Hello hello! First of all, thank you to everyone who added this story to their alerts/favorites. And a special thanks to AnneDance1711 and Kaylee13133 for your reviews! :)

I'm so happy that this chapter was on time. It feels like it's been forever since that happened. Unfortunately, with Christmas getting so close, I won't have as much time to work on the next chapter either. I will be working on it, but I can't guarantee that it will be ready by next week. I will, however, have it out the week after.

Just so you guys know, this chapter and the next are more Alyssa/minor character centric than anything else. No Marauders for a couple chapters. Boo. But they will return soon! Do not worry. ;) So without further ado, here is chapter 9! Please enjoy and leave a review. :)

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Chapter 9

Two days after the ball, we packed our things and boarded the Hogwarts Express. Just before I could slip into a compartment after Lily and Brooke, a hand caught my arm. I turned and locked eyes with Adam.

"Adam!" I squeaked, suddenly nervous.

See, after chasing Lily down at the ball the other night and staying with her for the remainder of the evening… I hadn't seen Adam since. I hadn't even made an effort to seek him out. In all honesty, I'd only left Gryffindor Tower to eat, and even then, that was only twice. The other times, Alice and Marlene had brought back enough food for us all to have a picnic in our room, and we'd made somewhat of a girls' weekend of it.

I tried to convince myself that I wasn't avoiding him, but even I didn't believe the lie.

"Can we talk?" he asked me.

I really didn't have much of a choice there, did I? What excuse could I possibly make to get out of that? Plus, there was nowhere to run. He could simply follow me into any compartment I chose. Reluctantly, and feeling like I had just signed my death warrant, I nodded.

Adam moved his hand down to hold mine, eliciting an immediate blush. He pulled me into an empty compartment and closed the door behind us, pulling the blind shut as well. I rubbed my sweaty palms down my jeans.

He's going to be so furious that I ran the other night, I thought.

That's his problem. More important things were at stake! the other side of my mind argued.

As he turned around, I found the words tumbling out of my mouth against my will. "I'm sorry!" I wasn't sure why I felt the need to apologize, especially since I'd apologized right before I ran off the other night, but I just felt like I had to. "I'm sorry I ran the other night at the ball, but you saw– I mean, I think you saw– but Lily was crying and–"

"Hey, hey, hey," he interrupted, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. "It's all right. I get it; your best friend needed you more than I did at the time."

I blinked. "You… understand?"

"Of course."

"So… why–"

Adam flashed a lopsided smile. "You do remember what else happened, don't you?"

Well, yeah, how could I forget?

"Maybe you should remind me," I teased, the words coming unbidden to my lips.

Wait, what?

Marlene would be so proud of my flirting. But at the moment, I was horrified at what had just come out of my mouth.

Thankfully, Adam took it in stride. In fact, he laughed.

He stepped closer and prodded my chin upwards with a finger. He leaned in close, and when his lips touched mine…

Nothing.

It was exactly the same as before. It was sort of… Blah.

Not exactly the fairytale moment a little girl dreams of.

He pulled away just far enough to look me in the eye. "I'm not going to assume anything, so I'm asking properly." I held my breath as he paused. "Alyssa, will you be my girlfriend?"

I'd never felt so conflicted in my life. So kissing wasn't all it was cracked up to be. There were still the butterflies in my stomach when he looked my way, and I felt inexplicably giddy in his presence. Those were good things, right?

So I whispered, "Yes."

He kissed me again, and I tried to ignore the voice in the back of my mind telling me that this wasn't right.

o0o0o0o

After our mini-excursion at the beginning of the train ride, Adam and I went our separate ways. He had to meet up with some friends to talk about some Quidditch strategies for the springtime matches, and I gladly took the opportunity to run back to the girls.

I shouldn't have been so excited to return. Once I stepped into the compartment, I was bombarded with questions.

"Where have you been?"

"Were you with Adam?"

"Of course she was with him, where else would she be?"

"Look, she's blushing!"

"I bet he kissed her."

"Oh, was it good, Alyssa? Tell us everything!"

I grumbled as I sank into a seat. "I bloody hate you all."

"We know," said Alice. "Spill it. Now."

So I spent the majority of the rest of the ride telling them everything about Adam and I. It was actually quite exhausting, and I was ever so thankful when Lily strode in from her prefect rounds and pulled me outside.

"What's going on?" I asked her.

She shook her head and pulled me all the way down to the end of the car, where she found the empty compartment I'd been in with Adam earlier. I sat down on one of the benches and she sat across from me, clutching a sheaf of parchment.

