This is awfully short, and an extremely unexpected appearance. However, I'm revisiting all my old stories, and this is the only one I currently deem worthy of redemption. It's going to get yet ANOTHER major overhaul, but in the meantime, I'll try to post a few more chapters of the old version, just so people will remember me.

Also, every single reviewer was correct. You ALL guessed where she was taking him. I am ridiculously predictable.

I didn't know whether Malfoy had heard about the Room of Requirement from his father, but I certainly knew about it. Albus and James and Tina Shacklebolt were always sneaking off to it, and my brother Hugo and his friend Alex Chang were always trying to follow them, and one of them dragged me along often enough that I could probably have gotten there in my sleep. "Where are we going?" Malfoy asked, and I could hear the pain in his voice. He was walking strangely, too, and trying to hide it.

"Someplace private," I said. Malfoy laughed, and winced, and I blushed when I realized how that must have sounded. "A place my parents told me about," I amended. "Not many people know it's there."

"Do your parents talk to you about going here?" he asked.

"All the time," I said. We had slowed to a snail's pace, and if I told myself it was to accommodate Malfoy, who was probably in pain, then I was only lying a little bit. "Sometimes I think Dad would rather be here than at his job." I gave a nervous little giggle, and a moment of silence passed. "Don't yours?"

"Never," he said as we rounded the final corner and stood before a stretch of blank wall.

"Give me a minute," I said, closing my eyes and turning away from him. I need a place for Malfoy to stay for the night, I thought. I need a place for him to be safe. I need a place for us to be alone— Before I could take back the thought, an unassuming wooden door appeared in the wall. Hoping the gloom would hide my blush, I led him inside.

I had seen the Room set up for many different purposes: spacious, with few breakable objects, for spell practice; hung with hammocks and filled with peculiar magical games for an illicit night spent outside the dormitory, under protest, with James, Albus, Tina, and, to their immense delight, Hugo and Alex; and once, memorably, filled with nothing but sour gray ashes that smoked ominously, remnants of the Place of Hidden Things, that my father showed me when he came to visit two years ago.

But I had never seen it look like this. It was a bit like a dormitory, with thick rugs on the floor, a single four-poster bed hung with green (for Malfoy the Slytherin, of course) in one corner, and a pair of armchairs in another. There was also a stack of sixth-level books and plenty of ink and parchment on a table at the other end of the room.

Malfoy came in behind me, and the door closed and locked with a click of finality. The room, which had seemed perfectly comfortable a moment ago, now seemed very small. And warm. And— "So, here we are!" I said too brightly. "I guess…we've already eaten dinner, so you're good for the rest of the time, and…I'll be going now?"

"Fine," he said, brushing past me into the room, but as he went he stumbled, and almost fell to the floor with a cry of pain.

"What did they even do to you?" I asked, half in exasperation and half in concern. "Throw you on the ground and beat you with sticks?"

"Not exactly," he said, not laughing. I helped him up, and led him to one of the chairs—definitely one of the chairs, definitely not the bed—and crouched beside him. "Petrificuls totalus," he explained, "only Titus Crabbe did it, and he's horrible at it, and I could still move a bit. They kicked me a little, not too much—OW!" I had accidentally poked him in the side.

"You know I probably can't fix all this," I said, trying to simultaneously conjure water and freeze it for an ice pack – one of my mother's favorite heal-all Muggle tricks, though it probably wouldn't work if anything was broken, and I didn't want to have anything to do with it if there were ribs involved, and if he was very bruised he would probably need to go to the hospital wing anyway…

He sighed. "I don't expect you to, Weasley. I'm…" I had the sense that he was struggling to either find the words or simply say them. "…I'm glad you helped me. But you can leave now. If you want."

I raised my eyebrows. "Do you want me to?"

There was a pause. "No," he said. "I want you to stay." He shifted a little so that he was looking at me straight on, and one of his hands was very close to mine. "I really want you to stay, Rose."

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