I'm so sorry about this. I could give a complicated excuse about house buying, visa traumas, and work, but it really is no excuse xx Thanks for all the reviews, once again, sorry I made you wait so long.

ACT 4 - MONTAGUE

She was breaking him – slowly but surely. Breaking everything about him – his dreams, his aspirations and even muddying the waters of his future, with her eyes, her body and her words. She was intoxicating, and it frightened him how strongly he felt about her. That would be the only word that he allowed to be used now in his head to describe the emotion he felt for her. Strong. It had bled across the colours of their houses and seeped into all the hidden places in his personality that hadn't been chinked up with words like 'pure-blood' and 'Voldemort' and 'dementors' and 'mud-blood' and 'the dark mark'.

After the vanishing cupboard episode, she had tried to remould his personality in little ways that smacked of Gryffindor, and then, came to her senses and avoided him, thinking this was her chance to ''break free'', while he couldn't remember and while he didn't want her. It didn't work, like he was the drug and she the drug seeker, as his memory came back in bits, so their relationship reappeared, to entwine them both until they were closer than ever.

After Hogwarts it had become alarming to the point that he left, and then found himself outside her flat in London a week later, irises in hand, and in turns abjectly apologetic and charmingly sweet. She had been bitterly sarcastic and reticent in her acceptance, and then it all slipped away when he took her into his arms and she melted against him in that peculiar way she had, and he felt what he had missed in his time away – home.

She turned up at his family home in London, uninvited. It happened more than once. In fact, it happened often enough that his mother knew who she was, and knew she took two sugars in her tea and 'just a splash of milk'.

When he had reciprocated the un-invitation, she wasn't in her flat, and looking at her fireplace and the tracing of ash on the carpet, he surmised that she had taken a trip. Using an old year book and a bit of luck, he chanced the floo network and found himself on a hearth in a room in one of the most pricey estates in Exeter.

"What are you doing here?" She was curled up all cat like and he marvelled at the grace of her pose even as he smirked at her and sauntered arrogantly over to where she lay.

"Just thought I'd drop in. Nice digs, sweetheart. Didn't realise Daddy raked it in so well." He grinned and dropped a light kiss on her lips. She pulled away and pushed him hard. "My Dad's dead, you prick. My Mum's remarried. It's not our - or even my house. Just somewhere I come during holidays."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…I didn't know. I'm sorry Angelina." The bravado and cockiness eased out of his voice leaving just him, standing there looking suitably embarrassed.

She didn't answer him, just reached up to pull his head down for a fierce, electric kiss.

It was the perfect way to describe it, electric. Every touch sent electric shocks through the other, every kiss was not enough, they each wanted more, Montague wanted her soul…wanted her to admit that she was deliriously in love with him. He couldn't even begin to understand what she was doing to him. He couldn't look away from her, she was so unbearably beautiful, her skin lit a soft gold, and her hands were pure magic on his skin. He dragged his mouth away from hers long enough to growl, "upstairs?" before devouring her lips once again, his hands playing with her hair. She hooked her legs around him and he stood walking up the stairs with her and dropped her onto the landing so she could lead him to her room, and to her bed where she wriggled out of her robes, and then watched him through heavy lidded eyes as he did the same and then leaning over her began to kiss every inch of her body, licking sometimes here, dragging his tongue there, and every second kiss would be his mouth, slanting over hers, owning her mouth…the passion telling her what he couldn't, and what he refused to admit to himself, that he was hopelessly, horribly in love with her.

He had his choice of any of the eligible debutantes. He knew he was one of the more marketable ones, and one of the more lusted after, with his easy confidence, thinly veneered with arrogance, athletic form and too handsome face. His mother always tsked tsked he was 'just like your father', but he knew in his heart of hearts, that it wasn't so. For his father would never fall in love with a Gryff. Would consider that the ultimate of all weaknesses that a pure blood could succumb to. He would never feel the restlessness as a cool chill in his bones when he wasn't with her. He would never have that tight feeling of adrenaline, lust and bitterness curled up like a rubber band ball with the thought of her. A feeling that snapped to encompass them both when he was with her, and coiled up tighter and tighter every time he was without.

"I should go."

"But you won't." He flung his arm out across her body possessively where she was lying stretched out along his couch with her head on his lap. She didn't attempt to move. A smile shimmered around his lips like a mirage, and she reached a finger up to trace his lower lip.

"I'm meant to be meeting Katie and 'Licia for a drink. It's been a while since we've caught up."

"What have you told them?" He posed the question in a careless manner, as if indifferent to the answer, his fingers threading through her hair and fanning it out behind her head in a halo, all the while watching her through half lidded eyes, slivers of blue that slashed at her.

"That I'm having a torrid affair with a Quidditch superstar, who just happened to a former Slytherin. Oh yeah, did I mention that his father is one of the more notorious Death Eaters? Oh, and his brother is in Azkaban ? Oh yes, girls, you do want to kill me? Go ahead, it isn't anything I haven't thought about before."

"Be nice." He chided, his face breaking into a smirk. "I've told you far too much about my family, babe."

"You're afraid I'm going to use it against you?" She raised an eyebrow and grinned at him tauntingly .

"I'm afraid you'll want to use it against me, one day…" He didn't meet her eyes and followed instead his fingers as they wove a steady pattern into her hair. She sat up then, and scooted back, so she was sitting on his lap, her forehead resting against his temple. "You know I'm not like that. I would never -"

"I know. I know. You love me."

Her head lifted off his and he could feel her staring steadily at him. He looked down.

"Yeah, I do. And sometimes, I don't know why."

He quirked his lips in a charming grin, "why Johnson, you know it's because I'm irresistible."

"Really, Montague. This is exhausting me. I'm always tired. It's everything. Just getting a little bit too much. This is like the fairy tale I hide away in until I have to get back to life again, and I hate it. I want this to be my life."

"You know I can't do that right now, Johnson."

"You can. It's your life, Christopher. Not your father's. His money may have done all this for you," Her eyes swept around the room before coming back to rest on him, "but he's not going to care what you do. He already has James under the thumb – he doesn't need you there too. And Chris, it's me too he's getting if he keeps you there."

She looked at her watch. "Shit. I better go. Otherwise I'll have to come up with a better excuse than the crap one I already have." She gathered up her jacket and slipped her shoes on. Montague didn't move.

"I'll catch you later?" she looked at him as she was shrugging on her jacket. He nodded.

She dropped a kiss on his forehead and he wrapped an arm around her waist, keeping her between his legs.

"Johnson. I'm sorry."

"It's OK. I just want you to think about it."

"Ange – I didn't know you wanted -"

"Later, we'll talk later, OK, love? I have to run."

Love. He knew it had to happen with her sooner or later. She was a girl. A Gryff girl, so it was doubly likely to happen. He didn't know why he tried to fool himself that it wouldn't.

He was in lust, of course. Just a Slytherin, desperate for a shag with the enemy, because she enthralled him. That was all. Pure physical lust. Strong lust. That was all he ever allowed himself to think. That was the safest thing for him to think.

Because, if it was anything more than that, he knew he was a dead man, because a man with two hearts had never been known to survive. One always had to give up. And quietly, oh so quietly, he hoped it wouldn't be the one she owned.