House Unity: Lessons

**Author’s Note: Welcome to my new piece of fanfiction! This will be a companion piece along with an R/L fic coming down the pipe much, much later. This was just a plot bunny that worked its way into my head and refused to go away. Thanks for everyone and everyone who stuck with my last story (or any of my stories) and thanks to sugarbear_1269 and Violet Jersey for betaing my stuff. I highly recommend you read their stuff!! But first… read mine…**

CHAPTER ONE- Shaking Off Dreams

Still got an assignment to finish, blast it all…

She rolled over in her bed, a groan already slipping from her lips as she thought of the day ahead. If school started perhaps an hour or two later, she’d be just fine. Hearing her brother banging around in the next room, she reluctantly let loose of those wonderful, fuzzy moments between sleeping and waking, sitting up sluggishly and running both hands through the coppery tangles of her hair.

She’d had the most wonderful dream the night before, she recalled, complete with castles and magic and adventures...

You’re just compensating for the complete dullness of your life, love, she told herself, wiggling her bare toes on the cool hardwood floor.

And as newly minted Muggle Genevieve Wesley started her day, the dream—the memories­—of being Ginny Weasley slipped from her mind.

~~~

He’d been out entirely too late with the chums—as always. Not as though it mattered, anyway. Everyone knew who he was, who his father was, and it wasn’t likely they’d give him any guff over breaking lousy curfew.

I absolutely ought to skive off classes today, he thought, stifling a yawn as he reached the door to his room. He pulled out a wand and was left standing in front of the ornate door with his wand hand outstretched, fingers empty.

Wand hand? he thought, his cruelly refined features twisting into a sarcastic smirk. Gone a little ‘round the bend, mate. Had a few too many. Abracadabra, he thought with a snort.

He let himself into the lavishly furnished bedroom, rolling his eyes at the sound of his father downstairs, already berating one of the servants.

For Draco Malfoy, life was good in some ways—rich, spoiled, and unfailingly superior.

And in this Muggle world, rich, spoiled, and superior were three fantastic adjectives to describe Drake Mallory.

~~~

“Don’t you think it’s even a little strange?” Hermione’s voice was insistent as she dogged Harry’s steps down the wide hallway. “No one says a word, and suddenly fourteen percent of the Hogwarts populace is whisked away to be ‘house ambassadors’?”

It had given her quite a start to begin her day without Ginny, without Ron. She’d gone half-mad searching the castle high and low for Gin, shouting herself almost hoarse and resorting to attempted location spells which were far beyond even Hermione’s advanced capabilities. She’d been trying to vanish a particularly stubborn batch of toadstools her attempts had produced when the students had been called into the Great Hall for the “announcement.”

With a “harrumph,” Hermione shot a pointed look at the incommunicative Harry. “Well? Don’t you?”

Harry made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and let his mind wander to Quidditch. What, exactly, were they going to do about games when half the players were missing? Harry certainly couldn’t imagine playing a game against Slytherin without that scowling prat Malfoy to contend with. Admittedly, no matter how much of a git the ferrety Head Boy was, Harry had noticed immediately that his nemesis was gone.

“If they’re going to assign representatives, I find it a bit odd I wasn’t even considered,” Hermione continued, the tiniest note of hauteur creeping into her voice. “After all, the last time Hogwarts sent out students as contacts was in 1902, and they sent two of each house, each with Prefect or Head Student experience, high marks and good relations with—”

Knowing she would go on forever if allowed to, Harry interrupted her, his voice good-natured as he laid a hand on her shoulder. “’Mione, think of it like this, eh? You can have a rest from bickering with Ron.” Though there was a bit of a gaping absence with the redhead gone, Harry had to admit. Ron filled the silence rather admirably and rather often.

And he was a hell of a mate.

Hermione stared at Harry owlishly, her mouth snapping shut, and when he walked away, she followed him wordlessly.

They’d just have to learn to interact without the others, she supposed logically, watching the young man who had once been a very uncertain boy.

It shouldn’t be too hard.

~~~

“Rob!” Genevieve’s voice careened into deafening decibels as she shouted up the stairs. “Honestly, Rob, if you don’t get your arse moving, I’m leaving without you and you’ll have to make it to school by your bloody self!” Rolling her eyes, she snagged her bookbag off the floor and hooked the strap over her shoulder. “And you’d probably wander off and traipse onto the rails.” She was just preparing to count down from five when the brightly-colored note on the outside of the bag caught her attention.

Appointment with Professor Dunmore, 1:32 p.m. The insanely precise reminder, written in her own handwriting, compounded her already mounting miseries of the morning.

Since her father was at work and her mother off marketing, Genevieve let loose every single curse word her brothers—all six of them—had taught her. It was words like that which had gotten her into an appointment with Dunmore in the first place. The nutty, albeit lovable, headmaster was known for his creative punishments, and Gen was more than certain her shouting match with Melissa Bulfinch would warrant at least some quirky castigation.

She vaguely recalled calling the bullying girl a daft bint, among many, many other things.

A shame, she thought, that a person could be punished for telling the truth.

After exhausting the bluer side of her vocabulary, she opened her mouth to yell once more at her brother.

“Don’t have a kitten, Gen, I’m right bloody here,” Rob said, thundering down the last few stairs with a clamor akin to elephants stampeding. Seeing the dour look on his little sister’s face, the 17-year-old impulsively leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Can’t be all that bad, eh?” With a lopsided grin, he snagged a single book off the table by the door and whisked out as though he’d been waiting on her.

Muttering one last curse word, Genevieve wondered why she couldn’t have had at least one sister.

~~~

Some fool was knocking on his door. They were either very stupid or very brave, he thought as he woke halfway up.

“Bugger right the fuck off!” His voice, though scratchy and sleep-muffled, traveled through the thick door effortlessly, and when he heard the antique hinges squeal in protest as the door was thrown open, he groaned.

This was absolutely, positively not the best way to sleep off of a bender.

It got immeasurably worse when the door-knocking fool—still unidentified—entered the room and jerked back the covers of the bed, leaving Drake completely starkers… and completely enraged.

He sat up, shameless in his nudity, his eyes squeezed shut against the assailing light. Trying to dredge up words, he sorted through his brain in an attempt to conjure up the name of the manor’s most recent maid, then decided it didn’t matter anyway. “Painfully obvious I’m trying to sleep here,” he said plaintively, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes.

“Yes,” a very male voice commented dryly, drawing the word out. “That much is painfully obvious, oh spawn mine.” Definitely not the maid.

The half-grimace of pain that had settled upon awakening onto Drake’s fine-boned features hardened into a distasteful sneer, and he reluctantly opened his eyes.

He’d be damned if he’d bother showing any sign of the pain the agonizing shards of overbright light was digging into his brain, or the dryness of his mouth and throat.

“Good morning, oh father mine,” he returned mockingly.

“Afternoon, Drake.” Lucas Mallory said, his voice tight and disapproving as he strolled around the spacious room, his tailor-cobbled low-heeled boots clicking on the hardwood floor. “It is well into afternoon, which would go a long way toward explaining why, precisely, I had the privilege of a ring from Holforth this morning. It seems the staff wonders why, precisely, my dear son was not present to fulfill his scholarly duties.” He turned cold eyes to his son, so pale they were nearly colorless, eyebrows lifted in a false show of guilelessness. “Hm?”

Resigned to the tragic loss of a few more hours’ sleep, Drake sat up and snatched the coverlet off the floor where his father had left it. “I thought I’d stay in and spend some quality time with my father,” he said snidely, one corner of his mouth lifting in a maddening smirk.

Lucas lifted a hand, serpentine quick, reflexively moving to strike his son. Drake did not flinch, and Lucas covered the movement by smoothing his hand over his carefully combed white-blond hair.

A Mallory did not stoop to striking his family.

Oftentimes, words would do just fine.

“Pity you’re an only child; we could have drowned you like an unwanted kitten,” Lucas said mildly, enjoying the infinitesimal flash of anger on his son’s face.

Drake stood, drawing himself up to his full height and making obvious the few inches of height and breadth he had on his father. “Pity you’re nigh to impotent,” he said sweetly, his own smoky silver eyes lighting on his father’s face. “Else you could have had more than one child.”

Lucas’s lips trembled with the effort of keeping them sealed shut, and finally his breath left him in a hiss. “Get dressed and go to school. I’m sure even a halfwit such as yourself can manage that.”

“I’m sure,” Drake repeated as his father left the room.

~~~

She’d had all day to prepare her speech, and she thought she’d put together a very good one. Her arguments were logical, her academic history nearly spotless. When compared with Melissa Bulfinch—who had started it all by shoving Gen in the hall— Genevieve knew she looked like a veritable gem.

Reasonably speaking, Genevieve thought she could weasel her way out of punishment.

She sat in the headmaster’s office of Holforth Prep, drumming her fingers restlessly on her horticulture textbook. She’d been a few minutes early, thinking they could start the meeting at 1:30. After all, what sort of cockeyed notion was it to call a meeting at 1:32?

She checked her watch, momentarily lulled by the motion of the second hand, then looked back up with a sigh.

The sigh caught in her throat, half-expelled in a tiny, heart-thumping shriek.

The headmaster was sitting directly in front of her.

“Good heavens!” she gasped, pressing a lightly freckled hand to her chest, feeling her heart beat through the burgundy and hunter green uniform she wore. “Honestly, Professor Dunmore, you should wear a bell around your neck.”

She stood to shake his hand, tucking her long, bright hair behind her ear. Her fingers trembled slightly with the shock of moments before, but her grip was firm.

He really was an interesting old bird, Gen thought, sitting down. His hair was pure white, cropped close to his head, as was his silver goatee. His eyes were a shocking blue behind the lenses of his rimless spectacles, and he constantly looked bemused at something.

Any man who assigned a skiver to sit atop the school building every morning for a week and announce the weather had to have a sense of humor, she reckoned.

A slightly twisted one, yes, but a sense of humor nonetheless.

“I’ve come prepared to plead my case, sir, if you’ll only hear me out—” she began, but he stilled her with a wave of his hand.

“No need, Miss Wesley. Though I’d be greatly interested in hearing your reasons for calling Miss Bulfinch a ‘diseased sow,’ I’m afraid I’ve already made some irreversible arrangements in the matter of your retribution.”

“Oh.” The syllable was flat, dismayed, but didn’t seem to affect the professor at all.

“I’ve a dire need for a tutor, Miss Wesley. It’s time for you to put your… extensive vocabulary and your stubbornness to use.”

CHAPTER TWO- Facing the Consequences

The breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding left Genevieve in a whoosh, and she laughed breathlessly. “Is that all?” she asked incredulously. Tutoring seemed mild compared with the hype the headmaster’s punishments had gotten from the student body at large.

“I have a certain student in mind,” Dunmore pressed on. “And though he suffers greatly in all his subjects, he seems to have a particular weak spot in the historical realm of study.” The headmaster glanced at the papers on his desk as though checking records. Picking up a fountain pen, he made a few marks on the paper, looking like any other professor making notations on a student’s official file.

From where she sat, however, Genevieve could not discern what the headmaster was actually doing—sketching a phoenix.

“He?” she repeated. “So it’s a boy I’m tutoring.”

“Your skills of deduction are wonderful,” Dunmore responded, abandoning his sketch to smile up at her beatifically.

And then the door opened, making his smile stretch even wider.

“How nice of you to join us, Mr. Mallory! You’re only several minutes late.”

Gen barely restrained herself from a pained groan as she turned to survey the young man in the doorway. A right bastard was Drake Mallory, and a right bastard he’d always been. Always gadding his money about in everyone’s faces and lording it over all of them. She recalled more than a few instances where she’d been on the receiving end of that blade-sharp, judgmental, superior tongue of his.

Now that right bastard stood negligently in the headmaster’s doorway, one solid shoulder propped against the doorjamb. His odd, silvery hair stood up in deceptively careless-looking spikes around his head, and his eyes were hidden by black sunglasses. The uniform they were all required to wear had been defaced to minimum recognition, the shirt buttoned only halfway and displaying an expanse of defined chest, the tie hanging at loose ends around his neck. Completing the ensemble was the suit coat, slung over one shoulder.

And despite the state of his clothes, the gleam of money all but screamed off him.

Of course, that might have been due in part to the car keys he had dangling off his fingertips even though a scant few of the students could drive, much less did.

“You can’t possibly mean for me to teach him history,” Gen said, a note of desperation creeping into her voice as she turned to face the headmaster. He’ll kill me, she thought, flicking a sidelong glance at the upperclassman in the doorway. Though if I’m lucky, he won’t even bother showing up to the sessions. One hand crept up to toy nervously with a stray tress of hair and she kept her wide brown eyes fixed on Dunmore’s blues.

“Please remove the tinted spectacles, Mr. Mallory. I assure you my lights are not that bright.” Dunmore gestured to a seat and eyed the young man.

Intrigued by the vignette before him, Drake hooked the sunglasses in the deep vee his button-up formed and quirked a pale eyebrow. “What’s this about history, Dunmore?” he asked casually, lounging in the stiff wooden chair beside Genevieve, turning his head to stare at her. Even as he looked at her in profile, he saw her cheeks burn red.

“It had come to my attention you are making failing marks in history, Mr. Mallory. It has occurred to me you could use some motivation.”

Drake would have spoken in his own defense, but before he could, the redheaded Wesley mite had sprung from her chair. Just as well, Drake thought, propping one black-booted ankle to his knee. It saved him energy.

“I’ll take detention,” she said, shaking her head in emphatic negation. “I’ll take a whole month of it!” How many times had that overprivileged git picked a fight with Rob? And how many times had he gotten away with it?

Both of Drake’s eyebrows winged up at her statement. “Careful, apple-polisher, you might hurt my feelings.”

Calm in the face of Gen’s pleas, Dunmore held up a steady, long-fingered hand. “I’m afraid the decision has already been made.”

And unbelievably, Drake snorted.

The pointy bastard actually snorted, Gen noted with disbelief.

“Well, well, what’d the little bum-kisser do to warrant so much trouble, I wonder?” Drake drawled, pinning those freakish eyes on her again, his long fingers tapping the earpiece of his sunglasses as he watched her, wide-eyed and expectant.

“Mr. Mallory, your tone,” Dunmore said, but he sounded… well, a bit bored.

As though he’d heard it all before.

“Funny you should ask, you chinless toff,” Genevieve exploded, unable to hold her temper. “As it was one of your girlfriends who started a row with me.” At his steady, bemused, and silent gaze, she huffed out a breath. “Melissa Bullfrog,” she said sarcastically, intentionally butchering the girl’s surname.

At this, Drake let out a very loud—and very ungentlemanly—guffaw of laughter. Now oblivious to the headmaster sitting before them, Drake leaned forward, planting both feet square on the hardwood floor, his eyes cast up to the still-standing Gen. From this angle, she noted, one could almost believe he could live up to that bloody angelic look.

And then he opened his horrible mouth.

“One of my girlfriends?” he repeated. “If I were that desperate, pauper, I’d just go on and date you, wouldn’t I?”

She leapt at him, eyes sparking angrily. She would have made contact, would have knocked the bloody hell out of him, had the headmaster not stepped between them.

“A smashing start!” he exclaimed merrily, clapping his hands as though to end the matter completely. “But I’m afraid I have other matters to attend to, my pupils, other pressing, urgent matters.” He regarded Gen over the rims of his glasses reprovingly. “I trust, Miss Wesley…” Now he turned his attention to Drake, who only seemed amused by the barely diverted attack. “And Mr. Mallory, you will both be present in the library late this afternoon when your classes are completed for the day.”

He walked between them to the door, standing firmly between them. Once they were in the hall, he knew they’d be likely to natter at each other once again, but they’d been given their instruction.

He knew both these young ones, and he knew they would follow their instruction, even if they did so in a roundabout way.

And as he closed the door to his office, the headmaster’s hair and beard grew longer, the tweed suit morphing into robes, the smart spectacles thinning into half-moon lenses.

And Albus Dumbledore smiled.

~~~

She had more to say to him. Oh, of course she did, after that arsehole comment he’d made. But once Drake had exited the headmaster’s office, the shades came back on and the school’s baddest rich boy, its richest bad boy, strode away as though she didn’t even exist, unbuttoned coat flapping behind him as he tucked his keys into his pocket.

Gen was absolutely fuming.

“It shames me to admit it, but I won’t ever look half as good in new clothes as he does in wrinkled ones.” The voice over her right shoulder was forlorn, but held an amused note unique to its owner.

“Connor,” Gen said without turning around. She was hoping against hope it was actually possible to burn a hole in the back of Drake Mallory’s shirt simply by staring at it.

Not that the git would notice a bloody hole. The shirt was barely on as it was.

“I… have to tutor… that prancing, taunting arse,” she said once he’d been caught up in a crowd of his own kind, whisked out of her field of vision.

For the first time, she sincerely and truly regretted calling Melissa all those names. The gratification it had brought, no matter how intense, was not worth it.

“Are you going to teach him to read?” Connor Collins asked cheerily, a cheeky grin brightening his thin, often peaked face.

Though her mood was sour, Gen’s lips twitched at his comment. “Worse. History,” she said with a sigh.

Damn, damn, and double damn.

When would she learn to keep her big mouth shut?

~~~

Though the gaggle around him was going on about something—more likely than not, they were going on about him—Drake’s mind was wandering. School bored him, as did the people around him. He had nothing to learn here. He would graduate, take over some of his father’s superfluous business dealings, and get his feet wet all at once.

A history class wasn’t going to help him with that in the least, or so he was convinced.

Besides, he had an image to upkeep.

Thinking such, Drake dug in the pocket of his mostly unbuttoned shirt, drawing out a slim silver case of hand-rolled cigarettes. Sure, no smoking in school, he thought, shuttling the case over long fingers and palming it easily.

He’d just save the smoke for a time when it would cause the most trouble.

He was twenty minutes late when he finally walked into his history classroom; his professor, when confronted with a tardy student whose uniform was in disarray, who had a cigarette dangling from his lips, who was wearing sunglasses in a brightly lit classroom, had no idea what to punish first.

So she kept her mouth shut and glared sternly, hoping everything she wanted to say was contained in that look.

Drake slid into a seat in the front of the classroom, stretching his long legs out in front of him and tilting his head back. Tutoring… it provided a whole new realm of distraction for him. And tutoring from a Wesley? Well, it was like taking candy from a baby. It was almost unfair what an easy target she’d make.

He gave her a week before she’d quit, running screaming away from the library with tears rolling down her cheeks.

**Author’s note: Patience is a virtue, my dear readers. All things will be revealed to you at some point or another, but if I told you everything right off the bat, why would you want to keep reading? If there is some confusion, read the summary and re-read the first two chapters. If there is still confusion… well, then, you’ll just have to wait and keep reading!! Now go, enjoy!**

CHAPTER THREE- Making a Point

She was ready to bolt.

She’d watched the clock for five minutes, and Gen had already told herself she wasn’t going to wait any more than ten.

And everyone knew Drake Mallory’s idea of “on time” was twenty minutes late.

So Gen didn’t even bother unpacking her bookbag, but fixed her eyes on the wall clock and happily watched the minutes tick by. After nine minutes and thirty five seconds of this vigil, she slipped the strap of her bag over her shoulder and stood, carefully pushing in her chair so as not to make excessive noise in the massive library.

All that effort was wasted when she turned, bumped nose-first into a very male—and only half-clad— chest, and uttered a loud, startled screech.

“Oh, well, bugger,” she said miserably, backing away from the history failure and slinging her bag onto the table, not giving half a hang if she was quiet now.

If only she’d left a few minutes earlier.

“Careful, there, brainbags, you almost broke my sunglasses,” Drake said, polishing a spot off the lenses of said glasses. “Were you leaving so soon? I’m heartbroken.” He followed this statement with a show of wide-eyed hurt so facetious she wanted to smack him.

But kindness killed just as well as anything else, and if the freakish half-albino prat thought he could scare her off, he could just reassess the situation. So she smiled sweetly and took out a book, slamming the spine of it down in the spot he had very nearly rested one long-fingered hand on. “I suppose you could be heartbroken,” she said sympathetically, laying the syrup on extra thick. “Provided you first found a heart.”

“Would that I hadn’t given it away to Melissa Bulfinch already,” he said, barely restraining his laughter as he sat down. At the sharp look that earned him from the Wesley brat, he merely beamed. “Oh, come now, pauper, that wasn’t what you were fighting over, was it? Me?”

This time she did raise a hand to smack him, her cheeks burning with pure and complete fury. Before this moment, she wouldn’t have thought it possible to be so conceited, so bloody self-involved. But he caught her wrist when she swung it toward him.
“Ah-ah, Wesley, teacher must play nice,” he said calmly, tilting his head to one side and regarding her frankly. It could be worse, he supposed. It could be that Wesley boy teaching him, the idiot soccer player.

And it was just the mention of “teacher” that had her blood immediately cooled. She had something to do, and she’d do it whether he tried to stop her or not. She jerked her hand away from his grasp, eyeing him balefully—he’d abandoned the jacket and sat casually in his carelessly draped dress shirt, its few fastened buttons barely doing their job. He looked like he’d just gotten out of bed, the slob.

“Do your assignment,” she said flatly. “It’s only ten questions, and it would take even the slowest of your ilk no longer than a half an hour to do them.” Turning slightly away from him, she tipped over her bag and rummaged through it, finally emerging triumphant with a plain band. She pulled her hair back, took her own homework out, and began to write.

He watched her, torn between amusement and amazement as he watched the bookworm plow her way through a mound of very serious-looking homework. Poverty-stricken little know-it-all, he judged with a sneer. If he tried hard enough—and he rarely did—he could recall several of the girls he knew talking about the poor tomboy, the lone Wesley female with the big brains and even bigger mouth.

Why a Mallory would ever need help from a Wesley was beyond him, and so thinking, he leaned over and flipped her book shut. “Not time for your homework, troublemaker,” he said flippantly. “Y’supposed to be helping me.”

Gen placed her pencil on the cover of her textbook and regarded him expressionlessly. What was it about money, she wondered, that made people think they were above others? Clearly it didn’t buy intelligence. “Page 210. If you don’t actually understand it, that’s one thing. If you’re just being lazy, which wouldn’t shock me in the least, then there’s little I can do. So at least open the book and prove all your daddy’s money can buy you an education, would you?”

That got to him, she could see. The flawless skin of his face mottled an indignant red and his pale grey eyes narrowed to slits.

“Score one for the pauper,” she said nastily, hating herself just a little as the words came out of her mouth. But something about him just made her stoop to his level, curse it all.

This was not going as planned, Drake thought as he flipped angrily through his textbook for the first time since he’d received it. She definitely wasn’t supposed to be the one insulting him. So he flipped to the page she’d suggested and stared at the questions in front of him, planning his next move.

When he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, he saw she had returned to her homework.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said petulantly without even reading the questions, an evil gleam in his eye. She wasn’t getting off that easy, by God.

Gen scratched long division on the margin of her physics homework, sorting out an equation. When she’d balanced the mathematics of the problem, she looked at him, exasperated now. How was she really supposed to deal with someone like this? They barely even spoke the same language. “I refuse to believe you’re that much of an intellectual wasteland,” she said, blowing out a breath. “Though your state of dress has undoubtedly aroused my skepticism.”

“Aroused your what?” he returned easily, shifting in his seat to cause his shirt to gape even more.

“Loathing,” she enunciated, correcting her statement. “It has aroused my loathing.” At a loss for what else to do, she leaned over, ducking her head just beneath his chin, and quickly scrawled the answers in his textbook. “There,” she said with finality, standing and gathering her own homework. “As long as you can manage to write that in your own handwriting, or cave-scratching, or whatever it is you do, you’ll manage to pass this assignment.” Without waiting for his response, she had slung her bag over her shoulder and walked out of the library, leaving a bewildered Drake Mallory wondering how she’d gotten the upper hand and left him looking like a fool.

~~~

“I don’t agree with this.” The tall, thin man paced the headmaster’s office nervously, his black robes flapping around his ankles, the cleric-style collar wrenched open. It wasn’t often Severus Snape was ever bothered enough to show his discomfort, but here, with this man, he could. He did.

“I’m aware of that, Severus,” Albus said, turning away from one of the many gadgets on his shelves. “I’m well aware of your disagreement, and the disagreement of the other house heads.” He’d momentarily considered not letting them in on everything, but knew he had to. Secrets bred mistrust, and mistrust was not welcome in such an unsteady time.

“It’s not safe,” Severus continued. Three of his own house were gone, playing “ambassador.” It was ludicrous, madness. “How can you expect them to be safe away from here?”

Dumbledore pounded a fist on his desk, his ordinarily kindly blue eyes now glowing with a mixture of emotions—fear, anger, understanding. Most of all, there was guilt at his inadequacies, at the things that had been beyond his control.

“Do you, Severus, expect them to be safe here? Six years ago Tom—Voldemort—came in with a professor. A professor I helped to hire! And do you think Virginia Weasley was safe her first year here, when she was chosen by a Death Eater to play consort to Voldemort? Or what of our tournament, a school event which ended in death for a student? They are not safe here, Severus, as much as it pains me to admit it!” The fire had left his voice now, replaced by melancholy, awareness of his own failure to keep his students safe.

“They are there for a reason, for a purpose I am not willing to abandon. And it appears to me they are safer where they are,” he continued quietly, “Than they would be here. I hope this hiatus will be beneficial for our selected students in many ways.” Standing and laying a hand on his Potions Master’s shoulder, he spoke quietly. “Perhaps it will be beneficial for all of us.”

~~~

In another wing of the castle, a young woman lay awake in her room, staring at the ceiling. She hadn’t yet been able to shake the feeling of loneliness that had settled in upon the absence of her friends, but what persisted even more strongly was the niggling feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Though Hermione Granger believed more firmly in fact than in intuition, she felt as though she’d missed something, as though she was wrong about something.

If there was a feeling Hermione didn’t like, it was the feeling of being wrong.

Harry had listened to her concerns all day, sure—but he’d also dismissed them, she could tell. He had other worries—captaining a Quidditch team with missing players, making it day by day without Ron to lean on—but he didn’t seem worried about the explanation Dumbledore had given them.

Well, Hermione thought, drawing her knees up to her chin and staring into the large fireplace of the Head Girl’s room. Harry might be one to blindly trust, but as for her, she’d take cold hard facts over sentimentalism any day.

As her eyes grew heavy and her body reclined back in the large bed, however, she was not feeling rational or factual. She was feeling sentimental as she wondered where her and Harry’s friends were and when they would return.

CHAPTER FOUR- Learning Lesson the First

Mornings to herself were a thing of beauty, Gen thought as she stretched her toes to the very end of the bed and fantasized about a hot shower and no one to share with, no one to fuss at.

Mornings to one’s self in the Wesley household were few and far between, and she planned on enjoying this one as much as she possibly could. Pleased with the prospect of the peaceful house, Gen treated herself to a long, leisurely shower and then took her time getting ready. In all that time for peace, quiet, and healthy feminine primping, she’d nearly managed to forget the previous afternoon’s punishment, the quarter-hour of near-torture she’d spent in the presence of Lucifer himself.

Nearly.

It was in the back of her mind as she ran a brush through her hair, one hundred strokes that were just a little more vigorous than they needed to be, strokes that carried a little more spirit than they ordinarily would have.

Deep inside, Genevieve Wesley was triumphant over the way the encounter had ended. She’d had the last word, by God, and that was a nice feeling.

After all, the last word in a household of six siblings was a rare commodity. She intended to relish it. She still had a little spring in her step as she shut the front door of their small house behind her. And that spring turned to a stumble as she stepped onto the sidewalk.

Of course he’d found a way to ruin her morning. Of… bloody… course.

A startlingly shiny Jaguar sat at the curb, the sleek body glittering envy-green in the sunlight, every inch of chrome polished to a murderously cold shine. The camel-colored top had been lowered, and in deference to the onslaught of the elements, the car’s owner had apparently made the spikes of his hair extra stiff, and his eyes were—as usual—shaded from the sun. The black sports coat of his suit lay crumpled in the back seat, and though the day wasn’t yet warm and wasn’t likely to be all day, the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up.

She was rooted to the spot, galled by the sight of that git idling in front of her house. She knew she was staring at him like a slack-jawed idiot, but the dual hazes of rage and shock left her speechless as he tipped down those damnable sunglasses and looked at her.

He'd spent a likely bit of time the evening before contemplating how, exactly, he could play this situation with the Wesley peasant. Only a fool wouldn't see her behavior of the day before as a challenge, and he was prepared to give it right back to her. A Mallory didn't need the pity of the headmaster and he certainly didn't need the charity — forced though it was — of the school's poorest student.

Frankly, Drake was shocked the Wesleys could scrape up enough money for uniforms, let alone tuition and books.

"Climb in, milady," he said sarcastically, gesturing impatiently at the car door. "Can't sit here all day."

"If you think I'm riding anywhere with you, you insufferable, spoiled prat, you're a great deal dumber than at first I'd feared," Gen spouted, finally finding her voice. Ride with him? Was he bloody well insane?

She'd rather bite her own tongue off.

He leaned over then, popping open the passenger side door. “If I understand correctly, you’re supposed to be tutor, my mentor. And cor, I just got so mixed up with my lessons last night, I don’t know if it’s right.” His voice was heavily affected with an innocent tone, but the sly look in his eyes gave him away. “I suppose I could always ask the headmaster,” he added absently, batting his eyes.

Gen thought she might be sick.

“You are a bastard,” she said through clenched teeth, getting in the car and saying a silent but fervent prayer that none of her neighbors had seen her. To satisfy herself, she slammed the door of the compact machine as hard as she could, but not a single gauge on the dash rattled, and she wasn’t even rewarded with a flinch. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this,” she muttered.

He took off before she could fasten her safety belt, sending the wind whipping through the hair she’d so carefully brushed and arranged. “Be a love and check over my cave scratch, would you?” He glanced over at her, his eyes unreadable behind the reflective tint. “As long as you’re at my beck and call, I may as well make use of it.”

Her only response was to jerk the book from the floorboard and settle it in her lap, taking his assignment out and shielding it from the decidedly nippy wind blowing through the car.

Smirking in satisfaction, Drake rounded a corner with just a touch too much speed and cut his eyes to her. "I knew you'd get in," he said, pushing just a bit harder on the gas as he saw her almost get a good grip on the sheet of paper. She didn't ask why he knew; he hadn't really expected her to. So he kept talking, comforting himself with the knowledge that he was surely on his way to a very entertaining and edifying morning. “After all, you had to satisfy your curiosity.”

“The only curiosity I have is how your brain managed to escape your head,” Gen muttered, finally pinning his paper to the dashboard and reading it with critical eyes, listening to him with only half her attention as she dug a pen out of her bag.

Irked at her inattentiveness, Drake slammed the car to a sudden halt at a crosswalk, nearly sending his passenger face-first into the pen and paper she held. “Well, what Wesley wouldn’t get into my car? Never seen something worth this much money, have you, pauper?”

She gasped, tears starting in her eyes at the acidic comment. Her temper should have gotten the better of her, would have, had the stakes not been so high.

But what she really wanted was to wound where it hurt most, to strike back at his one weak spot. So Gen grinned fiercely, baring her teeth like an animal, and raked her ink pen down the butter-soft black leather of the passenger seat.

It was somehow sickeningly satisfying to hear the almost feminine gasp tear from his throat. In the moment before he could regain his composure, she could see those wide silvery eyes pop to a comical width behind his shaded glasses, five long fingers fluttering out as though to touch the seat reassuringly.

The trouble with material things, Gen thought, was one got entirely too attached to them. The git was making a fool over himself, and so for good measure, she kept the writing instrument poised over the seat of his car, where a long black line now marred the formerly flawless leather.

“Oops. I guess a pauper like me doesn’t know the value of something so fine, eh?” she asked sweetly, tossing her wind-tangled hair back.

“I can have them redone, you careless bint,” he said through clenched teeth, regaining his composure—just barely—and driving the rest of the way to the school. What sort of a fool, he asked himself, let what was basically a wild animal into their car?

Fool me once, he thought, getting out in just enough time to open the door for her, making a big show of it for all the students who were milling around at the doors. “After you, mi-fuckin’-lady,” he said, sketching a ridiculously large bow to accompany his nasty words.

She swung her legs out of the car with his book still in her lap and then stood, spilling the book and assignment onto the ground. From what little she'd had time to read, he'd not only recopied the answers she'd provided him-- he'd done a bit of his own work, as well. Though now, she ruminated, slamming her shoulder into his chest as she passed him, he'd be turning his homework in with her footprint on it.

"I'll see you after classes," she said, her back now to him.

And now that her back was to him, she could allow the shame to come, the hot, angry tears that had risen to the surface when he'd insulted her— and insulted her family. Sometimes the truth hurt worse than lies, and his truth had certainly stung.

But if it was a battle of wills he was wanting— and it most certainly seemed like it, since he'd bothered to get up early just to pester her— he wouldn't be disappointed. She had quite a will to pit against his, and she intended to win.

Angry, speechless, and unquestionably bested, Drake slung off his glasses and threw them into the car, not caring at all for the sound of one of the lenses breaking.

