Chapter Fourteen- Blood of the Founders  

Draco did not move as Slytherin took another step back, away from the spot where Harry lay on the floor, on his side, his head on his arm. He looked as if he were asleep. His glasses were still on. Draco thought that didn´t look very comfortable, and would have knelt down and taken them off, except that he was hampered by the fact that he couldn´t move. He stood where he was as the bloodstained sword dropped out of his loosening fingers and clattered on the clear adamantine floor. Draco didn´t hear it. He was looking at Harry. 

<He saw Harry when he was eleven years old, sitting astride his broomstick, reaching his hand out for the Remembrall, telling Draco to give it back, the clear light of dislike and defiance burning in the back of his green eyes> 

Slytherin took a step forward over Harry where he lay on the floor, and came up to Draco. He took him by the arms and seemed to be saying something to him. Whatever it was, he was saying it very loudly. Draco looked at him without expression; at the center of the static motionless whirlpool he had fallen into, there was no room for any words. He heard no part of what was said to him, nor did he care. It didn´t matter. 

<He saw Harry on one side of a cage whose bars were made of light. And Harry slashed his palm open with a knife that flared silver in the darkness, and held his bloody hand through the bars, his face white with pain and determination> 

Slytherin shook him, hard, hands on his shoulders, and the next words he spoke broke in through the confusion flooding Draco's mind like pebbles striking through water. "Don´t tell me you never wished he was dead," he said. 

<He saw Harry standing at the edge of the quarry, half-transparent with the stars shining through the outline of his hair and face and hands and Harry took a step towards him. You wouldn´t hurt me, he said> 

"Ungrateful child," said the Snake Lord. Draco felt Slytherin´s grip on his arms loosen as he stepped back and looked from his Heir, to Harry, and back again, and smiled a smile laced with poison. "Wherever he is gone now," he said, indicating Harry with a jerk of the chin, his eyes on Draco, "remember that it was your hand that sent him there." 

And having released his grasp, he turned his back on Draco and walked towards the wall. The dark opening appeared, and he vanished through it. 

Now Draco did move. Not so much out of volition as out of the fact that his legs had given out. He hit the floor of the cell on his hands and knees, and crawled to kneel next to Harry. He reached to touch Harry´s shoulder, to straighten the dark head, turning Harry´s face towards him. As he did so he saw that his own hands were splashed with tiny flecks of blood and the blood came off on Harry where he touched him. 

"Harry," he said. It was reflexive. Not quite having managed to accept it, he still assumed Harry was already dead. And yet it was impossible. Surely, if Harry was dead, he would feel it, surely that part of Harry he had carried inside him since the Polyjuice potion had linked them together would die, would sputter and be extinguished, and, having dwelled as two persons in one skin for these past months, surely he would feel that amputation with the keen pain of a physical wound. Instead, all he felt was a pattern of this deadly numbness that seemed to go on and on and on without stopping. 

Don´t tell me you never wished he was dead. 

He remembered standing on the Quidditch pitch, fifth year, and the crowds shrieking in the stands as Harry landed, the sunlight striking sparks off the Snitch in his upraised hand, and Harry smiling, looking towards Ron and Hermione in the stands, smug in his victory. He remembered Dex Flint saying "You´re an exceptional Seeker, Malfoy, the best we could hope for, but Potter will always be just that little bit better than you." And he remembered loathing Harry for that, and maybe he had wanted him dead, and over such a stupid thing, such a stupid little thing as Quidditch. 

A coldness seemed to be spreading out from his stomach, coupled with nausea, and he fought it down, not thinking about watching Hermione run towards Harry across the grass in front of Slytherin´s castle and hurl her arms around him, even though Draco was the one who had rescued her, Harry hadn´t done much of anything but stand there, and even with love potion in her veins it still wasn´t enough, it was never enough, and had he hated him then, had he wanted him dead, had he wished it? 

He felt his own voice bubble up from his throat as if he had no control over it. "Harry." 

And Harry moved. His eyelids flickered and raised themselves, his eyes widened, and he looked around him, as if he had just woken up from a dream. 

Draco felt his hand spasmodically close on Harry´s shoulder, fingers digging in. Harry´s eyes flicked to his. They were wide, the green irises peculiarly lambent, like far-off and unreachable water. "I don´t feel anything," Harry said, and the blood ran out from under his body across the floor, more scarlet than the Gryffindor lion, crimson jewelry against the adamantine blue. "Did...did it miss me?" 

Draco remembered the sensation of his fist striking against Harry´s chest as the sword buried itself to the hilt there. He said, rather wildly, "Yes. Yes, it must have." 

Harry´s eyes narrowed. "You´re lying." His voice was bizarrely steady. "I felt it go through my chest." He coughed. "Your hands are all bloody," he said. 

Draco looked down at his hands, then back at Harry. Pressure like a shriek of anguish beat behind his eyes. Somehow it seemed very important to him to stay as calm as possible and not alarm or startle Harry, who perhaps had gone to a place where pain couldn´t reach him. It seemed to him almost as though if he could keep Harry from knowing how badly he had been, must be, hurt, then the hurt, ignored, might go away. He remembered suddenly Helga´s voice, which was like Ginny´s, speaking to him in that vaguely gray place of shadows, Be kind to him. He is only a child, and he has his death wound. 

"It´s all right," he said to Harry. His hands went to his own throat, and undid the bronze pins that held his cloak together. He took it off, folded it flat, and slid it under Harry´s head. Harry didn´t say anything. Nor did he move, only his eyes, passing over Draco, over the room itself, as if these were things he had never seen before. He was very white. 

"Just stay still," Draco said. He wished desperately there were someone else here with him. Sirius, or Hermione, or someone, as he had when faced with the shades of Harry´s parents. Knowing that while he had words for almost every occasion - brittle words and clever words and words that cut like steel - he had no words to comfort or to console, had never been taught comfort or consolation or the telling of necessary lies. You´ll be fine, he should say. Hang in there, Potter. But he couldn´t. 

"I am dying. That sword can kill anything," Harry said then, and his restless eyes stopped roaming and fixed on Draco. "I must be dying. But I don´t feel like I´m dying. I just feel cold." 

"I could get you something--a blanket -" 

Harry´s hand closed on Draco´s arm, above his wrist, just below where the Dark Mark burned like a black sun on his forearm. "Don´t. Stay here." He half-closed his eyes. "Something´s happening to me." 

Dazedly, and with a curious certainty, Draco thought, but it can´t happen now, not with me watching. As if anxious vigilance could hold back the inevitable, as if his own gaze was all that stood between Harry and death. He could feel a pulse beating weakly in the hand that held his wrist, and wondered dimly if he would feel the moment that it stopped. He wanted to pull away from Harry´s grasp on him, take him by the shoulders and shake him, shake him as if he were merely falling asleep and could be startled awake, shake the life back into him. But you couldn´t go around shaking people who had just been stabbed through the heart. He heard his own breath catch, as if he couldn´t quite get enough air, and there was a burning sensation behind in his eyes, as if they had been rubbed with sandpaper, and the faint pulse in the hand that held his arm beat and beat and beat steadily and then not so steadily as it suddenly sped up like a jackhammer and he nearly jumped back, shocked, as Harry´s eyes flew open and he gasped suddenly, his hand tightening convulsively and with incredible force on Draco´s wrist, nails cutting into his skin. 

Draco stared. Instead of leaving Harry´s face, color seemed to be flooding into it, a hectic red like a fever, the shades of life returning, the vivid eyes, and the chiaroscuro of the skin. His face was as it had been in the minutes before the sword ran through him - anxious, flushed, alive. A shudder passed through him, his shoulders lifting off the floor -- he jumped as if something had stung him, and with a hitching gasp - sat up. 

Draco grabbed at his shoulders, trying to steady him. But Harry didn´t need steadying. Draco felt the wetness of the cloth under his own fingers where blood had soaked through the back of Harry´s shirt. And yet. Harry was sitting upright, wide-eyed, gasping a little. They stared at each other, both dazed with the impossibility of what was happening. Harry couldn´t be sitting up, he couldn´t, it was sheer impossibility. By all rights he should be dead, and by the look on his face, he knew it. 

Harry stared at Draco. "It went through me -" he said. "It went right through me -" 

Draco tightened his grip on Harry´s shirt, the blood-soaked material knotting between his fingers. "Can you breathe? You can breathe?" 

Harry looked bewildered. "I can breathe fine." He blinked up at Draco. The ghostly look was gone from his eyes. He no longer looked as if he were gazing at some invisible country no one else could see. There was a vivid high color in his face, as if he had been playing Quidditch in cold weather, but there was something missing from his expression and Draco realized with a jolt that he no longer looked as if he were feeling any pain. 

"Harry," he heard himself say, "What´s going on?" 

Harry shook his head, then let go Draco´s arm, and his fingers went to his shirt, scrabbling at the buttons, nearly tearing the material. It came off and he had a t-shirt on under it. There was a rip in the shirt where the blade had gone through, just over his heart, and the rip was lined with blood. With shaking hands, Harry took the hem of the shirt in his grasp and pulled it up to his chin. And looked down at himself, eyes wide and brilliant with disbelief. 

The Epicyclical Charm glittered on his chest, at the end of its chain, just above his heart, where a dark red line was all the evidence that remained to show that a blade had been driven in there with enough force to pierce the cage of his ribs and drive itself out through his back. 

And as he looked, and Draco looked, in utter insurmountable astonishment, the mark faded even more. Now it was a faint red line. 

Harry spun around, craning his head over his shoulder. "My back. Look at my back." 

Draco looked. The back of Harry´s shirt was cut and bloody, but -- "Nothing." His voice sounded faint and tinny to his own ears. "Not any mark at all." 

Harry turned, tugging his shirt back down. His face was childlike with disbelief. "It doesn´t make any sense." He looked down at his t-shirt, and touched his fingers to the bloody rip in the cloth. He began to get to his feet, and staggered. Draco stood up himself, and caught Harry´s arm. Harry let him, seemingly too bewildered and preoccupied to even notice the contact. 

"Harry, maybe you shouldn´t -" 

"I´m fine." Harry gave a little choking noise between a laugh and a gasp. "I´m fine, you saw me. What happened?" He turned to Draco, as if seeing him for the first time. "Was it some kind of trick?" 

Draco looked at him with wary and astonished concern. "Don´t you remember?" 

"I do remember. That´s the problem." His eyes suddenly widened, staring over Draco´s shoulder. Draco let go of him and watched him as he walked a few steps away and knelt down next to Slytherin´s sword, which lay where Draco had dropped it, still scarlet with his blood. Harry reached out a hand, touched the blade, and then retracted his fingers, staring. When he got to his feet and turned around to look at Draco his eyes were burning with an intense green fire. "I felt it go through my heart," he said. "It went right through my heart but it didn´t kill me. What does that mean?" 

Draco shook his head. He couldn´t shake the feeling that this was some peculiar dream he was having and that Harry really was dead. People´s minds did snap when events became too much for them to cope with, didn´t they? Perhaps they´d let him have his father´s old cell in St. Mungo´s. "I don´t know," he said, with complete honesty. "You are the Boy Who Lived. It´s not your first time... surviving something." 

"This is different," said Harry, and the dazed wonderment made his eyes look cloudy. "I felt it go through me. Like white fire." Suddenly he reached down and seized the sword by the hilt. He stood up, and held it out towards Draco, point-first. 

"Do it again," he said. 

Draco stared at him, honestly befuddled. "Do what again?" 

Harry looked determined. His eyes burned with a green and stellar intensity. "I want to see what happens." 

"What happens if ...." Draco´s voice trailed off as he gazed at Harry. "You´re not serious." 

"I am. Run me through again." 

"No," said Draco, backing away. He couldn´t retreat very far though, because there was a wall behind him. He felt it against his back, holding him up, with a certain relief. 

"Come on. If it didn´t kill me once..." 

"No. You´ve lost a lot of blood, you´re not rational." Draco remembered being in the infirmary at Hogwarts after Buckbeak had slashed him with his talons, the sleeve of his robe soaking wet with blood and Madam Pomfrey looking at him with weary concern. Do you feel tired? Weak? Are you seeing spots in front of your eyes? Hallucinations? "Harry... you should sit down." 

Harry´s chest was rising and falling as if he had been running. "I don´t want to sit down. I feel like I could run twenty miles without stopping. I don´t feel weak at all." He raised his head, and looked at Draco with the same dazed and slightly drunken look. "Nothing can hurt me." 

"You don´t know that," said Draco, half-desperately, and reached forward and knocked the sword out of Harry´s hand. Harry made no effort to hold onto it, and it clattered to the ground between them. 

"Look, it didn´t kill me the first time." 

"And this makes you anxious to experience it again?" 

"I want to know," said Harry. "What´s wrong with me? I should be dead. That should have killed me. It didn´t. I want to see what happens if you do it again." 

"You already saw it once," said Draco. "Look, I´m sorry if you got distracted and missed it. Once was enough for me. No repeat performances." 

Harry just looked at him. His shirt had not yet dried and trails of blood like unraveling crimson threads stole down his right arm. And yet his face was full of color and life, his eyes bright - too bright. He looked like someone with a fever. This was not Harry, not calm sensible Harry who was as far from having a death wish as anyone Draco had ever met. 

His next thought broke from him without any effort on his part to control or hold it back. Think about what you´re asking me to do. 

It took a moment for Harry to react. He blinked, and seemed to be fighting something down - anger or disappointment or fear or even tears, it was impossible to tell. "I need to know," he said, his voice rasping through his throat. "If I can die." 

"I can answer that for you without any messy sort of impalings," said a voice, silky but steel-spined, from the corner of the room. "The answer is yes." 

Draco whirled and stared. And felt his mouth fall open. 

Ranged against the far wall were six tall figures in belted robes. They had heads, arms, and legs, but were not human. Their skin was scaley, dark gray and patchy in places, their eyes red and whirling, their heads knobbed and lumpy. The tallest of them stood in front, and in its hand it held cupped a single flame, that flickered with an emerald fire. It seemed to be smiling, whether at him or at Harry it was hard to tell. He knew without knowing how that this was the one who had spoken, and his belief was confirmed when it spoke again, its voice like iron now. "You can die, Harry Potter. And if you let your friend stab you again, you will." 

*** 

"I´m sorry," Ben said again. 

Ginny barely heard him. She had her hands over her face and was staring at the darkness behind her lids, at nothingness. How could I have been so stupid? she thought. 

"I could give you something to bring back with you," she heard him say, his voice tinged with pity and anxiety. "Weapons...?" 

"Weapons aren´t any good without someone to use them," said Ginny, and took her hands away from her face. "Never mind. It´s not your fault." She took a deep breath and Ben´s face swam into focus. She couldn´t quite read his expression. Which wasn´t that surprising, considering that she didn´t, in fact, know him at all. His surface resemblance to Harry was so strong that she somehow felt that he could solve things for her, as Harry had always solved things for all of them. But he wasn´t Harry; he wasn´t even anyone she knew. She got to her feet, feeling suddenly miserable and desperate to get away. "There´s nothing you can do, then. I should go back." 

"Wait." Ben caught at her arm as she stood up from the table. "Don´t tell me there´s nothing I can do. It sounds like you´re fighting a losing battle and -" 

"It´s not your battle." Disappointment beat behind her eyes like a drumbeat. 

"It is, though. Slytherin killed my father, remember." 

Ben spoke very quietly, and Ginny glanced up at him. He had a bit of the expression that Harry got when he was talking about his parents. Closed off. 

"There’s a reason I´m here," he said. "Waiting here. In front of this castle." 

"I know...I´m sorry. How did... what about your mother?"  

"I was so young when she died, I only know what people told me," said Ben. "It was right around the beginning of the war. The Snake Lord had just come to power and was wreaking havoc on the wizarding world. Recruiting giants and dragons to serve him, destroying whole armies, making them vanish -" 

Vanish . 

Ginny suddenly sat up so quickly that she knocked her chair over. It clattered on the floor behind her. She was hearing Fleur´s voice in her head. 

"Ben," she said hoarsely. 

He looked up at her. 

She was gripping the edge of the table so hard her hands hurt. "Fleur - a friend of mine once told me that Slytherin had made an entire army vanish into thin air," she said. "Is that true? Was it more than once?" 

Ben replied slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. "It was just once," he said. "It was when I was ten years old. An army was sent out from Ravenclaw, a company of about two hundred and fifty, men and warriors and beasts. They never arrived at their destination." 

"Ben," said Ginny again. "What if the reason they never arrived wasn´t because Slytherin made them vanish. What if it was because we brought them forward into the future?" 

Ben goggled at her. Really goggled. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open and she realized that she had, truly, astonished him. Amid the whirling chaos of her thoughts, she felt somewhat proud about this. 

"But..." he began, still staring. "We can´t...go back...I mean...and...it would change history." 

"No, it wouldn´t," said Ginny staunchly. "It´s already happened." 

There was another long silence while Ben stared at her across the table. Rather like Harry´s did, his hair was standing up around his head as if mirroring his surprise, like a crown of unruly black leaves. It was rather cute, just as it was cute on Harry. 

"How old are you?" she said abruptly. 

Ben found his voice. "That might work," he said, sounding stunned. "Your idea. It´s totally insane. But also, brilliant. And I´m twenty-two." 

"That´s kind of old," she said, without thinking. 

Ben looked at her quizzically. "Old for what?" 

"I was just thinking..." she stammered. "That I really did miss my goal by quite a few years when I tried to come back here. At least ten. I´m going to have to be a lot more careful when we go back to get the army." 

"When, not if?" Ben was smiling. "Confident, aren´t you?" 

"I have to be," said Ginny. "This is really my only hope. And if I can´t be accurate enough with the Time Turner, it´ll never work." 

"Magnifying a Time Turner´s accuracy isn´t so difficult if you have the right tools. All you have to do is accentuate the metamorphosis of the synchronicity between the temporal infrastructures." 

Now it was Ginny´s turn to goggle. 

"How do you know so much about time-travel?" asked Ginny. 

"From Helga," he said, resting his chin in his hand. "She and Rowena really helped bring me up. My own mother died when I was a baby. And Helga never had any sons, only daughters, so I think she felt a bit as if I was hers. In fact, I should show you something." 

Ginny looked after him as he got up and went into another room of the tent. When he returned, he was carrying a stack of books. She watched curiously as he sat down, and opened the topmost of the books. It was much larger than almost any book Ginny had seen before, except a few that were kept in the Antiquities section of the library and which students were prevented from touching with powerful Security Charms. The cover was of dark gold leather, stamped with gold along the spine. "You do know about the prophecies, don´t you?" he asked. 

"I know there´s a prophecy that the Heir of Slytherin will rise up and wreak havoc on the wizarding world," said Ginny reluctantly. 

"So there is," said Ben. "There´s also a prophecy that the Heir of Gryffindor will bring him to destruction, and that the Heir of Slytherin will help." 

"Don´t those run in conflict with each other?" 

Ben nodded. "That usually means that there´s some event, some kind of turning point, that could go either way. The outcome of that moment determines which prophecy is correct for your reality. It might have already happened, and it might not have. You wouldn´t know." 

"And maybe the Heir of Gryffindor that brings him to destruction isn´t Harry," said Ginny. "Maybe it´s you." 

Ben blinked, as if this had not occurred to him. "When my father died," he said slowly, "he cursed his murderer. The death-curse of a wizard with Slytherin blood is a powerful thing and they often come to pass." 

"What was the curse?" 

Ben shook his head. He had that closed look again. It was almost like seeing Draco´s expression on Harry´s face. "I don´t know - I don't think anybody is sure what his words were." 

Ginny thought it best to change the subject. Over the years, she had certainly learned that Heirs of Gryffindor tended to be very closed-mouthed when discussing how their parents were killed by wizards from the house of Slytherin. "So you can show me how to modify the Time Turner, or whatever it was you said before?" 

"That," he said, looking at the table, "is probably not the best approach.," Ginny´s heart sunk again. The plan she´d been forming in her head since Ben first mentioned what needed to be done to the Time Turner crumbled to the ground as she watched him and then he lifted us lift his hand and snapped his fingers once, hard. There was a rustle of wings, and a small apricot-colored horned owl lifted off its perch near the door with a soft whoo, and came to rest on his arm. He took a roll of parchment from the owl´s leg, smoothed it out, picked a quill up off the table, and wrote several short lines. Finished, he rolled his letter back up, tied it to his owl´s leg, and sent the bird off with another snap of his fingers. He watched it go, seeming lost in thought. 

After a moment, Ginny cleared her throat. "What are you doing?" she asked. 

"Well," said Ben, "you can´t expect me just to go a dozen years into the past with you without leaving anyone a note saying where I´m going, can you?" 

Ginny felt a huge smile begin to spread across her face. 

*** 

"The same Zonko´s pencils? The ones you used to draw the Marauder´s Map?" There was an achingly wistful tone to Ron´s voice that nearly made Sirius smile. "I can´t believe it." 

"Here," he said. "You can see them if you want." 

He pushed the small box of pencils through the gap in the wall, and saw Hermione´s small hand come forward to retrieve it. As he drew his own hand back, a flash of light caught the edge of his silver bracelet and the Vivicus charm seemed to dim for a moment. 

He seized at his wrist with his other hand, getting to his feet and staring. It hadn´t been a trick of the light - the Vivicus stone had flickered. He was sure of it. He felt his heart pound against his chest as he stared at the glowing light in the heart of the stone. It certainly wasn´t flickering any more, if anything it had grown in intensity and steadiness, the red stone shining like a small sun. Harry. 

Hermione´s voice pulled him partway out of his reverie. "Sirius," she called, her voice muffled by the stonewall between them. "Did you draw the Map?" 

"No," Sirius replied absently. "Remus did, and Peter helped. They were better draftsmen than James or I were." 

"So you don´t know how they managed to make it... come to life?" 

Sirius released his wrist and looked over towards the gap in the wall through which Hermione´s voice had come. An idea had come to niggle at the back of his brain. "Well, they stole the school floor plans, and traced them over with the Zonko´s pencils. They´ve stopped making those pencils, you know. They´re meant to make drawings come to life, but they tend to work a little too well." 

"Too well?" Ron´s voice now, sounding curious. 

