Hey guys!

So sorry that I'm late with the update, but this was the most difficult chapter I ever wrote. I just wrote and rewrote that chapter, as I really wanted it to be perfect. I hope so much that you'll like it as much as I finally do, especially that chapter. I just won't say anything more, just beg you to enjoy it and feel with it!

PLEASE REVIEW! Let me know what you think, as you will very soon understand why I REALLY have to ask for your opinion! ;)

Alanis ducked her head as one of those innumerable killings curses that a huge blonde deatheater cast all over the corridor missed Ginny, who fluently branched backward, and singed some loose strands of Alanis' hair.

Alanis stumbled back as another curse shot just few inches away from her temple into a gargoyle which then swayed dangerously and howled as it ran the risk of falling down to the ground. But Alanis didn't care much about the stone creature and moved on penetrating Alecto Carrow with disarming spells.

The big blonde deatheater growled as Ginny and Hermione managed to force him onto the defensive, but therefore he seemed to grow more and more aggressive and exaggerated. But Hermione and Ginny were very lucky indeed, as no single killing curse was basically able to hit them. Felix really did his bidding. Alanis flicked her wand with force and doggedly tried to force back the Carrow woman as well.

"Stupid child, get out of my way!", Alecto cried and threw many jinxes at her, that Alanis was happy that she succeeded that well with producing her shield charms.

At last, Snape wouldn't ever be able to judge her charms useless, weak and volatile. But anyway, this was so much different to an average DADA lesson.

The battle captivated Alanis, it let her move as if her body was just ruled by pure instinct, her surroundings were blocked out as soon as she looked in the face of her opponent and had to read her every movement clearly.

She never ever thought that combat would regale her that much, would let her blood boil with excitement, would make her able to feel every inch of her body and to return just to her natural being, her body and her mind.

As she'd fought a duel with Draco, she'd already got to know how satisfying and thrilling a fight could be and how much it was able to addict her. She had enjoyed to feel their strengths and powers colliding, to feel particularly Draco's force, to compete with him and to read him completely and had enjoyed him reading her even more intensively.

But this time her pleasure and excitement were different.

There was actually no pleasure left, there was just reality, because all this was more than a mere showdown. It was the reality of facing death, the presence of it breathing down their necks, hamstringing their minds and unsettling their bodies and consciousnesses.

It was pure.

The pure will to survive.

The thrill of it filled Alanis up, as she realized that skills, just stupidly memorized spells and rules of their use, and even perfection were then meaningless and rather preposterous to behold. None of those things did actually mean anything.

Everything decreased just to the art of fight itself, to the only purpose that the use of curses and fights could ever have. To kill.

And although Alanis felt how much every single curse made her loose herself, how her pure instincts took over her body and shut down her thoughts, reddened her sight and increased her will to survive, she enjoyed it. She enjoyed how her feelings ran high, how the strain bled her white and made her forget everything.

The difference between friend and foe was narrow, almost fading and of no significance, everything was just boisterous and rampant. Did she meet a friend or a fiend? Whom did she harm?

There's no need to think about that, because dead, all men were equal, and therefore even when they were facing it. They all were just on the edge to the ultimate and they didn't care about rules, moral or the good and evil.

The only thing that mattered, was the way how to perish, if somebody had to. And no matter on which side they belonged, all of them had this equal target, to at least die a glorious death.

There should be no fear, no hesitance and weakness. Desperation and rawness was welcomed.

Alanis felt sweat covering her whole body and exhaustion made her feet wobble. She nearly got taken aback as someone seemed to join her in that apparently hopeless fight. Alecto took advantage of her distraction immediately and threw a very powerful disarming curse at her, which stroke her hard and knocked her against the poor gargoyle.

Alanis moaned with pain and sank to the floor, felt warm and sticky blood of the back of her had soaking her hair. Her sight was clouded with red and white sparks, but a smile covered her face.

What was that, what made people to convey to the dark? The lust for pain and destruction, the thrill of death?

All that was nevertheless so tempting to Alanis. If that had been the reason for some people defecting to the dark, she would follow them immediately.

She got addicted.

She could even feel her own bloodthirst.

The dark had covered her heart, although she always tried to prevent it, since the day that Draco Malfoy took his first step into her life. But it had been inevitable.

She would belong to Draco Malfoy and to the dark.

Forever.

Suddenly she felt someone grabbing her arm and dragging her away from the stone gargoyle, supporting her wounded head and wiping away the blood of her face.

"Stand up, Alanis! Move on!"