~~~

“What are you doing?”

She jumped nearly out of her skin at the sound of his voice; she hadn’t heard him enter the lavatory. “Shhh,” Hermione said, sitting cross-legged on the floor in a position immediately familiar to Harry.

“You’re not trying something again, are you, ‘Mione? No more spells, okay?” he asked warily, tilting his head and looking at the book she held. “’The Divulgence of Divination’?” he read. “Thought you didn’t believe in Divination.”

Rolling her eyes mightily, Hermione looked up at Harry. “It’s not that I don’t believe in Divination. I just don’t believe in that hack Trelawney.”

Uncomfortable, Harry shifted his weight. It bothered him more than a bit to hear her speak so; after all, Sybil Trelawney had gotten it right once upon a time. In his mind’s eye, Harry could see the dusty glass ball that had been his—his and his enemy’s. That glass ball which had signaled the end of his godfather. The end of his innocence.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” Hermione said, shutting the book gently and standing to face him. His emotions had been clear enough for a moment, the pain and remembering as apparent as the scar on his forehead. She reached a gentle hand to him, patting his shoulder awkwardly. “Let’s just forget about it, shall we?” She forced lightness into her voice, knowing he wouldn’t want to be bothered with her latest escapades in self-teaching.

“All right,” he said, trying just to let those feelings slide away. After all, he’d come looking for her with nothing more complicated than a bit of supper on his mind. And so they left the bathroom conversing quietly, with Harry’s mind secretly on Sirius and Hermione’s on the book in her bag.

~~~

“I am afraid I do not understand.” Professor Dunmore looked at the school’s history professor, his eyes hiding a wealth of amusement and glee. “If the young man has turned in his first piece of homework in a month, how is this a quandary?”

The professor, a harried middle-aged woman with a cloud of frizzy black hair, threw her hands in the air. She’d tried explaining to the batty old man a half-dozen times, but he seemed to be on another plane altogether. “’ow’m I supposed to know it’s actually his, eh? Look at it!” she crowed, jabbing a finger at the offending piece of paper. “It’s a footprint in the middle of it. ‘ow do I know he didn’t nick it off someone?”

Dunmore tapped his fingers together, his sock-clad feet dancing happily underneath his desk. “Because, Professor, he has a tutor. Have a little faith.”

Knowing he wouldn’t say anything worth listening to—after all, the old coot hadn’t said anything worthwhile in the last half hour—the history professor got up with a dismayed sniffle and left the office.

Gen Wesley had only spent fifteen minutes with the school’s most infamous bully, and yet it was his homework with the footprints all over it.

At least now Albus Dumbledore knew one thing for certain: his beloved students had retained their personalities—fire and all—as Muggles.

Things were going just according to plan.

**AUTHOR’S NOTE: All my apologies for how long this chapter took—work and weather have combined to make a powerful writer’s enemy. Anyway, also I apologize for calling football soccer in the last chapter—I made a conscious decision not to do that… and then apparently forgot all about it. Old habits die hard. Happy reading!**

CHAPTER FIVE- Coming to a Decision

“You got in his car.”

Gen didn’t care to count how many times she’d heard Connor utter those same words over the course of the day. “Not helping, Connor,” she grated out between her teeth, staring balefully at the sandwich in front of her. She wasn’t in the least bit hungry, and hadn’t been since she’d seen that envy-green machine sitting in front of her house that morning.

Connor reached over to pick at Gen’s food and chewed thoughtfully. “You rode to school with Drake Mallory,” he said slowly. At Gen’s murderous look, he held up a hand. “Not finished, don’t disembowel me just yet.” He looked pensive, nibbling on a corner of what had, until moments before been her sandwich. “And you actually defaced his precious vehicle. I think I could safely write it up for the student paper, have you crowned princess of our class.”

Annoyed—and guiltier than she cared to admit—Gen shot Connor a warning look. “Not a word of it, Con. Not a single bloody word. You’re my best friend, not one of those trash reporters.”

“Not yet,” he rejoined smugly. While a small part of him was jealous for Gen’s attentions, a large part of him was frankly fascinated; he’d never seen anyone ruffle her feathers quite as effectively as Drake Mallory had. It would be interesting to know what exactly made her care what the rebellious wealth-monger thought.

“I have to tutor that bullying toerag after sessions, you know,” she said mournfully. He’d kill her. Or get her suspended. Or—and the last thought that occurred to her was by far the most horrific—he’d somehow tell her parents.

But she managed to snort a laugh at that notion—the idea of a Mallory, any Mallory, contacting the Wesleys… well, it was simply ridiculous.

“You know,” another voice joined the conversation, this one dreamy and only half-attentive. “He’d be quite handsome if it weren’t for that scowl and those clothes and the attitude…” Lucia Lovejoy trailed off and frowned as she sat beside Connor, a whole pineapple in one hand and a plastic fork in the other. “Hm. I suppose I’ve nearly named everything, haven’t I?”

“Lovey!” Connor jostled the willowy blonde next to him in greeting, causing her to stare at him thoughtfully. After a moment’s observation, she turned back to Gen.

“Hello, Genevieve,” she said kindly, already looking as though she’d forgotten what she was going to say, her blue eyes a bit unfocused under down-drawn pale brows.

“Lovey,” Gen said, trying not to smirk as she addressed the girl by her nickname. Sometimes she wondered how, exactly, the young woman didn’t get bullied more than all the rest of them combined. She suspected Lucia’s weirdness made people a bit afraid to bother her. “Don’t tell me you’re here to get a scoop for the school rag, too?”

Lucia’s eyes did clear then, and she smiled prettily at Gen. “Of course not. I’m reporting on Robert.”

“My brother?” Gen asked incredulously. “You’ll never get anything useful from him. An interview with him would make nearly as much sense as two rocks banging together.”

“Less, I warrant,” Connor laughed.

“My father says Drake Mallory’s father is a thief,” Lucia stated matter-of-factly. “I wonder if that car is stolen.”

Disgusted with the conversational pivot back to the topic of Drake, Gen rolled her eyes and tossed the remainder of her sandwich on Connor’s plate. “I’ve things to do before class,” she said, trying to keep her voice gentle despite her annoyance. She stood and gathered her things, walking across the commissary without a backward glance.

“Hm,” Lucia said thoughtfully, seeming to turn her attention to her pineapple. “I believe Genevieve seems a bit stressed.”

Connor’s eyes switched from the retreating Gen to the small knot of hoods sitting in the corner, flanking none other than Mallory himself. “I couldn’t imagine why,” he said dryly.

~~~

She told herself it was the right thing to do, the smart thing to do. After all, it could hardly be intelligent—or healthy—for her to continue coddling that spoiled horse’s arse, “tutoring” him and listening to him prattle on about money as though it were the only thing in the world worth commenting on.

No, Gen told herself, shoving her last schoolbook into her bag and mentally running over the day’s assignments, there really wasn’t any point in that at all. When asked about the progression of her punishment, she would merely tell Headmaster Dunmore that things simply hadn’t worked out and she’d gladly take another form of punishment.

It had nothing to do with fear of retribution at her actions of that morning, Gen insisted in her mind.

Nothing at all.

And it felt nice, really, to walk down the hallway knowing good and well she was supposed to be somewhere else. It sort of felt gratifying to skive off her punishment.

“What in the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, you repugnant, destitute wretch?” Drake stepped to her side, slamming a hand into the hallway wall just in front of her, effectively stopping her progress. “You’ve an appointment, or did you forget?” He’d been stewing over it all day, and a small, masochistic part of him had been looking forward to their meeting after school.

And then she hadn’t shown up, the yellow-bellied, penniless bint.

“I don’t believe any part of my punishment involved getting harassed morning, noon, and night, Mallory,” Gen retorted, her chin automatically jutting up defensively. It did no good to show fear. That only made things worse.

But there was a look in his eyes, wild and angry, that sent a tiny shiver of apprehension up her spine.

“I didn’t ask for your help, Wesley, but it appears I’ve been saddled with it,” Drake retorted, plucking a cigarette from his shirt pocket and clamping it in his teeth. His head was a roaring mass of aching nerves and had been ever since his history professor had taken him aside and first very gently asked him if he’d cheated on his homework, then insisted repeatedly how wonderful it was that he was getting help from that lovely Gen Wesley.

He couldn’t help but want to blame Genevieve Wesley. After all, if he’d just not done the assignment, or better yet, not shown up to class at all, he’d never have gotten the interrogation. His jaw had been clenched ever since, creating a wonderfully unceasing headache.

And it was all her fault, the absentee coward.

“Harassed?” he repeated with a snort, taking his hand from the wall to light the cigarette, arching an eyebrow at her in an expression that spoke clearly of the expectation she would not move.

He needn’t have worried; Gen wasn’t about to back down from this particular argument. She couldn’t help it, something about the bastard just brought out the worst in her. And besides, it would have been a horrifying slight to the Wesley name—and all her brothers—if she’d ran away from a direct confrontation.

“I’ll have you remember you’re the one who destroyed my property,” Drake said, blowing out a thin stream of smoke and wincing against the sharp pain needling behind his eyes.

Pain in the arse? More like pain in the brain.

“Even one of those car seats is worth more than you are, Wesley,” he said nastily, watching her blanch at his statement. Reveling in her shame, he sneered. “In fact, I’d wager one of those seats is worth more than your whole house.”

“I’d just love to know what in the hell you’re doing talking to my sister, you slimy git.”

Gen groaned and let her head drop back with a thunk against the wall. Rob was already in his football gear, his cleats open and trailing laces all over the floor. His red hair was a right mess, looking as though he hadn’t bothered to straighten at all after pulling on the practice jersey with the bright gold “C” for Captain stitched to the breast.

Not for the first time in the past two days, Gen found herself faced with a choice, and none of her options looked particularly good to her.

She could tell Rob the whole truth, part of the truth, or lie outright and let him attempt to pummel the snot out of Mallory.

Though the last sounded quite wonderful indeed, Gen cast a disparaging eye at her beloved brother’s untied shoes and heaved a sigh.

“Stop, Rob,” she said, stepping forward and between the two young men, who were now exchanging glares laced with ridiculous amounts of testosterone. “It’s fine.”

“I hardly think it’s fine, Gen,” Rob exploded, not taking his eyes off the rodenty, sharp-faced ponce in front of him. “Why’s he bothering you?”

“Oh-ho, that’s rich,” Drake said, snickering. “Not only am I harassing beloved baby sister, but I’m also going to get my arse kicked by an addle-brained athlete who can’t even fasten his shoes. Surely, Wesley, they can find some cleats that don’t require any motor skills to put on.”

“Stop!” Gen said, shooting an accusatory look at Drake and then returning her gaze to her brother.

Partial truth it was.

“Listen, Rob, I’ve been assigned to tutor him,” Gen said urgently. “I got in a spot of trouble last week, let my temper get away with me. It’s only a temporary punishment, Rob.” Gen laid a hand on her brother’s shoulder, feeling the tense muscles beneath the jersey, knowing full well he was about to try and pounce on Mallory. Thinking fast, and thinking of his welfare, she added, “You don’t want to lose your temper, too. You’ll be removed from the team.”

The muscles in Rob’s jaw fluttered, and his bright blue eyes narrowed behind the shocks of red hair that had fallen into them. “I don’t like this,” he stated, knowing that much was obvious. He liked to think he avoided trouble at most turns of life—one trait which was rare for a Wesley—but he knew when a matter called for a little trouble.

A Mallory messing with his little sister definitely smelled like trouble.

But she had looked to be handling the situation competently enough, and that begging note in her voice already had him backing down. It was hard to say no to the girl who’d grown up being both an enemy and a best friend, his ally and his adversary.

But even knowing it was what she wanted didn’t make stomaching that smirk on Mallory’s face any easier. So, at a loss for what else to do, Rob pointed a finger in Drake’s face and tried to look threatening despite his grubby warm-ups and untied shoes. “You don’t want to be crossing her or me, Mallory. She’d chew you up before you’d even have time to squeal for Daddy, and I’d do it twice as fast,” he concluded, pleased with his parting line.

He turned on his heel and walked away, choosing to ignore Drake snickering behind his back.

Gen bit her tongue, swallowing the curse word wanting to slip out as she eyed Drake balefully.

He looked at her with a sunny grin ill-suited to his features, the malice still showing through.

“Shame on you, Wesley. You told brother dearest there you were tutoring me. Guess that means you have to now.” She’d so effectively boxed herself in, Drake thought, he hadn’t even had to do any work.

“Shut your mouth, Mallory,” Gen said, shoving away from the wall and heading toward the library.

She would be counting down the days until her punishment from hell was over.

CHAPTER SIX- Breaking a Truce

It was easy enough to force a truce for one day’s tutoring, and even the next day’s tutoring came and went without incident. Rob’s insistence and overprotective nature were still weighing heavily on Gen’s mind, and so she forced herself to behave, keeping her demeanor frosty and haughty in the face of the miscreant’s taunting and willful stubbornness.

It was only natural, however, that the reluctant and shaky cease-fire Gen had maneuvered herself into would come to an end sometime, and the fifth day of tutoring was as good a time as any.

It would be easier to convince herself of that if she weren’t trudging behind the world’s biggest git on the way to, of all places, his house.

“Son of a—” she started, only to be interrupted by the scathing look he threw over his shoulder.

“Oh, no you don’t, Wesley,” Drake grated out, angrily tugging his cigarette case out of his pocket.

When he got the smoke between his lips, he remembered he no longer had his lighter.

It had all happened so fast, she’d been pointing at something in his book, and he’d merely told her to move. Actually, his exact words were “I can’t see the bloody page, beggar.” And then one of those small, weaselly, freckled hands had snatched up his lighter, flipped open the lid, and set it to going like a pro.

And then she’d dropped it onto his homework, right next to his bloody fingers, causing a merry little blaze and a merry little row with the librarian, ending in their term-long ejection from the library. The librarian hadn’t even bothered asking what happened, Drake thought woefully. He couldn’t even put blame where blame was due.

So not only did he not have his custom monogrammed silver lighter, Drake thought, stopping and turning on his heel to face the ragamuffin trailing behind him, he also didn’t have a place to be tutored.

“This is all your fault,” he said, the longing for the cigarette raging through him. “You realize this, yes? Completely your fault.” What sort of lunatic set something on fire in the everloving library, anyway? And moreover, what sort of tutor set their pupil’s assignment ablaze?

Granted, he had called her a beggar.

But really, was that any reason to get them barred from the library for the rest of the term, any reason to get his lighter confiscated?

“If you hadn’t started with the name-calling, Mallory,” Gen said, stepping toe-to-toe with him on the walk in front of his house, “We wouldn’t be here. All you had to do was answer one more bloody question on that assignment, but no, you had to open your big… bloody… gob,” she enunciated, poking her finger into his chest.

God, it felt good to do that. Two days had been a long time to keep her mouth shut, and now she intended to tell him what she thought.

“And another thing, the last thing on earth I want to do is step foot into your hell-trap of a house,” she added, glancing balefully at the towering three-story structure with its imposing iron gates.

Bloody show-offs.

“And your hair looks stupid,” Gen added as an afterthought.

Oddly enough, that one seemed to sting him, and he raised a reassuring hand to hover over the elaborate spikes atop his head.

Bint.

“Looks better than your carroty mop, Wesley,” Drake retorted, but the fire was lacking. He really didn’t want to step foot into the hell-trap of his house, either, especially not with the freckled little vagabond in tow, but it seemed he had little choice. “Make sure you wipe your shoes,” he added, throwing open the front door and sending a maid skittering to the back of the house with a single sneer. “And don’t touch anything, Wesley. God knows I don’t want your grubby pawprints all over my home.”

She momentarily considered hefting the heavy—and undoubtedly priceless—glass vase that sat just inside the front door and heaving it at his head, then thought better of it.

They could have come to her house, she supposed. She had been the one who had lit his homework on fire, provoked or not. She didn’t really see what the big deal was, anyway—it hadn’t even left a burn mark on the table.

She looked around the house’s expansive first floor, the towering ceilings flanked by the balconies of the second and third floors.

It didn’t matter that she hated the sloppily-clad punk who had already sprawled on a black leather chair in the center of the house, she still recognized the beauty and luxury for what it was. Her own house could easily have fit in here four times, and that was the reason she’d completely nixed the idea of taking him to her home. Shame was one thing when the insults were theoretical; it was quite another if your insulter actually saw your tattered, secondhand house.

From his comfortable vantage point, he watched her nonchalantly, watched her eyes widen and her jaw drop slightly open. It was on the tip of his tongue to make a sarcastic remark, to point out her obvious naïve appraisal, but something made him still his instinct.

It was amazement that had him amazed, the look in her eyes he’d never seen on anyone before. His type of people—wealthy people—were bored by nature. Their houses matched his own dollar for dollar, antique for antique, servant for servant.

In the life of a Mallory, there was no room to be amazed, only to make others amazed.

She felt his eyes on her, that strange pewter gaze, and the blood rose to heat her cheeks. Of course she’d gaped like an idiot in the very devil’s own house, and it was a right embarrassment.

“Well, what are you looking at, Mallory?” she snapped, the defensiveness impossible to quash. Now, she knew, she’d made a mistake. She shouldn’t have come here at all, showing herself as the bloody bumpkin she was. She might be smarter than the punk in front of her, but she wasn’t richer.

“I could ask you the same, Wesley. What are you looking at?” His amusement this time was genuine despite himself. It kindled a certain measure of pride to see someone so captivated with a home—his home.

But that dry drawl did nothing but further inflame Gen, compounding the week’s incidents in a hot ball of mortification. In the face of that flat bemusement, she snapped.

“Well, Mallory, I’m looking at a rich, lazy simpleton who couldn’t even use all his money to hire a decent tutor. Oh, no, he had to wait until a pitiful, poor peasant was forced to help.” Gather up a full head of steam, ashamed of the envy she’d felt in the face of his house, she jabbed a finger in his direction. “Would that I had half your problems, you wanton, ungrateful prat.” Her breath was already coming in great gasps after the verbal barrage, but what happened next made her breath stop.

He rose from the massive leather chair in one fluid motion, his face now dangerously blank, frighteningly composed. He took one step toward her, perversely satisfied when she didn’t budge.

“You,” he said quietly, making the hair on the back of her neck stand up and looking down into her eyes. “Have no fucking clue what my problems are. I’m sure it’s quite easy to judge from the gutter.” He thought of his father—how could he not?—and how Drake himself spent more time away from his ‘home’ than he ever spent in it.

Though she was shaking inside and more than a little sorry she’d started the argument, Gen lifted her chin and looked at him directly. It chilled her, though, to stare into those iced-over eyes. “That’s a little hypocritical, isn’t it, Drake? It’s just as easy for you to judge the lowly from your pedestal when you’ve no idea how they live.” Snatching her bookbag from the floor where she’d dropped it, Gen turned and headed back toward the front door, her last words floating back to his ears.

“I think we’ve both learned enough for the day, don’t you?”

~~~

“You’ve got to promise you won’t tease me.” Her voice was earnest and her face a study in worry—big eyes wide, mouth drawn into a tight bow.

Hermione wanted to locate her friends, certainly, but she didn’t want to earn Harry’s disapproval. She’d worked much too long and much too hard to just be friends with him, blind though he apparently was. At this rate, she reckoned he would notice she fancied him in oh, say a decade or so.

Harry shoved his glasses up on his nose impatiently, looking at the wooden bowl of water and the pile of woodchips Hermione had sitting on the Common Room floor. “You know I won’t, ‘Mione,” he said, shuffling his feet. “But I certainly can’t if you’ll never tell me what it is you’re on about.”

She’d been secretive for days, maddeningly so, slinking around and staying up late. This time, he had paid careful attention, but to no avail—this time, she had no Time-Turner; she was just acting dotty all on her own.

“Okay, listen,” Hermione said pedantically, moving the bowl of water to center it in front of her and waving her wand to calm the surface of the liquid. “Delilah Duckworth says in The Divulgence of Divination, this is the simplest way to divine the true nature of someone and to determine whether or not they’re in trouble.”

“Hm,” Harry said, hunkering down to watch. “Well, knowing Ron, he’s probably in trouble no matter where they are.” The laugh shared between them, though quick to come, was uneasy. Though Hermione hadn’t yet convinced Harry of any sort of mishap regarding Ron, Ginny, and the other missing students, he wasn’t ready to be at ease, yet, either.

He liked having his best friend nearby.

Hermione quickly explained the simple process, combining a handful of woodchips and a single bright strand of Ginny’s hair. Once dropped into the bowl, the hair would instruct the elements as to the person’s identity, and the woodchips would form shapes, much like tea leaves were said to.

“There are all sorts of combinations,” Hermione said, flipping to a diagram in her book, “But Duckworth says the first five are the only ones that can really be trusted.” Confidently, Hermione sprinkled the hair and wood into the bowl and both she and Harry were over it in a flash, watching with wide, fascinated eyes as the chips began to scatter, some forming around the outside of the bowl and a scant few staying in the middle.

“Okay,” Hermione breathed, careful not to disturb the water. “There are four chips in the middle, two pairs, so that extra pair is likely Ron. A pair means...” she glanced at the book for confirmation, though she already had it nearly memorized. “The person has a double nature, as though they’re keeping a secret.”

Harry frowned at this. “Ginny keep a secret? I think she outgrew that with Tom’s diary.”

Hermione started to respond, but the words dropped into a gasp. The pairs—both the two pairs in the middle and other scattered pairs around the edges—grew closer and closer together, until one chip in each pair slipped under the other chip, floating one on top of the other. “What on earth?” she breathed, her eyes growing even wider as the water in the very center of the bowl started to eddy in a tiny whirlpool.

“I don’t think that chip-on-chip status is in your book,” Harry said worriedly, staring at the diagrams upside-down. “We could ask Trelawney, but something tells me she’d foresee my death.”

“Hush,” Hermione said, still awed by the movement inside the bowl. “The two pairs in the middle in that whirlpool? It means tension, but not danger. Just personal tension.”

“Ron and Gin fighting, imagine that,” Harry said sarcastically.

“Double in nature, but not separate,” Hermione said, sitting back on her heels as the chips and water started to wear themselves out, their motion slowing and the eddies growing weaker and weaker.

“I think we’d know if Ginny had a secret,” Harry said doggedly. “It isn’t as though any of us could keep secrets from the other ones.” Even his own secrets were always found out eventually.

So thinking, he completely missed the arch look Hermione gave him.

No secrets, indeed.

Men were so daft.

~~~

Her nerves were raw from the confrontation, typical though it was, her unease close to the surface, and so when Gen ran into a much larger person as she thundered down the steps, her breath tore from her in a breathless, shocked scream.

Her jitters trebled when she looked up, up, up and saw the cruel, sharp face, its features so much like Drake’s, the pale hair impeccably styled. Where Drake may have looked at her with anger, distaste, this man looked at her with hatred.

“Oh look,” he said, narrowing his freakishly pale eyes and laying one slim-fingered hand on the iron rail running the front steps of the house. “We’ve had a visitor.” Lucas leaned down then, his hot, hateful breath stirring her hair as she stood rooted to the spot. “A Wesley, isn’t it?” he asked, sneering even though she hadn’t responded. “Absolutely disgusting.” His eyes cut to the front door of the home, and the cold anger Gen saw in them made bile rise in her throat.

His words and expression shocked her in a way Drake’s hadn’t. She expected anger from Drake; after all, what else good were teenaged boys?

But from a grown man who didn’t even know her?

“I—I—” she couldn’t seem to find the words, the right words, and he didn’t seem to want them.

He flapped a hand at her, looking somehow horrified. “Are you speaking to me Wesley?” he asked, flapping his hand once more. And then it was as though she didn’t exist, his eyes were no longer on her, his attention completely withdrawn.

And when he opened the door to go into his house, she heard him shout for his son.

~~~

“The father worries me.”

Severus wouldn’t sit down, preferring instead to pace the length of the headmaster’s office, turning sharply on his heel each time he reached the edge of the room.

Dumbledore wondered when his Potions Master would realize the headmaster was widening the room slightly with every circuit he made. Widening the room by two inches, he addressed the dark-clad professor wearily. “I know the father worries you, Severus, but I have told you—”

Severus stopped, turning sharply to face his employer, his mentor, his superior. “You have told me why, Albus. You have told me of the accuracy needed to maintain this experiment and the binds you hope to bestow to the divided of our school. But you have not told me how such a thing can be so. If you have created this Muggle world and its trappings for students only, how can there be a man so much like Lucius there? And how can it be safe for the boy?”

It was the most he’d said in a long time, giving Dumbledore time to think, to create his answer. In truth, the headmaster himself had spent much time mulling over that particular mystery. The Wesley parents in the Muggle world were good parents, but nondescript. They were not Molly and Arthur by any stretch of the imagination. But Lucas Mallory had been a surprise to even Dumbledore.

“In any situation such as this, the conditions will duplicate themselves as befits the situation,” he told the man who had once been his pupil. “And so in order to really be the same person, the same wizard upon his return, Drake must have Lucas. Lucius has clearly been a large influence in the boy’s behavior, Severus. You cannot argue this.”

“It’s dangerous!” Severus burst out. “We do not trust the man in our world, how can we trust a re-creation of him in a Muggle world?”

And though Dumbledore liked to believe nothing from his mind, this world, these people surrounding his precious pupils, nothing from his wand, could be harmful, he knew there was never any predicting magic, and he knew his experiment could not last longer.

“I am watching them, Severus,” was the best answer he could give Snape.

The father worried him, as well.

CHAPTER SEVEN- Issuing a Challenge

“What do you do in your spare time, Robert?” Lucia followed closely behind Rob, her pen poised above the pad of paper she held. Instead of responding, however, he merely hunched his shoulders and tried to weave through the crowd. For heaven’s sake, he could manage to get a football from one end of the field to the other without a single man touching him, but he couldn’t get away from lunatic Lucia Lovejoy?

She’d have made a mean football player, he thought as he swung around a corner, between two first-years, and never even came close to losing her.

“Perhaps he didn’t hear me,” the determined young journalist said conversationally to herself, quickening her pace and bludgeoning the back of Rob’s heel with her toe. Unaffected, she spoke louder, tucking a lock of fine blonde hair behind her ear. “I said, what do you do in your spare time, Robert?”

Several students, alerted by the loud query, turned to watch the spectacle laughingly.

He stopped so suddenly that she breezed right into his back, laughing that fairy laugh as he turned to face her, running a hand over his bright red mop of hair as though to calm himself.

She’d decided to write a story on him, she had, and any other time he’d be glad for the attention.

But it was Lucia Lovejoy, and her articles weren’t known for their accuracy or, say, their sanity.

Neither, for that matter, was she. And besides, he thought uncomfortably, shifting his weight from one leg to another, something about her just made him… itchy.

She was an odd duck, that one.

“Listen, Lucia…”

“Lovey,” she said brightly, pen once more at the ready.

“Lucia,” he repeated firmly, his face coloring slightly beneath his sun-darkened freckles. “I am not, nor am I planning on, giving you an interview for the Holforth Herald. Now… go terrorize someone else.” Much to his horror but little to his surprise, Rob saw her writing away as he spoke. “Oh, for pity’s sake, Lovejoy, would you just—don’t—” He shut his mouth finally, clamping his lips together hard enough to make them pale.

No use in persisting with that one. She’d just keep writing like a bloomin’ crazy.

Blessedly, her pen stopped scratching, and cursedly, for a moment she looked back up at him with big blank eyes.

The poor boy must have been paranoid, Lucia judged. Else he’d not be so twitchy, unwilling to answer a simple question. Cocking her head thoughtfully, she drew a tiny, flourished ‘P’ in the margin of her notes. It was certainly something to look into. Her attention, easily swayed, was diverted when she saw movement from the corner of her eye.

“Hello, Drake,” she said brightly, completely and conveniently ignoring the sneer Drake gave her as he approached the pair. His clothing was in its usual disarray, his hair standing on end. This time, the wild look in his eyes completed the ensemble.

“You look as though something’s the matter,” Lucia continued solicitously. “How might Rob and I help you?”

Rob was so incensed at Drake’s arrival that he didn’t even have an appropriate response for Lucia’s oddness. “I thought I told you to stay away from me and mine, Mallory.”

“Very overdramatic of you, Wesley. Where is she?” Drake stepped between Lucia and Rob, shooting the girl an annoyed glance when she didn’t move to make more room for him, but instead stood so close she was arm-to-arm with him.

“She who?” Rob asked, though he had a sneaking suspicion. His sister hadn’t looked all that sick when he’d left the house that morning, but she’d certainly sounded sick.

“She your idiot of a sister,” Drake exploded, rolling his eyes. “Why else on earth would I talk to you?” He hadn’t listened to six kinds of hell from his father the evening before just to be left hanging the next day. And hanging he’d felt, passing from class to class and seeing that skinny, poncey wraith she was always hanging about with—but no Genevieve to be found. Of course it made him a bit sore.

She’d issued a challenge, she and her sharp, spiteful tongue, and he didn’t intend to leave it lie. A Mallory always picked up the gauntlets thrown at him.

“And because you’re clearly dafter than I originally thought,” Rob said, stepping up and looking down his long nose at the equally tall Drake, “I’m going to have to repeat myself. Stay away from me and mine. You’re a loon if you think I’ll tell you where she is.”

“Home sick, then, is it?” Drake asked, blinking innocently. All he needed to know was in the drop of Rob’s jaw. “Not so hard to figure when she’s been gone all day. Thanks again, chum.” Sliding his sunglasses to the tip of his nose, he roughly thumped Rob’s shoulder in a mockery of camaraderie.

As he sauntered down the hall, swinging his keys from one finger, Rob sneered and started after him, but the quiet, feminine voice behind him stopped him.

“He seems to be a very unhappy boy,” Lucia said, frowning briefly then turning back to Rob. “You never answered my question.”

“He’s not unhappy, Lovejoy, he’s an arse.” He felt like hitting a wall, but kept his cool instead, the glower he held not suiting his face. “I can’t figure out why she’d even bother putting up with him, punishment or no. It’s not like Gen to get into trouble.”

Lucia’s frowned returned, deeper this time. “What about her first year?” she asked, the words reflexive. When Rob’s eyes lit on hers, confused, she shook her head and the thought was gone. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that. I must have been thinking of someone else.”

And Rob, ever skeptical of the moods of Lucia Lovejoy, rolled his eyes and ignored what he thought of as her ramblings. So when he stalked off for football practice, he never even noticed Lucia standing where he’d left her, completely perplexed by her own words.

~~~

All in all, Gen thought, she got more done at home alone for a day than she did at school. She’d caught up on her class reading, watched a few shows on the telly, treated herself to a long soak…

And all of it had felt completely joyless, completely wrong. She’d spent the evening before listless, confused for reasons she couldn’t even put her finger on. For the first time, Gen was forced to look at herself, her family, her life, from another’s eyes, and for the first time, she found herself lacking.

It wasn’t so much the money, she thought as she stretched out on the bed she’d so carefully made earlier that day. She’d hardly slept the night before thinking of it. No, it wasn’t the money, and it wasn’t even her family. It was her attitude.

It was the fact that she spit back at Drake Mallory every time he spit first, the fact that she’d felt very much like clawing his father’s eyes out. She’d answered hatred with hatred and nastiness with nastiness, and Gen Wesley hadn’t been raised like that, and moreover, the punishment she’d been granted by Professor Dunmore had certainly been combatant to that sort of attitude. He’d punished her for being so acidic, and she answered his punishment with… more acid.

And jealousy. Oh, there had been more than a bit of jealousy in her comments about Drake’s lifestyle, his money, and she’d been sick with shame by the time she let herself in the front door of the humble Wesley home. What she had said to him implied money could buy happiness. What she had said to him implied she felt her own situation inadequate.

Had she been a lesser person, it never would have occurred to her that she’d insulted herself and her family while trying to insult a young man who could quite possibly have been truly unhappy.

She didn’t move an inch when she heard the door slam downstairs; if it was her Mum, she’d likely expect Gen to still be abed. The heavy but rapid footsteps progressing up the stairs sounded straight to the back of her mind, her thoughts occupied elsewhere. Her thoughts lately, it seemed, were all directed toward one person—or one problem, as he had turned out to be. She was truly afraid they’d kill each other before their little project was over, and though a few days before she’d have judged otherwise, now Gen wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t feel badly if she did kill Drake Mallory.

