Quidditch practice was well underway by the time Harry'd got himself up and back over that side of school. There were lots of groups using the pitch. Hufflepuff first-years were flying heats, cheered on by a group of Ravenclaws dressed in an extraordinary assortment of knitted leotards. Harry squinted at them, shading his eyes against the afternoon sun.
"Flying Squad," Malfoy said, coming to stand beside him. "Synchronised, you know." He described a lazy helix with a finger. "We're reviving it."
"But...why leotards?" Harry said, before he remembered he wasn't meant to be speaking to Malfoy.
Malfoy shrugged. "They were in the box marked Flying Squad in the games room. Don't ask me." Then he narrowed his eyes and the whistle hung around his neck blew itself shrilly. Two tiny Hufflepuffs yelped as their brooms changed course suddenly and zoomed towards him, tipping them at Harry's feet.
Malfoy pointed at the children, a boy and a girl with matching golden curls and downcast expressions, and said. "You should have used broomwax, not bright white paint, but ten points to Hufflepuff for enterprise." He took out his wand and muttered, "Exuo celerovirga," and then waved the brooms away. The first-years hurried after them.
Harry was a bit shocked by all this. "Points? You're giving them points for getting caught painting go-faster stripes on their broom handles? That's—"
"They are Hufflepuffs though, Harry," he said. "It's quite a leap...Oh, I suppose—" He stopped the brooms again. "Five points off Hufflepuff for getting caught," he called to the unfortunate duo. Malfoy turned to Harry and said, "Well? Did you bring yours?"
Harry shook his charm bracelet down his wrist and, with a flick, grew the tiny silver broomstick into a full size Dust 60. It hovered before them, turning over gently.
Malfoy whistled. "Nice," he said. Then he leapt on to it and raced into the sky.
Harry looked around wildly. A school broom was lurking at the edge of the stands, sweeping idly at some leaves. "Accio knackered old school broom," he said bitterly, holding out his hand. The broom flew to him and he swung up while it was still moving. He bent low over the handle and sped after the tiny dot in green robes doing somersaults over the far goals. "I'll show you, Draco Malfoy," he yelled into the wind. His robes whipped around him as he soared higher, gaining air on Malfoy with a grunt and a burst of speed. "I'll show you on an ancient broom with," Harry looked closer at the broomstick he gripped, "with string holding it together!" And with that, he caught up with the other flier, who promptly arrowed downwards into a sickening drop, a nose-dive of ten feet, stopped dead, and then flipped himself rightside up.
It took Harry sixty feet to slow into a turn and, as he did so, he saw Malfoy, curled round his, his broom, dammit, perched on the brush, and smirking.
"What do you say? Shall we give them a show after all?" Malfoy drawled, and withdrew a net bag from his robes. Inside, a tiny Golden Snitch jumped and fluttered.
Harry couldn't help smiling. "You're on," he said, and Malfoy nodded, and let the Snitch fly.
Snape was not amused.
He paced the brief length of his desk and whirled, robes flaring, to pace again. "Professor Potter," he spat.
"Oh, Severus, call him Harry, won't you? Professor Potter sounds like you've fallen victim to some sort of dreadful tongue-twister hex," Malfoy interjected. He was lounging in a buttoned leather armchair, flicking through Magical Malefactors and Theurgical Tearaways: Crushing the Juvenile Jinx. Occasionally an illustration would cry squeakily, "It's not fair!" and Malfoy would nod gleefully at them.
"Harry," Snape ground out. "Are you really so pathetically desperate for attention? What possessed you to attempt the world record for fastest backwards dive in front of thirty-five very silly and very impressionable children, at least nineteen of whom are nursing hopeless crushes on you, the rest of whom merely worship the ground you walk on? Or fly over!"
"Did...did the Flying Squad break very many bones?" Harry asked, backing away slightly. "I could go and help Poppy, right... now, actually! It's no bother. I'm a dab hand at bone Charming." He risked a smile. "I've had a lot of practice."
Snape hissed at him.
Harry backed up some more. "I'll just... I'll just go away now, shall I? And do...that. Yes. Brilliant." He fled.
Harry was just reaching the gargoyles when he heard Snape saying, in tones of velvet menace, "And now, Mr Malfoy, would you care to enlighten—," and Malfoy gulping, "Bone Charming! Save students from Potter! Must dash!" and he was only a little way down the corridor when Malfoy clattered out through Snape's door. He slowed a little, and Malfoy caught up with him.
"I can't believe him, sometimes," Harry said, crackling with indignation. "Telling me off in the headmaster's office like a schoolboy. Taking points off at dinner."
Unimpressed, Malfoy shrugged. "Get... over it?"
"Get over it?" Harry spluttered. "Me? Get over it? That man has had it in for me since before I was even born. He's a menace."
Malfoy raised an eyebrow. "Indeed," he said. "Known for it, but...Look, I can't quite believe I'm actually telling you this, but Snape, vicious bastard that he is, is pretty funny, you know. He's only playing with you."
Harry boggled at him as they ambled through the quad. Well, Harry ambled, Draco strode in a sort of purposeful, athletic way, an internal observation at which Harry slightly boggled as well. "Funny," he repeated flatly. "Er, Malfoy, this is Snape we're talking about, right? Petty, vindictive, issues so venerable they've got their own bus pass?"
Malfoy stared at him. "Are you speaking Muggle?" he said suspiciously. "How charming. Now shut up and listen." Malfoy raised an elegant hand. "Point one: painful as it is to admit, you are the most powerful wizard in the country, if not the world, and you are nobody's victim so let's give that one a rest. Forever, ta. Point two: Professor Snape is a vicious bastard; he's also shrewd and cunning, and has the stamina of an ox and the power, yes, he has power of his own. Point three: this is a school and our concern is the," Malfoy looked slightly sick with himself, "education of young magical beings, and the best thing you could both teach them is that it is possible to deal with problems without magic."
Harry opened and closed his mouth a few times. "I'm struggling, here, Malfoy," he said. "What's your point again?"
"Oh, never mind," Malfoy snapped as they turned the corner. "I award you sixty points for being alive, and don't do any more exhibitionistic flying over my lessons. And try not to let too many of my fifth-years drool on you. No one wants to see that."
He pushed through the door to the hospital wing, leaving Harry to mutter, "You were exhibiting a few things yourself there, as it happens," to the uncaring cloak hooks.
Fistleflick found him the next morning in the Great Hall, so early to breakfast only he and the Herbology teacher, Desmeldre Ledum, sat yawning at the high table. She fluttered to the table, dropped her head into Harry's bowl of porridge, and stuck out her leg with an angry squawk. Tied to it was a very thick letter, many different sheets of paper rolled tightly into a dense cylinder and bound with a bright red ribbon. Harry patted his owl. "I'm sorry, Flick," he said. "I should have thought Hermione would go mental over that letter."
Harry,
I'm glad you're all right. I got your owl two days ago and I did tell her my reply would be a while but she insisted on waiting for it. I hope it's not too heavy. We have geese here, can you believe it? They do all the transatlantic packages from a delivery lake at the bottom of our road so we borrow them for our bits of post. Anyway, I've gone through every box I've got with me and pulled out everything I've still got from the D.A.. I even dug up the list, do you remember the list? I can't believe you've really put bureaucracy on the D.A.D.A. syllabus!
I'm a bit jealous, actually. I wish we'd had a decent Defence teacher. Well, Snape was quite good in sixth year, I suppose, in his way, and Remus was very good when he was there, but really I do resent the rest of that useless shower we got lumped with. I did a course last year on defensive combination casting and it was embarrassing how patchy my spellwork was. Me! Hermione Granger! I think the teacher was a bit disillusioned. And it's all very well all this crisis-learning and so on but I really think having a proper grounding, theory and practice, in casting when you're young gives you a natural feel for it...
Anyway, I'm ranting again. I know I am. Sorry, Harry. I'm a bit bored here. Not the work! The work is brilliant! I love it. It's one of the oldest libraries in the world, you know. And I have my own chair. But it's remote, and the wards are so convoluted you have to book a month in advance just to go past the end of the drive, and I miss you, and everyone. Write to me soon and tell me all about Hogwarts!
Love, H
PS. I can't believe they made Snape headmaster!
Harry's smile was wide as he unrolled the documents Hermione had forwarded to him. They made a motley collection: yellowing notes in his own schoolboy scrawl with Hermione's rounder, neater additions in the margins, a smoothed out Butterbeer label peopled with groups of initials with arrows drawing connections all over, a new piece of paper with a long list of newspaper editions and page numbers written on it, some scraps he couldn't readily identify, and the hex-held promise they had signed together at the beginning of the D.A..
