Chapter 13 ~~~~~ Part Two: Heavens are Shallow  

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me. 

- Elizabeth Bishop 

*** 

Hermione sat on the edge of the bed in Fleur and Viktor's room, turning the silver antidote flask over and over in her fingers. She had managed to wake Draco up and get him to drink some of it before he'd sunk back into unconsciousness; Viktor had carried him to the bedroom, and laid him down on the bed before Fleur had shooed him out, muttering, "This is all your fault." 

The bedroom was suffused with a soft, mellow light, a light that made Hermione think of warm autumn evenings and sleeping cats. The torches on the walls burned with a rosy, shaded glow and there were fine red openweave curtains all around the bed. The light that came through them was tinted and threw a deceptive, healthy flush across Draco's sleeping face. 

"He's not getting any better," Hermione said, in a small dull voice. "I'd thought the antidote was going to fix things, but it hasn't. I just don't know what to do." 

Fleur was sitting on the bed beside him, her head inclined. Her long hair spilled down and over her shoulders and veiled Draco's face behind a curtain of white silk. When she raised her head and looked at Hermione, her blue eyes were very dark. "Poison, you said?" 

"Poison," Hermione confirmed. 

Fleur put her slim fingers against the pulse in Draco's throat, her expression thoughtful. Hermione watched the two of them, so similar in looks, the torchlight burning up their pale hair. A matched set of fair-headed Flemish angels. Hermione had had plenty of occasion to watch Draco sleeping over the past few days, but the change in his face when he was not awake never failed to surprise her and catch at her heart. In sleep, all his malice was stripped away, all those carefully cultivated manners and graces, and he was just an ordinary boy, eyes blue-hollowed with tiredness, the soft pulse of his breath stirring the hair that fell across his cheek in uneven strands like pale unraveled thread. 

"Is everything all right?" Hermione asked, concerned by Fleur's intent expression. 

The other girl said nothing, only let the tips of her fingers glide down his throat to his collar. Hermione fought back the urge to protest, even when the older girl's hand slipped into the collar of Draco's shirt, and drew out the Epicyclical Charm on its chain. "So here it is," she said, her tone reflective. "I asked Harry what he had done with it, but he was so feverish..." 

"He gave it back to Draco," Hermione said. 

"Typical," said Fleur. "As if such a gift, once freely given, can so easily be given back." She let the charm fall and sat back, drawing the covers up absentmindedly over Draco as she did so. It struck Hermione as odd to see Fleur being so gentle, but then she remembered Fleur's little sister, and the fierce mothering possessiveness Fleur seemed to feel towards Gabrielle. "I watched over Harry like this," said Fleur, "just last night." 

"Thank you for taking care of Harry," Hermione said. "And for telling us he was here. I know Viktor didn't want you to -" 

"Viktor is honest to a fault," said Fleur. "But he did not sit with Harry while he was feverish; he did not hear him shouting out in his sleep for you...Both of you." Her blue eyes, tracing Hermione's face, looked nearly black. "I did not do it to be compassionate," she said. "I did it because Harry is our one chance against the Dark Lord, and if he does not accept that truth then I will accept it for him." 

"I know he is," Hermione said. "But I also love him. I'm thankful that you took care of him, whatever your reasons. I know we haven't always gotten along -" 

"True, we have not," Fleur admitted cheerfully. "You have always been jealous of any girl who came near the boys you love." 

"Right, and then there was that whole business where you were evil," Hermione reminded her with some asperity. 

Fleur had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. "That is true," she said. 

"And you tried to take over the world," Hermione added. "And nearly got Harry killed." 

Fleur sighed. "What would you have me say, Hermione? I could speak as Draco might, in mannered phrases, I could say I have done a great wrong, and seek to undo it. But that would not bring back any of them, these boys you have lost to dreams and divination and death. It will not make your journey shorter or your pain less, or the road to Romania any less dangerous -" 

"Romania?" Hermione interrupted. "Is that where Harry is going?" A sudden realization forced a squeak from her lungs. "That Romanian coin! He must have taken it from the Manor! Oh, I'm a fool." 

Fleur looked at her dryly. "You're an idiot all right." She looked down at Draco again. "If you wish to discuss Harry's destination, Viktor knows more about it than I do." 

"As soon as Draco wakes up," Hermione began. 

Fleur shook her head. "I would prefer it if you would go now. I would like a few moments alone with your Draco." 

"He's not my Draco," Hermione said, although she hesitated. She didn't want to trust Fleur - she really didn't want to leave Fleur alone with Draco - but Fleur had healed Harry and Viktor had helped him and she owed them both. 

"I believe Viktor is in the kitchen," Fleur said. Her tone was dismissive and final. "It is where he usually goes to sulk." 

Hermione looked again at Draco. "If you hurt him," she said, not looking at Fleur, "I'll kill you," and she walked out, closing the door carefully behind her. 

Fleur looked after her, and then with a sigh, turned back to the boy in the bed. "Hurt you?" she said. "You have, I think, been hurt enough." She leaned over him, and her bright hair fell down around Draco like a veil and mixed with his own. He did not move, but, reaching out with her mind, she could feel his soft and steady breath, the beat of his heart, the course of blood in his fragile veins. I have done a great wrong and seek to undo it, she whispered against his cheek, and began to unbutton his shirt. 

*** 

Voldemort did not look pleased - he never looked pleased - but a small, gratified hiss escaped through his teeth. "The cup," he said, "she has it, then? You are sure?" 

"I'm half goblin," said Mortenson. "I am trained to recognize objects of worth." 

"I must have that cup," said the Dark Lord. His gaze slid to Ron, and lingered on him meditatively. "I had trusted Lucius to procure it for me, but perhaps there is a more expedient plan..." 

"My Lord," Wormtail put in eagerly, "I would be happy to -" 

Voldemort waved a silencing hand. "Where are they now," he asked, "Lucius' son and the girl?" 

"They spoke to someone named Viktor," said Mortenson, looking a little unsure, "and another girl, and there was some talk of an apartment in Prague..." 

"That would be Viktor Krum," said Rhysenn. "He is the Seeker for Bulgaria's Quidditch team." 

"And he does indeed have an apartment in the city center," Gabriel added. "We keep an eye on him. He's in the resistance, it is believed, although it has never been proven." 

Voldemort's gaze flicked to the vampire. "Sunset is coming," he said. "Gather your... people to you. How soon can you be in Prague?" 

Gabriel looked mildly irritated. "It is a great distance, and it is too early for them to have fed, my Lord -" 

"'Denn die Todten reiten schnell," said Voldemort, and smiled unpleasantly. "Or so I have heard." 

Gabriel stood up, dumping Rhysenn off his lap. She landed, barefoot, with a vexed look, and hurled herself irritably into a nearby armchair. "And what am I do to, exactly, when I get there?"  

"The girl," said Voldemort. "Find the girl -" 

"No!" Ron, surprising no one so much as himself, slammed his fist down on the table. It shook. Gabriel's half-empty goblet tipped over. A thread of thick red fluid seeped from it, onto the tabletop. "You leave her alone," he said, his voice sharp and carrying. "You touch her and I'll never divine anything for you again, never!" 

The room fell instantly, deathly silent. Wormtail stared down the table at Ron, something approximating horror on his face. Rhysenn's expression was bleak, and the small goblins all appeared to be looking elsewhere. Only Voldemort looked amused. "But, dear boy, I need that cup," he said. "And she has it." 

"I don't care." Ron's breath felt thick in his chest. "If you hurt her I'll never divine anything for you again. I'd rather die." 

The Dark Lord templed his long thin fingers under his chin. "Very well," he said. "If you don't want her hurt..." 

Ron's mouth fell open. "What?" 

The Dark Lord turned to Gabriel, who stood poised by the table, his face half-hidden by his long black hair. "Bring her back alive," Voldemort said. "And with the Cup." 

The vampire bowed his head. "As you wish, Lord." 

Voldemort stood up. For a moment he and Ron regarded each other from either end of the long table, Voldemort as tall and pale and unmoving as a pillar of bone. Ron felt his hands shaking and stuffed them into his pockets. He could feel Rhysenn staring at him, as if she were entreating him to do something, but he had no idea what. 

When Voldemort finally spoke, his voice was almost without inflection. "After all," he said, "I'll be bringing her here, little Diviner. You'll like that, won't you, seeing her again?" 

Ron said nothing, only bit down into his lip. 

"You could see the end of the world, my boy," said Voldemort in a voice that was at once so soft and so carrying that Ron felt sure that everyone had heard his words, and that at the same time Voldemort was speaking only to him. "But can you see yourself ever having what you want? It is not so impossible as you might think." 

Ron cleared his throat. His chest still felt tight. "Just don't hurt her," he said. 

"Indeed," Voldemort said. He turned to Gabriel. "You heard the boy," he said. "Bring her to me unharmed. Now, all of you -" and he waved his hand towards the crowded table, at which all the little goblins made an alarmed chattering noise and began hopping to their feet - "get out of my sight. Yes, you too, Wormtail. Rhysenn, you will remain, but inside your cage. And as for you, little Diviner," and at that, looking directly at Ron, he smiled, "I wish to play a game of chess. Are you ready?" 

"I'm ready," said Ron. 

*** 

When Hermione walked into the kitchen she found Viktor sitting at the end of a long wooden trestle table. A single candle illuminated the gloom, throwing crazily tilting shadows against the walls and cupboards. He didn't look up when she let the door fall shut behind her, only pushed his straggling hair back, and muttered, "Ou sont les cigarettes?" 

"Viktor," Hermione said, slightly uncomfortable. "It's me." 

He looked up. His dark brows were drawn together over his deep-set black eyes and he was frowning. "Where are the others?" he asked. 

"Fleur's looking after Draco. She said she'd be here in a minute." Hermione pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Viktor. "I wanted to thank you for helping -" 

"I have not helped you," Viktor interrupted. "I do not approve of you being here or of Fleur having told you Harry's whereabouts. I feel it is a betrayal of the trust he placed in both of us." 

"I just want what's best for Harry," Hermione protested. 

"And you are so sure you know what that is?" Bitterness laced Viktor's tone for a moment. "You always did think that you knew everything, Hermione. And of the fact that you are brilliant there is no doubt. But it is not given to any one person to know everything. Not even you." 

"He can't do this alone," Hermione said in a small voice. 

"He cannot do it at all, it is a task impossible," said Viktor, his grasp of English deserting him along with his grip on his temper. "He loves you - he is in love with you - the least you could do is respect his wishes -" 

Before Hermione could interrupt, the door swung open and Fleur came in, followed by Draco. Through the dimness, they were visible only as silhouettes; Fleur lifted her hand and gestured quickly, and light leapt up all around the room as the torches on the walls lit themselves to flame. Hermione could see now that they sat in a pleasant, medium-sized kitchen. Stacks of clean dishes sat on the sideboard, and a small pantry was visible through a curtained archway. 

"There," said Fleur, smiling. "Much better." She looked over her shoulder. "Draco, sit down. I'll find us all something to eat." 

Draco stepped out from behind her and went to take a chair; Hermione sucked her breath in as he sat down and smiled at her. There was bright color in his cheeks and he looked healthy, alive, almost normal. His mouth curled up at her flabbergasted expression and he leaned back in his chair. He had swapped his soot-covered jumper for a black-and-red Quidditch jersey that Hermione assumed belonged to Viktor. It was too big on Draco; the sleeves dangled down over his slender hands and the neck fell away from his delicate collarbone. She could see the collar of his own white t-shirt underneath. "Hermione, darling," he said, "you look as if you just caught Dumbledore administering a naughty spanking to a group of unruly fourth-year girls. Why so scandalized?" 

"I'm not scandalized. It's just - you look good." 

"Well, that's hardly headline news. I always look good." 

"Don't be deliberately obtuse. I meant you look as if you're feeling better." 

"Better is such a relative term," Draco murmured delicately, and leaned back as a loaf of bread Fleur was in the midst of Summoning flew past his head and landed on the table. It was followed by a wedge of white salted cheese, a pitcher of cold milk, a selection of plates, and a pack of Lucky Snitch! cigarettes for Viktor. "Thanks to Fleur, however -" 

"Do be quiet, Draco, and eat," interrupted Fleur, taking the seat next to Viktor's. "Both of you." 

Hermione fell to the food, trying not to eat too ravenously and make a spectacle of herself. Draco ate more slowly; food had never been something that interested him much. He pulled the bread apart with long careful fingers and dunked the crusts in his milk and then either ate them or swirled them around until they dissolved. Hermione forbore from telling him that this was disgusting. She was too busy being deathly curious. What had Fleur done? Surely she didn't - she couldn't have - 

"I didn't have sex with Fleur, if that's what you're worried about," said Draco. 

Hermione went scarlet. "Draco." 

"There may have been some nudity," he said pensively. "But it was scientific and not recreational in nature." 

Viktor looked enraged. Fleur put a hand on his arm. "You really can be terribly rude sometimes, Draco," she said with a frown. 

"I can be terribly rude all the time," Draco said. "I happen to be restraining myself at the moment. You should be appreciative." 

Viktor said something loudly to Fleur in what sounded like a sputtering mixture of Bulgarian and French. Fleur replied to him soothingly, her hand still on his arm. Draco took the opportunity to pinch one of Viktor's cigarettes, and used the candleflame to light it. 

Hermione shot him a look. "You took off your clothes in front of her? Why?" 

Draco pretended not to have heard the question. "Sex magic isn't about healing anyway," he said. "I'd think with your extensive reading background, you'd know that." He inhaled and blew smoke at her across the table. "Although I suspect you're just cranky 'cause you're jealous." 

"I'm NOT jealous," Hermione snapped. "I just don't like the idea of her seeing you naked." 

"I see I should have gotten you a dictionary for Christmas," Draco said dryly. 

Fleur interrupted. "Nobody saw anyone naked," she said crossly. "I created a power transference. It is something Magids can do. I gave a little of my energy to Draco." 

Both Hermione and Draco stared at her. "Does that mean you're my Source now?" Draco asked finally. "Or - am I yours?" 

Hermione looked at him in surprise. "You didn't know what she did?" 

He shook his head. "No. I was just joking." The cigarette was burning away between his fingers, forgotten. "Fleur -" 

"I am not your Source," she said. "Nor are you mine. I gave you a small bit of my power, encapsulated, to replace your own flagging energy. It will not last forever but it will help you for a short time. Certainly long enough for you to find Harry. Then perhaps, if necessary, you can ask him to do for you what I did -" 

Draco's tone was clipped. "I'm not asking him for anything." 

Fleur pushed the ashtray towards him. "As you like." 

"And how long is it going to take us to find Harry? Are you going to tell us where he is?" Hermione asked, looking past Fleur at Viktor. 