Guilt was a tricky thing.

“Lazy, are we?”

The voice from her open doorway had her rocketing off the bed, her feet tangling a bit in the well-worn bedskirt hanging to the floor. Steadying herself on the scarred nightstand with a shaky hand, Gen looked wide-eyed at the very person she’d just been ruminating on, the last person she’d ever expected to see in her house.

Shock came first, followed quickly by shame. He was in her house, for God’s sake.

“What in the hell are you doing?” she asked, her voice pitching up to a higher register. She looked for some way—any way—to get him out of her room, out of her house.

While she was at it, out of her life might be an okay thing, too.

He’d obviously come straight from school, though the school’s starched uniform shirt hung completely open, on this particular day displaying a tight white undershirt with no sleeves. His slacks were beltless, hanging just a bit lower than the school specified, his sunglasses hooked oddly through one belt loop.

From his long fingers dangled a shopping bag from one of the city’s higher-end shops, and from his lips dangled an unlit cigarette. He held it there for just a moment, then tucked it away in a flash of fingers so fast it may as well have been a magician’s trick.

Drake would die before admitting he didn’t want to light up a cigarette in her house for fear of breaking some sort of taboo.

“Feeling quite all right, pauper?” he asked, his voice showing none of the strain it had back at the school with Rob, showing none of the strain he’d felt the entire evening before. The anger of yesterday’s outburst was forgotten—or cleverly concealed.

“I asked you a question!” she insisted, edging around the room, staying as far away from him as humanly possible. What was in the bag? Was it dangerous? Was he bloody insane?

Moreover, was she? Surely he in all his mussed, idiotic glory was a hallucination. She really had felt off all day.

“Asked you one first, Wesley,” he said, crossing to her bed and sitting down, bouncing as though testing the weight. In reality, he was buying time, thinking. He’d entered the house, stifling his first instinct to call her name, to smoke out the weaselly brat. He’d wandered a bit, taking in all the small details, the photographs and messages hanging all over the refrigerator, the note in competent, feminine handwriting addressed to Gen—There’s soup in the icebox to warm up if you’ll have it, Love, Mum—, the shoes scattered haphazardly.

All the things he never saw in his own home.

“No, I’m not feeling quite all right,” Gen burst out, shoving a hand through her messy hair. She’d let it curl after washing it, not bothering to dry it or even run a comb through it, and now it was a wild mess surrounding a pale, peaked face. “If I were, I’d have been at school, you arsehead!”

“Temper, temper,” he said, carefully setting the bag on the floor. “Well, regardless, you don’t look contagious, and you’ve a spot of tutoring to do. I’ll not do school work on the weekends, you know.”

“You’re a lunatic,” she decided with a weary sigh. How was it someone so caustic, so provocative, could seem so utterly harmless? He had horrid words, bags and bushels of them, mean and spiteful and barbed.

But it was starting to seem words were all he had, and words were, in fact, harmless.

“No, I just see to it people finish what they start,” he said casually, picking up his feet and swinging them to the end of the bed, crossing his ankles and—to Gen’s disbelief—taking care not to put the soles of his shoes on the bedcover, bedraggled though it was.

“Don’t you have anything to say about my house, Mallory?” she spat before she could stop herself. But he’d yet to answer when she slapped her hand over her mouth. Once again she’d berated herself, her parents, her life, before he’d even had the opportunity to.

“I try not to be so obvious,” he drawled. He’d thought of it, of course—how anyone lived in a house so small was beyond his imagining. “It seems someone’s defensive,” he said, stretching out his arms and then tucking his hands behind his head. Though her bed was awfully comfy, and he was acutely aware his presence was making her awfully uncomfortable. It was hard not to enjoy the combination.

She forced herself to sit, and after several moments of not entirely awkward silence, to talk about the chapter she knew he would be tested over the next week.

In the wake of the previous day’s storm came the calm, the peace that can only come after a purging fire. The two were momentarily and unknowingly united by their spite, but moreover, by the spite they had been shown by the same man.

An hour passed before the work was finished, and the instant Drake was satisfied with his tutelage, he slid gracefully off the bed, picking up the shopping bag and tossing it to her.

“Put those on,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and letting a smug smile flit over his lips. Here, then, was the Drake she was accustomed to. “We’re leaving.”

Gen gaped at him for a moment, not touching the bag. “We’re not doing anything. I’ve fulfilled my duty to you for the evening,” she said thoroughly confused and more than a little bumfuzzled at the peace that had just passed. It was… weird. There was no other word for it. And now that peace was to be broken, she saw, for that wicked light was back in his eyes and he was about to start trouble.

“You issued a challenge yesterday, Wesley. You accused me of judging without knowing, and I accused you of the same.” He leaned down, planting his hands on the end of the bed and looking her in the eyes. It had been an idea, a hatchling, the day before, and when he’d slammed out of his house after arguing with his father, he’d needed somewhere—anywhere—to go. So he’d gone shopping, and the insidious hatchling of an idea had blossomed into a wonderful scheme.

If the Wesley wanted to know what his life was like, from what pedestal he judged, she could very well see.

“Tell me, Wesley, that you’re not too much a coward to have a go at my way of life.” He tapped the long fingers of his right hand on his left arm, looking archly at the Rolex on his right wrist. “And if you’ve the guts, snap to it. Don’t want to have a late start.” He watched her from downcast eyes, through thick pale lashes, knowing he couldn’t have spurred her on any more effectively.

He’d already pegged their similarities, and he’d found one very exploitable parallel, indeed—if Genevieve Wesley was anything like him, she’d not stand being called a coward.

He wasn’t surprised when her chin jerked in the air and she snatched the shopping bag up. “Give me fifteen minutes,” she said heatedly, clutching her fist in the handles of the bag. Cowardly, her freckled arse.

“Should’ve looked in the bag before you agreed,” he said, spreading his hands in a fait accompli gesture and turning on his heel.

He was already out the door when he heard her scream of exasperation.

**Author’s Note: Suggested listening- “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurhythmics. Now… onto the story.**

CHAPTER EIGHT- Playing a Part

She would have called it off, really she would have. There were only two tiny things stopping her.

The first—and really, she’d admit it was no tiny matter—was her pride.

The second was that she’d never before actually felt cashmere.

With one hand, Gen held a hand to her mouth, holding back the frustrated curse that wanted to form as she reached the other hand out to stroke the luxuriant black material. An outfit, of all things, and one she’d never have dreamed of wearing in a million years. She didn’t know how she’d manage to get out of the house with it on, but she knew she would.

She had to.

It was a matter of pride, wasn’t it? Not a matter of a peaceful hour passed between the inimical.

With a sigh, Gen quickly shucked off the comfortable, baggy jeans she’d donned fresh from the shower and, after a dire glance, shimmied into the tight ones he’d provided for her, the cuffs and waistband fashionably ragged. Much to her surprise, they fit to a tee.

That was enough to start her in a foul mood. A Mallory didn’t need to be right any more than was absolutely necessary, and he certainly didn’t need to be right about a girl’s clothing size. It was just… improper. She slipped her feet into the stacked black sandals he’d thrown in the bag—also the bloody correct size—and left the best for last.

It was just a halter top, a sleeveless contraption with absolutely nothing to cover her belly and a cunning neckline that she knew would ride close to her throat, just barely escaping severity. The back was a complicated mess of strings so soft she was afraid they’d fall apart, but they held true when she pulled it on.

And it felt absolutely heavenly, soft as a cloud and sinful as a secret, clinging to the slight curves she possessed and riding just above her navel. She chanced a glance in the mirror and grimaced. Not a Wesley in that mirror, by any means. No, it was a little girl playing dress-up in someone else’s things. Her cheeks an angry red, Gen snatched a cardigan from the doorknob and slipped it on, covering her back and her stomach with a few angry tugs.

If he wanted her to play dress-up, then she would. She wouldn’t go out looking the fool as she was sure he expected.

She’d look the part he wanted her to play, and she’d play his game on her own terms.

Genevieve Wesley never played any other way.

~~~

“You made those boys run.”

She was still… everloving… following him.

Rob regretted ever taking for granted that he knew exactly what a headache felt like. He hadn’t ever really had a headache before, he thought, oh no. Not anything like this. A headache, a migraine, a bloody pike in his head would feel better than this.

Lucia Lovejoy had become his shadow.

“Yes, Lucia, I made those boys run,” Rob said, rubbing a filthy hand over an equally filthy face. The team had played deplorably, the worst scrimmage they’d had all season, and he’d made them run. He had run right with them, however. Team captain still started with the word team, he reckoned. So he ran with them. He was exhausted, starving, and sore, and she was adding embarrassed to the list.

“I would have thought a boy like you would be out with a date on a Friday night,” Lucia said, making another note in her book. Would it really take him so much to just look at her? She may have been weird, but it wasn’t as though she was a dead loss, Lucia thought.

“It’s hard to find a date when you’ve a second shadow,” Rob said, forgetting to check his crossness in a moment of sheer exhaustion. And though Lucia said nothing, did nothing, he could feel the difference immediately, and guilt swamped him. When he turned around, she no longer had her notebook out and was looking for a place to cross the road. “Come on, Lovejoy, don’t take it personally. I’m just tired. You should go home, or… go out. Have yourself a date.” Even as he said the words, they sounded lame. After all, who dated Lovejoy? She was like a bloody ostrich, either sticking her head in the sand or walking around with it in the clouds.

“I don’t date,” she said simply, but she was still looking for a place to cross. “In case you’ve not noticed, Robert, boys don’t like girls like me.” She tossed her hair, started to step off the sidewalk, and was immediately jerked back by Rob as a sleek, green car tore down the road.

Rob’s eyes narrowed as he stared after the retreating taillights of the feline machine, and he completely missed the unmasked gaze of hero worship in the recently rescued Lucia’s eyes.

Only one person he knew had a car like that. And there was absolutely no reason for him to be on this end of town.

“I have to go home,” he told Lucia tightly, finally turning to her and shaking her a little. “Go home, and don’t walk out in front of any autos,” he said, and he hoped against hope his little sister was home.

~~~

If she’d looked foolish, he’d have called it all off. If she’d looked frumpy, or beggarly, or poor, or stupid, he’d have had a laugh at her expense and he’d have driven on his way.

If it would all just fall the way he meant for it to fall, he’d let it be.

But it wouldn’t, of course. Damn the luck.

Drake was starting to think if it weren’t for bad luck, he’d have none at all.

She walked out of the house with a wary glance behind her, shutting the door and running down the steps of the sidewalk as though the hounds of hell were after her. She’d done something to hair, made that horrifying red shine and fall in waves, and she’d actually done something with her face.

If he squinted, he could hardly see the freckles.

And then, as she reached his car door, her face fixed in a cold, hateful expression that looked the same, makeup or no, she shed the ratty old sweater she wore, and Drake felt like slamming his head into his steering wheel.

Of… bloody… course.

Of course the bloody wraith would look like that. It didn’t matter that she’d hardly any chest to speak of; suddenly she was wearing a shirt that clung to what bits she had. And the pants he’d chosen—you did choose them, he reminded himself torturously—left little to the imagination.

And her stomach was very, very pale, and there he could see the freckles just fine.

Freakish Wesley freckles.

“Who knew there was a female under all that dirt and foul-mouthed prattle?” he asked, his voice smooth despite the snarl that wanted to escape.

“Drive,” she bit out, stepping down into the car and slamming the door. “Now.”

He’d changed clothes, she noticed, changing the school uniform slacks for his own jeans, black denim, and a loose black shirt that was barely buttoned. She didn’t care to ask if he’d gone somewhere or, more likely, had just stripped down in the car in front of her house. She just wanted to get out of there, and as soon as possible.

But still he sat, looking wide-eyed at her over the ever-present sunglasses. “Wesley, I am shocked! Your behavior indicates you’ve been less than forthright about your intentions for this evening.” The prissy, high-toned speech sounded dead up like his father, and he felt like rolling his eyes. Though she really did look like a murderer nearly in the hands of the law.

He waited until she’d nearly put on her safety belt, then he slammed on the gas.

He didn’t want to be late, after all.

He never considered a night to be underway until his arrival, and tonight… he had a guest.

~~~

She was at her wits’ end.

Hermione Granger had never stumbled upon an unsolvable problem before, but that was just what she’d stumbled upon. No matter how many times she cast the wood chips, she got the same sort of answers—muddled, confusing, and technically impossible. Every chip in the bowl was a stacked pair, and numerous tiny eddies would form as those stacked pairs circled one another, twirled with one another. They were all central, however, to the one pair—Ginny’s and, Hermione had assumed, Ron’s. But this last time, just hours ago, she’d talked Harry into casting Ron’s as she’d cast Ginny’s, and there had been turmoil in both—

But it had been different turmoil, vastly different.

Ginny and Ron weren’t agitating each other, Hermione deduced as she wrote down the known facts on a scrap piece of parchment, but she could get no deeper than that simple conclusion—at least, not logically.

But something sparked in her mind as she sketched the bowls she’d seen earlier, chips circling ‘round one another— a memory of Ginny throwing hexes like a pro. A memory of Gin giving a certain snotty Slytherin precisely what he deserved. Even as she felt her stomach sink with the possibility, she tried to talk herself out of it. But the facts were there—Ginny and Draco were both gone, and someone was bothering her.

And from the looks of it, she was bothering someone else.

“I hope you’re being careful, Gin,” Hermione said, taking the parchment she’d drawn on and rolling it up carefully.

She would take it, show someone.

But who?

~~~

She didn’t want to look at him, and she certainly didn’t want to look at her own reflection in the side mirror. She looked ridiculous, and seeing herself only served as a reminder of what she was doing, all for the sake of pride.

But Gen really couldn’t see any way around it.

She’d left a note on the kitchen table telling her mother she’d gone to pick up homework from Connor, and she’d slipped out the door like a thief in the night. She’d be in a fine stew, indeed, if either of her parents or her brother found out. She didn’t think there was any way on earth she’d be able to justify going out barely dressed as “tutoring.”

Instead of looking at him, Gen kept her eyes focused on the car seat, which he still hadn’t replaced. Though the ink mark wasn’t as glaring as it had been when she’d first done it, it was still there.

“If you’re trying to embarrass me, you may as well turn around and take me home. I’ve certainly no care for what your friends think,” she said suddenly, her eyes jumping up to meet his in the rear view mirror.

Of course she couldn’t see his expression—though the sun was setting, he hadn’t yet taken off the sunglasses. “My friends,” he answered flatly, swinging into the unpaved parking lot of a small, nondescript building she’d never seen before, “Won’t recognize you without your usual patched clothing and air of destitution.”

Now that feels more like it, he thought as he got out of the car, tossing his sunglasses back into the front seat.

Gen got out on her own—not that she expected any help from him, the spoiled bastard—and slammed the car door. Feeling marginally satisfied by the loud report it gave out, she opened the car door once more and slammed it again. Before she could repeat her efforts again, the security system on the car gave a slight beep.

“Take your frustrations out elsewhere, Wesley, I’ve places to be and you’ve a night of pretense to keep up. And do try to keep up.” Plastering a glittering grin on his face, Drake offered her his arm, only to have it coldly refused as she walked ahead of him, hips swinging to keep her balance in the tall shoes, back bared to the wind.

Oh, yes, Drake thought, clenching his keys in his fist before pocketing them. No one on earth was going to recognize her now.

As they walked into the small, makeshift club, they were swallowed up by the music, by the people around them, and there was no more chance for talk.

Gen watched wide-eyed as people thronged around her, more people than she’d ever seen crammed in one place before in her life. There were a few familiar faces, but most were unfamiliar, people she’d never seen and people she knew she’d never see again.

It was just weird.

At a loss for words and feeling very much out-of-place, Gen turned reflexively to Drake—and clamped her mouth shut before any words could escape. He stood still in the doorway, his light head bent close to a head of dark hair, a young woman in a purple halter even briefer than Gen’s own, her black pants emphasizing a tiny, doll-like build. She saw Drake laugh, his lips form the word “Later,” and he bent to brush a kiss over first one flawless cheek, then the other.

Gen put a hand to her own freckled cheek and, for a moment, envied the girl her porcelain complexion.

Surely she envied her nothing else.

With an exquisite eye roll, Gen turned away from the sickening spectacle of Drake and what was surely one of his many women, and staked out a tiny table in the corner. Escape, however, was not to be so easy. He was at her side before she could even map out an exit route, kicked back in one of the chairs, his feet resting on an extra one he’d somehow found.

“You’ve been here all of five minutes,” he said, finally taking out the cigarette he’d stowed away at her house and placing it between his lips. Instead of lighting it himself, however, he leaned forward and caught the tip of the cigarette in the candle on the table. “And already you hate it.”

“This isn’t my sort of place,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and looking at him archly. “Wasn’t that what you were trying to prove?”

He exhaled, narrowing eyes that nearly matched the color of the smoke. “No. I’m trying to prove it’s not anyone’s sort of place, Wesley. How you manage to be so daft and still get good grades is beyond me. Maybe the teachers pity you,” he said, smirking. No, it really wasn’t her sort of place. She looked too haughty for her own good—she looked as though she were still judging, even in skimpy clothing and a good layer of discomfort. “Don’t nick anyone’s belongings while I’m gone,” he finally said at length, ashing the cigarette in the small dish provided for that purpose. “I’m going to dance.”

~~~

At Connor’s for assignments. Will return as soon as possible, don’t wait up. Love, Gen.

A single muscle jumped and fluttered in Rob’s cheek as he read his sister’s neat script. The green car he’d seen tearing through their neighborhood plus the knowledge that Connor was still in the school’s newsroom pounding out the Herald added up to no good in Rob Wesley’s mind.

No good at all.

He knew his Mum wouldn’t stay up; she trusted Gen implicitly. In truth, up until now, so had Rob.

But he thought he’d stay up himself tonight, just in case, and in the back of his mind, a puzzling image nagged him, paired with an odd feeling of helplessness.

A stone wall covered in jagged letters…

“Been hanging about too much with that harebrained Lovejoy,” he told himself as he jerked open the cabinets looking for something to eat. But even the dismissal of the vision didn’t shake the shudder that wanted to go through him.

~~~

No one had spoken to her, and no one had asked her to dance. He’d been gone for nearly an hour, and though she’d gotten many speculative looks, no one had approached. They were not unfriendly, but nor were they friendly. It was as though some sort of shield surrounded her, and the more time passed, the more dejected Gen grew.

The least some git could do was ask her to dance so she wouldn’t be sitting there like a lump while her…

Date? her brain supplied cheerily, and she shoved it way. Mustn’t call it that. Her escort was out dancing with every girl on the floor.

Good on him, Genevieve thought with a small sneer. The more they had of him, the less she had to put up with.

Whether it was the shift in movement or the hot, Latin licks of the song that caught her attention, Gen couldn’t discern, but her eyes were drawn to the center of the floor, where Drake stood draped over the girl she’d seen him with earlier, his tall frame covering her tiny one with plenty to spare. It was a little like watching a tango, she thought, only with more sex added. What they were doing took talent, as the steps were complicated—but Gen didn’t notice the steps so much as she noticed the lines of their bodies pressed together, the worshipful look the girl gave him as they kept time with one another.

And through it all, Gen could feel her jaw tightening, the tension blooming in her neck, her shoulders, and her head. It was easy enough to attribute it to a more professional strain, the strain of a tutor who sees clearly why her pupil is too busy to do homework.

Easy enough.

When the dance ended, both dancers were out of breath, and Drake made a big show of kissing his partner’s hand before leading her off the floor with him. They ended up in front of Gen, the look passing between them unmistakable.

Genevieve thought she was going to be sick.

The girl dropped a wink at Drake, and then looked pityingly at Gen. “Drake, love, you really ought to take your… friend… on the floor for a dance.”

“Oh, yes, Drake, love,” Gen said saccharinely, poison dripping from every word. “You really ought to.”

And unbelievably, he grinned.

“Thought you’d never ask.”

~~~

Later, she wouldn’t remember getting to the center of the floor. All she would remember was that beat, insistent and loud, thrumming not only into her ears, but through her chest, her bones.

“Good God!” she exclaimed in a half-shout, grimacing at the bass. “Why does it have to be so bloody loud?”

Drake rolled his eyes and stepped into her so he could hear, knowing he was about to get his checkmate—if he could manage to cut her down in a four-minute song, she’d think twice before trying to upbraid him again. “If it were any quieter, you foul-mouthed peasant, I would have no reason whatsoever to stand close to you.”

“Pity it’s not, then,” she snapped back, moving her feet a bit. “I’m liable to break my damned ankle in these tart shoes you brought.”

Could she be any dafter? Drake wondered. Was there any humanly way for her to annoy him more?

“Fuck your ankles, Wesley, it’s your hips you’re supposed to move,” he retorted, wondering how she could take something like dancing and make it so joyless. “If you can manage that.”

Oh, she thought she could.

“One thing, Mallory, before we start,” Gen shouted over the music. “Don’t you lay a mangy finger on me.”

And then the rest of the beat kicked in.

She stepped out of her shoes in an easy, smooth motion, then snapped her hips sharply from side to side with the music, her smooth stomach taut with the controlled motion. She let her hands drift at the bared skin on her sides and sent them gliding down to her hips as they pivoted with the music.

For a moment he stood motionless, arms crossed over his chest, black shirt sticking slightly to his body with the heat of the room. He applauded sarcastically as the female singer’s voice kicked in, and neither of them heard her wailing, plaintive wordlessness for what it was—a warning cry.

The words started—Sweet dreams are made of this—and he stepped into her with eerie speed, hardly seeming to move as he stepped into her rhythm as though it were his own, his body following her sway as though he had started it.

She eyed him balefully, somehow resenting his participation, and ground her hips right. He followed closely, his own hips following the arc of hers while remaining mere inches away. She stepped to her right and he to his left, keeping body to body with her, his eyes directly on hers as she rolled her hips clockwise and he did the same.

Gen leaned into him challengingly, wondering if he’d touch her anyway, now wanting to force him into it—like a childhood spat, it was up to her to goad him into making the mistake, into flubbing up, but there was nothing childlike about this at all. She leaned into him and he leaned back, snake-quick, and then he repeated the motion to her, leaning in and making her stumble back.

It was cat-and-mouse now, and she could see he intended for her to trip up just as much as she intended the same for him. The challenge was hot and blatant in his eyes, and she dipped down, grazing her fingers to the floor.

Some of them want to use you…

He dropped with her, his knee fitting cannily between hers, his breath feathering over her face as they stood together in tandem, slowly drawing out the muscles. His hands ghosted for just a moment over her hips, not touching, but she could feel the heat off those warm, wide palms, and it made her see red.

The singer’s siren voice lapsed into the whip-cracking beat again, and Gen circled to her left even as he circled to his right, forming a tight, small circuit like two animals sizing one another up for a fight.

“Afraid I’ll bite, Wesley?” he asked, bending his head to put his lips close to—but not touching, no, she’d specified no touching, and he’d not lose this challenge—her ear.

She raised her head, her hair brushing his lips, and her hot brown eyes narrowed hatefully. “Purebreds bite just as often as mutts,” she reminded him over the music, and now the singer’s wail was a battle cry, spurring them both on.

She turned her back to him now, walking away from him and knowing he was right behind her as she extended her arms a bit, rolling her shoulders and feeling his arms line up directly behind hers. In a split second she was facing him again, sending him backward, and then a reciprocation on his end, sending her bending so far back she was kneeling before him.

She walked backward on her knees, taking the first opportunity to scramble back to her feet.

The “no touching” rule had not been a smart one, she saw now. For now, every near-brush was torture, and every bit of heat was too keen to describe.

And in that heat, it was ever so easy to lose what she knew she thought of him, and to lose what she knew he thought of her.

She was following him, perhaps not as well as he was following her, but Drake knew if she’d been anyone else, he’d be giving her at least grudging respect. But her glowing face, her angry, combative eyes only made him want to strike out more, made him want to make her shake.

He dipped to the floor this time, and she dropped with him. As they had last time, she started the sinuous slide up—and he stayed right where he was, crouched to the floor, his breath now hot on her stomach, drying the sheen of sweat there and bringing forth a new wave of heat.

And now the voice, that wordless cry the singer interspersed through the song, sounded like a sob to Genevieve, and she could sympathize, feeling the sinful warmth pour through her body and into her core. She turned her back again, her cheeks burning, but now he was spooned behind her, only an inch from her, and their bodies were moving in such small ways that they seemed to be locked together, rocking imperceptibly and suggestively to the beat throbbing around them.

Hold your head up…

His breath fluttered the hair tucked behind her ear and he inhaled deeply, smelling the honeysuckle warmth of her hair, the fire she tried to keep from licking out around the edges. All that smooth, freckled skin of her back confronted him and he hovered a hand first over it, then down over her long, slender arm. He hinted at putting his hand under hers and she lifted it, lining their arms up together as he coaxed her to raise hers to the ceiling even as his drew back down, stroking the air near her arm, but only the air, and never the skin itself.

Gen let her hand trail down, picking up the hair off the back of her neck—God, when had it gotten so bloody hot?—and then he was there, his head dropped over her shoulder, his lips so untouchingly close to the skin of her shoulder she could feel him breathing, feel the words forming on his lips.

God, Wesley…

The words were swallowed up in the music as they were swallowed up in it, mindless now with the game they’d both started, neither one knowing how to win. Fascinated with the power he’d wielded over her and the possibility of the same over him, Gen turned her face to look at his in profile and raised two fingertips near his cheek—

And with no more effort than that she made him turn his face toward hers, their breaths mingling together, eyes locked on eyes, and a tiny whimper escaped Gen’s lips.

Some of them want to abuse you…

Some of them want to be abused…

The cry of the singer this time broke Gen from her reverie, and her whimper turned into a gasp, drawing the breaths they’d shared back into her lungs and making her choke, tears drawing to her eyes with the force of the renewed breaths, and the ghost-echo of his words speared into her brain.

God, Wesley…

And she knew this must have been his intent all along, to pull her outside herself and make her look the fool.

With a desperate glance at him, body now still, she implored for it not to be true—the evening’s surreal events to have just been a dream—and she ran from the floor to get away from the music, knowing he would follow her.

He could follow her to hell for all she cared; all she wanted was some safe ground.

And when he broke out of the doors and into the night air, the last thing Drake Mallory felt was safe.

He felt crazed.

CHAPTER NINE- Losing Control

She was halfway to the car when she realized she’d forgotten the shoes. They would have been useful, she thought, in the confrontation that was surely coming. A few inches made a great deal of difference sometimes, and with her stomach a quaking, hot ball of confusion, Gen thought she’d like any leverage she could have.

Yes, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut against the thought of him so near to her, a few inches meant a great deal, indeed.

Stopping at the car, she slid the thin rubber band from her wrist and bound her hair with a few efficient movements. It was hot, unreasonably so, considering it had been chilly when they’d arrived.

His eyes had darkened to slate as he strode across the tarmac, his boots grinding in the few loose rocks laying about. He kept his hands poised at his sides like a gunfighter at the ready, his steps measured despite their quick pace. He would not lose control again.

He would not admit he’d lost it at all.

She let the bare small of her back rest against the cool exterior of the car, the cold, unyielding metal soothing against her skin. The music was behind them now, faded already into the interior of the club, a backdrop now to this awkward face-off.

Drake said nothing until he was upon her, resting his hands on his car, caging her in with the same mere inches he’d spared her inside on the floor.

“It’s rude to leave before a song is over, Wesley,” he said with a raised eyebrow, but wasn’t there a hint of breathlessness under there? “Not that I expect you to know that.”

“You’ve proven your point,” Gen said, crossing her arms over her chest. And what point had that been, she wondered. That even the unredeemable could be seductive?

“I didn’t have a point,” he said, bending his elbows to bring their faces closer together. And he spoke the truth—perhaps he’d had a point in the beginning, but for this night, she was supposed to be in his life, part of his world.

And for this night, didn’t that make her his?

A Mallory did not take possession lightly. So, without touching her, he exercised the same control that had kept him inches from her earlier, and with the tiniest relaxation of muscles, bent his elbows that final fraction of a degree, meeting mouth to mouth, stopping bitter words with a culminating kiss.

It didn’t spark so much as it seared, Gen thought, arching her back and feeling him give to her proximity like two magnets with identical poles, resisting touch of anything but lips and tongues and clashing teeth.

It was she who felt the first raindrop, imagined it steaming off her scalp as his lips pressed hers painfully into her teeth, and then she felt the second slide down her cheek like a tear just before the scattered drops grew more concentrated. When the isolated drops gathered into a shower, he broke away from her, his own stormcloud eyes first dazed, then annoyed.

Being jerked back into reality wasn’t nearly as pleasant as falling into your own trap, he thought as he jerked his head toward the car, the mists of temporary idiocy filtering away from his brain.

“Bugger,” he spat, pushing away, his hand brushing her hip in his haste. He didn’t bother opening the car door, merely jumped into the open top from the passenger’s side.

Gen did not turn to watch as he started the car, but instead left her back to the now-wet metal of the door; she placed a hand to her tender lips and felt a groan start to rise. Was this what she’d been heading for? Surely not. But for a moment, a fleeting moment, hadn’t something jumped between them, something older than the week’s spats and small camaraderies, something that felt a great deal like history?

“Fuck,” Drake yelled, slamming a fist into the steering wheel. The top was stuck. Of course it was, here and now.

Because at this moment, his possessions would clearly be the end of him.

“I know!” he exclaimed, raising his eyes to the sky and addressing whatever power had it in for him. “I get it, kissing the Wesley’s about as wrong as it gets. I don’t need any cosmic fuckin’ reminders!” With one more glancing blow to the steering wheel, he hopped into the backseat and glared at Gen, who had finally turned and was staring at him owlishly, her hand still to her lips.

He was all too aware his own lips had been there just a moment before.

“Don’t just stand there, you twit, help me!” he growled.

Too speechless to respond and too shocked to resist, finally surprised by his actions, Gen fumbled with the door of the Jaguar, her numb fingers slipping on the damp metal, unable to find purchase. When he gave her another glance, the heat—anger? leftover, misplaced lust?—spurred her into a defensive sort of movement and she followed his example, jumping into the car.

She wasn’t quite as agile about it as he’d been, and she barked her shin, tumbling into the backseat with her bare feet slipping on the wet leather seats.

They worked together in tandem, hands side-by-side to work the top past its catch, and when it finally hummed into place, shutting out the rain, they each leaned back, breaths heaving. He rested against the back seat of the car as she sat backwards, leaning her head against the front seat.

He looked over at her, her hair slipping out of its hasty binding, wet tendrils of it sticking to her damp face, the long, white line of her neck exposed as she caught her breath.

And then she began to laugh, head thrown back, drops of water running down her throat, her lips already darkened and a bit swollen from his earlier ministrations.

Since he found absolutely nothing funny, Drake was fairly certain she was laughing at him.

“Show me a night in a Mallory’s shoes, will you?” Gen said between gasps, a mild sensation of hysteria creeping through her. She didn’t actually find it funny, but if she didn’t laugh, she was fairly sure she was going to snap. “Really give me a taste of the life?” She couldn’t stop it; it was as though her mouth had a mind of its own.

It clearly had, a detached part of her mused. It had, after all, kissed him back.

And as that thought sent a sneaky sliver of heat back through her, twining with the hysteria as though those two emotions belonged together, it was his turn to bare his teeth, his turn to snap at her.

He wasn’t so much offended as he was embarrassed—he’d set out to teach her a bit of a lesson, and what had happened? He’d gotten caught up in it, in the sight of her and her usually hidden curves, in the hot honeysuckle smell of her, in the sound of the music and the ebb and tide pull of her, of both of them. And then his God damned car roof had stuck, making him look like an ass.

Well, he’d not take her mocking him for it.

She was mid-laugh when he snaked a strong, long-fingered hand around her waist, sending her first across the seat to him, toppling without a choice into his lap. His eyes were on hers, hot and angry as his hands covered her hips and with a quick, brutal shake, he crushed her back against the driver’s seat. Before she could catch her breath, calm her hysteria, slap the daylights out of him, he had settled himself firmly between her knees. His hands streaked to her shoulders and he pinned her there, his breath coming hard and fast between his teeth. He gave her no time to protest, wanting only to shut that smart mouth of hers, to silence that breathless laugh.

“You want me to treat you like I treat my usual dates, then?” he asked, jerking her roughly toward him, forcing her to tilt her head back to keep those wide brown eyes on his. She looked skittish but not frightened and she kept her eyes on his, her own breathing rapid and loud in the confines of the car.

He didn’t bother with gentility as all ten fingers clasped into the freckled flesh of her shoulders, and he didn’t bother with gentility as his tongue dived into the depths of her mouth, tasting both mirth and fear there.

He’d managed to shut her up, he thought distantly as she arched reflexively against him, his hands moving from shoulders to waist to bottom as he levered her closer to him, feeling the heat that centered between her thighs. As his mouth moved from hers to cover the rain-covered pulse point at her throat, a desperate panting noise escaped her lips.

“Well, then?” he rasped, that flaxen head tipped down and those devilish quicksilver eyes turned up as he thrust his hands under her bottom and rocked his hips under her, working to elicit the most shock he could from the venom-tongued viper above him, working to draw every bit of her out that he could, working to control her superiority and make it his own.

She couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. It was deplorable, it was shameful, it was addictive, the rough feel of his hands where no one else had been, the lips unchecked on her neck, sucking blood to the surface in pinched, painful spots. Who knew, she thought, her hands slapping weakly at the car seat on either side of Drake’s head. Who knew he could do such things? And who knew she had it in her to react?

And of course she didn’t have the heart—or the presence of mind—to stop him, she thought as his teeth grazed her skin and sent a wrenching shudder through her. After all, never in her life had she felt like this. Stopping it now would be like turning off a film before the ending, stopping a train before it reached its destination.

Gen Wesley had never in her life experienced something like this, and so she had no idea how to stop it or why she should.

“Where’s the goody two-shoes now?” he asked, the sound of her need needling ceaselessly into his eardrums.

That panting, that thoughtless, mindless, shameless whimpering she was doing was digging into his brain, it was making him crazy. It was a mirage, it was heatstroke, it was a hallucination, it was a fever, all rolled into one. It was just plain sick and he wanted to hear it forever.

Mostly, Drake thought, hooking his thumbs into the frayed belt loops of her jeans, because it was a pleasant change from her usual scathingly judgmental and paradoxically matronly tone.

And surely that was the only reason. It had nothing to do with the way she was writhing beneath his hands. It had nothing to do with the way she was pushing against him, the way she was already riding him despite the layers of clothes between them, and it had nothing to do the way she surely didn’t realize what she was doing. “Tell me you like this, Wesley.”

She didn’t respond, but instead put her lips tentatively to his throat, imitating his actions earlier.

She felt his intake of breath, the quickening of his pulse, and what she felt most was triumph.

A contest of wills, she’d judged from the beginning, and clever hands and a cleverer mouth did not a winner make.

But the remnant of a song still pounded in her brain and any rationale she tried to apply was falling sorely short.

“Do it, damn it,” he said, his voice pitched high in desperation as her lips traced the line of his Adam’s apple, exploring in a way she hadn’t expected to explore. When she didn’t obey—and had he really expected her to?—Drake let his hands follow her gyrations, his thumbs still hooked in her jeans; anticipating her reaction, he watched her face as he gripped her hips and angled his thumbs upward, running the seam of her jeans along the heat at the juncture of her thighs, the fine line between pleasure and pain arrowing into a single white-hot point, ripping a hoarse scream from her lips as she threw her head back, eyes now blind.

Panting turned into sobbing as the unfamiliar feeling whipped through her, moisture and warmth pooling at the point where it all started and ended, and neatly-trimmed fingernails scrabbled uselessly at well-tended leather as she poured herself out and let herself go. Her whole body felt raw and shocked as her hips jerked sporadically of their own accord, a feeling akin to grief joining all the others she was feeling.

And still he would not stop, now slipping his hand between denim and flesh to test, to sooth what fire he’d started, to feel what he’d wrought, and Drake Mallory smirked in satisfaction.

This he could excel at. He needed no tutor here. He needed no name, no legacy, no infamy.

He had a willing woman under his hands, and at the moment it didn’t matter what his name was, and it sure as hell didn’t matter what hers was.

She was draped over him, her hands fluttering weakly over his shoulders, over his face, over his arms, over his hands. Her lips trembled with the force of emotions she was unused to containing, and she could feel her oversensitive flesh pulsing underneath his fingers. Embarrassment rushed to cover her, though her baser instincts kept her moving against those fingers, moving against the man who had surely started this all in anger.

“I—I like it,” she finally answered, taking in a gulping breath of air, and the look in his eyes frightened her, the grimly victorious visage he presented her with, and her mind simply clicked off, sending unfiltered, confused fragments pouring from her lips. “I don’t know what to—I’ve never done—”

She couldn’t have stopped him more effectively if she’d opened the top and let the rain pour in. Though her statement was incomplete, her meaning was clear enough, and he closed his eyes, leaning his head back and away from her in an attempt to shut off the sight of her.

If he’d needed a reminder of the sheer wrongness of his actions, she had given it to him.

Even with his eyes closed he could see her, the afterimage of that vivid hair burned onto the back of his eyelids, and the smell of frustrated arousal, rain, and heat blended and overpowered him. He had meant to teach her a lesson, not bloody well shag her. And the hell of it was, judging by the horribly constrictive feel of the denim he wore, he still wanted to.

A bloody fucking innocent.

He should have known.

Even Drake Mallory had limits. Without limits, he’d simply… become his father.

Gen watched the furrow of his brow as he held her at bay; every fiber of her felt as though it was leaning toward him, pulled to him by an intangible need for more. A thin rivulet of mingled sweat and rain trailed down the center of her back, and the slick stickiness on the insides of her thighs served only as a reminder of what hadn’t yet happened. Her lips were sore, she could feel bruises blooming on her shoulders, and the ache between her legs had grown into something very akin to hunger. As soon as he’d pushed her away, she’d been torn in two, desperation warring with relief.

Independent of her brain, her voice trembled forth pleadingly from her lips.

“Drake…”

He lifted her then, his eyes narrowed intensely, and he plopped her unceremoniously in the seat beside him. He was up and moving, wanting to be away before she could clamber back onto him, falsely encouraged by his idiocy of only moments before. In a sinuous slide, a quick contortion in the small car, he was enthroned in the driver’s seat, his elegant fingers shaking slightly on the steering wheel.

“I’m taking you home,” he said stiffly, feeling suddenly formal. A peasant, he reminded himself, should be treated as such.

He should have never touched her.

His hands shook harder and he wrapped them around the steering wheel, a muscle jumping erratically in his cheek.

He could feel his eyes boring into the back of his head but refused to look back at her. Instead, he slipped on the sunglasses defiantly, knowing how ridiculous they were in the dark but needing to hide.

“So that’s it, then?” She sounded musing rather than mad, though she could have told him there was already a good deal of confusion and anger brewing in her. Had she done something wrong? Was it something about her? And worse, what in the hell did it matter? She didn’t need his approval.

Or she hadn’t before he’d laid his hands on her.

“Get in the passenger seat, Wesley,” he said, still facing away from her, his voice tight. He didn’t need this now, didn’t need the feminine tears or the catchy little sighs. He didn’t want her to beg, because he’d very nearly taken her in the cramped backseat of his car, and if she begged, he might still have to do it.

What had he gotten himself into?

“You are disgusting,” Gen shot back, her voice tremulous, but she was keenly aware of her own actions and she’d take responsibility for them. “And I should have known better than to even come here, much less allow you to…” She trailed off, unable to find the words to finish her sentence. The more her mind righted itself, the angrier she felt, both at herself and him. “Well, then,” she said, forcing a scathing amount of brightness into her voice. “Gosh, Drake, your life just looks better and better all the time. I’m ever so glad I joined up for a lovely Mallory evening.”

He reached back without looking, instead relying on the rearview mirror to judge her position. His hand snagged her wrist unerringly, and his voice was husky, dangerous.

“On any other Mallory evening, the girl in my backseat isn’t a virgin,” he said, carefully controlling the tremor that wanted to rise. “Now get in the fucking front.”

“I’d die a thousand violent deaths before I accepted a ride from you,” Gen said loftily despite the sinking feeling in her stomach. What, exactly, had just transpired? The whole world had tilted on its axis, and it felt now as though they were trying to put it back with little success. But for now she’d play her part, though a bit woodenly—she’d no idea what else to do. “I’ve no more need to beg a ride from you than you’ve need for a crown, Mallory.” She channeled her passion into indignation, grateful for the outlet. It saved her, at least momentarily, from thinking about what had transpired.

She climbed out of the car, grabbing the sweater she’d shed earlier and leaning in to address her stoic companion.

“Besides, Drake, darling, I could use a walk to cool off, seeing as you put me on edge and then couldn’t finish the deed.” Though surprised by her own nastiness, Gen was satisfied with her petty revenge, and she left the door hanging open as she stalked off, letting rain pour in and onto the seat she’d already damaged.

