Thank you to my wonderful Beta Reader, DracoWinchester! As always, I don't own anything that belongs to JK Rowling. Also, Happy 34th Birthday to Harry!

Malfoy walked over to Luna, whispering something as he passed her before stalking down the hall and into Umbridge's office. I had seen the toad herself waddle inside moments before and wondered what had happened to Ginny at the other end of the hall. Luna turned her protuberant eyes towards my alcove; Malfoy had apparently told her what he had done. Before she could take a step in my direction, a large Slytherin member of the Inquisitorial Squad appeared from behind her and dragged her into Umbridge's office. I saw Ron, Ginny, and to my surprise, Neville being taken inside as well. I wanted more than anything to scream in frustration. What was going to happen to them in there? How long would it be before Malfoy came back for me?

I didn't have to wait long. He came striding out of the office back over to my alcove. I wanted to close my eyes so I didn't have to look at him, but I couldn't even do that.

"I've been sent to fetch Snape, so I don't have much time. Look, you can be as angry as you want, I don't give a damn, but I'm not letting you get Crucioed over information for Potter's bloody plan."

He apparently sensed my alarm at the news that Umbridge was prepared to resort to torture to find out what Harry was up to, because he hastily finished with, "I don't think she'll actually do it, though. This'll all be over soon, and I'll come back to get you. I promise."

Hesitating for a moment, he tapped his wand on the top of my head, and I felt a peculiar sensation wash over my body. "I Disillusioned you. It would defeat the purpose if Umbridge comes out and finds you here."

And with that, he ran off towards the dungeons. I felt a burning hatred for him in that moment, and I swore I'd never forgive him. I was now immobilized and invisible, and therefore completely at his mercy. That, and it was also impossible to help my friends. I wanted to cry, but even my tear ducts were incapable of movement. Surely if they were being tortured I could hear their screams? Malfoy and Snape returned to the office, but I still heard no sounds from inside. Snape exited minutes later, and I tried with all my might to call to him. I knew that no matter what was happening to my friends in there, I was being tortured out here as well. Just as my panic was reaching an unbearable level, the door to the office burst open and Umbridge came waddling out, pointing a wand at Harry and Hermione. They walked right past my alcove towards the entrance Hall. Umbridge looked excited, Hermione determined, and Harry simply confused. What the fuck was going on?

Suddenly there was noise of a great scuffle from inside the office, and I heard yells and bangs. The door flew open yet again, but this time it was my friends that ran out. I had never been so relieved in my life as when I saw Luna running toward my alcove.

"Oh dear," she said, stopping suddenly. "She must have received help from an Umgubular Slashkilter to get out of the Binding Curse Malfoy put on her."

"Whatever happened, she's gone. We just have to hope she got loose in time to follow them to the Forest," Ginny replied, starting to jog down the corridor. "But now we have to hurry, come on."

Luna, Neville, and Ron followed her, and once again I wanted to cry. Fuck Malfoy, fuck him for making me invisible. I had just missed my one last chance to help my friends. I knew with a sinking feeling that they'd be gone to the Ministry by the time I could get to them. Whatever they were going to face there, I should have been with them. The focus of my hatred stumbled out of the office with most of the Inquisitorial Squad a few moments later. It was evident they had come out on the losing end of the dueling. Malfoy walked over to me and tapped me on the head once again, this time lifting the Disillusionment.

"If I let you move again, are you going to punch me or try to run away?"

He met my eyes for the first time since he had hit me with the Full Body-Bind. They burned with a silver fire, and I focused on them entirely as I tried to convey my hatred. He obviously read something there correctly, because he reached inside my robes to take my wand.

"I really am sorry. You should know I had to do this," he said, finally lifting the curse with a wave of his own wand. I immediately launched myself at him in an attempt to get mine back, and when I realized that was a futile effort, I settled for punching every inch of him I could reach as hard as I could.

"You stupid — fucking — bastard — what — have you — done —"

He grabbed my arms and quickly overpowered me, pushing me back up against the wall. "Don't make me curse you again, because I will," he growled, and I stopped fighting. I believed him entirely. "Now are you ready to listen to me?"

I nodded, and he released me. I glared at him, rubbing my head where it had connected with the stone. Perhaps he knew that I was only half listening, using the rest of my attention span to think of the most painful hexes possible, because he lead with something that snapped my focus entirely to him.

