Disclaimer: We all know its JKR's and not mine. I'd like to claim Titus (aka Teddy), but he seems to have a mind of his own.

Author's Note: There's really nothing to say about this part other than I hope you enjoy it, and if you're a PR fan too . . . I'm trying, but it's a damn hard part.

" . . . Slughorn . . ."

" . . . deal with it . . . me . . . go . . ."

There were voices, somewhere, far away at the edges of the black that enveloped her mind. Familiar voices that called her, caused her to reached out to them, to fight her way back from the blackness. Bit by bit the words became clearer.

"Damn, do you think he saw us?"

"Don't know. Couldn't see if he had his head on the right way."

"Luna . . ."

"Head."

"Ow!" Ginny let out groan, as she felt her skull bump against something hard, jolting her back into the world completely.

"Sorry."

"Neville?" His name was raw on her throat as though she'd forgotten how to talk.

There was a breath against her ear, and then her friend's labored voice, trying to reassure her and perhaps himself, said, "Hang on, we're almost there."

She was moving, but though she heard the pounding of feet against stone, she was quickly coming to realize that they weren't her own. Then they stopped, and she felt herself shifted, her body adjusted to be cradled more securely in another's arms, and instinctively she brought her own arms around her transporter's neck.

"Bloody hell, you're heavy." Neville grunted.

"Thanks," she muttered, her croaky voice undermining any attempts at sarcasm.

"You okay?"

"I- I don't know. What happened?"

"You were about to open one of Snape's old notebooks and then . . ." Luna sucked in a breath, "you weren't."

"Oh . . . right." Ginny managed to flop her head back a little so that she could look up at Neville for explanation, when something terrifying managed to process its way through her mind.

"I- I can't see." The words came out in the faintest of terrified whispers.

"What!"

She whimpered a little, frustrated by her inability to scream. Burying her face against his neck, so that she wouldn't have to keep not seeing anything, she repeated, "I can't see you."

"Damn!"

Suddenly they were moving again, no quicker than before, but with a different kind of urgency, towards something rather than away. Pressed up against Neville's chest, she could hear him panting with exertion, obviously pushing his body far beyond its normal limits. And then she was tumbling, her body landing on a soft mattress and protesting even that.

"What has happened?" Madam Pomfrey's concerned, but commanding voice demanded, and Ginny knew she was in the infirmary.

"She can't- can't-" Neville was struggling to force the words out between labored breaths, but overall failing miserably.

"Oh, sit down boy. Put your head between your legs. Now, Miss Lovegood, please let me know what has happened."

"He carried her from across the castle. She's heavy, and he's out of shape."

Neville let out something between a groan and muffled curse that Ginny couldn't make out but would bet wasn't complimentary.

"Yes I surmised that, but I meant what happened to Ms. Weasley."

There was a long pause, while they tried to think of a convincing story that did not include the part where they broke into Slughorn's office to locate Snape's old journals for Harry. Then all three of them spoke at once.

"We were practicing and my spell backfired." Neville volunteered.

"My potion exploded." Ginny explained.

"Toothy-voluptomarls."

Madam Pomfrey was silent for a long while, and Ginny would bet anything they were about to have McGonagall come sweeping down on them. She wondered if the Gryffindor quidditch team would even care that she was going to be in detention from now until next year. She knew she didn't. They were pretty much rubbish without Harry and Ron anyway, and finding that damn snitch was hideously boring.

"I hexed her."

Ginny's head whirled around, and only too late did she remember that she couldn't see the speaker, or anything else for that matter. Still the gruff, slightly arrogant voice of Titus Flint was unmistakable.

"Why didn't you tell me this in the first place?" Pomfrey demanded with an edge that betrayed how dubious she found the explanation.

"They're just trying to cover up their own arses, so they don't have to admit to being out in the corridors after hours. Perfect little Gryffindors, trying to keep house points."

"I'm a Ravenclaw." Luna reminded him happily.

Still Titus continued on as though he hadn't heard. "Thought I'd be trying to do the same, keep everything hush hush. Well, jokes on you Longbottom. Slughorn caught me. Figured if I went down, we'd all go. We'll have detention together for weeks, doesn't that sound fun?"

"Piss off." Neville retorted, sounding a bit too realistic in his anger.

"And why exactly did you hex Ms. Weasley?"

"I was aiming for Longbottom actually, but Peeves jostled me."

Ginny had to admit Flint was fast on his feet. He lied smoothly, effortlessly; his voice laced with disturbingly Slytherin-sounding disdain.

