Hey guys! Alright, this is going to be the last chapter until next Friday or so, most likely. I'm going out of town with my family. Happy Thanksgiving to all you USA citizens out there, and to the rest of you, have a lovely week!

By the way, more fluff ahead, but just a bit. Things get more intense pretty soon, I promise.

Chapter Twelve

"Ally, dearest," Antonin softly requested into my ear, "Will you please stop that? It makes it very difficult for me to focus."

We were sharing an armchair; I was leaned back against him with my fingers tracing patterns on one of his thighs while he attempted to study for his upcoming Charms exam.

From the couch across from us, Lorraine made a disgusted face, in spite of the fact she told me pretty much every night before bed that Antonin and I made the cutest pair she'd ever seen. It seemed as if news of us becoming official spread through the school faster than wildfire, no doubt thanks to my big-mouthed blonde friend, though I couldn't hate her for it. So long as I had my amazing boyfriend, it was hard to get me mad about much of anything, actually.

He was like the yin to my yang. If I'd thought I'd been spending every moment possible with him prior to this year, I'd been wrong; apart from classes, and sometimes even then when he could convince me to skive off, we were together whenever possible.

Most of the hours we spent talking, other times kissing, and sometimes we would just hold each other quietly for no good reason at all, communicating things through our still silence that we never could have had we used our voices.

Every day, I found myself more in love with him. I relished in the way the sunlight caught a glint in his dark brown hair, reveled in how brilliant he was on every subject I could possibly think of, delighted in the casual way in which he leaned against the wall as he waited for me between Potions and lunch.

I stopped the pattern-tracing at his request, shifting to a more comfortable position on his lap and nuzzling my face against his shoulder. That was the one thing I'd noticed about Antonin- he almost constantly demanded affection from me in some way or another. It felt sometimes as if he needed to reaffirm that I loved him over and over again, and my touch was the only agent capable.

Not that I minded providing it.

"You don't need to study," I reminded him, feeling more demanding than usual that evening.

With a chuckle, he shut the book. "You're going to be the reason that I fail all of my classes, Ally." The way he spoke suggested that he didn't mind, and his lips on my neck reaffirmed that.

---

Valentine's day, I thought, would probably come and go like every other day; Antonin didn't strike me as the type for pink hearts and cherubs, after all. It was a Hogsmeade weekend, though, and he insisted on taking me out for a date.

"It won't be a stupid date," he assured me. "I would be taking you whether the Hogsmeade weekend was any other day of the year, you know."

"Right, right," I answered, still not entirely thrilled. To me, it had always seemed a bit of a silly holiday, even if it was only a coincidence.

And so, at his insistence, we spent most of that Saturday sitting on a large rock in front of the Shrieking Shack- it was the least crowded place in Hogsmeade- and just talking about nothing in particular, his arm around me and my head on his shoulder.

"I have a confession to make," he announced, mysteriously, as the sunlight turned golden in the late afternoon.

"Hm?" I asked, busy playing with the perfect hand I was holding.

"I'm a wanker with no guts."

"What?" Usually, he was one of the most egotistical people I knew.

"I'm an idiot, a loser, and a coward," he went on.

"No you're not," I protested, but he put a finger over my lips to silence me.

"Alecto, I've been admiring you for years," he informed me softly, which surprised me a bit. I'd always figured his love had been a fairly recent development, perhaps a few months before this school year had started, at most.

"... Really?"

With a soft laugh at how eager I seemed at that news, he nodded. "I was about fourteen when I realised it."

"Realised what?"

"How perfect you are, Ally." He twirled a lock of my hair between his fingers.

"I'm not."

"Are, too." His grin was infectious, and I felt myself smiling back.

"If it's been years... why didn't you do something sooner?"

"Again, Ally, I'm a coward," he told me. "But I did do something. You probably just didn't make the connection."

"What connection?" I queried, entirely confused.

"Do you remember your 'secret admirer' who's sent you chocolates every Valentine's day for the past three or so years?"

"That was you?" I laughed, incredulously. "Really?"

"Yeah," he shrugged. "Told you I was a coward. It took me years to say anything in person."

"I don't care," I announced.

"You don't care?"

"I don't care how long it took you. I'm just glad you said anything at all," I declared, and then I kissed him.

---

One night, though, he-without telling me beforehand, no less- didn't turn up at our usual time.

I was perplexed and offended. I spent the evening in the Common Room, not talking to anyone, trying to sort out what could possibly have caused him to deviate from our usual schedule. When he finally appeared on the dormitory stairs, I wasn't quite sure whether I should be angry or happy to see him.

There must have been a conflict between the two on my face, because he laughed and hugged me. "I'm so sorry for being late, Ally," he apologised gently. "But there's something I need to talk to you about."

My heart stood still for a moment in an anticipatory sort of fear. "What is it?" Sure, he didn't seem to think that whatever he was about to say was a horribly grave matter, but Antonin was an expert at betraying no emotion.

After looking around conspiratorially, he whispered, "You've no doubt heard of Lord Voldemort."

