A/N: Well, it took me over a year, but here it is. Chapter twenty. 'Course I wouldn't be surprised to have lost all my readers by now, but anyway. For those who do read it, I hope you like it, and I shall do my utmost to turn out more soon. Much has happened since I began this story, to the point where it is no longer just slightly out of the realm of possibility but completely so. Still, I hope people like it anyway. Snape, I haven't quite figureed out what to do with. Maybe he'll end up doing something similar to what he did in the sixth book, and maybe not. I guess you'll have to find out...

Disclaimer: What is there to say other than, not mine, if you want it to be please sign the petition to J.K. on JessicaOwnsHarryPotter . com. Anyway, on with the story...

Chapter Twenty: Friend or Foe

Jessica ran down the hallway towards Gryffindor tower, on the verge of completely breaking down. Tears fell from her eyes but she did the best to hold back her sobs. She had to get away; she had to find a way to get his words out of her thoughts. She continued down the hallway, almost missing the staircase to the common room. She didn't even really see the steps as she bounded up them. Those mocking eyes seemed to float before her and the elder Malfoy's words rang over and over again in her ears. …your grandmother is good at screaming. It was all she did…all she did…she was almost as good at begging as she was at screaming…

With a strangled cry of "dristig" to the portrait of the fat Lady she entered into the common room, nearly forgetting to close the portrait behind her. The common room was empty so she grabbed a pillow and threw herself into a chair by the fire and finally let herself just sob.

She'd hardly been sitting for thirty seconds before a familiar voice asked, "Jessica?"

She looked around wildly, trying to locate the source of the voice. Harry stepped out from the chair in the corner and a small, bitter laugh escaped her. The common room was not as empty as she'd thought after all. The irony of the situation was not lost on her. Her mind flashed back to when, the previous summer, Harry had tried to comfort her in the Weasley's kitchen…

She smiled miserably at him. While she was glad it was only him, she hated the fact that he always seemed to catch her crying.

"Hi, Harry," she said.

"Jessica, what's the matter?" Harry asked, concern evident in his voice.

"It's n-nothing,"she said. She didn't bother to wipe at her eyes, she was probably going to burst into tears again any second. "Just had a friendly little ch-chat with L-lucius Malfoy."

Alarm flashed in Harry's eyes and he came over and sat on the chair opposite hers. "What did he say to you?" His voice was filled with urgency.

"Just that my grandmother screams well," she said, stuck between sarcasm and tears.

Harry stared at her a moment in disbelief. "He said what?"

Now Jessica shook her head. "I don't want to talk about it." She lapsed into tears again.

"Merlin," Harry muttered under his breath. He walked over to and awkwardly pulled her into a hug. He let her cry a moment, then pulled back and grabbed her hands. "Jessica, you have to tell Dumbledore."

She shook her head fiercely. "No. He already knows Lucius is a Death Eater, my reconfirming it won't do any good."

"But that's just it," Harry insisted. "Dumbledore knows but he can't prove it. At the very least this will be proof to Dumbledore that Lucius Malfoy had something to do with your grandmother's disappearance."

Jessica sat quietly, tears still running down her cheeks as she paused a moment. Finally, in a tired voice she said, "I just want it to end, Harry. I want it to heal, but it seems every time I think I've gotten over it, it comes back to smack me in the face."

Harry said nothing, but put his arms around her. This silent confirmation that he understood served to shake Jessica from her grief and suddenly she realized that she was talking to the one person who had more of a right to be in tears than any witch or wizard. But he wasn't. He pushed on, refused to give up. Harry had lost so much more than she had, and if he could be strong then that meant she could too.

"I guess you're right," she said softly. "When can we tell Dumbledore?

If Harry was surprised by her sudden change of mind, he didn't show it, but merely let go of her as he settled onto the couch next to her chair, saying, "Well, not right away, obviously. He'll probably still be in bed."

Jessica smiled slightly. "I'd forgotten how early it was."

"Funny how talking to Death Eaters can make you forget what time it is," Harry said wryly.

She laughed. It was only a half-hearted attempt, but it made her feel better, nonetheless. "Do you think maybe we could catch him after breakfast?"