He gazed at the list and tried really hard not to count; one always automatically found oneself counting the names on these things; everything was a miniature war memorial. He sat there, not counting, for a long, still minute, and then he shook himself. "Come on, girl." He scooped up his exhausted owl. "I'll take you to the owlery."
Later, after classes were over for the day, Harry trudged into his office and collapsed in his chair by the fire. Lumpy, who had been slumped over one arm and hidden under a cushion, leapt up and squealed an earsplitting squeal. "Harry Potter is KILLING Lumpy," the house-elf proclaimed. "Harry Potter is turning evil and MURDERING Lumpy for SLEEPING when Lumpy is working harder than Harry Potter can be KNOWING ever ever EVER!"
"Evening, Lumpy," Harry said wearily. "Sorry I sat on you. How was your day?"
Lumpy burst into tears. Harry thought he might be cursed, actually properly cursed, to spend the rest of his life living with house elves with emotional problems. He reached out and patted Lumpy on the shoulder. "There, there, Lumpy. Cheer up. It's Friday. No work tomorrow!"
Lumpy cried harder. "Harry Potter is saying these things to HURT me," he sobbed. "Lumpy cannot be seeing any other reason!"
Harry let his hand drop and sighed a huge sigh. Lumpy was a brilliant teacher. He only taught one course, the seventh-years doing the new Practical Magic Trials —there was nothing that elf did not know about warding and magical contracts— but his workload was huge because he had to start every lesson from scratch. And he compulsively cleaned any room he was in, so field trips were complete hell, and he had a persecution complex so sensitive Harry seemed to set it off just by breathing. But he was a good teacher. And, occasionally, a good person to talk to. Not today though, clearly, so Harry got up and went over to his desk, took out his letter-writing things, and began his letter to Hermione.
Dear Hermione,
Thanks for the papers. I am all right. It's good here. It's Hogwarts, good old Hogwarts. The ghosts all say hello. Even Snape and Malfoy. Hah. Did you know Malfoy was here as well? I'm floundering a bit with them, actually. I think it's this place. Ron used to say that about going home, that he loved it but it didn't matter how far up he grew, as soon as he walked into The Burrow he was ten years old and his brothers were teasing him.
Did I just compare that pair of old snakes to brothers? I didn't mean to, seriously! I just mean this place makes me feel like a little kid. I keep looking around to ask the teacher and then realising that's me. It's this place. I never felt like this at Durmstrang. But it'll be all right, I think. It's Hogwarts, so it's all right.
Don't be lonely. I'll come up and get you at Christmas, if you like. Book me in to the wards. We can have dinner here and you can get the train down south with the kids. Assuming you're going down to your mum's, that is. I can see your chair and you can tell me how you managed to get paid to sit around reading all day.
Love, H
Harry was just writing the direction 'Hermione Granger's Chair, Unst' when Malfoy opened the office door and stuck his head in. "We're going to the pub. They insist I invite you," he said, and disappeared off down the corridor. Harry looked over at Lumpy, who was snoring softly in the chair by the fire clutching a tear-spotted cushion, and very very quietly tiptoed round his desk and out of the door.
Along the lane to Hogsmeade, the trees were clothing themselves in their autumn finery: deep reds and shades of gold. Harry always privately thought of autumn as a particularly Gryffindorish time of year. The Three Broomsticks' sign was swinging and creaking a little in the cool evening breeze, which carried the familiar smells of tobacco and Butterbeer and Harry was overwhelmed suddenly, in that particular way that only sounds and scents have, with a fierce longing and a warm glow of nostalgia.
Inside, the place was the same as ever. It might have been fifteen years ago. Frankly, it might have been fifteen hundred years ago and not much different. You can rely on pubs, Harry thought to himself happily as he made for the gents.
He was just undoing his trousers when Snape loomed suddenly from nowhere. "Out with it, Harry," he whispered.
"Gah!" Harry said, with feeling. "What?"
Snape looked impatient. "Get on with it. I don't have all day."
"Look," Harry said. "I don't know what you think is going on here, but I'm just having a piss, all right? And I don't appreciate being loomed at while I'm doing it."
Snape scowled at him, his face creasing into deep, furious lines. "Did you, or did you not, Mr Potter, send me a message telling me to meet you here to discuss a matter of grave import to the safety of the wizarding world?"
"Oh, Severus," Malfoy drawled from the doorway. He was leaning against the doorframe, his head cocked to one side, his arms folded. "'Grave import'? Now does that really sound like Harry? I'm so disappointed." He straightened and clapped his hands together. "Still, you're here now. Come and have a drink." He smirked at them both and then, possibly noticing their frighteningly similar expressions and the sparks crackling around Harry's clenched fists, ran back to the saloon bar and the safety of many many witnesses.
Snape stalked out after him. Harry, in vast relief, undid his fly.
Harry had planned to storm out of the toilets and go directly to Hogwarts and bed, possibly shooting a few withering glares at Malfoy on his way past. But as he went by the bar he was stopped in his tracks by the sight of Snape sitting, ramrod straight, on a padded settle in the corner. Malfoy sat opposite him with his legs hooked into the back of his bar stool and Professors Ledum and Claphingale, the Transfiguration teacher, were ensconced in a pair of matching dining chairs at the top of their shared table. They all appeared to be engrossed in a conversation. Professor Claphingale— Clarice, Harry mentally corrected—leant forward to catch what Snape was saying and then threw her head back and laughed out loud.
Harry drifted towards them, fascinated.
Just as he was about to turn back towards the door, Clarice looked up and said, "Oh, Harry dear, there you are. Be a love and get this round in, will you? I'm on the Butterbeer tonight but everyone else is drinking—"
Everyone else turned to Harry and said, in unison, "Firewhisky."
"Firewhisky, love. All right?"
Harry supposed it might be all right, really. He turned to the barmaid and got in his round.
Harry woke up curled around a toilet with a splitting headache and Moaning Sodding Myrtle singing in his ear. "Myrtle," he groaned. "Please. Quiet. Ssshhh. Merlin on a Muggle bus, please be quiet."
Myrtle was indignant. "Quiet, he says. Ssshhh. You were perfectly happy to wake me up last night. It's all right when it's you singing your head off, oh yes, but when I try to join in it's all shhh, Myrtle, be quiet, Myrtle. Well, I shan't! You can't make me! Just because you had it done up — thank you very much, by the way— doesn't mean you can order me around in my own haunt! This is my bathroom and if I want to sing you can just jolly well lump it!" Myrtle folded her arms and flushed a few toilets for emphasis.
"I was singing?" Harry asked with alarm. "What...what am I doing here, anyway?" He dragged himself up and looked around at the cold rows of porcelain. Cool white porcelain. He laid his forehead against a sink. Ahhhhhh.
"Singing! Dancing! Oh what a lot of fun we had!" Myrtle chanted, suddenly gleeful again. She zipped around the ceiling, clapping her hands and then zoomed right up close. "You were very funny," she said. "I liked the song about the goblin who loved gobbling, especially." She put a finger to her mouth and chewed on it, her eyes round and teasing. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Harry. I may be eighty-five but I'm still a student."
Harry winced and pulled his head up. As he splashed his face with water, Harry began to remember, in flashes, how he came to be curled around a toilet in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom at god-knows-what o'clock in the morning. "Oh no," he said aloud. "I think I was making for my office and overshot somehow. What time is it, Myrtle? Ugh, I feel like death."
"You bastard," Myrtle replied, and flushed herself down the toilet. Harry blinked, then shrugged and cast tempus instead. His tempus took the form of two sternly pointing fingers, who first told him it was four o'clock in the morning and then told him to bugger off. Harry conjured a gentle mist of sobrieto around him as he shuffled out of the toilets and off to bed.
The next day was a Saturday and Harry sat slumped in his office, attempting to write up his lesson plans for the next week and failing, utterly failing, to resist the temptation to stare blankly out of the window at the Quidditch pitch beyond. It was a bright, cool day. High clouds wrapped the whole world in grey, sunshine occasionally breaking through in ladders or sharp-edged beams, rain showering briefly and then snapping off like the turn of a tap. He was in the worst part of hangovers, being prodded and pricked by flashes of his behaviour the night before. He had been singing, Myrtle was telling the truth. And dancing.
Harry threw one arm round Clarice and the other round Draco. "Draco, mate," he said seriously. "You feel like... thing, in a bag. A very posh bag. Coathangers, that's it. You feel like a bag of coat hangers. You're all pointy."
