Disclaimer: Anything that rings a bell is JK Rowling's

Chapter 55: The tale of two graves

"I really do expect better from you, Miss Thornton. If you can finish this set of examples in half an hour, you can have it done by the stipulated time. I do believe you and I both have better things to do than spend our lunch sitting in a classroom whilst I monitor the completion of homework that was supposed to be done yesterday."

Well, nobody asked her to sit in with me. I nodded my head as she went on and on. OK, I know it's irresponsible to not do my assignment but it's just one time. Last year I barely handed in any of my homework, and she was fine giving me zeros. I'm so tired of this whole OWL spiel these professors harp on about. I mean, it's one time!

"-Miss Granger always hands it in on time and even a day or two early and she has prefect duties so I have no idea what would be hindering you from- "

Well, I didn't ask Martin Higgs to fiddle with the Venezuelan fungus in Greenhouse three. Sev wasn't around to make the tonic for Madam Pomfrey and I never pass up an opportunity to make a potion. Plus, there was a breakout of Mubine flu in the Claw tower, so Madam Pomfrey had her hands tied and then some.

"-expect better from the headmaster's granddaughter."

"I apologise again, Professor Vector."

"I don't care for your apologies. Sorry won't rewind the time we have just wasted. Good day Miss Thornton."

And with that she snapped the door shut in my face. I sighed and pulled my bag up on my shoulder. What got her knickers in a knot. Nobody asked her to monitor me whilst I worked. The way she's acting like she missed out on her afternoon delight. I laughed to myself as I walked down the seventh-floor staircase; imagine Vector doing it with someone. She probably recited the multiples of seven as she orgasmed.

"-ss-sss-top i-i-it!"

After three workout sessions, I didn't have to see her to know who that was. Even if Angelique didn't speak much, I'd know her stutter anywhere. I quickly walked down the corridor, my wand out, ready to hex whoever was bullying her.

"And what is an insignificant little-"

"I am not insignificant." I stopped in my tracks at that, not turning the corner. That was definitely Angelique's voice, but it sounded nothing like her. "I-I-I am not! You j-j-just say th-that bec-bec-because you are insecure about y-y-y-yourself so…so k-k-k-kindly move out of my-OW!"

I turned the corner, chosen spell ready to fall off my lips, but my wand hung at my side as I watched Angelique Morian pin the redhead girl against the wall. It seemed the redhead's friends were just as shocked as there watched the alternation, frozen in place. Angelique let go of the girl as if burned, and her grey eyes widened in shock. I snapped back to reality as I watched the black-haired girl raise her wand, "Expelliarmus!"

The spell disarmed the girl and gathered the other two's attention. Angelique was still frozen in shock, and I glared at the three girls.

"One." I took a step forward,

"What?" The redhead straightened up, staring at me in confusion.

"Two." I continued walking forward.

It seemed the mousy haired one was the brains of the operation, "Liz, Mia, let's just go." She grabbed her friends and dashed down the corridor as I reached Angelique.

They were lucky I didn't reach three.

"I…I…d-d-don't know wwwwwwwwhat hap-happened. She just p-p-p-pushed me a-a-and…and-"

I nodded my head at the blonde, knowing she wasn't stuttering now but was at a loss for words. "Don't feel guilty for defending yourself. Those girls are in Hufflepuff?"

I was quite shocked to see the yellow ties, the puffs were known for their friendliness. She nodded her head, pushing her bangs out of her eyes, the rest of her hair pulled back in a neat bun. I always assumed she wore the bun just during workouts, but it seemed she used it all the time. I could tell by the fullness of the bun that she had long, thick hair. I wonder why she kept it constrained all the time.

Angelique was very tall, probably the tallest girl in our year, but she never looked it because she was always hunched forward, making herself as small as possible.. Her grey eyes seemed to concentrate solely on a spot on the floor and I realised that my inspection must be doing a number on her nerves.

"You heading down for lunch?"

She nodded but didn't move. Oh Mi, you would be so proud of my patience. "Want to walk down with me?"

She looked up, her face pink. Oh, screw patience, "Let's go for lunch."

