Disclaimer: The Harry Potter series, franchise, characters, et cetera, all belong to JKR. No copyright infringement intended.
CHAPTER 6: Heavy in Your Arms
"I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger of life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human."
Black Boy by Richard Wright
.
.
As soon as Draco awoke, he knew something was wrong.
He could feel it in the air. He shot up uncomfortably almost banging his foot against the foot of the wooden frame of his bed.
His room was eerily silent; the only sound he could make out was that of his own breathing.
The last time he awoke in the middle of the night like this was a year ago in the weeks before he was to kill Dumbledore . Nightmares would grip him so strongly that he found his mind reacting to the fear and waking him up before he could reach the end of the terrible dreams. That feeling of fear would grip his chest so tightly that he had trouble breathing. He had promised himself that he would never feel that out of control again. And for what seemed like the millionth time in the past year, Draco Malfoy was wrong.
Draco waited a few moments to slow his breathing and adjust his eyes to the darkness. The more he tried to calm himself, the more the fearful nagging gripped his chest. He had the feeling that something was missing…something was off.
Draco scratched the sleep-matted hair on his head and slid out of bed. Something told him to leave his room and wander into the hallway. He tried to ignore it, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep unless he surrendered to his intuition. Draco grabbed his wand from his nightstand and put his bathrobe on over his pajamas before leaving the room.
When he stepped into the blue-lit corridor, the nagging feeling seemed to multiply. Everything looked in order except for an unseemly bump in his mother's emerald carpet a few feet in front of the guest bedroom.
Was that there before?
His eyes scanned the empty hallway. All he could see were the same snugly sleeping portraits, sculptures submerged in ghostly blue shadows, and protruding gold torches that had been there his whole life. But something still felt different.
He walked over the bump and began smoothing it over with his bare foot. As he absentmindedly molded the carpet back into place, a strange thought jumped into his head. He curiously looked up at Granger's door.
What if she was wandering the manor at night?
Draco was about to laugh at the absurdity of the thought, but he stopped. His heart skipped a beat. Granger's door was cracked open. Her remembered how angry Granger was a few days before and how alive she looked. He remembered how bright she was at Hogwarts and intuitive she could be. He put the two together.
Had her anger driven her to go out searching for trouble?
He narrowed his eyes back at the door as if it was Granger herself in the flesh. In his panic, he didn't hesitate to enter the room. He didn't care if she was indecent; he needed to make sure that she was where she was supposed to be.
"Granger?" he called into the dark room, scanning the inky blackness for any sign of the small witch.
"Lumos," he whispered, grabbing hold of his wand from inside his bathrobe pocket. The small bluish-white light that spilled out of the end of his wand filled half of the room. From what was illuminated by his wand, he could tell that Granger was not in the room. A fresh wave of panic hit him.
"Come on Granger," he yelled for the second time, taking two long strides to the side of the bed and thrusting the mass of sheets away. The fitted sheet stared back at him. He rushed to the other end of the room, poking his wand into all the dark corners of the room, under the bed, behind the bookshelf, and in the corners of the closet. No Granger.
"Come on, this isn't funny anymore. I said I was sorry!" he hollered into the clearly empty room. He ran to the bathroom door and yanked it open in one fluid motion. Empty.
"Granger!" he called rushing out of the room. He didn't know what to do.
As he ran down the hallway screaming the witch's name, the sleeping portraits shot awake and started yelling complaints.
"I do beg your pardon, Master Malfoy," an enraged former Hogwarts headmaster squawked, adjusting his fallen monocle.
"Have you seen her?" Draco demanded, halting and holding his wand directly in front of the headmaster's face.
"What are you on about? It is the middle of the night, and I've been sleeping-"
"Have. You. Seen. The witch. She's not in her room,"
The pale old wizard wrinkled his noise in confusion before recognition finally hit him.
"Oh, the mudblood Malfoy mistress? The one you had the friendly argument with earlier? I must say… I don't know. Or care for that matter, Master Malfoy. If anything, you should be ashamed. Your aunt would roll in her grave. Such a incompetent death eater that the Dark Lord had to give you a despicable task-"
"Oh, sod off," Draco interjected, rolling his eyes. "Granger!" he yelled again, with no response other than the overlapping whines of the annoyed painting. He took two deep breaths.
He had two options.