"Who you were attempting to hex because?" Madam Pomfrey sounded slightly less dubious and Ginny was beginning to think that despite the incredibly flimsy excuse they just might get away with it on sheer nerve, when Luna piped up.

"Because he was trying to kiss me."

Neville groaned again, and Ginny went back to considering who could replace her as seeker.

"I see." The school nurse sounded like she saw all too well, but miraculously only moved to examine Ginny and then hurried off to prepare whatever was needed.

"I love that woman," Titus breathed, "Knows how to keep her nose where it belongs. Give her a half-plausible excuse, and she'll shut her eyes to everything but the injury."

There was a slight rustle and Ginny felt the bed sink a little as Titus sat beside her. "How are you, red?"

"I can't see," she replied frankly.

"Damn, must have been a hell of a Caecitus charm he had on that thing." The Slytherin's voice held a kind of disgusted admiration for his former head of house. "Blind 'em. It's what I'd do if I didn't want someone to read what I'd written. Well, we're not a pretty sight anyway. Longbottom here looks like he's run the grounds with one of those blast-ended skrewts on his tail. What happened, kid?"

Normally Neville took the younger boy's insistence on referring to him as kid, with a kind of grudging humor, but Ginny knew there was still certain amount of resentment over the moniker, and given the all too real-sounding anger she'd heard earlier, decided she should intervene. "He carried me from dungeons."

There was a long pause and then Flint let out a sharp bark of laughter.

"What's so funny?"

"You're a wizard. Why didn't you just levitate her here?"

"Oh, bloody hell." Neville groaned, "Luna, why didn't you say anything?"

"Oh!" She sounded startled by the idea. "I thought you wanted to carry her."

Titus snorted again. "You fickle dog, and here I thought it was my girl you were trying to snog."

Ginny heard Luna's sigh and felt the bed sink a little more as Flint pulled someone onto his lap. Merlin she hoped it was Luna.

"I wasn't--" Neville began to protest, but then gave up. "How'd it go?"

"Well, I managed convince Slughorn that it was just me. He thinks I was trying to steal lovage for an experimental befuddlement draft. Now I've got to come up with an actual experimental befuddlement draft by next week so we can work on it together during my detention. I don't even like potions."

"Oh, I'll help. I love potions." Luna volunteered.

Titus laughed softly. "You're failing potions."

"Yes, but that's only because I don't always turn in the homework."

"Do the toothy-voluptomarls eat it?"

"Of course not, I made them up."

"My mistake." Titus growled, and there was a shifting of weight on the bed again.

No, they weren't, they couldn't be. Ginny was suddenly very glad she couldn't see and really wished there was a deafening charm on that journal, too.

"Ugh," Neville let out a strained sound of disgust. "Hey! Isn't it going to look odd if you two are sitting here, snogging, when Pomfrey comes back?"

"I told you. She doesn't care. Woman would have made a damn good Slytherin."

"Then leave because you're making me ill."

"Do you need a dragon scale? They're very useful for anti-nausea potions. I've got some in my room." Luna asked with concern.

"No . . ." Neville let out another strangled sound, "I'll be fine if he'll stop kissing your neck . . . a different spot doesn't help, Flint!"

"Teddy, stop kissing me. Neville's going to throw up."

"Right, guess we're going to have to leave, then." Ginny felt her bed shift, suddenly relieved of its dual burden. "See you all around. Think of me while I'm serving my sentence in the dungeons. It is a far far better thing . . ."

But the rest of his declaration was muffled as the infirmary doors slammed shut.

"Insufferable git." Neville muttered under his breath.

"You just don't like him because he's . . . what exactly is he doing with Luna?"

"I don't want to think about it. Whatever happened to talking to his feet being too forward?"

"I guess they got past that."

"He's a Slytherin."

"You trust him enough to let him throw hexes at you."

"That's different."

"How?"

Neville didn't seem to have a good answer to that, so he reverted back to his original protest. "He's still an insufferable git."

"Yes, but he's Luna's insufferable git."

"You're just lucky you couldn't see them."

Silence.

"I didn't mean that."

"I know." Blindly she reached out towards the sound of his voice, trying to let him know she understood, and it was okay.

He caught her hand and squeezed it. "It'll be okay."

Ginny tightened her fingers over his to prevent him pulling away. Unable to see anything, she needed someone's touch to orient her. Neville's would be more than fine. "You really think so?"

Madam Pomfrey's sudden bustling presence prevented him from having to answer that. She felt the nurse's business-like touch on her temples, and then the swish of a wand in front of her eyes.

"Well, that should lift the charm, but it looks like it's designed to cause some lingering damage."

Neville's hand tightened on hers. "Can you fix it?"

