A/N- Ok, I know it has been along time, and I am very very sorry about that, please forgive me. So with out further ado, your next chapter -

24. Behind Closed Doors

Snape watched wearily as his student let out the deep calming breath she had been instructed to take. He would never in a million years have thought to look behind that bloody door for the boy-who-lived-yet-again-by-mere-luck. Yes—it was official—that boy had more luck then anyone had any right to. It was a horrible sight; it looked as if the boy had been down there for awhile. The small room in which he had been chained in was dirty and smelled of human waste. The boy himself looked as if he had been severely beaten numerous times, and his body was caked with dried blood and dirt. Within the chamber he had scurried away as if they were going to kill him. Later they discovered that his glasses had been broken and that he couldn't see them. He had several cuts that had become infected and he looked skinnier then Snape had ever seen him. Big chunks of his shaggy black hair were missing. Rivers had screamed, then started crying, she had cried the whole way from the dungeons and all the way to the infirmary, and was still crying after Poppy had cleaned and bandaged him.

"Ms. James, you will cease that insufferable noise, immediately!" Minerva said sharply to the girl, a little too sharply. She hadn't meant to be mean about it, really she hadn't. All she herself wanted to do was curl up in a little corner and cry her eyes out. Yet, she didn't get that luxury.

"Poppy—a calming potion for the girl—if you would." Dumbledore said, Rivers gratefully consumed the peppermint tasting liquid. "Now, Ms. James, I understand that you are both shocked and revolted." The young girl rounded on the headmaster, a look in her dark eyes that was far beyond mere confusion.

"That…that…that disgusting, arrogant little pig cornered one of my best friends and tried to rape her. It's bad enough that she herself is running around like everything is all peaches and cream, but I know better. I have hated that boy with every fiber of my being! I wanted to see his dick rot off , his eyes gauged out, and most of all I wanted to see Draco, Blaise, Spike and the whole damn BB beat him to a bloody pulp!" she was nearly yelling and hysterical by the end of her tyrant and all the two heads of house and headmaster could do was stare at the girl in front of them as righteous fury gave way to heart wrenching sobs. "and then, I cant hate him. I cant because now there this stupid little voice," she said, her voice teary as tears made water stains on her olive skin, "and unbelievably it sounds just like mother, eerily like my mother, and it keeps telling me to review my facts, but I don't want to, it's easier to just hate the boy-who-just-wont-die, I want to hate him, but I cant, because looking at him, laying there, barely conscious and clearly delusional, I feel nothing more then pity, because he has to have been down there longer then when he disappeared, and Polyjuice potion doesn't take a genius, and…" the sobs took over again. Snape looked down at the small girl.

At first he had been indifferent to the Americans, but then little things got them around his barriers. Like the fact that the little Tally girl had managed to square a big portion of Blaise Zabini's heart as her own, and that Anthony boy had captured the heart of Pansy Parkinson. And whether they wanted to admit it or not, Malfoy and Weasily had some sort of eerie attraction for one another. And now, the James girl, the very girl that had frightened every house, including her own, with her threats of bodily harm stood in the infirmary crying over a boy who had supposedly tried to rape her best friend mere days ago. They had captured his heart in away that no other students had ever been able to do. They managed to have this crazy, bizarre life, and still manage to turn in every assignment on time and be in the top twenty percent of his class.

"Ms. James," Snape started, knowing that he couldn't watch the girl stand there hugging herself and crying over her confusion, "maybe you should listen to your conscious, and maybe you should try and think of a logical way to explain this turn of events. But for now I must plead the import of what you have witnessed tonight. And I must beg of you to keep this event confidential, and if you don't think you can handle that, we need to know so as we can erase that memory." His voice was soothing and low, and he knew as soon as he uttered the words questioning her honor that she would never tell another soul what she had witnessed until she was allowed to. Her loyalties ran deep, but so did her pride. She was being asked not to talk about this and he knew she wouldn't. She nodded.

"I can handle it sir, thank you for your offer though. I think I should be getting back to my commons before they get to worried." she said as she whipped her face, a hard look in her eyes, saying that she was ready for the question her friends were going to fire at her. He nodded and together they left the Infirmary.

:.BK.!

Ginny sat sitting on the couch in her room. After hours of sitting in the common room they had retired to bed, but she had been awoken by the memory of what had happened. So there she sat, on the big comfy white sofa in front of a blazing, crackling fire. She stared intently, watching the logs snap and pop, wondering and worrying over Rivers, scared for herself, and wishing she could figure out how to put what she was feeling into words.

She started as the door swung open.

"Gin," Rivers said uncomfortably.

"Rivers, where were you? I was so worried, we were all so worried!" Rivers marveled over the fact that they had missed her entrance into the great hall, but then again, no one except the people that had let her through had noticed her presence in the Hall. And she was grateful because the odds of them remembering that and connecting it to the lock down were slim.

