Author's Note: Thank you to anybody out there who is reading this and has come this far with the story. I would love to know your thoughts on my OC Frances as I have tried to make her as realistic as possible but it's hard to judge when you're the one writing it. Is she too boring or too simple? This update is shorter than I was intending as I have decided to split it into two so that I can update what I have written already and then upload the rest in a few days. Hope you enjoy it...

Chapter Four

"Have you heard?" Ron asked as he swung through the portrait and threw himself over and armchair, landing on the floor just in front of it. "The trip to Hogsmeade is going ahead!" Frances had been sitting with Hermione and Ginny, going over some homework with the former.

"That's great!" Ginny exclaimed whilst Hermione and Frances looked pleased. They had been kept in the castle for nearly two months now and although it wasn't short of extensive grounds, they all knew it would feel good to see some new sights and be outside of school for a few hours.

It was a Saturday morning and all the students permitted to go to Hogsmeade had spent the morning busily getting ready for the expectant trip although it wasn't until the prefects announced its go ahead that they could get truly excited about the prospect.

Frances decided that she would try and tag along with Harry, Ron and Hermione. She didn't fancy going alone and she knew Ginny would be with Dean Thomas whilst Lavender and Parvati Patel were too giggly and girly for her to want to spend long amounts of time with them. The trio didn't seem to mind her going with them, but then they never did seem to mind her being there; she could just always sense that they were holding things back to discuss later which made conversation quite mundane.

Nevertheless, by eleven they were sat in the Three Broomsticks at a table together drinking butter bears by the fire, talking about lessons, teachers, Quidditich and where else they wanted to visit that day. Frances kept quiet most of the time, allowing the others to dictate the course of the conversations.

"Frances," Harry abruptly said to her, "have you noticed anything weird about Malfoy recently?"

"Oh, not this, Harry," Ron moaned and Hermione pulled a face, suggesting that she wished Harry hadn't asked the question.

"No," Harry said to them, "let her answer, I want to know what she thinks."

"Erm, well, yes, a little bit actually," she replied although determined not to give anything away about their recent meetings; she had made a promise to him and whilst she knew he probably wouldn't do the same back, Frances never betrayed her word.

"See!" Harry exclaimed, "I'm right!"

"Fran, Harry thinks that Malfoy's up to something," Hermione began to exclaim.

"He thinks he's a Death Eater," Ron finished.

Frances frowned and shook her head, "No, he's only sixteen."

"Exactly!" Ron and Hermione cried together but Frances could see that Harry was convinced that he was correct.

Not long after, the four Gryffindors decided to leave the bar as it was getting very busy and therefore difficult for them to hear themselves think, let alone continue with any sort of conversation. After visiting a number of shops that interested them and running a few errands, Hermione suggested that they make their way back to the castle as it had been a cold day to begin with and was getting chillier by the minute. Summer was well and truly over.

As they approached the castle, they all heard the shrilling scream of a familiar voice, which caused them to run towards the sound.

"My God," Hermione cried, "It's Katie!"

To their horror, Katie was shrieking in terror as she was sent above the ground, wavering in mid air. A package lay on the ground below her and Leanne was on her knees sobbing at the disturbed sight of her friend. Before anybody could do anything, Hagrid's allaying voice echoed towards us, scooping up Katie limp body which had since fallen to the ground.

"Nobody touch anything!" Hagrid cried clearly and sternly. Harry backed away from the package that he had been about to examine, obeying Hagrid's words with respect. The four of them looked between each other, not quite sure what to make of the situation. Frances was able to remain relatively calm as they followed Hagrid. They knew that they would be called on to give statements about what they saw and already Harry was ranting about curses, dark magic and Draco Malfoy.

In fact, Harry didn't shut up about Draco Malfoy all the way to McGonagall's office. Ron and Hermione were arguing with him about it but Frances just listened and tried to make sense of what Harry was saying. She wanted to side with Ron and Hermione, but she had noticed a change in Draco and his reaction to the letter he had received the night before made her slow to pick a side. Eventually, she decided that it couldn't possibly have been Draco. Harry continued to insist that Malfoy was behind the cursed necklace but when their Transfiguration teacher had informed them that he had actually spent the day in detention, it quietened Harry down and reassured Frances that her eventual judgement was the correct one.

Once she was back in the Common Room that evening, she tried to put everything to do with the day out of her mind but that was going to be difficult as the other three continued to converse about Katie Bell's injury and the possible causes of it. Instead, she made her way to bed early and found that she fell asleep almost straight away.

...