He'd told Draco Malfoy he was pointy like coat hangers in a very posh bag. He was never going to live this down.
"What are you doing back here, Potter, anyway?" Draco swayed very slightly. "Why aren't you off hero-ing in distant lands."
"I don't think hero-ing is a word, Draco," he replied. "What are you doing back here?"
Draco laughed and said, "And who else would have me?"
Harry considered this. "But surely you don't need to work." The thought of Malfoy without his millions seemed alarming and wrong somehow, like Scotland without rain.
"Oh, there's still money," Draco said dismissively. "Of course there's still money."
"But then why?" Harry persisted.
Draco rested his cheek against the pitted, dark wood panelling. His pale hair fell across his eyes. "Five points off Gryffindor for asking stupid questions," he said, and drank some more.
Harry could see Malfoy circling the Quidditch pitch, guarding the Hufflepuff team practice. He was a high up green dot winding around the edges of the stands. Harry stood and walked to his window, took off his glasses and let his eyes relax, rubbing his forehead in the place where his scar had been.
"How was Durmstrang, Harry?" Desmeldre asked curiously. "We thought it was lost to the Dark, for sure, but it can't have been, I suppose, if you were there."
Snape muttered, "Because he's known for avoiding trouble," and then looked surprised when Harry chuckled.
"It's not lost, it's just... different. They didn't have the same options we did. Not everywhere had a Dumbledore, you know. We were lucky."
Snape leant forward and raised his glass. "To Dumbledore," he said quietly. "Who gave us all choices."
Just then, Lumpy came in, looking rather cheerful. He carried an enormous stack of books that towered over his head, and he staggered from side to side a little, keeping them upright. Harry said, "Oh, let me," and took the top twenty or so books over to Lumpy's little desk in the corner.
"Harry Potter is being very kind to Lumpy," Lumpy said, still slightly muffled by his own stack of books.
"No problem," Harry said. "How are you today?" He braced himself.
"Lumpy is being very joyful, Harry Potter," Lumpy declared, looking completely delighted. "Lumpy has done all his lesson plans until Christmas and is able to be spending all of the day researching!"
"I've just realised why we get on so well," Harry said, laughing. "You don't half remind me of someone I know sometimes."
"Lumpy will take that as a compliment," the little elf said after a minute. "How is Harry Potter today?"
Harry went back to his place at the window. "I'm all right," he said. "I think I lost Gryffindor about fifty million points last night though."
Lumpy burst out laughing. "Points?" he squealed with disbelief.
Harry nodded. "Yeah, Snape and Malfoy keep taking them off me." He scowled. "They think it's really funny." He turned to see Lumpy laughing harder, uproariously laughing, and slapping his hand on his miniature desk.
"Oh, Harry Potter," Lumpy wheezed. His shoulders shook; his desk did too; his quill feathers quivered in their pot. "How can you not be knowing about Hogwarts points?"
"What do you mean?" Harry asked with surprise.
"Hogwarts points are being classic," Lumpy said, wiping his eyes. "Points are only being given and taken by social contract, Harry Potter."
Harry blinked. "You mean, they can only take points off me because I let them take points off me."
Lumpy nodded like this was the most obvious thing in the whole world. "Invested authority. Is meaning of course."
"Oh, no," Harry groaned, mortified. The thing about the coat hangers had nothing on this. Nothing. He thumped his head against the windowpane; it rattled and buzzed through his teeth. At least the kids didn't know, he reflected. Thank Felix for small mercies.
Just as Harry was losing himself in happy thoughts of Slytherincide, Malfoy tapped on the glass. He was hovering on his broom, a late Streak model with a black finish, gripping the handle with one hand and resting the other against the castle wall. He looked shocking: sallow and sweating, with shadows like bruises under his eyes. Harry opened the window. "You look dreadful, Malfoy," he said shortly.
Malfoy winced and then sniffed the air. "Not everyone can cast their own personal sobrieto," he said accusingly. "For us mere mortals there's just Pepper Up and Snape's Swill and," he looked pained, "Sprog-herding at nine o'clock in the morning."
Harry smirked and stretched his arms above his head. It was awfully tempting to let the man suffer. Five points off Gryffindor indeed. But then he caught Lumpy looking at him with wide eyes and a slightly disappointed expression and he rolled his eyes and brought his hand down in a gentle push towards Malfoy. "Sobrieto," he said, and then, "Palliatus," for good measure.
Malfoy gasped, "Wandless," in a sharp intake of breath that he quickly covered, and then dipped his head back and let the mist roll over him. "Ahh," he said. "That's the stuff." And he zoomed off back to the pitch without even a word of thanks.
"Tosser," Harry muttered, watching him go.
"How come Snape didn't murder you to death for that stupid trick before, then, Draco?" Harry asked, gesturing towards the man, who was escorting a very wobbly Herbology teacher from the premises.
Malfoy smiled, a smug sort of smile that somehow Harry wasn't too put off by. "You don't understand Severus at all, do you, Harry?
"That's a rubbish answer," Harry grumbled. "And I don't see why he fell for it in the first place."
Draco snorted. "Oh, please," he said, in a voice with hard edges. "If Harry Potter says Apparate, you say aye aye."
Every other Wednesday afternoon was curse-breaking with the sixth-years, so that meant every other Wednesday morning found Harry sweeping the work area for anything too advanced for the students to handle. It was shitwork, really: winkling out vasa vicio and hermit hexes—stray spells still trapped from the skirmishes of 2001— and identifying the cursed stones, left like landmines along so many of the corridors. Harry found it quite relaxing.
Today he was in the restricted part of the dungeons near the old Hufflepuff common room. There was a bitter, greasy feel to the air; it was unnaturally still down here, he thought to himself, like even the air was dead. He cast Specialis Revelio in a square pattern down the hallway, then Theurgio Tergeo to scrub away the minor spell fragments that glimmered and sparkled along the walls. Behind him, a quill scratched away busily on a scroll that stretched along the floor to the steps at the top end.
"Fourteen of the Jelly family," he said over his shoulder. "And six Leg-Lockers and six Twitchy-Ears in a group there. And I think we'll leave all of the babbling Jinxes but clear up all these other confounding cantrips because they're no good for teaching."
The quill jumped to another, much shorter scroll, and recorded the curses left for his class. Harry rubbed his eyes, pushing his glasses up on to his forehead. Time for lunch, he thought, and turned towards the steps and the Great Hall, motioning to the quill and scrolls to roll up and follow.
A Trip Jinx got him on the landing and he went face-first into the handrail. Harry's last, muzzy thought as the world went out was, pathetically, please don't let it scar.
And then someone was kicking him, over and over in the shins. "Ow," Harry remarked, and Malfoy hissed,"Get up. Get up before someone sees." His voice was harsh and urgent and so utterly unlike Malfoy's usual, lazily drawling, delivery that Harry snapped his eyes open and gripped the hand offered. Malfoy hauled him up, looking closely into his eyes and breathing heavily. He must have come running. "Mental or physical?" Malfoy asked, his voice low, his wand ready in his left hand.
Harry put a hand up to his head. He could only have been out for a second. There was no scar; there wasn't even a cut. "Nothing, just a stupid Trip Jinx on the landing. I hit my head. I'm fine."
Malfoy wrenched his hand away. His face smoothed into a blank, indifferent mask; only the tension in his shoulders matched the cold fury in his voice. "You can't afford to trip up here," he said, still speaking in an undertone. "They can't afford to see you trip up here. They need you to be... you."
"Yeah," Harry said. "I know. I know, all right?"
Malfoy turned on his heel and went up the stairs, two at a time. Harry followed him a little more slowly. As they passed the great hourglasses, Malfoy muttered, "Dock ten points from Gryffindor for letting the crown slip," and then made a little "hmph" of disappointment when the shimmering pile of rubies stayed resolutely at its total.
"Sir?" Tuogh the Terrifying of the Clan Tuogh — Harry thought he would never get used to the Orkney cobbies' habit of calling their children things like 'the Terrifying'— had put his hand up and was waiting for Harry to call on him.
"Yes, Terry?" Harry hurried over to the giantag, who had unfortunately disturbed both a Jelly-Legs and a Twitchy-Ear and was looking most uncomfortable, propped up against the dungeon wall and quivering violently.
Terry said something that was completely drowned out by a sudden explosion of noise beside him. Three Gryffindors had abruptly begun jabbering away at the tops of their voices, with a fourth looking around at them and saying in a slightly depressed and oddly familiar tone, "Come on, lads. We did tongue-holder counter-hexes in second year."
