A/N: Well, it's been over 2 years! To say the least I had no idea my "little break for a couple of weeks" would turn into this. In my defense real life firmly battered me over the head with a board. But that's neither here nor there. After I got several reviews and PMs recently(I won't name names but y'all know who you are... many thanks and HUGS! ) I realized I should at least take another stab at this. At the very least I could finish Year 4, so here goes nothing.

I cannot promise regular updates(not like I used to) but I will try and make them timely.

Lastly, I have actually had this chapter, complete and finished, since that September all those years ago(2005). I didn't know I had it until I went back through my files about six months ago but I did. Ah well. ::shrug::

Disclaimer: I own nothing but Alex, but if anyone wants her feel free... seriously. She scares me in my own head. ;)

They brushed past one of Hunter's dormmates, Alex couldn't tell which one in the dark, but the finger she pressed briefly to her lips in a plea for silence was acknowledged with a sharp nod and they continued on unmolested.

And though they were now inside a line of protection in the form of wand-wielding teenage boys, the appearance of the sharply superior Slytherin portrait was never so welcome.

A quiet, "Merry Christmas" from Blaise, (who ever said Slytherin passwords were mean?), and they were inside.

As promised the Common Room was empty. No one had gotten past Hunter's gang, meaning Falon hadn't...yet at least. Alex spared a half-second of worry for the boys standing guard, before refocusing on Tania again. Fire crackled to life automatically on the huge hearth, warming the room pleasantly after the bone-biting cold outside.

"Put her on the couch," Draco suggested. "we might need the room."

"Agreed." Hunter moved his wand, lowering Tania gently onto the plush furniture. What was left of the ball gown bunched around her still form. Alex wrinkled her nose.

It couldn't be comfortable.

"Someone get me the blankets off your bed," Alex knelt beside the couch and began undoing buttons. "And Blaise, could you please summon my Kit? You know what it looks like."

All three boys vanished from her sphere of attention, though she'd only given two orders. Blaise stood at the bottom of the girl's stairs with his wand out, but it was still Hunter who returned first, his arms loaded down with thick fabric.

Under their cover Alex finished stripping Tania of her rags and tucked the heaviest, feather-down blanket around her.

"Here," Hunter put a soft towel in her empty hand. "You chafe her hands while I get her feet. She's too cold." His gaze slipped to some middle distance. "Too cold..."

"Sure thing Hunter." Her voice snapped him back to his task.

A minute later Draco reappeared with a heavy wooden chest a foot across and half that deep. Without waiting to be asked he dropped it onto the low coffee table and set to work on Tania's other hand with a corner of the blanket.

"She seems better now," Draco said softly as Blaise added the other healing kit next to Draco's on the table. "Could we let her sleep it off?"

"She's still under curse," Blaise pointed out as Alex shook her head.

"And for all we know leaving them could be just as bad as trying to deal with them with the wrong counter." Hunter's gaze never left the slowly pinking flesh between his fingers as he spoke, his face so full of worry that it hurt to look at it.

"If we can get her to wake up she can tell us what he did, problem solved. But I don't know if she will..." Alex's eyes flashed darkly. "Of course if we had The Bastard's wand we could find out what he did."

"No!" all three boys shouted at the same time.

"I'll sit on you if I need to, Lex," Draco warned.

"Try it!" she hissed without any real heat.

"Maybe next time we're alone," he placated.

Alex snorted and turned back to the patient. "Okay then. Come on Tania. Wake up."

To their immense surprise, it worked. Her lips twisted in annoyance and she whimpered, "Noooo..." in a way that fairly begged for 'just five more minutes'.

"Tania Marie Dethart," Hunter intoned.

"Bu'...Hun'er I don' feel good." Her deep brown eyes flickered open, then screwed up in the corners in pain.

"We know, sweetheart, but we need to know what's wrong with you so we can make it better," Alex said with an almost furry softness in her voice, that none of them, but Blaise, had ever heard before.

She lightly placed a hand on the other girl's forehead to gauge her temperature. Tania winced and stared.

