((Did anyone else think of The Hunger Games when Bonnie got the silver canister of ice-cream from Ian? Because that's all I could think of, after I wrote it...
I'm loving the reviews this time around! Not that I didn't before, there were just more of them, this time! I'm so glad you're enjoying the story, so far. ))

"Times like these, dark times, they do funny things to people. They can tear them apart." -Arthur Weasley

"He'd better be able to explain!" Maggie fumed, tossing her hands in the air.
Tess, who was still asleep, groaned and pulled her pillow over her head.
"Maggie! Be quiet, would you? There's a full hour before I actually have to be awake!"
Maggie rolled her eyes and dragged Bonnie, still straightening her skirt with her robe thrown over her shoulder, out into the common room.
"Maggie! I need that arm, thank you!"
"Oh, you're fine. Come on, now. Are you really just going to take him right back?"
"I don't know, Maggie. What if it was all just some big misunderstanding?"
"It's Ian Rosier, Bon. He's a Slytherin. There has to be some kind of reason behind it."
"I don't..."
"Oh, don't even start. It has everything to do with him being a Slytherin. He has all of the traits: resourceful, ambitious, cunning, shrewdness, self-preservation, intelligence, determination. A kind of disregard of rules. They don't do things without reason, Bon. We might, sometimes. Gryffindors definitely do. But Ravenclaws? Slytherins? Rarely, if ever."
"Maybe this is one of those rare times, Maggie. I have to give him the benefit of the doubt."
"Bonnie..."
"Maggie. He stopped answering letters. He didn't...he didn't do anything really wrong, okay? I'll be fine, no matter what."
Her voice softened, and she said: "How could I not be, with a House full of friends like you?"
Maggie smiled, and the two girls, arm-in-arm, made their way to the Great Hall for breakfast.

Maggie and Bonnie joined Patricia, an early-riser by nature. They received their schedules for the year, which they examined while crunching their way through toast with marmalade.
Maggie wanted to own a shop in Hogsmeade, and so hadn't exactly applied herself to her O. , happy to receive mostly As and one P (in Potions which, for anyone who knew Maggie, wasn't surprising. She loathed the subject). Patricia and Bonnie were both interested in becoming Healers for St. Mungo's, and had earned nearly the exact same marks as Bonnie - they were in many of the same classes together, a fact for which Bonnie was grateful. Patricia was kind, smart, level-headed and hard-working, traits which made her a great person to go through any kind of training with.

Thalia and Tess would be in different classes altogether - Thalia wanted to go into research for new spells, and Tess wanted to teach...she'd prefer to do so at Hogwarts, but she wasn't picky. She'd go to the first wizarding school that asked.
And Cedric. Cedric wanted to work in the Ministry, or at least that was what he said. Bonnie wasn't at all sure if that was Ced talking, or if Mr. Diggory was somewhere behind that dream telling Cedric that was what he wanted.

Ian, who wanted to be an Unspeakable, could be in just about any class. Snape had apparently told him that he should be prepared for just about anything.

Bonnie didn't see Ian, though. Not at breakfast or at lunch. She didn't even catch a glimpse of him in the chaos of the corridors between classes. She was beginning to wonder if he was in Hogwarts at all. That night, after finishing what small amounts of homework had been given on the first day, Bonnie made her way up to the owlrey to send a letter to Alan. He'd gone to work for Gringotts after his seventh year, and was currently in China. Doing what, Bonnie didn't exactly know. When he'd explained it to her, she'd become so bored that she had tuned out.
She really needed to get a handle on that bad habit.

She looked around at the gleaming eyes and rustling wings, trying to find the barn owl that had delivered her package the previous night. But he wasn't there. There were other barn owls, yes, but not him. Bonnie chose a screech owl, who hooted softly as she handed him the letter.
"Safe travels, little guy," she said, tossing the owl into the air.
"Bonnie."
She actually screamed, disturbing the owls who hooted reproachfully and rustled their wings.
"Ian! Are you trying to kill me? I nearly fell out of the window..."
Ian raised his eyebrows.
"Your feet looked safely planted on the ground, from here."
"Very funny."
She walked by him and down the owlrey steps, letting the sensation of the sun on her face distract her.
"Bonnie..."
Ian was following along behind her. When she turned to look at him, the sight of his face shocked her. In the dim light of the owlrey she hadn't been able to see how thin his face had become, how dark the circles under his eyes were, now. He looked sad and exhausted, and she nearly broke down then and there.
"What, Ian?" she asked instead. She sounded fatigued, as if Ian following her had worn her out.
"I just..."
He ran a thin hand through his hair and the sight of that, too, shocked her. His hands were pale and far too thin, more like a skeleton's hands than Ian's.
"You said you could explain," Bonnie said, stopping at the bottom of the stairs. She folded her arms and looked at him, pretended she didn't want to wrap her arms around him and ask him what was wrong. And feed him cookies and cocoa and full-fat milk until he no longer looked so sick, so sad. Instead, she said: "So explain, then."