Harry cupped a hand round his ear. "Go on," he said, leaning closer.
"My brother, sir, Thumpit," Terry boomed as only a cobbie can. "He says the Hufflepuffs've already done this stretch. All the way to their old common room, he says."
Everyone fell silent, even the babbling boys who had presumably dredged the tongue-holder hex from the murky depths of second year.
Harry frowned. "No, Terry. I don't think that's right." He thought for a moment, weighing how to approach this, and presently he said, "But let's see if we can find out, eh?" He turned to address the class. This was a bit difficult as they were, mostly, scattered all over the floor, stretching both ways down the corridor. Only two Slytherin girls, Malariette and Doris, remained standing and unjinxed. Not his most brilliant lesson, Harry reflected. "Class, pay attention," he said over the various giggles and moans. "Who can tell me a way to check for spells or magical influence on something?"
A tiny Gryffindor girl named Jenny put her hand up. "Specialis Revelio," she said as Harry pointed to her.
"Very good," Harry said. "Take a point. Now, who can tell me a way to clean away magical residue?" Nobody raised their hand. "Not curse-breaking, like we've been doing today, but a cleaning spell," Harry added.
There were nothing but blank looks on the students' faces for a minute, and then Malariette, the Slytherin girl who was still standing, said uncertainly, "Theurgio Tergeo?"
Harry smiled. "Excellent, Malariette. Take two points." Harry pushed his glasses up his nose and raked a hand through his hair, doggedly ignoring the ripple of faint sighs this action produced. "Terry has asked me if this portion of the dungeons has been swept before. Can anyone tell me what they might try casting to discover whether a place has been previously been curse-broken and made safe?" He waited. "This is not in your textbook," Harry said sharply to a gawky, brown-haired boy sitting slightly off to one side. The boy stilled, one hand frozen on his Protego VI.
The stony passage was silent for a minute more and then Malariette spoke again. "Tergeo Revelio!" she said, tumbling over the syllables in her rush to speak the charm.
"Ten points to Slytherin, Ms Gila," Harry said, applauding her sincerely. He took out his wand, waved it in a broad sweep, and said firmly to the wall, "Tergeo Revelio."
And all along the walls of the dungeon, every single stone lit up.
Ten years ago, Harry thought to himself as he wandered through the stacks, he would have stormed straight out of that lesson and up to Snape's office demanding answers. There probably would have been curses thrown, there definitely would have been cursewords thrown, and he would have got nowhere, would have got absolutely nothing but a huge, loud argument.
This, Harry considered, must be what getting old is all about: preferring six hours in the library to a big, shouty, tension-relieving blowup. Getting old, Harry decided, was absolutely terrible. And unexpectedly dusty.
Irma Pince hovered at his elbow anxiously. Harry couldn't blame her. He had been in high dudgeon since he'd stomped into the library early that evening and his mood had grown steadily blacker as the hours wore on. "Harry, er...dear," she said uncertainly. "Are you sure I can't help you with..?" she trailed off, clearly not quite knowing how to tell Harry Potter, slayer of Voldemort, vanquisher of the Dark Army and glorious uniter of the magical races, that it was twelve o'clock at night and to piss off out of it so she could go to bed.
It weirded Harry out like anything. His face felt hot. "Irma. Madame Pince. I've known you since I was eleven years old. Please don't call me dear. It's unsettling."
Her pinched, mean face crinkled into what might have been a smile if she'd used it more often. "Harry Potter," she said, much more firmly. "It's late. I'm tired. Begone!" She hustled him towards the door.
"Can I take these with me?"
She looked horrified. "Certainly not! You'll have to take an imprint." She held out her hand for Harry's plastiscroll. He dug it out of his pocket, smoothing it out awkwardly as he offered it to her. Taking the scroll, Madame Pince marched to her desk.
"You know," Harry said, as he watched the librarian carefully position his plastiscroll and close the book with a smart tap. "I always wondered why the students weren't allowed these." He indicated a few more passages and she nodded and pressed those ones as well.
"I have my reasons," Irma Pince growled, and Harry pushed it no further. He retrieved his plastiscroll, nodded his thanks, and took himself away to his office and his chair by the fire.
Lumpy was still up when Harry entered the office, having only just returned himself from patrol over the first-years' class up the Astronomy Tower. The house-elf was drinking hot chocolate and reading a little stack of papers, which looked tear-stained and grimy and bore the unmistakable aroma of petrol.
Harry stoked the fire and then settled behind his desk. "How's your mum?" he called to Lumpy. "All right?"
"Being well," Lumpy answered shortly, folding his letter up and putting it away. "She is wanting to know how the coal cellar is finding me on the first floor."
"Lumpy, mate, when are you going to tell her?"
Lumpy hid his face. "She is being so very proud of Lumpy's doing of the fires and living in a scuttle! Lumpy does not think his mother could be bearing to know the truth. She always was saying to me, 'Lumpy, mammy is knowing that someday you will be being a grate elf!'" He burst into violent, silent tears, his whole body shaking as he sobbed.
Harry conjured a blanket and wrapped it around his colleague's shoulders. "I know, I know," he said, sorting through his papers. "But you're going to have to tell her eventually. Better hearing it from you than someone else."
Lumpy lifted his head up and stared at across the room at him. "Who would be speaking a word to my mammy?" he said, tucking his blanket under his chin.
"Oh, right," Harry said, embarrassed. "I see your point."
Lumpy sniffed, took out a ruler, and aligned a stack of books to the edge of the table."No. Lumpy will be always making sure there is a piece of coal on him and Lumpy's mammy will never be finding out anything and never be hating Lumpy for ever and ever." He nodded firmly. "What is Harry Potter reading?"
"You might have a bit of insight on this, actually," Harry said, beckoning to him. "I had a really weird thing happen with my sixth-years today, in the dungeons by the old Hufflepuff common room.
Lumpy rounded the desk and peered under Harry's elbow at the scroll. "Indelible imps," he murmured, reading the passage Harry had his finger on.
"Yeah," Harry said. "Well, no. Maybe. I was teaching curse-breaking. Or, curse-tripping more like, but some of them were getting there, but then Tuogh the Terrifying said that area had already been swept, and I cast a revelio and it had. And not just once, either, by the looks of it. And so I was thinking—"
"And Harry Potter is thinking there are indelible imps in the castle," Lumpy finished. Then he shook his head. "We would be knowing, for sure we would. It is not just being one type of magic they are preserving. They are opposing all change in the principle of it."
Harry nodded. "This was my conclusion. I was in those passages in 2001; there were a lot more than Jellies flying around. And then there were all the healing Charms. Ron just cast them over and over— he accidentally cured Iniquity Ilford's warts right before I," Harry shifted in his seat, "well, you know, killed her."
Lumpy clambered on to Harry's desk and pressed his face close to the bottom-most text, which read Malo Animo: a treatise on the malignancy of saturated magic. He gasped. "Harry Potter is thinking that Hogwarts is poorly! What is Headmaster Snape saying?"
"I, er, haven't exactly mentioned it to him, yet," Harry said. "And I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't say anything either, just until I'm a mite clearer on what's going on." And who is involved, Harry thought to himself, frowning.
"If you like, respected colleague." The house-elf shrugged. "Lumpy will be interested to read this scroll."
"Yeah, great. That'd be great, Lumpy, ta," Harry said. "You can take it now, actually. I'm going to go to bed." He groaned as he looked at the clock, which was firmly pointing to half past Your Bedtime. "I'm on patrol tomorrow morning. C.M.C. on the reserve. 'Night."
"Good night," Lumpy said, already engrossed in the paper.
Harry wandered down the hallway to his rooms, his mind still racing. Why had Snape not told him those passages had already been cleared, and many times, without lasting success? He had had ample opportunity in August, when they had planned the timetables. Why had Harry only heard about it by chance, from a student? Why had, Harry thought to himself reproachfully, he not himself looked? Who else knew? Lumpy clearly hadn't known —or he was a better actor than Harry could ever have guessed— but Lumpy was new, like him, just arrived this year. Did round, jolly Clarice Claphingale know? Harry pushed open the door to his bedchamber. Did Malfoy?
Harry woke, sweaty and confused, from lurching, chaotic dreams of Draco Malfoy stealing his broomstick and zooming down endless corridors thick with spells. He rubbed his face. Bloody hell, he thought, slipping his hand underneath the covers and closing his eyes, tossing one off to Draco Malfoy before Care of Magical Creatures: he really was back at school.
