-18-

Silence. Pure silence engulfed her. She couldn't bear to look. Was she dead? Had Jack somehow managed to kill her? Had she been stabbed? She didn't feel any pain but that wasn't much of an indication. She still held fistfuls of Oliver's suit – one lapel had been ripped off – as she lay on top of him. She could feel him breathing. At least he wasn't dead. She raised her head from the crook of Oliver's neck and cracked one eye open. What she saw shocked her nervous system almost as much as seeing Jack the Ripper in the flesh.

The entire population of Hogwarts stood in a circle around her and Oliver, staring in open-mouthed surprise. She looked back down at Oliver and he seemed as stunned as she felt. They locked eyes and started laughing. They surely looked like lunatics, laughing with relief and joy at being back until they ran out of oxygen and their stomachs cramped. By the time they had finished, still lying of the flagstone floor of the foyer of Hogwarts, the crowd surrounding them erupted into raucous exclamations that was so normal and welcome to the Slytherin and Gryffindor that they didn't care what was being said about them. They were safe and they were home.

They sat up as McGonagall and Snape rushed towards them to pull them apart. Darcy renewed her hold on Oliver and refused to let go, wrapping her arms around him. He held her with the same intensity. He placed one hand behind her head and pulled her flush against him in a heated kiss. Immediately, the noise in the hall stopped. Not a sound was heard except for the heavy breathing from the still exhilarated pair on the floor. Not long after, the students erupted once more into a frenzy of sounds. Some of outrage, some of incredulity, all of them disbelieving what they were witnessing.

Later, Darcy and Oliver would hear from their peers what they had seen. To the students of Hogwarts it had seemed instantaneous. First was the duel. Darcy had been disarmed and had lunged at Oliver to tackle him, intent on pummelling him no doubt. Then an explosion of purple light followed by Darcy on top of Oliver wearing funny garments and then, to everyone's immeasurable shock, snogging each other senseless.

As it had turned out, their theory on time had been wrong and they couldn't have been happier about it. Time had stopped when they had gone back in time. According to everyone, the events were perfectly in order. It was assumed Oliver had cast some unknown spell to change their clothing but all were still puzzled as to why one would do that in a duel. Oliver still marveled at how he used the same spell and ended up in 1999 again until Darcy reminded him how that year had become her favourite time period. Therefore, they were transported once more to Darcy's favourite era and precise year.

For one terrifying moment, Oliver feared that Darcy would just revert to her old ways and deny any attraction between them. When Oliver asked Darcy about this possibility, she vehemently refused to deny her Muggle parentage any longer and publicly held his hand as often as possible in public displays of affection that left no one in doubt of the pair being a couple .She would never have been able to do it had she not been emotionally supported by Oliver.

It was also obvious from that point on that the biggest rivalry between Darcy the Slytherin and Oliver the Gryffindor had now become the biggest romance Hogwarts had seen in a long time. According to the gossips, it was the biggest romantic story Hogwarts had ever seen.

It came as no surprise to Darcy Harris when she was shunned by the vast majority of her House. She couldn't deny that it hurt her greatly and her ego suffered a vast deal but with Oliver's support, it became bearable. She also discovered that some of her old friends stood by her and she also made a few new friends among her peers though many were doubtful about her at first. Some boys and girls in Slytherin now dared to speak to her and told her how glad they were that she had come clean about her heritage. As it turns out, two other Slytherins, one in first year and one in fifth year, were Muggle-born and countless others were half-bloods. Darcy had unwittingly started a trend of truthfulness.

Romantically, she and Oliver had also started a trend in inter-house dating. Couples who were forced to be together secretly because of their Houses – especially Slytherin and Gryffindor – had started coming out of the woodwork. New ones started up as well. No one would have ever guessed such attraction existed among such animosity.

That's not to say that everyone was happy with these changes. Death threats were made involving the Sorting Hat for betraying Salazar Slytherin's legacy. To no one's surprise, it was Slytherin House that hated Darcy for starting all of this. For the most part, Oliver was convinced it was because they had been fooled by her for years. Of course, most stated vehemently that they had known about her parentage all along and really, it was obvious that she wasn't one of them. However, no one could come up with a believable reason as to why they hadn't told anyone about it. Darcy had been sent hexes for a month after the incident. Fortunately, she only had to go to the hospital wing once. Darcy felt she had gotten off lucky.