"I know that Potter is going to the Department of Mysteries."

I could hardly breathe. "How the fuck —?"

"How the fuck do you think? Do you know who my father is? I'm sure you do by now."

Of course I knew, and the information had been stuck in my mind since the moment I found out. Anything to do with Death Eaters was not something I easily forgot. But what did Death Eaters have to do with Harry going to save Sirius? Voldemort had been alone with him in Harry's vision.

Suddenly, I realized. I staggered back into the wall, desperate to distance myself from Malfoy.

"Trap. Merlin, it's a trap," I gasped, suddenly having trouble breathing. He eyed me warily, noticing the state I was in. My friends were walking into a trap, one with lots of Death Eaters and probably even Voldemort waiting. I had to do something.

So I ran.

I don't know what I thought I was going to do, particularly without a wand, but I was so desperate to reach the Forest and warn my friends before they left that I didn't care. I would fight Death Eaters with my bare hands given the chance anyway. If nothing else, I would be a bloody human shield for my friends and distract the Death Eaters from them, but I couldn't just stay behind knowing what was about to happen. I had barely made it to the end of the corridor when the world went sideways and I crashed to the ground with something heavy tackling me down. My already sore head connected with the stone once again, and everything went dark.

"Mousseau? Fuck, Mousseau, wake up."

Gray eyes swam above me as things slowly came into focus. I looked around me, and realized I was in a completely unfamiliar place. I was on a bed looking up at a emerald silk canopy in a room lit only by glowing green orbs. I sat up so quickly that everything spun and I felt as though my head was splitting open. Hands pushed me back down on the mattress and my surroundings gradually stopped swirling.

"Merlin, can't you just be still? I think I preferred you unconscious. Stupid bloody Gryffindor, running off after your friends without a fucking wand or any regard for your own well being, what the hell were —"

"I was perfectly fine until you tackled me to the bloody stone floor. As I recall, I was at least conscious then and didn't have the world's most massive headache —"

"You weren't fine, you were about to get yourself killed over nothing —"

"MY FRIENDS AREN'T NOTHING," I bellowed, finally losing my cool entirely. "THEY'RE EVERYTHING TO ME AND NOW THEY'RE GOING TO DIE."

He just looked at me, his face unreadable. "I'm sorry," he said, still gazing at me.

"You've already said that, and somehow I still don't think that you mean it."

"Fine. You're right. I'm not sorry."

I finally met his eyes in surprise. "You're not —?"

"Not sorry. Correct. I'm not sorry that I kept you from crossing paths with an angry Umbridge, I'm not sorry that I prevented you from going happily along to your death or serious bodily harm, and I'm not sorry I knocked you unconscious, because it means you ended up in my bed."

Of course he would end with a joke, but now that I realized where I was, it seemed obvious. I glanced around the Slytherin dorm room with some degree of interest. It was a very rare thing for students to go into other Houses. Malfoy seemed to have relaxed when I was temporarily distracted, but I wasn't about to let it go that easily.

"I can't be here. I need to go to them. I can't stand not knowing, they've been gone for hours already and —"

"Can you please just lay back down before you pass out again?'

I stopped my pacing, having hopped up off the bed to examine the room. Why was he not taking me seriously? I started to become more and more irritated.

"No, I can't. Why are you acting like this isn't a big deal? You just pulled a fucking rugby move to keep me from helping my friends, and now you act like I'm a stupid child for caring about people," I seethed. "I'm starting to see why you find it so ridiculous that I would risk my life for my friends! You don't understand what it means to care about anyone, do you?"

My chest was heaving by the end of my rant, and my voice had risen to a shout. But my anger was nothing compared to the emotion that flashed through those steel gray eyes. He slowly stood up from the bed and walked in my direction. He looked positively dangerous, and I instinctively took a step back, only to find myself against a wall. He continued walking until he was inches from me, and I struggled to keep eye contact. I could almost feel the anger coming off him in waves.

"Is that what you think?" he began, his voice low and eyes fixed on me. "That I don't understand what it means to care? Why do you think I did this, Mousseau? Why do you think I've done anything I have so far. Because for some reason, unknown even to me, I care about you," he spat. I was now frozen in shock, pinned down by his stare.

No. He didn't care. Caring wasn't hexing people, making fun of them, taunting them about dead family members. Caring wasn't knocking someone unconscious to keep them from helping their friends just because you didn't want them to get hurt. Caring was helping people with what they need, being kind and friendly, and not playing games with them.