He's a complete git, Harry reminded himself sternly. And probably evil, and, oh, Harry moved faster, definitely hiding something and really... really, in very good shape. He could tell, even through those heavy, draping robes— the green ones he wore outside that lent eerie lights to his pale skin—that Harry just wanted to reach out and tear through and—
Harry came with a dizzying rush and a head full of Draco disrobed.
The clock in his chamber was showing quarter past Breakfast, and by the time Harry had rolled out of bed, and got ready it was just about ten to Class. There was no time to do anything but hurry down to the entrance hall and his patrol duty.
Jeremy Bigglesworth, a stout wizard of about fifty, whom Harry knew well from the La bête Landings, saluted him casually as he entered the hall. "All right, Harry," he said, taking out a pocket watch and glancing at it. "When's this class happening, then?"
"Should be any minute," Harry replied and, sure enough, just then the bustling hordes thinned, leaving about twenty third-years washed up around the edges, looking bored already.
"Crocodile, please." Professor Aries Wulfrickle clapped his hands and everyone straightened up and looked at him. He was a tall, broad-set chap wearing a peculiar pair of patchwork leather trousers and an elderly fisherman's jumper, and he steamed through the hall like a locomotive. The third-years trailed after him in pairs and Harry and Jeremy brought up the rear. Once outside, the two men mounted their brooms and rose above the winding black crocodile, looping eights around each other and catching up on old times.
"Been a long time," Jeremy observed as they met in the middle of their figures of eight.
"Yes, what is it, seven years?" Harry replied when he came round again.
"Must be," said Jeremy. "I've not seen you since the day we all voted."
"Well," he continued on the next loop. "Not all, but since we voted." He looked away, scanning the horizon.
"I won't ask you," Harry said firmly. "It was a secret ballot."
Jeremy circled downwards then, skimming low over the children, who were now sitting in rows along Hagrid's old vegetable patch, awkwardly cuddling stuffed sacks with fangs painted on them. He rose again, still avoiding Harry's eyes. "It was a mess," he admitted. "But you got some of what you wanted and we got some of we needed and sometimes you just have to make do, Harry."
Harry spat, "I never wanted this," and a fierce rage burned suddenly in his stomach. He urged his broom higher, away from Jeremy and old times and things he preferred to leave there. The October skies were a pale grey blue, marbled with high clouds, and the morning sun was a weak glow in the east. He swallowed hard, breathed out. He couldn't stay angry long with the wind at his back and the autumn colours of the forest laid out like a carpet beneath him.
Descending again, he saw that Jeremy was hovering, his head crooked to one side, watching Professor Wulfrickle with interest. "Funny," he said as Harry drew up beside him. "In my day, he would have been thrown out for being, you know, what he is. But I heard that Snape actually advertised for one. Specifically."
Harry nodded. "I saw the advert," he said. "No one was more surprised, believe me." It was a large part of Harry's reasons for returning to Hogwarts, as it happened, though Harry was not about to share that fact with Jeremy Bigglesworth, who was still peering at the C.M.C teacher with undisguised curiosity. "It was a good move, I thought," Harry said, carefully watching Jeremy's reaction. "There are so many kids here with lycanthropy. Dumbledore would have approved."
Jeremy winced, but then his expression softened, and he said, "Yeah, I suppose it wasn't that brilliant in my day, for them, really, was it?"
Harry was heartened by the admission. The Bigglesworths, an ancient Kent family, had been ravaged by the Landings— the horrifying monthly raids led by Greyback from his stronghold in France— and Jeremy had lost many members of his family to the slavering jaws of the Dark Army. From him, that short sentence was a ringing endorsement. Harry stretched out a tentative hand to Jeremy's shoulder, but Jeremy shook him off, saying briskly, "Oh, I think it's break-time," and turning his broom in the direction of the castle.
Harry had spent the next week in a blur of teaching, patrolling, and researching. He'd formed several theories, and debunked them all, and spent an unholy amount of time in the library, a place he'd thought he was well shot of. At the end of his tether, he'd written to Hermione to enlist her superior resources, and, Harry looked up from his lunch, Fistleflick was just returning with an answer.
Harry,
How interesting! I looked into the texts you mentioned and I enclose a list of some more that you might want to check out. I think Hogwarts should have all of them. They're not especially obscure. If not, you can borrow them from the Ruby Room down at Oxford but you'll need a pass. Well, I don't expect you will need one but, anyway. I've done my own reading, of course, and I think you might have been on to something with the Malo Animo paper. There's a lot of it around these days. Even the Muggles have noticed; they call it Sick Building Syndrome. There's a man at the Ministry who goes round cleaning them. He's called Des Bloughton, if you want to look him up. I met him once for coffee, a long time ago. Don't mention me.
What you're describing seems a bit more serious though. I thought I might ask the Chair of Demonica for his opinion but I need to think of a way to keep Hogwarts out of it. You're absolutely right that it's best to keep this to ourselves until we're really sure there's something wrong. Though, Harry, I really do think you ought to go to Snape, at least, and just ask him what he knows about it. I know you've never liked him but you've managed to work with him in the past.
You might be back at school but you're not a schoolboy any more!
Love, H
PS. And speaking of schoolboys. I hope you noticed I've ignored that whole paragraph about Draco Malfoy being evil. Leave him alone. The man is a P.E. teacher; it's penance enough.
Harry glanced over the list of titles Hermione had sent with her letter. Some, like St. Mungo's Medical Model and Carry On Cursing: When Revels Run Away With the Fairies, were reasonably familiar, but as the list went on the names gradually slipped into odd dialects of Latin and Brython that Harry struggled to parse. The very last title was a neat series of hieroglyphs and Harry blew out a little puff of dismay. "Not especially obscure?" he grumbled under his breath. "You're on a different planet, Hermione."
"Is she?" Malfoy asked with interest. "I wondered where she'd got to. What's Granger got to say for herself then?"
Harry folded his letter hurriedly and stowed it in his robes. "Nothing," he said, a little too quickly. "It's just... you know, the weather and the post office and some books she's been reading."
"Oh, how fascinating," Malfoy said, already returning his attention to his soup.
"Are you patrolling after?" Harry said after a while.
"Mmm? Not today."
"It's Gryffindor vs. Slytherin this weekend. Aren't Gryffindor practising this afternoon?"
Malfoy shook his head. "No one to cover them," he said, with a mean little twist in his lips.
And that was how Harry was manoeuvred into flying security over the Quidditch pitch in the pissing down rain.
Lightning shot a jagged streak of light through the muggy air and Harry counted, tapping the miles off on his jaw, "One, two, three, four&mdash" he'd got to sixteen before the thunder rolled and he called to Jack Hill, the Gryffindor captain, "It gets to five miles, Jack, and I'm calling this off."
The boy opened his mouth to protest and then, seeing Harry's face, thought better of it. "Yes, sir," he nodded, and turned to his team. "Come on then, you lot. Let's get what we can out of this. Jenny..."
His voice faded as Harry rose higher to cover the perimeter. The heavy clouds that had been gathering all day had finally spilled over and the close, sticky feeling was lifting at last. It was gloomy, though, the sun was thoroughly shrouded, and the thunderstorm was threatening to blow straight through the grounds. Harry Charmed the back of his robes to go stiff, like a chair-back, and leant against them wearily.
Below him, a boy screamed. Harry jerked up and cast protego hostias without thinking, throwing a gleaming silver net wide over the pitch, and then tore downwards towards the team. It was raining, thin, prickling arrows of rain blown in sideways by the howling wind, and Harry roared, "Get to the castle," in a voice spelled deep and booming.
The children nodded, white-faced and grim, already turning their brooms to the south. Their captain, Jack, put an arm round the smallest and then looked back at Harry, offering him his wand. He looked impossibly young. Harry shook his head, quickly, saying, "You'll have to take them, Jack. I'm counting on you." And then Harry formed the net into a tunnel, pushing it into a long low tube that clung to the entrance of the castle, and turned away to face the assault alone.
They were close, too close. Harry could see the rip in the wards from where he hovered. Frayed blue threads fluttered about the ragged edge. A Charmed bolt of lightning, he guessed. It must have been Charmed to break through, surely. The dark cloaked, swaying figures slipped through the tear in twos and threes, stumbling towards him, sending off wild spells that hit the ground around him, sparking and flashing.
"Incendio," Harry yelled, again and again, throwing fire walls to either side of the weaving, massing Inferi, funnelling them towards him and away from the castle.
The tear was sealing, sewing itself together and cutting off the hordes Harry knew were still massed outside. But there were already too many inside: sixty, seventy, maybe more, and they pressed in on Harry, who was now hovering only three feet off the ground, surrounded first by Inferi and then by a wall of flame that arched overhead, enclosing them all. The air was dry, the rain boiled away. There were too many, already too many; Harry knew it and he closed his eyes.