I grabbed her by the elbow, "B-b-b-but my b-b-bag."

"What about it?"

"It's in the t-t-toilet."

I laughed, "Why would you put it in the toilet." She opened her mouth, but I waved it aside, "I'm just kidding. I know what you mean." I walked into the girls' toilets, which we were stood in front of. I saw her bag lying near a basin, those girls probably started picking on her in here. She rushed over and picked it up.

"Does your sister know about those girls?" Juliette wore her hair well; I doubt her fiery nature would let anybody pick on her twin sister.

She shook her head, "I…I d-d-don't like t-t-to t-t-trouble her."

I nodded, and we walked out. We walked down two floors in silence. I kept most of my staring discreet, not wanting to scare her again. I noticed her playing with her fingers in a very particular way, "You play the violin?"

She looked wide eyed at me, as if I had accused her of the nastiest thing, she nodded slowly.

"That's cool. I tried playing the violin once. I was absolute rubbish at it."

She giggled at that, "I d-d-doubt that. Y-y-you're g-g-good at everything."

I laughed, "I can't argue with that logic." I shook my head, "But seriously, no. If you ask Professor Vector, she'd tell you just how no good I am. Who is your favourite composer?"

"The Moriati brothers. They're old w-w-w-wizard com-composers."

I hadn't heard of them, but she seemed to really like them, "Do you have a violin?"

She nodded, "I play every day…I c-c-c-can't sleep without playing it... I p-p-play when…I'm troubled."

I let that sink in, understanding that that meant that she played whenever those three little bitches accosted her. And they did so every day. "You know…I wonder if you could do me a favour."

"S-Sh-sure."

"You know what, never mind. It's too much to ask."

"N-n-no please Ky. T-t-tell me."

"Well…I've been working on this potion for months but I'm not getting the results I need and listening to my brother play the violin used to help me think so much better. I was wondering whether you'd play it for me whilst I work tonight?"

Her eyes widened and her face went red, "W-w-w-well I've n-n-never played in f-f-f-front of anybody be-f-f-f-fore."

"I figured and I'm sure you have something better to do anyway. I shouldn't have asked, it's too much."

I placed an embarrassed smile on my face, as we walked into the Great hall and she waved her hands profusely, "N-n-n-no its n-n-not too m-m-uch at all. I'll do it. D-d-d-d-don't feel b-b-bad."

"Feel bad about what?" Ron draped an arm around my shoulder,

"Eavesdropping is rude Ronald. Ron this is Angelique. She's going to be a famous violinist one day."

"I should get an autograph now then."

Angelique's red-faced shock was turning purple and she scuttled away.

Ron looked at me in shock, "Was it something I said?"

-x-x-x-

"Ky-"

I turned around and shushed Harry. The boy really was too curious; I huddled closer into him though, making it difficult to walk. It was cold though and I could feel the snow through my old sneakers…I probably should have put on some boots. I stopped at the tree and Harry bumped into me, puffs of smoke emitted from his mouth as if reminding me of my insanity to be out this early.

I crept out of the invisibility cloak and pulled out the jar of flames and enlarged it, then threw the blanket at the base of the tree and sunk onto it. Harry, who was also in his pyjamas and a thick woollen sweater followed suit, pulling me against his chest and I leaned my head comfortably against him.

It was probably five in the morning, I could see the weak rays of light seeping through the horizon, it was going to be another dull day. The lake, which was a few feet away, wasn't frozen anymore but I could tell that one dip into its pools of black would probably result in some toe loss.

"Permission to speak?"

"Do you know who Angelique Morian is?"

I didn't have to be looking at Harry to predict his look of confusion, "The redhead Ravenclaw girl with the…the short one."

I smiled, Juliette was short, but I know Harry was talking about her breasts which she was famous for in our year. "No, not her. Her sister. She's in our year too, blonde…grey eyes? It probably would help if she had big breasts huh."

I felt his chest rumble as he laughed, "I didn't know she had a twin."

"They're actually not twins." I recalled the conversation I had with Angelique in my lab a few hours ago, "Angelique is a year older. Their mother passed away the year she was to go to Hogwarts, so she stayed behind to help her dad."