Her early night meant that Frances was up early the next morning. She had awoken at six thirty and although she had lain in bed for another half an hour, attempting to fall back to sleep again, by seven she was up and getting dressed. So early was she up for a Sunday that nobody was in the Common Room yet. Breakfast wasn't going to be served until eight therefore Frances found herself on a stroll around the school grounds. She was just enjoying the fresh air when she stumbled upon Draco Malfoy sat under a tree alone. She realised that she had often seen him alone this year compared to other years when he had rarely been without Crabbe and Goyle.

"We have to stop meeting like this," Frances said approaching him.

"What?" he replied rudely.

"Never mind," she breathed, just trying to have a civil conversation for once, she thought to herself.

"Did you hear about what happened to Katie Bell?" she asked; everyone had been discussing it and it felt like a normal thing to ask. Then she remembered that Harry had implicated him in it and recognised that it probably wasn't one of the best conversation starters. Not that she believed Harry.

"Yeah," he grunted.

"I heard they're taking her to St Mungo's today," she continued.

"Oh, are they?"

"Are you okay?"

"Why do you always ask stupid questions?"

"Sorry," she said as she sat down beside him. He looked confused and uncomfortable but quickly accepted that he wasn't going to get rid of her quickly.

"So, I take it you're not okay then? Well, is there-?"

"No! That's another thing you keep doing, asking if you can help. Well, you can't, honestly, trust me," he cried.

"Sometimes it can help to talk about it."

Draco didn't respond. She inferred that that was also a definite no.

"You were right, you know. I'll admit it. At first I didn't want to, was even afraid to but I'm not anymore. Heck, I was afraid of you back in September but so much is different now, I guess," she began after a minute had passed.

"What are you talking about, Edwards?" he asked even more confused than when she had taken a seat beside him.

"About Harry, Ron and Hermione," she continued, "they're not my friends. You were right to say that I look out of place amongst them."

"Oh, well, I'm sorry about that," he retorted.

"Sorry?" she questioned him.

He shrugged and answered: "Yeah that Potter doesn't see that you would be a good friend to have. I don't know why you want to be friends with the 'chosen one,' anyway."

"You think I would be a good friend to have?"

"Well, you clearly care about people; I wish you would care about someone else, mind you because I can categorically say that I do not want your help."

"Right," she said. Frances was now looking directly at him. She noticed how pale and thin he was looking but she also found there to be something attractive about his face; the way he only smiled with the edges of his mouth and the way his grey eyes moved slowly and lingered on everything he set them on. She was starting to feel at ease around him when he suddenly shifted and it made her jump, proving that she still had to overcome her fear of him. At the same time, he was taking in her figure. She was quite tall, taller than most girls at their school and slim too but deficient in the chest area. She didn't wear much make-up but this allowed him to examine her smooth although not unblemished skin. Draco was finding himself attracted to her again.

"Have you done the potions homework?" Frances asked, attempting to keep the conversation going. Draco Malfoy snorted and shook his head.

"No, I have better things to be spending my time doing," he said justifying why he hadn't done it.

"What? Like spending yesterday in detention?" she challenged him, "For not doing your transfiguration homework."

Draco smirked for a moment before looking grave again. "No, other things, actually. And how did you know that?"

"McGonagall told us yesterday when..."

"When what?" he pursued.

"When...when...when, well, Harry thought you might have had something to do with..." she proceeded cautiously.

"WHAT?" Draco Malfoy reacted, "Eurgh, I wish Potter would stop trying to figure everything out. He's not an auror yet, if he'll ever be."

"Well, were you...?"

"No, no I wasn't, alright?" he replied and they stayed in each others' company for a few more minutes. Frances hadn't been convinced by his answer and how she was wondering whether Harry was actually right. Still, he had been in detention. At the same time, Draco hated himself for not providing a more believable refutation of Potter's accusation. If he protested any further to her then it would be obvious that he had something to hide but equally leaving it there could be fatal.

As he watched her get up and walk away off to the Great Hall for breakfast, he thought about how he could possibly use the fact that she was close enough to Potter to know things but not close enough to be completely loyal. Besides, he thought, she's not bad company.

...

The thought of using Frances for his mission was growing on Draco. The more he considered it, the more viable a solution it sounded to him. If he could know what Potter and the rest were thinking and what they knew about him already, he could figure out when it was best to work on the vanishing cabinet. He even wondered if he could hear secrets about the Order. Draco Malfoy was just pondering over this when Theodore Nott approached him in the Common Room. It was a busy evening but Draco had been sat all alone. Fortunately for him, Pansy was in detention and Blaise was at a Slug Club meeting.

"I know it was you," Nott said to him, sitting next to him. Draco looked around, worried that somebody might hear them but it didn't seem to him as though anybody had.