He tapped his wand to his heart. "Guy Fawkes," he whispered, and burst into flame.
"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck," a voice chanted above him. "You're not dead. You can't be dead. You don't do that. Fuck fuck fuck fuck." Harry was blind, or the world was dark, he couldn't tell, and he lifted his head up and tried to speak but he fell, oh, he fell.
There was a crash and a bright white light ripped through his skull and Harry was conscious for a moment— just long enough to think, not blind then and who's got me?—and then he was falling again and could not think.
Many voices, someone screaming, "Out of the fucking way," and Harry was jolted by an explosion. He felt dust on his cheek, a fine dust falling, which quickly turned to a sickening, burning agony and Harry moaned out loud, saying, "burning" and "pain," and then he was being set down, wrapped in a cool, slick blanket of something that numbed him from the outside in.
Harry twitched. Somewhere close by a chair scraped loudly along the floor as someone stood up. Harry opened one eye. A door slammed somewhere further off. The unmistakable, if somewhat blurry, nose of Severus Snape filled Harry's view as he peered intently into Harry's eyes.
"Alive then," Snape remarked. "Good good." He didn't sound overjoyed.
"I can't move," Harry said, wondering slightly if this was Snape's doing.
Snape stepped away. He stood at the foot of Harry's bed, straight-backed and forbidding, and clasped his hands behind his back. "It's the swaddling bandages, Potter. You're burnt. This is what happens when one sets oneself on fire."
"Right," Harry said, his voice sounding scrapy and thin. "Forgot about that part. Stupid of me."
Snape swallowed. "Seventy-three against one, Harry," he said. "And all the students safe. They won't forget it." And with that, Snape swept from the hospital wing.
"Hey," Harry mumbled, watching him go. "What happened to the wall?"
Harry was laid up for three weeks and two days, missing Gryffindor vs. Slytherin, Ravenclaw vs. Hufflepuff, two periods of curse-breaking-with-the-sixth-years, three Tikka Masala Tuesdays, Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award Ceremony, Witch Weekly's Pick-a-Potter Look-a-Likie Halloween Extravaganza, werecub duty, and Bonfire Night. This, Harry supposed, was what was meant by the phrase 'mixed blessing'.
Professor Snape visited him every other day. Harry wasn't entirely sure why. The man would turn up, confer briefly with Madame Pomfrey, and then stand by Harry's bed, glaring at him in complete silence, for precisely quarter of an hour. Harry had timed him.
Perhaps, Harry thought, the mad old bastard had always just really enjoyed detention.
Clarice dropped by and brought him fruit and gossip. She sat by his bed and ate his grapes and told him, giggling, how Desmeldre Ledum had got absolutely slaughtered at the Halloween Ball and made a pass at Professor Wulfrickle.
"I most certainly did not," Desmeldre sniffed the next day. She looked past him, apparently mesmerised by the trickling patterns of rain on the window. "Anyway, how would she know who I made a pass at? Everyone went as you."
Harry burst out laughing. "Everyone?" he asked, incredulously, still chuckling even as his body protested. "Even Snape? Even Malfoy?"
She reached over him and foraged in the fruit bowl on his bedside table. "Draco wasn't there, Harry," she said, through a mouthful of plum. "Draco's on leave. Didn't you know?"
"Of course Lumpy is knowing Master Draco was being gone from Hogwarts. Lumpy is being keeper of the doors," the elf said, as loftily as a three and a half foot house-elf could manage.
Lumpy had not been quite as frequent a visitor as Snape, though a much more vocal one. He'd spent the first four visits getting so increasingly distressed he'd finished each by being thrown out by Madame Pomfrey, who said he was disturbing... She hadn't specified further.
"When did he go?" Harry pressed. "Where did he go? It's the middle of term. It's Quidditch season. Don't you think that's a bit odd? A bit strange?"
Lumpy crumpled. "It is?" he said, suddenly uncertain. He polished Harry's bedstead in a flurry of movement. "No one is ever telling Lumpy anything!"
Letters had come, not by owl or borrowed goose, but delivered by hand by Bertram Bogburn, who had taken over as caretaker some years ago. He was almost as grumpy and unpleasant as Filch, but had, for some impenetrable reason, taken it upon himself to act as Harry's gatekeeper and, in this capacity, proved invaluable. Now Harry was able to sit up and manage it, Bogburn stumped into the hospital wing and stacked Harry's post around him.
"I've done three piles," he barked, indicating them. "This one's your mates. That one's school things: parents and the like. The other one is official." The 'other one' was a six-foot-high stack of paperwork, belted to a trolley.
Harry began to say, "Oh! I escaped the—" but Bogburn stopped him, saying, "Fan mail mountain? I binned it. I can't be doing with that rubbish cluttering up the place."
Harry, rather guiltily, blew out a sigh of relief. "Is there anything from Hermione Granger?" he asked.
Bogburn thrust three little envelopes at him and stumped off, pulling back the blue spellpaulin that covered the ragged hole in the hospital wing wall and clambering through it, shouting, "Clear off, you miserable gawkers," at some unknown persons beyond.
Harry opened all three, looked at the dates, and turned his attention to the oldest letter.
Harry,
I've spoken to the Chair of Demonica and he's promised to try to work up some scenarios that could produce your results. I kept your name and Hogwarts out of it— I said it was purely hypothetical—but I'm not sure how convincing I was. Anyway, I'm sure it will be fine. He's a good sort.
I think you should record what's going on in that corridor. Get a pair of Omnioculars from Hogsmeade or something, maybe?
I've booked you into the wards from the 20th of December because you didn't say when school breaks up for Christmas. I thought it was solstice? I am getting old; I can't remember! But please do write to confirm because we're cutting it a bit fine.
Love, H
The next letter was dated two days later. It was a brief note written on a square piece of parchment and folded so it made its own envelope.
Harry,
Christmas? Dates?
I might stay here over the holidays if you're not bothered. The Chair of Demonica's promised to show me his ancient runes.
Love, H
PS. Speak to Professor Snape.
And the third was dated three days after that and now addressed to Harry Potter, The Hospital Wing, Hogwarts School.
Harry!
I just heard. All our papers are always late. I wanted to come and see you but, well, the wards, and oh, Harry! I hope you're all right! I feel terrible. I'm sorry I was so short with you in my last letter. I thought you were just being crap. I hope you can forgive me!
I will be down to see you on the 21st of December.
I don't know what to write now. It seems silly to just go on about work and things. I expect you'll be going mad, stuck in bed. It said in the paper you blew up a hundred and fifty Neo Inferi, but I know what the Prophet is like. I'll wait until I see you.
—This is so strange. I was just sitting writing the above when Draco Malfoy firecalled me! I don't know how he hooked in to this fireplace, and he wouldn't tell me, but he did tell me what happened at Hogwarts. So not a hundred and fifty but, gosh, seventy three isn't bad going. I hope regrowing your poor skin isn't too awful. Poppy knows what she's doing.
Love, H
PS. Vlad has worked out three scenarios that could lead to curses resurging in the way you described and I will send them to you when they are finished. Also, Vlad doesn't think Draco is evil either. He knows him from way back, apparently.
"Oh, Vlad does, does he?" Harry grunted. "Well, I'm convinced."
Harry sat there for the rest of the day, trying to sort through his letters but, inevitably, stewing over his puzzling scraps of news. He was desperately curious to know why Malfoy had apparently abandoned his post to go round breaking into ancient libraries. And how on earth he had managed to do it, when even Hermione had no idea. Harry groaned to himself. If there was one thing he had really never missed about Hogwarts, it was obsessing about the mysterious machinations of Draco Bloody Malfoy.
He was, it seemed, powerless to prevent himself.
Madame Pomfrey bustled over to him, bearing a selection of hideous potions. Harry could tell they were hideous just by looking at them: they inhabited a series of misshapen bottles, they were various shades of vomitous yellow and snot green. One belched occasionally, letting off a sulphurous bubble of gas; the stink hit Harry's stomach and he gritted his teeth and tried not to be sick. "Poppy," he said, between his gulps and grimaces. "When can I be discharged?"
She tipped her head, considering him. "How's the pain?" she asked. She picked up his chart and flipped through the notes.
"Fine!" Harry said quickly.
Madame Pomfrey raised an eyebrow.