Alanis glimpsed through her dust-clotty eyelids up to the face of Ron and she even smiled at him more wickedly. But she pushed him away and painfully straightened herself up, not really wanting to accept his help.

Then a very loud noise echoed through the corridor as the stone gargoyle finally fell to the floor and broke into pieces. Ron had just saved her life. How ironic.

"Thank you.", Alanis said and was upset about her voice rasping feebly.

"Never mind.", he said and hurried up to Hermione's aid as that blonde deatheater tried to obstruct the access to the staircase of the Astronomy tower, to make his companions being able to follow Snape up to the top without being slowed down by some pupils.

Alanis tottered around, drunken of frenzy and shuddered as she still felt warm blood dripping down her head, distracted with pain, that rushed severely through her body. She couldn't help herself, but a violent fit of laughter escaped her lips, as she stodgily warded off a curse of that blonde deatheater and stumbled because of its vehemence.

What the hell's got into her?

Why did she forget what she was originally fighting for?

Did she really stupid girl forget about her swearing to fight for Draco?

Fighting for him would mean keeping her tempers, be down to earth, calm and focused. She had to fight for the light to someday entirely be able to be with the man she loved. No matter what she did, she would never avoid her fate, which was Draco Malfoy himself.

Therefore it was not enough just to be on the good side or play the part of the innocent dearly beloved, she had to fight.

She would fight to the ultimate.

"Avada Kedavra."

Those words seemed too easily spoken, so lightly escaping someone's lips, echoing with a deadly intensity. But that were just words. Two simple words, formed by human tongues, an amount of letters, just aspirated with an ordinary sound, a little tone to make it liveable. Liveable just to take other's lives.

Draco never understood the meaning of the word curse before.

His body tensed. He'd never ever realized that it were just two simple words which could kill.

Spoken in the right way, words could be more than powerful.

Because it had been so simple. Shorter than a single glimpse, it was just a sudden flash of light, which touched the numb and fraught faces of all witnesses with such a gentle green flame, that it seemed to hide the lethal shadow, that death had casted over them.

It even hid it's real impact, blinding the witnesses not to see it clearly, not to see the life in Albus Dumbledore's body fade away and be extinguished. It just left a corpse behind. An empty shell, nothing really important, nor worth. The only worth thing had long been gone, the spirit had abandoned its life force.

Draco had already seen death several times in his life, especially at his initiation rite, but this time everything was different. There was nothing overwhelming on it, there was no almighty, untouchable and invincible feeling left inside him.

The only thing that remained, was guilt.

He'd always thought of being prepared to fulfilling his task, facing Dumbledore and finally watching Snape casting the ultimate spell that freed him from his atrocious duty. Draco thought himself being able to cope with witnessing the death of the only wizard Voldemort had ever feared, the man who seemed to be the only one who really pulled the strings and even would continue doing it after his death and who contributed a lot that Alanis had stepped into his miserable life.

Even if the Dumbledore's were definitely his curse, he thanked them too. He had been able to regain his will to live, his will to even oppose his master and find back to those people whom he really belonged to and of whom he knew that they loved him.

After Dumbledore's body fell from the tower, Draco wasn't able to move, while his aunt screamed with laughter, danced around boisterously and shot curses in the air, which seemed to divide the dark sky in pieces and framed the pulsing Dark Mark.

Draco could just stare at the place where Dumbledore just had crouched and apparently pleaded for his life and that was now empty.

"It is over. Let us go.", Snape said and Draco looked at him. No one except him was able to see the still present feeling of shock and disbelief in Snape's eyes, his body tensing because of him shaking like a leaf and his face becoming a dark and cold mask to hide his swirling emotions.

Draco never really thought that even Snape would be affected that much by killing someone. But Snape actually did not kill someone, he killed Dumbledore, the only one who ever supported and trusted him fully. Snape was now alone, would be damned for all time as a murderer.

Draco could not ever imagine a bit of how Snape must have felt at that moment.

Snape eagerly grabbed Draco by his collar and dragged him down the steps, while Draco remembered that Potter might be around somewhere. Did Alanis keep her word and not tell him about what had the real purpose of Draco and her repairing the Cabinet? Had she been acting according to their plan?

"Snape!"

But as soon as Draco could hear the appalled voice of Potter behind them, he knew that Potter did just witness the cruel assassination of one of his most associated men, who was killed by the man he hated the most. Draco swallowed down heavily as he quickly took the steps down following Snape to the corridor to the Great Hall.

Potter would complete the perfect lie. He would make Snape entirely able to keep his position as the most camouflaged and important ally he could ever have.