~~~

“They’re not on a scheduled trip, are they?”

It was as though she’d appeared out of nowhere in front of him, this cunning little witch with her big brain and even bigger books, and for a moment, Dumbledore severely lamented not sending Hermione Granger back into a Muggle world. Why, for her, it’d have been like a holiday.

With faded eyes narrowed behind half-moon glasses, Dumbledore reckoned a witch like Hermione didn’t really take holidays—she took periods of unassigned reading.

“Good evening, Miss Granger,” he said kindly, making his way down the hall to the Great Hall, pining sorely for some trifle. It didn’t seem he was fated to get it just yet.

“Ginny and Ron, Colin, Luna… Malfoy and the others,” she persisted, skipping a bit to keep in step with him. For an old man, he could be awfully quick. “They’re somewhere else altogether, aren’t they? And they’re not getting along.”

He stopped then and spun so quickly she stumbled back a step, his eyes intent on hers. For a moment, brief and frightening, he’d reminded her of Professor Snape. Then his eyes cleared of the momentary flash of unease and it was just the headmaster again, normal and a bit absent.

But she’d seen what she’d seen, and the headmaster wasn’t altogether at peace with his absent students, either. “Where are they?” she whispered.

His eyes darted about the hallway and not for the first time, Albus Dumbledore questioned his own actions. But he knew he could give her an answer, one honest answer, and so he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “They are safe, Miss Granger. They are safe, and all things willing, they will return much improved. Do you trust me?”

She gnawed her lip, wishing she’d brought Harry along with her. If there was anyone with whom Dumbledore was absolutely forthright, it was Harry. But she hadn’t, and she was determined to handle the situation in an adult manner. “Yes,” she answered tremulously, her curiosity nearly spilling over. But it was not to be sated, for the headmaster continued walking down the hallway after clapping her shoulder, his attitude clearly a dismissal of conversation.

And though she knew no more than she had when she’d stopped him, Hermione let out a satisfied chuff of laughter.

She’d been right, by Merlin.

She knew she had been.

CHAPTER TEN- Making a Splash

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Drake’s mutter barely registered to his own ears, drowned out by the sound of the rain hitting the top of the car and splashing into the open passenger-side window, out which he now shouted. “Get in the God damned car, Wesley, you mule-headed arse!”

He’d followed her for nearly a mile now, the car’s powerful engine throttled to accommodate the slow pace he was keeping, staying just behind her as she walked the wet sidewalks. He’d taken more side streets than he cared to count, shouted at her countless times, and if the seat beside him hadn’t already been ruined by the wrath of the rain-soaked wretch outside, the water damage would have taken care of it.

Resolutely, Gen wrapped her arms around herself, feeling the sodden knit of her sweater squelch in the crooks of her elbows. The cashmere top she’d so admired clung to her now like so much wet tissue paper, and her bare feet were wrinkled from the downpour. She’d have turned around and shouted back at the over-persistent bastard, but she’d be damned if she’d give him the satisfaction of seeing her teeth chatter.

A car horn sounded stridently, breaking Gen from her thoughts and making her tense, but she did not turn around. It wasn’t Mallory’s—she’d heard it enough in the past fifteen minutes to know good and well the tone and timbre of that blasted machine.

Drake shot an angry glance into his rearview mirror and flipped off the impatient driver gesturing behind him. Riding his brakes just a little more, making the red rear lamps flash into the other driver’s eyes, he shouted out the window. “Bugger off, you fucking twit, there are plenty of other streets for you to take!” He pounded his fists against the wheel, wondering longingly where all his breeding and pride had gone tonight. Certainly they were elsewhere. He’d nearly shagged a Wesley, and now he was following her like a bloody lunatic. Thinking such, he yelled out the window again, the roar of a wounded, desperate, and very angry animal. “Wesley!”

He looked like a fool, and well he knew it.

But still he did not leave her.

After all, he told himself, it would be just his luck if something happened to the bint and then he was held responsible. No, he’d not bring shame on the family name if some sort of incident happened with the nattering wench. Instead, he’d see her home in this inane fashion and then be shut of her. He’d wash his hands of her after tonight, so he would.

And washing his hands sounded good, he reckoned as he rounded the last corner. He’d touched a bloody Wesley. Freckled, impoverished lot.

But for some reason, he couldn’t dredge up the accompanying shudder that usually went with those words.

He pulled to the curb in front of her house with a squeal of wet tires, ready to jump out and—

Walk her to the door?

—wring her neck.

But she was already in the house, and from where he stood, Drake could hear the bolt latch, and he uttered a string of curses under his breath. Well, he’d certainly not stand out in front of her house, mooning like an idiot. She was in the house, she was no longer his charge. As he approached the car, keys in hand, fate dealt him one more blow. The driver he’d gestured so rudely at only moments before drove by in a flurry of tires—and a magnificent splash of water, covering Drake from head to toe in muddy road-slough.

“Guess I needed a cold shower,” he said bitterly, getting into the car and listening to the water drop off him. “One more thing I didn’t need a cosmic reminder of.”

He’d never been so glad to see a day end.

But as he pulled away from the house, he looked once more in the rearview mirror, back at the dark windows of her small house.

~~~

She peeled the sweater off the second she was in the door, shivering lightly but no longer able to tolerate the wet, heavy fabric sticking to her shoulders. She’d carry it up to her room, hang it up to dry, and by the time Monday morning rolled around, it would look as worn and decrepit as it had before she’d subjected it to a night of melodrama and hormones.

Gen’s breath caught at that thought; hormones, indeed, and what a show of them.

And because her breath had already backed up in her throat, she had none with which to scream when a pair of strong, rough hands clamped on her shoulders and shook once.

“What in the bloody hell are you doing?!” Rob’s voice, even in a half-whisper, carried up in a higher register of shock. He looked her over once, and his eyes flew back up to her face in a mix of embarrassment and discomfort. His sister was dressed like a right tart, runners of mascara trailing down her face with the rain, and if that wasn’t a love-bite standing out on her neck, he’d eat every pair of his football boots. Discomfort turned to hotheaded rage and, without waiting for an answer, Rob set his sister aside—gently despite his anger—and headed for the door. “I’m going to kill that bastard, even if I have to spill his blue blood to do it.”

Gen had an idea he wasn’t speaking of Connor, and she didn’t think the story of going to Connor’s for lessons would be anywhere near convincing at this point. “Rob, no,” she said, her voice both sharp and weary. “Please.”

The plea shocked them both; Rob stopped, a hand still on the doorknob, and Gen covered her mouth with her hand. Where had that come from? Begging on behalf of that heathen Mallory? Up until that moment, Gen hadn’t been sure she didn’t want to kill Drake herself. But instinctually, she’d stopped her brother.

She’d figure out why later.

“It’s nothing, Rob. I’m a big girl, you know, if I’d not wanted to go out, I’d not have gone.” She reached out a hand to her brother, her best friend, and he turned toward her, unable to do otherwise.

With a single step, his long-limbed frame was positioned before her, and he had a thick-fingered hand at her chin, tipping it up and exposing the mark on her neck. “Nothing, eh?” God, he wanted to kill that wanker. Wanted to wrap his hands around the poncey bugger’s throat and squeeze. He’d think twice about touching Rob Wesley’s sister. “Die he hurt you?” he asked, his voice tremulous. “Did he threaten you?” That weird bastard and his weird silver eyes—God only knew what he’d done, what he’d said to her to make her come with him.

She jerked back, at once embarrassed by his actions and annoyed by them. “No!” she said, swatting his hand away from her. “Listen to me, Rob! I wanted to go. I have a life, too, you know.”

“Well, yeah,” he said, his voice exploding out like a sigh. “But not like that. Not with him. This is totally unlike you, Gen. You skive off classes all day, then you leave at night and lie about it.” Disbelief replaced wrath, though whether it was momentary or permanent, Gen had no idea. She was sincerely hoping she could keep him occupied long enough to let his fury boil away.

“If I hadn’t, Mum would have had kittens,” Gen said, and the siblings shared a knowing smirk. But on the heels of amusement came an idea that had her recoiling. “Oh, God, Rob, you didn’t tell her, did you?”

“No. But by God, Gen, I should,” he answered, rolling his shoulders and eyeing her curiously. Where on earth had she come up with the tart wear? He couldn’t pin down what feeling to react on first, what part of him to pay attention to. He was angry, but moreover, he was confused—what was she doing? And to what end?

And how could be stop her?

“Oh, right. Just as I should tell her about that time you and that blighter from one of the other football teams got pissed one night on his mum’s cooking sherry,” Gen said with a tiny smile, hoping to coax him away from the murderous thoughts of only moments before. It was a woman’s prerogative, she thought with an inward laugh, to divert a man. Her femininity had been her one—and only—weapon against her brothers in her youth, and now it was no different.

And with Drake? Was it any different with him, either?

Her mind called up a hot and ready image of his eyes speared on hers, his mouth streaking over hers, and she was glad the dark hid her easy flush. No, it wasn’t any different. Power in the form of gender, she supposed, and realization dawned in degrees. If she’d only pushed—only tried to match her power against the power he held over her—she could have had whatever end result she wanted. And even without pushing, hadn’t he followed her?

Hadn’t he followed her all the way home?

Impulsively, still clutching her wet sweater in her hand, Gen rose to her toes and kissed her brother on the cheek. “I love you, Rob,” she said sincerely. “Can’t you just trust me on this? He’s not all bad, you know.”

That was a revelation to them both, and shock mirrored shock in the two Wesley faces. She hadn’t meant to say that.

She streaked up the stairs then, leaving behind a very bewildered and befuddled big brother.

Somewhere along the line, Rob thought, he’d lost track of things. Scrubbing a hand over his face, he turned to trudge up the stairs to his own bedroom. What the bloody hell else was new, eh?

~~~

He slammed the door when he came into the large, old house, not giving half a damn if he woke someone up or not. It wasn’t as though his father slept, the old snake. Sleep, like many other things, was far too human for the likes of Lucas Mallory. But Drake did take care when stepping past his mother’s room, keeping his tread light.

The night had gone poorly, to say the very least. To put a finer point on it, his entire idea of the evening had backfired, leaving him confused, flustered, and extremely frustrated. He was none too warm from a drive spent with the windows down, but he knew taking a hot shower wasn’t going to do anything but torture him further.

Cold shower it was, then.

She’d bewitched him, he thought, using the clothes he’d chosen against him, using assets he hadn’t even known she had. She’d tricked him with his own tricks, and if he were completely honest with himself—and he liked to think he was—it scared the hell out of him.

A Wesley.

Dammit.

Well, a Mallory knew when and how to cut his losses. His father had spent a lifetime perfecting that art financially, going after the kill when need be and backing off when need be. And though Drake himself would never admit defeat, he would strategize a retreat when necessary.

And, he thought as the frigid water poured out of the shower, softening the spikes of his hair, forcing him to close pale lashes over slate eyes, a retreat was most definitely necessary.

After long hours of unrest and discomfort, he fell asleep.

And he dreamed, of course, of her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN- Following the Weekend

A weekend.

For most students, no matter the age, the word “weekend” had a magic all its own, the magic of no teachers, no classes, no responsibilities. No early rising, no apprehension over tests, quizzes or tutoring sessions.

But this particular weekend held a different sort of distraction altogether, and in two very different houses in two very different parts of the same city, the minds of two freed students bound them in a different way altogether, captivated them in a way entirely different than the four stone walls of an edifice of education.

One plotted a way in as the other plotted a way out. One thought of Friday night’s escapade and smiled with the prospect of the future, and the other grew more uncomfortable with each growing increment of pure physical want.

One realized he had somehow made a horrible mistake…

And the other realized she hadn’t botched up quite as badly as she thought she had.