"Well, okay, not fine fine," Harry amended. "But manageable." He gestured at the post stacked around his bed. "I don't want to get any further behind. Honestly, Poppy, I'm up to my ears in it. I've got marking here from September."
She stopped looking through his chart and looked at him instead. "I wouldn't call you fit, Harry" she said seriously. "But you're doing well. I'll discharge you if you promise to go straight to bed, and take it slowly. And check in regularly."
Harry nodded, pushing his hand through his new-grown mop of hair. "Can I go now, then?" Around him, the piles of letters quivered, as if readying to take off.
Poppy agreed, and they spent the next half an hour packing up Harry's things and going over all the potions he still needed to take. Harry was nearly gone, just floating his baggage through the spellpaulin, when he said, again, "Hey! What did happen to this wall?"
Harry's rooms seemed a very long way away. The hallway seemed to stretch as he walked, and Harry whispered, on the off-chance, "I'm sorry about your wall; I'm going to try to fix it," and, maybe it was his imagination, but the far door seemed suddenly a little nearer, the light in the sconces a little warmer. He trailed a grateful hand along the wall and wondered just how much of his life he had spent trudging down the corridors of Hogwarts Castle. Lots. More than most people.
A portrait was watching him, with one eye open. Harry winked at her, and she blushed and immediately began to snore loudly. It was deeply unconvincing and Harry grinned broadly as he passed, his heart light.
"Mr Potter!" Nearly Headless Nick sauntered through the wall and inclined his head. Harry, as ever, wished he hadn't. "Our fiery hero rises."
"Hello, Nick," Harry said. "How are you? I haven't seen you for ages."
The ghost looked a little guilty. "Yes, I'm, er sorry about that, my dear fellow."
Harry shrugged, about to say 'don't worry about it' or 'not a problem' or something, but Nick spoke again.
"I find..." Nick's eyes darted from side to side and he leaned in towards Harry. "I can't bear that ghastly place. I find it rather reminds me of being petrified and that&mdash" he drew himself up "—will simply never do!"
Harry laughed. "You're petrified of being petrified?" Behind him, his stacks of books and correspondence jiggled in glee. "Don't worry, Nick. I'm pretty sure there're no more basilisks in this castle." He cupped a hand round his ear and pressed it to the wall. "Nope," he said, in what he hoped was a reassuring tone of voice. "Just pipes."
"Excuse me," a tiny portrait said next to Harry's ear, and Harry jumped, startled.
"Oh, gosh, sorry." He stepped back and put his hands up. "I didn't mean to—"
"No, it's not that," the painting replied, a little squeakily. "I was just wondering if you knew there was a little boy sitting in an alcove round the next corner." Dressed in a severe black gown, she was sitting on a three legged stool, tipping it forwards as she leaned back towards the window that took up most of the width of the painting. Behind her, through the glass, an enormous eye blinked. Harry thought he could hear whispers, strangely deep and far away. "I'm not one for telling tales," she said. "But we think he's quite upset."
Harry frowned. "Right," he said. "Ta." He turned to his baggage and said, "Remeo." Rustling, it drew together slightly, floating as it was, and then shot off down the corridor at breakneck speed.
"I say," exclaimed Nearly Headless Nick with interest, and followed it, waving to Harry absently.
Harry knew, of course, the three staple Charms of wag-patrol: featherlight, behold-behind, and rectus-vultus. It had been the very first thing he had learnt, in the staffroom at Durmstrang on his first day teaching. "The most important things a teacher needs, Harry," Carol had said. "Are silent footsteps, eyes in the back of your head, and a straight face." He'd laughed then. "You wouldn't believe the ridiculous things children get up to."
Harry thought that he probably would believe almost anything, having spent five years at the same school as Fred and George Weasley, and he Charmed his body quickly, silently, and strolled around the corner, trying to look avuncular.
The alcove was only a little way down the passage, tucked between an arch and the rough edge of a chimney breast. Harry walked towards it, but something curious was happening: this hallway seemed larger somehow, the ceiling higher, like the castle was taking a great gulping breath of air. Harry's pulse quickened; he slipped his wand into his hand. The hush of the hall felt thick, felt dangerous. He reached the alcove and paused. He checked the foggy, indistinct reflection of the behold-behind Charm that hung in the corner of his vision like a Muggle wing mirror.
It's only a student, he thought to himself. You'll be going the way of old Mad Eye, if you're not careful. It's a student. It's a little boy.
He rounded the corner and found himself staring down at the stringy black hair of a thin, shabby little child he had never seen before, who was huddled on the floor and hugging his knees. Harry was standing in front of the dimly flickering sconce on the wall; his hazy shadow fell across the floor. The boy looked up; his immense nose was a jutting mountain below two beetle-black eyes.
It was impossible. It was insane. But Harry just knew it was true. "Snape," he exclaimed. "Is your name...are you a Snape?"
The boy raised his head and blinked back the welling tears in his eyes. He twisted his hands in the folds of his tatty black uniform robe, which flickered strangely around the edges like the lights in the hall. He opened his mouth and tried to speak; his jaw worked uselessly, soundlessly. He looked directly into Harry's eyes, holding his gaze for a fraction of a second, and then pop: he disappeared.
Harry let out the breath he had been holding. Around him, the hallway grew once again smaller and brighter, and Harry stood there, his Charmed face impassive, his mind screaming for answers.
Snape. He had to get to Snape. He'd wasted months and gained nothing but questions. Harry turned back towards the headmaster's tower, cursing under his breath. He seriously did not want a confrontation now. He was weak, he knew he was. His skin was still raw, and his magic young. He felt a trembling in his fingertips; he swayed, his pulse slamming behind his eyes.
"Damn," Harry said under his breath, but there was nothing for it: he had to find Snape and get some answers. He strode grimly down the corridor towards the gargoyles that guarded the headmaster's office, hoping the password was still kilner, and preparing to blast his way inside if it was not.
But as he arrived at the entrance, Harry saw, with surprise, that the doorway was open and the spiral staircase was winding itself up to its full height. He could not see who was riding it. Harry thanked Felix he was still featherlight and soundless as he put on a burst of speed and darted inside the door, just as it was closing.
"Well?" Snape sounded shattered. "Did you get it?"
"No." Harry recognised the voice at once; worn and tired as it was, the lazy confidence of crisp consonants and moneyed vowels was still unmistakably Malfoy's. "Granger was there."
"Hermione Granger?" Snape said with considerable alarm. "What?"
Malfoy let out a little groan of frustration. "She was sitting right in front of the fireplace as I flooed my head in. I had to pretend I was calling her."
"What did you say, you little fool?" Snape hissed. "If she suspects then Potter suspects and then we're all done for."
Malfoy snapped back, "I told her to whip her knickers off and say hello to Lord Malfoy! What do you think I said?
There was silence above him. Harry laid his head against the wall and tried to slow his heart, catch his breath, gather his strength to cast a glamour. He thought wistfully of his long lost invisibility cloak. He racked his brains, thinking. He was trapped. He could not get out until Malfoy left, and Malfoy would have to pass him to do so. He felt sick; how did he get himself into these predicaments? Harry placed his palms flat against his face, braced his fingertips against his brow. No, he knew how; it was the same fucking thing that got him out of these predicaments— this thing inside him that leapt through a closing door, scrambled blindly through a high-grown maze, stretched out a hand for a golden, fluttering Snitch.
"I told her Potter was in the hospital wing recovering from a severe bout of heroism and that she shouldn't worry because the man is impossible to get rid of, despite everyone's best efforts," Malfoy said wearily. "But I have to tell you, Severus, I think Harry already suspects."
There was another pause. Harry heard the creak of leather and the dull thud of flesh thumping down on to wood. Someone made a faint, desperate sound; he could not tell who.
"I returned the next day at about five o'clock in the morning," Malfoy went on. He spoke slowly, reciting the chain of events. "I went directly to Vlad's rooms and knocked him up there. He let me in and, as we walked through to his kitchen, he picked up a towel and threw it over some books. He tried to do it casually, poor chap, but he's always been hopeless at subterfuge."
Snape laughed bleakly. "I always wondered what you two could possibly have in common."
"Yes, all right," Malfoy said; he did not sound amused. "Anyway, when he went to get dressed, I had a look at what he was hiding, and the books...He had the Malo Animo. The whole thing had Granger's handwriting all over it. Literally! She's got him investigating memory spells, protection contracts, transmutation of energies. It's too much of a coincidence. And as you said: if she suspects then Harry suspects."
"Why was he hiding it," Snape murmured. "When did you lose his trust?"
