Wow, thank you for the response to the last chapter! More plot twists on the way! Please continue to R and R, makes my day!

The striking eyes which she had gazed in to with such happiness over the past few days were blank and unknowing. She saw his brow furrow as he looked at her hand on his arm, and as he started to form the words, she rose and backed away from him.

"Who are you?"

She couldn't answer, her throat constricted as she stared at him disbelievingly. He pushed himself up on one hand, the rope having broken during the spell, his blond hair falling over his face. The face she had searched for, the face that until recently had always lit up at the sight of her.

She felt her knees begin to buckle, and put a hand out to steady herself. She held on to the old desk so tightly, splinters began to dig into her skin, but she was past feeling. Numbness flowed through her, as her brain refused to believe the glaring evidence her eyes presented it with.

She heard a snicker behind her, and turning round she was dimly surprised to see Malfoy still stood there. His face wore a triumphant grin, he was gloating at her pain.

Her numbness spread, and she wanted to speak but the words could not, would not come. They fluttered away from her, like scraps of paper in a breeze. She was not physically able to look at Blaise again, and so, as if in a dream she headed for the door. Her legs felt like lead as she tried to pick them up, but somehow she managed to leave the room. The chill of the stone corridor would ordinarily have revived her, but she was beyond reviving.

She didn't remember the journey back to the common room, just surprise at finding herself on the floor there as the strength poured out of her shaking limbs like water. Her head cracked against the floor, but she felt nothing.

There was only the numbness that dripped from the wound deep within her, spreading around her body like venom from a snake. A wound left when something crucial disappeared.

Blaise sat up and stared in astonishment at the retreating figure of the girl, who seemed unaware of the long, black splinters embedded in her palm. He looked beyond her to Malfoy, who was leaning languidly against a desk inspecting his nails.

"Hi Draco," He said, pleased to see a familiar face.

"Hey Blaise, you OK?"

"Um, what am I doing here?"

"Well, you ran in here after a blood traitor who had insulted you, banged your head and slipped. So she said,"

"Oh, yeah,think I remember now," Hazy figures and pictures returned to him, and he said more firmly, "Yeah, clumsy of me. Who was she?"

"Hm?"

"The blood traitor?"

"Not sure, only know that she's in Gryffindor."

"Typical," Blaise picked himself up and strolled over to Malfoy, "All of them are the same, blood traitors or mudbloods," He wondered why his friend frowned a little at the word mudblood, but an instant later it was gone.

"Come on, potions now!" He said, throwing his arm about Blaise's shoulders. He was amazed how well it had worked.

Blaise was acting just the way he had before he had met Ginny.