A weekend.

~~~

It was a bit, she thought, like gathering weapons. Gen left her hair down, parting it to the side and letting the deep red tresses fall over one eye. A bit overdramatic, she judged, and pulled it back from her face, anchoring it in two sections at the back of her head, creating a wide fall of waves down her back. She dressed in her uniform as always, but opted for a last-minute change, digging in the closet for last year’s pleated skirt, the one she’d grown just a bit too leggy for.

He’d made her want him, fine, she thought as she fastened the skirt and looked at the length of leg showing. But she’d get what she wanted, whether he liked it or not. A Wesley didn’t back down from a fight, and if she had to look at this as a battle—well, then, so be it. She believed in finishing what she started, even if Master Drake Mallory didn’t.

She poked her head out her bedroom door and looked around—Rob had supposedly had morning practice, but she’d not put it past him to ambush her in her own home and walk her to school by the hand like a toddler. He’d actually woken her up before he’d left and told her not to accept any rides to school.

The concern was sweet, if a bit misplaced.

The last weapon of her arsenal was the entrance—it was a gamble to show up right on the cusp of being late, especially when her custom was to arrive early, and especially since she had no idea when he’d actually arrive.

On this morning of all mornings, she thought he would show up on time, and for once, she was right. Her gamble paid off.

She trailed a finger down the hot hood of the mean green machine as she sidled past it in the gravel lot behind the school, but she did not—would not—stop. She’d see what he had to say, if anything. She’d see if he would come to her.

She heard his car door open and slam shut, and a smirk pulled at her lips even as butterflies took up residence in her stomach. She may not have been cut out for this sort of work, but she could see why someone like Drake would so enjoy manipulation.

It had the potential to be very gratifying.

He’d been waiting for her, summoning the proper words—he could call a stop to things in a dignified, more mature way, arrange for her punishment to be alleviated, end this farce of a truce they’d somehow made.

And then she’d walked by—no, she’d ambled by his car, milk-pale legs stretching out of that impossibly short skirt, one speckled hand slipping over his still-ticking car, and she didn’t so much as glance back at him.

The words he’d prepared slipped straight from his mind, and the only word he could groan was four letters long and neither dignified nor proper.

He jumped from the car as though burned, now righteously determined to have things out, once and for all. He felt as though he were losing his bloody mind, punished all weekend, day and night, with dreams of her. For the first time in his life, Drake wondered if there was retribution for his less-than-admirable actions.

A living hell, as it were.

He caught up with her easily and turned her around by one shoulder, thankful for the privacy his sunglasses afforded him as she turned guileless eyes toward him. The last thing he needed was for that… that ragamuffin to see him ogling her legs. They were a bit too skinny, a bit too pale, he told himself. It didn’t matter that he’d had his hands on them, had them pressed to his sides, felt their strength in both flex and release.

“We need to talk,” he said suddenly, absurdly relieved that he didn’t yelp. Dear God.

“Okay,” she said simply, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. For a moment, his eyebrows had shot up, and he looked as though he’d been boxed right in the face. It was a good start.

He had to regain some semblance of control of this circus. “Nice skirt, Wesley. Too poor to afford one that fits?” One aristocratic eyebrow arched as he looked at her over his sunglasses—

And she merely smiled. “Too rich to afford a shirt that buttons, Drake?”

He bared his teeth at her, a quick flash of straight, even white, and then he smoothed it into a grin, remembering his intention to have it done with. “I’m going to do you a favor,” he said magnanimously, stepping with her as she headed for the building. “I’m going to see to it your sentence, if you will, is lessened, your obligation fulfilled. Think of it, Wesley. No more tutoring. No more punishment. You can do something useful, like spending your afternoons working in a factory for a few extra pennies.”

But she refused to take the bait, to snap back, instead turning her head to cast him a sidelong glance. “I’m afraid I have to turn down your generous offer, tempting though factory work sounds,” she said casually. “Are you sure you couldn’t be even more generous and let me turn down beds at the Mallory manse?” The casual tone sharpened into one of faux naiveté, and she saw his eyebrows shoot up again. She stopped then, ready to go for the kill.

Gen placed her back to the wall, leaning into it and scratching one calf with her other foot.

His head dipped ever so slightly, his shaded eyes following the rise and fall of the outgrown skirt, and as he was looking down, she stabbed a slim finger hard into the center of his chest, making him utter a surprised, choked gasp.

“You’re a bloody welsher!” she exclaimed, punctuating each word with a jab. “You’re trying to renege!”

It was worth it, she thought, to see him scramble. He was confused, visibly so even with the enigma of the sunglasses, and for a moment, his mouth parted wordlessly. Then the glasses were gone, jerked off in an angry gesture of futility.

“I beg your pardon?” he said, stepping closer to her and grabbing her hand to prevent one more jab to his chest. Yes, perhaps he had spent the better part of his weekend wanting her hands on him.

But not like that.

And no one, but no one, impugned the honor of a Mallory, least of all a pauper like this. Whether or not they were actually honorable was a whole other story—it was the public flogging of the matter that steamed him.

“Welsh-er,” she said, separating the word into two bitten syllables, greatly enjoying his reaction. “I fulfill my end of the bargain, spend a charming evening with you, and in return, you were supposed to do the same. Instead you turn tail and run like a coward when something discomfits you in the least. I don’t want your help with my punishment, Mallory. I’m actually starting to think of it as your punishment.”

Not entirely true—she had a feeling he’d enjoyed their Friday night a great deal more than he’d ever let on. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have bloody well panicked and all but begged for a reprieve first thing Monday morning.

It was just altogether too delicious. Too bad she didn’t have Colin’s ever-present camera.

“You’re either very daft or very evil,” Drake said, forcing his voice to be level. He’d convinced himself he was rid of her, and now she wouldn’t have any of it. Realizing he was still holding her hand—her finger, I’m just holding her finger, and it’s totally self-defense—he dropped it like a burning coal and thrust his hands into his pockets.

God damn her and that skirt.

“We’ll discuss this after school,” she said easily, shrugging as though it made no difference at all to her. “We have a session, if you’ll recall.” She turned away from him them, deliberately brushing against him as she made her exit. “Your house. I promise not to make any snide remarks if you promise not to make me polish the floors.” Her voice carried back to him, and it occurred to him that she had a bloody awful habit of walking away from him.

He’d wanted the last word, dammit.

But for today, that was not to be; even as he started after her, one large hand slammed him up against the wall, and a flushed, freckled face that bore at least some similarity to Gen’s hovered in front of his.

Yes, Rob had more or less let the matter lay all weekend, hadn’t even said a word to his baby sister about it. But then he’d come into the hallway and seen her touching the prat. It was really too much to bear.

“I don’t care what your excuse is, Mallory, this is it. Whatever game you’re running on my sister is over.” It had sounded much more convincing in his head, really, and when Drake’s response was an incredulous bark of laughter, it lost some of its appeal.

“Game? No, mate, I’m afraid you’ve got it all wrong,” Drake said, the illegitimate chumminess somehow suiting the moment. “I’m trying to get the hell away from your sister. She’s the one running some sort of game. You’d be better off asking her. I want no part of the beggar’s carnival or whatever this is.”

Rob’s eyes widened, then narrowed, and the pink flush on his face darkened to brick red.

First he’d sensed a threat to Gen. Now he sensed insult.

“You think you’re too good for my sister, then?” he asked, shoving Drake again. “You think there’s something wrong with her, eh?”

It was like bedlam, Drake thought. A total madhouse. Perhaps that’s what poverty did, drove a person completely insane.

Of course, he contemplated, there were other ways to insanity. The phantom feel of her thighs around his, the feel of her lips on his throat, the hours spent replaying those few moments…

Drake threw his hands in the air and stepped away from Rob before the idiot pushed him one more time. “Yes! I think there’s something wrong with all of you, Wesley! Mental illness clearly runs in the bloody family.”

“What have we here? Two young gentlemen bonding in the corridor prior to their educational engagements, I gather?” The voice was amused, mellifluous, and brooked no nonsense. Headmaster Dunmore stood by them, leaning over slightly as though to keep an ear on the conversation. “What lovely sounds two young minds make when working together. I regret I must bring closure to this particular discussion of no small merit and send you both on your way.”

It was not time for these two, he thought, readjusting his spectacles with a gentle hand. No, the butting of young male minds, nature’s traditional fight to dominance, neither would suit here. Such competition would only make all his efforts fruitless, and time was running short.

“On to your classes then,” Dunmore said pleasantly, clapping his hands together. Rob immediately started to comply, and only Drake stood defiantly, arms crossed over his nearly bared chest.

“First chime’s not sounded yet,” Drake reminded the headmaster snidely, wondering what on earth was going on. He’d not once been at school to hear first chimes. She was screwing things up, and he didn’t like it. Power was tantamount to money in his world, and to see a penniless brat like Wesley wield power in any form rubbed him the wrong way.

Actually, it was rather the right way, a sadistic part of him gleefully chortled.

And in front of him, Dunmore merely quirked an eyebrow, raised a finger to the ceiling, and looked complacent as the first chimes rung on cue.

It was not, Drake decided, going to be a good day.

**Author’s Note: I’m sorry my chapters have slowed down a bit and I thank all of you who are still reading—work has been really busy lately and I haven’t made it out the door and home on time once this week. Anyway, a bit of a longer chapter than usual. Happy reading!**

CHAPTER TWELVE - Making Him Forget

She was sitting on his car when he came out of his last class, perched on the hood like some strange, exotic bird, her knees drawn up to a risky height, affording him just a little too much of a look at those legs of hers. He’d spent the whole day fuming—at her, at her idiot brother, at the headmaster, at circumstances. He had worked himself into a good rant and more than intended to give it to her—

But she didn’t look the same as she had that morning. Sure, those legs were still there, and that fiery red hair, but her eyes were different. Drake Mallory, like any other proud predator, could sense weakness from a mile away, and the certainty, the surety she’d possessed that morning in spades had faltered somewhere along the line.

Never having used his overmuch, Drake would not have recognized an attack of the conscience.

She’d stewed over her actions all day, the uncharacteristic duplicity of the past few days, the slyness she’d never expected from herself. Her spine, her fire, those were constants. But to be sneaky about them was new to Genevieve Wesley. She was a novice at being underhanded, and now she was having second thoughts.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” she said, sliding off the car and smoothing her hands down over the skirt, which was feeling more and more inadequate with each passing minute. What had she been thinking, really? Or had she been thinking at all? If it was possible for men to think only with what was between there legs, wasn’t it possible for women?

Remembering the rush that had gone through her Friday night, the feel of his hands touching, stroking, inflaming, she figured that was totally possible.

“It’s my car, I had to come out here sooner or later,” he sneered, wondering what on earth she was thinking now. She was the devil, that one, and he didn’t intend to forget it anytime soon.

She started to cross to the passenger’s side, and he grabbed her forearm, stopping her. “Thought you were too good to accept a ride from me, Wesley?”

“Just like you were too good to finish what you started,” she said loftily, tears starting in her eyes at the sting in her arm and the wound in her pride. She hadn’t really realized that part of it, that prideful, stubborn, strong-chinned part of her. Not until she’d glimpsed into the car, saw the backseat, thought about her own actions. Dammit, he’d rejected her, and it bloody well pissed her off.

“Yeah, and I had a bloody case of blue balls to show for it!” Drake burst out, unlocking the door and thoughtlessly jerking it open for her. “Are you getting in or not?”

Whether it was the smug satisfaction of knowing he’d been just as miserable as she or the fact that he’d opened the door for her, Gen slid in without another word, tucking her legs up neatly as he shut the door.

He’d managed to replace the seats sometime over the weekend, she noted with some regret. The inkstain was gone, and there wasn’t a spot of evidence of Friday’s night’s storm. Gen ran her fingers over the smooth, now flawless leather, waiting for him to get in.

When he finally did, jaw clenched in the afternoon sunlight pouring in through tinted windows, he stayed silent, his eyes fixed on the road in front of them. He stayed so for several minutes, and they both realized it was the longest moment they’d spent in one another’s presence without some sort of noise, some sort of argument or accompaniment to move the time along.

“Why are you doing this?” he finally asked, his posture uncharacteristically tense, both hands on the wheel. He didn’t want to go to his home, didn’t want to take her there again. All he wanted was to know what in the hell she thought she was doing, messing with a Mallory.

“You do understand honor, don’t you?” she asked tightly, turning her head to look at him. His response was silent, a slight inclination of the head.

Of course he understood honor, even if he didn’t necessarily possess any.

“Well, as distasteful a prat as I find you, I was assigned to help you.” She took her fingers away from the seat, though reluctantly, and crossed her arms over her chest. It had all made sense this morning, to go on the offensive, to make the next moves, to steer the course of action.

But it seemed instead the action was steering her.

“And let me guess, Wesley,” Drake said, “Because of you and your precious honor, you expect me to live up to my end of some imaginary bargain you’ve concocted, some silly little game?” He chuffed out a small, incredulous laugh, though he knew that was precisely what she meant to happen, and nothing he could say or do would dissuade her.

Distasteful though he surely found her.

“Surely you can make it to the Wesley home—what would you call it? A hole? A shack? Ruins?—for just one evening. We won’t have gruel, I promise. Though you would have to wear something that actually buttons.” The ghost of a smile flitted over her lips and she wondered, not for the first time, what on earth her family would have to say about such a creature brought into their midst.

And Gen wondered how long it would him to charm them completely, the sneaky, ferrety bastard.

He didn’t open the door for her this time; that had been an anomaly, she was sure. As she got out of the car and stared up at the expanse of his home, she felt a chill sprint the length of her spine, and his father’s face swam in her memory, the cold, somehow dulcet tones of his voice slinking through her ears.

A Wesley, isn’t it? Absolutely disgusting.

Drake saw the small tremor pass through her, the slight knock in those skinny, freckled knees, and he tilted his head curiously. Was this fear, then, from the ever-outspoken twit? Fear of what, precisely? It was obvious she held no fear of him, and his home had bred no trepidation with her previous visit.

Well, Drake, what about this place makes you shake? he asked himself, and he closed his eyes behind the dark lenses.

His father, of course. His father scared the hell out of everyone, the creepy, superior, smug bastard.

It was momentary kinship that had him placing the tips of his fingers to her back, guiding her into the mammoth doors of his house, but it was self-interest that had him hoping his father was still at work.

The door had barely closed behind them, however, when Lucas floated into the foyer, slim cruel fingers petting the silver pocketwatch hanging at his waist.

“Oh, lovely,” he drawled, giving his eyes an eloquent roll. He didn’t even bother to spare Gen more than a cursory glance, instead turning his attention to his son. The similarities—and differences—made Gen draw in a sharp breath as pale gray eyes met insolent slate ones, now free of their usual dark lenses, two platinum heads tilted back, strong chins tilted up in challenge. One dressed so impeccably it seemed severe, and the other exuding the sartorial carelessness only the young can pull off.

“Get out of my sight,” Lucas snarled, flicking his eyes back to Gen and making it unclear which of the two he was speaking to.

Unclear or no, it was his son who answered, Gen standing speechless at his side.

“Gladly,” Drake responded, his tone matching his father’s so precisely it made her cringe. He jerked his head, gesturing for her to follow, and she did so even as she realized the subservience of the action.

Drake slammed the door with enough force to make it shake on its enormous brass hinges, and when he locked the door and turned to her, his eyes were blazing in challenge, his mouth ready to spew defensive words at her.

The shouting started before he could draw forth the sneer, the smirk, the ready insults, the armor he so needed.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Lucas’s voice, only moments before a derisive purr, was now a disgusted roar directed at someone else altogether. “Abed again? Or is it still, sluggard?”

A low, weary feminine voice responded, the tones so quiet and slow they were lost through the massive wood of the hallway; though they were undeterminable, Gen found herself pitying this woman, this wife, this mother.

“Your son is home,” Lucas stated coldly one floor below them. “And isn’t it wonderful, he’s brought a guest.”

Unable to do otherwise, Gen looked imploringly at Drake, her eyes wide, and her pity shifted from the unseen mother to the son, his face pale with barely constrained rage, his eyes bright with hatred.

“Well?” he said, spreading his hands and affecting a cocky pose. “What have you to say now, Wesley? Would that you had half my problems, is that what you told me? Called me a wanton, ungrateful prat, did you? Well, I honestly suppose you could have half my problems, if you—”

“Get up so I can properly speak with you, you lazy, sickly, lump of a woman!”

With every word Lucas shouted, Gen could see tiny flinches cross Drake’s face, one after the other.

I didn’t know, she thought, but couldn’t bring herself to speak in the growing cacophony of the room, instead closing the distance between them and raising her hands, covering his ears with her tiny hands, the tips of her fingers brushing the carefully arranged spikes of his hair as she tried to shut out the noise for him.

Drake grabbed her wrists, his face impassive, framed by her fingers, and for the briefest moment, he felt himself yield, almost felt himself give into the pity of the pitiful.

And then he bared his teeth, shoving her away from him and onto his bed, his hands raising to momentarily cover his own ears from the senseless shouting that continued below, his mother’s voice now raised a little louder, a little more forcefully. He raised his eyes to her, his hands still over his ears, head downcast and eyes up, and Gen suppressed a shiver as he looked first at her and then into her, the cold smirk sliding over his features craftily as he dropped his hands.

“Wore that skirt just for me, did you?” he asked, stepping toward the bed, one foot placed accurately in front of the other. “Spent all morning trying to drive me mad.” Think about that, he told himself. Think about how you thought of her all day, and managed to think only of her and not of this.

“I think I could really blame it on you, you know, making our son, your son soft. He dresses like a fool and you let him leave the house like that!”

Gen scrambled to shove the skirt over her knees, keeping her eyes on his, wondering what had happened in the last few moments to shake everything so, to turn everything so horribly wrong. It was supposed to be simple. Her hands now free, she started to put them over her own ears to still the shouting below and the words Drake spat at her.

He stood at the side of the bed and placed his hands over hers, his eyes sparking with anger, hurt, and… what else? She couldn’t tell, didn’t know if she wanted to, and he lowered his head to hers, his hands and hers covering her ears, bringing total silence to the room, and he captured her mouth in a kiss that tasted of fear and desperation and rage and confusion, her lips crushing back into her teeth, the blood of his abused lips mixing with hers. He shoved her prone on the bed and knelt above her, and her thoughts collided with the thoughts of the day—

This is what you wanted, wasn’t it? You wanted him, and he had to want you back—

And he dropped his head, his chest heaving with the turmoil inside him as the voices continued downstairs, his hands hovering at his sides as though he was unsure whether to use them on her or cover his ears again.

“You make me sick. Both of you make me sick. Whose money do you think bought this house?”

And then he looked at her again, his eyes wide, his face open and somehow vulnerable, and Gen felt her heart twist inside her. She hadn’t understood, hadn’t bothered to understand before engaging in this childish game with him.

Wanting to help, needing to, and needing to solidify the tenuous connection they’d managed to assemble between them as sure as barriers, she raised trembling hands to catch his long fingers and pull him to her.

The kiss this time was hers, tasting of her tears and the tears he wasn’t going to shed, tasting of scraped skin and hurt feelings. He settled himself above her with one hand and Gen shifted, guiding his other hand to the bare skin of her leg. Now they were both uncertain, on even ground as she traced timid fingers over the smooth skin of his chest, skin she’d looked at too many times to count, the heat of it now burning her fingertips in its intensity.

Drake drew in a sharp breath, closing his hand over the bare skin of her thigh, completing the action he’d completed in dreams for the previous days, testing the strength of muscle and the silk of skin, letting the voices below him fade as he focused everything in on this one point, on this one action, with this one moment.

It was wrong, she thought, to feel this way with such chaos surrounding them, but it was like picking up where they’d left off, only more important, more urgent. She’d seen the exact moment when his attention had shifted, going from the anger of the house to the lust of the room, and if she could keep it on the latter, keep that horrible, pained look off his face, she would do it.

“And while you were in here, asleep as you always are, do you know what kind of trash he’s bringing in here?”

They kept their eyes open as they tasted one another, lip to lip and eye to eye as his father’s insults reached both their ears, and when she broke away from him, she was breathless.

“Forget about him,” she whispered, and found it could be done. He buried his face in the hot skin of her throat, testing and tasting and nipping with sharp teeth, his thumb pressing the inside of her thigh, hinting at something higher, at something riskier even as he guided his hand just a little farther up.

Two buttons, Gen thought incoherently, arching mindlessly as his fingers brushed the bottom edge of her knickers, sneaking slightly under before going to surface again, before skidding slipshod over the flat spot between the waistband of her skirt and the waistband of her knickers, the spot that felt as though butterflies had bred beneath it, fluttering their wings in a maddened, strange rhythm.

Two buttons was all he had fastened on his uniform shirt. Two flicks of her slender, pale fingers had his shirt open and covering the both of them, draping down along his sides and over hers, making a tent for them, the floor her body, the ceiling his.

Her fingertips, rough from chores and shaking with hesitation, traced over the lines and contours of his torso, all things she’d seen before, but always with that barrier of two buttons.

Drake choked out a breath, a sob, a labored exhalation as her fingers shook their way across his chest, danced their way down his stomach, and he closed his teeth gently over the spot where her neck met her shoulder, trying to stop himself, to pause what was happening. With the bite, however, her hips arched under him, bringing her center clashing against his hand, damp cotton and the spicy smell of sex, hips hitting hips gracelessly and desperately as a small whimper reached his ears.

There was no more shouting, he noted as he lapped the spot he’d bitten, tasting the salt of her sweat and the soap she’d used that morning.

There was no more reason, either, but that seemed a small price to pay for the trembling hands now poised at the sharp angles of his hips.

“Wait,” he ground out, unzipping her skirt with a jerking motion, sending a burning line of heat down her thigh as the zipper scraped along it. He drew it down her legs, now smirking as he did so—such a little scrap of fabric, that skirt, and he’d wanted it gone all day.

Now it was gone, and she lay before him, her hair spread over his bed, her eyes clouded with want, and yes, fear. The chest of her own starched white shirt strained over hardened nipples, the stiff white fabric drawing to two defined points, the hem falling just short of knickers gone colorless from years of wash, thin in spots, affording him a ghost of a glimpse of the ginger curls beneath.

He drew back and knelt above her, his eyes roving at will, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides with the effort of self-control.

Gen watched him with hooded eyes, his intensity arousing her just as surely as his hands and mouth had, the searing expression on the aristocratic face making her short breaths transform into shorter pants.

Power. His body was powerful, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, but his eyes commanded, accustomed to getting everything within reach.

“I’m not stopping,” he stated, but he did not move, did not continue his actions. Instead, he gave orders. “Unbutton your shirt.”

He’d have done it himself, but he wanted her obedience, wanted her submission to show him what she really wanted.

He wanted her submission to prove she wasn’t acting out of pity.

She couldn’t have disobeyed him if she wanted to, any more than she’d been able to disobey the wordless instructions of their movements on the dance floor, any more than she’d been able to rein in her temper with him. Apprehensively, she unbuttoned her shirt with the same efficient motions that had loosened his.

He linked his hands behind his neck and watched her with his head bowed, as inch by inch of pale skin was exposed, her eyes locked on him as she found the buttons sightlessly, one after the other. Starched fabric parted to reveal a bra the same shade as the panties, once white and now nondescript, just a bit too small, her breasts plumping out above the material, the worn elastic cutting a tired line into the soft mounds.

And instead of covering herself with her hands when she’d unbuttoned the shirt, she looked directly at him and spread her arms to the edges of the bed, her mind a fuzzy mess of wonder and curiosity, reason be damned and innocence, as well, because the way he was looking at her…

He dove, his tongue tracing the boundary between fabric and flesh, raising goosebumps in the wake of his mouth, blowing cool air with gray eyes half-covered by pale lashes. He wouldn’t last much longer, but if this could last just long enough, just long enough for the house to be brought to rights again, to peace, if he could just hear the door slam downstairs and signal the exit of his father, it would be just long enough.

It would be enough.

She was restless beneath his hands, tired of being teased but afraid of being completed, constantly moving and trying to relieve the pressure he built brick by brick. How could he do this? She wasn’t ignorant; she knew enough to know what the beads of sweat on his brow and the hard length of him brushing her thigh through his pants meant, knew enough to wonder at the wait he’d imposed upon himself.

“I don’t think this is what Dunmore had in mind,” she said suddenly, the thought popping out of her mouth as he feathered a breath over her navel and she gripped five strong fingers into his hair. She was rewarded with a chuckle—a genuine one she’d never heard before.

He winced at the pain her tiny hands inflicted, relishing it all the same, and drove his fingers under cotton and into hot, wet, ready heat, the same heat he’d felt only nights before, under him this time, in his control.

Gen screamed, unable to stop herself, as one finger slid up and into her, curving just slightly in a come-hither gesture, the knuckle of another finger unerringly chafing the bud of her arousal, making her hips rise off the bed, wavering in a to-and-fro arc, brown eyes wide and shocked on him.

And still he stroked inside her, muscles clenching around his fingers as he unfastened his pants—beltless, of course, against school regulations—and kicked them off with his eyes pinned to hers. He positioned himself so she could not see the length of him, unconsciously considerate of what he was about to do.

He slid one arm under her neck, concentration written in the tense lines of his face, and he put his lips next to her ear, laughter sliding remarkably through his voice as he timed the fluttering of her muscles around his long middle finger. “Count with me, Wesley,” he said, withdrawing his fingers and pushing her panties to one side.

Count? She couldn’t remember to breathe, much less count, his proximity was blinding her, making her stupid, her body was making her mute and mindless. But he’d done this before, she could tell, knew precisely what he was about to do, and she clenched her hands in the covers of the bed and fought the urge to close her eyes.

She’d not go into this with eyes closed, dammit. She was a Wesley, and she had more honor than that.

“One,” they said in unison, brown locked to gray. “Two.”

Draco lowered his mouth to hers, only a whisper away, and as she steeled herself against the pain, it was only he who whispered “Three” and drove into her, quickly, piercingly, unhesitatingly.

He put his mouth over hers and felt the exhalation of her cry, her head bowing back against his arm, and when he was certain the moment had passed, he lifted his mouth from hers and said “Relax.”

She clamped her lips shut, the muscles in her jaw contracting tightly against the pain, and she nodded stiffly for him to continue.

There’s a girl, he thought, moving in small circles in her just to accommodate himself and her. Of course she won’t cry—not this one. He slid out, just a few centimeters, and back, and could have wept himself for the tightness of her, the sheer, glorious feel of her.

She should be glad, he thought as he eased into tiny, fast thrusts, this wasn’t going to last long at all.

The shouting downstairs had ceased, the door slammed, and a car departed, but neither of them heard and neither of them noticed.

The sharp pain dulled into an ache, uncomfortable but not unbearable, and Gen watched the power recede from his face as the vulnerability crept back in, and here was her power, the feminine power she’d been trying so hard to harness, and she raised her hands to clasp his back, his skin hot through the sweat-damp shirt, her body now moving with his in an effort not only to abate the ache but to reel him in.

His eyes brightened to silver and widened with that final roll of her hips, and he stiffened with a wordless hiss, his climax wringing him out inside of her even as she held him closer.

He didn’t collapse on her when it was over, didn’t turn into the sweltering mass of dead weight she’d heard the other girls whisper of at school. Instead, he rolled them both to their sides, staying inside of her as he shifted positions. “It’s going to hurt,” he said, his head thrown back, breath coming in gulps. “For me to pull out, it’s going to hurt.”

So don’t, she wanted to say, and her hand flew to cover her lips. What a thing to say, especially to the likes of him. So instead of speaking, not trusting her voice, she canted her hips and sighed as he was released from her. It felt like she’d had a tooth pulled, she thought, finding no other comparison to put to it. Aching and empty and raw.

He rolled to his back then, leaving his arm behind her neck, feeling her hair sticking to his arm in several places. He hadn’t the urge to move just yet; he needed to figure out what had happened. He’d started the day wanting to call things off, so how in blazes had they ended up here, in his bed, mostly naked, and freshly shagged?

She wanted to shift, wanted to move, but she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to move toward him or away from him. It hadn’t been what she’d imagined, surely, but it hadn’t been what she’d feared, either.

And then the silence struck both of them, the absence of shouting, of doors slamming, of insults and swears. Other than the labored sounds of their combined breathing, there were no sounds.

He sat up then, pulling his arm from under her head and pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. He had no words, none at all, not even the tiniest sarcastic rejoinder to offer the young woman in the bed next to him. He’d done what he hadn’t meant to do, and the most damnable part of it was he didn’t regret it at all.

Drake looked back at her and saw with the tiniest twinge of disappointment that she was refastening her shirt, one hand dipped low to hide the sight of her ruined knickers. He knew why she’d done it, of course. Forget about him, she’d said, and she’d managed to make him do just that. He leaned down, hooked one finger into the tartan skirt, and handed it to her across the bed, his expression mild.

The look, the strange softness of it, nearly undid her, and Gen jerked her skirt away from him with a hand that was no longer shaking. She stood, wincing at the runners of pain the motion sent through her, and pulled the skirt on with a few abrupt motions. She was afraid of what he might say next, what he might do. “Don’t you dare thank me,” she snapped, truly scared he would, as a master to a servant, express some sort of smarmy gratitude.

She’d die. If he did that, she would absolutely die.

But instead he raised an eyebrow, hooking his pants off the floor in the same movement that had garnered her skirt, and snorted as he slid them on one leg at a time. “Was there ever a time, Wesley, when I seemed overly inclined to state some sort of gratitude to you?”

Oh, wonderful. Now she felt embarrassed. Was this how sex was, then? Awkward, without rules, fumbling and uncertain? The act itself hadn’t been so clumsy, but this—this aftermath—she didn’t know if she’d survive it. “Well, good,” she said, trying not to press her thighs too closely together, trying to ignore the stickiness there, the strange feeling of something missing.

He chuckled a bit, couldn’t help himself, really. Was this how they acted, then, after their first time? He’d never been with a virgin, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. She’d likely make him feel guilty for it, the wench. She looked so small now, so tiny, so…

Approachable. It was downright appalling.

And before he could even think them through, the words slipped from his mouth. “I’ll be sure never to thank you for sex.”

Never, as though there would be other chances? His eyes widened even as hers did, and she pushed escaping tendrils of hair back from her face with both hands. “I hadn’t realized what just happened was an experience worth repeating,” she said.

If she’d intended to wound his ego, she couldn’t have found a better way to do so. The hell of it was, she hadn’t really meant to, speaking instead out of self-doubt. Had she done the right thing? Had she done it well?

Smirking turned to sulking as he turned his attention to his shirt, fastening two of the buttons once more. “If it wasn’t worth repeating, then I bloody well did something wrong.”

Not knowing—and not wanting to know—how she’d answer, he drew his keys off the ornate ebony dresser, finally turning to look her full in the eye. “I’d best take you home,” he said at length. “Before he comes back.”

And as he offered her a hand, helping her off the bed and onto legs with shaky knees, she found she didn’t have the strength—or heart—to argue.

**Author’s note: The next week is going to be hectic, filled with work things and travel things and all sorts of things, so I apologize in advance for whatever delay the next chapter will be under… but know that I’m writing and wishing you all well!!!**

CHAPTER THIRTEEN- Walking on Eggshells

He drummed his fingers against the smooth wood of the table in the Great Hall, looking across the table at her and wondering what to say. She’d been reading that Divination book for more than a week now, and he was quite certain she’d finished it more than once.

But… what to say?

Hermione may have been one of his best friends, but there was more to it. There was, for instance, the fact that Harry had no earthly notion how to handle Hermione, how to talk to her, how to treat her. Without Ron acting as a buffer, all Harry felt was… foolish. Every time he opened his mouth, something idiotic leaked out, each slip incrementally more idiotic.

“Is it really so awful?” he asked suddenly, groaning inwardly as his voice careened off on its own separate path. Stupid voice.

Hermione looked up at him from her book, eyebrows raised in surprise. He’d hardly said more than a handful of words to her since Ron and the others had gone, and he’d certainly never burst out with something so involved as a question. It had saddened her, really, their sudden separation. It was bad enough all their friends were gone, but for Harry to all but ignore her…

Well, she’d really had no choice but to throw herself into research.

“Is what so awful?” she asked, holding her place in her book with a finger in the event this conversation died quickly, as they all seemed to these days.

“Spending time alone with me,” Harry barreled on, visibly wincing behind his glasses. What was he saying? “I mean, Dumbledore told you they were safe, but…” He looked pointedly at the book she held.

Spending time along with him? Hermione’s brain buzzed around the idea and she contemplated clouting him upside the head for his simplicity. All she wanted was time alone with him, but every time she had it, he acted as though he’d rather have tea with Voldemort than speak up.

“Of course not,” she said, trying to keep her voice light and conversational. Casual was the key, she told herself. “You know, I’m just curious.” Was her voice strained? It sounded strained to her own ears.

And then Harry leaned over and put a hand over hers, speaking softly. “They’ll be all right, Hermione.”

Casual flew out the window, and Hermione raised wide hazel eyes to his bright green ones, surprise written plainly on her features.

And, feeling incrementally less idiotic, Harry smiled.

~~~
The earth didn’t stop.

Her brain may have been working at twice, thrice, tenfold its normal speed, throwing thoughts and feelings and doubts and questions at her in a barrage; her feet may have carried her up the walk and into her house a bit more slowly, the muscles aching, unused to the activity they’d performed; her emotions may have been scraped raw and bared to the surface—but the world was still going on.

It was the same house Gen stepped into, the same family clamoring over the supper about to be set on the table. Rob gave her that same goofy grin when he saw her come in, and her parents greeted her in the same fashion.

What would they say, she wondered, if they knew what she’d done?

And because nothing had changed—nothing other than her, that was—Gen kept up easy conversations with her parents, with her brother, while thinking ahead to a shower, thinking behind to a young man with wounded eyes, while thinking of the present and her own tangle of feelings.

It had been bound to happen, she supposed—even she knew flint and steel would only spark so long before starting a fire. But she hadn’t expected the reality of it, the harsh truth of his life. Pity, sorrow, grudging admiration. Where had they all come from?

Lust she could handle. That was simple, the simplest of everything. Even anger was more complicated than lust. But what had just transpired…

“Gen?” Rob asked again, leaning across the table to prod his sister’s arm. “The salt?”

She passed it to him with an apologetic glance and engaged herself back into the easy talk of suppertime and family.

The earth, after all, didn’t stop.

~~~

The bed had been stripped, the comforter undoubtedly removed by some tactful, secretive maid. And if the comforter went, the matching sheets had to go, and so the end result was an entirely new set of bedclothing for Drake’s enormous bed.

He couldn’t decide whether he was grateful or disappointed for the lack of a reminder.

She’d not spoken a single word until he had pulled to the curb in front of her house, and even then she’d merely said “Thank you” in a voice entirely unlike her usual waspish screech, tugging her skirt down as she’d walked to the front door.

He’d found he couldn’t go home, instead choosing to drive around, one hand on the wheel and the other twisting worriedly at locks of his hair, mussing the spikes and giving the wind something malleable to tear through. He’d driven until dark, and by the time he’d gone home, it was hard to believe what had actually happened.

Easy to remember, perhaps, but hard to believe.

He sat now on the scrupulously clean bed, his anger long since drained.

He’d woven a web and ended up just as tangled in it as she had, bound just as surely as if his hands and feet had been tied. What sort of state was the world in, he wondered, when a Mallory shagged a Wesley?

And, if he were totally honest with himself, what sort of state was the world in when a good girl shagged a troublemaker?

But it was not regret Drake Mallory felt as he lay atop his bedcovers fully clothed. It was wonder, confusion, the nagging certainty that a fuse had been lit and a course of action started. And for the first time in his life, he felt self-doubt.

Had he somehow let himself become an object of pity rather than of envy, of want?

He wavered into sleep with these thoughts in his mind, his brows drawn together in a furrow and his full mouth turned into a frown.

For the first time in his life, Drake Mallory was worried.

And across the small town, lying freshly showered in a narrow, rickety bed, Gen had thoughts of her own, all centered around one young man. She was not regretful, thought not of the decision she’d made or its possible consequences, but instead of the life she’d never bothered to see, the problems that had never before been apparent to her, or anyone else.

And Genevieve Wesley worried.

~~~

“He’s tired, Minerva.” He followed her brisk pace through the hall like an unusually determined shadow, the only relief in the flood of black coming with his pallid, peaked face. “He is exhausted from his efforts. We must force him to stop.”

Minerva McGonagall swung down a corridor, fervently wishing she could shake loose of Severus Snape. The man was like a giant, worrying crow, she thought. It wasn’t as though she could do anything, and she said as much.

“If the Dark Lord—” Severus shook his head, correcting himself. “If Voldemort knows the headmaster is weakened, trouble will be on the rise. This game of his must end.” He’d thought it through in every single way, and though he knew Dumbledore’s “game” would mean better chances against the Death Eaters if it paid off, Severus could see no possible way for it to pay off. There was simply not enough time in the world to do such a thing.

Such a thing, he thought dourly, was impossibly optimistic.

“Have some faith, Severus, surely you understand that concept,” Minerva sniffed. Though she had doubts of her own, she wasn’t nearly ready to start calling them out, to further divide what was already fractured. “Albus knows his capabilities. He will not attempt to exceed them.”

Severus actually snorted at this, made a thin, derisive nasal sound to indicate his disbelief, and the arch look it earned him from the Gryffindor Head of House made him tack on a sneer. “Don’t you think excess has already occurred? House unity, Professor McGonagall. It is a thing of myth.”

And as she reached the door to her office, Minerva McGonagall turned and gave a strange, sly, almost coy smile to her peer, and she spoke in a superior tone all of her students would recognize.

“So, Professor Snape, is magic.”

~~~

Gen found, as she usually did, that sleep—no matter how little— brought an edge of clarity to things as nothing else did. With that clarity, however, came the knowledge that she was ill-equipped to handle this situation. She was ill-equipped to handle her own emotions, and emotions weren’t, she knew, something she should have in regards to a Mallory.

So she would have to hide them.

She dressed slowly, studying her body in the dark, age-spotted mirror that hung behind her door, splaying steady hands over the pale, soft surfaces of breasts and stomach, bending down to test the muscles of her thighs, still aching with the memory of sex, still tingling with the memory of his hands.

The world went on, and in this new world, she knew she would have to walk very, very carefully.

~~~
“Bloody… stupid… hair,” he ground out, standing at the massive marble sink in his bathroom. He’d been fussing with the platinum mess for fifteen minutes already, and where had it gotten him? It still looked bloody stupid. Jerking his dress shirt on, Drake ducked his head under the tap, fed up. Wetting the stiff and sticky locks, he stood, shook water all over the bathroom, and walked out the door, letting his hair hang in his eyes in long forelocks.

He barely remembered his tie, and would have forgotten a pair of shoes altogether if the maid hadn’t timidly offered them to him on his way out, meticulously shined and already unlaced for him to shove his feet into.

He tied them on the way to school, propping his feet in the seat while steering with his knees and looking in the mirror to speculate on the condition of his hair.

Did it really look stupid?

He parked with a screech of tires, got out of his car, and backtracked to get his sunglasses, grumbling and cursing the whole while.

What in bloody hell had gotten into him this morning?

And then he saw her.

She was leaned against the wall, books cradled against her chest, talking with that poncey, sickly Collins and that sideshow Lovejoy. Her normal skirt was back—Thank God—and she didn’t look the least bit different. Or did she? Did she seem a little more relaxed, a little… brighter?

Quit staring, you sodding git, he told himself crossly. She’s still the same bloody pauper with the same ratty clothes and the same freakish freckles and the same superior attitude.

And perhaps that was what was bothering him. She didn’t look the least bit bothered, which was downright indecent, he thought, if one were to consider that merely hours ago, she’d been underneath him, practically begging him like a—

What in the bloody hell was wrong with him?

He stalked up to her, fumbling a cigarette out of his pocket with jerky, awkward motions and lighting it with a generic lighter—damn her for getting his old one taken away, damn it all—and grabbing her arm with hands that were just a little too unsteady, and as a result, a little too rough.

“Ouch!” Gen gasped indignantly, rubbing the spot on her arm once she’d jerked away from him and waved Connor and Lucia back. The last thing she needed was them following and catching on to… well, on to anything. “What in the hell’s wrong with you this morning?” He looked… interesting, she judged covertly as he herded her into a small, dead-end corridor containing all the housekeeping supplies. His clothing was perhaps a bit less haphazard than usual, and instead of the expected Billy Idol-esque spikes, his hair hung sleekly down the sides of his face, partially obscuring his sunglasses in thick, touchable-looking locks.

Treat this one carefully, indeed, she thought. He’d clearly gone dotty.

“What in the hell’s wrong with me?” he repeated with a dry laugh. Hadn’t he been asking himself that all morning? “What are we going to do?” he asked, shoving back his sunglasses and anchoring his hair back with them. It was annoying, having his hair in his eyes like that. What had possessed him to leave it like that?

“Do?” she repeated, her strawberry eyebrows popping up in surprise. “About?” Surely he couldn’t be talking about them. There was no them, after all.

Keep it cool, Mallory, he told himself. He was about to fall apart over… what? A poor wreck of a girl. And why? Because maybe she hadn’t actually wanted to have sex with him.

Maybe she’d just felt sorry for him.

“About tutoring!” he burst out, trying to kill that new, weird, internal voice. Bloody nuisance. “We need a place to tutor.”

“Well, we can’t do it here!” Gen snapped back, wondering why he suddenly seemed angry. It was ridiculous, the way he was acting. He seemed furtive and weird—as though he were ashamed someone would see them.

Smug, moneyed ponce.

Oh, bugger. She couldn’t even think the insult with any level of sincerity.

“Let’s do it at your house,” Drake said, suddenly wondering at the implications of their words. Do what, exactly? Were they still talking about tutoring?

And another image of her, pulling him down to her, flashed through his mind, honing desire he didn’t even know he had to a sharp and frightening point.

“We are most definitely not doing it at my house,” Gen said, her voice rising. Why couldn’t he ever button his shirt? Was it really necessary for her to have to look at his bare torso practically all the time? Could he not manage more than those two buttons?

“Well, we can’t do it at my house!” Drake exclaimed, raking a hand through his hair and mussing it into several different directions. “We’ve seen what happens there!”

They both froze then, staring at each other with wide eyes and accelerated breaths, bright spots of color burning in their cheeks.

Total madness, they both judged simultaneously.

Total madness really couldn’t decelerate into anything worse, Drake judged, and with a manic look in his eyes, he yanked her to him, covered her mouth with his, and kissed her.

She stretched to her toes, her books still held between them, her knees knocking slightly into his as she moaned just a bit into the demanding warmth of his mouth.

And then he released her, eyes squeezed shut, the very picture of frustration.

“Fuck!” he barked. “Just… fuck!”

He wanted Genevieve Wesley.

Damn it all to hell.

“You find a place for tutoring,” she said tremulously, backing away from him on knees suddenly turned to water. What in the hell was going on?!? Last night hadn’t been the damper on a fire.

It had been extra fuel, apparently.

“It’s your fault we can’t use the library, anyway,” she added, a careless, habitual, and comparatively weak accusation.

He was opening his mouth to correct her, ridiculously slow on the uptake, when she turned and darted down the hallway.

“Buggering… fuck.”

**Author’s note: I’m not a slacker, I swear. I truly am not. I’ve been working and thinking on the story a lot lately, and a lot has happened. Between illness in the family, turmoil at work, and a slight case of author’s allergy (ahem… it’s not writer’s block, people, just go with it), I’ve had a really hard time getting to write lately. But Drake and Gen are still cavorting around in my head, and so here’s the latest chapter. If it sucks, you have all my apologies. It’s not betaed (sugarbear_1269 and violetjersey always do wonderful work), because I’ve spent too long on this chapter and simply want it to out and done with. Bratty child that it is. Thanks to everyone who gave me encouraging words now and again to let me know they’re waiting… for as long as it takes me. Now, happy reading and hopefully the next chapter will be longer, quicker, and um… low-carb. Or something.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN- Obeying the Rules

“She’s not listening.”

Gen shot an annoyed glance at Connor, who had directed the last comment matter-of-factly to Lucia, who was perched beside him.

“I bloody well am listening, Con,” Gen snapped crossly. “Need I nod my head constantly just to prove it?”

“Genevieve is having a bad day,” Lucia observed, but she, too, seemed distracted, craning her slender neck to peer across the room occasionally.

“She’s having a bad day,” Connor said, reaching across the table to cover Gen’s hand with his, “Because she continues to put up with Moneybags Mallory.” He’d have to have been blind not to see the look pass over his best friend’s face, a subtle softening of her features, her breath catching in the beginnings of a sigh just before she stopped herself, trying instead to look casual.

“I rather think he’s trained up a bit better,” she said cautiously. “Sometimes he’s civil.”

Oh, yes, shagging someone definitely took at least some civility.

“Absolutely,” Connor said solicitously, his reporter’s mind trying to race through the details even as his heart tried to sort out his emotions. “You’ve trained him quite well. I’m certain I didn’t see him grab you and drag you away this morning. Lovey, did you see that?”

