Scarred Roses and Blood Filled Chocolates

Chapter Five: Vultures of Rumor and Deceit

Leaving her new dorm at noon on Saturday she was instantly struck by how quiet the school was. Whispers flew, cupped hands protecting piqued ears and scurrying lips. Hisses of a tantalizing secret flitted from ear to ear, eyes growing wide, faces paling, and the hairs on neck backs prickling.

Even the serenity and solitude of the library was infiltrated by the hurried hisses. People behind shelves, at tables, over Charms homework, the passing of news wouldn't cease. It was like being in a beehive. Hermione was slamming her book shut in agitation when Lavender came skidding in, holding her head.

Smooth golden tresses, cherry face, perfect robes were wry and lifeless, pale and wrinkled. "Lav, what is it? You're a mess."

Lavender tumbled awkwardly into Hermione's arms, sobbing in choked gasps. "Thoughts. Thoughts. Can feel them all. Even the ones I'm not trying to access. Screaming! Screaming! In my skull, even you."

Not since the end of the war had she had to shield an empath or telepath from her thoughts. Quickly she moved calm and neutrality to the front-most regions of her mind, masking her fear and worry with a dense blanket of white.

Slowly she lowered herself and the telepath to the floor, still cradling her crippled friend. "Tell me what you hear," stroking Lavender's hair she slowly sent out a magical summons to any strong enough to feel the subtle magic.

As the tension in Hermione's head lessened the slower Lavender's whimpers became, they lost their high octave, shuttering breaths coming in intervals of lessening space.

Abruptly, Lavender began to speak. "People. Scared, terrified. Saying the Heir of Voldemort has arisen, taking a standard on Hogwarts, seeking revenge...on...someone. So much fear, uncertainty." Tears welled up in the girls otherwise dreamy eyes, lost in the transgressions of others.

"Where's Parvati? Can she feel this?"

"No. She can feel it, but not as bad. Her power was rooted in having a twin and the sacred bond they share. With Padma in her coma her power is cut in half." Her voice fell in pitch, until it was barely more than a whisper.

A wry smile curved on to Hermione's face, she took her middle and pointer fingers and leveled them with Lavender's blue eyes. Vibrant, low frequency, gentle, magic put the telepath into a merciful, dreamless sleep. So bizarre how a playful girl could become so restless so suddenly.

"What happened to her?" choked Ron from behind Hermione's back, his freckles paled, and he seemed to condense into a form no more real than a shadow.

"I put her to sleep, she says she can feel mounting fear, and that's not a good sign."

Ron wrapped his long arms around the shoulders of the seemingly small body of Lavender. "But she's okay, right?" He sounded so young, so lost forlorn. He would be nothing without her, she was his everything. Love, breath, hope...

When Ginny's body had been found it had been as I two of Hermione's strong pillars had crumbled. An anguished older overprotective brother who had failed to protect, and a desolate lover. She had remained and become their pillar to lean on, never shedding a tear through all the grief. Not for anybody: Ginny, Arthur, Dumbdlore, Mum, Dad, Hannah...

This situation was weakening the last remaining fibers of resolve holding up her soul.

The library door creaked open, and Harry and Draco marched in, matching each other stride for stride. Almost mechanically they dropped their jaws and in low unfaltering voices asked, "Situation?"

She cocked and eyebrow, she had truly doubted Harry would feel her call. He may have been prophesized, and he may have had amazing strength and will power, but he just wasn't all that magically talented. Seeing Draco, however, only gave her a sense of strange, unearthly calm.

As the story was retold Potter began to pay Weasley extra attention, his eyes sensitive, understanding. Whereas Draco' eyes solidified, buzzing first form Hermione to the sleeping body of Brown. Calculating, searching, looking for an answer...the answer...to his question..."She wasn't an empath. She was only a telepath, so she shouldn't have been able to sense all that fear."

Damning herself mentally for making that large oversight and then damning him for recognizing her mistake she spoke, "She was an-"

"...empath and a telepath," intoned Ron raising a flour pale face. "She developed the gift after the war."

The silence that then fell between the four generals was tense. A sense of betrayal from the inside vibrated amongst them. Draco was startled to realize the blow it made to him. A person he had almost come to trust, fully, had still kept a colossal development from him, and her, and even from the supposed savior.

Though anger seared inside him he wouldn't allow it to burst from his mouth, the claws were in check. His instincts divided him: telling him to shout and yell, and yet his soldier's head told him to focus on the direct problem...