"He is at my apartment in Prague," Viktor said. His face obscured by smoke, Hermione could see only his jutting black eyebrows and craggy, furrowed forehead. "I sent him on ahead, and intended to meet with him there tomorrow. I was going to bring some of my friends in the resistance with me, for backup." 

"An apartment in Prague? Those endorsements must be paying off," Draco commented, finally abandoning his half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. 

"He'll be safe there," Viktor said. "Well, as long as he doesn't go out at night," he added as an afterthought. 

Hermione and Draco both started. "What do you mean, as long as he doesn't go out at night?" Draco demanded. 

Viktor's dark eyes narrowed. "You really know nothing, you English," he said, managing to make both words sound insulting. "I would have expected no better from Lucius Malfoy's son, but Hermione, you at least -" Viktor broke off, and shrugged. "The situation here is not what it is in England. We are not protected by our Ministry as you are. The Dark Lord's control has been steadily spreading these past months. His minions walk the streets freely at night; many are wampyr, the undead -" 

"Vampires," Hermione said. 

Draco half rose from the table. "You sent Harry somewhere where there are vampires?" 

"It was the safest place I could think of," Viktor said. 

"Safer than your own home?" Draco's voice shook. "What, you didn't want him here because he's a liability, is that it, he'd draw the Dark Lord's gaze onto you -" 

"I could not make him stay. He wanted to go." 

"I bet you threw him out." 

"Did you throw him out? He left you. Could you have made him stay?" Viktor shrugged his heavy shoulders. "There are not many, I think, who could make Harry Potter do anything he does not want to do." 

Draco opened his mouth to reply, but Hermione cut him off. "Stop it," she said. "Both of you. Draco, apologize to Viktor - and Viktor, don't bait us, it's unkind." 

Viktor, still glowering, shrugged again. Draco turned his eyes on Hermione - a cold, ice-water gaze- and then looked at Viktor. "I regret if my ill manners have offended you," he said tonelessly. "It was not my intention. Well," he added, more thoughtfully, "it was my intention, actually. But you are, after all, my host. I repent my trespass against your courtesy," he said, with a modicum of grace this time, and sounding very much like his father. "It will not happen again." 

"I do not care about you, or your ill manners," said Viktor. "We have, all of us, more important things to think about. I was going to suggest that you come with me tomorrow to join Harry but I realize now that you will refuse to wait that long. I have no desire to fight with stubborn children over the best dispensation of their energies. I must gather my colleagues and ready them. Do what you like." 

Fleur stood up. "Shall I give them a Portkey, Viktor?" 

He nodded. "I see no way around it." 

Hermione flew around the table and hugged him. "Thank you, Viktor." 

Seemingly gratified, he returned her embrace. He still smelled the way he had when he was eighteen: like cigarette smoke and black pepper and wool sweaters. He patted Hermione on the back. "There, there," he said. 

Draco cleared his throat. "Hermione. Sometime in the next century, please." 

Detaching herself, Hermione went over to where Draco was standing next to Fleur. Fleur had a pale eyebrow arched; Draco looked as if he were vexed and trying to hide it. "Was there a really pressing need to apply yourself to him like a coat of glue?" he muttered. "It did rather undercut our whole 'need to leave right now' argument. I do wish you'd think about these things before you do them. Rash and impetuous, that's your problem." 

Hermione allowed herself a small smile. "Looks like I'm not the only one who needs a dictionary." 

"Shut up, Granger." 

"You'll find 'hypocrite' in the H section, I believe." 

"I do not understand your relationship," Fleur said gloomily, glancing from Draco to Hermione and back again. 

"That makes three of us," said Draco, and Hermione did not contradict him. 

*** 

The Portkey deposited Hermione and Draco in the anteroom of a large, well appointed flat, presumably somewhere in the middle of Prague. The walls were white, hung with colorful paintings, and down the long hallway Draco could see doors leading off into various rooms. There appeared to be a kitchen at the end of the hallway, if the checkerboard linoleum was anything to go by. The lights had been left on: several shaded lamps were burning and there was a lit candle atop the small table near the door. On a peg near the table hung a dark red jumper, the cuffs of its sleeves frayed and pulled out of shape. Draco couldn't count the times he'd watched Harry absently pull his sleeves down over his hands and worry at the cuffs with his fingers. It was a nervous habit he had. 

Hermione put her hand against the jumper. "He's here," she said. 

"He's here," Draco agreed. "But he isn't here." 

"What do you mean?" 

"He's not in the flat." Draco began walking down the corridor anyway. He sounded remarkably calm even to his own ears. Inside, his stomach was knotting and he felt as if he were going to throw up. He wasn't sure what he was more afraid of: that Harry wasn't here, or that he was. "I can tell." 

"Well, is he nearby?" 

"I don't know." Draco stopped and peered into what looked like the living room. Viktor, he had to grudgingly admit, actually had pretty adequate taste in furniture. Either that, or he'd had someone else design the place. Fleur, possibly. The room looked both comfortable and elegant. A low fire burned in the grate of a large marble fireplace, elegantly carved with a pattern of leaves. A wingback chair was drawn up to it. There were several sofas, and a low table. Other than the fire, the place appeared untouched. 

The kitchen and study also showed no sign of occupation, but when Draco pushed open the door to the bedroom, they found Harry's things scattered haphazardly around the room, an almost comforting display of his habitual careless messiness. His clothes were flung across the bed, his bookbag, half inside-out, hung from a peg on the wardrobe, his boots were upended on the rug and all over the floor was scattered a motley pile of weapons - long-bladed daggers, sharp pikes, several swords, even a crossbow. "Now we know what happened to Harry," Draco said dryly. "He exploded." 

But Hermione had gone pale. "Didn't Viktor say he wasn't supposed to go out after dark?" 

"It's not quite dark yet." Draco looked pointedly at the window, where the sky was darkening to sapphire. He could see the angled roofs of the nearby buildings, the gabled windows hung with colorful curtains. Soon, outside, the Lighting Charms would go on and the sky would darken and Harry would come into the apartment, shutting the door behind him, opening his mouth in surprise when he saw Hermione and Draco there. And maybe he would be angry and maybe he would crumple in resignation and maybe, just maybe, if he was caught off guard enough - 

Draco broke off the thought and turned away from the window. Hermione was sitting on the bed, and she had taken one of Harry's shirts - it was his old Puddlemere United shirt that he usually wore to bed and that had a rip in the left shoulder, just below the collar - and was stroking it absently, plying the worn cotton between her fingers. 

In his head, Draco heard his father's voice, those clear familiar cadences. A Malfoy does not want for anything, Draco. There should be nothing beyond your reach that you desire and cannot have, for you are what you are, and if you cannot have it, it is likely not worth desiring. Desire is a tyrannical master. You are a Malfoy and you should never let yourself be mastered by anything that is unworthy of you. 

Draco wondered if his father considered himself to be a worthy master. Very probably he did. 

"I'm going into the other room," Draco said abruptly. Hermione looked up, surprised, but before she could inquire further, he had walked out, and slammed the door behind him. 

*** 

"And Pansy masterminded all this? Pansy Parkinson?" Sirius said, for what, Ginny thought irritably, had to be the sixth time. 

She had no idea why this was so difficult to believe. She had never liked Pansy and had always assumed her to be a bad lot. That Pansy would attempt to kill Draco while simultaneously seducing Ron for nefarious purposes seemed to Ginny to be par for the Slytherin course. 

"Yes, Pansy Parkinson," said Blaise, whose frightened expression had given way to one of slight impatience. She was sunk deep into Mr. Weasley's favorite worn green armchair, regarding Sirius and Lupin across the coffee table with a warily defensive expression. The table, like every other surface in the living room, was strewn with books and papers and Lupin's discarded chocolate wrappers. "Never trust a girl who wears green and orange together, I always say." 

"I'll keep that in mind," said Lupin, dryly. "Do you have any idea how many other students knew what she was up to?" 

"Malcolm, maybe," said Blaise thoughtfully. "They were close. Millicent might have known something. Other than that, I don't think most of us had more than a general idea that something bad was coming." 

"And you didn't think it necessary to tell anyone this?" Sirius asked. His tone was edgy. 

Blaise, curled deeply into the armchair, raised her chin. "Why would I?" she said shortly. "You treat us Slytherins like second-class citizens, you know you do. You think we're all liars, untrustworthy. You would only have thought it was some kind of plot, and Pansy would have thrown the blame on me, and I'd have been expelled. And then when the Death Eaters came to punish my family, who would have stood up to protect us? Your precious Harry Potter? He only looks after his own." 

"But you're telling us now," Lupin said, more gently. 

Blaise glanced down, but before she could respond, the door opened and Charlie came in. Ginny suspected he had been doing the washing up; his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and his hands and shirt with splashed with water. "Ginny," he said. "I need you in the kitchen." 

"Charlie, not now -" Ginny began. 

He quelled her with a look. "NOW, Virginia." 

Sulkily, she unwound herself from the sofa, and followed him into the hall. "Can't I help with the washing up later?" 

Charlie snorted. "You think I called you out here for the washing up?" 

"Didn't you?" 

"Only if you define "washing up' as 'a tall blond obnoxious Slytherin you seem to cherish an unlikely fondness for'." 

Ginny stopped dead. "Draco?" 

"No, the other tall blond obnoxious Slytherin -oh, what's the use." Charlie broke off with a sigh. "In the kitchen," he said. 

Ginny ran down the corridor, then stopped in front of the kitchen door, and composed herself. She would not run to talk to Draco Malfoy. He did not deserve it. Also, he would make fun of her and she was not in the mood. She pushed the kitchen door open and glided inside. 

It took her a moment to realize the kitchen was empty. She stared around in surprise. Was Charlie playing a joke on her? If so, he would pay. She had some of Fred and George's prototype Rodent Ripples in her room. If this was Charlie's idea of funny, he could spend the next week gnawing the furniture and trying to build a dam out of chair legs. 

"Over here, Weasley." Draco's voice came from behind her, slightly tinged with exasperation. "Didn't Charlie tell you...?" 

Ginny whirled around. Oh, of course. The fire in the grate was low, and there in the fireplace, visible from the waist up, was Draco. He was wearing a thoughtful expression and a vastly oversized black jumper with red stripes around the sleeves. 

"Is there some reason you're wearing a Bulgarian Quidditch jersey?" Ginny asked him, keeping her voice determinedly casual. 

He squinted at her. Little flames were licking up engagingly around his face and hair, making him look as if he had been outlined in metallic ink. A golden boy. "Come over here," he said. "I can hardly see you." 

She went over and knelt down next to the grate. "Where are you?" she asked. 

"Prague," he said, and she knew from his tone that that was all he was going to say about it. 

"And have you found Harry?" 

He shook his head, and sparks flew around his hair. "Not yet, but we're close." 

"So you're what? Just popping by to say hello?" 

"Maybe I wanted to see you." 

"No, you didn't. You want something. What?" 

"My, you've become a cynic," he said. "Whither all that charming optimism of yours? You sound like me." 

"Don't evade the point," Ginny said. "I'm too tired to go back and forth with you." 

"Fine," Draco said with a shrug. "I wanted to know if you'd heard any news about Tom." 

"Tom?" Ginny shook her head. "No. We don't exactly have the sort of relationship where he sends me postcards." 

"Well, given that he's dementedly obsessed with you, I thought he might have made some attempt at contact." 

Ginny flushed. "He's not dementedly obsessed with me." 

"Yes, he is," Draco said. "Trust me, I know a thing or two about demented obsessions." 

"I suppose you do," Ginny said dryly. "Anyway, no, I have no idea what's happening with him, and if you think that isn't bothering me -" 

"I think he might have gone to see my father," Draco interrupted. 

Ginny gaped. "What?" 

"I was at my father's office today," Draco said. "His secretary did a double-take when he saw me. I think he thought I was someone else, someone he recognized. Now, I suppose there could be a plethora of blond teenage boys making their way in and out of my father's office at all hours, but that's a troubling and I must say, rather unlikely scenario. I think he assumed I was..." 

"Tom," Ginny said, her voice wavering. "But why would he go see your father? Why?" 

"They knew each other at school," Draco said. "They were friends. Perhaps he was looking for help. Maybe he needed a golfing partner. Who knows?" He shrugged. "Also, on my father's desk, I found this." He reached a hand out from the flames, a small piece of parchment held between his fingers. "It's not my father's handwriting." 

Ginny took it and was about to unfold it, when the kitchen door swung open. It was Blaise. She stood in the doorway, her hand on her hip, regarding them both with an expression of dry incredulity. "Well, well," she said. "Black and Lupin sent me to see what you were doing, Ginny. I had no idea I'd be interrupting some further permutation of your bizarre love triangle." 

"It's more of a love square," said Draco, thoughtful. He grinned at Ginny. "Wouldn't you agree?" 

"Well, Harry does have that illicit passion for Ron," Ginny said. 

Draco looked greenish. "Ginny! I just ate!" 

"Ron's not unattractive, really," Blaise observed thoughtfully. "He has a sort of lanky charm." 

"I thought you two were going to fight with each other," Draco said disconsolately. "Not team up against me." 

"We fought already," said Blaise. "You missed it." 

Draco looked from one of them to the other. "You look remarkably unharmed." 

"Well, we had to change clothes after Blaise tore my blouse off," Ginny said sweetly. "She fights dirty." 

Blaise examined her fingernails. "So says the girl who thinks spanking is a perfectly acceptable defensive tactic." 

Draco looked pained. "You're trying to hurt me, aren't you?" 

Ginny chuckled. "Yes, but you deserve it. Honestly, like we'd fight over you." 

"We may have exchanged a few sharp words," Blaise said. "But then we resolved our differences peacefully." She smiled sweetly. 

"And that's it?" Draco asked dubiously. 

"That's how girls fight, Draco," said Ginny. 

"Damn," he said. "Another perfectly good prepubescent fantasy ruined." 

"Reality is cruel," said Blaise. She put her hand on the doorknob. "Ginny, I'll tell them you're busy. Draco -" Her voice was bright, brittle. "Good to see you're still in one piece." She turned to leave. 

"Blaise," Draco said. 

Blaiseturned slowly and stared at him. For a moment, Ginny held her breath. Draco was looking at Blaise, and Ginny knew that look: for just those few moments, Blaise was all he was thinking about, and his eyes were telling her that. "Thank you," he said. "I wasn't sure you'd do it." 

Blaise met his gaze steadily. "Neither was I," she said. "I guess you're right. I am like you." 

She turned and went out, and the sound of her high heels clicking on the wood floor of the hallways faded into the distance. Draco looked after her thoughtfully. "That," he said, "is a hell of a girl." 

"I like her," Ginny said, and realized, after saying it, that it was true. 

"As do I," said Draco. He returned his gaze to Ginny. "I have something else for you. I almost forgot." 

"What is it?" she asked. 