“Hmm?” Lucia asked, her brow furrowing. “Oh, yes, I did see that. Is everything okay?”

For a sheer, idiotic, self-destructive moment, Gen considered telling them everything.

Secrets get you nowhere, a small, whispering voice in her head told her. A shiver of fear, of dread slithered through her, the memory of a memory, the ghost of a ghost.

And then it was gone as quickly as it had come, and she shook it off as one shakes off déjà vu or the feeling of someone watching.

“He was just crabby because he has homework I won’t let him wiggle out of,” Gen said by way of explanation. She’d spent the better part of the day dwelling on Drake’s actions of that morning, sudden and hot and totally unexpected. He hadn’t acted like himself—he’d acted like a man possessed. While that wasn’t necessarily out of the ordinary, this morning he had been an entirely different demon.

She wasn’t naïve enough to hope sex had somehow changed him, and she certainly wasn’t stupid enough to think it had anything to do with emotions.

And then he walked into the student lounge where they all sat, lighting a cigarette and narrowing his eyes against the thin smoke it brought up, and her heart bumped double-time in her chest. He turned his head as he walked into the lounge surrounded by his entourage. He had never been a part of them, but he was even more separate now, his air that of an unlistening and unwilling participant in a group, his attention otherwise monopolized. His eyes met hers with a searing flash, and any following comments she’d had to make to her friends were lost in the space between them.

One impatient hand shoved flaxen hair out of silver eyes, and Gen bit her lip—

Didn’t I have my hands in that hair?

Sliding his cigarette between his lips—

That mouth, oh God…

That hair, that mouth, the unbuttoned shirt, the expensive spicy smell of him…

And then he looked away, the moment broken, and she could feel her breath coming in short, sharp cycles.

“The trouble is,” Connor was lecturing, “He has no concept of rules.”

Gen jumped as though stuck with a hot poker. “Rules!” she burst out, standing quickly enough to rap her legs on the underside of the table. “That’s right, Con, everyone needs rules, even him.” A thin, strange laugh tumbled from her lips and she added, “Especially him.” She couldn’t get him out of her head, damn it all, and that was going to have to change.

Rules, indeed. She’d lay down the law, they’d get their tutoring done, and there’d be no more… transgressions.

She’d gathered her things and darted from the room before Connor or Lucia could reply, leaving the both of them staring after her perplexedly, and one other watching her go with something just shy of overt fascination.

“You reckon she knows she’s mad?” Connor asked Lucia contemplatively.

~~~

It didn’t really sound like an altogether bad idea just to drive off and leave her, to go out with his friends and just forget the whole poncey tutoring gig. He had to have been out of his mind to kiss her earlier that morning, just plain raving loony. But as the day wore on, as he sat through class so boring they were painful, after he saw her with her friends, a plan began to form in Drake’s mind.

If he was nothing else, he was a consummate planner. He may have learned nothing else from his father, but he had learned how to outmaneuver the enemy. Up until now, he’d let her have the advantage.

But no more.

If he was cursed to want her, then she’d by God want him back, and she’d keep wanting him until he was finished with her.

That conviction only wavered a little when she walked out of the school, wind sending her skirt flapping around her legs.

“Do you think you could possibly hurry it up a bit so I’m not doing history homework until we ourselves are history?” he said, rolling his eyes grandly before shoving the sunglasses into place. He flicked his cigarette butt to the ground, grinding it out without looking. Instead, he kept his eyes on her.

It was her turn to roll her eyes. She could afford to be a little casual, she thought. She had things figured out now. Ground rules were the key. If she could get the heathen to do his homework, she could get him to keep his hands off her.

Provided that was what she wanted.

“Before we go anywhere,” she said hastily, trying to stem her thoughts and keep her voice casual, level, cool. It shook anyway. “I have a few rules.”

His eyes impassive behind black glass, he did what he’d wanted to do all day and touched her, trailing a fingertip down her arm., pleased to see her shiver. “You know I don’t play by the rules, pet.”

She drew back then, the swift motion sending music careening through his head.

Sweet dreams are made of this…

“First rule,” she said, willing herself not to lean into that touch, curl into that stroke and purr like a damned cat. “No touching.”

“I’ve heard that one before,” Drake snorted, but a frisson of panic wedged its way into his brain. Was it even remotely possible she’d just… finished with him? Was it to all be cool and calculated and pitying from now on?

“Second rule?” he asked flatly, trying to sound disinterested.

“No tutoring in any room with a bed.” A blush reddened her cheeks and she hoped a crack would yawn open and swallow her whole. Sure, it sounded reasonable, all things considered, but wasn’t she basically admitting she couldn’t control herself?

He, she insisted internally, nervously chewing on her lips, clenching her hands into fists as she waited for his response. He couldn’t control himself.

“More simply put,” he said in that maddening voice, that auditory smirk, “No homework in the bedroom.” He looked at his fingernails and then back at her. “Clearly that’s for other work altogether.”

That got her breathing rate up, he thought, watching behind the safety and privacy of tinted glasses as her breasts rose and fell with the rapidity of inhalation and exhalation.

“Rule number three.” Her teeth were clenched now, the words pinched.

Insufferable prick.

“No insults,” she said. “No bickering and no fighting.” Because even an idiot could figure out that’s where the sparks were starting from.

And for some reason, that set him off.

“Anything else, mother hen? Any other rules? Because I have a few of my own.” She was trying to tame him, tame them both, make him sedate, and all that did… was make him angry. “First rule, quit biting your lips before I take to them myself.” Her eyes widened and her pout of a mouth stilled its movement at his whip-crack tone. “And second rule—” he paused his statement to shrug off his jacket and throw it at her. “Put that on. I don’t want to have to see what I can’t touch.”

He rounded the car as she stood, shocked, holding his jacket in one hand as though she didn’t know where it came from.

“Well, Miss Wesley, are you coming or are you not? I’ve been a good little pupil and found a suitable classroom. Now all you have to do is get your arse in gear and get in the car.” He watched, half amused and half angry as she tugged on his jacket. “Oops,” he said facetiously, sliding off his glasses and looking positively cherubic. “I forgot. No insults. Completely my fault, darling.”

Gen bit her tongue, counted backward from ten, and wondered how it was, exactly, that she’d found herself wanting him.

Insufferable… bratty… prick.

**Author’s Note: Yeah, I’m slow, and I’m way sorry. If I could express in words how awfully hectic my life has been lately, I would. For once, however, I’m speechless. Much love and thanks for everyone’s patience, and I’m trying really hard to drop back into my regular swing of things. Go, read!**

CHAPTER FIFTEEN- Taking a Trip

It was tentative and new, long-awaited and potentially perfect, but no matter how much both Harry and Hermione had wanted one another’s attention, having it meant nothing in the shadow of their friends’ absence.

Days stretched into weeks, the headmaster was seen less and less, and the inevitable rumors concerning Dumbledore’s sanity—or lack thereof—were beginning to fly from house to house of the mammoth school of magic.

Harry had borne it all quietly, listening to Hermione’s theories and conjectures about where Ron and Ginny had gone, supporting her when she needed it, playing devil’s advocate and disagreeing with her now and again when she seemed to need it. He had comforted her more than once simply by being there, had stood by her side when she’d made a valiant effort to interrogate Minerva McGonagall—and gotten nothing more than a sharp rebuke.

But Harry had been quiet for so long, he hadn’t had time to speak his own mind.

He was in the middle of Potions class, notably missing not only his best mate, but also his ceaseless tormentor, when he slammed down his quill in a moment of long-restrained pique. He’d had a snide remark to make to Ron—

And Ron wasn’t there.

“I won’t do it!” he shouted suddenly, making the remaining students turn and gape at him.

Professor Snape, unruffled as ever, turned cool eyes and an arched eyebrow at his least favorite boy wonder. “One would almost care to ask what you were referring to, Potter, if one thought you did anything worth pondering.” Despite his cool demeanor, however, the potions master was taken aback by the outburst.

Lately it seemed as though the whole of Hogwarts, lessened though it was, had gone mad.

Harry wended his way through the dungeon classroom, his eyes narrowed at the black-clad Snape, his voice now pitched too low for his classmates to hear.

“I lost my godfather because no one would tell me what was going on,” Harry said through clenched teeth, suddenly certain he had a right to know what was happening. In the end, they’d put it all on his shoulders, so for now they should tell him what in the blazes was going on. “I think I’ve waited enough.” He’d been patient, right up until the moment he’d looked at Snape and heard in his memories the former Death Eater goading Sirius into action.

“If you are at all interested in saving your own vainglorious hide,” Snape said, his voice low and dangerous, “I advise you to stop this nonsense and return to your place at once.” Then, in a louder tone—“Twenty-five points from Gryffindor.”

“Harry,” Hermione finally hissed, shaken from her shocked silence by the decrease in points.

Her voice turned his attention, his bright jade eyes turning to her, pinning her to the spot in a brilliant flash of mingled anger and grief, and her breath caught in her throat.

He was magnificent.

And she was in love with him.

Clenching her teeth in an effort to lace up her suddenly unraveled nerves, she widened her eyes at him, wanting nothing more than for him to return to his seat, and remarkably, he did.

It was her turn to comfort him.

And from his spot in the front of the classroom, Severus Snape rubbed the bridge of his beakish nose and wondered how much more they would all have to take before Dumbledore called a halt to his fool’s pursuit.

Surely fabled house unity was not worth this unrest.

~~~

“Where are we going?”

She hated that petulant note in her voice, the whiny tone, but she couldn’t help it. Things weren’t precisely going the way she’d thought they would. She certainly didn’t think she’d ever end up in his car, wearing his clothes. It was just… weird. And now, Gen thought, the man who had only moments before shown desire in his eyes, in the leisurely stroke of a finger, was ignoring her.

“Why don’t you just sit back and enjoy the scenery instead of flapping your jaw at me?” Drake asked before he could stop himself. Her skirt had ridden up around her knees, and his coat now reached the exact same spot on her thighs as the tartan skirt she wore. The combination was giving him a bloody headache, and her pointed little questions weren’t going to help that any.

“Oh, cram it up your—” Gen started, turning in her seat with fire flashing in her eyes.

And then he slammed on the brakes, sending her jerking forward.

“No bickering, princess,” he said without looking over at her, slamming back on the gas with the same aplomb that had brought them to a halt. When she stared at him acidly, he flicked his eyes over at her. “Your rule, love, not mine.”

"It was a reasonable question, you bloody tyrant," Gen started, but she was finding it hard to concentrate. His jacket smelled like him even though he rarely ever bothered to put on the requisite uniform article, and every time she shifted, it was like he was covering her.

She worried at her lip in an unconscious gesture of apprehension, and gasped when Drake reached across the car, put his hand to her face, and squeezed her cheeks, forcefully forming her mouth into a moue more laughable than kissable.

"No biting your damned lips," he said, taking his eyes off the road to shoot her one dangerous glance. "For someone who's supposed to be intelligent, Wesley, you listen very shoddily."

"Oh, really?" she managed, slapping his hand away from her face. "For someone so self-righteous, you listen fairly poorly yourself. No touching, dammit."

There was a pause, short and tense, and they both spoke at once, exasperated tones identical.

"No bickering!"

Neither of them saw the humor in the exchange.

He parked in front of an apartment building and looked over at her. "We're here," he said unnecessarily, smarmily pointing out the obvious in lieu of insulting her, shaking her, or kissing her senseless. "After you."

"A flat?" she looked up at the posh, brightly-lit apartment building, then back at him with wide eyes. "You've a flat?"

“Not exactly,” Drake said, taking out the key he’d lifted from his father’s cabinet between bouts with his hair and bloody awful hallucinations of her that morning. What good was it to own scads of property if you never used any of it and if no one was renting it? “You might say it’s on loan.”

Bad idea, she told herself, warning bells going off in her mind. Alone with him in a flat was even worse than alone with him in a bedroom. Where on earth would they tutor that wasn't dangerous?

The kitchen would surely have counters, the den a sofa, beds in the bedrooms.

Could they possibly tutor in the bathroom? Nothing sexy about that, she guessed.

But as he walked ahead of her and began working his key in the door, Gen sighed. It wasn't the rooms that were the problem. It was that they were both clearly unbalanced.

That particular tidbit had been not-so-helpfully edited out of her Mum's many speeches on the topic of sex. No one had ever mentioned that it made you brainless and idiotic and completely unable to focus.

And really, Gen thought grumpily, shoving her book into Drake's back as he lagged a bit on the stairs, the end result really hadn't been all that good.

The gasp that came from her lips was an involuntary reaction to her own memories combined with the shock of the flat. It was... ordinary. She’d expected it to be posh, showy, all of the things she’d seen Drake himself as. But it was ordinary and cozy, and damn it all, it seemed comfortable.

It would be easy to miss the danger in all that comfort.

Drake watched her step inside, sliding the sunglasses to the top of his head with an air of detachment he didn’t feel. He hadn’t really realized how badly he’d wanted her on neutral ground, how much he wanted to remove the things that spoke of their differences.

If he was going to seduce her, really and truly seduce her, it would have to be in a place like this.

If he was going to possess her before she possessed him, it would have to be here.

**Author’s Note: Suggested listening- “Shiver” by Maroon 5

CHAPTER SIXTEEN- Walking on Eggshells

She watched him when he wasn’t watching her, in the moments when he deigned to show his true intelligence, sketching out the details for a term paper in a quick, decisive hand, talking out loud as he made analytical jumps, comparing different events in different periods to end up with conclusions that were not only innovative, but good.

He watched her when she wasn’t watching him, in the moments when she leaned over to decipher a word he’d written just a bit too quickly, afraid to ask him what it was for fear of sniping from him, or even worse, from her. She would tuck long locks of red hair behind her ear to keep it from blocking her line of sight, and damn it all, he would want to do that for her.

Drake’s hands itched to touch and he scoffed inwardly at her rules.

Rules.

As though they’d ever meant a shilling to him.

But as he watched her out of the corner of his pale eyes, he let her have her rules—for a few moments, at least—for he could see she felt the comfort that had suddenly and inexplicably bloomed between them on this neutral ground, the occasional sheepish smiles she sent his way, the encouraging murmurs she gave as she looked over the work he did. He didn’t need her for a tutor; they both knew he was smarter than that. But somewhere—where, exactly?—they’d slipped, and they were starting to enjoy themselves.

He peered at a freckle just above her knee and wondered how torture could seem downright pleasant at times.

He would be gentle with her this time, slow. He’d plead and she’d yield and he’d take his time, this time rid her of that teasing little uniform completely. He’d have her warm under his hands with no barriers and no—

She spoke then, yanking him out of his plans and clouding his face with anger. Did she have to interrupt him while he was thinking about her? “What?” he snapped, half aroused and a mite unhappy about it. He was fantasizing with her sitting right there, for fuck’s sake. What was going on with him?

Gen stood, gathering her books from the dining room table with jerky motions, her breath short. God, the way he’d been looking at her, like he wanted to gobble her up in one big bite…

The big bad wolf, she thought, though the eyes that had her pinned were not gold, but silver. “I’m going,” she reiterated, long since ready to beat her retreat. “We seem to be finished here, and I—” Can what? she pondered miserably. Walk home?

He raised his hand and caught the cuff of her jacket—his jacket. Seeing the warning look on her face, he cocked his head pointedly, his _expression perfectly clear. He’d broken no rules with this simple movement, since he wasn’t touching here, but only his own article of clothing.

He’d broken no rules yet.

He’d meant to rally with a clever remark, something witty, biting, some sultry innuendo, but as his brain was still rattling right along with seduction, the only thing his lips could form was a simple, nearly wistful question. “Do you hate me so much, then?”

He winced at the desperation of it, trying hastily to justify, to tell himself it was all part of his plan, just a way to soften her up, but he was already leaning forward to hear her answer.

The surprise on her face was evident, and nipping at its heels was confusion, then some wistfulness of her own. It was easy to forget, Gen thought, they all had vulnerabilities.

“No more than you hate me, I would imagine,” she spoke softly, yanking her arm away from him just a bit and raising her chin with the defiant answer. That, at least, would give him something to chew on.

But instead of retreating, Drake stood, still leaning toward her, eyes intent and predatory. A smile curved his lips but did not reach his eyes, and he peered at her as though trying to find something, trying to seek out something. “Clever girl, to turn it around on me,” he said, moving out from his chair to circle her. “So where does that leave you if I don’t hate you at all?”

It was enjoyable, he thought, to see her mental parry-and-thrust, the defensive moves, the footwork that kept her on her toes. She was fighting him, and he her, and it just got more and more interesting by the second.

He was winning, he thought.

It was easy for him to think that from his own shelter of conceit and hauteur.

“Of course you hate me,” Gen shot back, turning away from him with her cheeks burning. Why did he have to tease her so, to bait her? She wasn’t a fool, she knew nothing but pheromones, hormones, had changed since their encounter of the evening before. Nothing had changed but the pace of her breathing, the rate of her pulse, the sensitivity of her skin.

Perhaps everything had changed but her heart and his.

Or, she amended, taking a deep breath to steel herself for the final retreat, the exit, perhaps everything had changed but his heart.

Damn it all.

And then he was in front of her, bright spots of color burning in his cheeks, incongruous anger where only moments before there had been impenetrable calm.

Things just would not go as he wanted, would not go smoothly. She wouldn’t cooperate, she wouldn’t slow down, she wouldn’t give him more than the barest of glances—but she had the nerve to hand him his hatred and tell him what he did and did not feel?

“Hate?” he repeated, grabbing the lapels of his coat and bringing her to her toes so they were eye to eye. “Yes. I hate that skirt, and I hate your know-it-all attitude. I hate the way your legs look and that I know they’re smooth. I hate that this bloody coat—” he emphasized his statement with a shake, “—looks better on you than me.”

He brought his face close to hers, wanting to see his own want in her eyes. He’d meant to finish speaking, meant to finish his thought, but he pulled just a bit more on the heavy fabric, watched her eyes widen and her mouth drop open on a gasp, on a denial, on an exclamation, just as he covered it with his, tasting and testing and throwing all his carefully laid plans out the window as she kissed him back, her small tongue lapping at his lips with both regret and reverence. He pushed her away, fists still anchored in clothing, and he finished his statement, his own breath now tearing out of him. “I hate wanting you, and I hate not having you. I hate this bloody fucking awful feeling, and once all that’s out of the way, pauper, there’s no bloody room left to hate you.”

He released his grip, let her slide back to the flats of her feet, moving his hands to her back, to kiss her again, softly this time, gently as he’d meant to. Neutral ground was set aflame as he put his hands under his uniform coat to feel what he’d felt last evening in haste and in heat, using wide palms and long fingers to slip the overlarge garment off her shoulders and into a puddle on the floor.

Gen moaned into the kiss, her hands splaying over his as he covered her breasts through the white cotton of her blouse, not wanting to give in and touch him, but not willing to be passive. She’d feared this and she’d wanted it, she’d convinced herself she’d dreamed it when it had happened before.

When his lips moved from her lips to her face, tracing her features hungrily, the touches of a starving blind man, she finally touched him, her fingers threaded through hair that was usually stiff, impeccable under layers of some incomprehensible lacquer, but today was soft, just for her.

Mine, she thought, tightening her grip and making him draw hissing air through his teeth.

He stooped, sliding his hands from her back to her bottom in one quick, possessive swoop, picking her up and burying his face in her neck as she wrapped long, strong legs around his waist.

Slow, he reminded himself. Slow this time, and he placed tiny bites along the soft, white skin of her neck, feeling the dark beauty of the quiet gasps moving through her chest.

“It’ll be better this time,” he whispered, not realizing he’d said it out loud until she turned wide, wet brown eyes to his. And with her questioning look, he nodded, not quite knowing what he was agreeing to, but knowing at this moment he’d agree to anything.

This is what he’d wanted.

And she wanted him back, though she’d pretended otherwise.

He laid her on the sofa and loosed her legs, leaving her on the couch as he stood and looked down at her. It hadn’t been so different last night, their places, their choreography. But instead of making her unbutton her shirt herself, he knelt beside her and unfastened each button with slow and deliberate movements, the difference apparent to them both.

No touching, she thought as her heart gave a painful little hitch. What the hell was that supposed to mean, anyway?

Drake tugged her shirt off, familiar enough with the uniforms of Holforth to unbutton the cuffs before he slipped it over her arms—didn’t want her hands to get stuck, after all—and he pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses along her ribcage, pausing once to feel the heavy thump of her heart under his tongue.

I did that, he thought with a triumphant countenance. That is for me.

And he totally missed the possessive note, the ownership of his thought.

She was shy all over again as he removed her bra, using long thumbs and graceful fingers to knead out the lines worn into her skin.

“Drake, please,” Gen finally voiced, her first words since he’d begun, and she was embarrassed—not for what they were doing, but for her ragged clothes and the body she’d never quite gotten used to, the skin in which she sometimes felt uneasy.

He quieted her, not with words, but with movement, grinning up at her even as he kissed the concavity between her breasts, trailing a line down to her navel. Drake paused at the waistband of her skirt, leaving it be for a moment. Instead, he skidded his palms up her thighs, head tilted back to watch her watching him—he couldn’t believe she wasn’t stopping him—and he drew her underwear down her legs, the plain cotton soft against his fingers, the gentle step something he hadn’t taken the time with yesterday.

Gen watched him with trepidation, embarrassment, her thoughts too confused to pin down—but one stood clear, that this wasn’t him, this wasn’t how Drake Mallory acted, this wasn’t the man she despised but instead the man she wanted—and then he winked that sly wink, quirked his lips in his trademark smirk, and stuck the panties in his pocket.

Same man after all.

He breathed in, sighting her freckles and smelling her arousal, smelling the heat and the want and the sheer insanity of the idea of the two of them, wanting to taste the madness he’d wrought. So entranced was Drake he didn’t notice the two pale, freckled, trembling hands—Gen unfastened her own skirt and parted the halves, left to right, so she could watch what he was doing.

It felt as though all of her had quickened, every part of her—brain, breath, pulse—ricocheting out of control at every graze of his fingertips, at every look he gave her. Her stomach contracted in one white-hot ball, the muscles flexed to the point of pain, her eyes wide and nearly blind as he lowered his often-scathing mouth to the slick, hot skin of her inner thighs, tracing the crease at the top of her thigh with a willingness bordering craving.

There were too many things to feel, Gen thought. She was ashamed, her entire body flushing with the force of arousal and embarrassment at his proximity to her; she felt like moving, like freezing, like screaming, like her breath was about to stop.

This could be addictive.

This could be dangerous.

Drake drew back, clenching his teeth as he took a deep breath of her, gasped as he grasped for self-control, his eyes crossing slightly as he felt his erection pressing against the fabric of his slacks.

Just one more thing, he promised himself, one more thing to do before he started on sating himself.

He had to sate her first.

He slid his hands under the smooth, hot skin of her bottom, teasing his fingertips over the cleft there, chuckling as she hissed and slapped at his head in censure and encouragement. Slapping hands turned to gripping fists as he thrust forward, bumping his nose into the curls gathered at her center and bringing his lips to the slick, aching lips of her arousal, separating her with his tongue and closing his eyes, reveling at the taste of her.

He took in everything, senses heightened as he pushed her, shoved her, ruthlessly drove her to the edge with tongue and teeth and lips, not only smelling and tasting, but feeling every texture of her, seeing every muscle tremble, and listening to the sounds of her arousal.

As it turned out, when you got Genevieve Wesley good and truly worked up, she cursed like a stevedore.

He was using his mouth on her. That had been her first thought, but it had only lasted a fraction of a second, the barest sliver of a moment, before she was rocketed from restless arousal into keening, thoughtless need. She’d come for him yesterday—even as experienced as she was, she recognized an orgasm—but this?
Calling this a climax would have been like calling that Jaguar of his a pram.

Words were spilling from her lips, but she was too pleased, too high, to be ashamed of her bawdy language, the expressions of her most shocked and most speechless moments coming out effortlessly.

And it didn’t seem to be bothering him any.

Unable to take it any more, Gen followed instinct and let her back arch off the sofa in a tight bow, strung so tightly she thought she might just explode. Her hair stuck to her face in damp, erratic tendrils, her eyes wild and rolling.

As she thrust herself toward him, mindless keening spilling from her lips, Drake raised his head, beaded with sweat, and knew he was a goner. Even now, when his only contact with her was the barest brush of fingertips along her bottom, her hips were jerking and rolling with their own rhythm, one he intended to join.

This was just where he’d wanted her, but he never thought he’d reach desperation. Desperation, however, was just where he had peaked as he freed himself with hands shaking so badly it took three tries to unfasten his slacks, and his breathing more resembled a sob than anything else as he applied protection and entered her in a fumbling, shaking motion he hadn’t executed since his first time. She clenched around him on another peak, her nails drawing long, shallow furrows down his back and she sought purchase against a downslide of madness.

“Yes,” she whispered, and repeated the word with fervor as he finally found a faulty, driving rhythm, shallow strokes coupled with deep, probing thrusts, shaking them both to the core. Drake sought her lips with his, and their kiss was sloppy, shaky, frightened, broken by whimpers and pants and sobs and encouragement, but they were locked together lip to lip and body to body when he reached his own summit, giving her one last, jagged point of pleasure as he tipped over himself.

And neither one of them could ignore the way the kiss softened into an exploring, gentle sweep as they both rode the waves down, her arms now relaxed around him, his hands cradled to the sides of her face.

**Author’s Note: Thanks for the reviewer who caught my totally spastic mistake of calling Colin… well, Colin. I could have just let it go and not fessed up to my readers, but hey, I’m human. I goofed. Now… go read and forget all about my vulnerabilities!!!**

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN- Meeting the Family

“No more idiotic rules,” he spoke, still holding her, but the gentle, vulnerable look on his face had been replaced by his shield, that smirk. He was still inside her, reluctant to leave, still trying to determine what exactly had just passed between them.

Gen bit her lip to hold back a smile, able now to do so since he was proposing a cessation of rules, and echoed him. “No more idiotic rules.” It was an agreement of some sort, she supposed, and when had they ever agreed? It felt… strangely good. But uncertainty plagued her, and after he slid out of her, causing them each to gasp, she covered herself with small, ineffectual hands and watched him dress.

“Drake.” Had she ever said his name, and just like that, so… needy? “What… what is this?”

For some reason, the question made him angry. If she’d asked a different way, if she’d said “Are we together now?”, he’d have been fine. But to keep it so balanced, so casual, like the answer didn’t matter to her, made him angry.

“You’re supposed to be the brains here, Wesley,” he said, so focused on his shirt buttons he didn’t see the wince cross her face at his callous use of her surname. “So you figure out what this is, if it so desperately needs a title.”

Indignation dwarfing shame, Gen removed her hands and stood, her whole body flushed with anger and the remnants of their actions. She saw his gaze flick up to her and grow hungry rather than detached, and she narrowed her eyes, tossing back her hair.

“Well,” she said icily, not giving half a damn if he was looking at her that way. She was annoyed, dammit. She snatched her skirt off the sofa and fastened it with nimble fingers. “I can hardly think we’d need a title. It isn’t as though you’ll be telling your lackeys about us.” She slipped into her bra and added bitingly, “Or, for that matter, your parents.”

His lips lifted in a sneer, but there was misery underneath, dismay that their peace had been broken so quickly. He shoved a hand through his thick hair and said, “Nor you yours, princess, I’ve no doubt.”

She paused with her shirt halfway buttoned, one sleep bronze brow hefted regally. “You’re more than welcome to tell my father, Drake. I’d just love to hear you deliver the news that you’ve taken advantage—”

“Ha!” he interrupted.

“Of his little girl,” she finished, but they were both smirking now.

“Would you love to hear that, then?” he asked, putting his hands to her hips and looking down at her with a wicked gleam in his eyes. “‘Master Wesley, I fear your lovely, dulcet, well-mannered, even-tempered daughter and I have been, if you will, indiscreet.’” He paused his sarcastic banter as though thinking, and added, “‘Twice.’”

“Fantastic,” she said, shoving him away from her and barely checking her laughter as she headed for the door. “You can polish it up for when you come to dinner on Friday.”

“Friday?!” he echoed, and he was totally unable to keep the panicked yelp from his voice as he followed her out the door.

~~~

“Something’s different,” Hermione said, but she barely glanced at the bowl full of water and wood chips on Harry’s bedside table.

Later, she would chastise herself for being flighty and irresponsible, but for now she was focused on Harry. He’d been so quiet since his previous day’s outburst in Potions, and she was certainly going to get him to say or do something.

“Harry, I know you’re worried about Ron, but is it something more than that?” She sat Indian style across from him on the bed, her fingertips lightly touching his knees.

Harry was fairly certain his robes were going to ignite at those two points of contact, and it took him a long moment to discern what she’d asked him.

“Just tired, is all,” he said. “So many things changing… and with everyone gone, y’know, it’s harder not to think about Voldemort.” Ron’s antics and Malfoy’s general prattiness had at least been good distractions, Harry thought.

Hermione saw his thoughts wander, saw him drift away again, and felt a spurt of annoyance. In a burst of inspiration borne of frustration and pent up want, she leaned into him and kissed him fiercely, as though waging some sort of battle.

Her eyes were blazing as she pulled back from him, taking in his wide eyes, his glasses sitting askew on his nose, his heavy, uneven breathing, and she smiled with a secret, feminine knowledge just a few years beyond her age. “You were magnificent yesterday,” she breathed, and got no further than that.

He buried his hands in her hair—it was curly, sure, but who knew there was so much of it?—and kissed her, first matching her fierceness and fervor, and then leveling into a smooth, skilled meeting of lips she’d not have guessed him capable of.

As he grew pleasantly dizzy and Hermione pressed her hands into his thighs, Harry thought this would be a perfectly acceptable distraction.

~~~
Having a secret felt rather nice, Gen supposed. Then again, perhaps she was just trying to justify lying to her friends, her family… and herself.

Pretenses of hatred became harder and harder to keep up as the week wore on, as study sessions repeatedly and invariably ended with them trying to keep their hands off one another. Sometimes they succeeded.

The snarls and sneers he sent her way by day certainly looked real enough, she supposed, if one didn’t see him rubbing his fingers over a mysterious object in his pants pocket.

And when he did that, her snarls and sneers became quite real, indeed.

It would have been difficult to say with any certainty which of the two of them took the pretending harder. With each smirk of Drake’s friends, Gen wondered what he said to them, what he had told them. With each shocked glance from Connor and Lucia and every protective glare from Rob, Drake felt defensive… and more determined to make this Friday night dinner an opportunity to prove to her she wasn’t above him, or better than him. Her family would adore him by the time it was over.

And this want, this need for approval, didn’t seem strange to him at all.

After all, he was just proving a point.

