CHAPTER 14

"You're the Slytherin, right?" Lee Jordan asks me before shouting, "Expelliarmus!" and sending my wand out of my hand to the floor where the clatter is drowned out by all the spells being shouted around the room.

I bend down to pick it up and quietly answer, "Yeah," expecting him to begin listing off the many reasons a Slytherin cannot be trusted, bracing myself for the rejection I will surely face at the hands of these Gryffindors, but instead, Lee smiles and says, "It's nice to see that not all the Slytherins are as bad as the stereotype."

"Expelliarmus!" He grunts and takes a few paces backward as my feeble attempt at the spell whooshes over him. This is a basic spell I absolutely should have mastered years ago. The time it would've saved me . . .

"And she'd be even better if she weren't dating Malfoy!" Fred laughs.

Lee pauses for a second, his face blank, staring at me in false horror that probably holds some truth. "No," he whispers, "no, not Malfoy. How did you even manage to hear about the D.A. if you spend time around him?"

I smile sadly. And here comes the rejection. "He's . . . he can be a handful," I admit. "But he—he isn't all bad. He's great to me."

Fred and George begin laughing, Lee quickly joining them. "How can you possibly say he's not all bad? He's a bigot!" George points out.

"Yeah, he's a pureblood supremacist," Fred adds. "He might be 'great to you' or whatever, but that doesn't mean he's a good person. You can't trust him. He'll turn on you the moment he learns you're a part of Dumbledore's Army, just watch. Or if he sees you fraternizing with Muggle-borns or blood traitors." He gives a slight bow to let me know he's talking about himself and his family.

It's not like I haven't thought about that very thing, that this thing with Draco likely has an expiration date—the very second he finds out about my extracurriculars—but hearing someone else say it makes my blood boil. I don't even know Fred and George Weasley. How dare they say such things to me? I've actually given much thought to how Draco would react and am terrified he might find out, but I absolutely have no interest in discussing any of that with these strangers. I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself. Draco's reaction to learning that I am in Dumbledore's Army is not the thing I should be worried about. I should be worried about his reaction to me having Voldemort's child.

But the twins' words stick with me. "Expelliarmus!" I shout at Fred. His wand flies from his hand and lands somewhere behind him. "You have no right to say such things to me, Fred Weasley." My voice is low and dangerous. "You don't know me well enough."

"So you're saying that if you keep coming around to these meetings we might know you well enough to say such things?" he asks, stooping to pick up his wand. "Unfortunately, that might be too late for you. By then, Malfoy might have found out."

"I'm done having this conversation with you," I say coolly.

"Just trying to look out for a fellow member of the D.A.," Fred says.

"Well, stop. All right? Stop. It's my life, so let me worry about it, Weasley."

"Okay, whatever-your-last-name-is."

Lee and I go back to practicing Expelliarmus, Lee taking short breaks every now and then to laugh with Fred and George as the twins use the spell against an unsuspecting student—a Hufflepuff or a Ravenclaw, I believe—until Harry catches them. "Sorry, Harry," George says hastily. "Couldn't resist . . ."

After a few minutes of walking around the room and trying to help people, Harry shouts something. None of us really hear him, and we continue practicing the spell, at least until he blows a whistle. "That wasn't bad," he says, "but there's definite room for improvement. Let's try again . . ."

Why did he even stop us if he was just going to tell us to try again?

With the twins no longer distracting us, Lee and I focus solely on the spell, and our performance improves. I can expel his wand half of the time now rather than once every ten tries. And I continue getting better until Hermione calls, "Hey, Harry, have you checked the time?"

Harry blows his whistle again, and silence falls, except for the few wands that clatter to the floor. "Well, that was pretty good," Harry tells us, "but we've overrun, we'd better leave it here. Same time, same place next week?"

"Sooner!" Dean Thomas shouts eagerly, many people quickly nodding their approval.

Angelina Johnson, who I only know because she is the Gryffindor Quidditch Captain and Draco hates her for it, says, "The Quidditch season's about to start, we need team practices too!"

"Let's say next Wednesday," Harry compromises, "and we can decide on additional meetings then . . . Come on, we'd better get going . . ."

As I dart out of the Room of Requirement, Fred laughs after me, "Good luck with Malfoy!"

Only as I begin descending the stairs to the dungeons do I realize that I've missed my first detention with Snape. I immediately speed up, catching sight of the Quidditch team entering the common room when I reach the bottom of the stairs, and sprint toward them. Draco runs into me as he exits the room. "Did you just come from detention?" he asks me quietly. "I tried to get away from practice but . . ."

"No, I completely forgot. I was with McGonagall."

