Hey everyone! Sorry for my late update today, but I'd been really busy with the new furniture we bought for my new appartment. I will soon be resettling and that's why I'm so stressed. But I try hard to keep up the daily update!

Please keep telling me what you think about the story, the plot, the characters! I'd love to read your comments, and however bad they might be, I'd love to learn from them for the following chapters!

PLEASE ENJOY AND REVIEW!

"Oh Draco, I thought that we could possibly celebrate you coming back to us!", Pansy said and happily clung her arms around his waist, but Draco pushed her away. He knew definitely how Pansy would define 'celebrating' and he was not interested in it.

"How should we celebrate Potter beating me down?", he said annoyed, not really happy that the first girl he saw when he left the hospital wing was bloody Pansy.

"I missed you so much, my dragon.", she chuckled but Draco quickly sat down at the Slytherin table, helped himself to some sausages and eggs for breakfast and began to eat with relish. He'd never been that hungry the last time. Perhaps it was just the exhaustion that was trapped deep in his bones.

"Welcome back, mate.", Blaise said and a big daft smile disfigured his handsome face.

"Would you just stop treating me like I'd been dead? Just shut up and let me eat my breakfast.", Draco said angrily and grabbed the salt shaker.

But then he suddenly felt something grew warm in his pocket. He immediately knew what it was and before he took out the galleon, he glanced at the Gryffindor table.

Alanis sat there, with that mudblood Granger, but some places away from Potthead and the Weasels. She didn't look into his direction but seemed to be in a deep conversation with Granger.

It was such a good feeling that he was now able to keep Alanis in his mind without having to remind himself to stop it.

Come to the RoR.

You've fixed it?

Perhaps.

"I know well what you could do after your breakfast, Draco.", Pansy said, but in vain as Draco hastily cleaned his plate and didn't pay her attention.

"I have to go."

"But where to?", Pansy asked disappointedly, but Blaise came to Draco's aid.

"You can't any longer keep him away from his duties, Pansy. And even your thirst must be appeased sometimes, right?", he said and grinned as Pansy stood up with arms akimbo.

Draco left them behind as they started to quarrel and headed to the seventh floor.

He'd never ever thought of himself jumping up at a girl's call!

Then he saw Alanis walking slowly around the corner and her expression brightened as she saw him, but he could see tension in her eyes. As they both entered the Room of Requirement, Alanis grabbed Draco's hand and forced him to quicken his pace.

"What's up?", he asked, starting to get nervous at her wordlessness.

Alanis didn't answer and as they reached the Cabinet, she pulled her wand out and murmured some spells as she stepped closer. A loud cracking noise of the Cabinet echoed through the whole room and Alanis swore loudly.

Draco touched her shoulder and she suddenly winced as if he broke in on her being in deep concentration.

"Do you like to trouble me?", he asked her, looked deep in her blue eyes and she glanced at him as if she'd just reckoned him being next to her. She pulled back some loose strands of her hair and pursed her lips. Then she began to pace up and down, speaking more to herself than to him.

"I did everything that Albus told me to, I even used that Anti-Jinx Varnish... It now earns new life essence, but there seems to be a blockade within it... Perhaps because of you doing the first reparations..."

"Alanis?", Draco felt unsure. Why the bloody hell did he feel as if he had been for months in that hospital wing and time rushed by, while he missed everything important?

"But it answers me... I can feel that it's strength urges to be released, as if it longs for its twin... There must be an ultimate action left... We should really try-"

"Alanis Dumbledore! Look at me!", Draco shouted angrily and Alanis stared back at him in shock, raised her hands and rubbed her temples, as if something hit her head.

"...it out.", she concluded quietly, suddenly blushing.

"Hello to you, little Dumbledore.", Draco said and gradually realized what bothered her. She was now as much integrated to the mission of repairing the Cabinet and affected by it. She felt the same exhaustion and desperation that he suffered from for months. But now they could share that pressure.

"Hello Draco."

He could see her shifting uncomfortably from one leg to the other, but something prevented him from grabbing and embracing her tightly. Something made him uneasy about her. She was just as moody and restless as he'd been, the dark magic which was connected to that Cabinet took her up entirely.

And now he understood Blaise's sudden aversion to him. Draco must have been insufferably nerve-racking.

