Disclaimer: JK Rowling is the amazing author of the Harry Potter books. I am not making any money from this, just having fun.

At over 130 reviews, this fic has exceeded my expectations. Once again, thank you everyone... and don't hesitate to keep them coming. I am extremely flattered by the growing number of Alerts and Favorites for this fic and very pleased whenever I find one in my e-mail inbox.

Here is chapter 34. Enjoy.

Chapter 34

The Mess That Was Slytherin House

9th January, 1999

The Granger girl kept giving him strange looks when she passed him in the corridors. There was something irritating in the way she stopped and turned when she caught a glimpse of him, as though she might understand his motives by looking at him more closely. His motives. Was it truly so hard to believe a Slytherin might be telling the truth? He had just given her a warning. She hadn't heeded him, judging from the smiles and laughs Draco still drew out of her during Potions class. Well, it was her decision to make. He had been too circumspect, maybe; but it wasn't the Slytherin way to be obvious, and it wasn't Theo's way to openly betray a friend's secrets.

As always when his thoughts ran dark, his hand rose to trace over the scar that Draco had given him. The memories of that day flashed before his eyes – Draco, refusing to look at him until Theo spat in his face. The way he had looked Theo right in the eye as he performed the curse, slicing through his skin easily. The way Theo had refused to look away, had dared him, every step of the way, to go through with it. Excruciating pain. Gritted teeth. The hiss that had escaped his mouth even as he refused to scream. The blood welling up. And Draco – the look in his eyes, the set of his jaw, and the way he had collapsed as soon as the Carrows left and started crying.

The door opened with a bang, causing him to jump out of his skin. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to surprise you!" a voice cried.

"Astoria?" he said in disbelief as he turned around to look at her. He stood up abruptly, hit his head against the top of his four-poster bed, and sat back down on the mattress again again, seeing stars. "What are you doing here? This is the boys' dormitory!"

"I was looking for you," she said, looking unperturbed. "I guessed you might be here – it is quite warmer here than downstairs in the common room, isn't it?"

"Shouldn't you be in class at this hour?"

"I'm skipping," Astoria said, moving around the room and sitting down on the bed across from his (Draco's). "It's only Herbology. Shouldn't you?"

"Free period. You shouldn't skip classes."

"I can't concentrate anyway." She laughed a little, but there was nothing mirthful about it. "My grades have hit rock-bottom, and an hour of Herbology couldn't help that."

"What happened?"

As far as he knew, Astoria had always been a good student. Not as good as him, but more than adequate, and better than her sister by miles.

"You know what happened."

Their eyes locked. Sea-green met midnight blue and pierced his soul with terrifying accuracy. He guessed her next words before she said them.

"Don't you miss her?"

He knew whom she was talking about. He shook his head, quickly; not in denial but in refusal to talk about it. Astoria would not be deterred. She touched his arm gently.

"Don't you?"

"Of course I do," he said, slowly, as though she were drawing the words out of him by force; it almost felt like she was.

He missed her madly, wildly, desperately.

"She was my friend, too, you know," Astoria said quietly.

"I know."

"She was my best friend."

"Mine, too," he said sharply. Mine, first.

"I know that," she said. "Theo, won't you just talk to me?" She looked straight at him, her eyes wide with desperation, dilated black pupils trained on him. "I need to talk to someone. I need to – " Her voice broke. "I miss Tracey. I want to have her back, Theo. Where is she? Where is she?"

He held his arm out, and she took it, clenching her hand around it, rising from Draco's bed and drawing nearer to him, half-bending over him as sobs shook her shoulders. He had never realised how much Tracey Davis meant to her.

Tracey.

"She was so strong," Astoria said, her voice shaking. "I just... I never thought she could... Oh, Theo, I wish she were here. She was just so strong..."

Theo knew how she felt. There was something about Tracey, a sort of chin-up defiance and rebellion that made you want to take arms and ride into battle with her, made you forget your fears and the danger.

"She is strong," he said harshly. "Not... was."

Astoria gulped down another sob. "Yes – yes, I'm sorry. It's just... sometimes I worry..."