Draco takes me by the hand, and we go to Snape's office. Draco reaches to knock, but Snape flings the door open. "I suggest you release Miss Rodger's hand. After all, that is what caused all of this in the first place, is it not?" Snape says. Draco instantly releases my hand, and Snape ushers us into his office. "I know that I did not specify a time, but from this point forward, be here after dinner."

"But, Professor," Draco says, "what about Quidditch practice?"

Snape raises an eyebrow. "You can go after your detention." He sits down behind his desk and takes out some papers and beings reading them.

"Sir, what are we supposed to be doing exactly?" Draco asks quietly.

"Sitting there," Snape replies, "without talking."

"But . . . how is this detention?" I ask him.

Snape sets his quill down. "Draco has been a rather well-behaved student since his first year. He fell into the common temptation of young witches and wizards. I am not going to punish him."

I look over at Draco. He seems just as confused as I do. "What about me?" I ask. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't mind just sitting here . . ."

"As for you, I simply do not want to waste my time by giving separate detentions. Consider yourself lucky to be associated with Mr. Malfoy." He doesn't want to make Hogwarts too inhospitable to the Dark Lord's broodmare. Do they think that I will eventually come around and stop trying to escape if they make me comfortable here?

Draco looks over at me, grinning, about to say something, until I give him a small shake of the head. "Remain silent," Snape says. "If you weren't in my House, punishment would be worse." And I believe him. There's no doubt that Snape is nicer to the Slytherins. But part of me also knows—suspects—that the true reason is because he doesn't want to give me any punishments without first receiving permission to do so.

After nearly an hour and a half of silence, Snape lets us leave his office and go back to the Slytherin Dungeons.

We enter the common room, say goodbye with a swift hug, and migrate to our separate dormitories. I fall asleep almost as soon as my head hits my pillow.

My fear of Draco learning that I am in Dumbledore's Army makes the next two weeks some of the most stressful in my life. At least the knowledge of being part of the D.A., being a part of the rebellion against Umbridge, the very thing she feared the most, gives me some satisfaction during these long days. Nothing will ever be able to take that away from me, not even if Draco learns the truth, because I still managed to be a part of the rebellion.

But that day has not come yet, and Draco still has no idea.

The D.A. meetings so far have been sporadic and unpredictable, which I suppose is a good thing because no one will be able to guess when the next one will be, making it far more difficult for anyone who is watching the group. If it weren't for my Arithmancy class with Hermione, I doubt I would know when any of the meetings are, which is why, when I am sitting in the common room working on homework, my heart drops when Snape steps in and calls for me. Tonight was another meeting, and if I can't get away from him before then, I fear I might miss it.

I begrudgingly follow him to his office and tentatively take a seat in front of his desk. Snape looks increasingly uncomfortable. "Rodgers," he begins, watching me closely—he can't possibly know about my involvement in, or even the existence of, the D.A., can he? "I have received word from Malfoy Manor—"

"I'm not going back there," I state evenly. "I'm not going back there."

"You will if the Dark Lord commands it," he sneers. I gulp, looking away from him. "However, you are not being summoned."

I force my eyes to meet his. "I . . . I'm not?" I whisper, hope rising in my chest.

He shakes his head and answers softly, "The Dark Lord would like an update on your well-being and has tasked me—"

"You're basically asking me how my life is going?" I laugh. "Professor Severus Snape actually caring about a student's welfare. Are you joking?"

"Rodgers, you must take this seriously," he snaps. "I must report back to the Dark Lord to ensure that you are being well-taken care of."

"So you want to prove that you can successfully 'babysit' a fifteen-year-old?" I ask sarcastically. "Let me just say: you're not doing that good of a job, Professor."

His lip curls. "Would you prefer the Dark Lord remove you from Hogwarts and detain you inside Malfoy Manor or perhaps worse—Azkaban? Or perhaps you believe he will be kind enough to simply lock you away in a comfortable, inescapable place until he is ready for you."

His words send an icy shard straight to my heart. I take a deep, shaky breath. "Is this really necessary, Professor?" All joking has left my voice. "Couldn't you just lie and say I'm doing fine?"

"It had crossed my mind," he answers slowly, "but I do not trust you, and I believe you would tell the truth if asked, the truth that I never consulted you about your life here at Hogwarts."

I sigh. There isn't enough time for this. "So what would you like to ask me, Professor?"

He shifts in his chair and rubs the back of his neck. "He wants to know how you are faring here at Hogwarts."

"He wants to know if I've made any attempts to escape, doesn't he?" Snape just watches me silently. "I want you to ask me the question," I reply, not caring that this could put me even later getting to the Room of Requirement.

His black eyes narrow.

"Ask me the question so that I may answer."

Snape clenches teeth, "How are you doing now that you are at the school?"