"How about the Cabinet?"

Alanis sighed heavily and Draco saw her still being in deep thoughts.

"We have to try it out to see if my effort was of use."

Draco nodded and pulled his wand out too, as she waved hers.

"Avis."

A little white feathered bird just appeared right out of the tip of her wand, chirping happily. Draco picked the poor little bird, opened the Cabinet and put it inside. It tweeted pitiably and Draco was glad that the wooden walls muffled the noise.

"It's your turn.", Alanis said nervously and weak, like she had been a complete nerve-wreck. Was that mission really affecting her that much?

"Harmiona Nectere Passus."

Draco felt his hair standing on the end and a cold shiver ran down his spine as he felt as if the Cabinet answered to him. It was as if it took a deep breath, inhaled all the life essence of the little creature within it. Very soon, everything was silent.

They now had just to wait if the bird returned and wasn't lost somewhere inside.

With shaking hands he reopened the Cabinet and took a look inside. The bird was gone.

After closing the Cabinet again, he took some steps back and noticed Alanis turning her back to him as if she didn't bear to know if the Cabinet worked out.

While he whispered the spell another time, he reached out to take her hand and squeezed it, but even then she didn't look at him.

Draco rubbed the back of Alanis' hand with his thumb, but that was even not able to cope the strangeness that suddenly emerged between them. Had Draco been right?

And everything that created a bond between them was just connected to a simple affection?

Had they just been being infatuated and now, after they'd kissed and did not feel a lot of that exciting tension anymore, faced the reality? Was nothing there between them?

As if Alanis felt the doubts that whirled around his mind, she turned her head and looked directly at him. He suddenly got completely lost in her deep blue eyes.

There they still were. His feelings for her were still so strong, stronger than he'd now supposed. He knew he had been falling for her and he would do it again and again.

He would not ever stop to being attracted to her.

Alanis frowned as she reckoned Draco's expression brighten up and even darken.

But she was too concerned about that bloody Cabinet, that she didn't mind to interpret his sudden intense gaze. How long had they already been waiting for that bird returning?

She unglued herself from Draco, let her hand run agitatedly through her hair and repeated Draco's spell eagerly.

But nothing happened.

The bird was lost.

She angrily kicked the Cabinet and it seemed to moan apologetically as if it wanted to make sure it wasn't its fault that it wasn't working.

She fought back her tears of anger and stomped around, likely to throw all of that broken furniture across the room, just as Peeves would have done it. She didn't even dare to look at Draco, who must have been more disappointed than her.

How should they fix the Cabinet? If Alanis and Draco wouldn't manage to repair it, he would hardly satisfy the Dark Lord. Alanis knew what it would mean to disappoint him once more. She'd anyway seen those terrifying marks on Draco's body.

"Just try it again, Alanis.", Draco said, his voice suddenly so calm.

Didn't he realize that everything they tried was useless?

She felt so forlorn and she felt that Draco had absented himself from her. He must have felt how much it had taken of her to give herself to that bloody Cabinet, to perform that dark magic.

Suddenly everything broke through and she couldn't help herself but started crying, her body shook of convulsive sobbing and she flinched as Draco tried to put a hand on her shoulder.

But his movement didn't felt honest and she just didn't bear his touch.

"We'll find another way, Alanis."

"No, there's no-!"

Alanis held her breath.

How stupid she was! How bloody fucking dopy she had been! There was another way, right before her eyes and she had succeeded amazingly to overlook it!

"There is another way, Draco! Do you remember me wanting to get into the Room of Requirement at Christmas? I had to, because there's a secret path from this room right to Hogsmeade. That is the solution! We wouldn't have to grapple with that bloody Cabinet anymore.", she said with sudden excitement and her husky voice came thick and fast.

Draco looked at her in amazement.

Alanis did know exactly what he was thinking: Why did she keep that away from him as it was the biggest help that she could have ever offered to him, even better than fixing the Cabinet? Did she not consider him being trustworthy?

"Why didn't you tell me about that earlier?", he asked her agitatedly.

"Because I forgot to, Draco! I really was that obsessed with you and your mission that I just forgot it!"

"You dare to blame me?", he said angrily.