He nodded. "More than likely." He looked at her a long moment. The silence seemed to drag on between them, and finally she glanced away.

"What were you doing down here this early anyway?" She asked.

"I well, I was talking to someone," Harry's voice sounded flustered and she looked back at him.

"Who? Harry, there's no one else here."

"I was using the fire. You know, like how Floo powder works, only you just stick your head through."

She stared at him a moment, then said carefully, "No, I didn't know that."

"Ah, well, that's what I was doing." There was a slightly pinkish tinge in his cheeks, as he always had when he'd been caught doing something he didn't want to explain. It wasn't anywhere near as pronounced as one would see on Ron, but she'd dated him and she'd come to notice it. It probably slipped most everyone else's attention.

She met his eyes. "Do you want to tell me about it?"

"Well, it's er, I mean, I'm don't, that is, it's a bit of a, well, I'm just not supposed to talk about it," Harry stuttered, looking uncomfortable.

She smiled. "It's fine Harry, if you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to." He let out a sigh of relief and glanced away.

Jessica looked back at the fire a moment. The flames in the grating were extremely low as it was about six thirty or so in the morning. She stared into them, musing to herself. Life was so odd. You grew used to one thing and just as you began to think you'd finally come to terms with it, things changed again. While she knew that this was normally the way life worked, part of her fought against the idea that this constant uncertainty and feeling of being pulled along in directions she didn't understand was life. Every since her entry into the wizarding world, her life had been torn to pieces. That couldn't just be fate. And she didn't believe in Fate anyway, people shaped their own lives, it's just sometimes the shape of one person's life affected another in such a powerful way that that other person knew their life would never be the same.

Voldemort and his Death Eaters however, were different. While a person who ran across them certainly knew their life would never be the same again, it was generally because there was no life past that point to compare. Her thoughts turned cold. Part of her had been shocked, crushed by what Lucius Malfoy had said to her. His words had been the spoken equivalent of twisting a knife that was already buried in her gut. But another, smaller, part had been tempted, sorely tempted to use those nasty curses and hexes she'd learned from Draco on him. Only two things had stopped her. One, Lucius practically exuded danger. Something about the way he carried himself, the glint in his eye, the timbre of his voice, suggested a man far more dangerous than his clothes would have led one to believe. She'd had a strong feeling that should she try anything she wouldn't have lived to tell of it. Two, word of it would have gotten back to Voldemort, and merely proven to him that she was worth his attention. His efforts to get to her probably would have increased to the point of physical threats, hexed letters and such. So she'd let the grief take over and she'd run. But she wanted nothing more at the moment, now that the initial shock had passed, to see the light leave Lucius Malfoy's eyes in the same way it had left Harry's in her nightmares.

She looked back at Harry. "Harry, if you had the chance, if you thought you could, without dying yourself, would you… kill Voldemort?" She didn't know what had made her ask the question, only that she wanted to know if she was the only one.

She could see the question had shocked him, and in all rights, it should have. Despite the fact that they both had reasons to despise Voldemort, he'd never come up much as a subject. And certainly not in the way she'd brought it up.

"I don't know," he said finally. "I mean, part of me says yes, but another part of me says no, because it's just stooping to his level. I don't want to be a murderer."

"I don't think," Jessica said softly, "that a single decent wizard, or Muggle for that matter, would consider it murder Harry." She sighed. "But you're right of course, it would just be stooping to his level." She got up and hesitantly moved to sit next to him, hoping he didn't read anything into it. But he merely moved over to give her enough space to sit. She plopped down next to him and leaned her head back against the back of the couch, closing her eyes a moment.

When she opened them Harry was looking at her. His green eyes had that look to them, the one that made her so compelled to kiss him. Without really knowing what she was doing she leaned forward, noticing as she did so that Harry was leaning in too.

No! At almost the exact same time as Harry, she pulled back and looked away. Damn it all, why did this have to be so difficult? She couldn't do that! It wasn't safe, for either of them and they both knew it.

"Sorry," she muttered, standing up quickly. Carefully not meeting his eyes, she said, "So, when should we go see Dumbledore then?"