He could wake his mother up and get her involved, but that would mean having to deal with her inevitable rage and bringing up his feelings of incompetence and dependency, or he could find Granger on his own. It was an easy choice; he would go it alone. As soon as he entered the downstairs foyer, he had a feeling she wasn't anywhere to be found. He cast Lumos and zoomed through the rooms, color and light blurring in his vision.
"Granger! Granger! Granger!" he knocked over chairs and table and bookshelves. His ruckus only resulted in more obscenities from portraits and broken vases and nightstands.
He didn't care.
He needed to find her. The thought of losing her was unbearable. She held the key to him not being murdered. She was his only way out, and now she was being a stubborn bitch because she was always a stubborn bitch who didn't think about the consequences of her actions.
For a moment he imagined her laying dead somewhere in the manor. Eyes glossed over in a far-away look, hands above her head like a ballerina, her lips pursed; a know-it-all until the very end.
He wanted to vomit.
He realized in that moment he didn't want her to be dead but only because of the agreement. However, this thought only made his stomach churn more violently.
As he was circling the first floor rooms for the third time, was resulting in an overlap of destruction and inflammatory language from the various paintings, a voice stopped him in his tracks.
"Erhm, Erhm… Excuse me, Master Malfoy?"
Draco turned sharply, pointing his wand at the source of the noise. When he realized it was the family house-elf, whose name he couldn't remember, he felt angrier than he had the whole night.
"Sod off Sammy. I'm busy," he said, turning away from him. He feared if he looked at its stupid face for too long, he would hex it into oblivion.
"Is Master well-"
"What the fuck does it look like, you stupid animal?" He demanded, stepping away from the creature and levitating an already overturned bookshelf in case Granger was tucked beneath it. "I'm obviously not 'well'. This stupid girl has gone and evaporated into thin air. How dare you even approach me in this state you moron. "
He thought the elf would take the hint and get out of his way. But again, the creature cleared his throat to address his agitated master.
"Sonny heard the noise Mr. Malfoy was making and woke up. Is missus missing?"
"Obviously," Draco huffed, kicking the bookshelf. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was being irrational again.
Big fucking surprise of the year.
If the damn portraits weren't going to be any help, he could at least try the overgrown rat.
"Listen, Sammy, did you see her pass through here, or upstairs or something?" as Draco uttered those words, he didn't even turn to face the creature.
"No Master. But she was very sad when Sonny talked with her. She is a very nice witch. Very good witch. Very pretty witch-,"
"What do you mean when you 'talked with her'?"
"Sonny talked to her two nights before."
Draco clenched his fists.
"What did you talk about?"
"Missus says I should not tell master about the things"
Draco turned and leaned forward, pointing his wand at the creature's throat. Sometimes being direct was the only route wizards could taken when dealing with beasts.
"What did you tell her?" he demanded again, poking his wand into the side of the elf's neck for emphasis.
Sonny's eyes were wide with fear, and his ears stood erect. He was shaking like someone who just went for a swim in the Great Lake in the dead of winter. Draco could hear the elf's teeth chattering.
But the sound was like music to his ears. Because for the second time in 48-hours, the house-elf told a young wizard exactly what they wanted to know.
.
.
Hermione was uninhibited. Emancipated. Free.
The tresses of her hair flowed behind her as she propelled herself forward, bending and arching wildly in the wind. Her cheeks were flushed from the fresh air beating against her face. As she raced down across the sprawling meadows of dark grass, her limbs grew weak, but she ignored the mounting pain.
Every foot farther and farther away she got from Malfoy Manor, the feelings of joy become stronger and stronger. She didn't look behind to see what she left. The pain, the embarrassment, the entire arrangement was back there, and she didn't want to have anything to do with it. She was running ahead, looking ahead, reaching for some sign of another human being who could save her and bring her back to the Order.
She was going back to reality.
Being locked away in that dreadful house with the Malfoy psychopaths was becoming detrimental to her mental health. Even now, as she ran across the empty fields of grass towards some invisible end, she felt that something had changed inside her since she left. Some imaginary and crippling lifeline had been cut. The days of her being passive and avoiding what happened during the war were over. A page had turned.
She was running with total abandon in a way she never thought she could.
She was crying, and her tears felt cold as they dried on her cheeks. But she kept running ahead, trying her best to keep focus.