"I've finally finished that research on skiakyns," she told me.

I tensed and leaned forward. "And?"

She took in a deep breath. "I.. don't know, to be honest. I haven't completely finished writing out my own theories, but I figured you've waited long enough and this will give you something to think about over break."

Lily passed the parchment over to me, and I flicked through each sheet. They were all filled top to bottom with her tiny writing, some diagrams out to the side, some doodles to go along with her thoughts.

"How did you get all of this out of that one small book?" I asked.

"A lot of it consists of my theories," she answered. "Just… hold on to it until you can read it alone, all right? Some of it might be overwhelming."

I looked up at her. "Is it bad?"

Lily looked at me with such uncertainty that it scared me. She was always so sure of everything, so confident. But now, she looked like she was contemplating a million different possibilities, each outcome worse than the last.

"I wish I could tell you," she said.

"That's encouraging," I tried to joke, but it came out strained.

The train began to slow, so we stood to head back to our compartment and gather our things. Lily stopped me before we left and hugged me tight.

"Just… hold on, okay?" she murmured. "We'll figure something out."

My throat was too tight to speak, so I nodded.

We went back to where the other girls were sitting, and I stuffed the parchment into a bag, slinging it over my shoulder.

As soon as the train came to a halt, the corridors were crowded with students eager to go home for Christmas. I tried to prolong the inevitable just a little bit more, if only because I wasn't quite ready to face the throngs of people on the platform. But my friends were leaving already, and I didn't want to be left behind before I could say goodbye.

I followed everyone to the platform, where I received hugs from Alice, Marlene, and, to my surprise, Brooke. She'd never been the one to initiate touch, and I added it to my list of accomplishments.

Lily pulled me into a tight hug, but didn't let go for a while. She whispered in my ear, "When do you leave for Germany?"

"Next Saturday," I whispered back.

"I'll write you. Let me know what you think of those notes if I don't see you before you leave." She pulled back and gave me a tight smile. I nodded.

"Alyssa!"

I turned and saw my cousin Hestia waving to me, standing on her tiptoes to see over the heads of the crowd. I finished my goodbye and hurried off.

Hestia linked arms with me and pulled me along. "My parents say you're coming home with us for now."

That immediately shot anxiety through my veins. Where were my parents? Had something happened?

Uncle Peter and Aunt Clara both greeted me warmly when we were close enough. But I could see the stress lines around their eyes, their forced smiles. Uncle Peter kept rubbing his temple like it ached.

"What's going on?" I asked as Clara wrapped me in her arms.

"Don't worry, all right, love?" she answered. "Your parents were called in to work and couldn't make it to pick you up. They said they would come to get you when they got off work; don't concern yourself too much with it."

But it was a concern. They both asked off work to come collect me on days like this. If Dad had to be called in to work, it meant that there had been an attack. And if Mum had been called in, that meant there were enough dead and injured that the normal Healers on duty wouldn't be able to handle it all. Something had happened, and it was bad. Yet no one wanted to tell us. I looked around the train station and I noticed the same thing. Kids talking animatedly while their parents smiled and nodded, but then looking over their shoulders as though someone might be lurking in the shadows, waiting to attack when everyone's guard was down.

How could I not worry when people were dying and no one wanted to speak about it?

o0o0o0o

"Tell us about school, girls," Aunt Clara prodded while we set the table for dinner.

"Oh, it's just the same old stuff," Hestia shrugged. "You know, Potions is awful as always, McGonagall is ruthless in Transfiguration, and Slughorn is still promoting his god-awful 'Slug Club.'" She snorted and shook her head. "Really, what an appealing name. Yeah, I'll sign right up for that."

"I thought it was invitation-only," I remarked, "and pureblood exclusive. We couldn't get in. Half-bloods, remember?"

"Of course I remember," she answered, rolling her eyes. "It's pureblood exclusive most of the time. One of my friends in Hufflepuff got invited, and she's half."

"Now that you mention it, I think Lily might have said something about it, but I think she's been avoiding going to any meetings, or whatever it is that they do."

"That just doesn't seem fair," Clara said, frowning. She handed me a handful of silverware to put on the table.

"Yeah, well, what do you expect from Slytherins?" Hestia said.

"Enough of that," her mother said firmly. "Tell me something else."