Fear...he had never really understood fear, yet he hadn't experienced it either. When you literally have nothing to lose no family, no friends, not anything, you just don't get scared. Because, while you fight, and when you a tearing apart the enemy with blazing spells you are supposed to be scared of the death that may lie on the other side of that green light, but if you have nothing to lose then you defy the rules and don't get scared.

You just don't get scared.

"Where is this fear coming from?" he asked.

Her eyes turned over and sarcasm ripped through her voice. "A supposed Heir to Voldemort. Silly rumor. He couldn't have and Heir..."

She didn't know how wrong she was, but it was as he suspected...

Chapter Six: Confined to Realization

He didn't like it. Not one bit. An empath was feeling fears, and not just fears, but the shutters of uncertainty that preceded true, sheer, undaunted terror. Those raging tremors, even from others, put him on his guard.

His senses, instincts, blared at him to do something, anything. Rumors had a basis in fact. Rumor is a part of history, and history repeated, more than once. He respected history and would not overlook its merit.

The longer he dwelled on his basic instincts the colder it became, fog shifted in through the open window, turmoil shook the clouds, and skies darkened as the orb of liquid fired drowned in the horizon.

A creaking echoed suddenly through the room, but he did not jump nor turn to see who it was. It could only be her, the other with the password. He continued to stare darkly at the empty fireplace, his heavy boots on the coffee table, and his body sunken heavily into the burgundy leather of what had become his sofa.

The cold of the room sunk into her bones instantly, over her shoulder she could hear Salazar and Godric give a small shutter as they swung back in the frigid air. Twisting her wrist a fire blazed in the grate, "How did it get so cold, aren't you like ice?"

When no answer met her ears she plopped her heavy bag on the floor and pulled a sheaf of parchment from her pocket. "This came in the evening post. It was addressed to your father, even though you killed him." She spoke the last part hoping to rouse a response from him.

She got a response.

"No. You did."

"Don't be silly, everybody knows you killed him." Swiftly and anxiously she swirled on to the table in front of him, pushing his combat boots away, and thrusting the envelope at him.

"No. You did." He shifted his eyes to meet hers; the sphere of his eyes didn't waver once, never left her face. And she knew he was deathly serious.

Her knees became fascinating, as did the speck of dirt she found lingering on the hem of her robes. "I'm sorry."

The harsh bark that left his mouth jolted her to look him in the eye, again. Running a single finger down her jaw line her laughed again. "Lucy had it coming, every ounce of pain he went through." A humorous and heavy silence stifled amongst them. " He was your first you know?"

"My first?" she choked. He nodded in return, though he was unsure it was a question. Gently he curled the longest bit of her fringe around his finger and tugged it patiently, waiting for the initial shock to wash away.

Hermione let his toy with her bangs, oddly comforted by his finger in her hair, as if he was the only thing anchoring her to that Common Room. The memory of her first kill came quickly to mind, making the greens and reds around her swirl and her stomach ever the more grateful for his steadying finger. She hadn't seen his face, but he had been the one to shoot the Dark Mark over her parent's house. It hadn't mattered who he was; all that mattered was that he was dead. Gone, and he would not kill again, ever.

Her job thereafter had been that of an assassin. It didn't matter who or how she killed, just as long as her mark had a hole through his targeted head. "You were the best." His voice neither awe nor distaste, but she noticed his hands were both back in his lap, folded neatly.

"I don't know weather to take compliment or head." A smile peaked up her face; a majestic curiosity sparkled in her eyes, "What's in the letter?"

"A curse, for me. He'd want me dead if he was."

Interest immediately piqued by the mention of the mysterious, Hermione straightened taking her elbows off her knees. "Curse? I didn't feel a curse."

"You wouldn't of, it's a specific spell, meant directly and singularly for me." He was so calm, as if his dead father trying to bring him too to the grave was a daily activity used to break the monotony of school.

"Oh," she felt herself sink into his eyes, his calm intoxicating, as was his obsession. Completely lost in his gray depths. So much and so little, such a power like she had never known. Indescribable and simply stated, "No, no, no," she muttered indistinctly under her breath, standing up and walking to the bookshelves at the back of the room.

Little did she know the path she walked turned the carpet a thundering shade of tomato red through the foaming field of green. Regretting her removal from his space he draped his arm back over the side of the sofa and reassumed his vigil before the now blazing fire.