Priorities.
Herminie kept running.
She was mid-leap when he stopped her, casting a binding spell from a half a mile behind her, halting the witch's bounds and sending her entire body to the ground.
All of a sudden the wonderful blur of darkness was replaced with the endless starry night sky. It reminded Hermione of a blanket she had was little. It was blue and purple with specks of ivory stars. She used to crawl under the blanket with a flashlight and read for hours. When she looked up at the blanket it would remind her how small the world was. The blanket of stars that gleamed above her now made her feel the opposite about reality. The world was too big for her. Too complicated.
She tried to move her legs but they wouldn't budge. Her mouth was filled with dirt from the rough impact with the ground. Her arms were pinned tightly under her body and they felt weak.
She thought she was dying.
When an out-of-breath and distressed Draco finally caught up to her fallen body several minutes later, she realized that she could still move her hands. In that same moment, she realized that she could never escape him. There would be no more running.
So she screamed.
.
.
He saw her figure from a mile away.
It was Granger. He was sure of it.
As he raised his wand to hex her with a leg-locking curse, a sense of relief like he never felt before swept over him. At the same time, his heart swelled with elation, confusion and anger. He was elated because he found her, confused because he didn't understand why he was so happy to see that she was alive, and angry at her for managing to escape the manor. She had gotten a fair distance away. She might have actually had a fair shot of escaping. Of course Granger would resort to bribing stupid animals to get what she wanted.
Maybe she had forgotten to whom the elf would be loyal when it came down to its life.
When he ran up to her, he spent a moment observing her before speaking. All the impassioned speeches he recited to her in his head while he was storming the mansion looking for her seemed to dissipate when he saw her lying on the ground. It was almost like his reaction to her during their awkward meals the first few days. He couldn't be angry seeing her like that.
She was crying.
It was awful. Her face was blotchy and red, her eyes blood shot from the strain. She was twisting the parts of her body that she could control in odd motions. The hex pinned her legs straight, but she was flapping her arms around like an angry bird.
As a result of her twisting, a lock of chestnut brown hair spilled into the corner of her mouth. For some unexplainable reason, Draco longed to reach over and pull it out.
Somewhere in the middle of her bucking, she saw him. And she started screaming.
The sound was animalistic, raw, and chilling. It scared him more than anything else had that night. It was like the way she cried during the battle but amplified. She turned to face him, screaming all the while, tears pouring out of her eyes like water out of a faucet.
"Grang-"
"NO! NO! MALFOY! NO DRACO!" she yelled between coughs.
"It's okay," he tried, lowering his voice and taking a step closer. He wanted to hex her, but something stopped him
"NO! YOU CAN"T HURT ME! YOU CAN'T! LEAVE ME ALONE! YOU NEVER LEAVE ME ALONE! I WANT TO DIE! LET ME DIE! I WANT TO DIE! NO!"
"It's okay," he whispered again, this time kneeling awkwardly a foot away from her. He could have stopped her lamentations with a flick of his wand, but something told him not to. Something told him that she needed this.
"LEAVE! NOW!" she screamed, craning her neck to spit in his direction. Draco watched it fall into the grass an inch in front of him. "I DON'T WANT THIS! I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS! I WANT HARRY! I WANT RON! HOGWARTS! I WANT MY FRIENDS! YOU TOOK THEM AWAY! YOU TOOK EVERYTHING AWAY! NO! I HAVE NOTHING! I'M NOTHING…" her words trailed off into her sobs as she closed her eyes and indulged in her suffering.
Draco had never seen another human being behave like this before. Of course there was the time he stood before Dumbledore at the astronomy tower when he became…emotional, and there where the times when Pansy cried about various trifles, but those instances were not like this. Piercing, wild, uncontrolled. There was nothing he could do except let her cry.
"YOU ARE PURE EVIL!" she continued wiping her palm against her wet cheek, and hiccupping tersely before continuing. "NO!" she repeated, shanking her head as if she came to some physical conclusion. "YOU WON'T HURT ME! NOT YOU OF ALL PEOPLE! I AM NO ONE'S WHORE! ALL OF YOU KILLED HARRY!"
She broke into sobs again and Draco watched the drenched lock of hair fall out of her mouth. His heart was hammering in his chest, but he didn't say a word. A rush of cold air inflated the inside of his nightshirt, the blue striped fabric in the wind. It fell lightly back on his chest. He shuddered.