"What else has happened? Let's see, of course there was the ball; that was fun, lots of dancing. Gryffindor epically lost the first Quidditch match, how embarrassing. Potter was distraught, wasn't he, Alyssa?" Hestia continued to prattle on, and I tuned her out while I set everything on the table.

No matter how hard I tried to distract myself, my mind kept racing with everything that had happened. Lily researching skiakyns. Brooke's continuing jumpiness, even if she had been getting better over the last several months. Attacks still going on everywhere. And the one good thing in it all–

"…oh, and Alyssa got a boyfriend," Hestia said in a singsong tone.

I dropped the silverware I'd been holding, and jumped back before the knife could impale my foot. It clattered loudly on the wooden floor, and I glared at my cousin. "Hest!"

"Not my fault you're clumsy," she fired back.

"That's not what I meant!" Surely my face was red as a tomato.

"Oh, come off it. You know it's true." The smirk on her face could have rivaled Sirius Black's. Now that was infuriating.

I picked up the knife and rinsed it off in the sink. "You can't prove that."

"Can't I?"

Slowly, apprehensively, I looked up at her. The look on her face was quite evil if I'm honest. It was… frightening.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She casually inspected her nails, leaning up against the counter. "I may or may not have seen you sneaking off with an extremely attractive Ravenclaw boy."

"We were not sneaking–"

She pointed her finger triumphantly in my face. "Aha! So you admit you were with him!"

"Well, I-I, er," I stammered, then blurted out, "I saw you getting awfully close to Richard Boot at the ball! What was that about, hmm?" Hestia paled.

"Girls, girls!" Uncle Peter, who had been quietly chopping vegetables, cut in. I belatedly realized that I had called Hestia out on her romantic endeavors in her dad's presence. My bad. "This isn't a match to find out who can embarrass the other more. Honestly, one would think you two were sisters the way you taunt each other." He fixed us with a hard stare. "Now, make up to each other."

Hestia and I, now thoroughly chastised, met eyes and muttered, "Sorry."

"Good. Sit down; dinner's ready."

Later that evening, Hestia and I stretched out on her gigantic bed. I sighed, unreasonably comfy. It was like lying on a cloud.

"Your bed is my favorite," I muttered.

She sighed in contentment. "I know, right?"

We sat in silence for a while, and I had nearly drifted off to sleep when she propped herself up on one arm and said, "I feel like I never see you anymore."

I opened my eyes and looked at her. She was right. Recently, we'd never done much more than wave and say a few words in passing. "Yeah, I know. I guess a lot of it's been my fault. I've been so caught up with Brooke and Adam that I sort of pushed everything else– including you– to the side."

She shrugged. "My fault too." Her cheeks got a sudden pink tint. "You weren't wrong about Richard Boot."

I laughed, and soon enough she joined in. She lay down again and snuggled closer. I turned on my side so I could face her, assuming the same position we always had when we were little and had regular sleepovers. I missed those days, and wished we could go back to those times. No worries about our friends, no war, just us with our imaginations to guide us.

Slowly, we drifted off to sleep. And for once, I was completely comfortable as I slept.

o0o0o0o

When we woke up the next morning, the smell of bacon was permeating the house. After the huge dinner we'd had last night, I thought I would never be able to eat again. But my stomach let out an appreciative growl anyway.

Hestia and I trudged downstairs. I stared at the back of her head while we walked, and I snorted when I realized that Uncle Peter was right: Hestia and I could have passed for sisters, with our almost matching flannel pajama pants, oversized shirts, and wild brown curls that we hadn't bothered to tame. The only major difference was our eyes. I took after my dad's wide blues, and she took her mum's almond-shaped hazel eyes.

There were more than two voices in the kitchen, I realized as we got closer. I tuned in, trying to pick up on who they were, and I wasn't disappointed.

I ran around Hestia, into the kitchen, and straight into my dad's arms. He held me so tightly that my feet lifted off the ground. I finally let myself admit how scared I'd been that my parents wouldn't come back.

"I missed you," I whispered.

Dad kissed the side of my head and put me down. "We missed you too, honey."

Mum hugged me next and I felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders. As we all sat down for breakfast, I looked around at my family. Here we all were, safe and intact. Dad and Uncle Peter were bantering as usual, Mum and Aunt Clara rolled their eyes, and Hestia and I giggled at their antics from time to time. I allowed myself a smile. In that moment, it felt like nothing outside these walls– not Voldemort, not his followers, not this damn war–could touch us.

Please let me know what you think! If I don't get the chance to update before then, Merry Christmas!

~AMQ