Disclaimer : Naturally, I only own my heroine.

Chapter Seven: Out

Games are so much more exhilarating than practices. Really. I find I enjoy this little game much more when I can attempt to knock someone from another house out rather than my own comrades. Oh yes, I am having a blast, except for the fact that I lack skill and have been knocked off my broom.

This muck is so much more degrading in a proper match than practice when only Draco is scolding me. However right now I have slytherins and ravenclaws watching the CEO of ME getting knocked down. This motivated me to get back up and rip the quaffle away from Bradley. I actually scored. It was a miracle. Avery took out two other chasers, that might have done something to help but still. I was quite pleased.

I never got another chance throughout the entire game to stop and think. I didn't think. I just played. Had I thought—like I am doing now, I would have been unnerved by the idioticy of the sport. Zooming around on brooms, sweating like pigs and relying on animal instincts isn't what one should be paid millions of galleons for. Oh well.

Cappar that idiot. Hooch called a foul on him due to the bludger he sent at the Ravenclaw keeper. So what if it knocked him out on purpose? Fair play if you ask me. Nevertheless Draco had to put in Tarquin who couldn't hit a damn thing. Nevertheless, Moon and Zabini preformed this complex play to confuse the other seeker and Draco was able to grab the snitch.

When I touched down, I was filled with a warm feeling I had never experienced before. I was disgusting and gross but it didn't matter. We had won. I smiled and looked up the cheered slytherin stands.

Then I saw Lucius Malfoy.

I quickly looked around. Who else could be surveying?

I saw Harry Potter. He had showed up just like I'd asked. Even though it didn't exactly fill me with the warm feelings I had when I had asked him to come.

When I looked back at Lucius, he was smirking in my general direction and I just wanted to die. I practically ran to the showers where I found Professor Snape waiting for me.

"I am sorry Ms. Marlow but there are more urgent matters than your hygiene."

"I am sure the board wouldn't want to see me sweating all over my papers," there was no way he was going to not let me have a shower.

Then he handed me a financial rag, fresh off the press . . . and I ran to the meeting.

I demanded to leave school, to go to the office and solve this mess but they insisted it was unnecessary. Lucius shared this opinion, who was there with me in person. This means that they are just letting me stew with the knowledge that there is a workers riot underway at my out biggest production site. Kill me, just kill me.

We went over the situation and came to a half-arsed resolution that should put the situation at bay. I went through something like this briefly but it was so much easier when I was living at the office 24/7 and had no life.

I took my shower and collapsed on the leather sofa in the common room allowing my cigarette to rest, ignored, in the tray. I forget what I was reading and oh was it justified.

The slytherin quidditch captain swooped into the common room and yanked me out into the lonely corridor. "I have something very important I need to talk to you about." He held my shoulders against the stone.

"O-kay," I really wished I had grabbed my cigarette.

"Will you marry me?"

As was my custom, I chocked on my spit and lurched forward as though I had been kicked in the stomach.

"As a friend," he said as though he was clearing up some confusion. "I am asking you as a friend to marry me."

"That is the biggest oxymoron I have heard you use all year."

He groaned and released my shoulders. "Is that a yes or a no?"

"This is typically a big decision forgive my hesitation."

"Marlow," he grabbed his hair in frustration.

"You know if we did get married you would have to use my first name." I accico-ed my cigarettes and got comfortable. "So what brought this on? Does Lucius want you to get married?"

"No." I was mildly surprised. "But it's an excuse to get out of the Manor and have my own life."

"Oh dear lord," I blew smoke upwards. "Do you ever think about anyone but yourself?"

"Are you rejecting me?"

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "I have a workers riot going on as we speak, Draco. I really don't need this."

"I need an answer!"

"Does anyone know you asked me?"

"Not yet."

"Then you don't need an answer." I took a sharp drag. "Did it ever occur to you that marriage means fidelity?"

"No. Should it? Honestly, Marlow, you can't really care about that."

Love and marriage isn't a subject I tend to spend much time on so when it came time to draw up my feelings, I pulled a blank. I quickly started talking to cover up my fault. "Why don't you go ask Pansy?"

"Because she'd actually expect something of the union."

"How do you know I won't, hm? Maybe I want you all to myself so I can fall madly in love with you and have—heaven forbid—children."

"Now you're just being idiotic."

"I'll get back to you on it."

"Alright," he seemed satisfied. "Good game by the way."