"That's very sad." He rubbed his hands up and down my arms, warming me, burying his face in my hair.

"It is. And she has this stutter. She doesn't talk much because of it and she gets bullied by these three girls, Elizabeth Smetfield, Mia Corleone, and Anna Smith who are fourth year Puffs. They think this boy in their year, Benedict Copperfield, has a crush on Angelique because he once commented on how beautiful her hair looked." This Angelique didn't tell me, I found out from Ginny when I went hunting for those three little bitches.

"Oh. Well…that's petty." I could tell Harry was thinking very hard as to why I had woken him at this hour and brought him into the freezing cold to relay some gossip. "Oh Godric Ky…did you go too far with those three girls?"

I smiled; he did know me well.

"No. Nothing lethal. Should scar them for life of course, as any good act of payback should." It took me a while to proof the hair loss potion so the counter potion and spells wouldn't work on it, and it was pretty easy sneaking the potion into their shampoo. I needed to ensure that Copperfield saw them bald as I knew even if the potion was spell-proofed they could probably get wigs by tomorrow, so I got one of Ginny's Puff friends to take pictures of them once they awoke this morning, and to circulate said pictures.

Any minute now the Puff basement should be echoing with their screams.

I felt Harry's fingers run through my hair. He was very curious, but somehow, he knew this was important, so he remained silently patient.

Ever since I saw Angelique defend herself against that attack there was this weird burning at the pit of my stomach. I thought about if for most of the afternoon and I think…I think I was proud.

Not just of Angelique.

To most people that was just a quick sidestep and a turn, but for Angelique that was overcoming years of torture. And I know I wasn't the one who should take credit, it was Nessie, that line about them feeling insecure about themselves was so Nessie. But for some reason that whole scenario…got me thinking about last year…it was almost a year ago…

I held the hand that Harry had rested on my waist, running my fingers over all the lines of his palm…

"I don't think it hit any arteries." I applied the moonseed balm slowly, but his hands didn't even flinch at the pain.

I knew it must sting though.

"I am aware of that; hence I really don't understand your incessant fussing over it."

"Incessant fussing?" I looked up at Sev, into his expressionless black orbs.

I was sitting on the floor, tending his bleeding hand that hung off the armrest of his chair. I was just locking up my own lab, Angelique had just left, when I heard sounds from Sev's office. When I entered, I found him lazing in his armchair, holding a glass of firewhisky to his lips in his left hand whilst his right dripped blood on to the floor.

"I'm sealing up a wound before you pass out from loss of blood."

He scoffed, "Loss of blood…it's just a shallow cut." He downed his forth glass and I rolled my eyes, was he in a drinking contest I wasn't aware of. I knew better than to say anything though, even to ask how he had come across this injury. I dropped the cloth I was dabbing his palm with, and bent to pick it up. I then caught a glimpse of light in my periphery.

It was a piece of glass, and I could see its brothers and sisters lying in a pattern across the carpet. I then noticed a damp patch on the wall, the liquid dripping down in long lines…I watched as Sev tipped his fifth glass back.

I wonder what had happened to cause him to fling his first glass against the wall and the second to explode in his hands. Obviously, something disturbing enough for him to reach for a glass a third time.

I started applying the wound sealing balm. He was right, it was shallow, it should only take an hour or two to heal.

Sev had smooth hands, but a potion master's hands were the tool of the trade, so it made sense to care for them. I saw a hint of black peak out of the trim of his sleeve, at his wrist…the dark mark.

I've never seen one in the flesh before…and there it was…the sign of Voldemort's heretics…

"I brewed the cure for Venezuelan fungi yesterday."

He didn't respond. If he hadn't been drinking, I would have thought he was asleep. I crossed my legs on the floor, still running my fingers across his palm even though enough balm was applied.

"It was trickier than I thought it would be. All the clockwise, anticlockwise nonsense. It was a good arm ex-".

"I do believe your work here is done Miss Thornton."

I heard the dismissal in his voice and the fact that he regarded me formally, something he rarely did in private. However, he didn't pull his hand away from my own.