Maintaining their relationship was a struggle for both Darcy and Oliver. Hogsmead visits and stealing kisses between the library stacks could only get you so far. They refused to go to the Astronomy Tower as that was far to cliché. They had even tried to use the Room of Requirement but nixed that idea almost immediately. When Darcy had thought of a room where she and her boyfriend could sleep together they were horrified by the result. They room had been transformed into what looked like the set of a 1970's porn studio replete with orange shag carpeting and a vibrating circular bed. They hadn't been back since. In the end, they resorted to the Quidditch pitch: In the locker room, in the showers. In the stands if they were feeling brave (these had to be quick as the risk of Dementors was always in the back of one's mind).

Eventually, the buzz had died down. Darcy had made real friends with some of the Slytherins and with most of the Gryffindor Quidditch team much to Flint's outrage. She especially liked the Weasley twins and they had congratulated Oliver on having snagged the loveliest witch in school.

"Right. Go and inflate her ego. It's not big enough already," he had jokingly lamented.

Darcy had tried to keep her ego in check for Oliver's sake but really, her chief flaw had always been and would always be vanity and the twins were experts at exploiting it if they ever needed a favour from her such as playing a part in a prank against some of the nasty Slytherins.

The rest of the school year passed rather uneventfully after the hubbub of that first fateful duel. NEWTs were written. Gryffindor won the Quidditch Cup (the celebrations had lasted for weeks and Darcy had even been smuggled into the Gryffindor Common Room to be with her boyfriend). Graduation was held. The summer had come and Darcy and Oliver were still going strong. The couple had spent most of it together.

They had been in Darcy's room at her home just enjoying being carefree teenagers when Darcy pulled out a book she hadn't read in quite some time. It was her worn, Muggle copy of Jack the Ripper: A Biography of the Most Notorious Serial Killer of All Time. She flopped onto her bed, skimming through it and came to the last chapter outlining possible suspects. Her eyes widened as she read. She read it once more, this time aloud for Oliver's benefit:

"Over the centuries, theorists have proposed countless possibilities on the identity of Jack the Ripper. Some Ripperologists suggest that Jack was actually Jill: a midwife in the Whitechapel district. Others even claim that Lewis Carroll, renowned author of Alice in Wonderland, was behind the murders. Despite all of the guesswork one event remains the biggest mystery of all.

"On the night of the murder of Jack's last victim, just outside the house where Mary Kelly's body was found, a man had been found slumped senseless against a brick wall after a flash of orange light filled the dark street. Witnesses claim to have seen this man, presumably Jack the Ripper, engage in an altercation with a young man and woman. Officers were reportedly at the scene yet, curiously, never submitted an official report. If these eyewitness accounts are to be believed, the altercation was followed by a blinding flash of purple light, thought to be the explosion of a gaslight lamp, followed by the disappearance of the unknown man and woman and the unconscious state of the man.

"This man is thought to be Jack the Ripper. However, due to missing police documents, these accounts cannot be confirmed. The unconscious man did hold in his hand a fistful of long red hair purportedly belonging to the young woman who had vanished at the scene. He was taken into police custody on the spot and was never seen again.

"Was the young couple at the wrong place at the wrong time? Were they even present at the scene? Was Jack the Ripper framed by this couple? Should Jack the Ripper's work be attributed to two people? We may never have a definitive answer. Only one fact is certain: whatever happened on the night of November 9th, 1888, Jack the Ripper never resurfaced and never killed again."

Darcy stared at Oliver, astonished. She absently rubbed the spot on her scalp where her hair had been ripped out. It has since healed but still worried her to think about what had almost happened. She pulled her hand out only to get her – now antique – engagement ring caught on her hair. She had taken to wearing it on her right hand with her heirloom signet ring. She gazed at the rings with a smile.

Oliver plunked himself down on the bed next to her. "You know, Harris, I think someday we'll have to put that ring back on your left hand." His lips had formed his signature cheeky grin.

"And why's that, Wood?" she asked absently, still admiring the ring.

Oliver just smirked at her. Darcy looked over and realized that no answer was forthcoming. No answer was needed. She grinned back and tackled her someday-fiancé to the bed to kiss him like there was no tomorrow.

A/N: That's all folks! I really do hope you enjoyed this. It was a labour of love and I enjoyed writing it. I still lie in bed at night and wonder if I should have added this or that but this end product is what is the culmination of ten years of writing so I can finally say it is done and finished.

Just a quick note: I want to thank the fanfic community for making Oliver Wood consistently Scottish. The books never say he's a Scot but Sean Biggerstaff was and it's stayed that way in the public consciousness so thanks for that. That accent is just too sexy to ignore.

A review would be lovely!