Right?

~~~

It was just plain weird, and Rob didn’t like it one damned bit.

It wasn’t as though he hadn’t enough problems of his own, but to sit down to a Friday night supper with that… git and his smarmy smirk and his highbrow gestures… well, it was just too much for Rob.

Added to the mere presence of Drake Mallory was the plain and simple fact that Gen hadn’t informed her family of the guest until Thursday morning on her way out the door, stating it as loftily as she would have announced her shoe was untied or it looked like rain.

“Drake Mallory’s coming to dinner tomorrow night, hope you don’t mind.”

Rob could have sworn he felt steam rolling out his bloody ears.

And it did no good to complain about it to anyone. The only person who even listened to him with any sort of attendance at all was Lovejoy, and she was clearly mad. He’d liked to have strangled her when she started lecturing him about underestimating that bleach-blonde ferret. Then again, he was already wont to strangle her, but for whole other reasons.

Yes, Rob had plenty of problems, but the most current one included sitting beside that git and watching him kiss Rob’s parents’ arses.

Drake smiled sweetly at Mrs. Wesley, nearly making Gen’s eyes bug out of her head. It had been shocking enough when he’d shown up wearing a tie—actually knotted all the way up—but he’d brought her Mum flowers.

It was appalling.

“Explain to me once more how you know Genevieve,” Mr. Wesley inquired, more out of sheer forgetfulness than any intent to interrogate. He was having a hard time concentrating, as he’d spent a great deal of time thinking about how particularly lovely his wife looked this evening and how he probably ought to bring her flowers more often.

Smashing woman.

Drake widened his eyes at Gen, who sat precisely across the table from him, and then spoke directly to her father. “Well, sir, your daughter was kind enough to lend a little of her time and… talent to me.” The pause, though imperceptible to everyone but Gen, colored her cheeks. Did he have to be such a subversive pig? “You know,” he finally elaborated, “To help with schoolwork.”

“He really doesn’t need much help,” Gen demurred, then narrowed her eyes and added, “Well, not in that area, at any rate.”

And as dinner ceased and dessert came, the Wesleys barreled on in conversation, sometimes with Drake, sometimes around him, sometimes engaging a surly Rob into their discussions, and Gen had nearly relaxed when the bloody awful prat moved.

She was taking a swallow of her water when he ran his spotlessly polished shoe up her leg and directly between her legs.

She choked, sputtering water all over the cheerfully checked tablecloth, and the bastard just sat there looking solicitous as though he hadn’t a thing to do with it.

By the time Gen had caught her breath and wiped up the mess she’d made, he’d started moving his foot.

He hadn’t planned on the action, really, but she’d given him a look sometime between beef roast and cheesecake that had made him want to throw her across the table, parents or no.

She was becoming a sick addiction, and he had no wish to do anything other than feed it. After all, what had he to lose? When he was finished with her, he’d be finished with her. It was no different than anything else he’d ever wanted and gotten, really.

This, too, would lose its shine. All pretty toys did.

Her cheeks flushed and she tried to shift. When she did, she found out what he already knew: it only made matters worse.

“All right, show’s over,” Gen said abruptly, the words bursting from her mouth in a short-winded gust. Her knickers were wet, for God’s sakes. It was just… indecent. “It’s well past time for Drake to get home.”

“Genevieve!” her mother said, eyebrows lowered dangerously. “For heaven’s sakes, don’t be rude to your guest.”

“By all means,” Rob snapped, his first addition to any conversation about Drake, “Be rude.”

That earned him a slap on the bones of his wrist with a metal spoon.

One more reason to hate Drake Mallory, Rob reckoned.

“It’s quite all right, madam, Genevieve is quite right,” Drake said, lifting her mother’s hand and kissing it. Gen barely refrained from rolling her eyes, and then he shook her father’s hand. “I must be going. Thank you for a lovely dinner. You have a very comfortable home.”

The hell of it was, Drake thought as Gen all but shoved him out the door, he hadn’t been lying. The dinner really had been lovely—cooked by someone other than a French chef with too much ego and too little common sense—and the home was just that, a home.

Perhaps Gen and her family really were better than him, but he wasn’t about to admit it to her as she walked him out the door and strode to his car in long, purposeful strides.

“Something the matter, oh baby of the family?” he asked innocently, tugging on her hair and enjoying the fire it shot as she whirled around.

Gen thought she’d cooled down enough to look at him, really look at him, but when he looked at her like that, she had a hard time thinking anything. “Get in your car,” she managed through clenched teeth, digging for and finding the anger she so needed. “I asked you to meet my family and you make a mockery out of it by… doing that?” She couldn’t even find the words.

But the words she’d found had shocked him enough. “Meet your family?” he repeated, sexual thoughts suddenly dampened. “I thought this was just a dare.”

What did it mean? What did it imply?

He tried to scoff at it, both inwardly and outwardly, and found himself oddly unable. He’d liked her parents. Perhaps Rob was still a great, gangling ogre, but…

“That’s right,” Gen said hurriedly, wanting to clap her hands over her mouth. God, things were getting out of control, and all she wanted was to go back up to her room and sleep in the bed she’d had for as long as she could remember and look at the familiar, fading wallpaper, and pretend to be a little girl again.

Watching him interact with her parents had been too much.

It had been too natural.

It could be too easy, she thought, to…

And she wouldn’t let herself finish the thought.

“Go home,” she said, leaning forward to kiss him quickly at the corner of the mouth, unable and unwilling to send him home angry. “Please.”

Shellshocked, he did as he was asked for once in his life.

He had no way of knowing someone was waiting up for him at home.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN- Paying a Price

He was self-satisfied to the point of smugness, and he thought he had every right to be. After all, Drake thought as he maneuvered his car into the garage, her parents had loved him. It marked the first time in his life he could remember making a favorable impression on someone. Then again, he’d never set out to do so before.

And her reaction—

He shoved it from his mind, the seriousness of her expression causing a queer ache in his chest and abdomen, coupled with an odd sort of light-headedness. She was an odd duck, that was all. Genevieve Wesley was determined to make his life difficult no matter what, he reasoned, and so this was hardly any different.

But he did feel a bit sorry.

He was loosening his tie as he came through the door, unaccustomed to the close, choking width of the cloth around his neck.

“Yes,” his father’s voice came to him from the darkness just beyond the foyer, the big den in the middle of the first floor. “Relax, Drake, for we have a bit of a palaver ahead of us.” A single lamp clicked on with just a tiny motion from his father’s long, pale fingers, and the sharp angles and planes of his face were harshly illuminated.

Melodramatic fucker, Drake thought with a sneer. “Oh, goody, is it time for a bit of father-son bonding, then? Care to catch up on my life, Father?” But there was something here, something different from the usual antagonism, something entirely separate. Lucas Mallory looked like he knew something, and Drake knew knowledge in the hands of a man like Lucas was a dangerous thing, indeed.

Genevieve, Drake thought, his fingers tightening into fists at his sides. It didn’t seem a bit odd to him that she was the first thing to come to mind, that his worries would immediately fly to her.

“Please, have a seat, Drake. Make yourself at home.” A hand gestured expansively at the many places to perch, the tones of false gaiety clattering like marbles off the hard surfaces and corners of the room.

“I believe I will, seeing as it is my home,” Drake countered, crossing his arms over his chest and opting to stand.

Lucas arched an eyebrow at his son, already pleased with where the conversation was heading. It was so easy to bait the weaker specimens of the world, so easy to lead them by the nose. That much, Lucas thought, he had in common with Miss Genevieve Wesley. They’d both learned to bait Drake. Lucas intended to be much, much better at it, though.

“Is it? Well, perhaps it is now, but that is always up for debate.” Lucas templed his fingers under his chin, relishing the role of the villain. “You have something of mine, Drake. I wondered if perhaps you’d like to make a trade.”

“You’re mad if you think I’d deal with you,” Drake laughed, but the pit of his stomach was cold, so cold. “I’ve seen what you do to your ‘business associates.’ You never trade, Father, you get what you want and give nothing back.” He’d spent his whole life taking, taking, taking, had somehow made a success of it. It was no wonder his father had been termed a thief.

Lucas withdrew a slim electronic remote from the pocket of his suit coat, pointing it to one corner of the room where a large, flat-screen television sat unobtrusively. “My, my, Drake, I’m very disappointed in you. This isn’t business, dear boy, this is family.” He leaned forward then, his eyes glinting with malice. “And there are no rules with family.”

He turned on the television then, the sound coming in just a moment before the picture.

“Drake, please…” her voice, of course it was her voice, he heard it in his dreams, in his waking moments, in any moments where he found himself unguarded. Moans, pants, all the noises she made when they were together, his own low chuckle, his desperate, animalistic grunts—Do I really sound like that—and then the screen lightened, and Drake saw himself and Gen, tangled together as they had been several times in the past week, sheened with sweat and mad with want, fitting together perfectly.

He felt ill, felt part of himself roar with anger that his father would intrude on this, on this moment, on this part of his life. On Gen. He felt part of himself give up at the sight of that horribly clear picture, part of himself finally give in to the helplessness his father clearly wanted him to feel.

So he directed his anger at that helplessness, honed it like a blade, and turned sharp silver eyes to identical sharp silver eyes. “I never thought you for the voyeur, father. For that, you’d at least have to enjoy something in life, yes?”

If the impudence shook Lucas in the least, he did not show it. Instead, he watched the screen for a few moments, his face unreadable, then turned back to the young man he’d somehow fathered. If he hadn’t looked so damned much like him, Lucas would have thought it impossible for him to spawn such a brat. “Now are you ready to deal?” he asked silkily, and before Drake could answer him, he spun out the terms of his transaction.

~~~

Gen splashed cold water on her face and let it drip into the sink, not yet ready to raise her head, dry her face, and look at herself in the mirror.

Things were beyond her control, and it was high time she admitted it to herself and to Drake. She’d wanted him there tonight, plain and simple, wanted him to be there with her family, to fit in, to enjoy himself. And she’d wanted him, too, when he’d shown his true colors, toyed with her at her own dinner table. She wanted him with her body, yes, but she was starting to see she wanted him with her heart, as well.

Finally she looked into the mirror, blotting the water off her face, and when she lowered her towel, a face other than her own looked back at her.

Hollow-cheeked young man, his hair and eyes the same shade of dark sable, his eyebrows keenly arched over the bright eyes, expression sharp and knowing, his mouth shaping her name…

She screamed and backpedaled, immediately hitting the wall behind her as the image—illusion? Memory?—vanished.

Rob was the first one to the bathroom door, yanking it open without so much as a thought to his sister’s modesty. “What?!” he asked in a panic, wide blue eyes shooting around the room. “What is it?”

And what was she to say? She saw a ghost? Imagined a man in the mirror? “I… thought I saw a spider,” she said lamely, wincing at the girliness of it. But it did its trick; Rob was backpedaling thrice as fast as she had, his face now milky pale.

The big athlete was afraid of spiders, and the thought made Gen bite the insides of her cheeks to keep from laughing.

She let herself hang onto that laughter, banishing the feelings she’d been contemplating for Drake, and banishing the memory of a man who, in another world, had been Tom Riddle.

Things were falling apart.

~~~

Things were falling apart.

Severus Snape paced in Dumbledore’s immense office, face dour. “It has to end,” he said for what seemed to be the hundredth time in just a few days. “You cannot bear it alone.”

Albus Dumbledore struggled to his feet, face pale and hands trembling. It was not the worst he’d endured, but nor was it the best. He’d been in better shape, had accomplished more complex spells. It was just that there was so much depending on this one, so many people involved, and the headmaster was exhausted from holding the weight of another world in his mind.

“There are holes forming,” Albus admitted, stroking his long beard in a gesture so familiar, so habitual, it comforted him. “You are correct, Severus, I cannot bear it alone, not for much longer. But I will sustain it until I can sustain it no longer, then I will rest.”

He shuddered as the picture of Tom Riddle shimmered in his mind, and he hoped it would be over, one way or the other, soon.

~~~

“Five hundred thousand pounds.” Drake mused over the figure even as he felt his stomach turn over. Was it really that important? Was she? Was the money?

Was he?

The terms his father had laid down were concise enough; the money would be Drake’s free and clear if he had nothing to do with Gen ever again. No tutoring, no touching, not so much as looking.

The money was more than enough to buy him freedom from this house, from his father’s tyranny, even to take his mother away from it, and with the money came the video playing on the big television in the corner, endlessly looping through the few liaisons they’d had, endlessly looping through their transgressions.

“What if I told you I wasn’t for sale?” he asked, his voice sounding hollow and shaky, young. “That this is all one big fucking overused cliché?”

Lucas could hear the indecision, could nearly feel his son leaning into the deal, could feel the money changing hands. “I would give you a cliché of your own, Drake. Everyone has a price.”

Drake pulled his knees up, resting his feet on the chair, and put his hands over his ears to block the moans, his and Gen’s, that had been emanating from the corner since the inception of his father’s “intervention.”

“Everyone has a price,” he whispered, and wondered what his own price was.

**Author’s Note: Because I don’t feel I do it nearly often enough, I say a big thank you to all of my reviewers and faithful readers. I’ve had wonderful feedback and wonderful compliments here. But since you don’t care about that as much as you care about the story… get to reading!**

CHAPTER NINETEEN- Causing Harm

**Suggested listening: “Tangled” by Maroon 5

The first bell had rung, and she was already nearly late to class, walking down the hallway at a clip faster than normal, hair spread over her shoulder as she turned to look behind her, turned to see if he’d walk late into the big front doors of the school.

But as the bell sounded to signal the start of class, he had not yet arrived.

It shouldn’t have shocked her; it was, after all, Drake Mallory’s style to skive off classes and do whatever he damned well chose. But he hadn’t done it since they’d started their sessions, and she hadn’t heard from him all weekend.

After the first hour, she’d managed to convince herself it was something silly; he’d gotten sick or stayed out too late, or just plain felt like asserting his independence.

After the second hour, she’d told herself it didn’t matter why he was gone, and that it gave her a little bit of freedom, a little room for movement without that assessing hoary stare.

And from the third hour on, she had sheer, petrifying panic. She’d frightened him, she’d sent him home angry, she’d made him think she was more serious about things than she really was. He’d figured out how stupid they were being and decided to call an end to it. His father had finally killed his mother.

There were so many things that could have happened, and as she bit her nails ragged, Genevieve Wesley couldn’t land on a single one that made her feel any better.

She looked around the student lounge all those hours later, trying to find him, to get the smallest glance of that bright hair, a glimpse of those smoke-gray eyes, even in sullenness.

“Feeling all right, Gen, darling?” Lucia ran a hand down Gen’s hair, a small, sisterly smile playing about her lips.

Gen jerked as though guilty, casting her eyes first down to the table then up to the willowy blonde. “Lovey, do you believe in love?” The question—the non sequitur, Gen insisted to herself—was out before she could stop it, her worried eyes flicking to Lucia’s deceptively mild ones.

Lucia sat down, tucking away the secretive smile that wanted to rise. Of course she believed in love; it was all over the place. “What’s to believe in?” she asked. Seeing the stricken look on her friend’s face, she pressed on. “Genevieve, that’s like asking if I believe in the floor. A bit of a silly question, don’t you think?”

Her chest felt constricted, weighted, and anger, indignation buzzed in the back of her mind. Love? What made her think of it? What right had he to interfere with her life that way?

“I don’t know,” she answered hollowly, but she was unknowingly scanning her surroundings once more for Drake. There were his friends, his ever-present companions, but no Master Mallory.

“You’ll find him,” Lucia said, accurately pinpointing the target of Gen’s scrutiny. “If you want to, that is.”

And much to her chagrin, no matter what her internal struggle, the horror she felt at her own split mind, Gen found she did want to.

She wanted to very much.

~~~

She’d have cursed herself for an idiot if she’d been able to find breath. Her nerves were strangling her, making spots swim in front of her eyes.

Gen paused at the gate in front of the large house, placing one hand on the cold black iron to steady herself and buttress her weak knees. It was ten strides, fifteen at most, to reach the door, but it seemed an insurmountable distance.

She had never sought him out.

She had never been here unbidden. She’d felt unwelcome even when with Drake, and now, in front of the Mallory mansion, her stomach twisted and the freckled expanse of her forehead beaded with cold sweat. If she’d managed to eat at all that day, she’d have been sick everywhere, but as it was, her empty stomach was twanging unpleasantly.

She closed her eyes to collect herself, and the frowning bow of her lips lifted into a small smile as she remembered, saw, felt his arms around her, his bare chest pressed to her back as he whispered outrageously awful things in her ear, just to see what she’d do.

It would be okay, she insisted to herself, keeping her eyes closed even as she swung open the gate. Fourteen strides on her long legs took her to the front door, and though she’d gathered as much courage as she had, when she picked up the intertwined brass snakes that made up the Mallory doorknocker, she did not have to try to knock it against the door.

Rat-a-ta-ta-tat, her trembling hand sent brass against brass in a strange, flurried call, and a shiver passed through her.

Sounds like chattering teeth, she thought with a grimace.

Gen flinched, physically recoiled, when the massive door swung open, but instead of flaxen hair and eerie eyes, she was met by a short, olive-skinned woman with extraordinary eyes so dark they were nearly black.

“May I be helping the miss?” the maid asked in halting, stilted English, her eyes shifting back and forth like careful sentries.

Gen opened her mouth, heard nothing but a dry rasp, then swallowed and geared up for another attempt.

Girl, you’re an absolute horror of an embarrassment to the Wesley family. Acting like this, and for what? Drake Mallory! Appalling.

The self-deprecation was just enough to lift her chin, just enough to shove her voice into her throat and out. “I’m here to see Drake,” she said forthrightly, her voice now clear and a bit too loud for polite company.

What did it matter? Naught was polite about this house, and naught polite about their relationship.

Relationship.

She bit back a tiny sigh and watched the maid shuffle her weight from foot to foot.

“Miss, the young Master Mallory is not being here.”

Poor English or not, Gen could hear the lie in the maid’s voice. “He’s not here, you say?” she repeated, and even though she knew it to be false, knew it in her heart—

Can’t you feel him here?

— she felt the disappointment.

“Is not being here,” the maid insisted, nodding her head with a slight “hmph” exhalation.

“That’s a bit odd,” Gen said, taking a big risk, “As his auto’s still here on the premises.” The maid’s eyes widened and Gen smirked, completely unaware of Drake’s expression on her face.

“Young Master Mallory is not seeing visitors,” the maid reiterated. “Is there anything for me to be telling him?”

Oh, yes, tell him he’s a cowardly bugger who can’t show up to classes and can’t face me, and tell him I never wanted this, never asked for this, never signed on to turn into some bloody stupid bint over some sex. Just simple… stupid… sex.

“Tell him his tutor stopped by,” she said absently, already backing off the steps and away from the hateful hulk of a house.

And then the maid was pushed aside none too gently, and for a moment, her heart leapt in her throat, panic jackknifing through her.

Lucas—

But it wasn’t Lucas. It wasn’t quite Drake, either, not the way he should have been. The man she’d been looking for all day looked like someone else entirely; so drastic was the change that, as she stepped back toward the door, Gen calculated how many days it had been since she’d seen him.

A weekend and today, three days it had been since last she’d seen him, but it seemed like longer.

His hair was disheveled; not artfully so nor intentionally so, but tangled and wild as though he’d run fingers through it countless times, forward and back and forward and back. His eyes had taken on a red tint, so bloodshot were they, and the skin under his eyes had taken on a bluish-grey tone of its own. His bottom lip was chapped and torn, and as a lip-biter herself, Gen immediately recognized those marks for what they were—teethmarks, worry-marks from where he’d fidgeted unknowingly.

His clothes were a mess, also neither artful nor intentional, and the tie which dangled over one shoulder told her he’d not changed since leaving her house Friday evening. One cufflink was missing, the hole it had inhabited stretched and misshapen as though the link had been plucked or twisted until removed, and the whole of his ensemble was wrinkled and re-wrinkled.

“Drake,” she breathed, shaking her head in slight, involuntary censure, and the unspoken query hung between them. What have you done?

“My tutor?” he asked, swaying a bit as though drunk. In reality, it was sleeplessness which had him weaving, sheer and utter exhaustion of every type known to man, and likely a few types unknown. He’d wandered a bit since his father’s bizarre and sadistic proposition, but only when necessary. He’d stayed in the chair he’d sat in to deal, not eating, not sleeping, eyes cast sometimes to the blank television screen and sometimes to his father’s study door, where a cheque for five hundred thousand pounds undoubtedly waited.

And now he stood at the door, with that freedom behind him and his captor of sorts in front of him.

And she’d called himself his bloody… damned… tutor.

“My tutor, then?” Not my girlfriend, not even my friend, not my lover, my paramour, but my tutor. If she’d said anything else, he would have stayed in his chair, brooding instead of acting, sulking instead of speaking, dying instead of deciding. But her words—or lack of words—had propelled him from his chair, a spark of anger where before there had only been hopelessness.

Tutor. Rubbish.

“I reckon I’ve taught you more than you’ve taught me,” he said, his sneer a thin ghost of its former acidity. There was hurt there, though, confusion, worry about him, and it softened him more than he wished to be softened, pushed him in a decisive direction he did not wish to go.

“That’s likely true,” Gen said, lifting her chin once more and fighting not to ask him what in bloody hell had happened, what in the bloody hell was wrong.

In truth, she was frightened. She was scared of this man standing before her, but what was more, she was scared of what had made him this way. She wasn’t certain she wanted to know.

“I was only worried,” she said, attempting to hold an airy note in her voice, casual, light. “Though I suppose I shouldn’t have been. Looks like you’ve been pissed as a lord over the week’s end, and it’s just catching up with you now.” Gen was well on her way to one of the famous babbling lectures of the Wesley women, imitated but never duplicated by the jesting Wesley men. “Thought I’d drop by and make sure you hadn’t done something stupid. You know there’s a masque on Friday, don’t you? You’ll never be able to come if you miss all week’s school.”

There was the babbling, what an idiotic fact to bring up, the masque. Like he’d ever go to a masque, and they certainly weren’t going to go together.

“Not that it matters,” she continued, and he cut her off.

“Were you wanting to know if I’d go?” he asked, and he wanted to slap her for being there, slap her for risking herself in such a way, but she didn’t k now, she didn’t know, he reminded himself, didn’t have a clue what had been playing on his video machine just a few days before, hadn’t a clue what his father had planned for the both of them. “God, go,” he said. “Go, go, go. We can’t be seen together, don’t you know that, aren’t you supposed to be intelligent, are you absolutely daft?” He watched her lips part in shock, a gasp drawing from them, and he nodded fiercely. Yes, yes, yes, he thought, his decision tearing its way through his brain and driving a pike into his heart.

Would that I had a heart…

“What in the bloody hell has gotten into you?” she asked, her color rising, shame flooding her. Of course they couldn’t be seen together. That much hadn’t changed and wasn’t likely to. The great, moneyed Mallory couldn’t be seen with her, not even when he looked like a great heap of shite.

He was so beautiful it hurt her eyes, even like this.

I’m positively falling-down mad, she thought distantly.

He saw the money in his mind, but it was secondary, it was tertiary, it was positively incidental to everything else. Now what mattered were the video and the woman before him. “Pauper, I can harm you more than you can ever harm me.”

His father would destroy her and her family without so much as a backward glance, and Drake himself would be left intact to watch the festivities, and likely she’d think he’d planned it all. But with the money, she could be free, and he could be free, and his mother could be free, and his father would be left to damn himself to hell all he liked.

And then she struck him.

The little freckled pauper actually hit him, square in the chest, in a glancing, shoving blow that sent him stumbling across the polished parquet, a surprised exclamatory grunt leaving his lips.

“Harm me more?” she asked, her voice rising. Anger was good and clean and made perfect, awful sense, so much more sense than whatever soft-headed, fuzzy, hormone-addled thoughts she’d been having only moments before. “What is it, Drake? I’ve become more attached than you? You can’t possibly be hurt by me because you just don’t give a damn? You’re so much better than I? Bollocks!”

No, you’re so much better than I, he thought, for you’ve no devil in you, no devil in your family to cause so much pain, and you never asked for this, never asked for me…

But he said nothing, only stepped back and shut the door in her face to hide himself from her, to hide his pain away from her, to hide her hurt away from him.

And Gen struggled to hold on to her righteous anger in the face of her sudden and overwhelming misery.

CHAPTER TWENTY- Finding a Way

Empty.

She didn’t really think there was a better word than that in the entire English language. Empty… it was perfectly descriptive, perfectly perfect. It felt flat and nasal and cold coming out of her mouth, and it felt flat and nasal and cold lodged in her head.

The opposite of love—if love actually existed—wasn’t hate, Gen thought. No, the opposite of love was definitely emptiness.

Not that she’d ever loved Drake Mallory in the first place. A week-long spat followed by a week-long physical fling did not true love make, she lectured herself to the rhythm of her trodding feet. However, since she was quite certain she didn’t love Drake Mallory (quite certain, thank you very much, and never you mind those tears), and hate was simply too consuming of an emotion (and we’d never let him consume us, thank you very much, and never you mind the preoccupied look), then emptiness fit perfectly well.

She felt positively wrung out.

Gen skipped supper that night, pleading off with a stomachache. It wasn’t entirely a lie—she felt ill—but in a way, it hurt her more to be so secretive with her family. She’d lied so much already, and for what? For a man… a boy… who wished nothing to do with her? Who had, it seemed, used her and then shut himself away from her?

She would be just fine without him, she swore as she laid awake and stared at her ceiling through the wee hours of the morning.

She was just fine before him, and she’d be just fine after.

First, however, she had to cry a few tears, and if she did so in the dead of night, no one would know any different.

~~~

“Ohhh…” Hermione bent closer to the bowl of water, the curled tips of her hair nearly falling into the liquid. In an absent gesture that was already comfortable, Harry reached up and held the glossy locks back so they could both see more clearly.

“What is it?” He peered over her shoulder and wished, not for the first time, he weren’t so damned near-sighted.

“Ginny,” Hermione breathed. Of the two bowls they could view—Ginny’s and Ron’s—only Gin’s showed such odd unrest.

Her chips—still dual—were no longer swirling or agitated, but meandering around the bowl as though lost, sometimes sinking into the water and struggling to float again. The water itself was another matter entirely, its levels seeming to rise and fall with no discernible reason, sometimes becoming downright choppy.

“That’s not possible,” Hermione said, her voice queerly weak. “The water levels aren’t supposed to change.”

“’Mione, pardon me for saying so, but wood chips aren’t really supposed to move themselves around, either.” But it worried him, as well. What could it possibly imply?

“Stupid,” Hermione said sharply, making Harry jerk a bit before he realized she spoke not to him, but to herself. “We were too… preoccupied to even pay attention to our friends!” They’d spent the last weeks getting reacquainted in an entirely different manner, moving the bar from friendship to something higher. Their eyes met, both guilty, and the moment between them was tacitly clear.

Heroism was a full-time job, whether you were the hero or heroine.

“They’re safe,” Hermione insisted, but she didn’t sound so sure to Harry.

It sounded like a question, and he had absolutely no answer for it.

~~~

“This is most worrisome.” Madam Pomfrey looked at the headmaster, prying up his eyelids and clucking her tongue. “It’s absolutely disconcerting,” she reiterated stiffly, pinning Professor Snape with a sharp look.

“I am fine, Poppy,” Albus said, and though the smile in his voice was evident, his statement was nearly inaudible.

“This must stop,” she insisted, mixing a potion and shoving it unsympathetically into his trembling hand. “It is not meant for one wizard to hold so much on his shoulders, no matter how powerful he is.” She gave Severus another look, making him spread his hands apart in a grandly sarcastic gesture of subordination.

“What would you have me do, Madam? Pray tell, is there anything you’ve thought of that I haven’t thought of myself?”

Instead of replying, she gave a little ‘hmph’ and turned to make certain the headmaster drank what she’d given him.

“I thought not,” Severus said snidely, rolling his eyes in an expression that said far more than words.

“Friday at midnight,” Dumbledore said, stroking the very tips of his beard as though he couldn’t muster the strength to make it the entire length. His expression was sad now, faraway. “I will stop then, if they have not stopped themselves.”

“You know they won’t,” the Potions master said. “Optimism at this point is tantamount to foolishness.”

“Charmed are the fools,” Dumbledore quoted a wizarding proverb, his wistful smile once more returned, “For their grandest spells shall hold true.”

~~~

He was not there, and really, Gen thought, neither was she. Her mind engaged itself in the facts and figures of her classes, her body carried her from room to room, but her heart was elsewhere.

She longed to talk to someone—anyone, Connor, Lucia—about him, to voice her concerns or tell them what had happened. And what had happened? She still wasn’t certain, but she knew she could not ask the only person who knew, for he was not here and he did not want her with him.

But no matter how many times the words came to her lips to speak to her closest friends, she could not voice them.

He did not want people to know, and so they wouldn’t know. And that was only part of it. Genevieve Wesley was too stubborn and too proud to admit to her friends she’d fallen into some sort of thrall with Drake Mallory. It was shameful, and it was just plain laughable. If he was too good to be seen with her, then she’d certainly return the favor. He simply wasn’t good enough to tell her friends about. If he wanted to treat her as a dirty little secret, then she’d treat him as hers.

She’d never recognized her want for a real relationship, a public acknowledgment, and she wasn’t about to openly recognize that want now.

Foolishness.

She’d lived her life perfectly well before him—had, in fact, lived her life independently, proudly, and honestly.

She vowed she would do so again.

~~~

“You’ve not made me attend classes.” His voice was flat, belying no particular emotion. In truth, Drake wasn’t sure he really had any emotions left to belie. His father sat in front of him in the ridiculously opulent study—who could actually study in a place like this?—a tiny pair of spectacles nearly marring the icy perfection of his face.

Nearly.

He still looked sane, which was a flat wonder to Drake, considering how bloody mad the old man obviously was. Drake was fairly certain no other man in the world was, at this moment, holding a recording of his son having sex and offering that same son money.

Sick.

“No, I haven’t,” Lucas drawled indulgently. “You’ve more important things on your mind. Besides, if you’re here, you’re not with her, and that’s a considerable weight off my shoulders, boy. Think if you’d gotten her pregnant.” Lucas shuddered theatrically and thought for a moment he really might be ill. “Ignorant fool.”

“I’ve come to a decision,” Drake interjected, having heard more than enough. The words he’d prepared tasted dirty in his mouth, rotten and foul and sour. Part of him wished to spit them out, and part of him wished he could just be man enough to swallow them and be shut of them, once and for all. But he was not man enough, and how could he be when spawned from such a monster as sat before him? “You shall give me the recording and you shall give me the money.” Warming up to his part—and a role was all it was, for he could not honestly feel what he was saying, he was so numb, so terribly and awfully numb—“Because I am not nearly the fool you seem to think I am, I realize you cannot get me all these things immediately. I will allow two days for you to gather your assets. This makes our exchange on Thursday. I also ask that I be free to do with the money whatever I wish, as you’re asking me to alter my entire life for it.”

“I’m not asking you to alter your life,” Lucas said, tilting his head with a wide-eyed look of interest. This was a different Drake than he was accustomed to, more sharp than sullen, more reticent than rebellious. “I’m only asking that you rut with something less distasteful.”

Drake felt more words, ugly this time, ugly and painfully and terribly honest, rise up in his throat, and he tasted blood as he sank teeth into tongue to restrain himself. You’re so close to being free, don’t let him provoke you…

“You may do whatever you wish with the money,” Lucas said, clearly amused at the sudden brick-red flush of his son’s face. “Only not with the impoverished class.”

“Thursday,” Drake repeated, turning on his heel and striding away. He did not quite make it out fast enough to avoid hearing his father call after him.

“Oh, Drake… do groom yourself a bit. You look like hell.”

~~~

“I need a favor.”

There wasn’t a single tremor in her voice, and for that, she was proud. Three days had gone by, and Gen thought she’d done rather well and had looked for Drake less and less.

She thought about him more and more, but no one needed to know that, least of all her own conscious self.

And now, not looking for Drake (and certainly not thinking about him, oh, no, indeed), Gen was asking Lucia for a favor, a bit uncertain about the outcome. Lucia was, after all, completely dotty. A lovely young woman, yes, with the best of intentions, but not what Gen or anyone else would ever term “normal.”

Gen was just hoping her friend’s eccentricity extended to big favors and good resources.

Lucia looked up from the article she was editing and peered, as she always did, a bit myopically at Gen. All that red hair, for a moment, she’d thought…

She cleared her throat and extended a hand, inviting Gen to sit down across from her. “What sort of favor?” she asked, trying to keep the weird and suddenly giddy note out of her voice. Full moon this week, she reminded herself, perfectly dividing her attention between her article and her troubled friend, and everyone knew full moons meant weird behavior.

Lucia had even noticed her own behavior becoming a bit odd of late.

Gen sat down and closed her eyes for just the smallest moment, giving herself a moment with the vision she wanted to create. Independence, beauty, and even wealth, if only for a night. Just to prove to herself—and perhaps to other people—that Genevieve Wesley needed no one, and she would scrape for no man, not even Drake Mallory. Especially not Drake Mallory.

“It’s about the masque,” she said, and blonde head bent to red as the two friends schemed about the following night.