"Trust me," Theo said, wrapping his arms around the wisp of a girl that Astoria was. "She's strong, and if she were here right now she would laugh at us both."

Tracey was like that, sharp-tongued and cool, almost callous. Part of it was her nature, but part of it had been beaten into her by Slytherin house. She had been the Slytherin outcast and had had to fight for her place in the house every single day. That was because Tracey was Muggle-born.

"Salazar, what a mess I am," Astoria said, sinking to her knees on the floor beside him. "I'm sorry, Theo. I didn't mean to make a fool of myself. It's just, she hasn't written in so long, and I..." She bit her lip. "I don't know which is the worse thought, that she's just forgotten me or that she... she..."

"She's not," Theo said. "And she hasn't forgotten us. She's not like that."

If Tracey had been quiet, weak and subservient she might have got away with a hex every now and then and with being the seventh years' lackey. But Tracey was outspoken and stubborn. She proved a talented witch, and she had the knack for guessing which words would hurt the most and then saying them. Draco had taken an aversion to her from day one – and so had Pansy, naturally. But Tracey proved to be more than a match for them, and Theo took to following her around.

"She wouldn't forget you. Or me. We know her, don't we? We're her best friends."

And what a trial it had been, to get close to her. Tracey was obnoxious despite her birth, so full of herself that at first she shunned Theo as harshly as she attacked Draco. Theo insisted, and promised to teach her things about the wizarding world – customs that were indispensable in Slytherin –, and she gradually let him in. Getting to know her had been as slow as courting a well-born girl, but without the parents – Tracey was her own guardian. He had had to tread carefully around subjects which irritated her and just as carefully measure out the correct proportions of flattery, humour, and questions. But she had grown less and less cold, until at last he had started drawing genuine laughs out of her. Her laugh was beautiful. It amazed him that she could be so warm with him, and so cruel with Draco.

Draco, who was so callous with Theo that it ignited his blood every time he received a scornful look, a smirk, an eyeball roll. It was like they hadn't been friends since they were six years old. Draco treated him with the same haughtiness he used when dealing with anyone else – and in exchange, Theo associated with the likes of Blaise and Tracey, both of whom despised Draco.

"I know that," Astoria said. "And that's what makes it even more terrifying. I almost hope she has forgotten, because... because..."

Because the other option is so much worse.

"Why hasn't she shown up, Theo?" Astoria asked. "The war is over, and You-Know-Who is gone. There's no reason for her to hide anymore, unless..."

"Don't talk like that," he said sharply. "There are plenty of reasons. You don't know what she's doing right now."

During their second year, the year of the Chamber of Secrets, Tracey had been terrified. Draco kept taunting her about it – something that Theo would never forget. Her insults had only become sharper; in contrast, she was even more gentle with Theo. He saw her cry for the first time in second year.

"I hope she's happy," Astoria said quietly into his robes. She had calmed down now; her voice was more steady. "I hope we see her again soon."

In their third year, Draco and Theo were the only two Slytherins to take Arithmancy. During the first lesson, Draco plopped down right next to his old friend and said, in a warm voice Theo hadn't heard since they started at Hogwarts: "Hey, mate. Right where you promised you'd be."

And Theo forgot all his misgivings in two seconds flat. When they were seven, he and Draco had sworn each other to be in the same house and take exactly the same classes at Hogwarts. Theo wondered if he was truly so weak as to forgive someone he'd barely spoken to in two years so quickly.

He was.

Conversation in the dorms became significantly lighter, and Theo managed to convince his friend to "lay off Tracey a bit, will you?" By then, Tracey had bloomed into a hot-blooded hellfire who yelled at Theo as often as she laughed with him, and she did yell quite a bit when Theo started hanging out with Draco again. By then, she had clawed her way into a semblance of a position in Slytherin, even growing to be somewhat friends with the two years younger pure-blood Astoria Greengrass, and she fought for it tooth and nail. She set herself on equal footing with the pure-bloods and half-bloods of Slytherin, and they hated it.