"You know me. I don't like school dances and stuff. So I went exploring the castle. I just wasn't told to come back here, I'm sorry I worried you, but look at me, I'm fine!" This was all said in an overly cheery voice and a big plastered smile. She had never lied to her friends, and she wasn't going to start. She had just simply not told everything, she had gone off exploring, and she hadn't been told to return to the common room. But still, it felt like lying. She pushed the urge to tell Ginny everything down. Ginny, nodded, too distracted to linger on her behavior. She accepted the story with out a question. This was so unlike the Ginny that they had all come to know and love, and it scared her more then she was willing to admit. So, with a small nod, Rivers made her to the bathroom.

:.BK.!

Spike shifted in his bed. He couldn't get comfortable. He sighed and rolled onto his stomach, propping his head up in his hands and staring up at the photograph of him and his dad, there was a decidedly large gap to the right, one that should have been filled by a smiling blonde women, but in the picture which was taken right before his first year at Silver Waters, it was just the two of them, as it had been since he had been six.

Spike—knowing he wouldn't get much sleep with the thoughts of his mother drifting through his head, and now the dilemma with Ginny—quickly slipped out of the bed before he could change his mind. He threw on a pair of black sweat pants and a gray sweater with the words "Your little Princess is my little Whore" written in black. He slipped a pair of socks on and a pair of worn tennis shoes. Without a backwards glance to his roommate he left the room. As the portrait clicked shut behind him he looked at the girls portrait and wondered if Rivers was back yet. She was someone he could talk to about anything. She was the sort that could sit for hours and listen to your problems, well, to be fair so was Ginny, but at the moment she had enough problems of her own to work through. Making up his mind he rapped on the frame. The fairy on the flower gave him a glare before turning her back on him and going back to sleep.

The portrait cracked open and Rivers pocked her head out. "Spike, you OK?"

He gave her a crocked grin. "I need someone to talk to, and I know your most likely tired and all…" She dismissed this with a simple wave of her hand and told him to hang on a second. In less then five minutes she had on a pair of dark blue Nike jogging pants and a matching zip up. They walked in silence out of the common room, half way down the hall they ran into Snape.

"Ms. James, Mr. Anthony, I would have thought that you would be in bed now." He said, looking at Rivers. She gave him a small shrug, and in an instant there was an understanding. It was a lot on the mind of a sixteen year old girl to know what she did and not have a confidante. He mentally sized up the boy in front of him. He had his own problems, problems that he needed help with, but he was someone that would keep a promise.

"Ms. James, I believe that you will find the Room of Requirement empty. Take your time, I believe that you two have a great amount to discuss." With that he swirled past them, a cloud of black and continued on down the hall as if he hadn't seen them or just given them permission to stay out after curfew. Spike gave her a quizzical look.

"Lets just say that I need to talk to you too."

:.BK.!

Spike sighed as he sank down into the comfortable chair that the room had provided; Rivers smiled gratefully as she sat down across from him, kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet up under her. She gave a weary sigh before bringing her fingers up to rub her temples.

"Ya know when the dance was called off, and I didn't come back to the common room?" she asked, not looking at him, afraid she would lose her nerve if she did.

"Yea, we were all worried that something bad had happened to you. We love you and were scared."

"Yea, well, I was perfectly safe, standing right between Dumbledore and Snape." she said as she dropped her hands and looked at him. He had a look of confusion about him. When he made no move to question her and patiently waited for her to continue, she did. "I'm the reason that the dance got called off. I went running around the school on my own, I ended up in some dingy little part of the dungeons, a place where I shouldn't have been able to get to, to start with. But you know me and my curiosity. I started down these steps, and I could hear something, but I didn't know what it was. I thought I was going to scare the shit outta some underclassmen ya know? Well, I was all for that thinking it was all cool beans, until I got to the bottom and closer to the door. There was someone in there Spike, begging for help. I couldn't get the door open and I got scared and did the only thing I could, I high tailed my ass to Dumbledore. He called off the dance. Spike, Harry Potter was behind that door, and looked like he had been there for awhile. I was scared, so scared, I didn't know what to say. Spike, it couldn't have been him that day, it couldn't have been. I think it was someone with Pollyjuice potion, and it scares me to death." Tears were once again streaming down her cheeks.

Spike wasted no time in giving the girl a huge bear hug, holding onto her for her sanity and his too. It explained so many things. How the boy had went from shy and having a slight crush to a stalker and rapist. But this new discovery only complicated things more, now they had an innocent Harry Potter and no one to blame. It would have been so much easier to just go on and hate the boy-who-lived, and to give him the beat down of his life when he found the sorry basted. Now he had a new bastard to track down.