Neither of them saw the pale, silent young man slip into the school, ducking into the library where he was not allowed and out again with the stealth only those with nothing to lose can manage.

~~~

He paced the parlor end to end, cigarette after cigarette dangling from his lips, ashes carefully disposed in sterling silver trays poised at either end of the room.

Thursday had come, and Drake was waiting for the money for which he’d sold Gen. Just your tutor, he insisted, holding a cigarette up to his lips with a shaky hand. So it’s really no big deal.

He snubbed out the meager inch of the cigarette—mostly filter anyway, bloody awful things—and pulled out another one, realizing with painful clarity that he hadn’t smoked half as much when Gen was right there with him. He didn’t really know why, didn’t really have a reason. But now, there was certainly no reason to refrain, so Drake pulled out his monogrammed lighter and put it to use.

He’d needed to see her, needed to see her more than he needed to sleep or eat. He needed to catch just one glimpse at her more than he needed the money his father had promised him.

But he pretended it was his lighter he’d needed, the one object left at Holforth which he could actually get back.

The one thing he’d lost within the last few weeks that he could recover.

He’d seen her in the student lounge, seen her with that fall of red hair, talking to that lunatic Lovejoy. She looked fine, damn it all, fine and just bloody dandy without him. She hadn’t even seen him as he’d slipped past, big, shadowed eyes pinned on her.

It’s better this way, he told himself, snubbing and relighting as he turned watchful eyes back to the front drive again.

It was better this way, and the money would come soon, and with the money, the video, and with the video, her safety.

“Is it worth it?”

The voice, so often heard only through walls, and never heard as forthrightly as it was now, jarred him, and Drake jerked, sending a smattering of ashes over his already filthy shirt and his bare chest.

Drake stared speechlessly at his mother, jaw hanging unattractively agape, cigarette dangling precariously from the corner of his mouth, and like a character on the telly, the woman who only rarely—very rarely—came out of her bedroom reached up and plucked the burning tobacco from his mouth, tossing it into the silver dish with a distasteful look on her face.

“You’re too young for those,” Natasha Mallory said, unconsciously wiping her fingertips on the silk sleeve of her dressing robe.

He couldn’t help but goggle at her. When was the last time he’d seen her so, out of her bed and walking around without Lucas dogging her steps? Her yards of pale hair were pulled back away from her face, her keen blue eyes for once not shifting around in search of her husband.

This time, those sharp eyes were focused on him, and they didn’t look weak, or vacant, or distant. They looked… angry.

“Listen to me, before he comes with your money,” she said, putting her hand to his arm even as she spat the last word out of her mouth like something disgusting. She’d done so much wrong with him—or allowed so much wrong to be done, and which was worse?

She’d be willing to bet the latter.

“I asked you a question, Drake. Is it worth it? Are your thirty pieces of silver so precious?” She’d heard the deals between father and son, heard the cries of her son when he accidentally drifted into fitful, sick sleep, heard the flat glee in her husband’s voice as he taunted his son, their son, with a recording that should have never been made, a recording that made her ill to her very core.

She’d hoped against hope her son wouldn’t bend to the overwhelming pressure of her husband. But here he was, pacing the floor, waiting for his father to bring him his money.

Drake finally found voice to answer, weak though it was. “The money isn’t, but the freedom is.”

“You’d sell her for it?” Natasha asked directly. She had been disappointed by love, even trapped by it. She had no illusions, and no pretenses. She would ask him what she wanted to know, and he would answer her.

She still had a little power left in her, somewhere.

He weaved, thrown by the bluntness of the question, and a wave of nausea rolled through him. Too bloody many cigarettes, he told himself, but he had to grab the back of the settee to keep himself upright.

Sold her.

“It’s better than the alternative, don’t you think?” he said bitterly, raising his head to look at her, his hair hanging lank in his face. Had it come to this, then? Pacing the floor waiting for hush money, money to keep his father’s name good and Genevieve’s reputation above water?

And who was being paid to keep quiet here, Drake wondered. Was it his father or was it him?

“I can get you out of here,” he said, his voice small.

And Natasha laughed… actually laughed at this, but it wasn’t entirely humorous and not entirely right. It was a twisted laugh, somewhere underneath the pretty face and the expensive gown. “Did it ever occur to you I don’t want to get out of here?” She saw him wince, saw another piece of his heart break, and wished she had the words to explain it.

Not so long ago, she’d been a pretty, bright, promising young girl, entranced by the graceful hands and smooth voice of a man with more beauty than even she had.

She did not want Genevieve Wesley to be that same girl, and she did not want her son to be that same man.

“Listen to me,” she said again, and she put her arms around her son for what she knew could be the last time, speaking to him in a whisper. “If you take his money, you will never be free of him. Receiving due from the devil gives you no peace.” She stepped back then and hoped she wasn’t too late. “Give him his money and let him damn himself.”

“What about you?” Drake asked, tilting his head back to stem tears. Tears were but a weakness, and could be stopped. So he told himself.

“I?” Natasha asked, a vague, strange smile on her face. “I’m already damned, and damned by choice.”

He sat on the floor and stayed there even as she went into her bedroom.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE- Dressing the Part

She stared at her reflection in the mirror, taking a single curl and pinning it up slowly, as though entranced, a small, uncertain smile flitting over her lips. Behind her, Lucia straightened the dress she’d found for her friend and offered encouragement in vague, dreamy phrases, floating to Gen’s ears like heavenly advice.

Curl after curl, pin after pin, and Gen felt her heart both lift and sink with the preparations.

She would have this one thing, just for tonight. She’d gotten so good at pretenses, so good at hiding. She’d been hiding behind herself for so long, for tonight she just wanted to hide behind someone else.

~~~

He sat behind the huge desk in his father’s study, the folio full of money poised between his trembling hands. A dish of broken cigarettes and the occasional cigarette butt sat beside him, the broken ones deposited there when he’d managed to convince himself not to smoke, the butts deposited there when he’d been unable to fight the craving.

He’d waited all night long for his father to return home, his mother’s voice playing and replaying in his head as he grew more jittery, more restless, and less certain.

Drake Mallory wasn’t surprised his father was late, and he wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been double-crossed. Suspicion borne of years of experience had nagged him through the night and well into Friday morning, when the devil himself had strode through the doors of Mallory Manor, a black leather folio slung carelessly over his fingers as though it contained no more than ashes. He’d handed it to his son and had shaken hands—shaken hands—as though it had been some sort of transaction. Thankfully, he’d left after that, back to his own world and his own environs, back to the demons he undoubtedly held council with.

And now, hours later, Drake held the case and trembled, wondering what to do with the money and video inside.

He started with the video, studiously ignoring the money beneath it and tearing the magnetic tape from its black plastic case, his fingers feeling dirty and clammy as he thought of what was contained in the micro-thin strip of plastic.

Once he’d torn it all out, he balled it up and threw it into the ashtray, lighting the cigarettes around it and watching it shrivel into a hard, black ball.

May my heart do the same, he wished fervently, and heard his mother in his head once more.

You’d sell her for it?

~~~

The cool, regal young woman looking back at her from the mirror was not her, Gen thought, for Genevieve Wesley had never looked so sure of herself. Genevieve Wesley had never looked so beautiful.

Gen Wesley had never looked like anything other than a pauper, but it was not a pauper who looked back at her.

“It seems we did a satisfactory job,” Lucia considered, fervently hoping she’d managed to lighten Gen’s heart in any way she could. When the redhead stood and beamed at her, however, everything smiled except for her eyes, where there was a wary sort of knowledge, the knowledge that she was running on the last dregs of her energy, that things were about to come crashing around her.

Lucia hoped Genevieve found herself before that happened.

~~~

Drake took stack after stack of money out of the bag, arranging it carefully, deliberately on the desk before him, counting the bundles precisely before placing them on the desk.

He intended to make certain every last pound was there.

~~~

She affixed the mask to her face, glad for how it surrounded her eyes, set them off, took them out of context of the misery of her face.

Genevieve was more than happy to hide, this one last time, before she went back to being herself, with no secrets and no life.

With no love.

“I’m ready,” she whispered.

~~~

At Hogwarts, an exhausted headmaster fabricated one last scenario for the world he’d put together and watched his clock, counting down to midnight.

~~~

**Suggested listening: “Midnight Garden” by Bond**

Layers of gauzy material floated down from the ceiling of the school’s assembly hall, pastel colors layering over colors in great, sweeping swathes that reached the floor, obscured the door, turned the huge mahogany-paneled room into a mystery, into a place of intrigue and romance. Stringed music reached her ears before she came to the hall, coming alone as she had insisted.

With one hand, her nails tipped in shimmering silver polish, the young woman who had before been only Gen Wesley with a brief, shining interlude as someone’s lover, parted the gauze curtains and stepped into the room, raising her head to take in the sight of the resplendence.

Her hair was piled atop her head, the fire of it undimmed even on this night, a jeweled tiara nestled cozily among the myriad curls. The pale gray of her floor-length dress gleamed in the muted light of the room, and she split the crowd like a moonbeam crossing the floor. An elaborate silvery mask formed intricate patterns around her eyes, making her tears look like diamonds.

Before, she had been the pauper.

Tonight, Genevieve Wesley was the princess.

~~~

Five hundred thousand.

He placed the last stack of money strategically, squaring off the edges, buying himself just a moment to think.

Finally, he stood, placed the now overflowing ashtray in the center of the desk with another object, and turned and walked away.

With the confidence of a man long used to others taking care of his belongings for him, Drake Mallory took out his watch, checked the time, and never once looked back at the money as he exited the study.

~~~

“Nice dress, Wesley,” Melissa Bulfinch snickered as Gen walked by, her head held high. The sallow, flat-faced girl was nearly beside herself with envy at the figure Genevieve was cutting, but she certainly wasn’t about to let on. “Did you have to sacrifice your drapes for that?”

She nearly flinched when Gen turned, surveyed her with cool eyes, and smiled thinly. “Not quite,” she said, and her voice was gracious, nearly condescending. “What a lovely costume, Melissa.” She would not stoop, not for tonight. Stooping to this girl’s level was what had gotten her in trouble in the first place.

Don’t think of that, she told herself, and she let herself get lost in the music, in the strings and the swell of a song she’d once known but forgotten, a new song in an old way, or an old song in a new way. It didn’t matter which, it only mattered that it fit.

She wrapped her arms around herself, hands clasped to elbows as she tried not to imagine him here with her, holding her, and trying to pretend he hated the whole thing.

You were the wrong one at the wrong time, she told the Drake in her dreams, and she sought out Connor to dance.

It took too long to get his arms situated, his hands positioned properly, and even then, Genevieve felt awkward. Connor was a good friend, a lovely bloke… but she didn’t fit in his arms. She didn’t belong with him, nor he with her. She didn’t belong to him.

They danced stiffly for the first few bars of the song, and he was just offering her a stilted, numb-lipped compliment when someone touched her arm, cutting into the dance.

All motion stopped cold, the dance momentarily paused, time stopped as she looked at the man who was requesting her hand for a dance.

He was dressed like the poorest of the London streets, like a pauper, his trousers shabby and oft-patched, his shirt torn at the cuffs and stained. This man wore no mask but instead a threadbare tweed hat pulled low over his eyes, platinum hair peeking out beneath the edges here and there.

And instead of looking at her forthrightly, giving her that challenging glance he’d so often given her, the pauper held out one gloved hand, the fingers long since cut or worn out, and bowed, his other hand scraping low to the ground, his fingers skimming the glitter-strewn floor.

In her heart, she leaped. In her mind, she trembled. In reality, the princess looked down at the pauper, executed a deep, graceful curtsy, then turned to walk away from him. One strong hand grasped her arm, and it was on the tip of her tongue to scream at him, rail at him, ask him what he was doing, ask him if he was all right, then tell him she didn’t give a damn.

But though he had one hand on her arm, his head was still bowed, his eyes still obscured by his hat.

“We can at least end as we began,” she heard him say, and though the masque couldn’t have been more different than the club he’d first taken her to, she felt the heat, the sheen of sweat, the importance of the movement, and she allowed him to draw her close, unable and unwilling as she had been before to say no. How could she say no?

Just one last dance. That’s fair, isn’t it? Like a fairy tale.

She closed her eyes as one arm slid around her waist, feeling as though she’d come home, so many things to say, no way to say it at all, and he put his lips to her ear.

“I’m sorry,” Drake said to her, inhaling deeply, scenting her, knowing it could be— likely would be—his last time doing so. “What I’m doing is going to make things harder for you.”

The laugh she returned to him was deeper than usual, somehow edgier than usual. Royalty, he thought, addressing her ranks.

He deserved at least that for what he was about to do.

“Harder for me? I don’t think you could make things any harder for me if you honestly tried.” She wanted to meet his eyes as she said it, but he wouldn’t let her. “And did you?” she asked, the thought creeping in and refusing to leave, the suspicion. “Did you try to make my life so hard, Drake?”

He could feel her pulling away, almost violently tugging as the song was about to end, but he kept her close to him by sheer force, trying to remember the decision he’d made, trying to remember why he’d made it, trying to protect her and keep her at the same time.

He had to be selfish. He couldn’t bear not to.

“Let go,” Genevieve said through her teeth, her pride now leaping to the forefront, the idea of her evening—her evening, the time she’d given herself to prove her existence didn’t depend on him—spurring her on. When he didn’t comply—and had she really expected him to?—she shoved him with all her might, watched him stumble back in the open, torn shoes he wore, and her heart gave a horrible, stomach-turning wrench at the sight. Neither of them saw the people around them, the people who stopped what they were doing to watch Genevieve fight Drake. It wasn’t anything they hadn’t seen before; they just hadn’t seen it in costume. They did not listen to the words the couple shared, and none but Collin felt the heat arcing between them, the sheer sparks thrown by things none of them had known were happening.

“You,” she said, her breath shaking, the feelings she’d held back for the better part of a week finally spilling to the forefront, making her eyes shine and her skin flush the bright, hot red of the mortally humiliated. “You tell me it’s over and that you can’t be seen in public with me, then you have the nerve to show up here. Does that costume make it better? Is that supposed to be some sort of joke? Some mockery of my social status?” She ripped the tiara from her hair in a fit of pique and threw it at him, hitting him in the chest. “There. It suits you better, anyway. You’re the one who decided this joke, this sick, twisted joke of yours was over. It was over before it started.”

He picked up her tiara, brushed it off, and held onto it, then pulled his hat from his head, looking her squarely in the eye. His own eyes, she saw now, were bloodshot, the dark circles under them making him look younger, more vulnerable.

Don’t you feel sorry for him, she warned herself, edging away from him and into Connor. Why doesn’t someone make him go? Why doesn’t someone do something?

But the only someone was her, and no one else moved.

“This is only over,” Drake said, raking a hand through his hair and thinking of his father’s study desk, of the carefully arranged money. “If you look me in the eye and tell me it’s over.”

~~~

Lucas Mallory was a happy man.

After all, he had a subservient son, a clean reputation, and a spare copy of a very titillating video, if ever the need for it arose.

A happy man, no matter how black and bleak his happiness is, is not an observant man.

Lucas never noticed the servants rushing about the house, his wife standing in the shadows, the inspector standing in the doorway of his study. He noticed none of it until he was upon it, and they upon him.

“Is there something I can help you with?” he asked snidely, choosing his favorite view and looking down his nose at the shabbily-clad inspector.

And then he looked inside his study.

~~~

She couldn’t track what was happening, couldn’t make things fall in a nice, logical order.

What had happened in the space of a song?

He had broken her heart only days before with his snobbery. She had asserted her independence only hours before with her appearance.

And only moments before, he’d brought it all crashing down on her head once more, offering himself to her when she most wanted him, when she least wanted to want him.

“I don’t need you, damn it!” Genevieve insisted loudly, sending gasps willy-nilly through the crowd.

“Tell me it’s over,” Drake demanded, his own voice now growing edgy with desperation, one hand held out to her. “Damn it, Gen, just do it.”

“I don’t need you,” she repeated, but she could not bring herself to say it was over, could not make her lips form any other words than the only ones that were true. She wavered, her mind throwing her body into weakness, and he stepped to her, his arms banded around her tightly, and he spoke three words that made her want to scream, three words that brought into clear, surreal relief what exactly the last five days had been about.

“My father knows.”

~~~

His desk was obscured by a pile of wet, smoldering paper, or some such rot, and Lucas shoved into the study before anyone could divert or address him.

“What in bloody hell?” he asked, his cold eyes tracing the piles of char.

A few numbers here, a few recognizable pictures there, and Lucas roared in disbelief.

Surely that wasn’t money, surely there weren’t five hundred thousand pounds burned to uselessness on his study desk.

Crazed, pushed past the point of caring, Lucas swept his arm over the desk, heard both the lighter, now blackened, and the glass ashtray fall to the hardwood floor in a flurry of burned money, and then he heard nothing but the blood rushing to his head, filling his ears, making him see everything through a thin haze of red.

FUCK YOU, his desk read, the letters burned into the desk, marked by money and lighter fuel.

His son had reneged on his offer.

~~~

Fear was her first emotion, followed by disgust, confusion, a thousand other things. But none of them were as strong as the pity. That man, that horrible, insulting, empty man. And here stood his son, dressed as that which Lucas Mallory most despised, offering himself beneath himself.

She curled her hands into fists to hit him, to drive him away, but they fell ineffectually on his chest and Gen laid her head to his shoulder, feeling only the pity now, and the feelings which she’d tried to deny all along.

“Say it’s over,” he repeated, but he stroked a hand over her hair and clung despite the watchful, incredulous eyes around them. He’d missed this, this small thing, the feel of her hair against his fingertips. Mindlessly, he edged off one glove and buried his hand in her hair so he could feel every strand, every curl.

“I don’t need you,” she whispered for the third time, and raised her eyes to him.

“What does that mean, Wesley?” he asked, tightening his fingers just slightly, drawing her head back so she would look him in the eye. “You’re the smart one, you have to tell me.” Desperate, so desperate for her to say something, anything other than what she was saying.

“I don’t want to want you,” she admitted, and restraint made her voice hoarse, strained. “Or love you.”

She took off the mask and let it fall to the floor, and he laid his forehead to hers, his eyes meeting hers without obstruction.

And the world around them began to fall away, only hours before midnight.

**Author’s Note: This is the final chapter of “House Unity: Lessons”. It is not, however, the final chapter in the story started here. Keep your eyes peeled for the second story in the trilogy, “House Unity: Questions”, which will follow Ron Weasley and Luna Lovegood through their tenure at Holforth, and “House Unity: United”, which will feature Draco, Ginny, and all their supporting characters… of course. Now… go read!**

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Returning to Hogwarts

“You know, Hermione, there is a… thing going on down in the Great Hall.” For the life of him, Harry couldn’t think of the word, but he had thought Hermione would rather be down there, dressed in her prim, somehow enticing dress robes, dancing among the other students. But instead, she was in the Astronomy Tower once more, her bowls of water set before her, that magnificent brain trying once more to hammer at the unsolvable puzzle of their friends’ absence.

“I’ve almost got it,” she answered him absently. “It just seems as though this whole thing has a pattern, you know, something so easy I’m looking straight past it.”

Harry leaned to look at the bowls over Hermione’s shoulder, his jade eyes hooded when he saw that no matter how much water Hermione added, it always dropped down to the same level, so low in the bowl it was barely there.

“If these are people,” Hermione said, pointing out the chips, “Then this is a place.” She swept her hand in a circle around the bowl, indicating the water. “And a place, by its very nature, can’t be unstable.”

“Clearly a person can,” Harry groused. Besides, he’d rather come to enjoy that haughty half-scowl on Hermione’s face when her theories were called into question.

“Unless,” she said firmly, arching her eyebrow in a so there! expression. “It’s not really a place at all.”

Harry lowered his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, then nervously scrubbed a hand through his hair, that unconscious part of James peeking through. “I’m really bad at riddles, ‘Mione.”

“‘They are safe,’” Hermione quoted Dumbledore, wonder slowly dawning over her features. “‘They are safe, and all things willing, they will return much improved.’” Her eyes shining, she jumped to her feet and faced Harry. “He knows, Harry, for a fact they’re safe. How can he know that unless he sent them there? And if the water—the place—isn’t real—”

“Then he made it,” Harry finished. “Like a glamour. But if it’s unstable…”

“They’re coming back!” Hermione grabbed his hand, excitement bringing a flush over her cheeks. “Harry, they’ll really be back! Where’s Professor Dumbledore?” She narrowed her eyes, searched back in her mind. “Did you say something was going on tonight?”

Part of him regretted her conclusion, regretted the implication that their time together would end soon, interrupted by the arrival of friends, the drama of return. But part of him—a very large part—yearned for his friends, for Ron and even for the sometimes enigmatic Ginny. And a tiny, tiny part of him even wished for the enmity of Draco back.

So he wrapped his fingers into hers, tugged her to him, and said, “Middle-of-term ball. Let’s go.”

~~~
Dumbledore sat in his customary seat in the Great Hall, and though his head drooped tiredly and his staff wavered occasionally, he was smiling. No matter what other results his experiment had or had not yielded, he could see the shortage of students had forced a bit of unity where there otherwise would have been none.

Devoid of their leader and his overbearing ways, Crabbe and Goyle had somehow ended up at the ball with one Hufflepuff each. Pansy Parkinson was somewhat awkwardly trying to work her wiles on a Ravenclaw second-year, and even the Gryffindors had swallowed their pride enough to mingle.

Things were going well.

In this sort of circumstance, Albus did not mind as much the forced abandonment of his foray into otherworldliness.

He’d gotten some house unity, one way or the other.

There were pairs dancing awkwardly in the center of the floor of the Great Hall, some off to the side drinking punch or staring longingly toward the middle as though wanting to join in. There were those mingling in groups, gossiping and chattering, and the occasional, inevitable loner.

But all eyes turned to one point when Harry and Hermione came running through the Great Hall hand in hand, hair flying, eyes manic, common robes unsuited to the middle-of-semester formal.

The two of them were considered odd even by their closest peers, so it surprised no one when The Boy Who Lived and his brainy girlfriend thundered straight up to the headmaster’s table, breathing heavily and finally speaking in unison.

“They’re coming back, aren’t they?”

“She thinks you’re bringing them back—”

“When? Is it happening now?”

But he did not seem to be paying attention to them, his eyes intense and focused elsewhere, something akin to a smile playing about his bearded mouth. Finally, when their shouting became too much, he swept a hand out to them. “Silence!” he said, his unamplified, joyous voice carrying over the assemblage.

Professor Snape jerked in his seat at the headmaster’s side, the dark, inky liquid he was drinking spilling over his hand and his robes. That was the loudest and strongest he’d heard the man he considered himself indebted to speak in weeks. He half-stood, barking his thighs against the table, and Dumbledore stayed him with a flap of his hand.

Hermione felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up, gooseflesh prickle up and down her arms, and a smell she immediately associated with electricity and burned fuses stung her nostrils. She turned, feeling as though she were hindered by something, this rending of one world to accommodate another, letting her hand slip from Harry’s and her jaw drop open in a shocked gape.

The middle of the floor had cleared, and the air, the very substance of the room they stood in shimmered and pulsed, iridescent and weirdly alive, allowing Hermione a glimpse of something—

Students, just like us, perhaps watching the exact same thing, but from where?

Their faces didn’t look quite real, and she couldn’t focus on them, didn’t need to, because before she could fully comprehend that, or fully comprehend Harry pulling her back and closer to his body to shield her, two figures came sharply into focus, superfocused for a moment, sharper than the world around them, then softened back into normality.

“I’ll eat Merlin’s hat,” Snape said from behind her, and later, when she was more coherent, Hermione would insist fervently to herself that she’d only imagined the completely bizarre, atypical comment coming from the Potions master’s mouth, even though it was followed by the sharp, acidic addition of, “A Weasley?!”

Hermione felt her knees buckle entirely as she saw Ginny Weasley in Draco Malfoy’s arms.

“House unity,” Dumbledore said as his other world, and sat heavily back in his chair.

His world was dissolving, that other world shaped as a wizard would shape a glamour, but with far more detail, and rules only he knew.

The houses divided, sent into a foreign land with foreign lives and foreign memories, would stay in that world until he was no longer able to cast the elaborate and tricky glamours and memory spells which held the houses in their places.

They would stay until he was no longer able, or until they had shown unity in a public and undeniable way.

In his mind, Albus Dumbledore saw the snake and lion, coexisting, perhaps not peacefully, but certainly productively. The first of the houses had united.

~~~

He buried his face in her hair, shaking with the relief and the sheer awe her words had sent through him.

Maybe it would be okay, as long as she could say things like that.

The tremors passed and he parted his lips to whisper to her, to reciprocate her phrase, to say the words he’d never bothered to say, words that had never once been spoken in his house, but as he spoke her name—

“Genevieve…”

Ginny?

Draco Malfoy reared back, silver eyes wide and staring as he looked at the redhead in his arms, the beautiful, teary-eyed, silver-clad…

Weasley.

Ginny’s lips parted in a soundless shout, and she felt the duality, felt two halves of herself as clearly as if—

As if she’d done things in a trance without even realizing it.

“No,” she managed, her voice a rusty, pallid squeak as she tried to reconcile love and hate in her mind and her heart, tried to puzzle out what she’d done this time, how she’d done it, who had been controlling her this time.

And remarkably, he held onto her, his hands grasping her bare shoulders, her mask and tiara dangling from the fingertips of one hand, his eyes slicing straight to the heart of the matter, desperate and crazy and so completely Slytherin that she started to pull away despite herself, started to pull away even though she knew this was the man, the very same, who had touched every inch of her body and not harmed her, spoken her name—not your name, Ginny, someone else’s—in lust, in passion.

She started to pull away because he was Draco Malfoy, and because she was not Genevieve Wesley.

He remembered it all, and did not doubt any of it. Not for a moment did he cast aspersions on those memories. He knew precisely who he was, and he knew precisely who he had been.

Malfoys did not have hysterics, and they did not hallucinate.

Malfoys did not lose control.

And most of all, Malfoys did not make mistakes.

He remembered what he’d done to his father, another wave of relief, this one entirely different, breaking over him.

No video, no moving pictures of him with Gen… Ginny.

He put his lips to her ear and spoke quietly, in tones so dulcet no one would have believed it if they’d heard it.

“Stop fighting me and follow me,” he said, for he would not allow this to become a public spectacle, and he would not allow her to leave him.

And though a great portion of that was because women did not leave Malfoy men, an equally great portion was because he had given up everything for her in one world.

He would not change his mind.

Ginny looked around, shocked, speechless, her wide eyes taking everything in and giving it a weird, panicked, canted angle. She felt as though she were looking at everything through a large glass ball: Hermione’s pallid face, Harry’s thinned lips clamped together, Dumbledore’s approving smile and nod, Snape’s sneering, enigmatic expression.

And she wanted to get away.

So she twined her fingers with his, taking one stilted look over her shoulder as he dragged her down the hallway, glad, fiercely glad no one wanted to follow them.

How long? How long were we other people?

She couldn’t seem to get a good handle on time, as she’d memories enough to suit two people, or at least one and a half, the most vivid of those memories centering around this young man, this fair-haired young man and the gamut of feelings he’d run her through.

“We need somewhere to talk,” she said, and still her voice was rusty. She wanted her wand, her robes. She wanted things familiar to her, not this enemy, not his odd mannerisms and his fierce looks.

But those, too, were familiar to her, and then some. They were more familiar, and somehow hauntingly more welcome than her friends would have been at that moment.

He clasped her fingers almost to the point of pain, and with his other hand held onto the tiara and mask. Silly little things, really, but he wasn’t about to let them go. He needed it to prove to himself—or moreover, to her—that the whole thing had been real.

“Somewhere to talk,” he repeated, marveling a bit at the protective urges coursing through him. There were large, dark shadows under her eyes, and her skin had paled several shades lighter than usual.

Since when have you been that conversant with the Weaselette’s skin?

“Oh, bugger off,” he told that voice in undertones too low for her to hear, and concentrating, he reached out and grasped a doorknob where there had been only a wall moments before.

They needed a place to talk, and here was their place to talk.

They’d stepped from the ancient halls of Hogwarts outdoors somehow, the tiny, cramped spot of grass that had stretched along the front of the Wesley home back in that weird Muggle world.

And parked on the street was that sleek, green Jaguar.

“Best part of being a Muggle,” Draco smirked, running his hand over the side of the auto and feeling a sharp pang of longing and regret. It had its charms, he thought, not altogether unlike a sleek, sinuous broom, or a fiery, unmanageable woman.

He’d miss the car, but he wasn’t about to give up on the woman.

“I don’t know what’s more unbelievable, that I lived as a Muggle or that I shagged Ginny Weasley.” He carefully arranged both mask and tiara on the top of the car, spots of silver on that dark, glossy green, completing the Slytherin colors.

“It wasn’t me,” she said through clenched teeth, but the homey feel of the small yard, the smell of that nighttime air, only faintly tinged with auto exhaust, all but proved her wrong. It had been her, and willingly so.

And she’d be willing to bet every yard of her beautiful dress that this moment they’d stepped into was the same moment just before she’d sent him home, with a kiss at the corner of his mouth and the indubitable feeling of love rioting through her chest.

And the damnable truth of it was, that feeling was still there.

His hair was mussed from the hat he’d worn, his eyes both guarded and sharp, but something played about his mouth—worry, she labeled it, and knew she was right.

She knew this man inside and out, even if she hadn’t known him before they’d gone Muggle.

By way of response, he leaned against the car, deceptively casual, then covered one satin-clad hip with his wool-gloved hand and yanked, sending her stumbling into him, pressed chest-to-chest and hip-to-hip, and his breath, already rapid, sent tendrils of hair dancing about her face.

“Not you, then? It certainly felt like you.” He couldn’t help it, didn’t want to. It had been too long since he’d touched her, too long since he’d felt that fire, felt that heat of her skin against his skin, saw that mixture of warning, wariness, and worship in her eyes. “Remember?” He kissed her, and for the first time, he fully understood what that odd feeling, that past feeling that always seemed to stand between them had been.

Even as Muggles, there had been some magic there, strong and undeniable between them.

He stroked his tongue over hers and heard that low, familiar moan; he could have devoured her then, starting with swallowing that feline little noise right between his lips and down his throat.

Ginny wanted to fight him but found she couldn’t, and that didn’t surprise her at all. The dance, the car, the fevered, freakish evening at his house. It had all been inevitable, and had it all led up to this?

She thought it had.

And also the hexes, the insults, the snide remarks he’d lobbed about her and Harry. Here, in this world, those had all led up to this.

She pressed her hands into his sides, hard enough to hurt, reassuring herself he was real, and then she stepped away, tears in her eyes.

For reality meant more than one thing, and here, in her life and his, reality meant warring families.

“You hate me,” she said, shaking her head. “You and your family hate me and my family. Why do you think your father hated me so, Draco? Because he hated me here. He tried to kill me.” She stepped back, holding one hand out to keep him at bay. “I won’t subject myself to that again.” Fire snapped into her eyes and she raised her chin. “My father.” Draco laughed, rubbing a hand over his face. Had it come to this, then? Revealing secrets to a woman he’d hated his entire life without even knowing her?

And a woman who, once he’d known her, he’d been incapable of hating?

“Remember, Weasley, you’re supposed to be the smart one. If my father hated you there because he hated you here, then what on earth does that say about me? I hated my father there because I hate my father here.” He spread his arms wide, mocking himself. “Here it seems I am still the ungrateful brat. Would, you said, that you had half my problems.

“Slytherins aren’t fickle, Weasley, we get what we want and we don’t look back once we’ve gotten it.”

It was all so incredibly unfair. Ginny ran her hands up her cheeks, trying desperately to stem her tears before they even fell.

You’ll ruin your makeup, she told herself, but she just didn’t want him to see her cry.

The man she loved, her worst enemy.

“Is that what you’ve done, then?” she asked bitterly, hearing herself in her head, hearing her voice claim her love for him with no return. “Gotten me?”

He slid the tiara off the car and approached her, situating it once again in those red curls, deciding he rather liked it there. She looked the part, the faerie princess. “You said you loved me, Weasley. Is your Gryffindor loyalty so weak, then, that it doesn’t still hold true?” He held her head in an attempt to keep those brown eyes on him, in an attempt to fire her anger and get rid of her tears. She wouldn’t love him as long as she was crying, but she might love him as long as she was clawing at him.

She couldn’t bear to look at him when he looked at her like that, softness and cynicism coexisting, so she closed her eyes and kept her voice low and level, speaking haughtily through her teeth. “I said I loved you. I’m not a liar, and I’m not fickle.”

He surprised her by pressing a single kiss to the center of her forehead, a gesture his mother had shared with him on more than one occasion, both Narcissa and Natasha. If he knew love, there was his only source. “I have to have you—I have to be with you,” he said, and found that was the closest he could come to echoing her sentiment. When her eyes flew to his, angry and hurt and disbelieving, he shrugged. “I guess that means I love you.”

And though she’d thought that would be all she needed to hear, Ginny felt a soft, painful squeeze around her heart at his words.

It saddened and sickened her to know he wasn’t certain—not for her sake, but for his, the boy who’d never had any example by which to know what love truly was.

He laid his cheek to hers, caressing the back of her neck and listening to her breath even as she listened to his, the closeness an oddity for the two of them, the silence even rarer.

Then she spoke.

“Well,” she said with an enormous sigh, rubbing the smooth skin of her cheek over his stubbled one in a way that made him wince (she’d certainly have red marks among those freckles after that), “I suppose this means I won’t be able to hex you any more.”

He was worried about many things, about his family and his life, her life and the lives they’d stepped back into, but as he slid large hands from her neck down her sides to caress and cover the slightness of her ribs, the softness of her breasts, he hid his worry well. And much, much later as they lay together, cramped but comfortable in the backseat of the slightly out-of-place automobile the room had conjured for them, he pressed his lips where her neck and shoulder met and whispered to her.

“You’re supposed to be the smart one, Weasley. Surely you can figure out how to make this work.”