As they reached the corridor, they immediately encountered the other deatheaters, who were fighting some of the Order's and DA's members. Bellatrix longingly and eagerly entered the fray and just almost fell one of the aurors, while Greyback launched into Longbottom and Lovegood who were fighting side by side.

The sturdy defence and the protection of the castle was useless anymore. Because now, with Dumbledore being killed, even Hogwarts would be no safe place anymore. There were no barriers left for the dark side, Voldemort would easily take all over, as all the members of the Order would be scared, of Dumbledore being defeated that easily, angry, of not already having reckoned Snape being a traitor and not discovering him, and unknowing about how to take their steps further. But if the Order maintained being which it was, it should never hesitate to opposing the Dark Lord.

Dumbledore had really seemed to be a man who trusted people utterly. He trusted Severus Snape that much, that he even gave every responsibility to him. If Snape would now stop to obey Dumbledore's orders, the wizarding world would be at the mercy of the Dark Lord entirely. Potter was nevertheless the people's only hope and even he was not even yet fully aware of his task. Dumbledore's trust was admirable, but Draco knew that Snape would never abandon the man whom he owed so much, as much as Potter would never do.

"It is done! Retrieve!", Snape barked and pulled Draco hard on his collar to dodge one of the straying killing curses that Rowle cast all over the Hall, which recoiled on the high walls and destroyed everything in their direction. Bellatrix and Greyback did not listen to Snape and were totally caught by their bloodlust, while the Carrow siblings ran around as if they didn't know what to do.

Draco watched out for Alanis, but the air was filled with dust that clouded his sight, the smell of blood and his exhaustion let him struggle for breath and Snape just dragged him with him, that he was barely able to not stumble over his feet.

"Enough!", Snape yelled, but Bellatrix just laughed insanely, while she penetrated Hermione and Ron with killing curses.

And then it happened.

A very loud, dangerous noise echoed through the whole Hall and Snape and Draco looked up to the ceiling. That amount of Rowle's curses made the beams of the Hall burst, cracked the statues and let large pieces of them falling to the ground. But the statue that now fell directly down towards Snape and Draco was far away from being a piece. It was a huge statue of a dragon and within less than a second it would crush the two of them.

Somebody cried out for them, but they both were petrified.

Draco just closed his eyes to await the pain, the sudden end of his life, the final inevitable blow.

"Draconifors!"

Suddenly the whole Hall shook with the deafening roaring of a stone dragon which was just animated and stretching his wings, desperately trying to escape the narrowness of the Hall.

"Look what we have got here!", Bellatrix cried, but Draco just had eyes for Alanis and ignored Snape pulling him to force him moving. Didn't Snape realize that he owed Alanis his life?

Alanis smiled, as she felt him staring back at her and it was the most relieved and satisfied smile and Draco knew that she was even proud of her charm, as the dragon flew across the room and made everyone back away. Rowle and the Carrow siblings immediately tried to hit it with their curses, but that dragon resisted their magic, as his skin was nothing less than pure stone.

Draco had never thought that Alanis was that powerful. She'd just awakened a huge stone dragon to life, in order to save Snape and him.

And he'd never thought that he could be so relieved to look in her face. Although her face was half blood covered, her expression a painful grimace and her body arching of pang, she looked back at him.

Her eyes glistened with something that Draco had never seen before on her. She was filled up with that what made people surrender to the dark, selling their souls to the dark made flesh, just in order to succeed in one particular way, which they considered worthy to sacrificing everything they had for.

And even if her purpose was simple, it filled him up with happiness. As if she was radiating it all over the place, he could feel how her love for him captivated him, entwined around him, claimed him. This time, whatever happened, he would let it through that she claimed him hers. And she was his.

Then a green flash of lightning covered his sight.

As he managed to look at Alanis again, something was different about her.

Her smile was frozen in her face, although it still showed him so much love and warmth. Feelings, that even persisted after death.

As if was far far away from Draco, somewhere in a distant corner of the Hall, the stone dragon dashed to the ground, inanimately, as the magic that animated it, ran dry.

"No!"

But it hadn't been Draco's voice that cut the thick air around them.

Snape stared at Alanis with shock, but immediately grabbed Draco's hand, to stop him drawing nearer to her. Draco had not the strength to fight him back and was slowly dragged away.

Alanis' knees buckled under her and her body fell to the ground, unmoving.

Draco wasn't able to look away from her motionless figure, her unblinking eyes, her empty face.

He felt a heavy and comforting hand on his shoulder, as it seemed to always be there and never removable, never ever leaving him and refusing him protection.

But why did he get protection, when Alanis needed it much more?

Alanis had needed it...

"She's gone."

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