"Harry!" she screeched, her voice cracking slightly. She faced away from him and looked up at the stars, tears still welling up in her eyes.
In that moment, Draco felt something that he shouldn't have. It was subtle and snuck up on him, but he had a feeling it was always there, bubbling under the surface like his family's fear. He tried to resist it as he did with things that he didn't want to deal with, but seeing her like that, staring away from him and up at the cloudless sky, a faraway look in her eyes, made him feel connected to her.
He understood how she felt in that moment. Because he felt the same way, not only this past year, but perhaps all his life. He knew she felt completely lost and hopeless like the whole world was too huge and complicated for her. The words slipped out of his mouth before he could censor them.
"I know."
"You…" she sneered, as if noticing him for the first time. She lunged in his direction, but the curse hadn't been lifted, and it kept her legs in place like a jack in the box toy.
She was angry again.
The problem was that he did know, but he didn't, and he didn't want to. It was all becoming awfully confusing to the blond.
"You DON'T know," she hissed, begging to furiously pump her fists in his direction. She was apparently trying to hit him.
"I know," he whispered again carefully leaning forward.
Her fist hit his chest with a thud, and the second, harder blow landed on the side of his stomach. She threw decent punches for a girl, but she was still no match for the wizard, who towered above her on his knees.
"STOP! NO! DON'T HURT ME! DON'T RAPE ME!"
She was beside herself, punching, hitting every inch of his body that she could reach.
"I know, I know, I know," was all he said, grabbing both of her wrists in his hands, trying stop her blows.
Her skin felt softer than he expected. He didn't know why, but he always imagined muggleborns having scaly, dry skin. But her wrists felt so…human. He was not expecting that.
He restrained her hands to her sides and she continued to scream her abuses at him.
All he could manage in return was, "I know, Granger. I know," hoping she would calm down.
He remembered when he was a child and his mother would rock him in her arms when he was throwing a tantrum. He would resist her grip as much as physically possible, twisting and kicking, trying to remain enraged. But even then, her arms seemed to quiet him after struggling.
After some time, Granger grew quiet. Just sniffles and hiccups. He still had her wrists restrained tightly on either side of her. He was careful not to touch any other part of her body.
Granger closed her eyes. Her face was blotchy from all the crying.
Maybe she knew he wasn't going to hurt her. By the way she kept bringing it up, he wasn't sure what to expect when it came to that topic.
Draco careful removed his hands.
"Are you alright now?"
No response.
"Alright then…we are going back to the house. Please don't try anything. I have a wand," he continued stupidly.
She didn't move an inch.
Draco sighed. Of course he could apparate with her back to the manor easily. But that irritable feeling rose in his chest once again and he knew he would have to do something else.
He reached underneath her legs and behind her back, slowly pulling her closer to him. When he picked her up in his arms, she was much lighter than he expected her to be.
As he began walking in the direction of the manor, she shuffled a little in his arms, obviously uncomfortable.
"Don't fight me, Granger," he whispered, catching a whiff of her odd florescent scent. It sounded more like a command than a suggestion. He hadn't meant for that.
He walked for two minutes before she finally surrendered, and, to his displeasure, rested her head against his chest.
.
.
He was to be the third-in-command at Department of International Magical Cooperation. Level Five of the Ministry of Magic.
First of all, even Draco understood that most International communities would be wary of "Cooperating" with a Voldemort-controlled Ministry of Magic. He couldn't understand why the Dark Lord didn't just get rid of the branch as a whole. Draco didn't really see him as the poster child for international peace and conflict resolution.
Secondly, it was mental that he was able to get such a high-profile position. Of course, he always assumed that his family's connections would eventually lead to successful employment opportunities, but there was still something symbolic about completing school at Hogwarts and passing a ministry placement exam.
But now that Voldemort had won, things were different.
So he shouldn't have been surprised when his mother announced that she had 'taken care' of his employment situation, and he would start the following week. Maybe Voldemort had been busy handing out positions to more 'loyal' Death Eaters before he finally made his way around to the Malfoys.
Draco had no idea how his former crowd would receive him once he returned to the 'real world.' He didn't know how many people knew about his father. He wasn't even sure if his father was still working at the Ministry. His mother didn't tell him about those sorts of things. He was certain that he did not want to see him when he did start working.