"Yes, I should think so, with several days care, maybe more if it's not acting the way I think it is. Now, out."

"I was hoping to stay with her." He protested.

"Nonsense, Ms. Weasley needs rest right now. You can come visit her tomorrow morning."

"Its okay, Neville. I'll be fine." Ginny put on what she hoped was a brave face.

"If you're sure . . ."

"Of course she's sure. This is an infirmary, nothings going to happen here. Now out or I will have the Headmistress inquire into this entire matter."

There was nothing for it. With one more reassuring squeeze of her hand, Neville left.

Ginny had almost succeeded in forcing herself towards the mutable barriers of sleep, despite terribly foul-smelling poultice Pomfrey had place over her eyes, and an irrational fear that if she truly succeeded in reaching her dreams Snape would take control of her mind the way Voldemort had done with Harry her fourth year. It was absolutely mad, this fear that by opening that diary she had somehow caught the attention of Dumbledore's betrayer, that Snape would risk being caught to exact some kind of petty revenge on an inconsequential foot-soldier. Still every rustle of fabric in the too silent infirmary was the swish of former Potions Master's billowing black robes as he swept down on her. She was so on edge that when fabric brushed against her leg she almost screamed, and it was only the thick hand clamping down on her mouth that prevented her.

"Calm down red. It's just me."

"T-Titus?"

"In the flesh, well not that you can see that."

"What are you doing here?"

"Thought you could use a bit of company. As I'm already up to my ears in detentions, I appointed myself your night guard. In for a penny, in for a pound. 'Sides Longbottom'll have the day shift pretty much covered, and I don't think he'll take kindly to me being 'round for awhile."

Ginny snorted softly. "You'd better be up on shield charms by the next D.A. meeting, or you'll be the one in the infirmary. Did you have to dangle Luna in front of him like that?"

"You know, I'm a pleasant chap, don't understand his objection."

"Don't you?" She shot back, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She would have thought that anyone with half a brain could have figured out that Neville would want to pummel anyone who got to Luna first, and she'd always given Titus more credit than that.

Flint was quiet for a long moment as though debating what he wanted to say in response to that. What he finally settled on wasn't particularly illuminating.

"It's not about Luna." He brushed a strand of hair from her face. "Well it is, but not for the reasons you think."

"Now what's that supposed to mean?"

But the Slytherin boy didn't answer, just pressed a hand to her lips, and then she heard the crisp steps of Pomfrey as the nurse made her night rounds. It wasn't until she heard the steps fade away and the office door closed that Titus removed his hand.

"Are you mad?" Ginny hissed. "If Pomfrey had seen you, you would have had detention for the rest of the year and not with Slughorn."

"Did you know your face turns the same color as your hair when you're angry?"

"Give me my wand, so I can jinx your arrogant, reckless arse."

"Calm down, red. I had Luna put a disillusionment charm on me. She's a fair witch when she puts her mind to it."

"Which is never."

"Ah, but see there were Crumple-Horned Snorkels, or something like that, involved this time."

"Snorkacks"

"Right those. Her dad taught it to her when they were hunting them over the summer. Works, too, almost . . .you can only make out one shoe and my right hand, which I'm just keeping in my pocket."

"Luna learned a disillusionment charm, so she could hunt something that doesn't exist?"

"Hey, I'm not so sure 'bout that. There were some very convincing shadows moving in those pictures. I'm supposed to go with her next summer. Mum'll flip." He sounded positively gleeful about it. It was very odd to listen to a boy who looked like he could break you in half and would if given the opportunity, talk about her friend in such affectionate tones, but she was beginning to understand why Luna called him Teddy.

"Titus?"

"Hmm?"

"Why are you here?"

"Told you, I'm the night guard."

"No . . . I mean . . ." She licked her lips, trying to find a non-offensive way to ask what she wanted to know. "Why are you with us? Not the D.A. I get that, but why Neville and me and why . . .""

He cut her off. "Well Longbottom's easy. Chose me, didn't he? It's not everyone who'd invite a Slytherin with a Death-Eater in the family to your little group of fighters for the right. Can't exactly turn your back on an ally when you don't have any. 'Sides boy's got style when he chooses to show it."

"He's older than you."

"See and that's why I like you. You've got pluck and loyalty. Plus the two of you are tougher than you look, and I respect strength. But of course what you really want to ask is why Luna?"

She nodded.

He was silent again, and Ginny held her breath afraid he'd leave, insulted that she didn't trust him, or that she was questioning why someone would like a girl he so obviously did. She liked having someone to talk to, and despite Titus's brashness he was 'a pleasant chap' as he'd put it.