"The other half of your heart," he said, and for a moment she stared at him, uncomprehendingly, until he held his hand out to her. In the center of his palm was a small and sparkling thing: the other half of her glass heart charm. "I found it," he said. "But please don't ask me where. I don't want to have to tell you." 

Ginny hesitated. Draco so rarely said please. "All right," she said, against her better judgment. "But then I want you to do something for me." 

"All right." He raised his eyes to her. The harsh light of the fire spilled up, casting his face into bright relief, throwing the elongated shadow of his eyelashes down across his high cheekbones. "What?" 

"Keep it," she said. 

He closed his hand around it. "But it's yours," he said. 

"No," she said. "It's not. Maybe someday." 

He bit his lip. "I can't -" He cocked his head to the side, then, half-looking away from her. The fire sparked up behind him, the color wavering from gold into a paler yellow. Ginny knew that meant he was about to disappear. "Hermione's calling me," he said, his voice sounding suddenly tinny, as if it was coming from a great distance. "I have to go." 

"Please be careful," she said. "When you find Harry, don't let him talk you into anything stupid." 

Draco looked almost amused. "It's nice that you're concerned." 

Ginny's next words came out of her mouth without any foreknowledge on her part that she was about to speak them. 

"I am concerned," she said. "I love you." 

His head jerked up and he stared at her, an expression of absolute astonishment on his face. She stared back. She would have thought she would be fighting to keep her expression neutral, but really she only felt very calm. She had said it. Let him do with it whatever he wanted. Although really, he must have known. How could he not? 

When he replied, it was with only one word, and not the one she was expecting. 

"Why?" 

Before she could respond, the fire sputtered. The flames changed color again, from pale yellow to blue and then to green; Draco looked surprised for a moment, and then vanished. Ginny was not sure if she was glad or not that she had been unable to respond to his question. After all, if he wanted to talk to her, he knew where to find her. 

She realized she was still holding the folded parchment in her hand, tightly clenched. With a sigh, she unfolded it slowly, and felt a hammering jolt against the inside of her ribcage: somehow, she had not expected Draco to be correct about Tom, but this was his writing, here his curling r's and workmanlike, careful a's and o's. My orphan's alphabet, he had said, amused, of his cautious scrawls. And what a surprise, it was a list. Tom had always been so fond of lists. This one was a list of names: Thaddeus Nott, Eleftheria Parpis, Charles Travers, Linton Avery. 

For several long moments, Ginny stared blankly at the list. It meant absolutely nothing to her. With a shrug, she folded it up and slid it into her pocket before getting to her feet and heading back to the living room. 

*** 

The last dark red streaks of sunset were fading out of the sky (heavy with clouds, Harry had half-expected to be rained on at any moment) when Harry turned the corner of Viktor's street, almost running. Several wrong turns down narrow cobblestoned streets and a nearly sprained ankle had contributed to his lateness, although they were not the cause of it. Point me only worked when you knew where you were relative to due north, after all, and Harry had no idea. He swore under his breath, pulling his cloak tight around him, as the lamps all up and down the street suddenly lit themselves, casting shallow pools of light at intervals along the deserted pavement. 

Viktor's building was easy to spot. It had a colorfully painted façade, and Harry could see the gabled window of the living room from the street. The lights were on; he must have forgotten to Nox them before he left. At this rate, pretty soon he was going to start forgetting his own bloody name. Unless - well, Viktor had said the building employed a staff of house-elves. Perhaps - 

Harry's footsteps slowed. A moment before, the pavement in front of Viktor's door had been deserted. Now, just to the side of a pool of light cast by a street lamp, a group of cloaked figures was standing, so closely huddled together that Harry could not immediately tell how many of them there were. 

He knew immediately, without knowing how he knew, that they were aware of him, and that they were not friendly. 

It never occurred to him to turn around and walk away. Instead he kept moving, slowly and steadily, towards them, while at the same time his hand was creeping into his robes, under his jacket, looking for the hilt of the Gryffindor sword that was strapped to his side. 

He was almost to the door. He had begun to wonder if perhaps he was mistaken when one of the figures detached itself from the group. Harry caught the impression of someone tall, wearing a long black robe, when suddenly he found his way blocked. A tall man with long black hair and a stark-white face was standing between Harry and the door to Viktor's building. He wore a black robe, and the front of it was held together by a pin made out of a finger bone. His deep-socketed eyes glittered black and devilish under the faint lamplight, and he was smiling. The smile revealed two canines as long and sharp as the points of daggers. 

"Well, well," he said, and his voice was a softly accented hiss. "If it isn't the famous Harry Potter himself. This is a surprise." 

*** 

Sitting on the bed after Draco had banged his way out of the bedroom, Hermione realized that she was desperate for a change of clothes. Fleur had promised to make sure that the hotel sent their bags on from Diagon Alley to Viktor's apartment, but in the interim period, she couldn't help feeling miserable and dirty: there was ash caked on her shirt where Fleur had pulled her through the fire, and thanks to Viktor and Draco she smelled like cigarette smoke. With a sigh, she unbuttoned her blouse, shrugged out of it, and traded it for Harry's old Puddlemere United t-shirt. She had fond memories of this particular shirt, which Ron had given to Harry when they were all fifteen. It was a sort of pale brown color with black lettering and didn't suit Harry at all, but Harry had never minded and had worn it until the cotton was as supple and thin as tissue paper. Hermione rubbed her cheek against the sleeve. It was soft and smelled like Harry. 

Who, theoretically, she would be seeing again any minute. She stopped and glanced at herself in the mirror by the door before she went out into the hallway, checking to see if she looked terrible. Her hair, of course, was escaping from its braids already; she tugged it free and ran a hand through the tangles before giving up and going to look for Draco. 

She walked down the hallway calling his name. The flat looked just like the sort of flat she would have expected Viktor to own. Neat, European, decorated in primary colors. Draco wasn't in the kitchen or the study either, but when she walked into the living room he was there, sitting on the wide sill of the bay window. He had his knees drawn up and looked as if he were chewing thoughtfully on the sleeve of his shirt. He had taken off his oversized jumper and flung it over the back of a chair. 

"Didn't you hear me calling you?" she said. 

"It's dark," he said, as if he hadn't heard her. 

"And Harry isn't back," she said. "I know." She went over to the window and sat down opposite him. "Is that what you're fretting over?" 

"Not exactly." He stopped gnawing on his sleeve and looked at her over his arm. His blond hair fell forward into his eyes; he looked very young. "Is there any acceptable response to 'I love you' besides 'I love you, too'?" 

"'I know' is generally frowned on," Hermione said. "Although it's an improvement on 'Oh, no, not you too' and "well, that makes one of us.'" 

"You're laughing at me," he said, and looked at her with a half-smile that belied a certain level seriousness under his words.  

"Well, why are you asking?" 

"Research purposes." 

"Oh, all right," she said. "Seriously? It depends how it's meant. Is the person saying they love you as a brother or a son or a friend or a lover or a family member or what? Harry always used to write 'I love you' in his letters to me when we were just friends. Of course," she added, "I used to try to read into it, but I don't think he meant anything romantic by it actually."  

"Have you ever asked him if he did?"  

"No." She looked at Draco curiously. "What's this about, anyway?"  

He tugged moodily on a bootlace. "Nothing."  

"Liar," Hermione said. She reached out and took his hand; he let her turn it over, and she stroked her index finger across the ragged double cross-shaped scar that disfigured the palm. He shivered. "I'm sorry about what I said to you in your father's office," she said. "That was pointless, and mean." 

"You shouldn't apologize for saying things that are true," he said. 

"I wish you wouldn't let it make you bitter."  

"You're not bitter," he said. "He left you, too, and you're not bitter. How do you manage that? Is it some Gryffindor thing I'll never understand? I thought maybe," and he looked back down at his shoes, "maybe you didn't care about him anymore." 

"I do care," she said. 

"But what if he isn't worth it?" 

She sighed. When she leaned back against the window, the glass was cold against her skin. "He is worth it. But even if he wasn't, that wouldn't mean I was wrong or foolish to love him, or that my loving him had been a mistake. We don't love people because they deserve it. In the end what's important is what that love says about you, that you're capable of loving someone like that -most people aren't capable of a tenth of that kind of real love, a hundredth of it. Most people would be terrified of it, if they could even imagine it. But you aren't - you weren't. You broke that bottle of antidote without thinking about it -" 

"Not entirely," said Draco, "without thinking about it." 

She looked at him, leaning there against the dark window glass, looking like a fair-haired angel except for that diabolical mouth. "You have always compared yourself to him," she said quietly. "When you hated him, and then when you didn't. And I thought you might try to be like him, but instead you just tried to be what you thought he wanted you to be. But that's not right, Draco. You don't learn who you are by being what you think someone else wants. You need to figure out what you want." 

He didn't reply; he had gone rigid all over, staring out the window. "Harry," he said, and bolted to his feet. He spun around, looked at her - "Stay here," he snapped, and flung himself out of the room so quickly she had no chance to do anything more than stare after him in bewildered astonishment. 

*** 

"You're a vampire," Harry said. He recognized that this was information the stranger doubtless already possessed, but it seemed worth noting. He had never seen an actual vampire before, only the photographs Lupin had showed them in DaDA class. The man's ice-white skin and blue-hollowed eyes and overlarge canines looked exactly like an illustration from Harry's Understanding the Undead textbook.  

"Yes," said the vampire. "I am. And you are Harry Potter."  

There seemed no point denying it. "So this is why Viktor told me not to go out after dark," Harry muttered to himself. Part of him felt obscurely irritated that Viktor had not been a little more clear about the local dangers, and part of him wondered if Hermione would be jealous when he told her he'd seen an actual vampire, and part of him, the part that was The Boy Who Lived - whether he liked it or not - was reaching under his cloak for the hilt of his Gryffindor sword. Was calculating the distance to the front door of Viktor's building. Was checking how many exits there were from this small street, what obstacles there were to flight that might also be helpful for leverage in a fight. "Was there something you wanted?" he demanded, his fingers closing tight over the sword hilt. "Or do you just like to know who you're eating?"  

The vampire cocked his head to the side. "You are rather small," he said. "Smaller than I thought you would be. And I have no plans to drink your blood, unless, of course, you force my hand. I rather hope you do. As powerful as you are, and the great Harry Potter, your blood would be...something very special."  

Harry shrugged his shoulder; his cloak fell back, exposing his arm, his bare hand gripping the sword hilt. "Come near me and I'll put this through your heart," he said.  

The vampire smiled and the razored teeth gleamed in the lamplight. "You should know that the Dark Lord sent us," he said, and took a step forward. The other vampires followed. Their faces were hidden beneath their hoods, but Harry caught the flash of fangs as they smiled and began to move towards him.  

Harry grabbed for his sword and drew it fast; metal skidded on metal with a seething hiss and the runic band brushed his arm and burned. It was as cold as ice. Harry held the sword up and looked steadily at the vampires over the blade. "I said not to come near me," he said.  

"That is quite a blade," said the vampire. His teeth showed sharp where his lip curled. "You must find us very frightening."  

"I've killed worse," Harry said. He was finding it no effort to keep his voice steady; for whatever reason he was not frightened at all. Some part of him, in fact, was spoiling for a fight. Let them come, he thought.  

The first vampire took a step towards Harry, and the others fell into place behind their leader. They moved towards him with measured steps and Harry raised the sword and braced himself and then a look of complete surprise came over the first vampire's face, making him look very nearly human for that brief moment, and he stopped walking as suddenly as if he'd hit a wall. "Ce magie e asta?" he hissed in a language Harry did not recognize, and then, as Harry looked on in surprise, he felt a sudden hard grip on his arms, yanking him backward, and there was a familiar presence behind him and a familiar drawling voice in his ear: "You can't kill a vampire with a sword, Potter, if you'd paid attention in Defense Against the Dark Arts instead of falling asleep and drooling all down your front, you would know that."  

*** 

Harry half-twisted around and stared. "Malfoy?"  

Draco, who had one arm across Harry's chest and was gripping the back of Harry's cloak with his other hand, smiled tensely. "Try to contain your joy at seeing me, Potter. It's embarrassing."  

"Let me go," Harry said. "I'm fine."  

"You're being chased by eight vampires," said Draco, "obviously your definition of the word 'fine' is not the same as mine." His grip on Harry had not loosened. He pulled him back, and Harry realized Draco was dragging him into the pale circle of light cast by the street lamp overhead. "Give me your sword," Draco said, his breath stirring the hair on the back of Harry's neck and making it rise up.  

Harry could feel the hammering beat of Draco's heart even through the several layers of fabric - shirt, cloaks - that separated them. The vampires remained where they were, looking curiously at the both of them, and Harry wondered why it was that he felt so uneasy when after all it was Draco holding him there and he trusted him beyond almost anyone else in the world. Later he would wonder why he'd never doubted for a moment that this was Draco, holding his arm and demanding his weapon in a sharp, harshly urgent tone, but doubt had never entered his mind. This was Draco, the sound of his voice, shape of his thoughts, the familiar, electric quality of his presence. Urgency flowed out of him, crackling Harry's nerve endings, setting his teeth on edge. "Draco," Harry whispered, "how did you get here, how did you find me -?"  

"Just give it to me."  

Harry let go his grip on the sword and Draco caught it with a swift and fluid grace, not by the hilt but by the blade. Harry felt him wince. "Malfoy. Your hand-"  

Draco raised the sword up, under the lamplight, and the shadow of the hilt was thrown clean and black and elongated across the pavement at their feet. The rough shape of a cross. The vampires hissed among themselves and stepped backward, too quickly for their usual grace, giving the offending shadow a wide berth.  

Only the tallest, the first vampire who had spoken to Harry, did not move back. "You," he said, looking at Draco, "I know you."  

"No. You know my father," Draco said. 

"Arati exact ca tatal tau," the vampire replied, his pale lips quirking into a grin. "You look just like him." 

"Nu sunt ca tatal meu," Draco said, and Harry twisted around to look at him in surprise, but Draco didn't glance at him; he was staring past Harry at the vampires. 

The vampire chuckled. "You speak Romanian? Your friend -" and he indicated Harry -"does not." 

"He is my friend, yes," Draco said. "Daca vii aproape, de el, te ucid." 

"That is your business," the vampire said. "What of the girl?" 

Draco stiffened. "There is no girl," he said. 

Harry felt a sense of bewilderment and increasing agitation - what were they talking about? He was obscurely annoyed that Draco had never mentioned that he spoke Romanian although to be fair it had never come up. 

"You say you are not like your father," said the vampire. "But he is a liar, too. Even now Lord Voldemort believes your father moves against him."  

Draco chuckled low in his throat. "My father's loyalty cannot be bought," he said, "because he has none. The Dark Lord has more to fear than my father."  

"You mean yourself?"  

"I mean Harry," Draco said.  

