Scarred Roses and Blood Filled Chocolates

Chapter Four: The Handing of the Doves

Down the steps to the dungeon he went, the temperature dropping with every downward motion. His bones were used to it, most of the older students were. The streams of thought coursing through his brain were lastly on the weather, focused on her, and for once he wasn't trying to push them away. They had sat side by side in the library until eleven o'clock when Madam Pince hurried them out. For all his hard efforts and all her positive motivated determination she still couldn't grip the biggest, most staggering facts.

She had, at least, memorized the generals' names and the sights of the most important battles, using the same methods of memorization she had used during the war. To her the name had been nothing more than targets worthy of assignation via her murderous hands. The Vampire-Werewolf battle plans were committed. Empty actions done in specific time and place.

But the reasons and aggravators for the past war were lost. Draco had gone over the long time rivalries between the clans, but his patience was to no avail. He had explained the theories several times over, and though the explanations detailed eloquent, she still had minimal comprehension.

Through the portrait hole and over the threshold, she crumpled in her usual corner. Harry and Ron had fallen asleep on their Charms homework. Shaking them lightly they each stirred, puffy eyed, sleep caking their lashes. Ron had to peel his essay off his mouth, where it was adhered by drool dried in time.

"Nice. The paper on Enthrallment Charms goes real well with your complexion."

Ron shot her an incredulous look. "Where have you been?" he let out a monstrous yawn.

"In the library. I'm re-writing my Vampire-Werewolf essay for Professor Binns." She knew full well she was lying, but her time with Draco had been special, in an oddly perverse way. It had been truly nice. He had been, well, nice. They had spent several hours together, and he had been unnaturally patient, helpful.

"Oh good! Can we copy?"

"No! But if you want me to read over your paper, I'll check for grammatical and practical errors. Oh, Harry, that is wrong! Enthrallment Charms don't emit a smell, they flash a bright light of pure white energy. A light blaze."

As Harry erased the rubbish about charms that smell like rice pudding, they heard frantic footsteps pounding down the staircase from the girls' dorm.

The door flung open and Ron, who had fallen back to stupor, jumped a few inches into the air. In his shock he hexed Lavender blue. Lowering his wand he began to realize what he had done. Lavender turned a deep shade burgundy, and Hermione had to work hard not to giggle. "Ron, make her normal again."

"I think my color change makes her look foxier," said Ron pecking Lavender on the cheek before reversing the spell.

For a moment Lavender fluttered her eyelashes, put on a high-pitched giggle and for a few seconds she had become the stupid flirt she had been before...before everything.

In the months since the war had begun and ended the seventh year girls had drawn into one another, holding monthly rites of passage for the souls lost, holding fundraisers for war supplies. Bonds had not only grown in hardship, but had retained into friendships.

Just as suddenly as she'd changed, Lavender became the girl she had become; sure of herself and her decisions, taking her time and letting every action count. Underneath she was still a gossip...

"What happened with you after dinner?"

Retracing her steps from that evening she concluded that she must have told Lavender she was going to the library, and with whom she was going.

After Ginny had been killed by a nameless souls, she had begun to confide nearly everything in Lavender, Parvarti, and occasionally in even less likely girls.

"Um, nothing much," concentrating hard she hoped Lavender could sense her reluctance and secrecy with her telepathy.

Comprehension drew into Lavender's eyes, "Alright, let's go to bed, my head hurts." The tiny enforcement on the word 'head' told Hermione she had gotten the message.

Longing flickered momentarily in Ron's eyes, but he eventually let Lavender go. Hermione bid the boys goodnight, but as she left it was in bitter fashion. Ron had something she desperately wanted someone to care for her. Ron protected Lavender, and Lavender complied, but constantly kept watchful eyes on him.

Harry didn't have anyone, not since Ginny died, but he seemed so...

Hermione shook away the allegations, Harry wasn't hiding anything. He hadn't kept a secrete from her and Ron since the prophecy. But now...after everything...Harry just wouldn't keep anything from them.

"Yes he would," said Lavender, interrupting her reverie.

"No he wouldn't," Hermione replied while she opened the trunk at the end of her bed. Reappearing from inside the trunk, she saw both her roomies sitting up on their beds, not even pretending to be asleep.