Then she heard the chair creak as he leaned toward her and in a conspiratorial whisper confided. "She doesn't giggle."

"What?"

"Have you ever been around Slytherin girls?"

"Not for more than a minute if I can help it."

"Good choice. They're all complete uninteresting cows. Giggle delicately at the appropriate times at all our jokes, which aren't funny by the way, without a single actual thought in their heads because that's what Mummy and Daddy told 'em they'd need to do to snag an appropriately pureblood husband."

"So you like her because she's not a Slytherin girl?"

"Look, Luna may be barking mad, but at least she's got her own ideas, and she really laughs, at all the wrong times sure, but only when she thinks something is funny, not because she was expected to." His voice had grown warm and affectionate. "A fella is never going to get bored with a girl like that, more like the other way around. She's too damn interesting. Last interesting female my house ever produced was Bellatrix Lestrange."

Ginny shivered a little at the appreciative tone that had come into Flint's voice at the mention of the witch who had tortured Neville's parents into madness. "You were doing fine until that."

"Sorry," But he didn't really sound all that sorry.

"She's evil!" Ginny spat contemptuously. "She's never been anything but evil, and never will be."

"You're wrong. She made a turn somewhere, don't know where, but she did. Everyone makes turns—turns for the better, turns for the worse. Just because I hate what she's become doesn't mean I can't appreciate who she might have been. Whatever else she is, she isn't spineless."

"It's awful to admire someone who could do what she did to another person."

"Typical Gryffindor," Flint snorted, his voice going cold with warning, "You all think there's types of people—people who can do something like that and people who can't. Everyone's got that in them, even your precious Potter. The only difference is how much it takes to bring it to the surface. Luna understands that, and I'd bet Longbottom's got a pretty good grasp of the idea. You need to get on board or you won't survive this war."

Ginny's insides went dead, as the sharp truth of his words lashed out at her, cutting into her heart, and she felt something coil within her in response, just as cold and calculating as any Slytherin jibe. "Is that what you tell yourself? How you excuse your brother's actions?"

"Listen," he hissed in her ear, suddenly close, and she could feel little flecks of spittle on her face, "my brother was good man. Not a shiny bleeding heart, sure. He played quidditch too rough and did other things too rough as well, but he loved our Mum something fierce, stayed with her when she had the tremors, got her firewhiskey when nothing else worked. By thirteen he could knock my dad flat on his back. By fifteen he'd sent the old man packing. Then when he was eighteen—"

She tried to turn away, tried not to hear whatever terrible thing he was going to say next, but his hand clamped down on her jaw, holding her in place, "No you're going to hear this!—when he was eighteen the bitch hit me, knocked me out cold with a bottle of firewhiskey because I couldn't transfigure her slippers to amuse her. I don't know exactly what happened, but when I came to Mum was twitching on floor, and he was gone. He'd done the Cruciatus curse on her, on a woman who he loved more than she deserved. It was obvious what he'd done, but she'd never admit it, protected him to the end. Still don't get to come back to your family after that, do you? So he found a new one. Next time I saw him, he had the dark mark."

"I'm sorry." Ginny whispered, choking back tears, trying not to imagine what it would be like to live in a place where love was so intertwined with pain. The words seemed to snap something in Titus, and he released her face.

"Don't want your pity for either of us. Bastard made his choice." He sunk onto the bed, sounding weary, defeated, as though he'd told himself this too many times.

"Whatever your mom did doesn't excuse him."

"Don't think I ever said it did, but just in case you're still thinking that's only something that happens to those of us who wear green, ask Longbottom sometime what he'd do if he ever got the Lestranges alone, or ask your white-knight boyfriend what he plans to do to Snape if he finds him. I don't think either of them would stop with a body-bind."

"I think-" Ginny took a shaky breath, "I think I'd like you to go now."

"Yeah," Titus's voice was equally shaky. "I think that's probably a good idea."

But even as he said it, his thick arms were pulling her up, wrapping her in a great hug that was so fierce, she wondered who it was for, and though she stiffened against him at first, tried to fight him off, she soon found herself clutching him just as tightly and thinking of Percy, thinking that maybe she knew how he felt . . . just a little.

"That bastard is going to pay." He whispered in that same hard, determined, Slytherin voice that saw no boundaries to achieving his end, and though she didn't know whether he was talking about Voldemort or his own brother, she found herself responding with equal conviction.

"Yes, yes he will."

Thanks for reading. Comments and Criticisms welcomed as always.

Panache (who really wishes original characters wouldn't demand to purge their souls when she's trying to write a seminar paper).