Alanis shook her head, but she'd already managed to upset him entirely.

"I do not, Draco, how would I? But believe me that I'm sorry, I really forgot it."

"You just forgot? How can you ever, Dumbledore, forget something?"

"I can as much do it as you once forgot me."

Draco stumbled back and grew pale. Alanis panted heavily. She knew it was just such a worse idea to start to quarrel that way, even judging his feelings for her, but she was angry and hurt too.

"That has nothing got to do with your lack of foresight! I begged you to be honest."

Alanis felt her tears drying on her cheeks, but new ones already filled her eyes.

"I was always honest with you!", she whispered and looked to the ground, while Draco seemed not to be able to keep calm anymore.

"Why would Voldemort believe me that such a tunnel exists? He would be asking me as well why it took me that long to discover it."

"Just tell the truth, that I told you about it."

Draco tore his hair, glared at her wrathfully and she had to back away. He seemed to be even more agitated than he had been at the Astronomy tower. And she knew what it would mean if he really did not manage to keep his temper.

"You would be the first the Dark Lord would kill, because you know about it."

"Then he would have to kill my grandfather too."

"Why that?"

"Because this tunnel leads directly into the Hog's Head."

Draco just stared her unbelieving and she bowed her head once more.

"Are you mad? Did you actually realize how you threatened him with telling me of that passage?", he cried. "I can't believe that you even didn't mind to put your family at the risk."

Alanis dropped her shoulders. Draco was right. She just told Draco of that passage and gave him new hope, but didn't deliberate if it really was a considerable solution.

"But I guess that Aberforth would help us.", she said quietly, but she knew that even that was not true. Aberforth might have changed his attitude towards her, but he still didn't want to get involved to any things that were linked to Albus, and Alanis' mission to help Draco definitely was. Even if she just did it for Draco, Aberforth would not let her persuade him.

"Do you know what would happen? Hogsmeade and the Hog's head would be overrun! We can't just involve a whole village to that. I can't. I might be on the dark side, but I don't want to threaten innocent people just to safe myself."

Alanis stood there open-mouthed. Did Draco really just say that he would sacrifice himself for others? Did he really change that much, that he negated being selfish and that he very well cared for other people?

"But if there's no other way, Draco? Maybe the deatheaters don't want to arrest attention and would enter Hogsmeade and the tunnel just clandestinely? They would as much want to take the tunnel as a secret!"

Draco suddenly laughed out, grabbed his collar and ripped his suit open, to reveal the bare skin of his upper body.

"That, Alanis, is the only thing they would ever care to keep as a secret. You don't know what it takes to be amongst them, to be with him.", he said viciously and stepped closer, while Alanis backed away, not able to look at his marked chest. "You have no idea."

That were just the same words that Snape said to her. It was true. She did not know what it meant to face the most powerful and evil mage of their time. She was not worthy to cry over her failure. She was of no use. She was just a little foolish lovey-dovey girl, just as Snape said.

She quickly stumbled to her feet and rushed past Draco, just to get away from him.

Draco just stood there, watching Alanis running away from something she would never be able to escape from. He was so upset and sad too.

But suddenly he heard a strange rasping sound of the Cabinet. And after that there was just the most beautiful and soothing sound he ever heard in his life.

"Alanis!"

He almost roughly opened the door of the Cabinet and the little bird seemed as much as Draco crying out happily, as he was finally able to escape the dark insides of the Cabinet.

His gaze followed the bird, as it flew across the room and then he saw Alanis hesitating and turning around to face the little bird, as it passed her, twittering happily.

A relieved smile covered her face, he saw her body weaken of joy and she had to lean against the statue of the first headmaster of Hogwarts to steady herself.

They have finally done it.

Alanis did it.

He quickened his pace to meet her, wrapped his hands tightly around her and squeezing her whole body, as if he wanted to make her part of him. Although his joy seemed to overflow him, he separated himself from her very quickly.

Even with this happiness about the Cabinet finally working, there was still something unexpressed between them that tore them apart.

He knew that now the most difficult part of his mission was over, and Alanis had just completed hers. She would be free from any duties now. She was free to choose her next steps. Free to chose where she wanted to belong.

And he wished so much that she still would be with her.

He would have given his life to make that come true.

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