Chapter One: Darien L'Allor

She loved that rain! The way it trickled down her skin and how it made everything smell so wonderful. It was her idea of heaven. Every time it rained Ron would rolls his eyes at her as she darted out of the common room, through the corridors, down the stairs, and out into her beloved element.

On this particularly rainy Monday she had been standing by the lake for only a few minutes when someone walked up behind her and sighed. Thinking it was Ron come to yell at her again, she spun but froze in shock. Steam swirled about her face as raindrops dived off of her nose only to crash into her thin, determined lips. Thick brown eyelashes hooded stunned earthy eyes under their frost-covered expanse.

"Why the surprised look?" His voice was so calm and had an almost warm quality to it.

Suddenly shaken out of her trance she stepped forward and reached out a hand numbed into a marble like state. "S-sorry 'bout that. I'm not sure I know you…?" Her hand wavered timidly in the still rain sodden air.

His pale lips curved upward into to an ironic smile as his long hand clasped hers with a gentleness that no human being would have ever named his. "You did, a long time ago."

A sigh escaped her in a sudden cloud of mist as she stared at their interwoven hands of varied pallor. "Oh…You mean before my accident?" She shuddered at the horrible nightmare that she had endured for far too many nights…If only it had been a nightmare.

"Yeah…"

"Did I know you very well?" Her voice soared with sudden hopefulness as she looked up at the handsome stranger.

He laughed slightly; laughter was a challenge because it was something he rarely practiced. A nod was all he could manage as more than rain trickled down his ivory cheek. "I'm afraid I don't remember your name. My name's Ginny…but you probably knew that already though, didn't you?" Another nod. "Are you going to tell me your name?" She asked thoughtfully.

"D-Darien…L'Allor…." The words materialized as barely a whisper, for to her his name was a dangerous thing that had spelt her doom once before. "So why are you out here in the rain Ginny?" He asked, hoping against the odds that she had remembered something of previous rainy days.

"Actually I don't know why. The rain makes me really happy for some reason and when I'm in it I can almost remember something. I know it's really important, but I just can't quite remember what it is!" She began to drag Darien into the warm, dry confines under a strange little pine tree that had once meant so much to who she had been.

"I know what it is…." Draco muttered softly, praying she hear but dreading what could happen if she had.

Ginny turned to face him, a sparkle in her kindly eyes. "You do?" The excitement in her voice strained against her lips as it rushed out in a bubbly flow of words. "Tell me! I've been trying so hard to remember what it is! I know I just need to remember, someone depends on me…for somethin…" She sat on the pine needles with an excited thump before those melt-in-you-mouth chocolate eyes turned their gaze on him.

Slowly, almost as if he was aging very quickly for a youth of seventeen, he lowered himself to a seat next to her. "I don't know if you're quite ready to hear this-"

"Do you know how long people have been trying to tell me I don't need to know what was going on in my life before those bloody death eaters? Long enough! I know I had a life and that it was my choice! Everything that happened was something I was willing to risk for what I had and I want it back! I don't give a darn about what people are trying to tell me about what I do and don't need to know!" Puffs of fog flittered comically from her mouth as she caught her breath before one last sentence drifted out softly in their midst, "Please Darien, I need to know."

Her words struck him like a hammer. She needed to know? The risks hadn't stopped her from loving him and it was worth every moment of the Forbidden Curse? His mouth gaped open before he though to answer he without giving anything away. "You had a boyfriend, who your family didn't approve of, and-"

"Why didn't they approve of him?" Ginny asked quickly during Darien's slight pause.

A slight laugh escaped him, she hadn't changed as much as he had thought. "He was from a bad family and the worst house possible."

Ginny tilted her head thoughtfully. "But why would my family hate him? Didn't they realize I must have known something about him they didn't in order to have liked him so much?"

He thought about the question before answering, "I think some part of them wanted to trust him, but they'd been hating his family for so long that they couldn't quite bring themselves to stop…You could say that it was too much a part of who they were."

A frown pulled Ginny's face into a displeased look. "Oh," Her voice sounded disappointed. "Go on Darien, sorry to interrupt."

"Well," Darien paused thoughtfully and grinned to himself as he remembered something from long ago. "He loved you more than anything in this world. Every time it rained he knew he'd find you out here, so before he got up the courage to talk to you he would come out here and watch you while you played in the rain. He never knew why you loved the rain, but he didn't care because it made you happy." Darien smiled at her.

Tears welled up in her eyes as she returned the smile. "He did that?" Darien nodded. "All just to watch me?"

Darien nodded again. "Yeah, just to watch you. He once told me that you kind of got a glow around you whenever you were in the rain and that you just looked so much like an angle that he thought he had found his piece of secret heaven." Ginny's breath caught in her throat.

That line was familiar…Had her love told her that when he had told her how he felt or later, in some secret corner of Hogwarts?