"I had to brew Mobine Flu tonics today, its spread to the whole castle. Granted it doesn't have the same physicality required by the Ven-"

"Leave, Miss Thornton. Please. Just go."

"But then I guess-"

"GO AWAY! GO! GET OUT!"

He turned his black eyes on me, anger throbbing in them, the veins on his neck standing to attention as if on instruction from the thunder in his voice.

"I…I will if you let go." His palm had wrapped around my hand and was holding me in place in its iron grip. Sev's breathing was the only sound that occupied the room for moments that felt like centuries, yet his hand didn't loosen around my own.

"I am a death eater."

"I know that."

He looked down at me, eyes screaming words that I couldn't understand and jaw tight as ever, "Do you? I don't think you do. I don't think you understand the nature of what I am. Just last week I had placed-"

"No! You're not supposed to-"

"-the killing curse on a girl no older than you. A muggle-"

"Stop! You're not to tell me-"

"-who had the misfortune to be enamoured by a wizard who has fun baiting young, beautiful-"

"STOP! Let go! I don't want to know! Let-"

"-girls who he sleeps with and then gets his colleagues, which is what I am, to torture and play with her."

"LET GO! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR!"

"WHY NOT! Don't you want to know what kind of man your Sev Sensei is!"

"You're not that man! You just do what you have to for the-"

"OH, SHUT UP BANE. I am a death eater. That is what I am, that is all I am!"

"NO! That is not all that you are. You do what you do because nobody else can. You do it to protect-"

"Protect? And who is it that I protect? Who is it that I guard? You? Am I your guardian? Am I your protector?"

"Yes." My voice rang clear, he let go of my hand and stood, banging the cabinet with the same bleeding hand.

"You'll start the bleeding again!"

"LEAVE!"

"Not when you're like this-"

"Just go-"

"NO!"

He turned around, bearing down on me, somewhere along the argument I had got off the floor, "How incorrigibly stupid are you that you would stay! That you would wish to be in the presence of a man so evil-"

"You're not evil!"

He laughed, a laugh that contradicted the nature of laughter in its coldness, "Me? And what do you know of me to say that? You sit there, innocent, and childlike tending my wounds when you know nothing. Ask me where I was today, Miss Thornton."

I turned to the door, my gut told me that this conversation will not end well if I stayed and humoured him. "Ask me!"

I ignored him and reached the door, "Fine don't ask. I was with Bastian Blishwick."

My hand froze on the handle.

"Yes. Breakthrough. Revelation. She sees the light!"

I turned around again, "Is that what this is all about?"

He didn't seem to hear me though, he shook his head and sat down muttering profusely. He jerked his head up, "Stood right opposite me. Schematics of the circle. Right across…black eyes. Just like mine. It was his initiation…he took the mark today."

"I was under the assumption he had done that months ago."

"No. No. No. He was in hiding. Initiated with the rest of the new recruits today."

I sat down slowly; this explained a lot, but I was also terrified and excited by how loose lipped Sev was being - we were desperate for information but surely if he was telling me so much then he…he is not okay.

"If Linus or Lenzo stood where I stood, Blishwick would be dead. They'd be handing you his head. But me? What did I do? I stood there and watched and swore him my brotherhood."

'You had no-"

"DON'T speak to me about choices. Don't make excuses for this! Don't! Don't redeem me! Don't! I have failed you as a guardian! I have failed you. You should be gone! You should be gone! You should hate me!"

"Stop it. Stop telling me what I should do. Stop assuming that you know what I want!" I stood and glared at Sev across his table. "You think I want his head! You think I want to see you torture yourself because of his existence! You think that's what I want!" I let my breathing catch up and fuel my vocal chords, "Today I met a girl. A girl that I spent two years sitting across a classroom from but was a complete stranger to me-"

"What does-"

"YOU listen to me!" His black eyes glowered at me, but his lips didn't move, "She hasn't been dealt a fair deal in life. People, they hurt her. They pick on her. And she never fought back before today. She usually would sneak up to her dormitory and play her violin. Whenever she is troubled that's what she does. Play her violin. Today I heard her play. I've had the privilege to listen to Joshua bell, to Janine Janson…to Hillary Hahn play live in concert…but I have never heard a sweeter sound in my life than Angelique Morian."