The vampire's eyes slid to Harry. Even from this distance Harry could feel the coldness of the ancient creature's gaze, the bleak tunnels of its eyes. "The protection you carry is strong," it said, "one of the oldest. But your charms of love, your runes and dragon's blood, they will not save you when you face the Dark Lord, and he will send the terrors of the earth against you before he is done."  

"Let him send them," Harry said.  

"Just don't let him make you pay for the delivery," Draco said, in Harry's ear, "he's a cheap bastard, the Dark Lord is."  

Harry laughed, and after a moment, Draco did too, and the vampires stared at them. The first vampire looked at Draco. "You stand against the Dark Lord then?" he said. "Against your own father?"  

"I thought you said my father moved against the Dark Lord," said Draco.  

"Perhaps, but if you stand with the Potter boy, you most assuredly stand against them both," said the vampire.  

"He stands with me," Harry said.  

"I stand for myself," Draco said, as if Harry hadn't spoken. "And not my father."  

The vampire grinned, for the first time, and its fangs flashed bright and terrifying. "I have known Malfoys," he said. "For hundreds of years, I have known them, wizards like you - those eyes, that face, those manners -" 

"Manners are learned," Draco said. "Not like blood." 

"Sângele apã nu se face," said the vampire. "And I know blood better than most. Blood calls to blood, youngest of the Malfoys. You will not so easily escape the demands of your inheritance. Bufnita nu cloceste privighetori -"  

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Did you just warn me against having sex with pigeons? Because I wasn't really considering it. Dirty, horrible birds. Rats with wings, my father used to say -" 

"I said," snapped the vampire, looking annoyed, "that eagles do not generally breed doves. It is an old proverb of my country." 

"You know," Draco said, "my Romanian is really pretty much limited to 'Are these snakes poisonous?' and 'Hey, cute thing, can I buy you a beer?' so I'm afraid you'll have to take your long-winded proverbs elsewhere. Not that this conversation hasn't been fascinating, but Harry and I have to be going." 

"I don't recall saying you could go," the vampire snarled. 

"And I don't think you can come near us, or you already would have," Draco said. "There's something stopping you, isn't there? Something about Harry?" 

There was a short silence. The vampire hissed something in Romanian; Harry suspected it was something rude. "What about me?" Harry muttered under his breath to Draco, who shrugged. "Why can't he come near me?" 

"You're just special, Potter," he said, "I would have thought you'd be used to that by now, at any rate." 

"Very well," the vampire said at last, its tone unpleasantly petulant. "You will be seeing us again, children, before the -" 

"Wait," Harry said. 

The vampire blinked at him. "Wait?" 

"There's something I want you to tell the Dark Lord for me," Harry said, and stepped away from Draco and his outstretched protecting arm so that he was standing alone under the lamplight. "Tell him that I am coming," he said. "Tell him I'm going to kill him. And if he hurts Ron, I'll do worse. I'll burn his body to ashes and scatter the ashes all over Leicester Square so that Muggles dance on the body of Lord Voldemort for the rest of eternity, tell him that."  

There was something about the hard viciousness in his tone that made the vampire smile at the same time that it made Draco tense up against Harry so that the arm around Harry felt suddenly like tensile steel. "I will tell him," the vampire said, and drew its cloak around itself, and vanished, followed in quick succession by the rest of its followers.  

For a moment, neither of the boys moved. Harry stared down the empty street, seeing the shadows, the clear pools of light that spilled from the lamps overhead, the shut and curtained windows. He could hear the clear steady hammer of his pulsebeat inside his own head.  

"Well done," Draco said finally, stepping back and releasing Harry. Harry turned to face him; Draco was holding the Gryffindor sword, by the hilt now. There were smears of blood on the blade. They looked black in the moonlight. "Especially that last speech. You sounded as if you meant it."  

"I did mean it," Harry said. "Are your hands hurt?"  

"Only a little. Shallow cuts bleed. I'll be fine."  

"Where's Hermione? Is she with you?"  

"She's upstairs in the apartment," Draco said.  

"So it was Viktor told you where I was," Harry said.  

"Fleur, actually."  

They were both speaking in normal voices, as if discussing the weather. Harry fought the urge to stare at Draco. His face was pale and set and unreadable and shards of lamplight caught in his hair and made it look as if glass had shattered down on him. "I told her not to tell you," Harry said.  

"And Viktor told you not to go out after dark," Draco said.  

Harry flushed. "I forgot something important in a bar," he muttered.  

"What, your brain and your sense of responsibility? Oh, wait. That's two things."  

"Glad to see you can count, Malfoy."  

"Yes," Draco said. "Although not, apparently, on you."  

"Don't," Harry said, unable to stand it for another moment, "don't let's fight, I'm not angry at you."  

"That's very gracious of you." Draco's voice was carefully neutral. He lifted his face so that the shadows fell across his eyes and it looked almost as if he were wearing a mask. "I'd hate to think my saving your life had caused you any distress or inconvenience."  

"Is that why you came after me," Harry said, "to save my life?"  

"Why else would I have come after you?" Draco said, sounding perfectly calm, perfectly reasonable.  

"Maybe you missed me," Harry said. "I thought you might have, a little."  

"Ah." The shadows deepened around Draco's mouth. Harry tried in vain to reach out and feel what Draco was feeling, thinking; it was like having his face pressed to a glass so darkly tinted that it obscured everything happening on the other side. "Well, I didn't."  

Harry blinked at him. "You don't need to be all proud around me -"  

"No," Draco said. "I think you've made it quite clear that you have no use for me, or for my pride."  

You had no use for me in life, why would you have a use for me after you were dead?  

"I'm not dead yet," Harry muttered under his breath, and saw Draco start and look at him oddly, and he gritted his teeth. "I missed you," he said. "Whatever you might think, I did miss you."  

Draco looked down at him, and the lamplight spilled clear and unbroken over his face and hair. His expression as he looked at Harry was tranquil, almost serene. 

"So?" Harry licked his dry lips. "Say something. What are you thinking?" 

"I'm thinking," Draco said equably, "that right now, it's taking a great deal of effort for me not to hit you in the head with something." 

"Oh." Harry blinked. "How much effort, exactly?"  

"Too much," Draco said, and in one swift movement he swung his arm up, hard; the hilt of the sword crashed into Harry's temple with the force of a battering ram. Harry dropped like a rock, out cold.  

*** 

When Draco opened the door to the apartment he found Hermione standing in the middle of the foyer with the loaded crossbow balanced against her shoulder. It was pointed directly at him. "Move and I'll put this bolt right through your heart," she said in a steady voice. "I mean it, Malfoy. Stay where you are." 

He froze, one hand on the doorframe. There was blood all over the front of his shirt, and blood on his hands. Not his own blood. It was red. "I only left ten minutes ago," he remarked, his eyes on the weapon in her hands. "Do your feelings about people usually change this radically over such short periods of time?" 

The crossbow was heavy and was beginning to hurt her shoulder, but she didn't move. "Where's Harry?" 

"Downstairs," Draco said. "In the foyer - I wanted your help to get him up the stairs." He raised an eyebrow at her. "Or I did. Admittedly this was before I realized you'd decided a sucking chest wound was exactly what was needed to improve my rotten day." 

Hermione relaxed her grip slightly. "You hit him," she said. "I was watching from the window with the crossbow - I was ready to shoot any of those vampires if they got near you." 

"I had to knock him out. He wouldn't have come with me otherwise." His voice was quite calm, and the incredulous, almost amused look in his eyes made her feel ever so faintly silly. "I don't see how this translates into you pinning me to the wall with a fourteen-inch crossbow bolt." 

"Vampires can hypnotize people with their eyes," she said crossly. "Don't you pay attention in class? I thought they might have hypnotized you into hurting Harry -" 

"Well, they didn't. Now are you going to come with me or not? Your boyfriend's unconscious and bleeding all over the foyer. If we leave him too long he might go septic, or wake up and run away, or both." 

Hermione lowered the crossbow. "I can't believe you were willing to hit him," she said. 

"I can't believe you were willing to shoot me," Draco replied. 

She flushed. "I wouldn't have done it." 

"Even if I really had been hypnotized?" There was a brittle tone to his voice. 

She shook her head. "I couldn't." 

"Well," he said, taking his hand from the doorframe and preparing to go downstairs, "I guess that's the difference between us, then, isn't it?" 

*** 

Waking up was like having two very long, very thin needles jammed into his temples, just behind his eyes. Harry moaned, his eyelids fluttering wide and then squeezing shut again in protest as agonizing light sliced into his eyeballs. He tried to cover his eyes with his hands, but something seemed to be preventing him.  

"Welcome back to the land of the living," said a familiar voice. Draco. "Does the light bother you?"  

"Yes," Harry said, and winced again. Speaking also hurt. His head seemed to have started a rebellion and was trying to secede from his neck. As for the rest of his body, it didn't seem to be cooperating with him either. Neither his arms nor his legs were working properly.  

"Sucks to be you, then," Draco said - rather unfeelingly, Harry thought, surprised. Very slowly, he pried his eyes open.  

He was lying on his back on the bed in Viktor's apartment. Draco sat on the side of the bed, idly playing with the black seal ring on his left hand. Harry realized why neither his arms nor his legs seemed to be working. It was because his hands were tied to the ornate headboard, while ropes secured his ankles.  

"Malfoy!" Harry yelped. Forgetting the pain in his head, he jerked violently against his restraints, with little result. "What the hell are you doing? Did you tie me up?"  

"You wound me, Potter," Draco said, with a beatific smile. "As if I would do such a thing."  

"Then -"  

"I got the house-elves to do it," Draco said, giving the ring on his finger a final spin and turning to look at Harry. "They're wicked good with knots."  

"Why?" was all Harry managed.  

"I'm tired of chasing you round Europe," Draco said. "Barrelling from country to country, never a change of trousers. You're a flight risk, Potter. Short of handcuffing myself to your leg, I see no other way to assure myself that you stay put until Hermione gets back and we decide what to do with you."  

"Hermione won't be happy that you tied me up," Harry said grumpily.  

"Nonsense. It was her idea."  

Harry's right wrist jerked in the loop of rope that held it. "Where is she?"  

Draco shrugged, elegantly. He looked as if he had splashed water over his face, although his clothes were stained with mud and blood. Harry realized he was staring a little. He hadn't really looked at Draco properly in the street outside, and he found himself experiencing an odd pang of recognition: so that was what Draco looked like, all shapes and angles and that soft disorderly hair contrasting with the pointed chin and sharp features. "You're the one tied up," Draco said. "Shouldn't I be asking you questions?" 

Harry gave up the idea of struggling and lay back on the bed. "Look," he said. "I know you're upset with me. I know what I did was -" 

"Shut up," Draco said. His expression hadn't changed and neither had his inflection, but there was something in his voice that made Harry flinch and stare. Draco continued to regard Harry with the same look of faint, bland amusement. 

"Well, if you have something to ask me, ask me," Harry said. "Incidentally, I can't believe you hit me over the head with a rock." 

"I didn't hit you over the head with a rock. I hit you across the side of the head with my sword hilt." 

"Details," Harry said. "And it was my sword." 

"Which you luckily happened to bring with you. I won't say it was the one intelligent thing you did today, although we might perhaps agree it was the one not-completely-stupid thing you did." 

'Call me stupid if you like," Harry said ruefully. "Everyone else has already today." 

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Everyone?" 

"Well - Fleur. Of course she also told me I was a great warrior." 

"Don't get too excited. She uses that line on every guy." 

"The warrior line or the stupid one?" 

Draco ignored this. "Your eye is blacking up beautifully, by the way," he noted. "It's kind of red and yellow and maroon around the edges. Looks like you even bruise in Gryffindor colors." 

Harry squinted at him. "Did you get a haircut?" 

"No," Draco said. 

"Yes, you did," Harry said. "It was getting so long you could practically have stuck bows in it. Now it's barely over your ears." 

"Technically, I did not get a haircut," Draco said. "I cut it myself. Anyway, I don't want to talk about my hair." 

More than slightly taken aback by Draco's cold tone, Harry plowed ahead gamely anyway. He'd certainly had experience with Draco's bad moods before. Usually it was all right if you could just get him to laugh, lower his guard briefly, let you in just a little bit - "You don't want to talk about your hair?" he said lightly. "Who are you, and what have you done with Draco Malfoy?" 

Draco gave him a look. It was an indescribable sort of look. "You know who I am." 

Harry felt a shiver of tension run along his spine and realized all his muscles had tightened up - it was as if he expected Draco to hit him again. And yet a voice in his head said, Draco would never hit me, and he knew that in a way it was true, that Draco had only hit him to stop him running away, and he would have done the same thing himself - he remembered flinging Draco down that snowy incline near the Manor, out of the path of the hellhounds, and Draco climbing back up to him through the snow with blood soaking through the bandages on his arm. The things we do to each other. "Malfoy..." He bit his lower lip, casting about for something to say. "I didn't know you spoke Romanian." 

"We have relatives in Romania. My uncle lived there for years. I've told you that." 

"What did he say to you? The vampire?" 

" Sângele apã nu se face," Draco said. "Blood is not water - it's a saying. I assume he was referring to my father, or my family in general." 

"He knows your father?" Harry asked. 

"I'd rather not talk about my father." 

"You don't want to talk about your father, you don't want to talk about your hair. What do you want to talk about?" 

"I'd rather not talk to you at all," Draco said, "but since we're stuck here until Hermione gets back from the kitchen, I suggest we choose some topic unrelated to either of us, our family members, or how much we dislike each other." 

Harry blinked; Draco's words made no sense, and all that came to his lips was a startled denial. "I don't -" 

"For INSTANCE," Draco interrupted loudly, "If there's a petrificus totalus, then is there a petrificus partialus? And if so, do people use it for kinky sexual purposes? Because I can't see what else it would be good for." 

"Dislike you? I don't -" 

Draco looked so angry that Harry wondered briefly if he was going to hit him again. Fortunately, the door opened at that moment and Hermione came in to the room, carrying a silver flask. 

Harry stared. She looked the same, and yet somehow different - he leaned forward, although the ropes bit into his wrists. His heart jumped up - she was wearing his old Puddlemere United shirt, surely that was a good sign? It was slightly too big on her, and the sleeves gapped around her slender arms: her face looked thinner, her skin translucently pale. Her soft mouth tensed uncertainly as she looked at him and her dark eyes went very wide and very soft. "Harry," she said, her voice barely a whisper. 

Draco looked from one of them to the other as they stared at each other, and his mouth set in a bitter line. "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose," he said. "I'll be going. There's a bottle of sixty-proof Bulgarian cough syrup in the kitchen with my name on it. If anyone here needs me, well, they can fuck right off." 

That snapped Hermione out of her daze. "Draco," she said. "Wait -" and she held out her hand to him, with the silver flask in it. "Take this, please," she said. 