He was certain that rumor had spread about Granger. How would people receive him or his family? He was unsure that he would be welcomed with open arms because he was chosen for such a 'special' task, or sneered at because it was disgraceful. He and his mother's isolation following the war only created more questions.
Though he hated to admit it, there was a part of Draco that was secretly reluctant to leave Granger in the manor. Since her failed escape, Draco went out of his way to make sure she stayed out of trouble, but after her emotional ordeal, the task was easier than he expected.
If her temperament was silent before their first fight and enraged after, she was somewhere in between now.
She did not attempt to fight with him outright, but he could tell she didn't like him being around her as often as he was. She would wrinkle her noise in displeasure or glance at him briefly and turn away when he walked into her room at night.
Sometimes she would make underhanded, snarky comments about him, but he could tell they did not have the same malice behind them as they once did.
Something broke in Hermione Granger the day that she tried to escape Malfoy Manor.
She wasn't exactly calm, but she also wasn't the annoying know-it-all he knew in school. He would ask her yes or no questions and she would answer or nod. Only rarely did she ignore him.
Since the night of her escape, he had made one thing clear to her to prevent her from crafting any crazy escape plans in the near future: if she tried to escape again, he would kill the house-elf, regardless of its involvement or lack thereof.
Yes, he knew it was brutal and perhaps excessive, but it was necessary to get his point across. He also knew how much she loved magical creatures (after having Care of Magical Creatures with her for six years, it was impossible not to know), and it seemed like the only way to get through to her.
He remembered how her eyes widened in fear and how she averted her gaze. She waited a moment before nodding curtly.
He also made it clear that her failed escape would remain between the two of them, and if she tried anything else during her time in the manor, he would tell his mother who could easily tell the Death Eaters.
Yes, that also wasn't exactly true either, but he didn't think Hermione was frightened by his mother. All her obsession with 'the plan' and making Granger feel at home was really taking away her once-threating edge. And he didn't even want to get started about what Granger could possibly think about him now.
He had all of the elf's passages leading outside of the manor sealed off. The only people who could apparate into the grounds were Death Eaters.
In the week since her escape, he came into her room for about an hour or so each night to make sure she stayed out of trouble. At least, that's what he told himself he was doing.
What he actually did was sit in the armchair adjacent to the massive bookshelf and get lost in his own thoughts, while Granger, on the opposite side of the room, sat on the floor, cross-legged, scribbling in some journal.
"Where'd you get that?" he demanded the first time he saw her with it, after she turned briefly to look at him when he walked in before turning away.
She kept scribbling.
"Granger," Draco said.
She turned to him again and narrowed her eyes before nodding at the bookshelf.
"Are you going to take a journal away from me too?" she spat under her breath, but Draco heard her. He didn't say anything in response.
Maybe it was one of his mother's old notebooks that she'd taken for her own. She probably burned out his mother's pages.
Mudblood twat.
But the words were losing their old meaning. He knew he should have called her names or insulted her intelligence for such a stupid failed escape, but it was almost if something was stopping him from being his old self.
Maybe something broke inside of him the night she tried to escape, but he didn't want to think about it.
So the plan was in a semi-hiatus until Granger was sorted…if that ever happened.
Sometimes at night, when she had her back turned to him furiously scribbling, he would stare at her. He watched the rise and fall of her back with every breath, the way she briefly stopped writing at times to think about her next words and put the end of her quill in her mouth, and how she tilted her head to the right when she wrote slower passages.
As he sat entranced by the petite witch, his mind would wander to the night she escaped and how her head felt against his chest…
It took him a few seconds before he realized what he was doing, and he always stopped himself.
Her quirks were annoying.
And so was she.
He just wished he didn't have to keep reminding himself.
.
.
Sonny didn't know that Dobby was dead, just that he was Dobby's replacement.
His eyes widened as Hermione told him the story of her first time at Malfoy Manor and the events of Shell Cottage.
"Oh dear," the elf said anxiously, looking down at the floor between them. "Dobby was a good elf. A strong elf-"
"A free elf," Hermione finished smiling sadly. "He was my friend."
"Elves is not supposed to be friends with wizards," he said nervously, just realizing he was alone in the room with the witch. He tapped his bony fingers against his robes. "That is how house-elves get into trouble like Sonny did for helping miss-"
"You can call me Hermione, Sonny."
