This is for Jenna who is awesome and all around lovely. *hugs*

Thanks to Paula for beta-ing and pointing out the fact that the beginning sounds a bit kinky... which you shall see was not my intention... but it's hilarious so I'm leaving it that way :P

The title is stolen from an Underoath song of the same name... Do people even listen to them anymore?

Cho wakes up to voices echoing throughout Ravenclaw Tower. Shrill screams, the words unintelligible make the windowpanes tremble, and rumbling replies swell beneath the floorboards.

They're at it again.

She turns over in her bed and pulls the curtain aside to peek over at Marietta.

The other girl is already wide awake and turns toward the sound of Cho moving. She sighs wearily and rolls her eyes. "They've been screaming like that for half an hour. I can't believe you slept through it so long."

Cho shrugs her shoulders. "I guess I'm used to it by now."

"I don't know why they bother." Marietta reaches for her watch to check the time. "You'd think they'd give up after a century or two and Merlin, it's TWO IN THE BLOODY MORNING!" She stomps her foot on the floor to make her point, hoping the fighting couple below takes the hint.

The screaming stops for a brief moment and the girls begin to wonder if perhaps they really did move their argument elsewhere when they hear two voices call up the stairs, perfectly in unison for once.

"Oh, shut up!"

Marietta collapses back onto the bed and crosses her arms. "It was worth a try, I suppose."

And the battle rages on.

What the girls don't understand is that ghosts have very little regard for the living nor do they have any sense of time. No. Ghosts have all the time in the world.

And maybe that's their problem.

Maybe that's their curse.

xXx

They are only shadows now.

He reaches out to her with pale, translucent, unfeeling hands but she pulls away. She doesn't know why; he can't hurt her anymore. The damage is already done. Perhaps she ought to be relieved but such an afterlife as this is a hard thing to bear.

She clutches the front of her dress, pulls down her collar to reveal the scar he left that never quite healed even in death. She shows him what he did to her, demanding an apology that she knows she'll never receive. He's too proud.

But then again so is she.

xXx

"Forgive me," he says, and it isn't a question. There is no hint of remorse in his voice so she thinks he oughtn't be surprised when she turns on her heel and walks away. But she always comes back, doesn't she?

It's what ghosts do. They come back and nobody ever really knows why. Maybe they have unfinished business or maybe they're just frightened, spiteful, stubborn. Maybe they just want to start over and this is their clumsy attempt at reincarnation, wallowing in mistakes and self pity.

And these two are a haunting unlike anything anyone's ever seen.

They haunt each other in deserted corridors, dangling apologies and forgiveness in the air like a promise they refuse to fulfill. They don't know how to resolve or perhaps they are just afraid of what will happen if they do. It's a vicious cycle going on for centuries.

His chains don't serve a purpose; they can't weigh him down and he doesn't feel a thing. He waves them in her face, flaunting them, demanding her attention. And Helena was never much for symbolism or grand gestures but he wears them anyway. He never could learn from his mistakes and look where it got him?

xXx

"Forgive me," he says, but he never asks. And he swears to himself that he will never ever beg. A baron wouldn't stoop so low. He might be dead, but he is still better than that.

She moves to slap him, but her open hand doesn't make contact with his face which frustrates her all the more and so she leaves.

She swears she won't come back but that's a lie.

In the meantime, he wanders. The echoes of chain linked bitterness resound on stone walls making his presence known like the screaming matches keeping the Ravenclaws awake at night. Like the bitter grumbling in the dungeons that the Slytherins have learned to ignore.

They are only shadows now, shadows of what they used to be, imprints of lives that no longer exist. Some nights, if she were to look very closely, she would see him fist fighting the Whomping Willow, branches swinging through a vapor on the wind. He wishes he could feel the impact, to experience the feeling of air leaving his lungs. He wants to beat the pain he harbours out of him and he wonders where he keeps it if he no longer has a body.

Because they may be only shadows but they are more real, more permanent when devoid of flesh and bone and beating hearts. And how do hearts break if they're dead?

How can two people who are so dead be so alive?

xXx

"Forgive me," he says, but he never asks.

And then he wonders why he always finds himself alone.