Draco got up from the bed without looking at Harry, and went over to Hermione. She pressed the flask into his hand and said something very quietly to him that could have been Don't be angry, although Harry couldn't hear her and couldn't tell anything from Draco's response. He was shaking his head and had half-turned away when Hermione caught at his arm and pulled him back. 

And there was something about the way she did it - the familiarity of the gesture, or her need to keep him there, or the way that Draco let her do it when Harry knew perfectly well how careful he was about being touched, how alert to the meaning of every casual gesture - Harry wasn't sure what exactly, but the feeling of jealousy he had experienced so powerfully in his dream surged up and over him again, a nausea so bad it was like pain. He bit down on it, clenching his fists. I deserve this, he thought, I have no right at all - 

Hermione dropped her hand from Draco's arm. He looked at her - he wasn't smiling, certainly, but neither was it that look of absolute hatred he'd bent on Harry, it was rather a curiously vulnerable sort of blankness - and then he went out the door and shut it behind him. Hermione turned and looked at Harry and took a deep breath and Harry realized something: he had absolutely no idea what to say to her. 

*** 

"Those illusions don't sound so bad now after all, do they?" Rhysenn murmured, her forefinger tickling the back of Ron's neck. "How many games of chess are you at now? Six? Ten?" 

Ron twitched away. "Stop it. What's the point of that cage if you can just stick your arm out like that? If you ask me, Voldemort should have made the bars closer together." 

"You're holding back," she whispered, letting her black hair veil her face like a curtain. He could see her grinning behind it. "The Dark Lord won't like that. Are you afraid of the future?" 

"Everyone's afraid of the future," Ron muttered, glaring down at the chessboard on the table in front of him. He was actually on his fifth game with Voldemort, having been roundly trounced the first four times due to lack of concentration. The truth was, he really didn't want to have another vision - he was terrified what he might see - and he couldn't help panicking over Hermione, and Harry by extension. 

He was not panicked about Draco. Draco could take care of his own bloody self. 

Voldemort's eyes had begun to narrow in suspicion by the middle of the fifth game. Luckily, Wormtail had arrived in a state of agitation and fetched the Dark Lord out of the room. Ron stared moodily at the chessboard, and wondered if there would be any point in cheating while Voldemort was away, and if anyone would be likely to notice or care if he did. 

"Not everyone is afraid of the future," Rhysenn said. "Only people with something to lose." 

"And I have something to lose?" 

"You're in love," she said. "Everyone in love has something to lose." 

"Well, then everyone has something to lose, don't they? Everyone loves someone. Even Malfoy has feelings. Icky feelings, but feelings." 

"You are more like him in feeling than you think," Rhysenn said, tucking her hair back behind her ears. Ron looked away hastily. She was nearly naked again. He did wish she would warn him when she did that. 

"I'm not like Malfoy." 

"You are," she said. "To love where love is not requited is painful, but to love where you have no right to love - that is pain that cannot be articulated, perhaps not even understood unless you have felt it." 

"Everyone's got a right to love," muttered Ron, who still felt uncomfortable around this sort of talk. "And I'm not in love, anyway. If Malfoy is, that's his lookout, although I'd rather not speculate because eeew." 

Rhysenn looked amused. "And I suppose if it were up to you -" she began, then broke off hastily as the enormous double doors to the chess room slammed open and Voldemort strode inside, Gabriel the vampire on his heels. 

Both Ron and Rhysenn flinched - the Dark Lord looked furious. 

"What do you mean, you could not approach him?" Voldemort roared in a voice like a hissing bonfire. His black and scarlet robe flew out behind him as he spun to glare at the vampire who followed, white-faced and sullen, on his heels. "What is the meaning of this?"  

"I mean I could not approach him," replied Gabriel, his voice strained. He looked less flushed and human now, more pale and strained and nervous. His lips were drawn back tightly against his teeth and Ron could see the outline of his fangs. Ron remembered Lupin saying that vampires took on a waxy appearance when it had been a long time since they had fed, and shivered. Fortunately, as usual, no one was paying any attention to him. He sat with his elbows propped on the table, trying not to knock over the chess pieces, and stared. "You didn't even tell us he would be there. I was expecting the girl -" 

Voldemort waved this objection away. "And you could not get by him? Did he use strong magic on you, was he hung about with crucifixes?"  

"He was hung about with the Malfoy boy," said Gabriel, his lip curling, "but that was not the impediment."  

Voldemort narrowed his eyes. "The Malfoy boy. Isn't he dead yet?"  

"He looked quite alive to me," said Gabriel.  

"I was speaking figuratively. I know he is alive. I have a certain amount...invested in him. I was rather hoping he'd manage to not die until after the ceremony, although Lucius' over-zealousness may force me to formulate a new plan. In any case, the Potter boy -"  

"He has some charm on his person," said Gabriel. "It seems some form of runic band. It is endowed with powerful anti-demonic spells. I cannot approach it."  

"Perhaps you should have tried a bit harder."  

"I could not," Gabriel said, with emphasis, "and I know none who could. You will have to find some other way to retrieve what you want."

"I could send Wormtail," Voldemort muttered under his breath, "but he is weak and stupid." His head snapped up and he looked at Gabriel, his eyes gleaming unpleasantly. "Lend me your human servants," he said. 

"But they are my servants! They obey me." 

"And you," said Voldemort, "obey me." 

Ron remembered what he'd learned in DADA about ancient vampires holding the ability to hypnotize humans with their gaze. If Gabriel was trying that on Voldemort, it was failing miserably. The short battle of wills between the two ended as something seemed to crumple behind Gabriel's eyes, "Very well, my Lord." 

"Remember what the girl carries," said Voldemort. "Make sure they know it is to be brought back with her. They can touch silver?" 

"Yes, my Lord." Gabriel's eyes slid, then, to Ron. "Master...that boy there." 

"Yes?" Voldemort said. 

"Could I feed on him?" 

Ron pushed his chair back so quickly that it scratched the marble. "Don't even think about it, fang-face." 

"My Diviner? Certainly not," Voldemort said. "I need him alive." 

The vampire licked his lips, gazing at Ron with low-burning eyes. "I could take just a little and leave him alive," he murmured. 

"No," Voldemort said, more sharply. "You cannot have any of his blood. Come now." He snapped his fingers. "Time grows short. If you must have blood, you can feed upon Wormtail before you go." 

Gabriel made a face. "He tastes of onions," he complained. 

"The Muggles have an apt aphorism about beggars and choosers, Gabriel, that you would do well to learn from. Now come," and Voldemort swept from the room, the vampire at his heels. 

The moment the door closed behind them, Ron turned to Rhysenn, who had been silent throughout the interview inside her cage. She met his gaze with a pair of dark gray eyes but said nothing. "What does he mean, human servants? What was all that about?" 

"If a vampire bites you but doesn't drain your blood, it gives him a certain amount of power over you. A bit like the Imperius Curse. A real master vampire could command an army of human servants. They're still humans, though, so Harry's demonic protection spell won't help him." 

"Harry has a demonic protection spell?"  

"He has a runic band," said Rhysenn. "He wears it on his belt." 

Ron narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. "You knew that," he said. "And you didn't say anything?" 

Rhysenn examined her nails. 

"Harry's with Hermione," Ron said, thinking aloud. "I thought Wormtail's spy said earlier that she was just with Draco?" 

Rhysenn looked bored. "One of these days I will understand what the enormous fuss is over that girl. She isn't even pretty." 

Ron ignored this. "The human servants - do you think he'll remember to tell them not to hurt her? Should I -" 

"They'll do whatever they're told," said Rhysenn, rather shortly. "And the Dark Lord told Gabriel that she isn't to be hurt." 

"He also told him not to feed on me," Ron said. "Why? What does he care if I get bitten?" 

Rhysenn looked almost surprised. "Because he needs your blood himself," she said. "Didn't you know?" 

*** 

Harry didn't move as Hermione approached the bed -- she supposed he really couldn't move very far, after all. Draco had secured his wrists tightly to each side of the headboard. It looked likely to be a fairly uncomfortable position, if not actually painful. He raised his head as she came near the bed and sat down facing him. A deep blue-black bruise flowered out from the welt just above his right eye. 

"Does it hurt?" Hermione said, fighting the urge to reach and touch his face. 

"Yes," Harry said. There was tension in the set of his mouth and his tone was guarded. "Hermione, could you--" 

"Of course." 

She lifted her wand, pointed; the ropes sprang apart and Harry's hands fell into his lap. He chafed his wrists, his eyes downcast, and said, guardedly, "Are you going to scream at me, too?" 

There was a short silence while Hermione thought. "Draco said something like that to me earlier today," she said finally. "I guess I've been yelling at you both a lot lately. I'm sorry." 

Harry looked as if she had taken the wind out of his stubbornness. "So you're not angry?" 

"Well, of course I'm angry," Hermione said hopelessly, "you run off and leave me, you put yourself in danger - I mean, Harry, what were you doing out so late? Viktor said he made you promise to be back before sunset, what happened? Did you just decide to ignore him?" 

Harry looked grimly exasperated. "No, I -" He sighed. "Could you hand me my cloak? I think Draco threw it over the footboard." 

Wondering, Hermione picked up the cloak handed it to him. There was a distinct bulge in the inner lining; turning the left pocket inside out, he drew out a small green book, stamped with gold lettering. The Malfoy Family Code of Conduct. 

"Draco's book?" Hermione asked. 

"You could say that. He gave it to me for Christmas," Harry said, running a thumb along the spine. "I had it in my pocket when I went out earlier - I wanted to bring a book with me, and there wasn't anything in the flat in English, and I -" 

"Left it somewhere?" Hermione finished. "And had to go back for it?" 

Harry had the grace to look embarrassed. "Yeah. I couldn't Summon it - it's got all sorts of protective spells on it." 

"You couldn't have gone back for it tomorrow?" 

"Someone could have bunged it in a rubbish bin by then!" Harry looked outraged. "Or stolen it, or - Hermione, surely you understand why it's important." 

"Well, because Draco gave it to you, of course." 

"He didn't give it to me - he trusted me with it." Harry set it carefully down on the nightstand. "He trusted me with a lot of things, I think, and I let him down on all of them, and I didn't want to screw this up too. It's an heirloom, and you know how he is about things like that. Family things -" Harry winced, and broke off. "My ankles," he said. "I almost forgot." 

"Oh! I'll get them," Hermione said, and touched her wand to the ropes at his feet. They fell away, and when she looked up he was leaning back against the headboard, rubbing his chafed wrists again and looking at her ruefully. 

"You know," he said, "I've thought about what it would be like when I saw you again a hundred times since I left, but I have to say I never exactly imagined it this way." 

"I'm sorry it came to this, Harry," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. She wanted to touch him, wanted it badly, wanted to push the damp hair back from his forehead and kiss the welt on his cheek and put her arms around him and feel that steadfast, familiar heartbeat, the constant pulse of her safety and his. A wild tenderness surged up inside her, but she said nothing and remained where she was, her hands folded quietly in her lap, her gaze fixed on a point just below his left ear. 

"Came to what?" Harry said, leaning forward to undo the ropes that were tied around his ankles. Hermione leaned back to give him room. "Malfoy losing his mind entirely?" 

"He had to knock you out. You would have run away again." 

"He didn't have to tie me to the bed." 

"Well, I suppose he could have tied you to the couch, but I'm not sure that would have been a distinct improvement from your perspective." 

Harry made a low, exasperated sound. "I don't want to talk about Malfoy," he said. "Do you hate me, too? Is that what this is about?"  

At that, she did look up. "I hate what you did," she said, softly. "I hate that you left me." 

A spasm of pain crossed his face. "Hermione, I -" 

"I hate what you did to Draco," she said. 

"I don't want to talk about him." 

"Too bad," Hermione said unsympathetically. "If you think I'm going to let you leave here without us, you're out of your mind, Harry Potter. I don't care what fantasy you've got in your head about saving the world single-handed -" 

"I don't want to leave here without you," he said in a low voice. 

Hermione stared at him. She would have thought he was lying, but Harry didn't lie. Not in the same way that Draco didn't lie - Draco didn't lie to himself, because self-delusion was weakness, and weakness was despicable. Harry didn't lie because he couldn't. He looked at his hands, clasping the blanket, plying the fabric nervously between his fingers. 

"I was wrong to leave without you," he said. "Both of you. I see that now. I've been pushing you all away because I thought I couldn't possibly ask you to come with me. I thought it would be the most supreme kind of selfishness possible to drag you two along on a quest that was mine. It's my death the Dark Lord wants, after all. It always has been. What happened to Ron is my fault." 

"But, Harry -" 

"Don't." Harry's hands shook on the blanket, but his voice was steady. "Let me talk. I'm telling you what I thought, not what I think now. Draco kept trying to tell me, but I don't think I ever really listened," he said, and Hermione noted his abstracted use of Draco's given name, but did not comment. "He kept telling me that I was a hero, I was going to have to make a hero's choices. I thought he was mocking me a little, the way he always does, hell, the way he always did -- calling me Harry Potter, World Savior and all that. I figured he was trying to keep me from getting an inflated opinion of myself. But I realized, after I left, that he meant it. And he was right, too. He wasn't mocking me at all. He was trying to tell me that being a hero was hard and brutal and even demeaning, that it isn't glorious, that its all these ugly choices you make, day after day, every day. He was trying to tell me that you don't get the luxury of sparing your friends pain. You have to choose the world and not...not everything else," he said, and there was nothing self-pitying in his voice, only a frayed and irresolute exhaustion. 

"I thought," Hermione said, "that's what you were trying to do. Choose the world." 

Harry shook his head. "No. I was trying to keep the people I couldn't stand seeing hurt from being hurt. But that's not choosing the world. That's choosing myself and what I love and can't bear to be without. The truth is, if I really want to defeat the Dark Lord, I need you both. I can't be without you. I can't think properly without you -- I get all muddled and I try to think what you'd do but you're not there to tell me -- and without Draco I --" 

He broke off. 

"Without him, what?" Hermione asked, but Harry just shook his head. 

"I never meant to hurt either of you," he said in a low voice. "That much is true, anyway." 

"Then why did you write all those horrible things in that letter to Draco?" Hermione said. 

It was cruel, but then she meant it to be a little cruel. His head jerked up and he stared at her, astonishment seared across his features. "He showed it to you?" he said. 

"He didn't believe you'd written it, at first," Hermione said. Some small part of her wanted to remind him that he had not written her a letter at all, but pride stopped her. "I had to do a spell to prove it." 

Harry's hands had fisted themselves on the blanket. His knuckles were white. "I know I'm not a very good letter writer," he began, a little unsteadily. 

"Harry. It was horrible." 

"I didn't mean it to be horrible!" he said, and there was anger in his voice now as well as anguish. "I was trying to be honest. God, I can barely even remember what I said, now. It's all gone blurred together - but I never intended -" 

"You can't have meant those things -" 

"And what business is it of yours?" he half-shouted at her, suddenly, and Hermione almost fell off the bed in surprise. Harry never shouted at her, never. "Why are you tasking me on Malfoy's behalf, Hermione? Why don't you tell me how you feel? Do you need Draco to talk for you?" 

