alone those of Draco and Hermione. I've quit now though, and I am back to writing, hoping that my experiences would only make it better. The next chapter is proving to be cathartic for me. I'll be back soon with it!

Until then, please review, and thanks for reading :)

love, M.