"Well, they made things come to life but they worked in odd ways. So you could draw a bowl of porridge that you could actually eat, if you concentrated hard enough. But it would give you horrid stomach pangs. I could tell you a story about James and a cranberry scone, but I won´t. Or you could draw a broom you could fly on, but they did often tend to lose power in midflight. There were some nasty accidents. Why?" he added, and as the word left his lips there was a groaning, creaking sound and a section of the wall between his cell and the one holding Hermione and Ron suddenly vanished. Actually it didn´t so much vanish as swing outward with a creak as if it were hinged. Which, Sirius realized a moment later, it was. A squarish section of wall had been transformed into a door, and on the other side of the door stood Ron, and next to him Hermione, a Magical Reality pencil in her hand and an astonished look on her face. 

"I really didn´t think it would work..." she murmured, gazing upward. 

"You drew a door," said Sirius, shaking his head in amazement, although he´d long ago accepted that Hermione was a sight cleverer than anyone had a right to be. 

"It´s a bit crooked," said Ron appraisingly, stepping through it so that he was now in Sirius´ cell. Hermione looked mildly affronted. "Not that that matters - it worked," he added quickly. 

"It doesn´t really help us, though, does it," said Hermione, a bit mournfully. "I mean, we can´t draw on the bars. They´re too far apart." 

Sirius looked at them both thoughtfully. "Which one of you is the better artist?" he said. 

They both looked at him consideringly for a moment; then Hermione said, "Ron is." 

"Give him the pencils, then," said Sirius. 

Hermione obeyed and Ron stood holding the box of pencils and looking at Sirius as if he were just a bit mad. "Do you want me to draw you a cranberry scone?" he said. 

"No," said Sirius. "I want you to draw me the cell where Harry and Draco are. From memory. Do you think you can?" 

Ron glanced at Sirius and then at Hermione, who was staring at him hopefully. "I can try," he said. "Have you got any parchment?" 

Sirius shook his head. "I want you to draw it as close to life-sized as you can. On the wall, over there. And..." 

Ron looked at him. "What?" 

"Try to hurry." 

It took almost the whole box of pencils for Ron to complete the sketch. The lead in the pencils was very soft, and the wall very rough. Ron worked slowly, grinding each pencil down to its nub, scraping his fingertips against the stone until they bled. Sirius and Hermione watched as quietly as they could as a rough image of the cell took shape: the high walls, the clutter of furniture, the tapestries with their embroidered dragons and their motto In Hoc Signo Vinces. 

Finally, Ron stepped back, clutching the stub of the last a pencil in his hand. "That´s all I can do," he said. 

"All right. The power is there. I can feel it." Sirius was struck by the sensation emanating from Ron's sketch, almost as if the boy had put a little of his own magic into the drawing. It was so reminiscent of the feeling he'd had when Wormtail first handed him the Marauder's Map, the feeling that great and terrible things could happen just by using it. He glanced at the sketch and smiled as two dots labeled "Harry Potter" and "Draco Malfoy" popped into view, but felt flooded with concern when six more dots with labels like Udrovad and Fenudeel appeared on the wall. 

"What are those?" Hermione asked nervously 

"I don't know, but they're not moving," Sirius replied. He had expected Harry to be alone in the cell, perhaps with Draco, but certainly not with a contingent of Slytherin's minions. And they didn't have their wands, but if his plan worked, they would have the element of surprise. He turned to Ron and Hermione in turn and asked, "Are you ready to go through? You'll have to concentrate on their cell, your memories of it, the way it feels to stand in there and look at the walls and the ceiling. Don't think of this dungeon at all." 

"What about you? You haven't been in there, so what can you concentrate on?" Ron asked. 

"Take my hands," Sirius insisted, pocketing the last of the pencils. "My focus will be on Draco and Harry, and I think a combination of that and your efforts will pull us through." The three of them moved silently in front of the drawing, and they concentrated on the cell, and on Draco and Harry, and recalled them. Sirius could almost feel the pulse of his charm at his wrist as he concentrated on the drawing and the boys. The magic from the pencils was still there, for as he gazed at the lines of the drawing on the wall, they seemed to leap out into three dimensions, gathering reality to them. Sirius heard footsteps, which he knew were not his, and saw a faint blue glow bleed out from the drawing on the wall. 

As one, they stepped forward, closing their eyes. 

*** 

"It just never stops, does it?" said Draco resignedly, staring at the demons. "What are you all doing here?" 

"We were invited," said the head demon speculatively. 

"I didn´t invite you," said Draco positively. He turned to Harry, who was still looking dazed and a little drunk. Draco sighed inwardly. Relieved as he was that Harry wasn´t dead, he could have done without High on Life Harry at the moment. "Did you invite them?" 

Harry shook his head. Draco turned back to the demons. "I don´t suppose it would make any difference if I told you the toga party was down the hall?" 

"Funny little mortal boy," said the head demon, and Draco decided that he really didn´t like the emphasis that was put on the word mortal. "You did not summon us, or demand our presence. The sword did." 

Draco looked at the sword. So did Harry. It lay as it had, dully gleaming on the bloodstained floor of the cell. 

"Come again?" said Draco faintly. 

Maybe we should just jump them, said Harry´s voice in his head. 

Draco swiveled his head around and looked at Harry with mounting dread. He was quite sure now that something very peculiar was going on with the black-haired boy. He just wasn´t sure what. We should do what? 

Attack them. We´ve got the sword. It can kill anything. They won´t be expecting it. 

We cannot just attack them. Even Draco´s mental voice dripped icicles. They are demons from Hell. 

Harry looked unimpressed. So? 

So?! So, they´re demons from Hell! 

You say that like it means something. 

Okay, Potter. Don´t take this the wrong way, but the best thing you could do for the both of us right now is sit down on the floor and put your head in a bag. Take deep breaths and think of a nice quiet place where nothing ever happens. Weasley´s bedroom for instance. 

I bet they think they´re so great just because they´re demons, Harry said, looking resentfully across the room. Well, they´re not so great. 

Don´t mock the demons, Potter. 

Why not? Do you think they can hear us? 

No. It´s just... not very classy. 

"Are you quite finished trying to convince your friend not to attempt hacking us to pieces?" demanded the lead demon, his bonfire voice cutting into Draco´s thoughts. "I can assure you that it would be a waste of time. We are spirit, not flesh." 

"Bugger," said Draco, with feeling. "You can hear us." 

"Your telepathy? No, we cannot. It was a logical extrapolation, given the effect of the healing magic on a human, especially a rather little one like your friend there." 

"Harry is not little," said Draco indignantly, partly in defense of Harry and partly because, after all, he and Harry were the same size. If they hadn´t been, they couldn´t have been such effective opposing Seekers. A moment later, thoughts of Quidditch vanished as the import of the demon´s words hit him. "Healing magic? What healing magic?" 

He glanced over at Harry, and had to admit that he did look as though some sort of magic had thrown its glamour over him - as if a light had been turned on inside him and was shining out through the slim glove of glowing flesh that covered his bones, through his bright emerald eyes, through the brilliant patches of red darkening his tanned cheeks. 

"The flesh of a manticores heals wounds," said the head demon. "Its blood, when drunk, can revive those near death. When a human is drenched in it, as your friend here was, it imparts the special property of being able to survive one mortal blow. One mortal blow," said the demon, again. "It does not grant immortality. Only a very few kinds of magic do that." 

"So I´m not immortal," said Harry slowly, as if the words were just beginning to sink in. 

"Far from it," said the demon. "You are an ordinary mortal child. Well, there are a few things about you that stand out. That scar which connects you to the Dark Realms is very interesting and if we had more time I´d love to have a look at it, but we don´t. Maybe we will have time later. No, little Harry Potter, you are mortal, and if stabbed again, you will bleed, and you will die, as the Snake Lord knows this. This euphoria you are feeling will soon lift. It is a side effect of the manticore´s healing power, working in you." 

"But the manticore is an evil creature," said Draco, still feeling dazed. "How can its blood heal?" 

"The manticore is only an animal," said the demon, and there was a sharpness in its voice. "It is only a living being. Evil and good are the words you humans use to put a name to a purpose. But an animal is just an animal, a tool just a tool, a sword just a sword. It is the use you make of it that determines its nature. It could be said that that manticore saved the life of your friend with its own dying blood, and how did you pay it for that? With steel and poison." 

"It would have killed us," said Draco faintly, although in his ears he heard the voice of the manticore as it died, Why do you slay me, Master? It was you who made me what I am. 

"Probably," agreed the demon. "That was the purpose it was set to. To protect the Orb in its body. Because with the Orb removed, the Snake Lord once again has access to his powers. If you had died, instead of the manticore, the Orb would not now be in his possession. In a way, it could be said that you delivered it to him." 

Draco felt that this was twisting things quite a bit. Then again, nobody ever said demons played fair. "I don´t understand why the sword called you here," he said irritably. 

"Slytherin blood," said the demon, and looked pointedly at the sword, still scarlet to the hilt. "We were to be paid in the blood of a Magid of Slytherin descent, if not Slytherin himself. The sword alerted us it had taken the life of such a one. But it was wrong," the demon added, turning a gas-blue glare onto the very much alive Harry. "You´re alive." 

"I certainly am," said Harry cheerfully. "You know, you look a lot like the demon that attacked me in my Draco's bedroom not long ago. Is he one of you? Tall, rather striking fellow with no ears?" 

"You mean Strygalldwir," said the demon, looking unamused. "He is not among us. He was sent to warn you of Slytherin´s design on you but, alas, was unsuccessful." 

Draco went cold all over. "So, what, you´re here to finish the job?" he demanded. 

"Not exactly," said the demon. "We could take the life of the Gryffindor heir, certainly. But the exchange loses much of its power if the life is not offered freely. In that context, I´d like to offer you a bargain." 

"A bargain? That´s funny," Draco said, half under his breath. 

Harry spoke in his head, sounding chipper. Funny ha-ha or funny peculiar? 

Shut up, Potter, or I swear I´ll beat you like a bongo drum. 

Harry sounded sulky. Lighten up, Malfoy. 

Draco decided against lecturing Harry on the inappropriateness of lightening up when faced with demons demanding a blood sacrifice. It was quite novel being forced to be the serious one while Harry giggled his way through peril. Novel, but then again having his leg sawed off at the knee would also have been novel. He desperately wanted the old Harry back, as a calming influence. This Harry was about as calming as a small parrot that had just consumed a half pound tin of coffee beans. 

Draco´s mind darted about, seeking possible avenues of escape. He knew from his father that it was a very bad idea to make bargains with demons, or bargains with anyone. In fact Malfoys don´t bargain was one of the Malfoy family rules, ever since one of his ancestors back in 1630 had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for being made Chief Warlock, with unforeseen consequences. And wasn´t that how his father had died? Torn to pieces by a demon-Banishing spell gone wrong; he´d seen it in the Prophet. 

Come on, Malfoy. Harry again. It´s better to live one hour as a tiger than a whole lifetime as a worm. That´s an old Gryffindor saying. 

Oh yeah? Well there´s an old Malfoy saying, too. It goes "Who ever heard of a wormskin rug"? 

Do something, said Harry, sounding determined. Or I will. 

Draco took a look at Harry, blood-splattered and fiercely determined, his green eyes burning like suns. This was the Harry that had faced down Voldemort in a duel, the Harry that had killed a basilisk with a sword when he was twelve years old, the Harry who always won at Quidditch because he was just that little bit less afraid. Only that Harry faced danger because he had to; this Harry seemed...to want to. 

Draco turned back to the demons. "What kind of bargain?" 

The demon explained the original bargain between the forces of Hell and the Snake Lord. The explanation involved a certain amount of conjuring of ancient contracts with print so small that Draco imagined ants would have had a hard time reading the text. The demonic signature on the bottom was enflamed, and next to it was Slytherin's own black seal, the same skull with the serpent coming from its mouth that Draco could feel on his own left arm. 

"See, here it says clearly that if we have to make more than two trips to collect the sword, further penalties will accrue," the demon noted as Draco tried to read some of the clauses. "Then, there are interest payments, terms of use, a very specific privacy clause which has prevented us from publicizing the terms of the agreement in the Daily Prophet, and do you see this?" 

Draco squinted at the text. "The warranty disclaimer? Why would anyone sign a bargain with Hell without even a guarantee that what they were bargaining for wasn't going to break the first time he used it?" 

"He did have a thirty day trial period, and there's a pretty good indemnification clause in there," the demon insisted, sounding aggrieved. Draco shook his head in disbelief. "But all of that is from times that have passed, mortal boy. The completion of the bargain is now at issue." 

"Slytherin told me that until the Orb is opened and his life-spark released, you can´t find him, and cannot take either the sword to meet the original bargain or his life, to cover the interest and penalties." 

"He was correct," the demon said coldly. 

"He also said," Draco said slowly, "that if he freely selects and presents to you the life of a Magid Heir who has Slytherin blood, then he can retrieve his powers from the Orb and keep the sword. Is that correct too?" The demon nodded, and Draco considered the import of the contract's terms. "I know I can die, I did it last week. And you say Harry can be killed now too?" 

The demon nodded again. 

"So we have to open the Orb," said Draco slowly. 

"If you do not, we cannot take the Snake Lord, and if we cannot take him, we cannot take the sword," said the demons. "We cannot even take it from you now, or believe us, we would have done so." His voice was bitter. "We want the sword. It is our right to hold it and our obligation to claim it. We have no use for Magids, and do not want you or your friend. In exchange for the boon your mother granted our fellow, we have agreed to grant you one moment of opportunity to fulfill this bargain in the manner of your choice." 

Draco looked over at Harry. Harry was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, looking sulky, and generally being of no help. Draco turned back to the demons. "If you have no use for Magids, then why do you want Slytherin?" he demanded. 

The demon grinned, showing that in fact it had not two but three rows of razor-sharp teeth. "Vengeance," it said. "He cheated us. In Hell, his torments will be excruciating and very... extensive." 

"Good," said Draco, nodding nodded. "If we open the Orb, you will be summoned to take him?" he said. 

"Immediately," said the demons. "If you open the Orb, we will be summoned. We will reveal to you then how you. If you can cause Slytherin to return the sword to us by his own hand, then the bargain will be fulfilled, and we will take the sacrifice as you choose it. We would prefer that you allow us to take the Snake Lord. Of course, if he reaches the Orb before such a return occurs ... we will be forced to take our sacrifice as he offers it -- either your blood, or the Gryffindor´s." 

The demon´s words were cold, precise and exact. Draco turned them over in his mind. Demons, he knew, did not lie; at least not when conducting bargains, but there were often several shades of meaning to their statements. In this case, however, there seemed no choice but to trust them. 

"It´s a deal," he said. 

Behind him Harry was muttering something about people who went around making deals with demons for no good reason. He was muttering quietly, however. Earlier he had made a bit of an attempt to rush forward and Draco had stiff-armed him back into the wall, knocking the wind out of him. 

"We do realize the near impossibility of your task," said the demon, grinning with all its sets of teeth showing. "But even the sliver of a chance is better than none." 

Draco shrugged. The sword was a comforting weight in his hand. He could sense the demon’s greedy gaze upon it. "My father used to say, 'If you fall off a cliff, you might as well try to teach yourself to fly on the way down.´" 

"What does that mean?" the demon demanded, blinking. 

"No idea," said Draco. "I was hoping you would tell me." 

The demon smiled again. "You do fancy yourself clever, and so you are," it said. "If we must take an Heir in the end, I do hope it´s you," he added, looking at Draco directly. "I somehow imagine you could well keep the Master entertained. Not to mention that the eternal sunset of the damned would suit your coloring beautifully. All that black and scarlet, and your fairness and silver hair. Lovely." 

Draco wondered for a fleeting moment if the demon was hitting on him. Then he decided that that was very unlikely. It was merely trying to frighten him, and had succeeded, with a rather vivid and unpleasant mental image of a land beyond a black gate, where the sky was always blood-colored, a place much worse than the one where he had met Lily and James Potter. 

"I doubt Hell ever welcomes anyone," he said thoughtfully. Beside him, Harry looked at him, and he saw a flicker of something pass across his green eyes. 

The demon raised its hand, and gestured towards the wall. The dark opening appeared there again as it had for Slytherin. "When we are summoned again, we will be paid," said the demon. "If not with the sword, then with blood." 

They vanished, without even the decency of the * pop* of Disapparation to lessen the eerieness. 

"Well, that was informative," he said, turning around to look at Harry. And jumped as a sudden shimmering rainbow refraction painted the wall on the opposite side of the room. It blurred, and without any warning, Sirius, Ron and Hermione appeared out of the wall, stepping forward as if they stepped through a door. 

Draco blinked, but the vision stayed steady. It was Sirius, Ron and Hermione. They were filthy, but looked unharmed. He barely had a chance to get a look at them, though, before Harry bolted around him and ran towards them. Sirius, grinning hugely, threw his arms around Harry and hugged him so hard that Harry´s feet lifted up off the floor. When Sirius put him down Hermione and Ron fell on him, and they all embraced each other in a flurry of arms and excited chatter. 

Draco stood where he was, feeling awkward. He looked down at the floor and saw the sword at his feet. And blinked at it. Its hilt was devoid of any stain, as if it had drunk swallowed up the blood spilled on it. He suppressed an involuntary shudder, bent down, and took the hilt in his hand. When he straightened up, he saw that the others were still standing together. Sirius had his hand on Harry´s shoulder, and Harry was talking in a sharp, excited voice, audible even across the room, "The cloak? They took my dad´s cloak? We have to get it back -" 

"What we have to do is get out of here before his minions get back," said Sirius, trying to turn Harry around to face him, but Harry pulled out of his grasp. 

"It´s the only thing I´ve got that belonged to my father -" 

Sirius looked surprised. "Harry, this isn´t like you." 

Draco crossed the room to them before he was quite aware of what he was doing. "He´s not exactly rational," he said, meeting Sirius´ eyes, which were dark with doubt. 

"I´m fine," said Harry, flushed with anger. 

"You know you´re not." 

Sirius reached out and put his hand back on Harry´s shoulder, and this time Harry didn´t pull away. "Harry, I´m so sorry about James´ cloak. There are other things I could give you that belonged to your father, though." Now Harry did turn and look at Sirius as his godfather reached into a pocket of his trousers and drew out something about the length of his hand, which looked like an intricately decorated little silver thimble, complete with a strap. 

Harry looked at it. "Is that a thimble?" 

Sirius smiled, the lines deepening at the corners of his eyes, then handed the object to his godson. The moment it touched Harry´s hand it seemed to leap into life, and suddenly began to expand in size. Harry jumped as it grew and grew and became the scabbard for a longsword, carved all up and down with an intricate and beautifully colored design of leaves, birds and animals. 

Draco didn´t really look at it; he was looking at Harry´s face, which had gone first very red, then white, and now the color was coming back again, and he simply looked amazed. Something else had changed in his expression, too, some of the fierceness seemed to have died out of his eyes. 

Hermione was smiling nervously. "It´s your Key, Harry," she said. 

Harry didn´t say anything. He looked at it mutely, then at Sirius. "It´s a scabbard for a sword?" he said. 

Sirius nodded. "For the Gryffindor sword." 

"But the sword is broken," said Harry. He walked a little ways away, bent down, picked up the broken sword, and came back to the group. He showed it mutely to Sirius, who stared at the blade, broken almost in half just above the crossguard. "Not much use," said Harry flatly, "a scabbard without a sword." 

"The sword´s just a sword," said Hermione, "not a Living Blade. We can get you another sword." 

Sirius was still staring at the shattered blade. "Harry, what happened? How did you break it?" 

Harry hesitated. He looked over at Draco, who looked back at him steadily. "Tell them what happened." 

"Which part of what happened?" asked Harry, shoving the broken sword into the scabbard and buckling it around his waist. 

"Everything," said Draco. "Go on, tell them. Don´t leave out anything." 

Harry looked a little dumbfounded, but nodded, once, slowly. Then Draco turned around and walked away, not really looking where he was going, found the opposite wall and leaned back against it. He slid down it slowly, by degrees, until he was sitting on the floor with his hands locked over his knees, having put the sword down beside him. He couldn´t hear what Harry was saying to the others but could watch and imagine. He saw them all staring at Harry as he spoke, riveted and shocked. At a certain point, Sirius paled, Ron swore, and Hermione gave a little scream and clapped her hands over her mouth. Draco heard Ron say loudly, "But that´s impossible!" and saw Harry shrug, then Hermione went to put her arms around Harry and Draco lowered his head down on his knees and swam for a while in the peaceful blackness behind his eyelids. 

He vaguely wished Ginny were around. There was something exhausting about Harry, Ron and Hermione when they were all together. The automatic wordless communication between them was almost as swift as the telepathy he shared with Harry, and he was so used to seeing it arrayed and deployed against him that he felt automatically defensive and weary when he faced it. Sirius being there didn´t help either. Normally it would have, but not after what Draco had done. 

"Draco." 

Sirius´ voice. Draco raised his head. Sirius was kneeling in front of him, his dark eyes very somber. Behind him, Draco could see Harry, Hermione and Ron, still clustered in a small group, as they so often were at school, heads bent together: red, brown, and black. He said, "What?" 

"Are you all right?" 

He stared. "Shouldn´t you be asking if Harry´s all right?" 

"Harry´s obviously fine. You, however, have looked better." 

In a small voice, "I figured you´d be hacked off at me." 

"Hacked off?" Sirius sat back on his heels. His eyes were on a level with Draco´s. "It strikes me that you´ve had to make a lot of difficult choices these past few days. Choices nobody should have to make, especially not a boy who´s barely grown. I have to ask myself if I would have done what you´ve done, if I had been faced with these decisions when I was your age." 

"And?" 

"And I think I would have. I hope I would have. You´ve done better than anyone could have expected or asked of you. I´m proud of you." 

Draco stared at Sirius for a moment. No one had ever said that to him before. Not once, not ever. "I didn´t have a choice," he said. 

"There´s always a choice," said Sirius. "When we say there´s no choice, we´re just comforting ourselves about the decision we´ve already made." His voice was, for a moment, bitter. "Even under threat or torture there is always a choice. And you´ve made the right ones. Draco..." He rested his hand on the boy´s shoulder. "Being a good person...it doesn´t mean adhering to some random set of rules you´ve imagined, or imposed on yourself. It means doing each right thing because it is the right thing; because it protects the people you care about. If there´s one thing I´ve learned in my life it´s not to be afraid of the responsibility that comes with caring for other people. What we do for love: those things endure." And his eyes darkened. "Even if the people you did them for don´t." 

