Will you leave?

Jessica turned her head when she heard him approaching the top of the stairs, but did not sit up.

"After six years, you still perch in high places to tempt detention. I knew you'd be up here, Nott, I mean Jess." You're the only one, she thought. Not too many people care to come up to the roof of Gryffindor tower on the first day of classes. Just me, trying to get the stink of home out of my clothes before classes start.

"You don't have to force informality, Colin. Just because you know me best doesn't mean you know me at all well." Well, now, that's a lie, girl. He knows you better than you do yourself, mostly. You just never told him a lot of details about home...

"Ah." He sat behind her head and looked down into her face. "Well, It isn't like you let anyone in, Jess. You're as moody as..."

"Moody?"

"Yes. Just let me in." He bent down to kiss her swan like neck and added softly- "You won't regret it."

"Ah." She reached up to take his face in her hands. "That's a different sort of letting you in than you were talking about before, isn't it?" She sadly touched the bruise over his left eye. The one her brother Thomas had left that afternoon. They had already promised each other they wouldn't mention it again, but still...

He winced. "Maybe. You only really talk after..."

"Oh, I see the plan, now. Tear down my defenses until I'll tell you anything you want to hear." She sat up and turned around. "How very clever."

Oh, excellent. I've got her attention and made her smile. A real smile, not that sort of grimace she wears when she's thinking about her family. He smiled back at her and offered his hand. She took it, and suddenly they were horizontal. Unfortunately, the mark on Colin's face was not the only one that irate Slytherins had left on his body that day. He gasped in pain as she ran her hand over his left side.

"What is it? Let me see."

"It's nothing." He hadn't been planning on telling her about this mark, but at the look on her face, he relented. "Malfoy took offence at my taking pictures, again. I think he was looking for a reason to hit me, actually. He's always hated me, ever since our first year." She worked on his tie and the buttons of his shirt as he said this, finally revealing enough of his chest to see the wound properly. It looked like he had taken a Bludger under his arm.

"Are your ribs broken?" Her voice was shaking. He couldn't read her expression, except to say that it was very sad.

"No. I don't think so. What is it, Jess? You look like someone's died. It was Malfoy. You know what he's like." She lay her cheek on his chest, placing her hand below the large bruise.

"A long time ago, I knew what they were all like. Malfoy was one of my best friends when I was a little girl. I was a terrible child, I suppose. Malfoy, Thomas and I were like a wreaking crew when we all got together. Narcissa Malfoy called us her little Straffenkinder and made us play outside all the time so we wouldn't destroy her house. Then the boys went away to school, and my parents decided it was high time they tried to tame me."

Now this was news. Colin usually tried to keep her mind off of her childhood, as it made her sad, and he didn't like to see it. He had always known that she had been familiar with several of the Slytherins, but with the way they treated her, he supposed that they had never liked her. Apparently this was not entirely the case. "Well, they certainly failed at the taming bit. You're still marketable as trouble in a box." Then he thought of something else. "Malfoy never hangs around with your brother, does he?"

She laughed just a little. "No. They never got together on their own. Thomas doesn't take orders without balking, and neither does Malfoy. All they ever did was argue if I wasn't there."

"So they haven't changed."

"Yes, they have." She looked up at him, her eyes full of fury. "We used to ask why of everything." She said in a harsh whisper. "They came to school and stopped doing that. They just do what their parents expect of them, now, no matter what. Thomas used to ask me if I was upset with someone before he got mad at him or her for me. And Malfoy... Malfoy was always a bit of a bully, but he' gotten so much worse... I suppose he's in the logical place for him to be, but I think of what he might have been like, and I hate it." Her voice took on a frightened quality that Colin had never heard as she added- "And I would have been just like them. I would have."

Well, you said you wanted her to open up. Suppose the only way out is through, now. "You could never be as cruel as the Slytherin girls, Jessica. That's why you're here."

"No. I'm here because I couldn't..." She stopped. Should she tell him this? What if it got around to her brother? "If I tell you something, will you promise me-" He shushed her and put his finger up to her lips.

"It tried to put you in Slytherin." He said very softly. "But you wouldn't go." At her shocked expression, he explained. "Students refuse or ask for a certain House at least once every year. I heard some of the teachers talking about it a little while ago at the feast. It just means you have more courage than usual. And a taste for rebellion."

"Actually, it means I had taste in something else before I really knew what it meant." She said slowly. "You were sent to Muggle Primary school. Do you remember how women and marriage were viewed about a hundred years ago in the Muggle world?" She closed her eyes, trying to relax.

"As little more than property and business deals, respectively, as I recall. Arranged marriage in the upper classes, divorce next to impossible. Not pleasant for anyone involved, though I suppose there were a few who learned to love their assigned spouse. Luckily my family was not upper class enough to do that sort of thing."