"I'm eating really well, much better than I ate for the last five years, thanks for asking."

"And?"

"I never have to wonder where I will be sleeping, so that's nice. And the bed itself is pretty comfortable—though I'm sure you already know that considering you went here as well, didn't you? Come to think of it, Voldemort went here, too, right?"

"Do not use the Dark Lord's name." I roll my eyes at him as discreetly as I can. "Do you . . . feel safe here?" He clears his throat. "Are you comfortable? Are you coming to terms with your duty to the Dark Lord? Are you learning enough that, should the Dark Lord's enemies discover you, you could defend yourself?"

Does he know about the D.A.? "If I say 'yes' to all of that, will I be free to leave?"

"Rodgers, this must be taken seriously."

I huff at him. "I feel safer here than I ever have. I am more comfortable now than I have ever been. Yes, I am fully prepared to serve the Dark Lord in whatever he needs of me. I'm learning enough. Is that what you want to hear?"

"Is that the truth?"

"It's as close to the truth as you're going to get."

"Detention. I will accept disrespect from no one, not even the Dark Lord's future bed slave."

An all-consuming rage, the likes of which I have never experienced, sets my insides on fire and brings tears to my eyes. In one swift motion, I jump to my feet, swipe my wand at his desk and send it flying to the stone wall to my left, and aim the tip of it directly at Snape's face. "DO NOT CALL ME THAT!" My chest heaves with labored breathing as I try to bring myself back under control.

Snape does not look the least bit affected by my threats or my destruction of his property. "I take it that you are not, in fact, doing well with your duty to the Dark Lord?"

My wand quavers, the tears in my slipping down my cheeks. "I am not having this conversation with you." I lower my weapon, spin on my heel, and stalk toward the door, only to find that it is locked with magic and unable to open. My voice is weak when I say, "Please just let me leave."

"I believe I gave you a detention," Snape answers loftily.

"And I have to serve it now? I have things I need to do."

"You should have thought of that before destroying my desk."

"And what must I do for this detention?"

"You may start by cleaning up the mess you've made."

I glower at him. "And when I finish that, Professor?"

"What you did during your detentions with Malfoy should suffice."

"I thought that was special treatment because of who he is?"

"I do not believe you are a real student, and as such, I see no point in punishing you as I would other students. That would just be a waste of my own time."

"So why punish me at all?"

"To teach you respect, something you are sorely lacking but will certainly need when you face the Dark Lord."

With a growing pit of helplessness in my stomach, I aim my wand at his desk, but before I can flip it around to be upright, Snape says, "Without magic."

I roll my eyes and walk over to the desk, grabbing the two legs closest to me and placing my foot on the edge to pull it onto its side.

"Have you made any escape attempts?" he asks.

The coolness in his voice draws the truth out of me because for a moment I almost believe he can read my mind anyway. "No. And if I had wanted to, I could've." With a grunt of effort I manage to get the desk onto its feet. "I went to Hogsmeade. I could've just up and left had I really wanted to." I move to the other side of the desk and begin pushing it noisily across the stone floor, surprised at the level of resistance it gives.

Snape stares stony-faced at me. "You illegally went into Hogsmeade?"

"Illegally? Don't be so dramatic," I say, making my way over to the pile of parchment on the floor. "I just walked right down there. It was fine."

I meet his gaze as I place the parchment on his desk. "Why didn't you run?" he asks quietly. "From what I hear, that's all you've spent the last five years doing."

"That's why I didn't run," I confess. "Do you know how tiring that is? Never having enough food, never knowing where you'll find a place to sleep, never knowing if you'll be attacked in the night? Being completely, totally, utterly alone in this world? It sucks. No matter how annoying the schoolwork and the classmates and the frankly overwhelming amount of people are, I know where I'm going to rest my head at night, and I know that I will have food each day. Why would I give that up right now? As of right now, the Dark Lord has not called upon me. I'm not in immediate danger."

I move to pick up the quill and ink bottle, the last of debris from smashing his desk, and continue, "Besides, had I truly wanted to escape, I would've done so in Diagon Alley." I turn back and return his belongings to his desk. "It's the whole devil-you-know thing, isn't it? I know what to expect here at Hogwarts. While I know it's not what I want, there's a fairly high chance of things being much worse outside of Hogwarts. So I'll stay here until that chance diminishes. Besides, being here allows me to learn magic at a faster pace than ever before, which should come in handy when I reach the point where my only option is running, death, or servitude."

Snape does not reply, and I take my seat back and remain in silence until he frees me.

The moment Snape releases me from his office, I dash up the stairs, trying to make it to the Room of Requirement before the D.A. meeting ends, only to find the members filing out. I missed it. That prick made me miss it. I wait in the corridor, planning to ask Hermione what exactly I've missed.