"Oh, er, say, maybe in forty-five minutes? He should be awake by then."

"Right, well, see you then." And still not looking at him Jessica retreated quickly to the girl's dorms.

Forty-five minutes later on the dot the two of them stood outside the door to Dumbledore's office. Harry had known the password to the gargoyle at the bottom of the staircase, and they'd encountered no one on the way there.

"Do you think he's awake?" Jessica muttered to Harry, looking uncertainly at the big doors leading to the Headmaster's office. "I mean, I don't want to wake him up…"

Harry, however, simply reached up and knocked on the door three times, then cautiously pushed it open.

Jessica glanced around briefly as they stepped inside. She was given the impression of a large circular room, with its walls covered in what appeared to be portraits of the previous Headmasters of Hogwarts. Placed around the room were several small tables covered in little silver instruments that whirred and let out puffs of smoke. Jessica couldn't even begin to imagine their purpose. Her attention was, however dragged away from gadgets on the tables by a polite clearing of the throat. Looking in the direction of the noise she noticed Dumbledore seated at a large claw footed desk, and remembering her purpose in being here, stepped forward with Harry.

From behind his desk Dumbledore had fixed them with a slightly curious gaze, and when Jessica and Harry stepped forward he said mildly, "Hello Harry. Jessica."

"Professor, Jessica's got something she needs to tell you," Harry said, his voice carrying in it a slight undertone of urgency.

Dumbledore shifted his gaze from Harry to her, and she couldn't help feeling scrutinized. "I see. Well, then, by all means have a seat." He made a gesture towards the two chairs in front of his desk.

As they sat she tried to think of the easiest way to tell him. While she attempted to piece together the words in her head, Dumbledore said in a slightly interested voice, "What is it you have to tell me, Jessica?"

Jessica took a deep breath, then began. "Well, I woke up early this morning, really early. I've been waking up early for the past week or so, Hermione said it's the effect of the potion I'm taking, sleeplessness you know." She was vaguely aware that she was babbling but the headmaster's gaze encouraged her, so she continued without feeling overly embarrassed. "I was looking out of the tower after I got up and I noticed a carriage coming up to the school. I knew Draco Malfoy was the only student on a leave, so I went down to meet him in the entrance hall. When I got there he was just coming in, pulling his trunk behind him. I stepped forward to say hello, and then his father stepped inside behind him." In her mind's eye, she could see Lucius stepping through that doorway, scanning the room quickly, his cold eyes meeting hers. "He introduced himself to me and said that Draco had told him so much about me. I, it bothered me, to hear him say that but I pretended that I didn't care, I just said something along the lined of 'Indeed?'. Then he said that it was very tragic the disappearance of my grandmother."

"Ah," Dumbledore murmured softly, his eyes on her. "And you …?"

"I was furious, Professor. I told him that he had no right to talk about my grandmother, that I knew what he was, and he wasn't fit for my grandmother to tread on. His voice got very cold and he told me that I shouldn't take the fact that I had nightmares out on other people. I told him my dreams and my life were none of his business and that he could stay out of it. And I called him what he was, a Death Eater."

Dumbledore said nothing, merely nodded to encourage her, but his stare had intensified, making her feel almost as though she stood on a stage in the middle of a spotlight.

"I started to walk off, I didn't care if it was dangerous to turn my back to him. And then, he said…" She choked on the words, swallowed, took a deep breath and then continued in the most unemotional voice that she could muster, "he said that my grandmother was good at screaming." From the slight flash in Dumbledore's eyes, she could tell the words surprised him, though probably much less than they had her. "I turned back around and asked him what? He said that I'd heard him and that it was all she'd done in the beginning, that she wouldn't beg and it took them, days, to make her beg, but when it finally happened that she was almost as good at begging as she was at screaming. Then, I called him a, a bastard, and I ran off." Jessica let out a sigh of relief, detailing the full story seemed to have released the tension she'd been holding in.

Dumbledore looked at her a long moment, then said, "Thank you. That confirms much of what I already suspected with relation to what happened to your grandmother. Now, a few questions, if you don't mind?"

