((Sorry for the minor delay...I had to go away for the weekend and didn't have access to the internet. I'd meant to post this before I left, but ran out of time.))

"We love the things we love for what they are" - Robert Frost

She didn't have long to dwell on the fact that Ian Rosier was not the same person, any longer. Hogwarts wouldn't let her.
The first Tri-Wizard Tournament in years was going to be held, and Beauxbatons and Durmstrang were arriving now.

They came in a flurry of winged horses and a splash of water, and were welcomed to Hogwarts in the typical fashion: a grand feast. This one, though, was different. In an effort, it seemed, to make everyone feel more at home, they had included dishes from France and wherever Durmstrang was (Bonnie was hazy on the details). All she knew for sure was that she wouldn't enter the Tournament, not for all of the glory in the world.
Ian, Cedric, Maggie, and Thalia seemed to have different ideas. They all entered their names on slim slips of paper, hoping for the chance to...
What?
Possibly to die?
Bonnie scowled at the offending Goblet every time she saw it, and gave it a wide berth.
Her unhappiness mounted to new heights when names were called.

Viktor Krum, Fleur Delacour, she didn't feel much for. She didn't know them. And while she certainly hoped they remained safe during the Tournament, her world wouldn't exactly shatter if something happened to them.
But then the Goblet sent Cedric's name up, and her breath stopped.

He was happy, she could see it in his eyes. Another chance to prove himself, to be the man his father expected him to be.
And then the Goblet unexpectedly spat up a fourth name, and the Hall went quiet.
Harry Potter.
She didn't understand what had happened, didn't know what to think. Potter was only fourteen...how had he entered his name at all? How had he fooled not only Dumbledore's enchantments, but the Goblet itself?

Everyone else seemed to be thinking the same thing.
And it didn't take long for Hogwarts students to take sides. For once, Slytherin was on the side of the Hufflepuffs, wearing "Support Cedric Diggory!" badges. Bonnie and her friends had refused the buttons, knowing that Cedric disliked them and that the rest of the school knew where their support was without them having to wear badges or buttons.

Every time Bonnie saw Ian, in the time before the first Task, she felt something different. Anger. Sadness. Longing. Sympathy. Disgust.
No matter how she tried, she couldn't get the image of the Dark Mark out of her mind.

She didn't know that he couldn't get the image of her horrified eyes out of his. Or that he had been watching her when Cedric's name had been called, and wished things were different. Not that his name had been called, not exactly. But changed enough so that he at least could have offered some word of comfort to her.
She'd looked terrified, so upset that he couldn't stand to watch her any longer.

Ian had spent most of his days with the other seventh-year Slytherins, some as furtive and melancholy as he, some more determined. He didn't think any of the others had the Mark. His had been a special case, a case of a son taking a father's place. He'd been bound to the Dark Lord because his father had been.
"Your mother is dying," his aunt had told him, her eyes flat and dark. "She will die, if you don't give her something to live for."
"I'm not my father," he had told her, voice low and rough.
"No," she had agreed, "But you are his memory. You look like him, you sound like him, walk like him. Take his place with the Dark Lord, Ian. Make your mother proud."
"How do you know this will save her?"
"She told me herself. She has nothing, now, to fight for. Give her something, Ian. Give her a reason to stay with us."
And so, he had. And it seemed to work.
It was the only thing that kept him from refusing, from turning away from Little Hangleton, that evening.

They almost circled each other, watching but never speaking, each keeping silent tabs on the other.
Bonnie never told a soul about the Dark Mark, not even Maggie. She couldn't bring herself to.
In fact, she pretended her meeting with Ian in the owlrey had never happened. Pretended she still hadn't spoken to him and didn't intend to.