Fred and George Weasley leave the room and wave obnoxiously to me, laughing at their own false excitement. I wave back and pointedly look away, hoping they'll take the hint. They don't. "You missed the meeting," Fred says.

"We went over some really important things," George adds.

"Like how we're to get in touch with each other."

"Without drawing suspicious looks when Gryffindors talk to a Slytherin."

I smile. "Like you're both doing right now?"

"And like you're doing," Fred says.

"So you're being just as much a House traitor as we are, if you think about it," George says. They begin walking off. "Tell Malfoy to watch his back!" George calls over his shoulder.

"Why is that?" I ask them.

Fred answers, "As Beaters for the Gryffindor Quidditch team, it's our job to knock him off his broom!" They disappear down the stairs, laughing.

A few minutes later, the Golden Trio exits the room. "What did I miss?" I ask them.

"Where were you?" Ron asks.

"Detention with Snape," I answer swiftly.

"For what?" he proceeds to ask me.

"Being disrespectful." I look at Harry and Hermione. "What did I miss?"

Hermione hands me a Galleon and begins explaining what it is and how it works. It's a Protean Charm. I flip it over in my hand, examining it, as she explains that when Harry charms his Galleon to say a date and time, ours will get hot and the numbers on the edges will tell us when that time is. The more she describes it, giving me more detail than I really need, the more my stomach drops. This is how the Death Eaters communicate—I've seen it. Why are they using this?

I drop the Galleon into my pocket, not wanting to think too much on it right now, not when I have zero reason to mistrust them. "Thank you," I say airily. "It's a clever piece of magic, Hermione." I look to Ron and Harry. "Good luck in the Quidditch match."

They say goodbye, and I start down toward the dungeon. As I approach the entrance to the common room, I hear faint singing. Singing? Since when do they sing? The sound makes me uncomfortable, but to my great relief, it ends fairly abruptly and has completely died off by the time I get back inside. Draco, as well as a few of the others, glances up to see who has entered. "You missed practice," he says as I take a seat beside him.

"Practice? Did you fall off your broom? You know I'm not on the team."

Draco laughs, a genuine laugh that makes my stomach flip, and I can't help but smile back at him. "No, no, not the Quidditch practice," he replies. "We were practicing the song."

"Song?"

"For the match against Gryffindor. 'Weasley is our King.'"

Oh no.

"I'll help you learn it when we've got a chance."

"Brilliant," I say, gulping down my regret. Nothing good is likely to come from this.

He puts his hand on my back and leads me to one of the sofas, where we take a seat. "So where were you?"

"Detention with Snape," I sigh.

"Again?" he laughs. "What happened this time? Not caught with another bloke, were you?"

I nudge him. "Never. I was . . . Apparently, I 'disrespected' him. So he gave me detention on the spot. I don't know, it was stupid." Though really, Snape had every right to give me detention for throwing his desk and threatening him. The real question is why he was so lenient. Was I correct in my assumption that he does not want to punish me without express permission from Voldemort, lest I try to escape again?

"Are you tired?" he asks.

"I . . . I don't believe so."

He laughs again, and heat rises to my cheeks. "I was just wondering, you seem distracted."

"Perhaps I was."

Draco raises his eyebrows and leans in. "And just what was distracting my dear Charlotte?" My stomach does another flip. This close, in the light of the common room, his normally gray eyes are nearly green, with little specks of yellow. For a fleeting moment, I have the urge to be this close to him while bathed in an array of different colors, just to see how many other tones his eyes can take.

"You," I say with a wink. More than anything in this moment, stronger than even my feeling of guilt, I want to feel his lips on mine again, because when he kisses me, I can almost forget about everything that is wrong in my life. He watches me closely for a moment, and just when the longing becomes unbearable, Draco's lips meet mine, and his warmth banishes my guilt and sorrow. One of his hands comes to a rest on my hip, the other behind my neck, and I lose myself in his minty breath and soft lips, my fingers tightly grabbing the collar of his shirt.

Someone beside us clears their throat, and Draco and I pull apart, smiling at each other for a moment before turning to see who needed to get our attention. It's Pansy, and I have to physically restrain myself from yelling at her. "Yes?" Draco asks, his voice strained.

"You are a prefect," Pansy growls at him. "Act like one." Then she stalks off.

Draco looks at me, eyes wide. With false horror, he says, "Looks like I'm in trouble."

"Perhaps we should set a good example by working on homework," I laugh.

He grins. "Could you help me again with Transfiguration, Professor Rodgers? Maybe this time help me move my wand correctly, as I needed you to do in class?"

I lean forward and rest my forehead on his shoulder for a moment before sighing, "Why not?"