Hermione felt it before Draco did; she was having a hard time concentrating on the differences between moonstones and stardust anyway. The air changed, tightened, making oxygen suddenly seem thicker and far scarcer. As if a giant blanket had been set over the air space locking everything in.

She quietly closed the cover of her book, and rose slightly in her leather-backed chair. On his sofa Draco felt the tell tale quiver in his fingers that said all too clearly a spell was afoot, or aloof. Whichever, whether the magic was floating, corporeal, or stationary it still clogged his mind.

Lifting her fingers through the air Hermione traced the scent of power. Draco bypassed sensing, intuition, and an emotion he could not understand maneuvered him in front of her path toward the door.

Under his fingertips the gilded back of the portrait hole felt cool, and still it buzzed with a heady magical energy. "It's a locking spell. A stasis," her voice shook as she too touched the portrait and the power soaked into her body via her outstretched hand. Curious brown eyes met the unquestioning eyes placed on an unquestioning blank face.

Her pursed his lips, registering the spell, and knowing where it came from. "It's like, no, it's exactly like the locking spell we used on the Circle." His entire face darkened as he recalled the final battle, the seventh years in a circle chanting as they struggled to keep the last duel inside their ball of ever weakening power.

"It is isn't it?" not waiting for an answer she hurried on. "That spell, we created it, and not just anyone knew how to resurrect it and cast that charm. We only ever told Dumbdlore how we did it and now he's...gone." The tears that she had been holding up inside came unbidden making the dim firelight waver in her eyes.

"He wanted it. He said he had truly seen the lights of this world and all it's glory," whispered Draco, not turning around to interrupt her memory.

Wiping her tears away with the pad of her thumb, only to feel new ones trickle down as replacements she touched his shoulder. She needed to see his face, a person, and not the skeptics of his back. Skin stretched over bone, reveled in cold eyes of damask, floating in a bed of mooned skin that immediately softened and warmed when it saw her face. He reached forward a strong still hand and softly wiped the last remnants of water off her pink tinged cheeks.

Regaining control of her stomach Hermione said, "So if this is the same spell we used, then we can disassemble the cast the same way." She dipped her head in a low nod reassuring herself of her theory.

"That would work...if we had taken the spell down..." his voice faded unceremoniously. He bowed his head looking at the fading carpet.

Hermione knew he was remembering that day again. The day they had defeated Voldemort. It had taken every drop of magic to close off their sacred circle, and when their magic had drained away they were left with a crumpled pile of seventeen-year-old bodies dominoed over breathing shallowly. "Except we collapsed before we had to take it down," Draco didn't need to confirm what she was thinking. They had been there together, their power flooding through the circle of linked hands.

Changing tone completely she looked back at the portrait, "Did the stasis feel a bit weak to you?" He nodded glumly. "Well that means we're on the edge of the spell. Anybody with enough power to cast this spell in the first place wouldn't have made it so weak."

Catching on he looked up with twinkling eyes, "So, if we are in the weak area then we can use our combined power to blast through these weaker strands and go through the portrait."

"Exactly." Hermione stepped back, Draco at her side, she didn't want to think why such a heavy stasis was over the school, didn't want to find out who was crazy enough to perform such a draining spell, but most of all she just didn't want to know what was on the other side of the portrait.

There was no count of three as they raised their hands to the blockade. Extending their fingers a burst of power escaped their palms. Pure bright energy blew at the portrait. Such was the united force that the hinges unlocked from the spell's wraith and it swung free of its bindings.

For a moment the only thing he could see was the dust where the spell ad pried from the wall and the only noises were the creaking of the now free hinges and the screams of Godric and Salazar as they breezed through the air.

Or was it Godric and Salazar?

The overwhelming and nameless emotion threatened to over take Draco. Speechless for a moment he knew what it was he was experiencing. It was like being a virgin again. Fear drenched Draco, and as loud piercing screams etched a tattoo in his ears he did the only thing he knew to do.

He reached out his arm to the gasping figure of Hermione and drew her lithe frame into a collision with his. She barely had time to see his eyes before he clamped his mouth over hers and their fear shattered in their mouths. As they kissed Hermione let her mind wash into a bliss where she wasn't terrified that they wouldn't survive. It took a moment before he fully realized why he was kissing her, and then he knew. He was kissing her because once they crossed that portrait hole he may never have the chance to do it again.

And still the screams continued.