"Of course not," she said softly.

"Was there, anyone else who might have overheard this exchange between yourself and Mr. Malfoy?" Dumbledore asked. Jessica shook her head.

"No, just Draco."

"Who is about as likely to admit to having heard it as he is to volunteer to cut out his own tongue," Harry muttered in the seat beside her.

"It is true Draco is intensely loyal to his father, even though, at times, one must suspect his family life of being less than ideal," Dumbledore commented calmly. Harry merely snorted. He turned his attention back to her. "One other question. When Lucius spoke on your grandmother's screaming, what did he say? What was the exact wording that he used?"

" 'Your grandmother is good at screaming', " she repeated.

There was a pause as he considered this. His next words were chosen very carefully as he said, "Are you quite certain he did not say 'Your grandmother was good at screaming'?"

"No, he said 'is'." She looked at him, slightly confused. Why did grammatical tense matter?

Harry realized it first. With a note of alarm in his voice he said, "Do you mean to say Professor that she might still be… alive?"

She gasped and looked at Dumbledore in shock, whose frown lines had deepened slightly. "It is difficult to say. You did anger him considerably. Anger is the only thing which would cause Lucius to risk such words being overheard. He may have only said it for effect."

She nodded, looking grim. "To make it worse when I finally realized what it may have meant." She looked down at her hands, which were clenched tightly in her lap. "Is there anything we can do Professor? A hearing or—"

"Unfortunately," he interrupted, "you are the only witness. Draco will deny having been there."

"What about Veritaserum?" Harry demanded.

Dumbledore shifted those blue eyes from Jessica to Harry and said, "Truth potions only work when they are unexpected. If we attempt to force Lucius into a hearing, he will make certain not only to take any and all potions that could possibly counter it, but that his son goes through the same regimen as he does." He sighed. "Besides, Cornelius Fudge had recently received several large donations from Lucius. He would fight any attempt to bring Lucius before the Wizengamot."

"Then there's nothing we can do?" She asked. She'd told Harry that it wouldn't do any good to tell Dumbledore, but once they'd entered his office she'd allowed herself to hope that maybe, just maybe…

"What you can do," Dumbledore said, with the utmost seriousness, "is learn a few hex and jinx detection spells and perform them on your mail for the next few weeks. If Lucius was angry enough to take the risk that someone might overhear what he said to you, then I suspect he is not finished." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pocket watch, which he examined a moment before returning it to his robes. "I will see what I can do, but for now, the safest course of action will be for you to be extremely careful. Breakfast is starting, so if you would like something to eat before classes, I suggest the two of you make your way to the Great Hall."

Jessica stood up, trying to hide the fact that she felt like flinging something glass at his study wall. "Thank you for listening, Professor." Her voice had gone wooden in an effort to hide her grief and frustration.

She turned away from those blue eyes and strode out the door, her entire posture emanating rudeness. Behind her she heard Harry say, "Sorry Professor. She's just—"

"I understand Harry," Dumbledore responded. "She has lost much and it frustrates her that she can do nothing about it." His voice carried down the flight of stairs after her. "I am not about to blame her for that." Was that pity she heard in his voice? Did he pity her?

She stormed out, barely giving the gargoyle at the bottom enough time to jump aside, not caring if Harry followed her or not.

Draco did not come to breakfast that morning, nor to lunch or Potions, where Jessica and Pansy spent the better part of the class review the recipes they had copied, searching for similarities. There were a few, common base ingredients. They would have to start with those. After several arguments they agreed to start on the experimental aspect of their project the next class, provided Snape had no other hints to drop to Pansy.

As Jessica left the Potions classroom with Harry, Ron and Hermione she noted how disconnected she felt from everything. Harry had been the one to relay the story of the Lucius encounter, not her; she didn't feel she could tell it again. It led to pitying looks from Hermione and Ron looking awkward, which only frustrated her more. She didn't want pity. She wanted to do something about it.

So, instead of making her way to Gryffindor tower with the others, she muttered something about needing a walk and strode off before anyone could argue.