Lavender was applying an herbal paste that she had made in Potions to her face, and Parvati was putting Muggle hair curlers in he short hair. She had cut her plait off when Padma fell into a coma, a condition there was no magical cure for. Parvati was just opposite of Hermione, who swore she would never cut her hair again after her parents' deaths.

"Pardon?" intoned a sarcastic Parvati, another telepath.

"He would never keep a secrete."

Raising an herb flecked and perfectly arched brow Lavender replied, "Ahhh! But he is, and he does. I can't say what he's hiding, his thoughts are clogged by loss and mourning--"

"Not like you, you're like glass," said Parvati matter-of-factly.

Suddenly her back straightened eyes brightened, and the curlers on top of her head bobbed up and down. "No way! Not Draco Malfoy, that's funny!"

"Would you two stay out of my head?"

"No," came the quick harmonious answer.

Glaring at her dorm mates Hermione threw herself under the heavy duvet, only to struggle from her entanglement to answer the tapping at the window.

Silence echoed around the dungeon Common Room, it was fairly late, even by Slytherin standards. But on any given night there were usually a few stragglers, doing homework, listening to Bee and Freddie's on WWN, or even doing more stimulating exercises.

Unsure of his lifeless surroundings he sunk into a dark corner, his book bag sliding soundlessly to the ground, uplifting his hands he readied himself in defense. Quiet was good, eerie noiselessness was bad, especially in this particular Common Room. In this Common Room it was just plain unsettling.

He stood in his corner for several minutes, his guard lifted, but when nothing happened the resistance began to fall. He was lowering himself to pick up his bag when the shadows shifted near the door. Light steamed in from the open doorway, two figures stood shrouded in the light.

One was a boy, slightly on the short side. The other was a girl, generous hips, and from the way she carried herself he suspected it might be Pansy, and perhaps Blaise. The shadow shifted her considerable weight, and pulled the boy inside.

"Hurry," she whispered urgently, dragging the stranger. He tripped and stumbled as she hassled him over the hard stone floors. Squinting he tried, and failed, to turn the unidentified stranger into a definite persona. Pansy rushed the guy up the stairs before he could tell who it was. Assuming that the boy was in fact Blaise he lifted his bag and drifted vaguely to his dorm, wondering how Goyle had uncharmed the girls' staircase.

Still fully clothed he flung himself on to his mattress, listening for any sound beyond the four dorm walls. All he heard was the poor snoring harmony of his four dorm mates.

Four...that meant...Ha! Pansy had finally moved on to some dull Ravenclaw.

He was just putting his arms behind his head, hoping to sleep straight through to the next afternoon.

But he would not have his way.

The portrait was not at all to her liking, an oil painting of Godric and Salazar. They were snoozing peacefully, their heads resting on each other. Hermione stood before their gently breathing images and checked the letter in her hand again.

It had come right as she let her lids flutter. The Headmistress wrote that the reconstruction of Head Boy and Head Girl's dorms was completed. At the head's request, she moved to her new quarters immediately.

She supposed it wasn't the painting she disliked, more the fact that she couldn't get the damn thing open. Every spell, every burst of magic, even yanking at the gilded frame wouldn't get the thing open.

"Technical difficulties?" came a voice from down the hall. She'd known he'd been here since he'd turned he corner nearly a Quidditch pitch down the hall. His footfalls, though muffled, made the floor shutter beneath her feet, his breathing was loud, and his presence spoke all those volumes.

"It won't open."

Draco rolled his eyes, "Well I can see that, but why won't it open?"

"I don't know, if I knew we wouldn't be having this discussion."

Acute abilities or not, neither of them heard the images on the wall begin to move. Godric sat lavishly in a plush leather chair, smoothing his silky red robes over his knees, he straightened his tall wizard's hat sat above a head of deep golden hair. Salazar crossed his legs and began to tap his fingers expectantly on a hard wood table between them. Salazar wore no hat, and his black hair was long and lanky, his eyes a striking shade of flashing magenta. Magenta like lave, like a bubbling brew of passion and hate.

"Dear Godric, it seems we have a set of arguing Heads," said the dead Slytherin Head stroking his goatee.

In feigned disbelief Godric said, "Salazar whatever shall we do?"

The avid chatting of the portraits caught Draco's eyes. He turned from his argument, putting a blank expression on his face as he turned toward this new and unknown adversary.