I nodded. My parents mentioned the Dark Lord often over dinner, and the whole of Slytherin house buzzed with news of him from time to time. There was a war going on, I knew, right now; it had never directly affected me, though, so I hadn't given it too much thought.

"They keep us very sheltered in this school," he continued, "but the fact is... he's growing in power. There's a foreseeable end to this war, one in which wizarding bloodlines are once again cleansed." An excited gleam had entered his eyes as he spoke. "And he's building an army of his closest supporters."

My brow furrowed. "And?"

"We've been holding secret meetings- in Hogsmeade, mostly- with the Death Eaters. They're trying to gain our allegiances at a younger age, see."

"The who?"

"Death Eaters- his inner circle. My uncle's one, that's how I got started. And Ally, I'm... I'm going to join them, at the end of the year. So's Amycus." He seemed so proud of himself, and yet I failed to see why.

"So you're pledging your life to someone you've never met, to fight in a war that's probably just going to wind up doing more killing than good?"

"That's not it at all, Ally," he insisted, taking my hands in his. "I'm fighting for what I believe in. I'm fighting to rid us of all the filthy scum that's been polluting our world. I'm doing this to make a better world for us to live in together... I thought you'd be happy."

I wanted to be happy for him, but all I could feel was dread. "This isn't going to turn out well for you."

"You don't know that. I'll be fine," Antonin pressed, seeming a bit offended that I wasn't seeing this the same way that he was.

I sighed. I hated seeing him disappointed in my reaction. "I'm going to support you though, Antonin, no matter what. You know that, right?"

With a wry smile, he wrapped his arms around me. "I know. I just wish you could be happy about it."

Frowning, I pulled away from him. "I'm happy that you're doing something you feel is important, Antonin. It's just... I worry about you."

"You shouldn't," he chided gently. "I can take care of myself."

There was no point in arguing with him, I decided. "Alright."

"I love you, Ally," he reminded me, smoothing my hair away from my face.

"Love you too," came the automatic response, and I forced a smile. There was too much worry lurking in my mind for me to snap out of my uneasy state.

He was quiet for a moment, his eyes searching my expression. "If it would make you feel better to know what I was doing, you can come to one of the meetings with me. There's another in two weeks."

I shook my head. My parents would never approve, and I trusted him not to do anything ridiculous. "Just don't get in over your head, Antonin."

"I won't," he assured me, but there was something ominous about the silence that followed.

---

The school year passed entirely too quickly for my liking. Antonin suggesting failing all of his NEWTs so that he could stay for another year, but we both knew that could never happen. Apparently, I was just going to have to deal with losing him.

"It's not losing me," he reminded me every time I put it that way. "I'll be there to meet you for every Hogsmeade weekend. And I'll write you every day."

As I pouted slightly, he pulled me closer. "Don't be difficult, Ally. We've still got the whole summer to spend as we please."

"But you know that my family won't-" I started to point out.

"Your family nothing," Antonin answered. "I've already written to your parents, and they've agreed to let you come to Italy with me."

Though I wondered how much gold he'd had to bribe them with to get them to agree to that, I was too shocked to put the question into words. "Antonin..."

"My parents are picking us up at the platform tomorrow. Or, I should say, having us picked up. I was going to surprise you with this on the train, actually." Fondly, he ran his fingers through my hair.

"... Wow," I managed.

His smile was expectant, waiting for a more telling reaction.

"Wow," I repeated. "The whole summer?"

Nodding, he pressed, "Isn't it great, Ally? Just you and me at my family's vacation home..."

Just us? I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about that. "Um, you mean alone?"

He nodded, seemingly misinterpreting my hesitance. "At least most of the time. Unless you would rather not be?"

"Actually..."

Looking a tad crestfallen, he murmured softly, "I thought you would like it."

"I would like it, but... I don't know, it seems more like a honeymoon than an innocent vacation."

With a laugh, Antonin ran one hand down the side of my face. "No, Alecto... I'm planning on taking you somewhere much nicer for our honeymoon."

Raising my eyebrows, I replied, "I still don't know about this. I mean... it's not really... proper, is it?" I was blushing, and I knew it. My family had always been very old fashioned in its views of that sort of thing, and whereas I wasn't completely sheltered, it wasn't one of my regular topics of conversation.

"Hey, hey," he coaxed softly. "Didn't I tell you that your parents had agreed to this? Don't you think that there are some conditions to you staying with me?"

"Well, yes, but..."

"Sh," was his only response. With a sigh, I resigned myself to this vacation plan of his, even though it still gave me a rather unsettling feeling.

"Fine, but Antonin..."

"Yes, love?"

"If at any point I want to go home-"

"You won't," he cut me off, finishing his statement with the sort of kiss that makes a girl weak at the knees. How was I supposed to refuse that?

Finally, the Death Eaters are mentioned! Took me long enough, didn't it? Yeah. This is the point where Antonin's personality starts to change and he becomes two versions of himself: Alecto's Antonin and Voldemort's. ... Thus the title of this whole fanfiction.

Please review! (:

Until next week,

Caroline