"Sonny knows, but miss tried to do very bad thing last time she was friends with Sonny." He blushed and pulled one of his ears over his golf-ball-sized eyes bashfully. "Mr. Malfoy would not like it."
Hermione smiled again, and placed her quill into the leather journal in her lap before closing it.
"I don't see anything wrong with us being friends, Sonny. I actually think you are the most morally upright being in this whole mansion. And anyways, you don't have to worry about me doing anything dangerous for now."
That was true. After Malfoy's unpleasant threats, she had to admit that, for the time being, nothing good would come out of escaping. The next time she tried, she promised herself she would bring Sonny with her. That's part of the reason she needed to spend time building his trust.
Sonny didn't look convinced.
"But you are still a witch. Witches and house-elves are not supposed to be friends," he said, nodding his head as if he was cementing some internal conclusion.
"Let me let you in on a little secret," Hermione said, leaning over her empty plate of food. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she and the creature were at eye-level with one another. Since he obviously was not used to humans being in such proximity, he leaned back in fear.
"I'm a slave too," she whispered. "I'm like you."
"What does miss mean?
Hermione smiled sadly again.
"Wizards and witches, especially the Malfoys, think I am less-than-human because of the way I was born. They hate me because of who I am, and that's why I'm here. They locked me away and they want Draco to hurt me because of who I am and what I stand for. So I can't leave, and I have to do what they say. I am like you. They took away my options."
She decided to leave the part out about how they were planning on killing her. She knew how house-elves didn't take bad news well.
Hermione watched as the elf changed from anxious to intrigued.
"You are still a witch-"
"I know, I know, but when I'm here, I'm not," she pulled the empty pockets up out of Narcissa's robe to illustrate her next point. "See, no wand."
Sonny looked slightly less frightened than before.
"Friends?" she asked holding out her hand.
He hesitated before responding.
"Sonny will think about it, miss," he said, ignoring her outstretched hand bowing tersely.
Hermione sighed and retreated her hand.
It was actually a decent start when it came to a house-elf. She remembered how long it took Harry and her to convert Dobby, and these two elves had the same masters.
Hermione reached into her lap to pick up her makeshift journal and continue writing, but Sonny's voice stopped her.
"Miss he will not hurt you. He is a good boy. Sad boy, but a good boy. He cannot hurt."
Hermione lowered the journal and shot the creature a confused look.
"Who?"
"Master Malfoy."
It took her a moment to reconcile what the elf said with the image of Malfoy.
She sighed.
Of course the Malfoys had brainwashed the elf into thinking they were the absolute best wizards to walk the face of the Earth. The poor thing probably wasn't capable of bad-mouthing them.
"I wish that was true, Sonny, but wizards like Draco like to hurt people. He has hurt me in the past and he likes when other people are in pain. That's who he is."
"Sonny know Master for a long time. He is angry sometimes, but he cannot hurt in the way bad wizards can. He is a good boy. The past year he is very, very sad and has many people telling him many things. Sometimes he don't know what to listen to. Sonny comes to clean Master's room, and he sit at his desk alone in dark. He is always alone. And sad, very sad. Only since battle is finished he gets less angry,"
Hermione's facial expression did not change, but she felt something she shouldn't have for Draco Malfoy in that moment. Remorse, or something suspiciously like it, filled her chest. The images were just too unsettling. She never thought of the possibly of him being affected by being assigned to kill Dumbledore, any more than he was by getting assigned her.
As Sonny turned to leave, he stopped in front of the door.
"Miss?" he asked.
"Hmm," Hermione responded, lost in her own thought about Draco.
"It is funny."
"What's funny?"
"You say the Malfoys is bad because they judge wizards cause of who they is. But miss also says that Master is bad because of who he is. You says Master did not give you chance, but it sounds to Sonny missus does not give master chance either."
.
.
Yay! New chapter! So things are moving right along with the relationship haha. I hope the pace is not maddening for you guys, good things happen for those who wait ;)
As always, thanks to 'arosesinnocence' for beta-ing. She put up with a lot of mess with this chapter so I wanted to thank her soooo much.
And thanks to all you who have reviewed so far! And those who haven't, don't be shy I want to know what you think!
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Ya'll know what to do!
-marrymealittle