"Don't you dare tell anyone about this or else I shall personally castrate you." I said that all with a straight face and a flat tone, if you can believe it.

"Whatever you say."

I rolled my eyes as he strolled off and I returned to the common room.

Later I was reading some depressing news articles and backtracking through my reports. Searching for the missing link wasn't as easy as I though it was going to be. I had anticipated some glaring error or careless mistake that would unlock this whole mess. No such luck. I am not a really lucky person. But admitting to that would require admitting that I believe in the catch-as-catch-can way of universe luck adheres to.

If I have left you wondering what I do believe in well, that my friends is a more complex question. So let me tide you over with another tidbit of fascinating information: I have switched tobacco products. Yes, now I use the rolly-kind. I put in my own tobacco and filter. It takes longer and looks seedier but I like it's more satisfying.

"Hey," I didn't have to turn around to know it was Harry, he had mastered the art of finding me alone. "You weren't at lunch."

"I'm not hungry."

"You lie," he said taking a seat on the step next to me. Half of his arse was teetering on the edge and I wondered if he would fall the meter or so down. "After games I am always famished."

"Blaise got me something from the kitchens."

"You got of the field quite fast, especially since you asked me to be there." Oh merlin, the last thing I needed was for him to feel emotionally taxed.

I threw the paper into his lap, "I didn't ask for this." I watched with almost a sick feeling of revenge as his face fell. "That is why I ran off the pitch, Harry, with bloody Lucius Malfoy on my tail."

"How on earth can you deal with this?" he sounded mystified.

I found his tone of voice only irritated me more. "I deal with it because I have to," my words were sharp on the consonants like daggers. He didn't know. I was so popular amongst my workers before I came back to this bloody school. I was on top of my game just two months ago. Now it had all gone to the dogs.

"Hell, this would be your life if you didn't get lucky and live under those muggle stairs for eleven years."

"Me, lucky?" he pulled back. "I had to fight Voldemort if you remember without a bloody clue as to what was going on in the wizarding world!"

"And woopdedoo," I said flatly. "Dear Mister Potter you have survived because you had everyone and their mother on your side. You had a war going for you. One you jumped in on just at the right time. I however have grown up and lived in a warzone. It is like living in a cloud of nicotine and never tasting real air." I gestured to my tobacco, "this here, makes no difference."

"So why don't you leave?" the tone of the conversation wasn't yet friendly but wasn't an argument either. "You are the boss so make someone else boss. You have more galleons than you know what to do with; why do you stay?"

"Because it doesn't work like that," I snarled.

"Are you telling me you wanted this?"

My mind flashed back to a dimly lit office where Snape was first telling me about the hell in which I wanted to descend

"You have nothing to be loyal to, Miss Marlow. What currently run, is not yours, it is still your father's."

"What do you suggest I do?"

"First of all, what is it you want?"

"I want to be powerful."

"Yeah, I guess I wanted it."

Harry put his hands on his knees and shook his head in amazement. "I just. . .don't understand you."

He left me alone on those steps with a deep flashback. Actually, multiple flashbacks because I eventually milked every last smoke I could and started picking at my fingers until the skin around the nails bled.

"Do you feel any loyalty to me, Professor?"

"It's apart of the game, Miss Marlow. Whoever has the most information wins."

"Commendable but requires follow through."

"Professor, will you come with me . . . through all of this?"

My fingers were now tangling themselves in my hair.

"They found your letters! Why didn't you burn those bloody letters!"

"This law will state that all outfits of enterprise in order to do business in the UK must adhere to certain uniform regulations."

"Mr. Weasley you can't be serious! This is complete socialism you are proposing!"

"My father babysits you more than he listens to you."

"I will always look out for you."

I shrieked, ripping out locks by the roots. Like the Great Flood memories came back to me. Trivial patches really. Just the briefest of moments, phrases or thoughts that stacked up one upon the other, stating, contradicting, truth, lies and my every changing mentality that I was always right on the edge of everything there ever was.

I wanted to curl up into a ball and die. I wanted Malcolm. I wanted Blaise. I wanted Justin. I wanted Draco. I wanted Harry. I wanted my father. I wanted it all to go back!

"Go back to where?"

To this day I do not know who said that. If it was I or my conscience, I can never be sure. I have even pondered if it had been a ghost, haunting me; waiting for the right moment to twirk me.

I was at a deadend. There was no other way of saying it. Everywhere I looked, every which way I stacked my house of cards, I –

"Wouldn't it be nice to tie up all our loose ends and bury all our skeletons?"