Salazar squinted at the boy, he had vaguely familiar eyes and hair, but then again rarely any other student looked a stranger to him after so many years guarding the Head Dorms. "Son, don't go all monochromatic with me, I invented monochromatic."

She was taken aback by the weirdness of this man, the eyes, the facial hair, and the way he was sitting chatting with Gryffindor as though nothing between them had lead to two wars. The feud between these once best friends had blown the alliances of four houses, had nearly lost Ginny Weasley her life at age eleven, and had driven Tom Riddle to the brink of genocide. And yet here they were looking as is they were going to eat tea and crumpets, though they most assuredly were not as they were dead and in a painting.

"You did? I had no idea," interrupted Godric. "Anyway, you probably want to get some sleep. Password?"

"You haven't told us the password," said Draco, he gave the founders a scanting look.

"Respect for your elders," was the unionized reply.

"Godric which password shall we use?"

"Why Salazar, the same password we always use."

"Not always."

"No, but Fate was not smiling on that exception."

"True Gods, Godric and I have reached a rare and mutual agreement, you shall have the password till death do us art."

Hermione had to choke back a scream, as it was her mouth was open gasping. "Till death..."

"Do us part," finished Draco. Before his shock could be properly registered the hinges swung and the portrait opened to reveal the adjoined Common Room of Head Boy and Head Girl.

The union of the room was ideal, perfect, neutral. The deep reds pleasantly offset the passionate greens. Hints of silver and gold tied the competing colors together, beneath her fuzzy slippered feet a spongy red carpet settled directly opposite a red ceiling that seemed to have no end, rather it transcended into the heavens for all eternity.

Even as she stood there agape the wall colors shifted and she was floating amidst in sea of green, only to be once again absorbed in the blood ocean.

To her left rested a doorway seemingly sunken into the wall, labeled in a silver serpent. Athwart from that door was another adorned in a golden lion, the snake slithered about over the wood and the lion flexed his back legs menacingly from his prison painted into the wood. Those two representative symbols were the only things in the room steadily opposed to each other, the only judgmental pieces offered.

From the territory he held at the door Draco gazed over the room with no apparent interest, and yet his head buzzed, consuming every detail that wasn't moving. A quaint fireplace, two sofas, a window seat overlooking the vast Hogwarts grounds, and then there were the constantly shifting, altering, continuously flowing, colors, melting and swirling into each other.

As if by impulse, without a previous verbal exchange, they sat down on the sofa each knew was theirs and theirs alone. Nonchalantly Draco placed his shoes on the table that separated the sofas from the fireplace.

"First names?" she nodded.

"No verbal abuse?" he nodded.

"Deal they said before rising and parting in completely different directions only to return to the room's center wondering why their doors wouldn't open.

The tempers that had been brewing shallow all day started to boil, searching desperately for an easy answer. Not necessarily the right answer, but an easy solution.

The rectangle mirror over the fireplace calmly reflected the storm of wills clouding over the focal of the room...

Or at least it did reflect...

Until the images of Godric and Salazar themselves crammed into the shinning surface. "Tsk...tsk...for a Gryffindor she sure does seem to be saving her own hid."

"No, she's just tired, Friday night after all. And I've heard that Slytherin boy of yours was awful brave."

Choosing to ignore his former partner in crime, Salazar turned to the audience. "You are two of the dimmest, most uncreative people I have ever seen."

"People in positions of power are always that way: dull, impractical, uncreative..." rambled Godric.

Talking to Godric, Salazar hissed, "I already used uncreative." Turning back to Draco and Hermione, he said, "Did it ever occur to you that you need passwords for your dorms?" Examining his fingers before speaking again, "Obviously not. Well, in that case I'll just tell you that you need a password to enter your dorms-"

Elbowing the green robed man, Godric hissed, "Shhhhhh-you're not supposed to tell them that. At the rate you're going you might as well tell them what Fate has in storage."

"All I did was tell them they need a password," protested Salazar.

"Fate wanted them to sleep in the Common Room for two days before we told them the solution," fumed Godric.

"Oh darn," said a sarcastic and uncaring Salazar. "Screw Fate," he added.

"We had a Head Boy that tried once, he got smited," reminded Godric with a smug expression on his face.

"Ah-yes! I remember him." Clapping his hands in a most un-Slytherin like fashion Salazar continued, "Your password is...um...what is it?"

"History repeats itself."