"I do not see…"

"I have spent hours…days…months thinking of ways to hurt Blishwick in the way that he hurt me. I fantasised about confronting him again and trumping him with my new and improved skills." I gulped, letting my mind feel nothing else than the smoothness of Sev's desk. "You think if Angelique had gone up in her room and cried and plotted revenge against those girls that she would be half as good she is today! No! Years from now she will be an amazing violinist and what would those girls be? Nothing! Nothing but a bad memory. I don't want to spend another moment wasted on him. I want to be better. I want to…spend my energy becoming someone that you can be proud of. That Nonno and Linus and Len and Minnie can be proud of. He is nothing but a bad memory."

Sev looked down, away from my determined gaze. I suddenly felt tired beyond words, the conversation draining me, and the look on Sev's face was not one that could be comforted. I turned and walked to the door,

"You are the only thing in this life that I am proud of. I hope that one day you would feel something close to the pride I feel…that one day you won't hate me."

I gulped, the tears tracing down my cheeks as I stared at the door, knowing I would never get anything close to that again from Sev, "I don't know why you work so hard for a sentiment you long since earned. I could never hate you Sensei…I quite steadfastly feel the opposite of that for you..."

"Ky?"

I lay my hand on Harry's knee, his warmth surrounding me as I lay my head back on his chest, "Bastian Blishwick was sworn in as a death eater yesterday. Sev told me. I know, I also thought he was given the mark months ago but turns out he was in hiding."

I could feel him breathing silently, his hands clenched in fists around my waist, "And he did-"

"I'm not here to discuss what Sev did and didn't do. I'm here to talk about Blishwick, like you wanted me to do so all those months ago."

He was silent for moments, I watched a lazy tentacle rise up out of the water, I should have brought some pancakes for the squid.

"OK. If he's out of hiding that means he can be found. You should send word to your brothers'; I'm stuck here in this castle so I would be of no use."

I removed my head from its comfortable position and turned to face Harry. "No. I won't aid them in their obsession for-"

"THEIR OBSESSION!" There was a ruckus as the birds flew away and I blinked, gathering my patience. "Is that what you call your brothers trying to rid the world of the evil that dared hurt you!"

"Yes Harry. That's what he did. He hurt ME. ME." I pointed at myself in emphasis, "And I won't allow him to do so anymore."

His green eyes blazed and his nose flared, "Damn right he won't. He'll never get his hands on you again. Never."

I nodded in affirmation, "That I do not disagree with. But I do disagree on this notion that any sort of vengeance is sought on my behalf. I understand you feel it is necessary but it's not for me. You want it done to make you feel better. But it won't. Please listen. The Chinese have a saying, when you seek revenge dig two graves, one for your victim and one for yourself. I find I quite like living Harry, and I want to live more than I want Blishwick dead."

"So, what…you want him to just walk free."

"He's not going to be free Harry. He will get what is coming to him, but it is neither my job nor yours to serve it." I placed my hands on either side of his face, "One day you will help defeat Voldemort. I don't want you spending any time envisioning Blishwick's death or plotting his murder. That will only inhibit you from becoming better. Do you think he is sitting around planning our deaths. No. He's working on his cause. And we should work on ours. Killing Voldemort would do more good than getting rid of Blishwick. I want you to concentrate on you, not him, on you." I touched his chest; he looked like he was downing a litre of poison.

I kissed him slowly on the lips, he pulled me tightly to him and drowned himself in me instead of the poison.

He pulled back suddenly, "So, what…you want me to just walk away if our paths cross."

I laughed and shook my head, "Oh I don't want you to look for him Harry, but if he finds you, by all means do as you please. I certainly plan to."

I captured his lips again, the wind tossing up my hair ignored as I let myself feel only the warmth of Harry in the cold hands of the morning.

A/N: So that's why I wrote in that cheerleading bit, meeting Angelique helped Ky deal with her feelings towards Blishwick and she's actually come to quite a mature decision that she probably wouldn't have if not for that.

Please review and let me know what you're thinking! That was a tough scene to write with Snape.

Kalina