"You really love her, don't you?" Astoria asked into his robes.

It had never been about love, but need. During their fifth year, right after one of their arguments, Tracey had kissed him. Theo had never really thought much about girls, but after that, all he thought about was the feel of Tracey's chapped lips on his, fierce and demanding as she had always been fierce and demanding. Tracey's strength was what had first attracted him to her, and it was what now held him to her, like a lifeline.

And then there had been the war.

"If only things that been different..." Astoria whispered.

A Mudblood in Slytherin. Those who had only just begun to tolerate Tracey now turned on her, violently. Theo found her crying twice, and it hit him harder than seeing her bleed would have. Her strength was now as fragile as glass. He almost left her then, but humanity had the better of him and instead, he drew her closer still.

Then one day, during their sixth year, Tracey disappeared. She didn't show up for breakfast in the Great Hall. She didn't appear in class. And when Theo went to the hospital wing, a sick feeling of dread nestled in his stomach, she wasn't there, either. Muggle-borns had been disappearing for weeks, but Theo hadn't dared to mention it to Tracey.

She didn't receive or chose not to answer his owls. She vanished into thin air. None of the other sixth years mentioned it, and Theo drove himself nearly sick with worry for over a month. That was when she wrote him a letter. Just one. Just four words. Concise and almost sharp, like everything about her. I'm safe. Stay alive.

He had thrown himself into life, studying efficiently, laughing with Draco and even joining the Quidditch team. Secretly, he gave a deeper meaning to Tracey's words and started asking Draco about the Dark Arts – Draco, who knew more about that than any of them – and had read books about how to go about defending himself against them. In seventh year, he'd been caught "borrowing" from the Restricted Section of the library after curfew and the Carrows had taken charge of his punishment during a Dark arts lesson. Draco had been chosen to perform the curse that had sliced through his skin and left the grotesque scar that twisted down his front. Theo had stood still, unrestrained, and his eyes had dared Draco to do it.

That night, Theo had seen Draco cry for the first time, and he might have forgiven him more quickly if Tracey's words hadn't still been resonating in his head.

Stay alive, she had written.

And he had. He had done more than that. He had learned and matured, both physically and mentally. He had grown. Stay alive. But was Tracy herself still alive? He hadn't heard from her since those four words, five syllables she had sent, over a year previously. She hadn't shown up at Hogwarts for either the rebuilding, the celebrations, or even just school.

I'm safe. He clung to the words like a lifeline, often taking her letter out at night to read it over and over again until he fell asleep. She had been safe. Why hadn't she come out of hiding yet? Please, don't let her be dead. Maybe Voldemort had got to her.

"She's safe," Astoria said, echoing his thoughts. Her voice was low and calm. "She's safe and there's a reasonable explanation behind all this and we'll see her again soon."

She had pulled away slightly, raising her damp eyes to his, and was looking at him steadily. Her gaze made him uneasy; she was a shrimp of a girl, very slight, but her bearing was proud and made her seem taller than she was. Her eyes glimmered with intelligence. Despite her friendship with Tracey, he had never been close to the younger Greengrass girl. She was a pretty little thing, but Tracey's strength and beauty had eclipsed her gentle manner and Theo had never paid her much attention.

"Well," he said. "When we see her again, she' s going to ask why you're failing all your classes, you stupid girl." He gave her a little push, making her stand up. "Off you go, Tory," he said, using Tracey's nickname for her. "To Herbology."

More Theo, again. Don't be mad. I just think he's interesting

I'm studying extra-hard at the moment, learning all those history dates and boring geography stuff. The bright side is, after this, I'll never have to hear about French, History, or Geography again. Or, well, not for another year at least. I suppose after that it depends on what I decide to do after high school.

I really have no idea what career I'd like to have, but I'm pretty sure it does not involve urban planning in France, or regional development, or tourism in our overseas territories, so I'll be glad when I never have to open a geography book ever again.

Next chapter is Monday, the day before my first exam, and it's called You Had a Choice – and Hermione and Draco are back, with more tension than fluff this time.