"Why..."

"Blaise was worried, sweetheart, so we came and found you."

Tania froze. A million things flashed across her battered face in that moment, mostly boiling down to fear, betrayal, fury and shame.

There was an awkward silence during which everyone tried to figure out what to say. Strangely, it was Draco who spoke first.

"Hunter couldn't have stopped us from coming, Falon is a bloody son of a bitch and this isn't your fault. No one thinks less of you." It was crisp and matter-of-fact and he met her eyes unblinkingly as he said it.

Tania swallowed. She looked back at him in only partial comprehension and shrugged minutely. " 'Kay."

Hunter winced. "She...she regresses when it's particularly bad."

"So do I," Blaise admitted, no one missing the implication that this was a common event.

"Tania, sweetheart," Alex murmured, "do you remember how Falon cut you? Was it a knife or a spell?"

"U-u-ummm," Tania turned her head towards the back of the couch.

"Tania, sweetheart. I won't tell." Alex carefully took one of Tania's hands. The other girl hesitated.

"I didn't tell about your project did I?"

"Mmm...no?"

"That's right, sweetling. I didn't. So could you tell me?"

"B-..." she paused like she was trying to think, "b-both. F-F-Fal-...he d-drew wi' his w-wan'."

Alex's back tensed but her expression didn't change. Sheer force of will. "And...did he give you any potions, sweet?"

"No," Tania sounded a little more sure of herself this time. It made sense, considering what Blaise had said about Tania's affinity for potions in general.

Alex nodded, not demeaning Tania by asking her if she was sure. "Okay, good girl."

"That's easy enough then," Hunter said quietly, his eyes finally leaving his sister's face to glance up at the rest of the crowd. "I can take care it from here."

He slipped his arms underneath Tania and lifted her, blankets and all. She whimpered in pain.

"Here," Alex practically dove into her kit and grabbed a dark green vial. With careful fingers she opened it and held it out to Tania.

The younger girl looked at it, then at Alex in a way that made Alex remember how disdainful she'd been when she found out Alex hadn't read Potions of the 13th Century. "Snape made it," Alex clarified. "Back when I...fell on my way out of the Quidditch stands last year. It's for the pain."

Tania still didn't look enthused, but she allowed herself to be dosed with the potion anyway.

"Thank you," Hunter all but mouthed, walking away with his sister.

The trio didn't reply as he made his way up the stairs to the boys dorms.

"So much for this," Draco hefted his own medical kit and followed in Hunter's footsteps, heading back to his own dorm. Blaise followed silently and, after banishing her Kit back to her room, so did Alex.

THUD.

The door was not shut kindly. Draco glanced up from sliding his kit back under his bed to see Alex, apparently not satisfied with that kick the door viciously.

"Stop it!" Blaise snarled.

"I will not!" she snapped back, repeating the noise a third time.

"Alex-"

"Don't you side with him, Draco Malfoy!"

"Oh please!" Draco threw up his hands and passed her to yank the door back open. "I'm going to go call in the watch dogs. Please be finished murdering each other by the time I get back!"

Frustrated as his words were, the Draco slid the door quietly shut. A pale hand grabbed it before it could settle against the frame and her skirt whipping around her ankles, Alex dashed after him.

"Oh sure! Walk out on me, Malfoy!" she shouted after him, her feet pounding down the steps even as he vanished out into the hallway. "Merlin only knows you don't care! After all, what's she to you?! Nothing, that's what!"

And though the blonde reappeared in the room her yelling didn't quiet. "You sodding stuck up piece of-"

"Cut it out!"

Alex froze. "Excuse me?"

Blaise strode forward from his spot on the stairs. "Cut. It. Out Alex!"

"I will not, Blaise Frederic Zabini! I will say whatever I want whenever I want to!"

"Then do it in your own dorm!"

Her eyes flashed. "I'm pissed off and you're being a jackass!"

Blaise scowled and slouched back against the stone behind him.

"Immature," she scoffed.