Sympathy tore out of Draco what anger or condemnation would not have. His throat tightened, and he burst out, "I told Harry about his parents - that was wrong of me-- " 

Sirius silenced him with a gesture. "I know you´d rather cut your own hand off than hurt him. You did the wrong thing but for the right reasons. Maybe you saved his life. I did the wrong thing; I should have told him myself, before." 

"So you forgive me?" said Draco, raising his chin up and looking squarely at Sirius. For reasons he couldn´t place, Sirius´ forgiveness for hurting Harry meant nearly as much to him as Harry´s had. 

"I would forgive you for anything that required my forgiveness," said Sirius. "But that does not." 

Draco looked at him. The backs of his eyes felt hot, and his throat felt too tight. He remembered Sirius hugging him earlier, in Slytherin´s library, and how odd that had been; the only people in his life who had ever embraced him out of sympathy had been Sirius and Hermione, and neither time had he really known how to respond. In the silence, while he tried to figure out how to react, Draco heard Ron again, speaking clearly. 

"Manticore blood? That´s the weirdest thing I´ve ever heard." 

"It´s not that weird." Hermione´s voice. "I remember that manticore blood and skin has have healing properties from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." 

"Yeah, well, not everyone memorizes their textbooks," said Ron. 

"Yes, some of us just scribble on them," said Hermione, and the haughty disdain in her voice was so evident that Draco looked up and actually felt himself smile, and Sirius smiled back. 

*** 

Ben, Ginny had decided, was a lovely, angelic sort of person and it really was too bad that he was so old, and also, not from her time. Draco could learn a lot from him. Ben was endlessly solicitous about her welfare, making sure she had enough to eat, enough to drink, and wasn´t bored, while he hurried about the camp, packing and making various preparations. He even brought her extra clothing when he realized that the army they would be travelling back in time to intercept had vanished in the middle of winter. "I´ve only got men´s clothing," he said apologetically, handing her a bundle of garments. "I´m sorry." 

Ginny took the clothes gingerly, and snorted. "Leather trousers?" she demanded. 

"They´re breeches," said Ben. "They might be a bit big on you, but...what´s so funny?"  

"Nothing," Ginny spluttered, and shooed him out of the tent so she could change. 

She had just stripped down to her undergarments when there was a soft *pop* and a very angry-looking someone Apparated into the tent. 

Ginny screamed, leaped backward, and succeeded in wrapping one of the heavy canopies that draped the bed around herself as a covering. Then she screamed again, this time for help. "Benjamin! Ben!" 

The intruder young man glared at her as if she, not he, was the intruder in Ben´s bedroom. He was a young man, around Ben´s age. "Who the hell are you?" he said rudely, looking not at all pleased to encounter a half-dressed teenage girl where he had presumably expected to encounter Ben. Ginny was about to reply equally impolitely when the tent flap opened and Ben raced in. He came up short when he saw the intruder, the look of alarm on his face fading into one of surprised resignation. 

"Gareth," he said. "What are you doing here?" 

Ginny looked at the intruder with renewed interest. So this was Ben´s cousin, the Heir of Slytherin. Salazar´s son. She should´ve guessed. He was tall, Ben´s height, but as fair as Ben was dark, and looked several years younger. He had thick light hair that fell in his eyes, skin as fair as Draco´s or Narcissa´s, eyes as green as Harry´s. A clean-shaven, arrogant, handsome face, now twisted with fury. He certainly didn´t look nearly as much like Draco as Ben looked like Harry, but did look like someone who could have been a distant cousin or relative. Especially when he scowled as he was doing now. 

"Ben," he said furiously, waving a hand towards the Heir of Gryffindor. Ginny saw that in his hand, he clutched a piece of half-crumpled parchment. "what the hell is this?" 

Ben edged behind Ginny, looking martyred. "Gareth, you didn´t have to Apparate all this way -" 

"I bloody well did!" 

"Ginny, this is my cousin Gareth," Ben added, half as an afterthought, pushing Ginny towards Gareth, who scowled at her mightily. "Gareth, this is Ginny." 

"Congratulations," he snarled at her. 

"I´m the Heir of Hufflepuff," she told him, by way of introduction, still hugging the bed canopy around herself. 

"Yes, I would have guessed that. You´re just as red and speckled as all the rest of them. Now skive off, will you? I need to talk to Ben." 

"Red?" Ginny sputtered indignantly. "Speckled?" 

Ben stepped between Gareth and Ginny, whether to protect Ginny from the angry Heir of Slytherin or the other way around, it was difficult to tell. "Gareth, don´t be an ass," he said. 

Two bright red dots of rage appeared on Gareth´s cheekbones. "Oh, I´m the one behaving like an ass? What´s this, then? What kind of letter is this?" He glared down at the parchment, unrolled it, and started reading out loud. "And so I will be going into the future to fight a battle unlike any we´ve fought before. If I die there and do not return, I trust you will take my son and raise him as if he were your own, and as a brother to your own children -" 

Ginny goggled at Ben. "You have children?" 

"Just the one," said Ben absently. 

"Gah," said Ginny, nearly speechless. 

"Aside from the fact that you sound like a puffed-up poncy git in this brilliant epistle of yours, it looks like you´re planning to get yourself killed?," snapped Gareth, still glaring at his cousin. "You moron." 

"I am not a moron." 

"I beg to differ." 

"All right, that´s it," said Ben, grabbed Gareth by the back of his cloak, and commenced dragging him into the tent. He glanced back over his shoulder at Ginny, and called "Just give us a minute, will you?" before they vanished, and the tent flap closed behind them. 

Quite unrepentantly, Ginny raced up and put her ear to the flap. She could only make out muffled words of the conversation that was taking place inside - "sodding git", "get yourself killed why don´t you", "always me having to look out for you," and "not going to do anything just because you say so." 

Ginny sighed to herself. If they really were anything like Draco and Harry, this could go on for hours without ever getting to any good bits. She reached forward and pulled the tent flap back, and stuck her head inside. 

Ben and Gareth were standing about five feet from each other, both yelling. Ben was scarlet in the face; Gareth, a bit like Draco, evinced his anger only by looking colder than ever. He was looking so cold, in fact, that Ginny wouldn´t have been surprised if the arm he was pointing stiffly at Ben had broken off at the elbow and shattered on the ground like an icicle. He swung around and glared at Ginny. "What do you want?" 

"And hello to you too," she replied. "Look, don´t you think it´s Ben´s decision what he wants to do? I appreciate that he´s your cousin -" 

"Second cousin," said both Gareth and Ben, in unison. 

"Whatever. The point is, it´s his business. And I think it´s very brave of him. Nobody else in my time knows what he knows, is as equipped to fight this battle as he is. He could be the instrument that destroys the Snake Lord once and for all, which would be a wonderful thing--" she broke off, realizing with a sudden jolt that she was talking about Gareth´s father. 

"This has nothing to do with him being my father," said Gareth, spitting the words out as if they were poison bullets. "I loathe him. In the morning when I wake, I curse his memory. If the recollection of him could be wiped from the face of the wizarding world, if it would only please me." 

Ginny gaped at him. "Then what? I don´t understand." 

"You can´t win against him," said Gareth simply. "He´s too powerful. It took the power of the houses of Ravenclaw, Gryffindor and Hufflepuff combined to bring him down, and even then he couldn´t be killed. What can you do? You´re only children. He´ll destroy you all, massacre your armies where they stand, and carve flutes for veela children out of your bleached bones." 

"Gareth," said Ben, with a certain warning exasperation. 

"We have something they didn´t have," said Ginny, confidently. 

"What?" 

"The Heir of Slytherin on our side." 

Gareth looked at her narrowly. "Are you sure?" 

"Yes," said Ginny, with a certainty she didn´t feel. 

Gareth glanced at Ben, his eyes wide and inquiring. Ben looked exasperated. "I was trying to tell you, Gareth. The prophecy, do you understand now? I have to go." 

"The prophecy," said Gareth, sounding disgusted. "It´s just a prophecy, just a bunch of words. It´s not like it came from on high." 

"Actually, it did," Ben pointed out gently. "That´s what a prophecy is." 

The Heir of Slytherin, now looking slightly deflated, looked back at Ginny. "He could still get killed," he said, indicating Ben with a wave of his hand. 

"I´ll be there to protect him," said Ginny staunchly, and she saw Ben grin behind his hand. 

"You," said Gareth with disdain, "are a girl." 

Ginny felt her ears turn red. She was about to take Gareth to task for his medieval outlook, when she realized that while his outlook certainly was medieval, there was a good reason for it. In fact, as far as history was concerned, medieval, for Gareth, would be progressive. 

"She´s an Heir," said Ben, briefly. 

Gareth looked mutinous. "Then I want to go with you." 

"You can´t. You haven´t got an heir," pointed out Ben, looking weary. "If you died, that would be the end of the Slytherin line. And that would alter history." 

"So I´m being left out because I haven´t procreated?" Gareth snapped. 

"Yes," said Ben, with finality. 

"That doesn´t seem fair." 

"It´s an imperfect world," said Ben. "Get used to it. Now are you going to be helpful, or not? We´re dealing with a lot of unstable magic here, and frankly I think we shouldn´t be wasting time. We´ve got to convince an army to follow us into an uncertain future to battle the most evil wizard who ever lived. And we haven´t even had lunch yet." 

Gareth smirked. "Well, since you don´t want my help..." 

Ben´s dark eyes suddenly narrowed. "I didn´t say we didn´t want your help at all. As a matter of fact...can we borrow one of your dragons?" 

Gareth looked indignant. "One of my dragons? You know how expensive dragons are!" 

Ben looked mutinous. Ginny sighed to herself. It was a good thing, she thought, settling herself on the bed, that they had all the time that magic afforded them. It looked like they were going to need it. 

*** 

Hermione was astonished to see how bad Draco looked. His hair hung over his eyes in lank silvery tangles, his eyes were dark with exhaustion, the shadows under them bruise-blue, and he looked as if he hadn´t slept properly in weeks. She would have guessed he´d been the one mortally wounded, not Harry. Harry looked chipper and bright-eyed fresh by comparison, although that wasn´t saying much. 

She knelt down beside Sirius and reached out to touch Draco lightly on the shoulder. She wanted to do more, but was wary of being too demonstrative towards him around Harry, even now. "You all right?" she said. 

He nodded, looked up at Harry and Ron with tired eyes, and said, "We should go. We haven´t got much time to get to the Orb." 

"Harry told us," she said. She bit her lip. "It really is too bad we don´t have the Cloak any more -" 

"My understanding is that you can´t open the Orb without Ginny," said Sirius. "And she, it seems, can´t be found." 

"I´ve been thinking about that," said Hermione. "If the Lycanthe can´t locate her, she´s either outside the castle, or outside this time. I say we get the Orb, get out of the castle, and try a Locator charm. If she´s gone back through time she probably did it to escape, and she hasn´t properly learned to set the Turner yet. We were off by a few hours when we came back here from the past. She´s probably experiencing the same thing again. She´ll be back sometime, and the Locator charm will find her." 

She spoke with more confidence than she felt. She was fairly sure Ginny had used the Turner in some capacity, and wasn´t at all positive that this wouldn´t end in disaster. But there was no point saying so. If they couldn´t find Ginny in time, perhaps there would be some way to destroy the Orb. Magic had advanced a great deal since the original spell calling for all four Heirs had been cast. She said as much, and Draco looked at her, his eyes quizzical. "The demons said that we would need a force equal to the force contained in the Orb to destroy it," he said. 

"What does that mean in layman´s terms?" Ron asked nervously. 

"I think it means that it´s pretty damn unlikely we could muster up that kind of firepower," said Draco. 

"I think it means that if Darth Vader loans us the Death Star we might have a chance," said Harry. 

Hermione giggled; nobody else did. Draco looked at Harry like he´d grown a second head. "Still punchy, are we?" 

Harry looked mildly abashed. "I´m sorry about before. I was..." 

"An enormous pest," suggested Draco. 

"Not myself, I was going to say." 

"Who were you, then?" Draco demanded, getting to his feet with a slight wince. "Please inform me, so I can avoid him in future." 

"I said I was sorry," said Harry, looking mildly irritated, but Hermione noticed that completely without thinking he had stepped forward and put a hand on Draco´s arm, helping him to his feet. He did this as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do; only Ron´s face mirrored some of the surprise Hermione was feeling, although none of the pleasure. Please let them be friends again, she thought fervently. I know how much they both need it, so please let it happen. 

Harry let go of Draco´s elbow, and winced grimaced slightly. "It´s gone away, went away the second I touched this," he said, touching a hand to the scabbard at his waist. "I feel really stupid." 

"Well," said Draco equably. "I know how you feel. As it turns out, it only takes four drinks to get me thoroughly pissed. I would have expected myself to have a much higher tolerance." 

Harry raised an eyebrow. "You got drunk?" 

"One more drink and I would have been dancing around in my underwear." 

"Thank you for that particular piece of mental torment," said Ron. 

"Not a problem, Weasley." 

"Boxers or briefs?" wondered Hermione innocently. 

"Hermione," said Harry. 

Draco grinned. 

"I was just asking," she said. 

"Boxers," said Ron absently. 

They all looked at him. He looked back, surprised, then turned beet-red and looked imploringly at Harry. "That time back at the Manor - when you wrecked his bedroom and all his clothes flew around - remember?" 

"Not at all," said Harry, looking fidgety. 

"You wrecked my bedroom?" said Draco, looking at Harry in shock. 

"It wanted redecorating," replied Harry airily. 

"I do believe we´re wandering from the topic," said Sirius, quietly. "The topic of escape. All we have left of the pencils are these little nubs here, and I'm not even sure it will work in all this adamantine." 

"What have we got to lose?" asked Hermione, plucking the pencil from Sirius' fingers and handing it to Ron. Draco and Harry exchanged a look and Hermione was sure from Harry's expression that he was defending Ron to Draco yet again. To stave off an argument, she left Ron to draw a simple door, and explained to Harry and Draco about the Zonko's pencils and the maps. 

Sirius joined them as she was finishing, and said, "Harry, I want you four to get out of the castle as soon as possible. I'll find Remus and we can get the Orb and bring it to you outside the castle walls. 

"But I'm the only one who knows where the Orb is," Draco interrupted. 

"And I have the Lycanthe, and that's the only thing that can lead us to Ginny," Hermione added. 

"Well, I'm not letting you go off on your own again," Harry said to her. 

"I wasn't on my own," she countered. 

"You're never alone with Ron Weasley, but you might as well be for all the good he does," Draco said scathingly. 

Ron said something that sounded a lot like "plucking faster", and made a move towards Draco. Harry grabbed the back of his shirt. 

Sirius sighed. "So to bring us back to the issue of the moment, when we get out of here, where are we going to go?" 

"Draco and Hermione and I should get the Orb," Harry suggested. "Sirius, will you take Ron and go find Lupin? Then, when Ginny gets back, we can deal with the opening issues." 

"I want to stay with you guys," Ron protested, looking back over his shoulder. "While you lot of Heirs are opening that Orb, you need someone to watch your back, protect you from evil. Important stuff. Besides - I might not be an Heir, but I do have Hufflepuff blood." 

Draco scoffed. Hermione nudged him with her elbow, to make him be quiet. 

"All right, you lot go together," Sirius said. "With the Heir of Slytherin is probably the safest place to be, and I'll likely have an easier time sneaking around the castle on my own." He looked at Draco. "And when you have the Orb, guard it with your life." 

"Certainly not," said Draco, with the ghost of a mocking smile. "I plan to guard it with my really big sword." 

"All right, then," said Harry. "Let´s go." 

*** 

It was sunset, and the sky was golden streaked with silver threads like the threads in a tapestry. Ginny sat by the fire that Ben had made that afternoon, shivering very slightly. It was autumn in the time they were in currently. In the distance, she could see many small campfires burning around an assortment of tents. Clouds like dark red roses scudded high across the amber sky. The air smelled of oncoming frost, and rather strongly of dragons. Actually, dragon, as in the one that Gareth had lent them earlier that day, or what she thought of as that day, even though it had actually been on a day over a decade later than the one she was now reaching the end of. His name was Feroluce, he was a Common Welsh Green, and he smelled distressingly of sheep, even when he was tethered many yards away as he was now. 

She squinted slightly, and saw a figure coming towards her from the camp. She hoped it was Ben. He had been gone most of the day, talking to the army, and here they had come across an obstacle she hadn´t been expecting: she couldn´t talk to the soldiers, and they couldn´t talk to her. It appeared that her ability to communicate in the past was limited to speaking with Heirs, since both Ben and Gareth had understood her perfectly, and when they spoke, she had heard perfectly sensible English. But when she tried to converse with anyone else, she heard a gabble with an occasionally understandable English word salted in. She had eventually given up in high dudgeon, and, she was sure, to Ben´s amusement. She had gone to wait for Ben and read Helga´s book on Time-Turners, while Ben used all his charm and his Heir of Gryffindor status to try to convince the army of his objective, and to assure them that if they didn´t come to the future, they were sure to be vaporized by Slytherin anyway. 

"It´s destiny," he told them, looking very serious and important in his full Gryffindor regalia: red cloak lined in gold, scarlet tunic sewed with the emblem of a dragon, and, of course, the sword and the in a scabbard that was woven all over with flowers and leaves. Ginny thought it was rather cute. She wondered if this was what Harry would look like when he grew up. Then she remembered why she´d had such a terrific crush on him in the first place. 

The figure coming towards her resolved its shape as it neared. It was Ben. He waved, looking exhausted, and collapsed by the other side of the fire. "Success," he announced. Then he made a face. "That dragon smells," he observed gloomily. 

"Don´t I know it," agreed Ginny. 

"Have you been here all this time?" 

"I haven´t had much else to do. And I didn´t think it was a good idea to mangle time by inventing Quidditch or something." Ben looked at her blankly. "After your time," she added, smiling. 

"No, I think I know that word. It reminds me of your brother somehow." Ben shivered, probably from the cold, and moved closer to the fire. 

Ginny suddenly realized that she didn´t know anything about Ben´s family. Professor Binns´ class was all about battles and dates, and if he ever talked about the Founders, she must´ve slept through class. "Do you have any brothers, or does being the Heir mean you´re the only guy, or in my case, girl, in your generation? Harry, Hermione and Draco - they´re all only children, and I´m the only girl in my family. Is that how this Heir thing works?" 

"Well, Helga has a few daughters, and the oldest is the Heir. There is only one child who carries Rowena´s blood, and I do have a few half-brothers and a sister, but..." 

"What about Gareth?" 

"I don´t even think he knows how many children Slytherin created. The Snake Lord selected him as the Heir when he was about five, I think. Gareth doesn´t talk about how it happened. We used to play together when we were children," he said. "I think he still feels a pretty heavy burden about his father being responsible for so much death. Even though it´s not as if they really knew each other." 

"I´m surprised you all let him live," said Ginny, and Ben turned a very surprised expression on her. 

"Kill Gareth? I´ll give you that he´s annoying, but..." 

"It´s not that, it´s just that he´s the Heir of Slytherin, isn´t he? Kill him, and you could end the line. Slytherin might never rise. I´m not telling you to do it, obviously," she added hastily, "since it would screw up history anyway, I´m just surprised that it never came up. In fact, why does the spell to open the Orb call for the presence of all four Heirs? Why the Heir of Slytherin? Isn´t the prophecy that the ultimate Heir of Slytherin will be evil?" 

"You ask a lot of questions," said Ben, his voice faint with tiredness. "Why is that?" 

"I´m a girl with six older brothers. I´ve always had to ask a lot of questions, just to get one straight answer." 

She heard Ben roll over onto his stomach and sigh. When she glanced over she saw him looking at her, resting his chin on his folded hands. "My father went to see Slytherin to ask him to give up the battle he was waging," he said, in a remote sort of tone. "Slytherin invited him into his library, and when my father turned to shut the door, stabbed him through the back with his sword. There were servants there who witnessed some of what happened next. Slytherin bent over him where he lay on the ground, watching him die, but as my father died he left his curse. The dying curse of one of Gryffindor blood is always potent. The curse was that as Salazar, his own cousin and once best friend, had murdered him, so he cursed Slytherin that he would one day be destroyed by his own blood and flesh." He sighed again, and put his hands over his face. His next words were muffled. "Rowena was mindful of that when she created the Orb spell. I think she also was being a little protective of Gareth. He was only eight at the time, and she would have been looking for a way to make sure he was protected after his father was... removed." 

"It seems so complicated, and like it hinges on so many tiny little things," said Ginny doubtfully. "How can you hang a whole spell, a whole prophecy, on the choices of someone who hasn´t even been born?" 

"If it seems complex that´s because it is. And even making it simpler wouldn´t make time and the flow of destiny any easier to manipulate. Helga told me once, 'Time bears destiny towards its inevitable realization. You can neither raise your hand to turn it aside, nor raise your sword to hold it back. Even the wisest man cannot know what tragic flaw may in the end prove essential to the whole.´" 

"A tragic flaw?" Ginny let her head fall back as she gazed up at the sky, which had darkened to charcoal. She thought of Draco. If anyone was tragically flawed, he was. Oh boy, was he flawed. Well, not physically. 

She grinned to herself in the dark, and rolled over onto her stomach. "Ben?" she said, and was about to ask him if they would be leaving right away or waiting until first thing in the morning, when she realized, from the light sound of him snoring, that he had already fallen asleep. 

*** 

Hermione had been worried that they would run into guards on their way to the Orb; she had been worried that the resident monsters of the castle would delay them, or worse yet, they´d bump into Slytherin himself. The biggest obstacle to progress however, turned out to be the fact that Ron and Draco flatly refused to get along. Every few feet they would stop and snap at each other. Ron stepped on Draco´s toe on purpose; Draco stuck out his foot and tripped Ron. And so on. Hermione glanced over at Harry as they turned a corner, and he rolled his eyes. "I thought Draco was supposed to be walking ahead of us, making it look like we belong here?" she hissed at Harry, who sighed and whirled around. 

"Okay, Draco get over - what are you two doing? Look, there´s no need to put him in a headlock - ouch, that looks painful. Stop it." 

Draco and Ron separated, glaring at each other. Hermione sighed. They were in a dark narrow corridor lined with suits of armor. The ceiling disappeared into darkness and cobwebs. Draco had been right; this part of the castle looked quite thoroughly disused. Their voices echoed softly off the stonewalls. 