And that's exactly what I told him.

He stepped back as though I had struck him, and maybe I had. The emotion that had been raw on his face disappeared, and suddenly I was stared down by a mask of high cheekbones and cold eyes. "If that's what you truly think," he conceded, with an air of detached politeness. "Or perhaps you should consider not every person shows emotion in the way you deem proper."

With that said, he gave a slight bow and turned and walked out of the dorm. I still stood against the wall, held now by confusion. Out of nowhere, his Pureblood manners and breeding had shown themselves. It dawned on me that they must be a defense mechanism. Merlin, I had fucked up this time. I had been angry, lashing out at him for being the reason I was here and not at the Ministry. In reality, he had possibly just saved my life — and admitted to caring about me.

That was the part that got me. How could he? We had made a lifestyle out of tormenting one another. Sure, we had snogged, but that didn't mean anything, did it? No, I had assured myself, it didn't. There was also the unavoidable fact of his Death Eater ties, and my Death Eater hatred. Was this where his antagonization came from, that he cared about me and either didn't know how to show it or was too conflicted to try? My head was pounding, whether from my fall or from the situation I was now in, I wasn't sure. I somehow made it across the castle to my own bed, and fell into a restless sleep haunted by dreams of my friends being attacked by a Death Eater whose mask could not manage to hide familiar gray eyes.

I was woken up by Ginny a short while later, which sent me into an immediate state of panic. She had just been healed by Madam Pomfrey and had come to find me as soon as possible. We sprinted to the hospital wing and I nearly collapsed at the sight of my friends alive, though some in worse states than others. Ginny and Luna spent the next hour filling me in on all the events of the night, and I felt like I was in a dream. Voldemort had finally come back into the open. It was starting again. Death Eaters had been arrested, Malfoy's father among them. I somehow couldn't make myself feel sorry for him.

I told Ginny and Luna about what had happened with Malfoy, and Luna became uncharacteristically distressed when she realized I had been in the alcove the whole time. They gave opinions on Malfoy's behavior, once I filled them in on the backstory from the entire year. We settled into an exhausted silence, staring at our friends. Hermione was still unconscious as a result of some unidentified spell, but Neville and Ron were only sleeping. Harry was in Dumbledore's office. My heart constricted in sympathy at the thought of him. I understood to some degree what he was feeling, losing someone at the hands of a Death Eater. But I knew there would be guilt as well. To our surprise, he came into the hospital wing a while later. He didn't say anything, so we didn't either. We just all leaned on each other, and I knew that would be a regular thing in the days to come.

Sunday saw the release of articles in the Daily Prophet about the events in the Ministry, and we crowded together in the hospital wing once again to read them. As we discussed them and the prophecy that had been smashed, Harry stood suddenly to leave. We all watched, understanding his wanting to be alone. Ginny, Luna, Neville, and I left soon after, promising Ron and Hermione we would be back the next day.

The end of the term feast was an eclectic mix of happiness and sadness. McGonagall was back and Umbridge was gone, but now the worry of Voldemort hung over everything we did. The Slytherin table was almost deathly quiet, and we all knew it was because most of the people had been affected by the arrests made at the Ministry. Malfoy didn't look in my direction, and he hadn't since he walked out of his room. I felt a twisted sadness, as though I had lost a friend I didn't realize I had before — because that's exactly what it was.

On the train ride home, Malfoy and his two henchmen tried to ambush Harry but were cursed and jinxed and hexed by so many members of the DA that they were almost unrecognizable. I laughed along with the rest of my friends without finding any humor in the situation. I concentrated on enjoying the rest of the train ride, knowing it would be awhile before I saw my friends again. My mother and I were going back to France for the summer, so I would be gone until the start of the new term.

At the station, I said goodbye to them in a mass of hugs, kisses, and well wishes. My mother finally got to meet them all and loved them immediately. Hermione was teary eyed as she said goodbye, and it took everything in me not to cry as well. As we turned to walk outside, I saw a flash of blonde and instinctively looked closer. Malfoy was leaning against the wall, watching me. When our eyes met, he simply inclined his head before disappearing back into the crowd. That same sadness washed over me again, and I knew we had just said goodbye. I just couldn't help questioning for how long. It was inevitable we would speak again — wasn't it?