Walking around the lake, various people waved to her but she took little notice of them, only occasionally waving back. While her eyes were on the blue sky, her attention stayed stuck on the elder Malfoy's mocking blue eyes. She could block out his words, but she could not rid herself of that image of his eyes, filled with such vicious mockery, knowing every word hurt and enjoying seeing it do so.

Therefore, it wasn't until she practically walked into him that she spotted Draco leaning against a tree ahead of her, as though he'd been expecting to see her there. Hesitantly, he walked up to her, and she looked away, determined not to meet his eyes.

"Hi, Jessica," he said.

"We're not talking," she said, her voice cold. Here was a way to vent her anger and frustration. And after the way he'd stood there that morning, he deserved it.

"What?" Draco said. "What did I do?"

"If you don't know then you must be stupid," she snapped.

"Is this about this morning? I didn't do anything! Stop acting like I betrayed you!"

"No, betrayal implies an action. You just stood there!" She fixed him with a glare then said, "You didn't do anything, just let him say it."

"That's because I'd prefer to have a tongue come summertime!" Draco said. "You don't know my father. You don't know what he's capable of."

"Oh, I think I do," she said. "I think he made it pretty clear just what he's capable of."

"You don't understand–" Draco started.

"There's nothing to understand!" she yelled. It was a good thing they were on the far side of the lake, otherwise this conversation would have had a dozen eavesdroppers already. "Your father helped to torture my grandmother to death! Don't try and pretend there's any more to it, because there isn't! I would have been there Draco! I would have been there that night if it weren't for Harry! Has that thought even occurred to you? Has it!"

"But you weren't there!" Draco protested. "You weren't there, so what's it matter, it's not like I can go back in the past and do anything about it!"

"You could have done something this morning!" Jessica screamed at him. "You could have stood up to him instead of just standing there like some obedient little servant!"

"I'm no one's servant," Draco said coldly.

She stared at him; met his eyes, blue, like his father's, but with enough gray to remind her that this was not Lucius. Yet, no matter how long she stared into them, she could find no shred of guilt, not one ounce of understanding.

"Oh Merlin," she whispered. "Please don't tell me you were there Draco, please."

"I wasn't there," he said, his voice still cold. "And don't call me Draco. It's Malfoy, you mudblood lover." He sneered at her. She stared at him for a moment, shocked, then furiously raised a hand to slap him. This time however, he had his wand out, and the spell words, "Petrificus Totalus!" flew from it faster than she could even retract her hand. All the muscles in her body froze like ice, and though she kept telling herself to move, move, she couldn't. She couldn't even move her jaw. Only her eyes could move and they didn't, staying on Malfoy's face as the momentum from her effort to slap him flung her forward. She landed painfully, surprised that her nose didn't crunch as it hit the ground. With his shoe Draco rolled her over and knelt down. In his eyes there was a hint of glee, she supposed, at finally being quicker than her.

"Father was very offended by what you said," he whispered. "So this is a warning, and the only one you'll get. You are on the wrong side, the losing side." Jessica couldn't fathom those eyes now, for Draco seemed to be at war with himself, and all she could do was stare up at him. He stood, looked around and then strode off.

Hope you all liked this chapter, please review!

Reviewer Thanks:

MooseDeEvita: I know, doesn't writer's block just suck. Not that I can hide behind that as an excuse. A year is just a tad too much.

SweetDrm-QueeN8: Glad you like it so much. What'd you think of this chapter?

Trinka: I know, I used the 'f' word without even warning anybody. Shame on me... Lucius was confident, but mostly, it was anger. As Dumbledore said, he's definately not finished with her. Life for Jessica is just going to keep getting interesting. One question, do you think I'm getting to cliché or repetative? Or is it ok?

Litasha1987: I'm glad you liked the last chapter. If you're still around, I hope you'll like this one. Let me know! Favorite parts, worst parts, etc are things I love to hear about from readers!

Magicgirl45852: Well, if you haven't disappeared, then tell me how you like this one!

sweet.filo.chik: well, I don't know, Lucius Malfoy stoops pretty low at times. I wouldn't put it past him to wound with words when he couldn't use spells.