"What are you arguing about?" Harry demanded, arms crossed over his chest. 

"Weasley implied I wasn´t to be trusted," said Draco blandly, looking at Harry. "Then he stood on my foot." 

"You tripped me," snapped Ron. 

"After you stood on my foot." 

Ron changed tack. "Where the hell are you leading us anyway, Malfoy? Into a trap?" 

Draco snorted in disgust. The two boys had paused in a shadowed doorway, snarling at each other. Hermione came to stand beside Harry, praying that they wouldn´t be seen. "Yeah, that´s right, Weasley, it´s a trap," Draco snapped, the sarcasm in his voice so thick you could have cut it with a knife. "It´s a trap and you figured it out. Because, you know, it´s not like I haven´t had plenty of opportunities to murder the lot of you, were I so inclined. It´s not like Harry hasn´t got the means to kill me hanging around his neck, if he wants to use it -" 

Ron glanced over at Harry. "Use it," he said. "Please use it." 

Draco looked at Harry and batted his eyelashes. "That´s right, Harry," he said in a falsetto imitation of Ron´s voice. "Why don´t you save me from the nasty man?" 

Harry looked at Draco crossly. "You´re not helping things," he said, with an edge to his voice. 

Draco shrugged. "Do I ever?" 

"I wish I´d never saved your life," said Ron, abruptly. Then he looked startled, as if he couldn´t believe he´d said something quite so dreadful. Hermione gaped at him, although she could tell from his expression that he hadn´t meant it. 

Draco was a different matter. He gave Ron the angelic smile that meant he was very annoyed indeed. "How charming, Weasley," he said. "You know, all this really reminds me of something I thought of yesterday while I was kissing your sister--" 

Ron lunged at him, and was restrained by both Harry and Hermione, each of whom had efficiently grabbed an arm. They couldn´t stop him from shooting Draco a look of death, however. "Keep your hands off my sister," he snarled in fury. 

Draco rolled his eyes. "´Keep your hands off my sister´? Who says that?" 

"Both of you, stop it," snapped Hermione, holding on to Ron´s arm. "What we´re doing right now is more important than this - bickering." 

"I´m not going anywhere without a guarantee that we can trust him," said Ron, pulling away from Harry and Hermione and jerking his chin at Draco. 

"Sure, you can have a guarantee," Draco smiled. It wasn´t a nice smile. "The same guarantee I gave when I promised I´d never sneak into your bedroom at night and slit your throat." 

"You never promised that," Ron pointed out. 

"How right you are, Weasley. Sleep tight." 

"All right, enough," announced Harry. He had drawn himself up to his full height and his green eyes were blazing. Bloody and scratched and bruised as he was, he retained the ability to draw a sort of dignity about himself like an adamantine cloak that nothing could penetrate. For a slight sixteen-year-old he had quite a commanding presence when he wanted to exert it. So did Draco, Hermione thought, but it was of a different sort. Draco was the sort of person who people would follow and obey out of a mixture of fear and respect for his innate brilliance and ruthless charisma. Harry, people would follow because they loved him. It was very hard not to love Harry, even when he was being his stern self, which he was now. Both Ron and Draco shifted uneasily under his gaze. Ron stared mutinously off in the distance, and Draco looked at the floor. 

"You will both," said Harry coldly, "from this point onward, shut up and leave each other alone." 

"But, Harry..." Ron protested, albeit weakly. 

"I said shut up!" said Harry firmly, grabbed Draco by the arm, and hauled him protesting several feet away, where he turned and glared at him with such intensity that Hermione knew perfectly well that he was telling Draco off telepathically. Harry had never told her in so many words that they communicated that way, but it hadn´t been hard to figure out, especially since she had heard them in the Weasleys´ kitchen. Her hand strayed rather guiltily up to the Lycanthe at her throat, and as her fingers closed around it their voices leapt audibly into her consciousness as if she had tuned a radio to the Harry-and-Draco station. 

...no reason to act like that, Harry was saying sternly. You´re not eleven years old any more. 

Draco looked sulky. He started it. 

You started it. 

I did not. 

Anyway, Harry added, Ron´s got a point. 

What? Draco demanded, looking as if he were resisting the urge to take Harry´s glasses off and whap him on the head with them. Are you trying to say you don´t trust me? Still? 

Harry looked surprised. Of course not. 

Draco continued to glare at him with suspicion. 

Look, Draco, I told you I trusted you, and I do. 

Draco gave him an incredulous look, then sputtered with mirth. 

Harry turned pink. What is it? 

You. Saying my name like that. Look, don´t give yourself an aneurysm. It sounds funny when you say it, anyway. You can go ahead and call me Malfoy. 

Harry looked taken aback. You called me Harry. 

Only when I thought you were going to die, said Draco, with complete frankness. He leaned back against the wall and half-lidded his gray eyes at Harry. What do you mean, Weasley´s got a point? I´d agree he´s got lots of points, all of them bad, but somehow I don´t think that´s what you meant. 

No. I was thinking of that. Harry glanced at the Dark Mark on Draco´s arm. I trust your intentions, but there are some things you don´t have control over. Slytherin does. That Mark links you to him. What if he suddenly decides to use it to control you? 

So you´re worried I might wind up hurting one of you? 

Not so much as that you might get hurt. Sirius told me that the Dark Lord used to be able to control the Death Eaters from a distance with that Mark. If they resisted him, he could burn them alive. Harry´s green eyes were somber. He could burn you. 

Draco shrugged, gaze steady. Then let me burn. 

Harry opened his mouth, closed it again, and leaned his head back against the wall tiredly. Is there anything I could say that would - 

No. 

Harry sighed. All right, then. Do what you like, Malfoy, you always do. 

"They´re doing it again," said Ron, suddenly, startling Hermione out of her eavesdropping reverie. "Standing there staring at each other. It´s weird." 

"They´re talking," said Hermione serenely. She let go of the Lycanthe as she spoke. "That´s how they talk." 

Ron looked at her suspiciously. "Can you hear them?" 

She smiled. "Maybe," she said, a little distracted. Harry and Draco had finished their conversation and headed back towards them. 

Ron was still irritable. "It gives me the creeps. Harry shouldn´t be hiding things from me that way." 

"Ron, not everything is about you," Hermione said, walking forward and falling into step beside Harry. Draco dropped back, almost between them and Ron, and they moved further through the serpentine corridors. She squinted and tried to see to the end of the hallway, but Harry´s hand on her arm caused her to stop and turn and stare right at her own face. 

It wasn´t a mirror, she knew that from the blue eyes that were gazing back at her from the wall. No, she had seen this face before, framed by hair that was like hers, yet somehow different, wearing a dark blue dress that was almost identical to the one she was in now, the one that Rowena Ravenclaw had dressed her in a thousand years before -- or the previous day. She heard Draco swear behind her, and realized that none of the others had seen this before. She herself had only seen it when she had been kidnapped, the day she took the love potion, when it had been hanging in a round, tapestry-filled room. She wondered vaguely why Slytherin had moved it into this hallway, and felt Harry beside her reach his arm out, as if to touch his ancestor´s face. Harry, who had so little experience with ancestors, was clearly transfixed by the face of Godric Gryffindor; she doubted he´d even seen the other founders´ depictions. She took his other hand in hers, to offer a little comfort, as his fingertips brushed against the tapestry threads, and then... 

She heard Ron say suddenly, and very sharply, "Don´t touch that! It´s a trap!" but it was too late; with a great rumbling and grinding noise, the floor seemed to open up under Hermione´s feet. She heard Harry next to her shout in surprise; then the earth lurched again and she was tumbling down into darkness with Harry beside her. 

*** 

Sirius strode down the corridors exuding far more confidence than he felt. It seemed to be working, as well. Gray-robed minions hurried past him in great numbers, but not a one of them stopped to glance at him. It seemed to him, in fact, that they were all hurrying in the same direction with some sort of purpose, although he couldn´t guess what that might be. Nothing good, he expected. 

He had confidently claimed to Harry and the rest that he knew exactly where he was going. In truth, this was not the case. He thought he recognized the corridor he was in, with its many shadowed doorways, as the one he had been in with Lupin and the banshee woman, Raven. Yes, surely it was the right hallway. The flagstone floor seemed familiar, as did the curling-serpent torch brackets and the arched, almost oval wooden doors set in the wall at intervals. And there -surely that was the door Raven had shown Lupin through, carved of dark oak, brass-banded. He paused in front of it and then, before he had a chance to move, the handle of the door suddenly slid up, and it creaked open from the inside. Sirius backed up along the hallway, and stared. 

Through the door came a trio of young women, clad in filmy white, two carrying lanterns shining with a soft pale light, the tallest playing a little harp that echoed a strange, sweet music. As they drew nearer, Sirius recognized them as veela. Up close, their resemblance to Narcissa unnerved him, as if he faced herwas facing her, refracted through some sort of distorted mirror. Like her, they were all tall and pale and slender, with waterfalling silver-white hair and upturned blue-gray eyes. They paused, their silver robes swirling around their slender bodies, and giggled to each other. 

"Quel homme attirant. Que devrions-nous faire avec lui?" smirked the first. 

"Je pense que nous devrions le manger," purred the second. 

They advanced towards him en masse, smiling, and Sirius began backing away. He did not like the looks on their faces, nor the cruel, cold smiles on their red mouths, or the way the one on the left was hungrily licking her lips as she looked at him. He had absolutely no idea what they had just been saying, but was quite certain it wasn´t good. 

Suddenly another female voice cut into the scene, this one oddly familiar. "Shoo! Shoo! Get away from 'im! Leave 'im alone, you bunch of tarts!" 

Sirius turned, and stared. Standing in front of him, barefoot and wearing a white nightgown, was Fleur Delacour. Her hands were jammed firmly on her hips and she looked furious. She had stretched one hand outstretched out imperiously, and to Sirius´ surprise, the veela cowered back away from her. 

Then he remembered. It was no wonder they were afraid of her. She was Slytherin´s Source. 

The tallest veela bared her teeth, and said in a wheedling voice. "Fleur... pourquoi est-ce que tu ne nous laisses pas seuls et nous laisses avoir notre amusement?" 

"Parce que je le dise!" barked Fleur, imperiously tapping her foot. "Because I say so! Now go!" 

With a few parting hisses and some baring of teeth, the veela turned and vanished off down the corridor as if pursued by Furies. Fleur watched them go, looking a bit like a Fury herself. Her silver hair was crackling around her head like charmed tinsel, and Sirius was reminded that she was a Magid, and her anger was a powerful weapon indeed. 

He took a step back, and her gaze flicked over to him. "Are you all right?" she asked, her tone melting into sympathy. "My cousins, they get...a little overexcited." 

Sirius nodded, mind whirling. 

Her eyebrows drew together. "I 'ave seen you before," she said. "I know you. You are a friend of Professor Lupin. I saw you in his office, you were in the fireplace." 

Sirius nodded. "I´m Sirius Black." 

"The professor...is he all right?" said Fleur, widening her dark blue eyes. "Is 'e 'ere?" 

"He´s 'ere...I mean here...he´s with the other werewolves," said Sirius, not one to pass up an opportunity for extra information. He knew from Harry what Fleur had done, but also knew from Draco that there was more to the story. He tended to believe that she sincerely wished to make up for her mistake. Also, she seemed so weak she hardly posed a threat. "Can you lead me there?" 

She nodded slowly. "I can. It is down this 'all, as a matter of fact. You were not far off." She looked up and down the corridor with weary trepidation. "If 'e catches me..." 

"I´ll say that I threatened you," said Sirius, with more confidence than he felt. "They think I´m a big bad vampire, 'round here." 

Fleur nodded slowly, as if she was too tired to ask more, and led the way down the hall. It turned out to be a short distance to the iron-bound door he remembered; Fleur rapped upon it once, then pushed it open, letting Sirius walk in ahead of her. She came after him, shutting the door firmly behind her. 

*** 

Draco, with Ron right beside him, raced to the edge of the black hole in the flagstone floor into which Harry and Hermione had vanished, and peered down into it. 

He saw a void of blackness narrowing down and down into nothing, with a faint glimmer of light at the end that might have been daylight, or might have been a reflection off water. "Harry!" he yelled, his voice bouncing off the sides of the hole. "Hermione!" 

Ron added his voice to Draco´s. "Hermione! Harry!" 

A very faint, echoing shout answered them. Draco listened as hard as he could, but wasn´t sure whether it was in fact an answer, or merely an echo of their own voices. He glanced sideways at Ron, who was as white as his shirt. "How did you know?" he hissed. "That it was a trap?" 

Ron shook his head. "I just did," he said, his voice flat and dead. 

Draco felt a sudden, sharp tingle in the scar on his palm. He glanced down at his hand just as Harry´s voice spoke inside his head: Hey, Malfoy. You up there? 

Yeah. Draco´s shoulders sagged with relief. Hermione and you both all right? 

We´re fine. Waist-deep in water, but fine. Ron...? 

Didn´t even lose a freckle. 

Tell him we´re okay. 

Draco glanced over at Ron, and nodded curtly, once. "They´re all right." 

Ron looked at him narrowly. "How do you know?" Then he shook his head. "Never mind. I think I can guess." 

How did he know that it was a trap? came Harry´s voice again, bemused and astonished. Ron, I mean. 

Draco shrugged. I don´t know. He says he just did. 

There was a short silence, then Harry spoke again. Hermione says he´s a Diviner. 

"You´re a Diviner?" said Draco to Ron, incredulously. He knew from his father how very rare Diviners always had been, and how sought after their skills were. That Professor Trelawney, who had only a hint of Divining power, had managed to secure and maintain a professorial position at Hogwarts on the strength of her minor talent, bespoke how rare the gift was. 

The redheaded boy looked defensive. "I guess so." 

"Looks like you´ve got a trumpet to blow after all, Weasley," said Draco with a grudging amount of respect. "And you saved me from falling down that hole. Grabbed my arm. Rather a mysterious action on your part." 

"I was reaching for Harry," said Ron, looking deeply disgusted. "I was reaching for Harry, and I got you. Now how are we going to get them out of there?" 

"Ropes," said Draco, "we need ropes, or cords, or something -" 

"Hermione said no magic, though," said Ron worriedly. "Not inside the castle." 

"I know. Bugger." Draco cast about for an idea, and his eye fell on the heavy tapestries adorning the walls. "What about those," he said slowly, jabbing a finger towards them. "We could cut them up into thin strips and tie them together. Make a rope that way." 

Ron nodded, a little reluctantly. "Very practical. You sure you´re not a Muggle?" 

"Very funny." Draco got to his feet. Hang in there, Potter. We´re going to try to lower a rope down to you. 

Okay. 

Draco grabbed the side of a tapestry depicting a herd of unicorns prancing in a summery meadow filled with brightly colored and clean scented flowers. It was terrifically incongruous amid the portraits and battle scenes that hung in the corridor, but nonetheless, he tugged at it; Ron joined him on the other side of the tapestry and tugged pulled there, too. A choking cloud of dust rose from the tapestry as they yanked at it, and Draco doubled over, coughing. When he straightened up again, he blinked the dust out of his eyes. Then froze, staring. 

Advancing towards them from the far end of the hall were, three tall, slightly stooped, gray-swathed figures whose scabbed and rotting hands protruded from the sleeves of their robes. Before them rolled a wave of intense and glacial cold. 

Dementors , he thought wildly. 

And Harry heard him. Get out of there, he said. Run. 

But you - 

RUN! yelled Harry, with such force it nearly split Draco´s head open. 

They ran. 

*** 

"Dementors." Harry swore. "They got chased away by dementors. We´re on our own, Hermione." 

There was a long silence while Hermione absorbed this information. "So what have we fallen into exactly?" she said in a small voice, after what seemed like a great deal of time splashing around silently in the dark, but was probably less than a minute. 

"Water," said Harry, and the sound of his voice was very comforting. "Just...ordinary water." 

"It´s so dark," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. 

She felt Harry´s hand bump against hers underwater, and he squeezed it tightly. "Lumos," she heard him say, and the space they were in was suddenly flooded with dim light. 

"Harry! No magic!" she cried, trying to find a way to reverse his light spell. "Slytherin will know!" 

"We´re not in the castle right now. And how could he come after us down here anyway?" 

At this moment, with the water chilling her body, Hermione wondered if being discovered by Slytherin would be the worst thing for them. How long could they survive down here anyway? And where, exactly, was 'here´, she wondered, turning around. She Hermione could just make out that they were in some sort of dim rocky space, floating in the middle of a dark rippling pool that stretched from wall to wall, with a very big circular black hole in the middle of a wall about five yards away. 

"I wonder if that´s a way out," said Harry thoughtfully. 

"Or a way in," said Hermione, before she could stop herself. 

"A way in? For what?" 

There was a silence. Hermione was fairly sure they were both picturing some sort of slavering sea-monster. 

"You know," said Harry, "I´m fairly sure there´s some way we could get out of this, if we thought about it a bit." 

Hermione was trying not to think about what might be under the water right now, snaking its way towards them. She looked up, trying to see where they had fallen in. "If I could reach that brickwork higher up, it looks like it might give a handhold," she said. "If I climbed on top of you, maybe--" 

"I´d be pushed under and drown," said Harry ruefully. "Later, you can climb on top of me." 

Hermione was about to respond when she noticed that the hole in the wall was now giving off a silvery sort of glow that she was fairly sure hadn´t been there a moment ago. Or maybe she was imagining it. She looked over at Harry, who seemed to be busy examining the wall for handholds. "I´m amazed you can still make jokes," she said, trying to sound light. 

"Learned it from Draco. A two for one special, joking and smirking lessons. It really does help," he said, splashing around to face her. The light was quite unmistakable now. It poured out from the hole and made silvery lacework on the water. Harry had his hand out and was clinging to the uneven rocky wall. 

"Maybe if we did some sort of spell so you wouldn´t sink," Hermione said desperately, and then something came out of the hole and glided towards them. 

It was a heart-pounding moment before she was able to clearly see what had emerged into the pool. Mermaids. Three very pretty mermaids with long fairish green hair, delicate gills fluttering just under their chins, and greeny-gold fish tails shimmering underneath the water. One perched and pouted on an outcropping near the hole, but the other two swam closer, until they were only a few feet from Harry and Hermione. The silvery light came from a whitish globe the nearest one had on a thin chain around her neck. They looked at Harry and Hermione, and tittered. "Hallo," said the leftmost one, and the other dissolved into a fit of giggles. 

Hermione was reminded, rather bizarrely, of Parvati and Lavender, had they been part-haddock, although the sulky one bore a strange resemblance to Pansy Parkinson. 

"Who are you?" Harry asked, sounding more amazed than anything else. "And how can we understand you?" 

"We're merveela," said the one on the right, looking affronted, "and of course we speak English. Not that it matters, since we're going to eat you anyway." 

Harry blinked at them, and then at Hermione. She shifted nervously in the water. Up close she could see that the merveela had rather sharp teeth and long greenish nails. "I'd really rather you didn't," Harry said. 

"Oh, dear, I'm afraid we must," said the merveela. "Terrible nuisance of course -- especially from your perspective -- but we were set here to guard the castle, and guard it we must. We're not meant to let anyone past, unless it's the Heir of Gryffindor, but it's not like he's coming." 

"But I am the Heir of Gryffindor," Harry protested, spitting water. 

The merveela looked unconvinced. "Everyone says that, but nobody ever is." 

"He really is," Hermione said. "Show them the scabbard, Harry."  

Holding onto the rock behind him with one hand, Harry fumbled the sword out of its scabbard and held it up in front of him. 

The merveela all gaped. The first of them seized the one in the middle and shook her with excitement. "He´s the one! The one from the prophecy, about the Heir! We can tell him the Secret!" 

"Wait, what about her?´ the second demanded, looking doubtfully at Hermione. 

"She´s nobody." 

"I am not nobody," Hermione snapped. "I´m the Heir of Ravenclaw." 

"Well, the prophecy doesn´t mention you," said the first mermaid in a superior tone. 

"Sexist piece of claptrap," said Hermione firmly. 

"Any secrets that can be told to me," said Harry loudly, "can be told to Hermione." 

The mermaids raised their delicate green eyebrows. "Well, all right," said the first, took the glowing little orb from around her neck, and offered it to Harry. "This is for you," she said. 

"What´s that?" he asked dubiously. 

"Not sure exactly," said the mermaid cheerfully. "I do know that it´s very powerful, and that it´s very old. I have been the custodian of it for almost a hundred years, and my mother before me. It came from the body of a wizard that was thrown down here hundreds of years ago. He was already dead, so we didn't eat him. The elders buried him, and kept this. It´s meant to be given to the Heir of Gryffindor." She held it up to Harry. 

Harry shook his head. "I can't take it," he said. 

The merveela looked vexed. "Why not?" 

"Because I'm about to drown," he said. 

"Oh." The merveela had the grace to blush. "Look, follow us -- we'll take you around to an exit. It isn't far," she said, and pushed off from her rock, the other merveelas in tow. Harry glanced at Hermione, shrugged, and followed. They soon found that the water was very shallow, shallow enough to walk in, and they blundered after the merveelas through the water, feeling cold and miserable, but no longer in danger of drowning. 

Finally they came to a small stone platform set into a wall. Above the platform a set of stone stairs led up into darkness. Harry heaved himself up onto the platform and pulled Hermione up after him. They squelched wetly all over the stones while the merveela located her orb, and held it out to Harry again. He took it, and to the merveelas' great annoyance, handed it immediately to Hermione, who examined it curiously. Its glow had died down, but an animated little flame still danced inside it. Actually, when she looked more closely, she could see that it was three small separate flames, flickering apart and then together. A band of silver ran around the middle of the Orb, and it was chased with a barely-legible inscription in Latin. Hermione could make out only one word: Adunatio. 

"What does that mean?" Harry asked, his hair tickling her cheek as he leaned over her shoulder. "It means a unity, or joining," said Hermione, handing the little globe back to him. "It could be a love amulet, or ..." 

"Be careful with it," the first merveela interrupted severely. "It´s dangerous. Don´t break it. It´s not to be broken. Terrible things might happen." 

"Maybe we don´t want it, then," said Harry. 

The merveelas looked indignant. "Hrrmph," the leftmost one said, and pointed at the stairs. "Those will take you back to the castle," she said, sniffing haughtily. "And good luck to you both - you´ll need it." 