"He's not talking for me," Hermione said stiffly. She hated the way she always froze up when she was upset, but she couldn't seem to help it. "I'm talking for him." 

"And you think I don't know why? I saw your face when you looked at him just now- the way you always look at him - you feel guilty, don't you? About the way you feel about him, about everything. About what you did - you chose me, and you broke his heart, and he never said anything. If it'd been me I'd have crawled off like a sick cat to lick my wounds somewhere in private, but he couldn't do that. He's too proud. He had to behave as if he didn't mind. It would've killed me, but then he's strong in a different way than I am. And I saw how you pushed us towards each other, me and him, like you thought I could fix it for him, patch over what you broke, make him happy - because damned if you'd want Ginny to make him happy, or some other girl, no, that would have made you jealous. But what is it you really want me to do for him? What do you want me to give him that I haven't already? What do you want me to be for him that I haven't? I've always tried to be what you wanted, Hermione, but bloody hell, I can't even tell what you want from me any more!" 

Hermione gaped at him. She was too stunned to even begin teasing out all the threads of what was true from what was rage and confusion in what he had just said. All she knew was that she had almost never seen Harry this angry in her life. "Maybe I did push you," she began, her voice wobbling. "Maybe I am selfish. Maybe you're right to hate me -" 

Harry squeezed his eyes shut. "I don't hate you," he said. "Just because I know you're not bloody perfect doesn't mean I hate you. You're the one who thinks everyone has to be perfect. I practically killed myself trying to be what I thought you wanted me to be. But I'm not perfect, Hermione. I'm selfish sometimes and I do bloody stupid things and I hate - you wouldn't believe how I can hate. I think ugly, brutal, horrible thoughts. All the time. I wish I'd broken Wormtail's neck - every day --" He broke off, his voice ragged and desperate. "If you knew the half of it - what I'm really like -" 

"Don't, Harry," she said. "Open your eyes -" 

"No." He kept his face averted. "You're not listening to me. Remember that time third year when you told Ron I didn't want to kill anyone? You were wrong. I want to kill Voldemort but maybe that doesn't matter, he isn't even human, but if I could get my hands on Draco's bloody father, I'd kill him, and he is- I thought about killing him at the Manor - if it hadn't been for Draco, I'd have done it, too, I'd have grabbed one of those swords off the mantelpiece and stuck it through his throat and I would have been glad --" 

"If it hadn't been for Draco," Hermione said. "You didn't hurt his father for his sake - you couldn't take his father away from him, even though his father's a monster. That's unselfishness, Harry, it's -"  

"It's not!" Harry shouted. "And that's exactly what I mean. You don't see me. You see what you want to see. And I'm not saying I'm a bad person, either, because I don't think I am - I'm just ordinary -" 

"You're anything but ordinary." 

He took a deep, shuddering breath, a sound like a sob whipsawing its way out of his lungs. "You'll never understand," he said despairingly. "I love you so much but you just don't understand. You've always seen my best self, and I wanted to be that for you, so badly. But I don't think my best self has much of a chance against Voldemort, Hermione. I just don't." 

"Is this what you couldn't tell me?" Hermione whispered. "Is this what you've been hiding from me all this time?" 

"Yes," he said. He had raised his face a little, but his eyes were still shut, stubbornly, his teeth biting down into his lip. "Mostly." 

"Harry, open your eyes, please. Look at me." 

"No. I can't look at you and say these things. I can't do it." 

She moved closer to him, reaching out to touch him for the first time, her outstretched fingers feathering the lightest of touches against his bruised cheek. She felt him tense all over, as if he were holding himself back from leaning into her touch. "Open your eyes, Harry," she said again, and this time he did. 

He opened them slowly and looked directly at her, and there was in his eyes a sort of hopeless relief that made her think suddenly and acutely of that first night at the hotel in Diagon Alley and the look on Draco's face when he had turned to her in the narrow bed and held his arms out. Exhaustion warring with relief warring with despair: he had done something he had been afraid for a long time of doing, and then it was done and all choices rendered irrelevant. She had felt it in the way that he had touched her, as if she were a dream he had been afraid of having, not a girl but a penance. 

Just like him, she thought. She said, "I'm sorry you thought I wanted you to be perfect, or anything other than what you are. If you'd killed Wormtail - if you'd killed Lucius - it wouldn't have made me love you less. Draco's right. You're a hero and that means you find yourself forced into positions where there are no right choices. I love you, Harry. Nothing changes that. Nothing I could do changes it. Nothing you could do changes it. No wrong choices could change it. I've loved you since I met you and I'll love you if I never see you again. And I'm not angry at you. I promise I'm not. I feel like I've done nothing but scold you for months and I'm sorry. I was just scared of losing you." 

He put his hands out and she took them. They were cold in hers, and she ran her fingers lightly over the backs of his knuckles, her thumb against the scar on his palm. "You're really not angry?" he asked. 

"No," she said. 

"Thank God," Harry said. "I don't think I could cope if you were both furious at me." 

"I know." She reached up, pushed his hair back out of his eyes. "You are going to have to talk to him eventually." 

"I would, but - what could I even say?" Harry asked. The loose strands of his dark hair tickled her eyelashes. "Maybe I should wait until he's a little less angry." 

"He's Draco," Hermione said. "He won't get less angry." 

Harry sighed. "I can't believe I could have so -" 

He broke off, pulling away from her. He was staring over her shoulder. She turned and saw Draco standing framed, blond and indolently scornful, in the doorway. He was looking at them both with an expression of bland distaste. 

"Sorry to break up the touching reunion," he said coolly. "One of your pots on the stove's boiled over, Hermione. Black stuff is leaking out of it and catching on fire." 

"Oh!" Hermione spun around. "Did you take the pot off the stove?" 

"You told me not to muck about with it," he said. "So I didn't." 

" Oh, Draco, honestly!" Hermione leaped to her feet. "I'll be right back, Harry," she said to the silent boy on the bed, and ran for the door. The corridor was half full of black smoke and by the time she arrived in the kitchen and flipped the stove off, she was cursing Draco under her breath. 

"Not at all," he said, having tailed her to the kitchen. "I assure you my parents were married." 

Black fluid had pooled all around the base of the stove and the ingredients inside the pot were charred and unusable. "Why didn't you come get me earlier?" Hermione demanded. 

Draco made a face but stayed well away from her. He was being very careful not to get any of the reeking black liquid on his expensive leather boots. "I didn't want to interrupt anything. I feel no need to go blind earlier than I have to." 

Hermione glared at him, and dumped the ruined pot into the sink. "There was nothing to interrupt. We were talking." 

"Is he all right?" Draco said abruptly. 

"Ask him your bloody self," Hermione snapped. 

Draco turned on his heel and stalked out of the kitchen. Grabbing up a dishtowel, Hermione was drying her hands when an idea hit her. She peered out and around the kitchen door. "Draco!" she called. "My wand - I left it on the table in the bedroom. Could you bring it to the kitchen?" 

Draco, who had been leaning against the side of the corridor, gave her a look of intense annoyance. He peeled himself off the wall and stalked down the hall and into the bedroom. She saw Harry glance up at him as he came into the room and then Hermione took her wand out of her left robe pocket and raised her hand and pointed it at the bedroom door. "Claudo!" she hissed, and she saw Draco pause and spin around as the door slammed shut. " Forinsecus!" There was a grinding noise, and a number of iron bolts and locks appeared on the outside of the door. "Prohibeo iunea!" Hermione called, and the bolts slid home into the locks just as something thumped against the opposite side of the door - probably Draco, Hermione thought, signaling his rage at being locked in. 

Well, too bad for him. She slid the wand back into her pocket. "There," she said aloud, "Now they'll have to talk to each other," and, pushing down the feeling that perhaps she had just done something unwise, she went back into the kitchen. 

*** 

Ginny was so lost in thought when she returned to the living room that it took her several moments to realize that Blaise was gone. 

Sirius and Lupin sat alone on the couch; Sirius' shaggy dark head was bent and he was studying a folder of parchment that Lupin had open on his lap. Lupin was speaking, and his voice was soft, the words meaning nothing to Ginny, "The victims were all close to Voldemort during the darkest years," he was saying, "They denied it at the trials, of course, and escaped Azkaban. The spies say they returned to Voldemort later, and he forgave them. As for now..." 

Ginny stopped listening and simply stood for a moment, watching them as Sirius leaned to turn a page of parchment and Lupin moved aside to allow it, turning his head with a half-smile in his old friend's direction. She wondered if, wherever they went together, they carried with them the ghosts of two others boys: one dead, one who might as well be. She wondered if Harry and Draco would ever be like this, some time in the far future. She wasn't sure she could ever imagine them peaceful - not together, and certainly not apart. 

Something occurred to her belatedly. "Where's Blaise?" she demanded. 

Lupin looked up. "She left," he said. "She went to Pansy Parkinson's. She said she'd come back later tonight and if she couldn't, she'd owl tomorrow." 

"Oh," Ginny said, feeling oddly bereft. "But -" 

Lupin looked up at her. "Yes?" 

"It's raining," she said. 

"She took your raincloak," Lupin said. "The yellow one - she said you wouldn't mind." 

Of course she did, Ginny thought, faintly amused by Blaise's nerve. She was disappointed the other girl was gone. There had been something she had wanted to ask her, something she had wanted to say... 

"Moony," said Sirius thoughtfully, tapping his quill against Lupin's knee, "could you check and see if Avery is cross-referenced under the Mulciber files? Didn't Arbuthnot Mulciber meet a sticky end a few years ago?" 

"Mm, he did, but Moody said that was a botched plot of Renton's, so it's probably unrelated. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to look, though..." 

There was the sound of rustling parchment, but Ginny had stopped paying attention. Idly, she crossed the room to the long table that ran along the wall under the garden window. Usually it held Mrs. Weasley's good china, but now it was covered with books and numbered stacks of parchment. She ran her finger along the gold-embossed spine of one of the books, Death Eater Histories, Vol.III, but her mind was elsewhere. She was thinking about Blaise, about how Ginny had known just the right thing to say to make the other girl stay, somehow, which seemed odd to Ginny because she didn't know Blaise at all, in fact had barely spoken to her previously. 

It was because she was like Draco, Ginny thought, I talked to her just as if she had been Draco. They were both so single-minded and so economical in their caring; weighing the checks and balances of what mattered and what didn't, what was worth doing and what wasn't. Each armored all over with their icy indifference, each with a vulnerable place where they could be hurt: for Blaise, it was Draco. For Draco... 

"Nothing under Mulciber," Lupin said, softly, his voice cutting through her reverie. 

"Check the others, then," Sirius said. "Parpis and that first one, Nott..." 

It was as if his words cut into her, as sharply as a knife. Ginny stiffened all over, whirling away from the table to stare at Lupin and Sirius. Neither of them noticed her movement at all, so engrossed were they in their papers. A moment later Ginny was scrabbling at her pocket, yanking out the slip of parchment Draco had given her, opening it with shaking fingers, reading once again down the list of names. Thaddeus Nott, Eleftheria Parpis, Charles Travers - and that was all, the lower part of the list had been torn away, right through the last listed name: Linton Avery. 

A queer feeling built up behind Ginny's eyes, as if she were about to cry, or laugh very hard. She could hear her own uneven breathing, and feel the pound of blood in her veins. Tom, she thought. It's you, Tom, killing them, isn't it? I should have guessed. I should have known it was you. But why would you kill them, your own Death Eaters? 

Her breath caught in her throat. Because they're not yours, she thought, the world seeming to tilt crazily about her. They're his...and you could never bear to share your toys, not even with yourself. Better that the toys be broken... 

She looked up, then, absolutely sure that Lupin and Sirius must be able to sense her shock, hear the hammering beat of her heart. But they were still engrossed in their research and their own conversation. She felt as if they were miles away and she was looking at them through Omnioculars. Think, Ginny, she told herself fiercely. Detach from the panic and think...This senseless killing isn't senseless at all. Tom never does anything without a rhyme or a reason to it. If he's killing them in a specific order, then there's a reason for that order. They were all close to Voldemort during the darkest years, Lupin had said, They denied it at the trials, of course, and escaped Azkaban. The spies say they returned to Voldemort later, and he forgave them - 

But you didn't forgive them, Ginny thought. You didn't forgive them, did you, Tom? You never forgive anything. Her heart was still pounding wildly as she reached for the book on top of the table, and flipped quickly to the index. She found the entry for 'Trials,' and swiftly paged back until she found the right chapter. Somewhere, she thought, there would be a list of their names, not in the order in which they had been brought to trial, but in the order in which each had been pardoned and forgiven... 

And there it was. Trembling, she pressed the page flat and read: 

Thaddeus Nott 

Eleftheria Parpis 

Abuthnot Mulciber 

Charles Travers 

Linton Avery 

Frances Parkinson 

The book dropped out of Ginny's hands and struck the floor with a bang. Both Lupin and Sirius looked up, startled. Ginny as barely aware of Sirius beginning to rise to his feet, a worried expression on his face. 'Ginny, are you -" 

"I have to go," Ginny whispered, and bolted past him, through living room and out the doors and into the hallway and she grabbed Charlie's green cloak off the wall peg and stumbled out the front door, clutching her broomstick in one hand, not even remembering when she had picked it up but that didn't matter because she was fleeing down into the garden, she was kicking off from the ground, she was racing the rising moon towards Pansy's house and praying that she was not already too late. 

*** 

Draco gave the locked door one last kick and turned around. He bent a wrathful gaze on Harry, who was still sitting on the bed, too bewildered at this sudden turn of events to say anything. "Oh, nicely done, Potter," Draco snarled. "Was this your idea?" 

Harry scrambled up and off the bed. "What's she done? Locked us in?" 

"Level six Forinsecus spell," Draco said with grudging respect. "Take hours to get it off, even for one of us. I haven't got the energy, and you're too incompetent to get a counterspell right. Blast the girl. I don't suppose you've got a crowbar shoved in among your unsavory belongings?" 

"No," Harry said. He leaned against one of the bedposts. "Besides, she's got a point. We should talk." 

"We have nothing to talk about," Draco said, and stalked across the room to the wardrobe. He threw it open. It appeared to be functioning as a sort of catchall closet, stuffed with pillows, blankets, Quidditch gear, boxes, and a haphazard array of household items. "I wonder if I could bash the door down with a Quidditch bat?" Draco mused aloud. 