Ian spread his hands out in front of him.
"Bonnie, I'm sorry..."
"No, Ian. You have to tell me. Did you think you could just...just...forget me, like that, ignore me, and then come back to Hogwarts and have me just run straight to you? It doesn't work like that."
"I know. Bonnie, I know that, but..."
"But what?"
Ian glanced around and took Bonnie gently by the elbow, guiding her under a tapestry and into an alcove hidden there. An arrow-slit of a window cast a strange bar of light across Ian's face that made him look even worse.
"It's more complicated than you think."
Ian wasn't helping his case.
"And, what? You thought I wouldn't understand?" Her words were meant for argument, but her voice was pleading. She didn't want this. She wanted it to be last year. She wanted everything to be peaceful and calm and good and golden again.
"No. Yes. Bonnie...even I can't really understand. I wish I could just tell you, right here and now, of everything that has happened this summer."
"Then tell me."
"It's not...Bonnie, I told you. It simply is not that easy."
"And I'm not that stupid," Bonnie said, real anger beginning to edge beneath her sympathy. She made to leave, even pushing the tapestry aside before Ian caught her arm.
"Bonnie. Please don't leave me."
She turned, holding his gaze as confidently as she knew how.
"Then tell me."
Instead of saying a word, he kept his eyes locked with hers and pulled up his left sleeve.

There, branded onto the skin of his forearm, was a mess of dark lines. She couldn't see what they were very clearly, not at first. Shock and confusion had overridden her mind. But then her sight cleared, and she saw it for what it was.
And it made her stomach churn.

Wide-eyed and startled as a deer caught in the beam of a flashlight, she stumbled back until she was as far from Ian and his Dark Mark as she could get, pressed to the stone wall behind her.
She thought she might be sick.
"Bonnie, I...this is why" Ian passed a hand over his face, as if he could clear his thoughts by the pressure. "This is why I never wrote you," he said. "I just could not...could not face you. And I am so, so sorry..."
Bonnie was crying, hot tears slashing across her face before she realized it was happening. Her throat was tight with the attempt to hold back screams and sobs of anger and sadness.
"Sorry? Ian, I thought you were...I trusted you! I thought you were different! I...I loved you, Ian."
Her voice became more and more choked with each exclamation until it caught on the word "loved" and fell apart. She placed the back of her quivering hand against her mouth, unable to take her eyes from Ian's forearm.
"Bonnie, please let me explain..."
"Explain! What is there to explain?"
"Everything! Please, just..."
"No! I can't even..."
She wouldn't meet his eyes, kept them squinting into the light from the arrow-slit window. The sting of the light on her now dim-accustomed eyes kept the tears from taking over.
"I can't even look at you, right now," she hissed. And in a whirl of Hogwarts robes and a flash of gold hair in the light, she was gone.

Ian, alone in the dark, put both hands over his face and sank back against the wall, sliding down the stone until he was sitting on the cold floor, shoulders shaking.
In his mind, the memories flashed like unhappy photographs.
There were so many hands.
His aunt's cold, bony hand on his shoulder.
His mother's frail white hand in his.
His own hands, clammy and fumbling.
And His hands. His awful, terrible hands that could hardly clutch the wand as he pressed it into Ian's skin.

He remembered it all, as clearly as if he were still living it. Apparition to Surrey, an imposing house rising in the distance, his feet heavy and slow, trudging as if on a march to death. The dusty smell of absence and semi-neglect that hung in the old rooms as they passed through.
The stillness. The silence. The giant snake that led them to a room where a high-backed chair faced away from the door and a high, cold voice beckoned them forward. Strangling his scream before it could live, when he saw Lord Voldemort. The tears he hid as the wand pressed, hard, into the skin of his forearm.
His horror as he watched the darkness spread and take shape there on his skin, for all the world to see.
His mother with her eyes shining, hands clasped beneath her chin. The first smile he'd seen on her face in years.
And now, most recently, Bonnie's eyes shining with tears, the disgust written plainly across every inch of her skin.
The sound of her feet and her ragged breath as she ran from him.

He'd always thought "broken heart" was an exaggeration.
It wasn't.
His was ripping at the seams, tearing itself to pieces.
Gain a mother, lose the one girl you've ever loved.
Gain a family, lose the only friends you had.
Gain friends, powerful ones, and lose the only person you would die to protect.
Gain power, tear yourself and that beloved one to pieces without any words at all.
He didn't want this. He didn't want this.
He had to echo the words over and over again, because there was a part of him that did.
He'd never understood his father. Not until now.
Power. Glory. Victory. They were beautiful, beautiful words, more intoxicating than just about anything.
Anything, that is, but Amortentia.
Because he could still smell strawberry ice-cream, could still feel his heart-rate pick up speed, and he knew that if she had let him explain, he would have renounced it all in a heart-beat.
It hadn't been his choice, he would have told her. Not entirely.
How can you choose, between your own life and that of your mother?
How can you choose, when your family is on the line?
And what if the thought of power reeled you in more than you ever thought possible? What then?
He was scared. Terrified. He was only seventeen, and his world was in bits and pieces, sharp as knives, all around him. One step in any direction meant blood and pain.
And how was he supposed to choose?

Bonnie didn't cry, after she'd dried her tears in the hallway in front of the tunnel. She was finished, she decided, with tears.
But the Dark Mark lingered, flashing over and over again, that hated sign on that most-loved skin. She wanted to cry. She wanted to be sick. She wanted to scream, to beat her chest and pull her hair and tear at her clothes until her rage and fear were satisfied and her fingers bled.
But she didn't. Couldn't.
Instead she took a breath, walked into the Common Room. Laughed with her friends.
And tried to ignore the open, festering wound that no one could see.
It turned out that broken hearts were real, after all.

((I apologize for any and all cliches, cheesiness, or...
Actually, I really don't. Because it was enormously fun to write. Which makes me feel a bit sadistic, honestly, but...
I know I'm kind of pushing it with the Death Eater thing. But Maggie's right - there are reasons, for the Mark and everything else.
Review, review, review! ^^ ))