Silence pressed in around their heads, both trying to hold their tongues as people, unnoticed to the combatants started to file in. Mostly people from their own group. Those who knew something had gone wrong.

But then Alex burst out with, "Merlin's beard, I'll rip his vocal cords out of his throat with my bare hands!" She flexed her hands in front of her face as if preparing to do just that. "I'll deprive him of his ability to sire children and break every bone in every finger, toe and appendage he's got!"

"He ought to be crucified!" Blaise snapped.

"Flayed alive. Impaled on a pike!"

"Snogged by a Dementor!" Blaise bared his teeth.

"Agreed!"

His head snapped up. "Don't you dare agree with me you bitch!"

Alex's expression fell flat. "I'll agree with whatever I damn well please, Zabini!"

Blaise lurched forward off the wall and stuck his face in hers. "You're just a stupid little girl, Alexandra. With a bad case of arrogance and nothing to back it up! If you weren't rich-"

"At least I am rich in my own right! What do you have? No money, no pride, no brains in that pretty little head. I suppose it's a good thing you like whoring yourself out, cause otherwise-"

He grabbed her shoulders painfully, his face tense and white. "You dammed Blood Mage!"

Alex inhaled harshly through clenched teeth. "I am no," she slammed her heeled shoe down on the top of Blaise's soft dancing shoes, "damn," then jerked one of her arms free, "Blood Mage!" and slapped her best friend across the face.

If he had been pissed before, it was nothing to his expression now. Blaise didn't even flinch from the physical abuse, his face darkening to fury. Without missing a beat he began to swear at her in a conglomeration of French, Italian and Japanese.

The insults ranged from comments about her intelligence to cheap slurs against her mother, blood line and magical and sexual preference...or lack thereof.

"I speak seven dead languages and at least three times as many living ones, Blaise," Alex said softly, her face far too calm. "Yet I find there are quite a few things that are best expressed without words."

Locking eyes with him Alex drew her wand in one hand and a tiny throwing knife in the other. She hesitated for a second then cast them both to the ground behind her.

Blaise grinned in a way that could, and had, scared small children and discarded his own wand. "You're a sad, sorry excuse for a witch."

"Putain!(1)" Alex threw herself at him, shoving him off balance.

Blaise grabbed her wrist as he stumbled but she yanked it away from him despite the sharp pain it caused her. The girl got behind him as he regained balance and wrapped her arms across his throat.

He grunted and leaned forward, his hands reaching up to grab her arms. Alex fought him, pulling with all her weight, but making little progress. Her chest began to hurt from most of her weight, which it was currently supporting against his back.

"Alex!" Blaise snarled, swinging to his side and dropping her off onto the stone floor. She caught her nails across his cheek as she fell. The cold stone jarred her spine and she sat for half a second, stunned. Above her Blaise merely scoffed.

"Whore!" she snapped again, surging to her feet and straight at him. He sidestepped lightly and she went flying past, towards the stairs.

And in one solid move Vince caught Alex as she tried to stop, holding onto her as she tried to turn and get back at Blaise.

"Alex!" Draco said, surprised.

"Get...get off me!" Alex snarled, pushing at Vince's hands. He looked down at her, and met her blazing eyes calmly.

"Do you really want me to?" he asked.

"Let her go, Crabbe," Blaise suggested in a low mocking tone. "I'd love to see her try again. Pathetic little-"

"Zabini." One of the older boys in Donovan's gang said warningly. Probably Donovan himself, but there was no proving it, clumped together as they all were.

"Mark, I think Hunter may need you," Draco cut in with the politely phrased command.

The fifth year nodded and made for the stairs, followed by his year mates.

Still breathing hard in Vince's arms Alex all but wailed, "But it isn't right! Hogwarts is supposed to be safe!"

Blaise stopped looking furious, instead just looking deeply, deeply angry. "Apparently not anymore."

Alex scoffed, finally extracting herself from Vince. "Apparently it never was!"

A/N:

Putain: French for hooker/whore.

PS: If you'd like a summary of what's going on(so you don't have to completely reread it all) just drop me a line and let me know. I can pound one out for you.