One night, however, during patrols, it became impossible to ignore Ian any longer.
Because they were trapped. Together.
It was the worst possible circumstance, Bonnie thought, heart pounding along uncomfortably close to her throat.
"Alohamora!" she murmured, tapping the knob of the locked door with her wand. But nothing happened. Nothing at all.
"It's no use," Ian told her without looking at her.
"What do you mean?" Bonnie asked suspiciously.
"It's the Room of Requirement. In this particular form, that door will not open until the opener's requirement is fulfilled."
"What are you talking about?"
"I opened it," Ian said, smoothing his hair with his right hand, "So that I could talk with you."
Bonnie was quiet, more silent than she'd been in her life. Even her breathing was near non-existent.
"Please tell me you're joking," she said. If it hadn't been Bonnie, her voice could have been called"dangerous". As it was, it was just very, very low.
"Bonnie, you left me no other choice. Would you have spoken to me, if I had approached you in the corridor between classes?"
Much as she hated to admit it, he was right. Bonnie shrugged, her crossed arms a protective barrier in front of her.
"Maybe I would have," she grumbled, "If I knew this would be the alternative."
Ian grinned a strange, lopsided thing.
"Of course," he said.

The room was more corridor or antechamber than room itself, all grey stone hung with tapestry, a soft rug lining the long stretch of floor. There were some curving chairs shoved against the walls, if either of them cared to sit facing each other across the stone passageways.
And, everywhere, there was silence.

"I've been teaching myself a bit, recently," Ian said, pacing, restless as a caged tiger. "Not that Moody has been inadequate - the opposite, in fact, but..."
He looked at her, his expression pained.
"Do you remember when we played that game of yours, where we were to tell each other the truth?"
Bonnie nodded.
"Why did we ever stop playing that?" Ian finished. He smoothed a hand over his hair, an old, familiar gesture. And Bonnie smiled. The first chink in her armor.
"Bonnie, I want to explain," Ian said. "Would you allow me that?"
"I don't think I really have much choice."
"I...I did not join Lord Voldemort because I believe in what he is doing," Ian said, choosing his words carefully. Bonnie's eyes had already begun to narrow. "I joined to save my mother," he said finally. "I told you, before, that her...depression, sorrow, madness, whatever it was...it...it's been getting worse over the years. She rarely ever left the house. It got to the point where she stopped eating altogether. She did not desire life, she desired death because she wanted to be with my father. And my aunt thought that...that because I look like he did, because I am some kind of living memory of my father, I could change that. The only way I could do that, though, was to join him."
"And, what?" Bonnie asked, not quite believing. "That just made everything better?"
"No, Bonnie," Ian said, sounding exasperated for the first time. "No, of course not. Not at first. But it did. She...she went to Diagon Alley for the first time since I've been at Hogwarts. She combed her hair and pinned it up, she wore her favorite robes again. She laughed, Bonnie. I haven't seen her smile since...since I was very young. And if I had to indenture myself to the Dark Lord to buy my mother's life, so be it."

Bonnie was crying. Crying big, solid-feeling tears, and she couldn't even truly say why. Maybe she was glad his heart wasn't in it. Maybe she was just about dying with the sadness of it. She didn't know, didn't care.
The tears were coming thick and fast, absolute swarms of them.
"Ian..."
"I tried so hard to think of another way," Ian continued. "I spent days in my room with the curtains closed, trying to think. I...I set your letters aside because I could not think of a thing to say to you that would not cause you pain. And then when there was nothing else for it but to take the Mark, I could not face you, I..."

Bonnie was looking at him carefully as if he might attack, tears still rolling.
"So I just...I kept the silence I had begun and hoped that one day I could explain it to you. And then I finally had that opportunity, and...and I lost my words, all I could do was show the Mark to you, and when you left I knew that I had made a mistake. And then you avoided me all this time."
Bonnie closed her eyes and leaned heavily against the wall, as if she suddenly weighed far more than her small bones could bear.
Ian took this chance to approach her in the calm, smooth step of one approaching a wild horse. He ran the pad of his thumb along the ridge of her cheekbone and caught her teardrops and wasn't swatted away.
"Bonnie," he whispered, voice giving out already. "I'm...I am so scared. Scared of what the Mark means, scared of what I'll have to do...scared of losing you. If i haven't already."
"You ha...haven't," Bonnie said through her tears. "I don't think you have, anyway."

And then the world dissolved, melting in the connection of warm lips and hot tears and gentle skin.

Dark clouds were far from behind them. In fact, they were still approaching, vividly dark against the pale horizon. But now, holding desperately to each other in the midst of their fear, they could pretend, for a little while, that it was all sunshine and warm spring meadows.
Theirs were not the big, clashing battles of myth and legend. There were smaller, but the blows they dealt were just as hard.
They'd won one, already. But these, too, were on the horizon. Gathering number and gaining speed.