With that, she disappeared beneath the water, swiftly followed by her companions. With a disquieted glance back, Hermione took Harry´s hand, and together they ascended the stairs, which vanished upward into darkness. 

*** 

"Okay, but about how many of you are there?" Lupin asked, reaching absently for a Hippogriff Crunchie, then shuddering and putting it down. "I mean, how many in the Snake Lord´s army in total? It would really help with strategy planning to have an idea of the numbers." 

"Well," the chief of the werewolves (whose name had turned out to be Peter Whitstone, and who in his normal life was an accountant who currently lived in Ipswich and who had been bitten by a werewolf when he was sixteen) replied, munching a jellybean, "there´s us werewolves, and then there´s about two hundred dementors, the veelas, maybe a hundred trolls, a few banshees, the Gentlemen, some Oggrings and some Skolks." 

"Oggrings?" Lupin was astonished. "Skolks? But they don´t exist! They´re mythical!" 

Peter looked at him in surprise. "They are not." 

The DADA teacher in Lupin was extremely interested. The resistance fighter in him was mildly horrified. "Oggrings are shape-changers," he said, thoughtfully. "I haven´t heard of a Skolk since..." 

"They´re living skeletons," said a pretty female werewolf on his right who had introduced herself earlier as Isabel. "They´re very hard to kill." 

Most of the werewolves had taken a passing interest in Lupin after his arrival and semi-adoption by Pete, and had come up to say hello and snag a jellybean. Isabel was the only one besides Pete who had stayed. The others were now engaged in an involved game of hackeysack in the corner. Lupin couldn´t believe how harmless they all seemed. So this is the vicious pack of beasts I´ve stayed away from all my life. I am deeply ashamed. 

"There´s no such thing," snapped Lupin. 

"You seem tense, my friend. I think it´s time," Pete announced, "for a little relaxation." 

Lupin raised an eyebrow. "Relaxation? All we do is relax." 

But Pete and Isabel were not to be dissuaded. The pretty werewolf girl clapped her hands. "Fetch pipes, fetch drums, fetch musical instruments made from the shoulder blades of a pig and the stomach-lining of a water-vole, we´re going to get down to some really bad sounds!" 

The other werewolves scurried to do her bidding. Lupin, who was familiar with werewolf rock from the Time-Warlock series Sirius had ordered for his last birthday, and knew it involved a lot of howling noises, and so moaned and held his head. "Look, we have work to do, we have -" 

The door opened then, and Sirius came through it, followed by a very pale, very thin Fleur Delacour in a long white dress. Lupin was so shocked that for a moment he barely reacted. Then he saw Pete get to his feet, reaching for the wand he had tossed at Lupin when he first came in, and he reached out and caught it out of Pete´s hand. "Let me," he said roughly, and walked quickly over to where Sirius and Fleur were standing. Blocking the pair of them from the view of the rest of the room, he muttered "Fleur, catch this," and tossed the wand towards them. Fleur caught it out of the air, and Lupin stepped back. "They pass," he called over his shoulder, and saw Pete, who hadn´t really been paying attention, nod and wave. 

Lupin turned back to Sirius, reached out, and clasped his hand hard. "You´re all right? And Harry?" 

Sirius filled him in quickly on the events of the day, while Lupin stared in amazement. He looked over briefly at Fleur when her part in events was mentioned, but she was staring firmly away, her eyes filled with tears. He decided not to ask her anything. 

"So we´re going to meet them outside," said Sirius finally. "I just came back to fetch you. Although it looks like you´re doing all right for yourself. And I think that werewolf over there fancies you." 

Lupin was taken aback. "What? Pete?" 

Sirius grinned. "No, the pretty one in the blue." 

Lupin rolled his eyes. "And even in the midst of a truly bleak situation, you´re trying to find me a date. Touching, it is." 

Sirius grinned again; Fleur scowled. Then she said, "It might not be so easy as you think." 

"To get Lupin a date?" said Sirius. "Being a bit hard on the poor man, aren´t you? He´s not that unappealing." 

"No, to get out of the castle," said Fleur, flushing a little across the tops of her ivory-pale cheekbones. "There are very few exits and those are 'eavily guarded. What we need is a map." 

"We?" said Sirius lightly, trying not to give the word too much emphasis. 

Fleur looked down. "I would like to come with you, if you would 'ave me." 

"Of course you can; we can use your assistance in getting out of the castle," said Lupin, touched by how unhappy she seemed. There was also a slight gnawing anxiety at his heart when he remembered talking to her about her desire to get her hands on a source of power. Perhaps if he´d been a bit more helpful, she wouldn´t have taken it quite so far. But that line of thought was profitless... "We have maps here," he added quickly, gesturing back towards the table where Pete and Isabel were standing, looking at some sort of chart. 

"How do you know that the other werewolves won´t turn on us?" Sirius hissed in a whisper as they made their way back towards the table. "Aren´t they in thrall to the Dark Lord?" 

"I put Will-Strengthening Potion in the Every Flavour Beans," said Lupin, under his breath. "They don´t know it yet." 

Sirius grinned. Lupin was visited with a sudden idea. He looked over quickly at his friend. "Have you still got those Zonko´s Pencils, Sirius?" 

"Only one." Sirius produced it from his pocket and handed it to Lupin. It was odd to have one of those pencils back in his grasp after twenty years. He remembered the feel of it, the sense that magic was flowing out of it as he traced it over the map of Hogwarts that Peter had torn out of a copy of Hogwarts: A History. The first Marauder´s Map. Now he bent the soft nub of the pencil to the map of Slytherin´s castle, although at Fleur´s suggestion, he traced only the ground floor where the exits were. He felt the pencil spark with energy in his hand as he followed the lines that indicated corridors, doors, stairways and exits, and watched the tiny dots that testified to the location of the castle´s occupants spring into existence and movement. It was only when he had traced the gardens and the walls that surrounded them that he noticed something strange. 

"Sirius," he said, beckoning his friend over, "look at this." 

Sirius looked over his shoulder, started, and swore. Lupin didn´t blame him. Outside the walls of the castle were a veritable heaving mass of dots, indicating hundreds, perhaps a thousand, people gathered outside the walls. And if that wasn´t odd enough, there were three dots gathered towards the front of the mass that bore the names Virginia Weasley, Draco Malfoy, and ... Benjamin Gryffindor. 

"What the...?" Sirius muttered, but Fleur at that moment interrupted him by quickly crossing the room, and yanking aside one of the heavy velvet draperies covering the windows. The werewolves yelped indignantly as bright silvery moonlight speared into the room, but Fleur ignored them, gesturing wildly for Lupin and Sirius to join her. They hurried across the room to the window, and Lupin held the heavy drapery aside as he peered out into the gardens. 

And nearly fell over. Beyond the walls, he could see a heaving mass of figures milling about - dozens, hundreds - the moonlight gleaming off bright armor and silvery weapons and brightly-colored pennants that held their own light as they snapped in the breeze, each adorned with a dark red flag bearing a golden lion. Gryffindor. 

"It´s an army," Sirius whispered, amazed. "Ginny went back in time and got an army. How´d she do it? What an amazing girl." 

Lupin shook his head. "They´re just milling about, though. What are they waiting for? Why don´t they attack?" 

"They cannot get in," said Fleur positively. "There are wards up all around the castle that prevent an attacking force from entering. They will never be able to get in. The Snake Lord knows this; he is probably not even worried." 

Lupin glanced at her. "Is there any way to take the wards down?" 

Fleur nodded slowly. "Only Slytherin can take them down. Or..." 

"Or what?" asked Sirius, turning to look at her. "Or you can?" 

She shook her head, trembling all over. "I can try, but when I attempt to disobey an express order....you do not know the pain, it is blinding, scorching." She looked down at the ground. "I wish I could 'elp you. I 'ave much to atone for." 

Sirius looked at Fleur´s bent head, then over at Lupin, who was wearing a thoughtful expression. "Remus," he said slowly. "Have you got any more of those purple Every Flavour Beans?" 

*** 

Draco did what Harry had suggested, and ran. He was quite aware of Ron running behind him; the redheaded boy had very long legs and Draco was impressed with the speed with which he zipped down the corridors. Or would have been, if he´d had the breath and energy to be impressed with anything. 

They raced around a corner and Draco darted sideways and towards a long staircase the color of polished bone. Then he felt Ron´s hand grab at his sleeve. "Do you know where you´re going?" the other boy panted. 

"Sure I do," said Draco, and ran for the stairs. Ron followed. From the cold that billowed behind them, Draco could tell that the dementors were not far behind them. They clattered up the stairs, around a corner, another flight of stairs, and ran smack into a closed door. 

Ron swore, with despairing resignation, and snarled, "I thought you said you knew where we were going!" 

"Shut up a minute." Draco stared at the door, which was not quite like any door he´d seen before. It seemed to be made of dark ivory, and was bolted seven times and barred seven times on his side. With frenzied fingers he scrabbled at the bolts, but it was no use, they were stuck fast. It didn´t help that his fingers were sweating and his hair was getting in his eyes. There was a freezing wind blowing through the corridor and he had a feeling he knew why. 

"Use your sword, dimwit," said Ron, flopping back against the wall and glaring at him. 

"What?" 

"Use your sword! It can cut through anything. Think!" 

Draco pulled the sword from the sheath hanging over his back. He looked at it, then at the very solid-looking door, then shrugged, and swung the blade at it hard. 

As it had cut through Harry´s adamantine chains, the blade drove through the door, slicing off great chunks as if it were cutting through butter. He drew it back, and swiped at the bolts with it. The sword sliced through them and they clattered at his feet. Ron grabbed for the door handle and wrenched at it; the door swung wide, and they dashed through it. Draco tried to slam it behind them, but it was too destroyed to hang properly and just dangled from its hinges. 

"Leave it," barked Ron, and Draco turned to see where they had ended up. 

They were standing on a wide stone balcony that seemed to run in a circle around a tall bone-colored tower. The balcony was walled, although the walls reached no more than chest-high, and were topped with crenellated battlements. Draco raced to the edge of the balcony and looked down. Far below and all around, he could see the tops of the forest trees, stretching away towards the horizon. High above, stars and a half moon gazed back at him, and washed the sheer sides of the tower with a cool milky light. Draco looked around and realized that he hadn´t been outside in days. 

There was no way to climb down that he could see, and no other exit than the one they had come through. 

Ron didn´t even swear this time. He was very pale in the moonlight, his freckles standing out like inkblots. "We´re trapped." He looked at Draco. "Can you do anything? They took my wand." 

It was an obvious effort for him to ask this, but Draco didn´t say anything. He was thinking that it was all very well and bloody good to be a Magid, but not actually that much use in crisis times. All he could do was spells without a wand, and he couldn´t think of any spells that would come in handy, even if he had had a wand. If only he´d learned how to Apparate. Experimentally, he held up a hand, casting his mind back to Charms class. "Catedra," he said. 

There was a bright flash of light, and a large overstuffed sofa appeared a short way away from them, resting against the battlements. It looked very comfortable, and had a matching paisley ottoman. 

Ron looked at him in disgust. "Malfoy..." 

Draco glared, and tried again. "Cerrucha," he intoned, and this time thin ropes burst from his fingers and tumbled in snakelike coils around his feet. He grabbed for one. "We can climb down -" he began, tossing one end of the rope to Ron. 

Ron looked at it dubiously. "At least it isn´t paisley." 

"You´re working my last nerve, Weasley," said Draco, turning to see if he could wedge the sword in between the crenellations of the balcony. If he could tie a rope to it, then perhaps they could - 

"Malfoy," said Ron, in a strangled voice. 

Draco turned and saw Ron staring off behind them with huge eyes. He spun around, feeling the blood drain from his heart. 

The three dementors stood at the tower entrance, tall and remote and terrifying. The moonlight iced them with silver, throwing terrible elongated shadows over the flagstones, making them seem ten times taller than they were. They paused where they were, the blank black spaces under their hoods indicating nothing at all. 

Then, slowly, they began to move forward, and a bright spear of cold shot through Draco, freezing his nerves, turning his blood to ice water. No, not this, not now. 

He sensed that Ron beside him was not as affected as he was. Swearing, Ron bent down, grabbed the ottoman at his feet, and thew it at the advancing dementors. The tallest of them caught it neatly out of the air, crushed it on one huge, spatulated hand, and heaved it over the side of the balcony. 

"I don´t think he liked your ottoman, Malfoy," said Ron in a strangled voice. 

Draco was beyond being able to think of anything clever to say in return. "Get out," he said instead, and shoved Ron away from him, hard. The redheaded boy stumbled, and looked at him in surprise. "They want me. Get out of here." 

He had a vague sense of Ron looking at him in surprise, saying "Malfoy--" and then his words bubbled away like speech heard under water, as the dementors began to move forward, gliding in stead of walking, and driving before them the cold. Cold so intense it sliced into his flesh like knives, as it had in the forest, and as in the forest the cold brought with it the agonizing weight of memories not his own, a rising tide of screams and shrill pleas that stoppered his ears and blinded his eyes. The memories of blood washing over his hands drove into his brain. And this time there was no Harry to drive them away. 

He hit the wall with his back, hard, the uneven rocks driving into his shoulder. For a moment, the pain cleared his vision. Feet away, the dementors were moving towards him. He could see Ron standing by the tower entrance, staring over towards him. Everything seemed to be happening both very quickly and very slowly, and he realized suddenly that he had left his sword there on the balcony, he could see the moonlight gleaming off its silvery hilt, just behind where Ron was standing. He reached out a hand, willing the sword to leap into his grasp as it once had. 

Nothing happened. 

He tried again, not even sure how to try, it had always been so effortless before. He reached out his hand, extending his fingers, and willed the sword to come to him. 

Nothing happened. He heard his own despairing exclamation ring in his ears, and then even that was driven away by the freezing mist that was rapidly dropping down over his vision. He could try a Patronus spell, he thought, but then he´d never tried that before around a real dementor, never contended with the glacial force of them that seemed to suck all the will and energy and hope and - 

Ron´s voice cut through the mist. He was shouting something, hoarsely. Draco´s name. Draco looked up slowly, and saw Ron running toward the balcony. He seized the sword from where it lay, and spun around with it in his hand. His face contorted with pain, he swung his arm back, and threw the sword hard through the air. There was a brilliant flash of light, and by its illumination Draco saw the sword winging towards him, slicing the air; he reached up, and caught it by the hilt. He swung it down and forward, weight and intent behind it as his father had taught him, and drove it hard into the body of the dementor standing in front of him, just where its heart would have been if it had had one. 

There was another flash of light, this one even more brilliant and greenish in hue. Draco staggered back, half blinded, as the dementor screamed. And screamed. It was the first time he had ever heard one of these notoriously silent creatures make any sound. And what a sound: a long soulless breaking scream of pain and rage. Clutching at the hilt of the sword buried in its body, the dementor staggered backwards and toppled to the ground, writhing, as Draco stared in fascinated horror. 

Immediately the other two dementors turned around. They made no sound, but began rapidly moving towards him, and he saw as they moved a still figure lying on the ground behind them. 

Ron. 

He darted forward to seize at the sword buried in the body of the dead dementor, but the dementors creatures were too quick. They swerved in front of the corpse of their companion, cutting off his access, and as they glided towards him, silent and terrible as an oncoming wave. He took a step back, and another step, and fetched up against the wall again with his breath coming hard in his ears and his hands shaking. He turned around and hopped up on top of the wall. He was looking down at the advancing dementors now, and below him the wall dropped sheer as a cliff to the treetops below. The stars and the moon beat down with a blinding silver light, and all time seemed to slow down to this one sliver of a second, pinned between the earth and the sky. 

He closed his eyes, and thought desperately back to the short Patronus lesson Harry had given him in the forest. A happy memory. He hadn´t had one then, and buggered if he had one now, he thought bitterly. He heard Harry´s voice in his head. Then make something up, Malfoy. He tried to force his mind around the dream he´d created for himself back in the forest, but the faces he tried to conjure up - Harry´s, Hermione´s, Sirius´ - seemed to take a long time to form and solidify and the cold was getting more and more intense. He held out his hand. Expecto Patronum, he whispered, and then, louder, "Expecto Patronum!" 

He opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was wings. Huge green-gold wings that blotted out everything else. For a moment he thought his spell had worked, and then he remembered that the Patronus he had conjured had been silver, and then the wings fanned backward and dropped, and he saw the entirety of the creature he was looking at. 

And he almost fell off the wall. 

A dragon was hovering in mid-air just at eye level in front of him, its wings beating with steady power. It was dark green in color, with whirling golden eyes, and wore trappings of green and silver. And on its back sat Ginny . He almost didn´t recognize her, she looked so fierce and intent. The powerful wind from the dragon´s wings blew her fiery hair behind her like a scarlet banner. In her left hand was a pair of golden reins, and she held them as if she knew exactly what she was doing. 

She held out a hand. "Get on!" she called, the wind tearing the words from her mouth. "Draco!" 

He jumped without hesitation, and, clasping her hand, scrambled up onto the dragon´s back. He slid his arms around her, which would have been quite pleasant in some other situation, and shouted into her ear, "Your brother! We have to go back for your brother!" 

Ginny half-spun around, her face white. "I only saw you! Ron? Where is he?" 

In response, Draco reached around her and grabbed her hands where they clutched the reins. He hoped fervently that riding a dragon was like riding a horse, which he did know how to do. He yanked the reins hard to the right, and the dragon, to his delight, responded by swerving into a steep, banking dive. 

Ginny screamed but stayed bolt upright as they flew low over the tower, the dragon bellowing -- in rage or outrage, Draco couldn´t tell -- as its wings scraped the crenellated battlements. He was leaning forward around Ginny now, staring down, scanning the flat top of the tower for Ron. 

He found him, and he was no longer lying limp on the flagstones. He was standing, cradling his arm against his chest, and backing away slowly from the two advancing dementors. He looked up and gawped as the shadow of the dragon fell over him. 

Ginny was staring down at her brother in horror. "Ron!" she screamed. 

Draco flung himself sideways, and reached out his hand. "Wingardium leviosa!" he cried, and Ron´s feet left the ground. Draco wasn´t any better at the spell than he had been when he´d used it on Hermione back at the manor mansion - Ron shot into the air like an arrow from a bow, and Draco nearly fell off the dragon as he caught the back of Ron´s jacket and hauled him bodily down from the air. He landed awkwardly on the dragon, in between Draco and Ginny, and gave a stifled yell of pain. The right sleeve of his shirt was soaked with blood. 

As he landed, the dragon bellowed in protest at this new addition to its load, which gave Draco an idea. "Ginny!" he yelled. "Can you make it breathe fire?" 

"Yes!" she shouted back, left hand white on the reins, her right hand behind her, clutching onto her brother. "I think so!" 

"Well, do it!" he shouted, and Ginny, whipped the reins sideways, pulling the dragon into a sharp backwards turn so that they faced the tower, and then shouted something unintelligible into its ear. 

It reared back, and Draco had to grab at Ron´s jacket to keep him from sliding off. Flame burst from the dragon´s mouth, the color of molten lava, a cascading jet of fire that seared across the roof of the tower in a destroying, purifying blast. It was soundless and fierce and almost instant. Like a wave, it crashed across the roof´s surface, obscuring everything from view - and just as quickly vanished. 

Draco stared, and in the deathly silence that followed the blast of fire a terrible stillness seemed to descend, like the aftermath of a shattering explosion. Slowly he became aware of the rhythmic beating of the dragon´s wings, heard Ginny´s sharp gasp, and Ron´s ragged breathing. They were both staring below them, and no wonder. The roof of the tower was bare; burned clean by dragon fire. The ugly sofa was gone, the dementors were gone; it was as if the top of the tower had been swept bare clean by some cosmic event. All that remained was the sword, which glittered, unburned and unharmed, in the middle of the bare empty expanse of scorched flagstones. 

*** 

"What about Slytherin?" Sirius asked as they hurried after Fleur down a narrow, twisting darkened corridor. Long hallways led off in all directions, archway after archway disappearing into green-tinted mist. Creatures hurried by them - trolls brandishing heavy axes, banshees emitting low, sepulchral moans as they stalked by, veelas looking rapacious and clicking their beaks expectantly. Sirius now realized that the many Dark creatures he´d seen rushing by him earlier had been racing outside, Called to the battle. Only the werewolves, freed from the Call by the potion Lupin had administered on the sly, remained in their rooms, blissfully unaware of what was going on outside the castle. When he, Lupin and Fleur had left, they´d left off basket weaving and moved onto a fingerpainting session. 

"Where is he?" muttered Lupin in Fleur´s ear as they stalked purposefully down the corridor. Fleur led the way, a determined light in her eyes. "Where´s Slytherin?" 

"I do not know," she replied firmly. "Nobody does. He left instructions that he was not to be disturbed, and nobody would dare disobey him, even if they could." 

"Did you get the sense that he's was concerned about the army attackingoutside the walls?" Sirius demanded. 

Fleur shook her head. "No. Whatever 'e is doing, 'e is not concerned about that." 

"My guess is that he´s about to make a last bid to reclaim his powers," Lupin said, as they turned a corner and came out into a large, circular room. "He knows perfectly well that at his full power, he could flatten such an army with a thought... what is that?" 

Sirius stopped alongside his friend and stared. Instead of a roof, this room was open to the sky, except where it was crossed over by four metal chains joined together in the middle. And from the middle, a fifth chain of brass, each link as large as a cartwheel, dangled down into the room, connected by an S-shaped link to the centerpiece of the room: a huge serpent, as big as a house, made out of overlapping plates of copper and glass. It was coiled around and around a tall marble pole, topped with a carved marble skull with a serpent protruding from its mouth: a sculpted Dark Mark. Sirius could see through the transparent parts of the metal serpent´s body to an intricate system of brass cogs and gears inside, turning in regular rhythm. Black steam puffed from its brazen nostrils, and fire flickered behind its huge empty eyes. 

With a determined look, Fleur strode into the middle of the room, walking very quickly. As she moved towards it, the serpent began to slowly uncoil itself. Slowly its tail moved, extending outward towards her, sweeping across the floor. Fleur stepped over it, rucking up her sleeve as she went - Sirius saw her slender arm emerge from the white sleeve, the pale skin stained by the blister-black Mark just above the elbow - and then she raised her arm and pointed it at the serpent, her face contorted with intense concentration. 

