On the Hogwarts Express, Bloom is reading her spellbook with fairy spells in it, while Ron asks her what she heard.
"Unbreakable Vow, you're sure that's what you heard?"
"Yeah, 'I made the Unbreakable Vow' is kind of hard to mistake, Ron."
Bloom looks at the blinds and they close on their own - her fairy magic.
She mumbles an incantation under her breath, and they see a ball of fire form out of thin air.
The cabin is suddenly freezing, but Bloom's grin is huge.
She makes it look like Hermione's face, then Luna's, then like Molly's before Ron says "You c-c-can't just break an U-U-Unbreakable Vow. By the way, could you please put all that warmth back where it was? It's freezing in here now!"
Bloom grins, shows him the spell to draw power from the world around you, then says "Sorry, trying out a new spell."
She snaps her fingers, and the fireball dissipates - and the room is instantly flooded with warmth again.
"We got the part of no-breathing-the-Unbreakable Vow, Ron. It's not that hard to guess, what with the name and all."
"No, you don't understand - oh, bloody hell, who is it?"
They hear a knocking on the window, and the Harry magically opens the curtains with his wand to find Lavender standing on the other side.
She uses her breath to fog up the window, then writes 'Ron+Lav' and circles it with a heart.
She mouths 'I miss you' and then leaves with a pout.
Harry says "Lovely."
Bloom looks up from her spellbook, and comments "Great talent at drawing, huh?"
Ron says "All she wants to do is snog me! My lips are getting chapped, look."
He points at his lips, and Bloom says "Guess it isn't lasting, huh Ron?"
Harry says "We'll take your word for it."
Hermione passes the cart, sees Lavender's handiwork, and keeps walking.
Harry asks "So what happens if you break an Unbreakable vow?"
Ron glowers at Lavender's fading heart, and says "You die."
Later, at the Burrow, everyone is there - including Sirius, Remus, and Nymphadora.
The new Minister of Magic, Rufus Scrimgeour, comes to visit Bloom and Harry - he wants them to publicly align with the Ministry to boost public morale.
He even tries to bribe Harry with connecting him to people in the Auror department, Bloom and Harry share a look for an instant and Bloom gets mad.
Harry refuses, and points out the fact that the Ministry wasn't so keen last year to be friends when they were too busy calling him, Bloom, Dumbledore, and anyone else that said the Dark Lord was back liars.
When Scrimgeour tries to backtrack, Bloom's eyes start turning orange and she shouts him out of the house - literally, he was backing away from the girl with fire in her eyes and a very dangerous look on her face.
Basically, she said the old Ministry had lost all her respect and the new one was as bad as the old one in its own ways - and when he tried to threaten her, she told him to get detention with Dolores Umbridge and see just how well her Black Quills work and exactly how well she can use the Unforgivable Curses.
By then, he was out the door and down the steps, still backing up as Bloom kept advancing.
Harry ran outside and got her to cool down enough to go back inside while he sent Scrimgeour off.
"I heard about some complaints about Umbridge, but…"
"Yeah, she was terrible. Why she's still in the Ministry is a question I'd really like the answer to. And Bloom would like to see her kicked out and her wand snapped in a million pieces."
"That young woman has quite the temper."
"She's touchy about Umbridge, the woman did torture us, after all. Bloom got the most of it though, and the worst of it by far."
Harry glares at Scrimgeour, then goes back inside.
He finds Percy yelling at Bloom - who has no trouble yelling back.
"You can't just do that to the Minister of Magic! He'll have you arrested! You'll-"
"Percy, I am really, really, really not going to work with a Ministry that is arresting innocent people and locking them away for appearances. They're snatching people, arresting them, and saying they're rounding up Death-Eaters when they're just putting on a show for people's approval! If that's what the Ministry is now, after it was doing everything it could to convince people Voldemort wasn't back when he was, then I have no reason to help them. What will they do? Have me teleport people off the street and they just vanish? Say the problem is going away on its own?"
Bloom storms off again, and Harry says "I'll talk her down. We're both kind of touchy after last year - but Bloom's worse, she nearly died then got called a liar."
When Harry finds her later, she's sitting in a tree and staring at the sky.