"Would you keep your voice down," he hissed in reply.

"So it's true then?" Nott asked, "I know you're one of them, Father told me about it."

Draco didn't reply this time but just grunted in response.

"What's it like?" Nott persisted in his questioning.

"What do you think?"

"Are you proud to have it?"

"Of course I am," Draco lied. Sure, he had been happy to receive his mark and be like his father when he first received it but to be proud of it now was untrue. He just wished it had happened to anyone but him. The mission had not been going well. It was nearly the end of October and he hadn't been able to get the cabinet working and so he had made the risky decision to try and kill the headmaster through a cursed necklace. If Nott knows and Edwards was asking me earlier, he thought to himself, who else is going to guess. Draco wished he could admit it to Theodore whom he had known since he was a child but he knew that he couldn't trust him to keep it a secret; his father was also a death eater and if other death eaters, or God forbid, Voldemort himself found out about how badly his task was going, his life and his mother's life would be made so much worse than they already are.

"Just do me a favour," Draco said addressing his friend, "keep your mouth shut about anything you think you know, okay?" And with that he left the Common Room for the dormitories.

...

When Draco was sat at breakfast the next morning, he knew that at some point that day he would come into contact with Frances. They had Transfiguration last thing of the day but he suspected that they may come across each other sooner than that. He had spent that night in bed thinking over what he would say and do in order to get information out of her. Being the good Gryffindor that she was, he knew that she respond well to an act of sadness and this was going to be his start.

As it turned out, he didn't get to see her all day and even in Transfiguration they were unable to speak. Therefore, his only opportunity was after dinner on the second corridor. She was walking just in front of him so he sped up and passed her. From here, he slowed down and sighed loudly, taking a quick glance in his direction to see if she had noticed him. She hadn't. She was looking straight ahead. In order to grab attention he manoeuvred himself slightly closer to her so that he could nudge her arm and make it look like an accident.

"Hey!" she cried, looking around. When she saw who it was, Frances decided to say nothing more. They continued down the corridor until Draco to a stopped and leant against a pillar. When she saw that he had dropped off, she stopped too and looked back at him. He had his back to the wall and had his head down with arms folded.

"Why are you standing there?" she asked. He shrugged.

"Are you sulking about something?"

"If you call getting bad grades sulking then I guess. It's alright for you, you don't get bad grades," he replied.

"And neither do you. Since when did Draco Malfoy get beat up over what can only be one bad result?"

"More than that," he retorted, "I've been in detention every night this week."

"That's your fault for not doing your homework." Frances had nothing better to be doing that evening and since she was slightly gullible although not foolish, she would stand with him and hear what he was about to say.

"You don't know what it's like," he insisted. The corridor was clearing now so that only the odd person passed them by. "I have a lot of pressure on me; my parents are counting on me to succeed."

"Look, Malfoy," she said to him, holding her books in her arm. "I know this isn't any of my business but maybe you should speak to a teacher or even Dumbledore."

"I can't," he whispered.

"Why not?"

"Because they won't understand." Suddenly Draco was beginning to wonder whether he was still talking about school work and Frances was becoming sceptical too. She took a step closer to him and looked into his deep, grey eyes.

"Why are you talking to me about this?" she asked him slowly.

"Because you seem like you would listen." Draco cursed himself for having such a poor excuse and sounding so ridiculous.

"I thought you didn't like me. I thought you wished I didn't want to help you and that I would leave you alone," she challenged him. He shrugged again.

"Do you know how sexy you look when you pull that serious face?" he asked her. If there was one thing Draco knew how to do, it was to charm. Frances coloured and looked away embarrassed.

"Maybe, maybe I could help you with something you're finding difficult?" she proposed, trying to revert back to the original conversation.

"What, be tutored by a Gryffindor?" he said pulling a face. He knew he would have to make this believable by seeming reluctant at first.

"I get it. Whatever, see you," Frances said as she begun to turn away. She didn't really want to have to spend hours tutoring Malfoy, she didn't know why she had offered to do so. But, to her dismay, Malfoy retracted his negative answer and said he would be interested.

By the time Frances had made it back to the Gryffindor Common Room, she had agreed to meet with Draco three times a week in the library to tutor him in Transfiguration and Arithmancy, two subjects in which she excelled. Her own abilities in their other subjects were not so excellent and therefore she refused to take on the responsibility of tutoring him in them. As previously mentioned, Frances may have been gullible but she was not foolish. She sensed that there was more to these meetings than studying but she couldn't work it out and her curiosity was getting the better of her. With very little excitement to be found in the tightly controlled castle this year, Frances was out to find her own entertainment.