"Delenda!" she cried, and a bolt of green light shot from the Dark Mark on her arm, arrowed straight towards the mechanical snake, and disappeared down its throat. 

As Sirius stared, transfixed by amazement, the green light from Fleur´s Dark Mark vanished, and she collapsed silently to the floor in a crumpled heap. He looked sideways at Lupin, but his friend had already dashed forward, leaping over the serpent´s coiled tail in his hurry to get to Fleur. The serpent made no move to stop him as he lifted the unconscious girl in his arms; indeed it seemed frozen in place. Sirius might even have said that it was wearing a surprised expression. Suddenly, its head drooped, and there was a thud inside it, as if something had exploded. A good deal of white smoke poured out of its joints, and bright flashes went off behind its eyes. With a tearing noise, it collapsed in on itself, scattering bits of glass and copper across the floor like bright confetti. 

Fleur´s eyes were open now, and when Lupin reached the door and Sirius, she said in a firm little voice, "Put me down now, please." Sirius helped Lupin set her on her feet (and could have sworn she was blushing slightly); standing, she stared past them, transfixed, at the destroyed machinery of the dragon. Then, in a hushed small voice, she said, "Listen." 

They listened. Sirius imagined that Lupin, with his extra-sensitive hearing, probably picked up on the noise before he did, but eventually 

"The wards are gone," said Fleur. "The walls 'ave fallen down, and the castle is open to attack." 

*** 

"Can I see him? Just for a minute?" Ginny begg ed. 

Ben nodded. "If you like, but he´s not awake; the mediwitch gave him a Red Verbena Potion for the pain. He won´t be waking up any time soon. Your brother is out of this war, for the time being, anyway." Ben touched her shoulder lightly. "Go on; I´ll be waiting here." 

Ginny nodded and pushed the tent flap aside, and went in. Inside was a clean, well-lighted little room with white walls, a dark wooden floor, and in the center of the room, a bed. And on the bed lay Ron. 

She walked over to the bedside and stood looking down at her brother for a moment. He lay on his back, his left hand heavily bandaged and stretched out beside him. She bit her lip. The moment they had landed the dragon in the clearing in front of the army camp, Ron had slid from its back, landed on the ground, and promptly fainted from the pain in his arm. Ginny had gasped when she´d seen the extent of his injury, and started screaming for Ben. 

If she´d ever wondered what happened to an ordinary person who touched a Living Blade, now she knew. It was as if her brother had clasped his hand around a live coal: his palm and wrist were marked with a livid, bleeding burn in the shape of the sword hilt, and the imprint of the carved metal serpents had burned themselves into his skin, almost down to the bone. He had been shaking with pain and reaction until the mediwitch had given him some relaxation juice. Now he lay quiet, flushed with sleep and fever, his red hair pasted to his forehead in sweaty locks. 

Ginny leaned over and quickly kissed him on the temple, just where the silvery mark Rowena had left there was still shining. Then she straightened up and went out of the tent. 

Her eyes were blurred with tears, and it was a few moments before she was able to focus on the fact that the person waiting for her outside the tent was not Ben, but Draco. He was leaning against one of the wooden tent supports, looking vaguely skittish, in that way that cats sometimes look, when they´re quite uncomfortable where they are but still refuse to move. His face was streaked with sweat and dirt, and his light silver eyes stood out in clear contrast. A little shiver ran up her spine at the memory of sitting on the dragon in front of him, feeling his arms around her and the muscles in his chest hard against her spine, his hands over hers on the reins. 

"Ron´s all right," she said, and scrubbed hard at her eyes with the back of her hand. "If you were wondering." 

"I was wondering." Draco´s eyes were cool and remote. "I owe him now. Again." 

"You saved his life, too," she said. 

"He´s still two for one," said Draco. 

"Yeah, yeah, and no Malfoy can owe a Weasley anything, family honor, blah blah blah," said Ginny irritably. "Where´s Ben? I want to talk to him." 

Draco uncurled his arm and pointed a long, elegant, disdainful sort of finger in the direction of the next tent. "He went thataway," he said. "He said he´d be back soon." 

"Soon? What does that mean, soon?" 

Draco raised one eyebrow, which was something she´d always wished she could do. "Later than right now, earlier than never." 

"Thank you. How helpful." 

The wind had picked up and blew Draco´s blond hair into his eyes; he pushed it away with an impatient hand. "I aim to please." 

"Maybe you should aim a little lower, and try for being somewhat tolerable." 

"Ouch," Draco straightened up, eyes sparking. "Aren´t we cranky, Weasley. And after our touching interlude last night, I rather thought you had feelings for me." 

"I do have feelings for you," said Ginny firmly. "Feelings of loathing and great irritation." 

"So you decided to fill the gap with Mr. Poncy Git in the leather tights?" 

"They´re breeches," corrected Ginny. "And Ben is not a poncy git, he´s the Heir of Gryffindor." 

"Harry is the Heir of Gryffindor," snapped Draco. The cold wind had blown color into his cheeks. Either that, or he was more angry than he was letting on. "Do we need more than one? Do they come in six-packs?" 

"These are Ben´s soldiers!" said Ginny heatedly, gesturing at the camp all around them. "I couldn´t have done any of this without him." 

"Well, if I´d known that what you were looking for was a man with a really large..." 

"No need to be nasty." 

"...Contingent of armed forces, I was going to say." Draco grinned, a grin that turned suddenly considering. "Let me get this straight. You went back in time to retrieve Mr. Poncy Git and his army, and then you came back here?" 

Ginny nodded. 

"You could have spent months back in time with this guy. Getting acquainted. Very well acquainted. How do we know you didn´t?" 

"You don´t." Ginny spoke serenely. 

"And are you going to provide any further clarification on that?" 

"Nope." 

"And now you´re just trying to annoy me," Draco observed. 

"Yes, I am," said Ginny. "And by the way, behold my success." 

"I thought all you Weasleys were supposed to be nice people," said Draco, looking somewhat mournful. 

Ginny suppressed another grin. "There´s a lot about me you don´t know," she said. 

Draco gave her a long look. "Apparently," he said, and she got the feeling that he wasn´t, after all, actually angry, and that he was playing with her as he often did. Usually, however, he won. This time, she had a feeling it was a draw. She felt his considering glance on her and realized that she was shivering in the cool night breeze. 

"You´re cold," he observed, and pulled off the black sweater he was wearing. The resultant static electricity haloed his silver hair around his head. He had another black shirt on underneath, the sleeve of which was torn. Always black, she thought. "Take it," he said. 

"I´m really fine, Draco." 

"Come on. You gave me your sweater once." 

She blinked. It took her a moment before she remembered that she had given him her cardigan to dry his hair with back at the Manor the week before. A little grudgingly, she reached out and took the sweater. She was about to thank him when a voice spoke up from behind them. "According to Feroluce, he had a good time with you two." It was Ben, hands in pockets, looking vaguely amused. "You let him breathe fire." 

Ginny felt herself blush. "Just the once." 

Ben smiled. "It´s all right." Ginny noticed something she had noticed seen before, which was that he seemed to be avoiding looking at Draco. When he had first seen him, kneeling over Ron, he´d done an astonished double take, and nearly dropped the stretcher he had been holding at wandpoint. As for Draco, he´d barely reacted to Ben. He looked at him once, hard, and Ginny almost saw him thinking, That´s not Harry. As far as she could tell, he had responded more to the Gryffindor regalia - cloak, sword, and scabbard - than to Ben´s actual, physical resemblance to Harry. She had a feeling Draco had a sort of recognition of Harry that went beyond the way he looked to the way he was. He would probably recognize Harry in the pitch dark. 

She had already brought Ben up to date on what had happened at the top of the tower while they waited outside the mediwitch´s tent; now he proceeded to fill them in on the army´s efforts to get into Slytherin´s castle. They walked as they talked, back through the tents towards the walls of the castle, where the army was grouped. They were a mass of huddled figures in the darkness, punctuated by bursts of wandlight. A discontented buzzing rose from them, as if from a hive of wasps. 

"They don´t seem happy," Draco observed dryly. 

Ben shook his head. "It´s no use," he said, looking frustrated. "There are wards up all around the castle that prevent this number of people from entering. We could try climbing over the walls one by one, but that´s like asking to be picked off by Slytherin´s army of Dark creatures. Have you ever seen veela when they get angry? I don't want to subject my men to that until I have to. If we´re going to attack, we need to attack in numbers, we need to attack in force -" 

"We need to attack in leather tights," added Draco. 

"Would you like to borrow a pair?" Ben asked him, without missing a beat. 

"Draco, shut up," said Ginny. 

"Is there no magical way to take the wards down?" Draco asked. 

"We´ve been trying, of course," said Ben. "I thought perhaps you might have some knowledge, being the Heir of Slytherin. And I see he marked you with the signa serpens." 

Ben spoke lightly, but his eyes on Draco were hard and inquiring. 

Draco looked down at the Dark Mark on his slender arm, revealed where his sleeve was rucked up, just under his elbow. "Yes," he said tightly. 

"Doesn´t that frighten you?" said Ben. 

"I don´t frighten easily." 

"You want to fight," said Ben, sounding incredulous. "You want to use that Living Blade of yours to cut down the darkness? Knowing what you are?" 

Ginny met Draco´s eyes with her own. She could see the stars reflected in his eyes, a lighter silver against the dark silver irises. He looked intent, and hesitated a long moment before speaking. "Maybe I don´t know who the enemy is any longer," he said slowly. "Maybe it´s me. I don´t know. But I do know who my friends are. I want to fight with them. If you let me fight, I´ll fight on your side. If you don´t let me fight -" 

"Then what?" 

"I´ll fight on your side anyway." Draco jabbed a finger towards the castle, looming huge and black against the dark sky. "In there is everything that matters to me in my life. I want my life back." 

Ginny felt a brief flash of unaccountable irritation, but suppressed it. She knew Draco was speaking figuratively, after all, his mother wasn´t in the castle, and she certainly mattered to him. Still, it was true enough that he was quite unreasonable where both Harry and Hermione were concerned, and pretty much only where they were concerned. She had been, in fact, surprised at his fierce adamancy about returning to get Ron - and had then felt guilty for it. What kind of person would he be, if he hadn´t wanted to save her brother´s life? And what kind of person had she thought he was, and how could she be in love with a person like that, and was she in love with him? It was all very confusing. She shoved the thoughts down firmly, and looked at Ben. 

"Did he have these wards up around his castle in your time? Do you know?" 

Ben shook his head. "Armies were never able to attack Slytherin Castle directly; he always attacked first. The only force ever sent against him vanished." 

"Well, they did arrive," said Draco. "It just took them a thousand years to get here." 

"There must be some way to knock the wards down," Ginny insisted. "If it takes Magid power, fine. Draco´s a Magid, even if he doesn´t know all that many spells -" 

"Thank you for the ringing endorsement," said Draco. 

Ben ignored this bickering. He was staring up at the sky, thumbs hooked into the scabbard of his belt. "Some larger kind of magic is at work, here," he said, looking somber. "Strange signs and portents - odd lights in the sky. Not to mention that one of my best archers was knocked out by a falling ottoman. Something," he said, firmly, "is up," and barely had he finished speaking when there was a gigantic rending cacophony; the soldiers all around them yelled and leaped backward as the walls around the castle collapsed into rubble with a thunderous crash. 

*** 

"Harry, what are you thinking about?" 

"You know." Harry looked over at Hermione and gave her a wry smile. They were both a little out of breath from climbing what seemed like a thousand twisting stairs. The walls of the narrow staircase had grown steadily dryer as they had ascended up from the water, and they were mazed with rather pretty patterns of multicolored lichen and moss, in shades of gray, green and violet. Both Harry and Hermione were still soaking wet; Harry had wanted to use a Drying Spell on their clothes; but Hermione had nixed that idea: "No magic while we're in the castle." So they dripped, and squelched with every step. Harry´s drenched clothes felt pasted to his body, the scabbard seemed to weigh a ton, and wet locks of black hair kept falling into his eyes. The discomfort wasn´t much, however, compared to the worry nagging at his brain. 

"Ron and Draco?" Hermione said. "I think the biggest danger there is that they´ll kill each other." 

Harry looked sideways at her. He could tell perfectly well that she was trying to sound cheerful for his benefit. He always knew what she was thinking where he was concerned. What she was thinking where Draco was concerned was of course another matter. There she was a closed book. He had never really gotten a grasp on what she felt for their silver-haired ex-enemy, and wasn´t sure he wanted to. He knew he loved her; he knew she loved him. And Draco - Draco was as much a part of him as his own right hand. Sometimes an arthritic and painful hand, but still part of him. Some thoughts were just better buried. 

"All right," came Hermione´s slightly breathless voice, cutting into his reverie. "What is it?" 

"What´s what?" echoed Harry, falling back to earth with a thud. 

"You. You´re feeling guilty about something, Harry Potter. I know you. There isn´t anything you could have done, by the way. The floor collapsed under us, if you recall." 

"I know. I wasn´t feeling guilty about that." 

"Well, you look like the guilt bus ran you down." She poked at him playfully with a wet finger. "Who´re you feeling bad about? Ron or Draco or both?" 

"Both," Harry admitted, squelching around another staircase turn. "I shouldn´t have snapped at Ron - he´s just looking out for me. I can sort of see what Draco´s thinking - Ron can´t. I´ve got reasons to trust him Ron doesn´t. I shouldn´t have made him feel like I didn´t understand. And Draco - all right. He´s my friend -" 

Hermione grinned. "Ouch. Did that hurt?" 

"Quiet, wench. I´m on a roll here. I said he´s my friend, and given that he´s Malfoy, he´s been a good one. And he really would care if I died, I realize that." 

"Oh, Harry, for goodness sake. If you died..." She shuddered. "He'd die," she said, quietly -- so quietly that she wasn't sure Harry heard her. 

He didn't seem to have. "I can´t help feeling like if I´d been a better friend to him in the beginning, if I´d given him a reason to trust me about all this, he wouldn´t have run off and none of this would have happened." 

Hermione sighed. "He walked away from you, you know. From all of us. It was his choice." 

"I don´t know. Sometimes people walk away because they want you to leave them alone; sometimes they walk away to see if you care enough to follow them into hell. I think I went the wrong way." 

"Don´t say that. You´re a good friend, Harry. The best anyone could have." 

"Yeah.´ Harry knew he sounded unconvinced. "Maybe." 

He might have said more, but they had reached the end of the staircase now. It terminated in a heavy-looking mahogany door studded with brass. The door handle was carved in the shape of a frog. Harry took hold of it and pulled, and the door slid open without even a creak of rusted hinges. 

He stepped through the doorway and Hermione followed, her hand on the Lycanthe at her throat. They found themselves in a huge room, empty of any occupants. The floor was polished flagstones, alternating in darker and lighter squares like the pattern of a chessboard. High above was the ceiling, which like the ceiling of the Great Hall at school seemed enchanted to reflect the sky outside. At the moment it was a brilliant black field glittering with diamond-powdered stars. Huge tapestries hung along the walls, depicting scenes out of dreams: in one, a castle of bone rose from a bleak wasteland, in another a silver chariot shaped like a flower was driven across the sky by huge fiery-winged horses that reminded Harry of the horses that drew the Beauxbatons carriage. 

"It´s beautiful," said Hermione, looking around. "And horrible." 

But Harry was staring at something on the floor. "Hermione...what´s that?" 

She looked where he indicated. Inked on the floor in what looked disturbingly like - but certainly couldn´t actually be - blood, was a circle inside of which was a sketched five-pointed star. In between the points of the star were drawn various symbols: a dot, a cross, a square, an oblong, and something that looked a bit like the letter "H." 

"It´s a Draxagram," said Hermione, looking a bit unhappy. "It´s Circle Magic - this one´s got a pentagram in it, so it´s got something to do with summoning dark forces. Wizards use them for summoning magical creatures, especially powerful ones that you don´t want to get out of control. They can´t get out of the circle when they appear." 

"What if you step into the circle?" Harry asked, morbidly fascinated. 

Hermione shuddered. "Don´t ask." 

She turned away from the pentagram, and so did Harry. He followed her towards a raised dais in the center of the room, which contained the room´s only furnishings, if such a strange collection of objects could be called furnishings. 

In the center of the room were four slender golden pillars, set in a straight line. Harry could not imagine what they might be for. They looked like the supports for some massive tent, each about two arm´s lengths apart. A few feet in front of the four pillars was a crystal sphere, rising upon the coils of a translucent green base in the shape of a serpent. In the heart of the globe burned a still flame, living, animate with a life so alien that Harry stared in fascinated horror. It was a thing he felt to be alive, even if it could not be alive. The flame inside the clear globe threw violent shadows over the walls, the tapestries, the bare flagstone floor. 

"There it is," said Hermione, beside him, her voice soft. "The Orb." 

He went over to it and laid his hand on it. Something about it was weirdly fascinating. He found himself overcome by a peculiar urge to touch the thing. Hermione came up beside him then and laid her own hand on the Orb. He found himself super-aware of her presence next to him, her damp sleeve pressed against his bare arm, the long curls of her hair tickling his throat. He turned and looked at her, at the line of her profile, marble-pale and serious in the dimly pulsing light of the Orb. Her cheeks were flushed to wild rose with excitement; she looked as she did when she had solved a particularly difficult Arithmancy problem. 

"What is it?" he asked, his voice slightly husky, from the damp and perhaps from something else. 

"I think we should try to open it," she said. "I mean, I´m the Heir of Ravenclaw, you have Gryffindor and Slytherin blood - we´re just missing Ginny, but maybe if we can get it to open a little ways, it´s better than nothing. And there wasn´t anything that said we all had to touch it at the same time." 

Harry nodded and laid his hand over hers on the slick surface of the Orb. "Alohomora," they both said, her soft voice almost drowned out by his. 

There was a flash of light from deep within the Orb: a radiant flash of deep red, followed by a pulse of deep blue. Something inside him tensed almost painfully, he waited -- 

Nothing happened. 

Hermione looked disappointed. "It didn´t work," she said, taking her hand off the Orb, but keeping her fingers interlaced with Harry´s. 

He turned and looked at her. Her damp hair curled in thick locks around her face, frizzing a little at the ends, and her wet robes clung to the outline of her body. The Orb threw scarlet patches of light over her dress, her skin; she looked as if she were splashed with blood, and he felt his mind cast itself back, as if he were remembering, although the memories that came to him were nothing he had ever experienced. He saw the same room he was in now, and a woman in a blue dress stained all over with blood, cradling a dark-haired man in her lap and weeping inconsolably. 

It was Hermione he heard crying, and yet it wasn´t Hermione at all. Her familiar face blurred out of all recognition as he leaned back against one of the gold pillars, suddenly feeling very faint. For the second time that day he felt the sensation of steel going into his chest, this time thrust through from behind before his murderer spun him around and lowered him slowly to the ground, and leaned over him, and smiled at his death even as he bent and kissed the blood from his mouth. Cousin. Best friend. Enemy. Murderer. 

"Harry?" Hermione´s voice came from a long way away. He went on leaning against the wall, lost in a dark haze of memory, until he felt her small hands at his waist, loosening the scabbard there, and it clattered to the floor with the sword still in it and the mist lifted from his eyes as if a wind had blown it away. He heard himself taking deep, gasping breaths, and raised his eyes. 

Hermione´s face swam slowly into focus. She looked very anxious. "Harry?" 

"I´m all right." He pushed himself off the wall, feeling his shirt stuck to his back with sweat and water. "I was just..." 

"It´s the Key," said Hermione, the anxiety in her eyes turning into sympathy. "It makes you...remember things." At his anxious look, she hastened to reassure him. "Not all the time. In dreams, and in certain situations." 

"What kind of situations?" Harry demanded, although he had a feeling he knew. He looked around the room, then back at Hermione. "I think Godric died in here," he said. 

She nodded without speaking, and drew him towards her. She rested her hands lightly on his shoulders, lifting her face to his. "I know," she said. "I felt it. Something awful happened in here; something heartbreaking." 

He didn´t say anything. There was a fierce pain inside him, made up of residual nightmare, the aftereffects of so many stresses and torments, the constant fear for his own life and for the life of those that he loved. He looked down at her, half-blindly, and saw her face, very white in the flaring and fading light of the Orb. "Harry," she said. Her eyes searched his. "I love you, you know that," she said quietly. "I always will." 

He nodded, the tangled knot of emotions inside his chest tightening almost painfully as he looked at her, her eyes dark and earnest, fringed by lashes beaded with water. He remembered the first time he had ever kissed her, both of them drenched in rain, and a blazing stab of yearning and pain struck at his heart. Unthinking, he bent and kissed her, as he had not been able to for days, even weeks: hard and fiercely, as if hungry for something he had not even quite realized he was starving for. 

She responded instantly, her slender hands locking across his back, lips opening under his, and he swam dizzily in the icewater coolness of her mouth, almost forgetting everything else in the need to be closer to her. She stood on tiptoe, her back against the pillar, pushing her body against his, her head arched back, whispering into his mouth, repeating his name, Harry, Harry, Harry. Her eyes were closed, and he could see the leaping pulse in her throat, hammering as he touched her, his hands finding his way through the wet folds of her clothes as if he were pushing through damp leaves, peeling them away. All around them, the room seemed to flare and fade in time with the beats of his heart, fading and brightening, fading and brightening. He felt her body shake as he touched her and his mouth on hers was wild and trembling and he saw another room and another man, with untidy dark hair and dressed in scarlet, and a woman in blue, and the light of tawny candles glowing, and then behind them a door opened, and another man came in, and this one was dressed in black and silver... 

Hermione gasped. 

Harry spun away from her, his hand going to the scabbard at his waist, his damp fingers slipping over the hilt of his sword. But it was too late. Salazar Slytherin stood there in front of the glowing Orb, and in his left hand he held something silvery-gray and filmy, which Harry recognized with a lurching swell of shock that almost knocked him off his feet. 

James Potter´s Invisibility Cloak. 

*** 

The castle was in chaos; Sirius had never seen anything like it. He had insisted that Lupin remove the still extremely weakened Fleur to the relative safety of the werewolves´ den, where she could be protected. Lupin had allowed Sirius to borrow his Paw Paw wood and unicorn tail wand and Sirius was edging cautiously along the walls, map in hand, trying to orient himself in order to get closer to the dots marked Virginia Weasley, Benjamin Gryffindor, and Draco Malfoy. 