"Hey, mind if I come up?"
"Not my tree, I can't say no."
Harry climbs up and sits down on a branch near Bloom, and says "Scrimgeour's a git, one that controls the government, but I git nonetheless."
"Yeah, I know."
Bloom glares at the grass for a moment, until Harry lifts her chin with one hand.
"We're going to figure this out. With or without the Ministry. We're going to stop Voldemort, for good, and then we'll figure out how to make all this work."
"Ron and Hermione won't even look at each other, I probably just got myself on a wanted poster, and you still have every chance of being killed. Exactly how is all this going to work out right?"
"We'll make it work. Together. Promise."
Bloom sighs, and then they branch Harry is sitting on suddenly moves down to put him right next to Bloom.
"When did you learn to do that?"
Bloom smiles weakly, and says "On the train back. It's in the spellbook."
At dinner, Arthur tells Harry and Bloom that what she described was likely a vanishing cabinet, you can step inside and disappear for an hour or two - very handy in the last Wizarding War, when Death-Eaters could come knocking at any time.
They fell out of style though, mainly because they required an enormous amount of upkeep to maintain.
The one at Borgin and Burkes is still fully operational though.
At school, Hermione has no idea where it might lead either.
They can guess Draco's looking for a vanishing cabinet, but why is the big question.
He was looking at the one at Borgin and Burkes the night Bloom invisibly followed him around while her body was unconscious on the ground, but they don't know why.
Hermione says "He looks different, don't you think? Draco. Almost…ill."
Bloom nods, she's noticed he's been taking naps during classes and getting thinner and thinner.
Harry asks "Who could tell the difference?"
Bloom says "Well, his behavior is definitely different. He hasn't so much as spoke two words to us, even to insult Hermione, all year. And, believe me, he's had plenty of chances to do so."
They all nod, and then Bloom and Harry have to go to Professor Dumbledore's office.
Dumbledore shows them a memory of Professor Slughorn's, one of Tom asking him about a magic he found in the Restricted Section.
He went to Slughorn because all of the other professors would likely misunderstand - they're not like him, apparently.
The magic Tom read about is very rare, but he doesn't say the name - and then the memory clouds over and Slughorn's voice turns to an angry shriek.
Bloom can tell that was not normal, the Potions lab does not usually have a dense fog in it that comes from nowhere.
Dumbledore nods, and says "Very quick to catch on, Bloom. Yes, in this case, the memory was altered by its owner - Professor Slughorn. I asked you two to get to know him, and you have. Now, I must ask you to retrieve the true memory. Without it, we are lost in the dark and leave the fate of the world to chance."
Bloom and Harry nod, and try to think of how they could do it.
Bloom comes up with the idea of reenacting the scene, saying what Tom Riddle said in hopes of getting Slughorn to tell them.
It doesn't work, he figures out the fact that Dumbledore put them up to it and leaves.
As they go back to Gryffindor, they spot a figure moving down the corridor.
It goes up the stairwell, and Bloom and Harry curiously follow it.
Bloom uses a spell and sees its Draco, but they have no idea where he's going.
When they get around the corner he turned to, they find he's vanished though.
Bloom does a spell and sees his footprints - they just stop at a point in the middle of the floor.
"Harry, I think we're a little stressed. Let's go back to the Common Room."
Harry nods, confused as Bloom, and they keep going to their original destination.
Bloom and Hermione are doing their homework, while Harry is looking at the Marauder's Map.
Hermione asks them if they seriously thought they could just ask Slughorn to give them the memory if he's so ashamed of it.
It's his deepest, darkest secret, and they just asked him to hand it over?
They're going to have to persuade him somehow, and it just got a lot harder.
Harry says "Hermione, I think Draco's leaving the castle."
She stops reading and looks at him, and both he and Bloom nod.
Bloom adds "He was walking up some stairs, and just vanished in the middle of the hallway - I saw the footprints that proved it. They just stopped in the middle of the floor. Now, unless he was levitating himself, he really wasn't in the hall."
AN: Where's Draco going? And how are Bloom and Harry going to get the real memory from Slughorn? Keep reading to find out!