I crept up the stairs to the boys dormitory like some sort of criminal. My eyes darted from left to right, up until the moment where my hand gripped the infamous knob. I pushed on the door just enough to get it to open, fearing a creak or a groan. My eyes peered through the crack and the coat looked clear. I opened the door further until I saw it.

The empty, cold, surprisingly neat bed of the late Malcolm Baddock. The last time I had seen it, I had hidden letters carrying the dark mark beneath it. Oh all that had changed since then. The Dark Mark was a relic, Voldemort had been defeated, deatheaters recoiled into their snobbish culture and life had gone on. But he was still dead. The fact was cold and final, very unfair when life is a continuum for the rest of the universe.

"Didn't your mother tell you that lingering in doorways was rude?" I swung the door all the way open and looked to see who had caught me redhanded. It was Mr. Blaise Zabini.

"I'm creeping around, do you mind?" I was testing his humour because I never knew anymore with him. "Why on earth do you still sleep here?"

"Because I like too," was his short response. The tan boy looked surprisingly normal and if I am lying, I'm dying—I think I saw him reading a book.

"You know the letters are all long gone."

"What makes you think I am looking for those?" I said all to quickly, slamming the door on accident.

"Why else would you be here?"

"Do you not want me here?"

"Be honest with me, please, it saves time." This was the first time since he went into his dazed delirium of self-destruction that I remembered him talking about honesty. The last time the concept came up, it was I who was screaming it at him.

"I felt the urge to come here . . ." I trailed off trying to find the words. I started trying to roll another tobacco blunt but I was trembling too much.

I eventually threw it aside and buried my face into my hands. "I want out, Blaise. I wanted to be the boss of my father's company but I am back where I started."

Blaise watched me for a few moments before getting up and putting his arms around me. I hated being treated like a child but I couldn't bring myself to protest. "You are far from where you started." He stretched to rest his chin on my head and softly rubbed by back reassuringly.

"I want out." I said into his chest, just above his slytherin badge. "I want out." All the resistance had left me and I felt oh so tired.

"Whatever you say, princess," Blaise murmured in an equally sleepy voice.

Draco has surprisingly boring prep speeches. No really, If you were expecting something to churn the intestines and boil your blood you would be terribly disappointed. He says about two sentences and then goes off on a selfish rant about how Potter is an arse. I forget how selfish he is sometimes. God and to think he asked me to marry him. It's enough to make you heave.

In other news, I haven't spoken to Harry in a good week. I am not even sure why and to avoid thinking about it, I have just buried myself into work which was only frustrated me even more which has lead me to smoke more which has brings me to not feeling very athletically inclined. The circle of life.

The next thing I knew, I was on the pitch and in the air. Moon was vicious as always with the quaffle, but eventually it changed hands and I was chasing down Dean Thomas. Oh, I think I forgot to mention, we were playing Gryffindor. Ironic, isn't it?

God, their chasers were good! Harry must have them running themselves ragged in order to get into this type of condition, merlin. My chest was pounding and I could barely stay out of the way of the bludgers which seemed to live in my direction.

"Marlow, wake up!" Moon shouted at me.

How many hours had we been playing? Sweat, quaffle, goal, bludger, I couldn't keep it all straight. Time was slipping out from under me with every pass, every breath. I heard someone shout my name just before I hit the mud.

Since when was it raining? Oh god, this mud is cold. Not to mention gross. I want to die.

"Slytherin's new chaser, Alexandra Marlow is down, the question is will she get back up, folks?" Oh right, the game. I felt like someone had ripped out my stomach but that built in ambition got me back onto my broom.

I don't know when but for when I think back, I have a very clear image of Harry's face, sweaty and full of concern. Then a smile appears on his face and that is all I got. It's funny because when I think of Draco, there is a similar expression that comes to mind.

The game was never finished because I think about twenty minutes later, I was receiving a pass very high up and got hit by something. This something collided with my ribs and sent me sailing bloody kilometers. I apparently landed in the Forbidden Forest but someone else told me that bit. The last thing I remember was looking down on the pitch with the quaffle, in control and then I died.

Author's Note: Another chapter up for my beloved readers. I know it is a cliff-hanger but if I didn't do that you all wouldn't be engaged! I don't want to give too much away even though I think my writing style is pretty transparent.Oh andall thephrases in italicswere actually from the text; if you backtracka couple of chapters youcan find their exact context:Anyway, tootles, until the next installment!