Thundering down the corridors were creatures of all description, locked in mortal combat with regiments of wizards. A ten-foot swamp troll heaved its axe at a witch dressed in Hufflepuff gold; a beaky veela screeched and launched herself at a heavily armed witch in Gryffindor red, who dispatched her handily with a Combustis spell. A wizard in Ravenclaw blue was being chased round and round the stairwell by Raven, the banshee, who was shrieking and brandishing the Giant pike. Everywhere Oggrings were being dispatched in all their shapes and forms, and unpleasant black flying things glared with horrible fierce eyes, diving and biting at anything that moved. And where was Slytherin? He must be somewhere in the upper tiers of the castle, since he wasn´t showing up on the abbreviated Map. This made Sirius even more nervous - what was he plotting? 

His thoughts were firmly disrupted as he passed a set of double doors; they flew open, and out of them poured twenty or so skeletons dressed in brazen armor and carrying great axes. Skolks. They rattled and clanked across the floor. Sirius ducked back against the wall, but one of them - the captain, probably, for he had a scarlet plume flying from the top of his brass helmet - turned and glared at Sirius with darkly glowing red eyes. With a hiss, he lunged at Sirius, who whipped out his wand and hurled a quick succession of spells at the creature, all of which bounced off its armor. Sirius had to duck to keep from being struck by a rebounding Impedimenta curse. He heard the whistle of displaced air as the Skolk´s axe whipped just above his head; ducked, knowing it was useless, and then - 

A hand grabbed the back of his robes and yanked him backwards as a flashing sword came down, leaving a trail of scarlet fire behind it in the air. It struck the skeleton in the shoulder, and the Skolk burst apart into a heap of tumbled bones. Silently, the other skeletons backed away, then turned and fled down the hall. Sirius saw the red stones in the hilt of the sword glitter as it was withdrawn, and thought, with mingled shock and relief, Harry? 

He turned around, and saw, staring back at him with an expression of concern, James Potter. 

*** 

Ginny seized Draco´s arm so tightly that he winced. "Sirius," she said, and pointed. 

Draco glanced where she indicated, and saw Sirius, leaning back against a wall further down the corridor, and standing in front of him, Ben. At their feet was a heap of Skolk bones - Draco had just dispatched several of them himself, and Ginny had quite impressively destroyed one by kicking it apart with her foot. Sirius was white as chalk; Draco had never seen him look like that. Surely he couldn´t have been so badly put off by the Skolk; he was an Auror, after all. Then he twigged. Ben. Unprotesting, he let Ginny seize his hand and together they raced down the corridor to Sirius. 

Ginny caught at Harry´s godfather´s arm. "Sirius," she panted. "This is Ben - Benjamin Gryffindor. Harry´s ancestor." 

Ben, having resheathed his sword, had been holding his hand out to Sirius and was looking extremely confused. "Is something wrong?" 

The color came slowly back into Sirius´ face. Draco looked at him, and felt a twinge of unhappy empathy. Until now, it hadn´t occurred to him that a twenty-year old man who looked just like a dark-eyed, scarless Harry would be someone who looked just like James had when he had died. And behind the comprehension dawning in Sirius´ eyes, there was something else. Disappointment. 

Wearily, Sirius held his own hand out. "Nothing. I thought you were someone else. I´m Sirius Black." 

Another one of the nasty black flying things swooped low overhead. Draco dispatched it with his sword, splattering green ichor all over Ben, who glared. 

"Now we can continue to stand here exchanging pointless pleasantries and get hacked to death in the process, or we can go after the Orb," said Draco. "Thoughts?" 

Ginny pointed. "Upstairs," she said shortly, fingering the Turner around her wrist. 

They ran upstairs en masse, crouching low. The battle raged on around them, but something - probably the fact that they were with the Heir of Slytherin - kept most of the worst of it away from them. They raced quickly around the marble spiral staircase, Draco in the lead, turned several corridors, and found themselves standing before a set of carved malachite doors. The carvings depicted scenes of battle and court life. 

Slightly breathless, Draco pointed at the door. "The Orb´s in there." 

"And so might Slytherin and dozens of minions be," pointed out Ben, fingering the hilt of his sword. 

Draco looked at Ben, then at Sirius, and then, with a slight shrug, reached out, took the handle of the door, and pushed it open. 

They all peered around the edge of the door. They saw a vast and empty room, in the center of which the jade-colored Orb sat displayed on its serpentine pedestal. There was no sign of any other furnishings, save a series of strange markings on the floor. 

"I´ll go in and get it," said Draco, drawing his sword and looking at Sirius. "You lot, stand guard and make sure nobody comes in." 

"I´m going with you," said Ginny. She shook her head at Draco´s mutinous expression. 

"Maybe we can get it open - I´m Hufflepuff, and you´ve got Slytherin and Gryffindor blood - if it doesn´t work, we´ll just take the Orb instead, but we might as well try. Anyway, it´s safer in there than it is out here," and she gave him a little half-grin that was rather cute. 

Sirius had his wand out and a determined expression plastered across his face. "You two go - we´ll keep out anything that might come in after you." 

Draco nodded at him and at Ben, who was staring off down the darkened corridor, his sword glimmering in the half-light. Then he took Ginny´s hand, and ducked in through the open malachite doors. They stepped into the vast circular chamber, and as they did so, Draco distinctly heard the malachite doors shut and lock behind them with a sharp, audible click. 

*** 

Hermione knew what the gold pillars were for, now. She stood with her back against one, her wrists and ankles bound tightly to it with slender, steel-strong ropes. Harry, beside her, was likewise bound, only his right hand was also encased in an adamantine cuff which ran through the side of the pillar. Both of them had been too stunned to react when Slytherin had first revealed himself, and had lost precious seconds of time trying to recover from the shock. Harry had shoved Hermione behind him and as a consequence, she hadn´t even seen Slytherin hit him with a Stunning spell. He had collapsed in front of her, and she had gone for her Lycanthe, but it was already too late - Slytherin had flung an Impedimenta spell at her with bruising force, knocking her to the ground. She had blacked out momentarily, and when she had regained consciousness, no more than seconds later, she had found herself magically bound to a pillar, Harry across from her. 

She could just see Harry over Salazar Slytherin´s shoulder. He still looked groggy and dazed from the Stunning spell, and there was a spreading bruise on his cheek where the spell had hit him. Her heart ached, looking at him. As if he hadn´t been through enough, as if they both hadn´t been through enough. But why Harry, why always Harry? 

Then Slytherin moved in front of her, cutting off her view of him. "I´m so sorry to have interrupted that tender moment you were having," he said, looking down at her out of his sleepy black lizard eyes. "Would you believe that I once interrupted my Rowena and my miscreant cousin Godric in this very room, in much the same...situation?" He cocked his head, and his eyes raked her face and then her body. She wanted to squirm away, but the ropes held her fast. "I imagine you would believe it, wouldn´t you," he murmured. "A betrayal like that leaves its marks even down through a thousand years. And you appear to have the same rather disgusting proclivities that she did. How unfortunate, a pretty little thing like you. And I was almost planning to let you live, before. What a disappointment." 

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face away from him. Her heart was pounding hard in her chest, so filled with loathing it felt as if she might burst. Her one consolation was that without Ginny and Draco, he couldn´t open the Orb. She hoped they were far, far away. 

"What do you see when you shut your eyes?" he whispered, laying cold, long fingers against her cheek. "You remember, don´t you," he said. "How it was, with us. The rooms in this castle, where we were together--" 

Hermione´s eyes flew open. "I remember nothing," she spat at him. "You´re disgusting. Don´t touch me." 

"I am disgusting?" he snarled, and his lip curled back over pointed teeth. Her stomach lurched. He stepped back, taking his hand from her face. "You. I thought you were like her. I looked at you through his eyes and I saw he loved you as I had loved her. And so I took you. I would have made you my Source. But years of breeding with Mudbloods and Muggles has corrupted the pure line of her blood. You are not like my Rowena. You stood next to my Heir on the stairs and I saw how that sword burned your arm, and I realized. You are no Magid. You are nothing. An ordinary girl, Muggle-born, my servants tell me. Not worthy to be a Source of mine. Not worthy to wear her face, not worthy to have her blood run in your veins. You´re nothing." 

Hermione glared at him in furious disgust. "She didn´t love you," she hissed. "I have her memories, and I know. All she ever was to you was something to possess and to control. And she realized that, and she didn´t love you. She loved Godric. All you ever were to her was something evil, something foul -" 

He hit her. His ringed fist hammered up into her jaw and her teeth met in her lip in a burst of agony. She gasped and through the haze of pain that darkened her vision, she saw Harry throw himself forward, the ropes that bound him to the pillar dragging themselves out to their fullest extension, but it still wasn´t far enough for him to reach Slytherin. 

And Slytherin turned and looked at him. And smiled. As terrible a smile as could be imagined. "Little Heir of Gryffindor," he said. "You look so much like him, but he was never as slight as you, or as breakable. But like you, I think, the most breakable part of Godric was always his heart. You wouldn´t have thought it to look at him, but there it was. Now -- watch me," he smiled , and Hermione heard with dread in her heart the torturer´s smirk in his tone. It was oddly reminiscent to her of Draco´s voice, as he had sounded years ago when his only goal in life seemed to be to hurt Harry as much and as often as possible. She tensed, feeling instinctively that Slytherin would go for her as the most direct way to hurt Harry. But he didn´t. 

He lifted the Invisibility Cloak he had been carrying wrapped around his right fist, and from a pocket of his robes he drew a long, thin-bladed knife. He looked at Harry. And then he plunged the blade of the knife into the Cloak, shredding it. The knife tore through it with the sound of rending cloth that was also a sound like screaming. Hermione gasped, but there was nothing she could do; within seconds the Cloak - that had been James Potter´s, that had accompanied Harry, Hermione and Ron on so many adventures, that had saved their lives, that had been the one thing Harry had ever had that had once belonged to his father - was in ribbons around Slytherin´s feet. 

And Harry didn´t move, or speak. He bowed his head, as if he was unable to look, but she saw his shoulders shake. And it was unbearable, the worst pain in the world, to see Harry suffer and to see him look defeated. She wanted to scream and to howl in rage and despair, and if she could have gotten free of her bonds, she felt sure she would have killed Slytherin with her bare hands. There was no sound in the room, except the sound of Harry´s uneven breathing, and her own ragged gasps in her ears, and the sound of the door opening. 

The door. Hermione flung herself around inside the ropes that bound her, and saw with mingled dread and amazement the double doors swing open as they had swung open for her and Harry, and Draco and Ginny walked into the room. 

Draco went first, and Ginny came after him. He was gripping his sword in his hand, and Ginny had her wand out and ready. Their eyes raked the room, passing over the walls, passing over the pentagram on the floor, passing over the Orb, and then passing over Harry, Hermione and Slytherin - and moving on as if they had seen nothing at all. 

An uncontrollable exclamation tore its way out of Hermione´s mouth. "Draco!" she cried. "Ginny!" 

Neither Draco nor Ginny turned around or reacted as if they had heard anything at all. Hermione´s gaze went to Harry, and her heart faltered at the expression on his face. He was staring at Draco fixedly, and with an expression of complete shock, as if he couldn´t quite believe what was happening. She had a feeling he was trying to speak to him as he often did, mind to mind, and was getting...nothing. 

Slytherin, meanwhile, was laughing. And taking no care to hide the noise he was making. "They cannot hear you," he said. "They cannot see you. We are behind an Obfuscatus charm - simple, but effective. Watch." 

Hermione watched, helpless to tear her eyes away. She realized that she could not hear what Draco and Ginny were saying. Ginny had paused and was talking earnestly to Draco, one hand on his chest, looking up at him with dark, serious eyes. She wore a rather archaic-looking pair of breeches and an oversized black sweater that was probably Draco´s: it swallowed up her delicate frame. Hermione could see the gold chain of the Time-Turner glittering against her throat. And Draco - slender in his dark clothes, with the sleeves of his shirt pulled up; she could see the black rose of the Dark Mark on the white skin of his inner forearm. He reached up a hand and pushed back the untidy silver hair from his forehead, glancing around the room, and she begged him silently, see me, see me. But he didn´t. He shrugged finally, and then he reached out a hand and laid it on the surface of the Orb. 

"No," whispered Hermione, and then louder, "No, NO!" 

But they couldn´t hear her. She saw Ginny speak, and then a deep flash of light came from the center of the Orb, the color of gold, followed by a pulse of dark green. Draco stepped back, his eyes widening, and then he caught at Ginny and pulled her back too as the Orb began to shake and tremble. Inside the globe, the animate flame flickered. Hermione heard her own caught breath achingly loud in the silence. The flame shook again. Then, abruptly, it went out. A sharp, crackling noise broke, and the crystal sides of the Orb split and fissured and rained down like shattered bits of eggshell. A plume of greenish smoke rose from the shattered remains of the Orb, and floated into the air, where it hovered for a moment. Then, like a falling arrow, it plunged towards Slytherin and drove into his chest. 

Slytherin howled, as if he had been pierced through with a dagger, and arched his back as the green smoke arrowed into him. His whole body seemed to glow brightly for a moment with a luminous emerald halo. Then it vanished. 

He straightened up then, and began to smile. 

"What the hell?" Hermione vaguely heard Draco´s voice as if from a long way away. He sounded flabbergasted. She didn´t blame him. "How did that work --?" 

Ginny looked as if she were about to answer him, raising her head - then she gasped, and looked straight at Hermione and Harry. Hermione had one split second to realize that now Ginny could see them, when Slytherin raised his hand. He pointed it at Ginny, and lovingly intoned, "Wingardium everriculum!" and Ginny screamed as her feet left the floor and she flew across the room with lightning swiftness, slamming into the pole that stood next to Harry´s. The same ropes leaped up and fastened around her, whipping swiftly around her arms and legs, binding her tightly. 

Draco spun around. "Ginny--?" 

He broke off, and stared. It was obvious he could now see them all as well. His eyes went to Harry and then to Hermione, and lastly to Slytherin, where they rested with loathing... and fear. Hermione had rarely seen Draco afraid. Angry, yes, whiny certainly, obnoxious often; but he was rarely afraid. 

He looked afraid now. 

It was perhaps that Slytherin seemed so different now; it was as if he had grown many feet in stature. He radiated power, a bleak and shimmering power. She had thought in the Burrow, when he was drawing on Fleur´s magic, that he had seemed far more powerful than she remembered, but that was nothing to this. An ominously tinted light poured from his eyes, and a halo of intense and pulsing energy seemed to surround him. He stood tall, arrow-straight and terrifying, and his eyes were black as suns in his arsenic-white face. He held out his hand to Draco. "Come here," he said. "Give me that sword." 

Draco shook his head, but it was Ginny who spoke. "No." 

Slytherin lifted his hand and touched it to the base of Harry´s throat, sliding it down gently to rest just over his heart. Harry shuddered, but didn´t say a word. Hermione watched with a horror that nearly took her out of her body. From the expressions on Draco and Ginny´s faces, they were feeling much the same thing. "Do as I tell you," he said. 

"You won´t kill Harry," said Ginny finally, in a shaking voice. "You need him." 

"I don´t need all of him," said Slytherin, his voice very calm. He bent to pick up Harry's scabbard, which lay at his feet, and pulled the sword from it. Harry and Draco both started - it was again in one piece - but they didn't have time to think about why or how before Slytherin brandished the sword at Harry. "I can begin by slicing off his fingers, one by one. I´ll make sure he doesn´t bleed to death, not right away at least." Then he smiled and dropped the sword back onto the floor. "Or not. I need no such Muggle methods now, to make him scream." He turned his head, and looked at Harry. "You have felt the Cruciatus Curse before," he said. "But never with such power behind it as I possess now." 

"No!" Hermione screamed, and jerked against her bonds so hard that they cut into her wrists, bringing blood. She didn´t look at Harry, couldn´t see him past Slytherin´s back, looked instead over at Draco, who was deathly white, although his eyes were nearly black. He raised the sword in his hand, and threw it hard at the ground. It hit the flagstones with an echoing sound. Then he put his foot on it, and kicked it across the room towards Slytherin. 

It skittered across the flagstones, sending up brilliant sparks. 

Draco´s eyes were bleak with hate. "Take it, then," he said. 

"You were not worthy of it," said Slytherin, and, taking his hand from Harry´s throat, turned and held it out. The sword leaped into his grasp and he smiled down at it, lovingly. Then he turned to Draco, and held out his left hand. "Come here," he said, and Draco did. 

*** 

Draco felt his feet move against his own volition, carrying him forward like a piece of driftwood caught in a powerful tide. He fought it, bit down on his lip, tasted blood in his mouth. But it was useless. The Orb had opened, and so Slytherin had his powers back, and with them, the powers afforded him by his bargain with Hell. Draco felt himself driven forward, and then he stumbled and fell to his knees before the Snake Lord. 

He looked up. Harry, Hermione and Ginny stared down at him from their prisons of rope. Ginny looked desperately furious, Hermione despairing and panicked, Harry´s face was white, set and unreadable. And Draco saw that he was struggling, with as little evident effort as possible, to free his left hand from the ropes that bound it to his side. Draco couldn´t imagine why he was bothering - Harry´s left hand was as useless when it came to doing magic as his own right hand was to him. But he felt Harry reach out towards him, and his voice whispered softly at the back of Draco´s mind: Distract him. 

Draco´s eyes flicked to Slytherin, who was gazing down at him with a sort of furious appetite. "We have come to the end now," he said, and his voice was low and even and resigned. "At the end of things, I meet them all again, and you, who were created for me. I planned you, a thousand years ago." He reached down and with a gesture that could almost have been called gentle, slid his hand under Draco´s chin and tilted it upward. His eyes scanned the boy´s face, and somehow, Draco knew what he was seeing: the clean even planes of cheek and chin and jaw, the long gray-silver eyes with their slightly tilted edges, the white-blond hair, too fine to tangle, and that he was recognizing it all as he might recognize a drawing he had done, years ago. There was no love in that look and no hate, but something much colder and more removed even than that. His thumb ran under Draco´s chin to his collarbone, and it took all of Draco´s reserves of control not to pull away, retching with nausea. He kept his eyes fixed above Slytherin´s shoulder - kept them fixed, in fact, on Harry, who had managed to free his wrist from one coil of rope, and was working on the second. 

"A master craftsman made you," said Slytherin, and his voice was remote. "Or so I thought. But you are flawed, broken somehow, internally. There is a corruption in your blood. I see it as a blemish that will grow with time. I do not think you can be put back together again." He cocked his head to the side. "Tell me," he said. 

Draco heard his own voice, dry and eroded-sounding, as if it came from far away. "Tell you what?" 

"What do you see in them? Those three, that you love, in their different ways. I loved, once, as well, three such as those. Then I put that away, as I put away childish things. But you will not let it go. What can they offer you that I, who offer you everything, cannot?" 

Draco shut his eyes. Printed against the back of his lids he saw them. Ginny, bright with spirit, Hermione, who he had loved, and Harry, who he knew better than his own self. 

What can they give you that I cannot? 

He raised his chin and looked at Slytherin. 

"Hope," he said. 

*** 

Slytherin´s sharp intake of breath masked Harry´s gasp of relief and the sound of the rope falling to the floor as he freed his left wrist. His right wrist remained shackled to the pole behind him, the cuff cutting into his skin. But he had the one hand free. Slowly he raised his hand to his mouth, and spit into it what he had been holding there since he had watched Slytherin had bound them bind Hermione. The tiny, glowing white orb. 

It had been a grueling effort not to talk, and a worse one not to shout in fury when Slytherin had struck Hermione. He was still shaking with the aftereffects of the effort it had taken not to react to that. He clenched his hand around the tiny orb in his fist, and stared at the tableau in front of him. Slytherin standing over Draco, his face a mask of barely-concealed rage, and Draco kneeling on the floor. Even kneeling, there was nothing submissive about him. He reminded Harry of a thoroughbred animal gone feral, baring his teeth at the Snake Lord. Harry had barely heard the last thing Draco had said. "Hope," it had sounded like. 

"Get up," Slytherin barked, and Draco rose to his feet, so slowly that it bordered on insolence. Standing, he was as tall as Slytherin, yet seemed much smaller, perhaps because he was slighter, perhaps because of the aura of immense power that now seemed to hang over Slytherin like an adamantine cloak. "You," said Slytherin, "my little Heir, have been grit in my shoe, a needle pricking my fingers. An irritant. You have done nothing quite as I expected. But now, you will do exactly as I say, and you will see how small your petty rebellion truly is. 

"Go to the Heir of Gryffindor. Cut his bonds and free him." 

Harry saw Draco´s eyes widen, his lips parting in surprise. 

Slytherin said, "Take him to the center of the pentagram, and leave him there. The demons will know, then, that he is the offering." Draco´s mouth turned into a bloodless line of shock, and Slytherin began to smile. "Then return, and kill the other two. After that, I might perhaps let you live." 

Draco did not move. He stood where he was, head bowed and silver hair spilling over his face, hiding his expression. Slytherin reached out his hand then, and pointed almost lazily at his Heir. Harry saw the air between them shimmer, as if it had been displaced, and Draco lurched forward a little, losing his footing. It was the second ungraceful thing that Harry had ever seen him do. He almost fell over, but the Snake Lord caught him, and held him hard by the arms. "I am going to send you away now," he said in a whispered hiss into Draco´s ear. "A little punishment I devised for my followers, a thousand years ago when I could still bend Time and creation to my own whims. You will go back into your past, Draco Malfoy, while your body stays here to serve me. I cannot imagine that the intimate review of a life like yours could bring anything other than pain. Mementorius!" Slytherin cried, and there was a pulse of green light that burst between him and Draco like a firework. Then the Snake Lord released his Heir and left him standing, blinking and dizzy-looking, in the center of the room. 

It seemed to take a moment for Draco to regain his equilibrium. He moved then, moving towards Harry slowly across the room, and when he reached him and stood in front of him and raised his head, Harry saw with a sinking heart the emptiness in the gray eyes that held his. He reached out with his mind, but it was like trying to put his arm through a concrete wall. There was nothing there. Draco´s body stood before him, but his mind had gone, it appeared, far away. 