"All right. Now think about all the backward, archaic things you know about the Wizarding world." He had been rubbing her back. At this, though, he stopped and lifted her up by the shoulders. He was clearly horrified.

"You must be joking. Tell me you're joking. They can't do that anymore. Can they?" Jessica sat up and turned away from him and sat quietly for several moments, until Colin wrapped his arms around her from behind. She was shaking, and her heart was beating terribly fast. Alarmed, he did what he could to calm her. Finally, she spoke.

"It isn't something that's ever spoken of openly, anymore. We've come that far, at least. But in the old, pureblood families of Slytherin House, it's still done about half the time, mostly to make sure the children don't end up alone, or with the wrong sort. When I was ten, I was sent to my father's study for breaking a tea set, and he wasn't home, so I was expected to stand in a certain spot until he got back. By that time, I had learned to read upside down, so that I would have something to do whenever I got sent in there. The only thing on the desk that day was a marriage contract for me and-" She swallowed. Hard. "-Gregory Goyle. But there was a condition. I had to be in Slytherin House or go to Durmstrang. No other House or school was acceptable. I don't know how I got through the summer. It was like awaiting my execution."

Colin felt like a large bucket of ice had just been dumped in his guts. The idea of Gregory Goyle even looking at her made his skin crawl, but the fact that her parents had essentially tried to sell her to him... "Did Goyle know?" He asked in a hoarse whisper.

"I don't think so. I wasn't supposed to know. I think the parents usually only tell their children what's been decided long after the sorting. Otherwise too many Slytherin children would refuse to go into the House on principal. I mean, at eleven, most boys are just not interested in the idea of being married. I expect a lot of them still think girls are pretty gross at that point."

"Well, I wasn't raised in quite the same manner as they were, but yes, I imagine that girls were pretty far down on my list of priorities." He took a deep breath and then asked his next question. "Is that when things got bad at home?"

"Oh, yes. When I came home for Christmas, it was almost like I wasn't there. All the parties and events were off limits to me, then, because I had been proved unworthy. I just wandered around the house when they left, and when I finished with my homework; I realized the extent to which I had been shut out. My father had locked me out of the library, the study, and every place in the house I used to go for solace or solitude. He never had to say why. When you sent me those Muggle computer magazines that summer... Colin, I think if you hadn't done that, I would have done anything to get my parents back."

He kissed her then, very gently. "My little computer geek. I'd wondered why you took to Muggle technology with such ferocity."

"We all have goals, Colin. I guess that one of mine is to do whatever it takes to drag that part of the wizarding world at least partly into the 21st century. Kicking and screaming, if necessary. You've seen Dexter?"

"Yes. An artificial Raven that wouldn't work without both magic and some very high-grade tech. Plus whatever the Hell you did to my digital camera and laptop to make them work here. I'll never forget the look on McGonagall's face when she spotted me with them." The lecture he had gotten was on his big list of Things to avoid repeating, ever. His camera and computer had been confiscated and most likely disassembled by the Ministry, but he had never told on her. He was certain that Dumbledore knew, however. And Potter. Colin was certain that nothing ever escaped either of them entirely.

Jessica smiled again then. The cheeky, sweet smile that had drawn his eyes even from Ginny Weasley, which was quite a feat after third year. "'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' That's what I'm going for, except that I'd like them to become inseparable in certain things. We're already obviously wrong to any Muggles who see us, so I don't see why we can't play with their tech."

"Jess, It's forbidden." He was truly frightened, now, and trying hard to hide it. "If the Ministry finds you making anything like Dexter, they'll take you away.."

She cupped his face in her hand. "There are ways to hide magic under a tech veneer. They're too new for the Ministry to watch for, yet. And there are ways to make magical artifacts only work for one person or one family. Don't be afraid. " Yet, she thought. "This won't be a violent or bloody revolution." On our part.

"You might not be violent, but that doesn't mean they won't be. And they will, Jess." He gazed at her hopelessly. "They'll kill you. It'll be the same as the Voldemort war, with some backward people trying to stay in the past, and keep everyone else there, too. And the body count will be just as high. They'll blame all the muggle-borns, but they'll come after us most of all, because you were supposed to be theirs." His words were cutting her into pieces, and he knew it. "Dammit, Jess! I don't want them to hurt you, and I couldn't bear to be separated from you. I love you."

Oh, Gods, what have I let myself in for? Every word he's saying has run through my head a hundred times already, but hearing him say it is making me cry. "But I can't stop this. I won't. It's already overdue. But I won't take you into my path unwilling." She took a deep breath, and looked up at him. "Will you leave?"

He didn't have to think about his answer. He held her as close as he could get her to him. "Never. Never."