"Viktor wouldn't like it if you ruined his bat," Harry said, his mind not really on the problem of the door. Having shouted at Hermione, for which he already was beginning to feel guilty, Harry felt drained and wrung out, in no shape to ponder what exactly it would take to placate Draco's apparently boundless rage. He'd imagined seeing Draco again dozens of times since he'd left Hogwarts but the imaginary circumstances had always been quite different. He'd always been returning home in triumph from a summary defeat of the Dark Lord, and all his friends had come flooding out of the front doors of the school to hug and congratulate him. Sometimes, in the fantasies, he'd been bandaged up or limping bravely, and everyone had been very concerned. In none of the fantasies had Draco regarded him as if he were a worm and an outcast from polite society. 

"Viktor also told you, presumably, not to go out after dark," Draco said. "Tell me, Potter, were you purposely trying to top your previous thickheaded stunts, or was tonight a coincidence? I can never tell if you're trying to be stupid deliberately or if it just comes naturally." 

Harry sighed. "Look, Malfoy, you don't have to talk to me if you don't want to, but will you at least listen?" 

"No," Draco said, dragging several boxes out of the wardrobe and upending the contents at his feet. "Hey. Are these Muggle tools?" 

"Yes," Harry said. "And what do you mean, no?" 

"What do you think I mean?" Draco prodded at the tangled pile of junk at his feet -- broomstick seats with the stuffing coming out, scraps of uniform, bits of metal tools, a pestle snapped in half. "Is that a what-d'you callit, one of those things you can take hinges off with?" 

"Accio!" Harry said impatiently, snapping his fingers; the screwdriver shot out from the bottom of the pile and flew across the room. It smacked into the palm of his hand and he set it down on the bed next to him. "Yes, it's a screwdriver. I'll give it to you if you talk to me for five minutes." 

Draco had straightened up and turned to look at Harry. There was a hard, unpleasant flatness in his gray eyes. When he crossed his arms over his chest his cotton shirt pulled tight across his back, showing the angular thinness of his shoulder blades. He was still too thin - he should be back at school, Harry thought distractedly, with Madam Pomfrey to look after his recovery, not barreling around Europe on no proper sleep, no proper food either... 

"I'm not sure I want that Muggle device that badly," Draco said. His voice was deceptively soft, and Harry, attuned as he had become to every tone and shade of Draco's voice, knew that it meant that the other boy was very angry indeed. 

"It's far too big to take the hinges off anyway," Harry said. "Look, Draco - Leaving Hogwarts like that, it was the biggest mistake I'll ever make -" 

"Don't sell yourself short, Potter," Draco said. "I'm sure someone with your obvious talent for imbecilic misjudgments will be making even bigger, better mistakes in future." 

"I didn't want to leave you," Harry said. "I thought I had to." 

At that, something did flicker in the back of Draco's eyes - a sharp, irresolute fierceness, as if Harry's words had surprised him. Harry remembered putting his hands through the bars of that cage back at the Manor, the sharp quiver of surprise that had run through Draco when Harry's knife had cut into his skin. "Is that what you thought," he said. 

"Voldemort is my problem," Harry said wearily. "Not yours. You've done enough, suffered -" 

"Your problem?" 

Draco's voice was blood and honey: metallic and deceptively sweet. Carefully, he set the box he had been holding down on the nearest wardrobe shelf. He turned and walked over to Harry. Harry, leaning against the bedpost, did not shrink back as Draco came and stood in front of him, but he wanted to; some part of him entirely expected Draco to hit him again as he had done earlier. Draco made no violent move in his direction, however, merely hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his jeans and regarded Harry with half-hidden eyes and maliciously set mouth. Harry felt as if the hair were standing up along his arms and the back of his neck, and he couldn't help remembering the alleyway outside the Midnight Club, and being pushed up against that wet wall, the sense of menace he'd felt, the unease. But that was nothing to this, because now it really was Draco looking at him with a flat unforgiving gaze, the finely drawn mouth tight with furious disdain. 

"Your problem, Potter?" Draco said again. "Are you entirely sure about that?" 

"It's my responsibility," Harry said, keeping his voice as steady as possible. 

"Really." Draco raised his hand; Harry tried not to flinch, but Draco only touched his hair with a surprising lightness, pushing it back from his forehead, and grazed his thumb along Harry's scar. "Because of this?"  

"Malfoy," Harry said, his voice very quiet, "what happened to your hand?" 

Draco dropped his hand as quickly as if Harry's skin had burned him; he rocked back on his feet, his eyes narrowed. "Maybe it is your problem," he said, ignoring Harry's question completely. "After all, what's the Dark Lord to me? Only the man who forced my father to have me as part of some breeding program. Only the man who tortured me with the Cruciatus Curse until I bit through my lip because he was trying to get me to tell him where you were. Only the man who took my parents away from me as surely as he took yours - no need to gape at me, Potter, I know all about what my father gave up in the Dark Lord's service. I never had a father and thanks to him, I never had a mother either, but you're right, of course, the Dark Lord is entirely your concern." 

"I didn't know you wanted - revenge," Harry said, his mouth so dry his voice sounded indistinct to his own ears. "You never said -" 

"I didn't need to," Draco said. "You wanted it enough for the both of us and I wanted what you wanted. But that was when I thought I would be a part of whatever you accomplished." His slender shoulders lifted in a shrug; Harry was reminded oddly of Fleur and her expressive gestures. "I know better now." 

"You are a part of whatever I do," Harry said, almost biting off the words in his urgency. "Didn't you read my letter -" 

Draco's hand slammed into the side of the bedpost so hard that Harry almost fell over. "If you ever mention that letter again," he snarled, his voice suddenly raw and uncontrolled, "I will break every bone in your body. Do you understand me?" 

Harry was too shocked to say anything. He simply stared, as Draco, looking away from him, seemed to be fighting for control, although over what emotion Harry could barely guess. For the first time Harry was able to imagine the shattering of that perfect restraint, the death of all those careful refinements and that beautifully controlled malice. It was like imagining the death of a person; it terrified him. "All right," he said finally, quietly. "I won't mention it again." 

"Good," Draco said, and his voice shook. He dropped his hand back to his side, tightening the fingers into a fist, hiding the ugly weals along the palm that Harry knew better than to ask about again. "Then we understand each other."  

"Do we?" Harry said. "Because if we're going to go on together, you and I, then we're going to have to learn to get along better than this." 

"Go on together?" Draco echoed. The gray eyes were veiled again, barely visible beneath lowered eyelashes. "What do you mean, precisely, go on together?" 

"If we're going to stand against Voldemort together," Harry said, "then we can't be fighting with each other." 

Draco looked at him incredulously for a moment, then smiled delightedly, that swift characteristic smile that lit up his face and made his eyes sparkle, a smile that felt like something tugging at the corner of Harry's own mouth, making him want to smile back, and then Draco, still smiling, said, "You thought I was going to come with you now? I'm not sure what's funnier, Potter - your endless optimism, or your boundless stupidity." 

Harry's smile vanished. "What?" 

"Well, of course you'd think that," Draco said dryly. "After all, what purpose do I have on this earth beyond following you around?" His gray eyes, up close, were shaded with an amused and tranquil blue. "I remember when I was eight years old," he added, confidentially, and Harry, bewildered, felt the confiding and gentle tone like pain, as the memory of past and lost intimacy is always painful. "I had a pet bird. It died. My father killed it, actually. I ran away from the Manor. My father sent the hellhounds to drag me back. They dropped me on the floor at the foot of the staircase and my father came down and knelt down over me. I thought he might pick me up, but he didn't. He said, You were wrong to run. You belong to me. You are mine, like this house, like these dogs, like the portraits on the walls. No less and no more than any of my other possessions, you belong to me. You are subject to my laws and to the Manor's laws. Fight me and I will break you. Run from me and I will bring you back. There is no part of this earth you can run to that I cannot find you, no place so distant that, finding yourself there, you will no longer be my son."" 

"But this isn't like that," Harry said. "You don't belong to me like that and I don't make you do anything you don't want to do. I'm not like your father. I'm not friends with you because you're useful. You matter to me," he said, thinking how very feeble that sounded. If only he had Draco's gift of words. "And I'm your friend because I want to be. I assumed it was the same with you. I would never want to hurt you, not deliberately." 

"I know," Draco said. "I'm sure you wouldn't. And you, I suppose, are mine as much as I am yours." The blue-gray eyes, supremely calm, were icy. "I wanted my death to mean something," he said. "And you took that away from me. Maybe you meant to, maybe you didn't. But I won't ever forgive you for it. Ever." 

Utterly bewildered, Harry stared. "I don't understand," he said. 

Draco cut him off. "You wouldn't," he said. "And it has passed the point where it matters to me whether you understand me or not." The deliberate voice was elegant, the words carefully chosen; Harry wondered if Draco had rehearsed this particular speech, or if it was simply that in times of stress he reverted to his Malfoy upbringing and the carefully cultivated ancestral graces that kept real emotion at bay. "I remember when you said you didn't choose the connection we had, it was forced on you..." The careful voice stumbled a little, but Draco caught himself and went on with perfect clarity, "I should have listened then. I didn't. But you were telling the truth, and I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful for a lot of things, Potter. And I will miss you," he said, "when I can," and he stopped, not as if he had nothing else to say, but as if he could not find the words to go on. 

"Miss me?" Harry echoed. "But I'm not going anywhere." 

"I am," Draco said. "Tomorrow. I'm going back home. You and Hermione can go on together. I won't try to stop you. I promised her I'd find you, and we've found you. My responsibility in this matter is discharged. I intend to return to England by myself." 

Harry felt his knees give; he slid down the bedpost and found himself, to his surprise, sitting on the floor. He felt as if he had just been running down the stairs from Gryffindor Tower, shrugging his cloak on, late to breakfast as he often was, and just as he was about to put his foot down on the last step a black pit had opened up at his feet and he'd toppled into it without warning or even enough time to cry out in surprise. He looked up at Draco, but from this vantage point the other boy's face was in shadow: he could see him only in shades of light hair and pale skin and dark clothes. "I could stop," Harry said. "I could come back with you..." 

"And leave Ron, and your revenge, and all that? Could you really?" 

Harry couldn't pretend. "No. I have to go on." 

"I know," Draco said. "I'm not asking you to come with me. I don't even want you to come with me. As I said, we are not without choices, and this is what I choose. I chose you as a friend, and I can retract that choice by my own free will. You don't have to pretend that you need me to come with you," and for a moment he almost sounded amused, but then it wasn't really amusement at all. "I would just -" 

Harry interrupted him. He did not want to hear it. "Are you saying you no longer want to be my friend?" 

"Yes," Draco said. "It's my decision. Perhaps it's not what you want -" 

"It's not what I want." 

"-But I trust that you will abide by it." 

"I couldn't possibly," Harry said, immediately, without thinking or deliberation. 

Draco was motionless, looking down at him. The curtains stirred in the faint, cool wind from the half-open window, and the same wind ruffled Draco's hair and blew the fine bright strands across his face. His eyes held no light of their own, only reflected light from the lamps in the room, and if there were any pity or regret or tenderness or remembered kinship in them, Harry could not see it. He could see only the tension in the thin shoulders, the shadow-hollowed eyes, the downturned curves of the dispassionate mouth. "I'm asking you," Draco said. 

"I can't," Harry said. "If I said I could I'd be lying." 

The tension went out of Draco's shoulders; he looked down, as if he were gazing at himself, at the blood still splashed on his boots and trousers, the wreck of his clothes, the ruin of his beautiful hands. "You won't even do that for me," he said. "Not even that." 

"No," Harry said. 

"Then," Draco said, "I suppose we are at an impasse, Potter," and he sat down on the floor, at the opposite side of the bed's foot, leaning his back against the other bedpost. He pulled his legs up and wrapped his hands around them and rested his chin on his knees. Harry looked over at him, waiting for him to go on, but Draco was silent; there was only the faint sound of the wind coming into the room, and the shadows lengthening on the floor between Harry and the boy whose pale hair blew across his face and covered his eyes so that Harry could not see them. Over the sound of the wind Harry became aware of a faint whispering noise and realized that, as it had been promising to do all day, it had finally started to rain. 

*** 

Hermione tapped the heavy bolts holding Viktor's bedroom door closed with the tip of her wand, and they melted away. She paused a moment, hand on the door, listening for any sound from within. Silence. Perhaps they were sulking? Perhaps they'd made up and were chatting in a happy telepathic silence? Perhaps they'd ripped down the curtain rods and beaten each other to death with them? Where Harry and Draco were concerned, anything was possible. Biting her lip in trepidation, she pushed the door open. 

The lamp on the mantelpiece had burned out and the room was in shadow. Grey light poured in through the open window over the bed, along with wind and the metallic smell of city rain. For a moment she thought the room was empty and wondered wildly if they had both been desperate enough to climb out the window to get away from each other. Then her gaze slid down to the foot of the bed and she saw the two figures huddled there on the floor, wrapped in their dark cloaks, apparently fast asleep. 

There was so little light in the room that it was hard to see them properly. The faint illumination from the window stenciled them both with light, touching the edges of Harry's black hair with lighter shadow, turning Draco's fairer tangles to silver tinsel. Draco was asleep, slumped back against the right bedpost, his chest rising and falling softly as he breathed. Harry's head had fallen back against the footboard and his eyes were closed and his mouth was soft in relaxation and for a moment she just simply stood and watched them breathe in tandem: one sleeper, two bodies, she thought. 

Kneeling next to Harry, she reached to stroke his cheek, gently. She meant only to smooth his hair back and go, but when she touched him his eyes opened, slowly, the veiled lids lifting over tired green eyes. He looked young in his exhaustion, the dirt and cuts smudged darkly against his pale skin, a blue tracery of spiderweb veins visible beneath his eyes. There was a faint curiosity in his expression. "Are you all right?" 

"I'm fine," she whispered. "When did you two fall asleep?" 

"Two hours ago, maybe three," Harry said, fighting back a yawn. "I've just been dropping off and waking up again. Listening to the rain. I'm glad you came back," he said, and smiled at her. It was a dejected smile, a little disbelieving - Ron had smiled at her like that, she remembered, the first time they'd seen each other again, sixth year, after they'd broken up; less a happy smile than a rueful admission that sometimes life didn't turn out the way you wanted it to. She wondered what Harry been sitting here thinking about. He looked a little dazed, as if he'd lost something extremely important and was still trying to remember where he'd last seen it. "I appreciate what you tried to do," he said. "Even if it didn't really work." 

"It didn't?" Hermione tried to keep the surprise out of her voice. "Harry...if you want we can go into the living room and talk." 

"I can't," he said, and slid his eyes sideways. She followed his gaze and saw that he was looking down at Draco. When she had first come in she had thought that the boys were leaning on each other, but had realized as she came closer than it had merely been a trick of the shadows. Draco was in fact leaning away from Harry, his head cradled against his own arm, braced against the foot of the bed. But his other arm, his free arm, was extended towards Harry, and his left hand gripped the sleeve of Harry's cloak tightly, his fingers so intricately knotted into the material that Harry could not possibly have stood up or drawn his cloak away without waking the other boy. 