*** 

He was in a gray place, but it was not the place he had been when he died. All around Draco stretched endless plains, terrifying in their immensity. It was a place of contrasts. Motion and immobility existed simultaneously here, black and white, light and shadow. He seemed to stand at the apex of an immense pattern, woven through the earth at his feet and running for miles in each direction. He realized that it was the pattern of his own life, intertwining with the lives of everyone around him. Somewhere behind where he stood was each moment of his childhood, and before him was his future. 

He took a step back. He was dimly aware that his body was somewhere else, doing something else, felt his fingers on ropes, unbinding them, but it didn´t matter because where he really was, was here. 

His foot came down on the pattern. And in a flash of memory, he was in a sunlit grove, riding with his father. He was eight years old and his father had broken the neck of his pet bird, and he was in tears over it. And that was the last time he had ever cried. He moved on, shifting his feet over other memories, other scenes. Saw himself flying, in green robes; they were playing Quidditch, and he was trying to knock Harry off his broom. Not caring much if Potter died when he hit the ground. He saw himself insulting the memory of Cedric Diggory, saw himself on the train on the way home taunting Harry and his friends, but mainly Harry who he knew blamed himself for Cedric´s death, watching his face as he spoke, digging the knife in, twisting it. The taste of these memories was bitter in his mouth. This was his life, laid bare like a flayed corpse, each moment of petty cruelty, each loss, each defeat, each lesser and greater evil. I cannot imagine that the intimate review of a life like yours could bring anything other than pain. 

He walked forward. He had come to a new part of the pattern now, where the thread of his life wound around and around another and a darker thread, and knew that this was where it intertwined with Harry's. This would be the moment he had taken the Polyjuice Potion. He saw the two lines stretching forward together, sometimes closer together and sometimes farther apart, and with many lines spiraling off from them into the distance, winding through them like threads in a tapestry, although he could not see where the lines ended, or which ended first. He took a step forward, and the voices rose again in his head, clamoring like thunder. 

It was raining, and the rain tautened around him like the silver bars of a cage. Hermione said, Draco, I´m so sorry. His father in the asylum cell, his voice like a whip. You were born in the image he designed, with certain qualities: Magid powers. Viciousness and charm. Lack of empathy. Competitiveness. Cruelty. Fleur smiled at him, tossing her hair. Oh, evil. There is no such thing. And Harry. I thought you were my friend. Live with your choices, then, since your life means so much to you. The Dark Lord´s voice: Is that your son, Lucius? He shook his head as if he could free himself of the sounds that echoed there, heard his father´s voice again, You are, in the end, only what I made you to be. 

He froze where he was, hoping that if he just didn´t move, the memories would go away, the voices would be silenced. But they remained, rising inside his head in a screaming cacophony, cutting off all other sound. 

*** 

Hermione stared in horror. Draco was kneeling again, his fingers unfastening the cords that bound Harry´s ankles. She knew, of course, that he was being controlled, that otherwise this was something he would never do, but it was cold comfort given the danger Harry was in. Her eyes flicked towards the pentagram in the center of the room. It continued to glow eerily, and the glow had developed a strange and dreadful pulsing. As if it were a door, shaking with vibration as someone - or something - tried to knock it down. She pushed the image away fiercely, and fixed her eyes on Harry. He was looking at her as well, and as she stared he gave her one of the sweetest smiles she had ever seen, and then he looked over at Slytherin, and back at her, drawing a direct line of meaning with his eyes. She knew what he was saying - distract him - and she swallowed hard. 

"You´re not as strong as you think," she said loudly, staring at Slytherin´s back. He turned, as she had known he would. A thousand years had not made him any less susceptible to petty jibes. 

He looked at her, his eyes inquiring, contemptuous. "Oh, really?" 

"You think that little pentagram can keep back the forces of Hell?" Hermione snapped. "Look. Already it´s eroding. The outline is fading. They´ll be here in seconds, and they won´t be too pleased that you tried to keep them out. Even all your powers can´t hold them back. I´ve read about what happens to wizards who bind demons -" 

With a snarl, Slytherin glared at her. "Silence, you stupid little Mudblood," he barked, turned his back on her, and stalked across the room to the pentagram. Heart pounding, she watched as he used his left hand to redraw the perimeters of the magical outline, glowing streams of green light issuing from his fingers as he moved them above the floor. 

She turned her head back to Harry, and saw him raise his hand, and throw something hard at the floor. The tiny white orb. It struck the flagstones and shattered, and from its shattering exploded a burst of blinding white light. The light leaped up, refracted and split into three white arrows. One arrow flew towards Hermione and struck against the Lycanthe at her throat. She felt it grow very hot, then cold. The second arrow soared towards Ginny, and struck her wrist where the Time-Turner was bound; the third flew at Harry, and the scabbard at his side glowed as the light collided with it. Harry raised his head and smiled at her again, this time with exultation. 

It worked, he said, and it took a moment for her to realize that he had not spoken aloud, but that his voice was echoing in her head. She looked quickly over at Slytherin, who was still standing over the pentagram, his eyes on it; Draco, being lost in a world of his own, did not seem to have noticed anything. 

What WAS that? Ginny´s voice now, astonished. 

The last piece of the puzzle, said Harry. 

The keys are all connected now, said Hermione, in a passion of amazement. Without us having to touch them or each other. Oh, good work, Harry! 

I thought when they were connected they made a weapon, observed Ginny. 

They do. They did, said Hermione, a tiny spark of confidence growing inside her chest. It´s us. We are the weapon. All of us together have a strength that not one of us alone could possess. 

But we´re not all together, said Ginny, and her eyes were on Draco. 

That, said Harry, and his eyes were glowing with a steady green fire, is going to change. Right now. 

*** 

He stood where he was with his hands over his face, the darkness of semi-oblivion all around him. The memories and the voices in his head had ceased to make any sense and had become a meaningless and terrible chant that echoed in the caverns of his skull. He remembered dying. Dying had been better than this. 

Draco. Another voice in his head, this one rising, separating itself from the cacophony of other voices. Where are you? 

It sounded like Ginny´s voice. But perhaps he was imagining things. Perhaps his mind had snapped. That was, after all, the purpose of the exercise, wasn´t it. To break him. Still, this was the first voice he had heard in this place that wasn´t accusatory or angry or reminiscent of some great sorrow. Maybe -- 

Draco. This time he was sure of the voice: it was Hermione´s. You´ve got to fight this, shake it off. We need you. Please. 

He raised his chin then, squared his shoulders. Looked around. He saw nothing - but perhaps the darkness had begun to fade, just a little bit. He could see bright lines of light, fracturing the dimness ahead of him. And if it wasn´t his imagination, the clamor of voices in his head seemed to have died down. 

Are you there? Hermione again. Say something, tell me you´re all right, please. 

I´m here. The words came with difficulty at first, then more easily. But I can´t leave this place. There´s no up here, no down, no way out. Do what you have to do without me. 

We can´t. It was Ginny´s voice this time. We need you and besides - 

Besides, what? With every word spoken, his thoughts were clearing. What am I doing now? 

You´re untying Harry, said Hermione reluctantly. Slytherin will make you bring him to the pentagram and you have to fight this, Draco, you have to break it, it can´t be worse than resisting the Imperius Curse - 

There´s no point. A dull and weightless despair had settled on him. Kill me, then. I give up. 

Kill you? Ginny´s thoughts jolted with shock. 

Kill me. You´re the Keys, the weapon. Destroy me if you have to. Death would be better than where I am now. 

Oh come on, Malfoy. You can do better than that, and this time it was Harry speaking, not that any of them were really speaking, but he felt the shape of Harry´s thoughts in his head, wry and familiar. Aren´t you even going to try? 

Leave me alone, Draco replied wearily. Go. ..away. 

You know, Malfoy, said Harry, sounding as if he had no inclination to go away and leave him alone, you´re a pretty good Quidditch player. 

What? What´s your point, Potter? 

Maybe you bought your way onto that team, but you´re a good Seeker, the best one I´ve ever played against. You make me watch my back. Nobody else ever has. I even like how determined you always are to beat me. I thought it meant you were a determined person. Strong. A worthy adversary. Not the type to just give up. 

I´m not giving up. 

Really? I´m sorry, I guess I was just confused by the part where you said 'I give up.´ 

Draco felt his stomach clench, and for a moment the dimness wavered crazily around him. Just kill me and end this right now, he groaned, turning his face away. 

No. You know what they said. If anyone takes him down, it´s going to have to be you. If you didn´t think you could do it, Malfoy, you should have said so before; if you knew you were going to be too weak and frightened and convinced that you don´t deserve any better than this. 

He heard Ginny's voice again. You think this is what you are, but it isn´t. 

Then, Harry cut in over her. Let me tell you something, Malfoy, there´s no such thing as what you are. You want to believe it because it means you don´t have to make any choices. But there are always choices. Every second of your life you´re choosing to be one thing or the other. And that´s what makes you who you are. So who are you, Malfoy? 

Draco spoke out loud, and heard his voice come out in a whisper. "I don´t know." 

Hermione sounded accusatory, no longer comfortable, no longer easy. You don´t know? Well, you better figure it out. 

You can´t just give up. Harry´s voice was harsh with desperation and with anger. I thought better of you than this. Even when you weren´t my friend, you were at least a worthy enemy. And now what? You´re just going to let him control you and break you and not even try to fight it off? What´s happened to you? When did you get to be such a coward? 

Draco´s eyes flew open, and he stared down the narrowing tunnel of light and darkness. Something inside him swelled unbearably. He couldn´t put a finger on what it was exactly, but heard his own breath in his ears, ragged with effort - felt his heart racing inside his chest -- 

I´m not a coward, he said. 

Aren´t you? If it was me, I´d fight. But I guess that´s just me. I´ve always had to fight for everything. I´m not some spoiled little rich boy who´s had everything handed to him on a plate. You never had to get by on any merit of your own. I guess that´s why you´re so spineless. 

This was so monstrously unfair that it actually broke through the gray fog in Draco´s brain. Spoiled? He could hear the rage in his own mental voice. You goddamn know better than that, Potter. If you said that to my face, you know I´d break your fingers. 

Would you? There was half-suppressed laughter in Harry´s voice. Trust Harry to be laughing at a time like this. You always did talk a good game, Malfoy. 

Go to Hell, Potter, he said, furious. 

And funnily enough, that´s exactly where I´m headed in about five minutes if you don´t break through this thing. And you´ll be the one who sends me there. How´s that for irony? 

Draco felt his stomach clench, and he saw through the darkness - as if through a crack in glass -- the room he had just left, the wizard standing above the pentagram, Hermione and Ginny tied to their posts, and himself in front of Harry, undoing the last ropes that held Harry´s right hand to the post behind him. Hermione´s face was full of desperate concern as she looked at Draco, and so was Ginny´s, her eyes huge and dark and searching, and he knew they were hearing every word he and Harry were saying. And Harry had his face tilted up, his eyes flicking back and forth as if he could somehow find Draco, wherever he was, and there was anger in his face, and a sort of desperation, and everything Draco himself was feeling as if he looked into a mirror. 

Draco closed his eyes, the faces of his friends printed blindingly against his inner lids, and the something that had been growing inside him blazed up suddenly behind his eyes like a white pillar of fire. It was an emotion too great to name, too intricately blending agony and grief and love and hatred and rage. Rage at himself for his cowardice. Rage at life for forcing him into this, for forcing him to be this. Rage at his father for having sold him to this fate before he was even born. And rage at Slytherin for imagining, for presuming, that he could control him. He was Draco Malfoy and he would not be controlled, he would not be owned, and he would not be trapped against his will. 

The darkness that held him reeled and shook and collapsed, the invisible puppet strings snapped, and he felt himself falling, hurtling really, through a great empty inner space. Pain shot through, but he pushed it back, waiting in impatience, exultation welling up in him, for he knew now exactly what he must do when he stood free again, and conscious power flowed through him like rivulets of electricity. 

Something struck him, hard, and he opened his eyes. He realized knew that what he had felt was his soul hurtling back into his body. He was standing directly in front of Harry, quite unbound now, who was looking at him out of steady, dark green eyes. There was no fear in them at all, and as Draco returned to himself they lit up with a wickedly brilliant inner satisfaction. He heard Harry´s voice in his head, clear and strong: 

Welcome back, Malfoy. I knew you could do it. 

Hermione and Ginny on either side of Harry were looking at him as well, and there was equal satisfaction in their faces. He felt the emotion that surged forward from all three of them, amplified by the power of the Keys, all four of them together, the Heirs , as they had always been meant to be. And he understood that that, coupled with his own anger, was what had torn him free of the spell that bound him, and understood as well exactly what he now needed to do. 

He spun around, and reached out his hand. He felt the power of the other three pour into him, racing through the conduit of the Keys like electricity through wires. He saw Slytherin start in amazement, a look of disbelieving rage spreading across his poison-pale face. Draco laughed, and as Slytherin took one angry, incredulous step forward, Draco whispered, "Accio" and saw looked with delight at Slytherin´s fingers, obviously against his will, prying themselves one by one off the hilt of the sword. Draco opened his hand, and the sword, released from Slytherin´s grasp, flew into his own. Exultation running through his veins like bright light, Draco stepped toward the Snake Lord, carrying the sword in front of him, a wave of brilliant green fire. 

In the instant in which Slytherin saw what he intended, convulsive terror wiped out all other expression on his face. It was the first human look Draco had ever seen there. An inarticulate cry tore from his throat and he started backwards, frantic hands fingers clawing out in front of him. "No, no!" he shrieked. "Wait!" 

Draco brought the sword down, a wave of brilliant green fire. The blade struck against the Snake Lord´s wrist, neatly severing his hand. He shrieked aloud as fire poured from his wounded arm, an indescribable, intolerable shriek scream of rage and horror, and his severed hand tumbled at Draco´s feet. Beyond disgust, beyond anything but a terrible sort of savage exultation, Draco seized the mutilated hand of the Snake Lord, clamped the fingers tong-like around the hilt of his sword, and flung them together into the pentagram inked on the floor. 

He threw his head back then, and, his voice furious and carrying, shouted at the invisible forces of Hell. "There you go! Your half of the bargain! Given to you by his own hand, the hand of the Snake Lord himself! Take it, damn you, and use it!" 

There was a dreadful silence. The Snake Lord had fallen to his knees, clutching the stump of his hand, from which little tongues of flame flickered between his fingers. There was no blood. His gaspingly caught breath sounded like thunder in the utter soundlessness. 

And then. 

A low muttering roar rumbled up out of the stillness. It grew louder and deeper and stronger until the room seemed to vibrate with it. Above the roar a sharp crackling noise broke, and the walls around them suddenly split and fissured and through the long cracks that appeared in the stone, the open sky poured in, silver with moonlight. Slytherin´s magic castle was crumbling. 

Draco spun around, and saw the others standing behind him, wide-eyed, free from the entangling ropes. Their bonds had been simply withered away. They were all staring, and for good reason. From the middle of the inked pentagram, several dark shapes had appeared, crouching, and then rising. Draco heard Slytherin yelling in furious terror, but only at the very periphery of his consciousness. He was too busy staring. The shapes were not the demons he expected, but huge creatures, barely visible in the shaking darkness, much taller than human men, with eyes like burning coals and black wings shot through with gold. 

They were both horrible and beautiful as they stepped out of the circle and closed in around Slytherin, who was crouching on the floor. Draco saw his silver-black head go up in an odd, defiant, desperate poise as they closed in, and he howled out something unintelligible. 

Draco never knew what it was. He would have liked to have thought that in his last moments, the sorcerer might have had a momentary flash of humanity, and cried out for Rowena. But most likely he was screaming out one final malicious spell. 

Draco felt the floor surge under his feet. The castle was coming apart. Something caught at his arm. Harry, probably. A thunderous darkness was rolling towards them like a racing shadow. It poured over Slytherin, over the demons who stood above him, exulting, over the flagstone floor, and then it was upon them. The earth seemed to turn itself upside down, and from very far away Draco heard Slytherin scream. 

*** 

When consciousness returned, Draco found that he was lying on his back with his head pillowed on someone´s lap. Slowly, he opened his eyes and looked up. Backlit by the moon, a figure was bending over him. He saw long waving hair and a pale oval face, dark eyes and a worried mouth. Hermione. She smiled when she saw he was awake. 

"Welcome back," she said. 

He started to struggle into a sitting position. "Harry - Ginny - " 

"Shh. Everyone´s all right." She touched his face lightly, and then turned her head. "Harry!" she shouted. "Ginny!" 

"Don´t yell," said Draco firmly. "My head is splitting." 

She grinned at him. "Poor baby. Here." She scooted back, and helped him into a sitting position. It was true that his head was pounding, but it didn´t matter. He felt light, as if a huge weight had been lifted off him, as if he´d spent weeks in a dark shuttered box, and now the lid had been pulled off and at last he could look up and see the stars. For the first time in many days, he was no longer cold. 

He propped himself on his hands and glanced around. He was sitting on grass, and grass stretched all around him, a wide green untenanted meadow in between a circle of trees. Of the castle which had stood there, with its walls and battlements and towers, there was no longer any sign. The sky overhead was streaked with explosive color: blue, green, scarlet and gold, bright as the Aurora Borealis, and through the washes of brilliant color the stars glittered like towering crystal cities. Far off to the right he could see a glimmer of bright scales, a towering form: Feroluce the dragon, and just below Feroluce, two small figures: one in dark red robes, the other with dark red hair. Ben and Ginny. 

"Hey! Malfoy!" There was a thud as Harry dropped to his knees next to Draco. He was, if possible, even filthier, covered in soot and bloodstains, but he was grinning all over his face. He gripped Draco´s shoulder hard for a second, and Draco looked back and gave him a half-surprised smile. "You missed the coolest part," Harry announced. 

"Damn," said Draco mildly. "Because I was so enjoying the fun we were having right up until I passed out." 

"It was not cool," said Hermione, looking slightly ill. "Slytherin caught on fire, and he...sort of burned without actually burning up. And the demons dragged him into the pentagram while he was screaming and then they all just vanished into the floor with this huge sucking sound, and everything in the room started sliding down into the hole, and you fainted and nearly fell into the hole too, but Harry caught you. And Sirius and Ben came charging in because the doors broke apart. Sirius carried you out. The whole castle came apart, piece by piece and all the Dark creatures fled into the woods, the dementors too. I´ve never seen anything like it. Lupin said it was a retrodimensional timeshift collapse - he´s over there with Fleur. She´s fine, by the way." 

"Sounds like I missed some good times," said Draco. 

"Then I´m telling it wrong," said Hermione positively. "It was quite horrible. And Harry thought you were dead and made a spectacle of himself." 

"I did not," protested Harry, but he didn´t look particularly bothered. He craned his neck around. "Where´s Sirius?" 

Hermione got to her feet. "I´ll get him. He was talking to Ben about what to do about the army." She smiled down at Draco. "Ron told him you killed a Dementor, so he wants to hear all about it." 

Draco nodded, just about too exhausted to speak. It wasn´t a bad exhaustion, however. Even though it was a cool night, and he was sitting on wet grass, and his body felt like a giant bruise, he nevertheless felt his eyelids drooping, as if he were sinking back into the blissful comfort of the first real sleep he could remember having had in weeks. 

Malfoy . Harry´s voice spoke in Draco´s head. Draco was grateful that he didn´t have to open his eyes or move to respond. I thought it was time to give you this back. 

Now Draco did open his eyes, and saw Harry holding something out to him that glittered bright as sunlight in his hand. The Epicyclical Charm. 

He shook his head faintly. I don´t want it. 

Harry looked surprised. But it´s your life. 

I know. Draco leaned his head back against the tree trunk. I don´t want the responsibility for my life. Not right now. Hold onto it for a little while. 

All right. Harry looped it back around his throat, looking somber. Not unhappy, though. Thanks, then. 

Draco shut his eyes again. The exhaustion was folding in around him like a blanket. He vaguely heard other people arriving, sitting down around him in a circle in the grass - heard Sirius´ voice, heard Harry greet Ron (awake again) happily, heard Lupin speak to Fleur in French, heard Hermione´s laugh, and then Ginny´s soft voice in response. There was a soft touch on his arm; he heard Lupin ask how he was doing, and Harry said that he was fine, just tired, and they should let him sleep; he heard Sirius say that the Ministry was on their way; he heard Ginny announce, some sadness in her voice, that Ben had gone, and his army had gone back with him. The voices became fainter and fainter, like music heard from another room, and then one last voice bent close and whispered in his ear. 

"Draco." It was Ginny. Her voice was barely a murmur. "There´s one thing you should see before you fall asleep." She leaned over, and he felt her hand on his left arm, pulling up his sleeve with great gentleness. He half-opened his eyes and looked down, and it was a moment before he realized that what he was looking at was not an object she wanted him to see so much as the lack of an object - on the fair inner skin of his forearm, which had born the skull-and-serpent sign of the Snake Lord, there was no longer any mark. 

*** 

Next Chapter: The big ending. Plot threads wrapped up, questions answered, and the biggest birthday party ever. Special appearances by Snape, the Weasley family (all of 'em, including Bill, Charlie, and the twins), Dumbledore, Neville, Krum, the Gryffindor girls, Malfoy kinfolk from all over the world, and many more; Remus has a date, Ron gets lucky, Draco receives unsettling news; signs, omens, strange portents, wall-to-wall snogging and Draco gets Harry a birthday present. (Tune in to find out if Harry dies of the shock, Ginny and Draco ever resolve their...relationship, and hey, Sirius wears Armani.) And if it seems like Ben´s departure was given short shrift, well, there will be more on that later. 

References: 

1) "Who ever heard of a wormskin rug?" - Red Dwarf. 

2) "It's not like it came from on high." "Actually, it did. That's what a prophecy is." -- Angel. 

3) "Sounds like I missed some good times," said Draco. "Then I’m telling it wrong." -- Buffy. 

4) "You never promised me that." "How right you are." -- Red Dwarf. 

5) Oggrings, Skolks and Draxagrams : all of these critters come from a book by Tanith Lee called Prince on a White Horse. It's a very funny book, now, I believe, out of print. 

6) The section in which Sirius, Ron and Hermione escape from the cell using the Zonko's pencils is inspired by Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber, in which Corwin escapes from his cell with the aid of an enchanted sketch. Page 167 in the Avon edition. 

6) Feroluce: Is the name of the king of the vampires in a short Tanith Lee story called Fleur de Fur. 

Chapter 15