"I thought you said you hadn't made up," Hermione said. 

"We haven't," Harry said. "He told me he never wanted to talk to me again, and then he sat down and fell asleep. I started to get up but he grabbed my cloak. I thought he'd woken up but he hadn't. He was still asleep. He must have been really tired," Harry added, "to fall asleep like that." 

"He hasn't been sleeping much lately," Hermione said softly. 

"Well," Harry said, "I'll just sit here then. I don't mind." 

Hermione looked from Harry to Draco. Even asleep, Draco seemed to have arranged himself elegantly, his hair tousled just right, the curve of his arm just so, whereas Harry always slept as if he lay where someone had tossed him. Draco had the charm and the physical beauty, but Harry would always be, to her, the more beautiful. Draco was the graceful one, but Harry had grace, grace in the sense she had learned about as a child: innocence that inspired mercy, courage that merited compassion. What she had said to him before was true. She could never have hated him. 

"I love you," she said. 

He smiled at her, a tired smile but a real one, and she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the mouth. She meant it as a gentle kiss, but his mouth opened under hers and she felt her nerve endings spark. His lips were as soft as she had remembered and he still tasted faintly of chocolate. His left hand came up to cradle her face, although he kept his right arm where it was, with Draco holding on to him, and she felt somehow as if she were kissing them both and it was a very odd feeling although not entirely unpleasant and she pulled back, suddenly afraid that they would wake Draco up and precipitate what promised to be a very bizarre scene. "I should go," she said. 

"Well, now I'm not going to get back to sleep," said Harry, although he sounded amused rather than cross. "I don't suppose you want to tell me what that was for?" 

"No," she said, and stood up. "It'll do you good to wonder," and with that, she walked out of the room, and closed the door behind her. When it clicked shut, she leaned against it, closing her eyes. 

Because her eyes were closed, she heard the noise before she saw them: the sound of footsteps on the hallway's wood floor. Her eyes flew open and she sucked in a startled breath of absolute horror at finding herself surrounded. She fumbled for the knob of the door behind her but there were already rough hands on her arms, jerking her forward. A hand clapped over her mouth, cutting off her scream, and she bit at the fingers but it was too late: something heavy and hard came down across the back of her head, and the world exploded into a fragmenting kaleidoscope of shapes and colors before fading entirely to black. 

*** 

It had been raining steadily for twenty minutes already when Blaise landed her broomstick in front of Pansy Parkinson's house, but she stood on the gravel walkway in front of the door anyway, reluctant to go up and knock. 

Nouveau riche, her parents called the Parkinsons, their tone distasteful, and it was evident even from the outside of Pansy's house that the Parkinsons' wealth was new rather than inherited. Despite, or perhaps because of, the two huge stone griffins (rampant, with heraldic shields) that guarded the front door, the enormous house looked somehow cheap and tawdry - the two awkward modern wings that had been slapped on at either side stuck out like sore thumbs, and the enormous brass P's that served as door handles were just... 

"Hideous," Blaise muttered, wrinkling up her nose. At least the grounds were beautiful. Lawns fell away to a small lake in the distance, and she could see the shadowy copses of trees dotting the hillsides: slender birches, attenuated larches, stripped and elegant and dripping with rain. The air smelled wet and heavy, sharp with dampness and wet bare wood. 

Blaise sighed to herself. The truth was, she did not want to go inside; she did not want to face Pansy; she did not want to do any of the things Ginny had asked her to do. And yet, somehow, she felt she had to. Partly because it would help Draco - and she did love him, although standing here somehow she found it hard to conjure his face out of the shadows and the falling rain - and partly because Ginny had asked her to, and while she felt she owed the other girl nothing, she also felt a strangely perverse desire to prove herself. 

It was inexplicable - prove herself to a Gryffindor, a girl younger than herself! And yet - Hermione had said to Blaise, I trust you, but Ginny's face had showed her open disbelief and her mistrust and finally, a doubtful hope. If Blaise turned back now she would only be fulfilling Ginny's expectation that she would fail, and that she refused to do. 

She propped her broomstick against one of the griffin statues and ran up the stairs, her yellow raincloak as wet and heavy as drenched carpeting. The doorknocker was brass and very heavy, carved in the shape of an eagle's head holding a ring in its beak. Blaise's wet fingers slipped on it at first, but on the second try she managed to lift it. Its fall sent a great echoing reverberation through the house. 

There was no reply. Blaise waited a minute, two; then leaned back and looked up at the house again. Lights burned in the upstairs windows and some of the downstairs as well. Someone must be home, then, and surely they could spare a house-elf to open the front door, even if they weren't expecting visitors. Annoyed now, she reached out for the knocker again - 

The door swung open before her fingers could close on their target. She stepped back, uncertainly, rain dripping from the hood of her cloak and running, cold, down into the open neck of her dress. She blinked, clearing the water from her eyes, and stared. 

The entryway was full of candles. They burned, high and hot, giving off a strange gold light, and in the center of that gold light, his hand on the open door, stood Seamus Finnigan. Blaise felt her mouth open of its own accord; what on earth was he doing here? And in those clothes, they looked fifty years out of date - those boots, that long tailored black cloak, the white shirt under it, so odd against all his pale hair and lightly freckled skin and what on earth was that splashed all over his cuffs, was it red ink ...? And why was he looking at her like that? 

She had no idea, of course, how she looked to him. The darkness behind her, her slim Chaser's body wrapped in the familiar yellow cloak - because Seamus did remember it, as he remembered everything about the girl he'd loved, so Tom remembered it too - and the poppy-red hair escaping from the hood, streaming in long soaked strands down over her shoulders, plastered to her throat, her face in shadow under her hood. 

He caught her to him so fast that she had no time to exclaim in surprise; his right arm went around her, his other hand sliding up under her hood to run itself over the wet planes of her face, her damp hair. The look on his face was indescribable - a glazed sort of desperate hunger, as if he were holding himself back, but just barely. She could feel the tremors running through the tense young body pressed against her, and the wild hard beating of his heart. "I knew it," he hissed under his breath, "I knew you couldn't stay away...." 

Oh, bloody hell, Blaise thought, mortification mixing with her horror. He thinks I'm Ginny. 

"Seamus," she said, and oddly, his body relaxed at that, as if he were surprised to hear her say his name. "Seamus, I'm not Ginny. It's me, Blaise, so..." His grip on her relaxed further, although he did not release her. Blaise bit her lip. This was certainly very awkward. Perhaps he had been drinking? "Mistake anyone could have made, really," she assured him. "Is...is Pansy anywhere about?" 

It was a moment before he replied. "You're not Virginia?" was all he said, and Blaise blinked. Did anyone actually call Ginny that? Well, apparently Seamus did. There was no accounting for boyfriends. 

"No," she said lightly, "although after a greeting like that, I can't understand why she ever dumped you. I wouldn't have thought you had it in you, Seamus. You always seemed so stolid." She tipped her head up towards him, and her hood fell back, exposing her face. "Appearances can be deceiving, I guess." 

At that, he smiled, his soft mouth curving upward suddenly into a hard malicious grin. He leaned towards her, his pale curling hair falling forward over his forehead, and a spark of apprehension lit in the back of her throat, making her swallow hard. 

"You have no idea," he murmured, and, still holding her where she was, his free hand came up to trace again the contours of her face, the shape of her mouth. "Perhaps you are not her," he said, "but you'll do just as well for the moment. In fact," he said, raising his hand, a gesture which slammed the front door closed so hard that the hinges shook, "in fact, you'll do very well indeed..." 

*** 

A muffled noise woke Harry: it sounded like a bag of wet sand striking against a wooden surface. Blearily, he pried his eyes open and looked around. 

Surely it couldn't have been more than a few minutes since Hermione had left. Draco, however, was apparently now awake, and was several feet away, down on his hands and knees, trying to get something out from under the bed. Harry rubbed his eyes. "Did you drop something?" he asked. "I thought I heard a noise." 

"Go back to sleep," Draco said ungraciously, and dragged what he had been looking for out from under the bed. It was his sword, the one Sirius had given him. The dark steel seemed to part the moonlight, like the gleam of a fish's back breaking the surface of river water. "I'll be out of your hair in less than a minute." 

"You're not still blithering about leaving, are you?" Harry got slowly to his feet, yawning. Being so very tired had the effect of making him feel a little drunk. "I thought maybe you'd have slept that off." 

"Right, because, you know, I didn't mean it in the first place. I was just being melodramatic for kicks." Draco straightened up. "Get out of my way, Potter." 

Harry realized that he had, whether deliberately or inadvertently he wasn't sure, put himself between Draco and the door. 

"No," he said. 

Draco paused and blinked at him. He had slept oddly on his hair and it was sticking up wildly all around his head; in another situation, Harry would have been tempted to laugh. "What do you mean, no?" 

"If you want to leave you'll have to go through me," Harry said. 

"Potter." Draco looked pained. "Tell me you're not really doing this. 'If you want to leave you'll have to go through me?' Who says that? This is just embarrassing." 

"I don't care," Harry said, and found that he didn't. Far from feeling mortified, he felt merely resolved, absolutely adamant, and it was nice, finally, to feel something that wasn't subject to question. "Hit me if you want. You already did once today." 

"And then what? You'll hit me back and we can scrap like we used to, make each other bleed? And what does that prove? This denial problem of yours is becoming tedious. Just get out of the way, Potter, it makes me sick to look at you." 

"Then look at something else," Harry said. "I don't care - you're not going. I don't even care what you stay for, it doesn't have to be me, but this is where you should be -" 

"Because you say so?" Draco took a step forward. His eyes were flat, glittering with fury. "Get out of my way." 

"No," Harry said, again. 

"Move, Potter," Draco said, and tried to step around Harry; his shoulder knocked Harry's, and Harry, already strung up and tense, threw out an arm to block his way. Draco moved to shove him sideways, and Harry pulled back so hard that he toppled over; he grabbed at Draco, and they went over together, landing on the carpet in an unpleasant and awkward heap, the sword clattering to the floor just before Harry. 

"Ouch - ouch!" Harry yelped as Draco's sharp elbow dug into his arm. He had landed with Draco on top of him and crosswise, and it hurt. "Malfoy -" 

Draco, going very pale, pulled back. "Are you all right - are you cut, are you hurt?" 

"No, I'm fine. Your elbow -"  

The pallor vanished, followed by a flood of angry red. "Potter, you stupid bastard," Draco snarled, and started to get to his feet. 

Harry, moving with a greater speed than he would have thought himself capable of, threw out a hand and caught hold of the front of Draco's shirt and hung on like grim death. "I said you weren't going anywhere," he panted, "and you aren't." 

"Let me go." Draco was panting too, the breath knocked out of him by the fall and his own blind fury. "I said let me go, Potter!"  

"Don't call me that."  

Draco spat at him. "Harry."  

"Swear you won't run if I let you go."  

'I won't swear anything of the sort."  

"I'm happy to stay here all night like this. It's more uncomfortable for you than it is for me."  

Draco changed tack. "I thought you said you were still my friend," he said, his voice acidly bitter, "I thought you were going to let me have a choice -"  

'I don't know if we're friends. I don't know anything for sure, except that you can't leave like this."  

"I can do whatever I want!"  

'No,' Harry said, "you can't."  

"What gives you the right to tell me what to do?" Draco snarled.  

"I love you," Harry said. "That's what."  

Several things happened after that in quick succession. Draco's eyes went almost impossibly wide and his mouth dropped open; Harry had never seen him look like that, and in another situation he would probably have found it funny. He didn't now. He found it even less funny a moment later, when Draco, going rigid all over, jerked away from Harry so violently that his shirt tore. His face was a white mask of astonishment and dawning anger. 

"That,' he hissed, glaring at Harry, "is so - you're so - that's so bloody unfair!" and his voice cracked on the last word, but before Harry had a chance to respond the bedroom door tore off its hinges with an explosive screech of splintering metal and shattering wood. 

It crashed to the floor an inch from Harry's feet, sending dust and splinters flying through the air. There was the sound of shouting, and a moment later hands had caught hold of Draco and flung him off Harry. He hit the far wall and crumpled; Harry began to struggle to his feet, but one set of hands caught hold of his arms, while another hand pressed a sharp blade to his throat. Something dark was flung over his eyes, cutting off his vision. "Get his hand - his right hand," he heard a voice bark just by his ear, and his wrist was grabbed and held. He felt himself being pressed back against the floor, the hilt of the sword jamming painfully into his back. He flinched, and the grip on his arm tightened. "Move," said the voice, "and I'll cut both your throats - starting with your friend's..." 

*** 

And that's it - until after OotP, and let us all join in a group prayer that Draco survives that volume intact. I for one am looking forward to having new muchly! And I can't wait to incorporate cool new spells and magical minutae into my fic. If there are parts of OotP that contradict DV backstory, I'll just be labeling this as an AU; hope that's okay with you folks. Next chapter: Hermione is kidnapped and taken to Voldemort's fortress; Harry and Draco must struggle to go after her and keep their own relationship from wobbling entirely out of control; Ginny is ready for her showdown with Tom, but is he ready for her? - not to mention that Viktor is none too pleased that Harry trashed his apartment, while Hermione wishes Rhysenn would wear a bit more clothing. Honestly. 

*** 

I couldn't code this in, but Nanami did a beautiful manga of this last scene. I thought it would interrupt the narrative to put it in the middle, but you must see it: it's here. 

*** 

Harry's dream about being dead and seeing Draco in the Manor: I actually did write it, and cut it from the narrative because it was both too depressing, and fairly irrelevant in its entirety. However if you do want to read it, it's here. 

*** 

References: 

Sic oculus, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat : "Such eyes, such hands, such looks." From the Aeneid. 

Take heed; for I hold vengeance in my hand, to hurl upon their heads that break my law: Adapted from : 

Take heed; for he holds vengeance in his hand, To hurl upon their heads that break his law. Shakespeare, Richard III. 

"I have learned to hate all traitors..." Aeschylus. 

"Desire is a tyrannical master": Socrates. I seem to be in some Classics phase. 

'Denn die Toten reiten schnell: The dead travel fast. From Dracula. 

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Traditional proverb. 

Fleur's French lullaby is traditional and translates thusly (with many, many thanks to Glowfrog for the lyrics): 

To the clear fountain 

I went to walk 

I found the water so beautiful 

That I bathed in it. 

Under the leaves of an oak tree 

I let myself dry 

On its highest branch 

A nightingale was singing. 

I have loved you for a long time 

I will never forget you 

I have loved you for a long time 

I will never forget you. 

The Romanian spoken by Draco and the vampires in the street scene: If you think it is easy to find random Romanian speakers to help you with your fanfic, it ain't. It's also a long scene, so the translated version is available here , with the Romanian rendered as English in italics. 

"Your definition of fine is obviously not the same as mine" - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. 

Chapter 14_1