Malfoy's tone was thoughtful. "I don't think it's a matter of not trusting me," he said. "I think Granger asked him to keep mum. You should have heard him going on and on. He's lost. The man is completely doolally over her. "
"Over Hermione Granger?" Snape's voice rose in shock. "The most insufferable know-it—"
Malfoy sounded bored. "Oh, give it a rest, Severus," he said. "No one's fooled."
Snape's voice grew suddenly, worryingly loud as he walked towards the top of the stairs. Harry's blood pounded in his ears and he pressed himself hard against the wall, trying to sink into it, though he knew it was ridiculous. "Will he tell her what he knows?" Snape said in a hoarse, remote tone.
"No," Malfoy replied after a moment. "Not Vlad. I think if he'd come to Hogwarts he'd have gone straight into Hufflepuff. He won't betray a confidence."
"But he didn't help you either?"
There was a longer pause and eventually Malfoy said, very quietly, "No. He could not find a way."
A chair scraped back. Harry heard footsteps; he knew his time was up. Malfoy was at the top doorway, round the twist in the stairs. Harry heard his foot on the topmost step like a clap of thunder, and then suddenly the solution hit him. He screwed up his face, gathered all his concentration, and thought submersio, submersio as hard as he could. Malfoy was walking down the stairs; Harry could hear him getting closer and closer. He thought I'm not going to make it in a brief sick flash of certainty, but just as Malfoy came into sight, Harry sank fully into the wall: melted into the stone, or the spaces inside it.
Malfoy passed the gargoyles and strode off down the corridor. Harry slipped out of the door behind him and turned, spent, for his rooms. Although he could not yet understand, could not even guess at their reasons, Harry now had confirmation of his terrible suspicion. Because as soon as he had looked into that alcove, Harry had realised what he was seeing. Not a ghost, or an echo, or an indelible imp, but a memory.
Wherever this was, it was not Hogwarts.
He was down. He was knocked down. Feet, hard and sharply clawed, were trampling him. His head slammed against the floor and he choked as his neck jerked, his shoulders jarred against the solid stone. He could not see what it was but his wand was out instinctively, gripped hard and braced against his wrist. He rolled, crying out, "Protego," as he covered his head with his other hand. Something silver sputtered from his outstretched hand, bursting and then dying, strangled, unrealised.
He yelled again, "Protego! Protego," forcing a rough cloak from his wand that covered him, patchy and ragged but enough, just enough, to cover his body. Above there was a roaring like waves crashing against rocks and then a voice screamed,"Lock the doors! Lock all the doors."
A strong hand reached through his shield, clutched at his head, gripped into his hair and dragged him roughly along the floor. Harry twisted, his hands flailing over his head. He kicked his feet out hard against a doorframe and the man holding him swore and stumbled. Harry bent and sprang up, panting and wild-eyed.
It was Malfoy. Draco Malfoy was scrambling to his feet and putting his shoulder to the heavy oak door that stood open to the corridor. Of course it was. Harry had known it would be him. He felt sick. He tensed.
Draco said, "Push!" And Harry blinked, muzzy, and then moved forwards, put his shoulder to the door as well. They heaved it into its frame and Draco slapped the wood with the flat of his hand; he sank to the floor, twisting himself into the corner, his knees bent up close to his body.
Harry sank too, pummelled and raw. His back scraped down the gnarled wood of the door; his shoulder butted against Draco's. Draco said, "It's the full moon," and, "I don't know how they got out," and, "Ledum. That evil little cunt must've opened the pens."
Draco let his head roll to the side, stretched his wand out and touched Harry's cheek very gently, sealing off the shallow scratches that bled there. "Aries will keep them under control." His voice was harsh and triumphant. "That Ministry bitch will go down for this."
Harry kissed him then, suddenly desperate and reaching blindly. "Don't be evil, Draco," he whispered against his neck. "Be deceitful and too clever and petty and snide." He pressed his face into the hollow of Draco's throat, pushed his heavy robe from the pale skin of his shoulder, licked him along the knotted, tensioned muscle. "Just don't be evil."
Draco raked his fingers through Harry's hair, tugged him close and kissed him back, very seriously. "It's too late," he explained. "It's too late." He pulled away abruptly, shaking his head. "It's all been decided."
"What have you done?" Harry asked, fierce and breathing hard. "You and Snape. What did you do? What is this place?" Harry threw his arm out in a wide arc, taking in the room, the castle, every fucking thing around them. "What did you fucking do, Draco?"
Draco's face was white, his mouth a thin, tight line. He said, "It was only meant to be for a little while. Just while we fixed the wards. Dumbledore's wards were always the strongest, you see. You must remember how strong they were." He braced his palms on his thighs and pushed himself up to stand by the window, half-shadowed in the moonlight. His grey eyes were distant as he scanned the grounds outside. "I think they're all accounted for," he said with relief, then drew his hand and cast something Harry could not hear, but which surrounded him with many tiny points of silver light: four clusters bobbing gently and a trail of specks streaking and twisting around them.
Harry rubbed his scalp. It throbbed and stung and there were little spots of blood on his hand as he pulled it away. "The werecubs are all on Wolfsbane, right, so...why are they going mental on us?"
Draco rolled his eyes. "They're still teenagers, you moron." He moved away from the window, grasped Harry's arm and pulled him to his feet.
They stood very close together in the middle of the room. It was a odd sort of wedge shape, almost a cupboard, the width of two doors on one side and narrowing to the window that blunted its peak. Harry had not even known it existed and he glanced around, trying to fit it into his mental map of the castle, just as Draco said, "It's the Rambling Rathole," and behind him, through the window, the landscape blurred and shifted to show the lake. Harry felt faintly offended that Draco Malfoy knew of a room when he didn't, and he frowned and looked away from the glass.
"This is still Hogwarts," Draco said. His eyes were fixed to the floor. "Nothing has to change."
Harry shook his head. "Everything has to change. That's what being alive is," he said furiously. "You've... this place isn't whole. We can't live here, you lunatic. You can't sustain a pensieve like this." He cupped his hands in front of him, making a bowl. "The enchantment was never meant to be used on anything like as large as a castle." Harry knew this must be very Dark magic indeed and his stomach churned at the thought of it. He wanted Draco to look at him, to explain to him how it was all a good thing really. That it had been an accident, a mistake, that he wasn't sunk in the Dark Arts and that Hogwarts wasn't rotting and polluted under a thin, patchwork veneer of memories. "How is Snape doing it?" he demanded, swaying, his vision blurring. "The power needed... where did he get it?"
Draco reached out to steady him. He stepped even closer, his robes rustling; Harry could hear him breathing in ragged uneven breaths. Draco pressed his forehead against Harry's and spoke in a low, urgent tumble. "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know where he got it but it's done now anyway...Only meant to protect this place, the poor old bastard...But now it's all gone wrong and I can't fix it and the Ministry have just been looking for an excuse to get rid of all us—" Draco pushed up the sleeve of his robe with his right hand and shoved his tattooed forearm into Harry's face "—Marked men."
Harry stared at the Dark Mark, and the bold blue 'I' wreathed in fire next to it. He had never actually seen the Insignia Inferiosa on living flesh before, only caught glimpses on burning bodies, flailing limbs, and on the sketched plans at the referendum seven years before. He was fascinated. He could not help himself—he stretched out to touch the dancing flame and Draco hissed and pushed him away, cradling his arm closely. Harry stumbled backwards and sat down, hard, on the floor.
He was so tired, so very tired. He thought of Poppy Pomfrey and her stern decree of bedrest, only a little while ago, though it felt like years. He felt shockingly weak; his limbs were jelly. He smiled, too brightly, and said, "I'm meant to be—" but he could not finish. The world tipped and he crashed sideways against the floor. He heard Draco swearing and he felt Draco grasping his shoulder, but it was all very far away, at the top of a high tower, and Harry was sinking deep into a black lake of nothingness that covered him in silence.
Harry was not surprised to find Draco gone in the morning. He was a little surprised, and massively relieved, to find himself intact and unhexed. The bright, blued winter sunlight streamed through the window and Harry yawned and stretched, scrunching up his face at the cracks and pops in his spine. He felt surprisingly refreshed, considering he'd been pushed through stone, trampled by werecubs, and spent a night in a cupboard with—
He groaned. Really, really, he thought to himself, going to have work harder at not collapsing every time the man walks by. Blood and sand. Scowling, Harry set off, at last, for his rooms, composing his letter as he went.
Dear Hermione,
I think it would be best for you to not come to Hogwarts on the 20th of December, as it is apparently only being held together by spellotape and a deal with the devil...
Dear Hermione,
Malfoy's Dark. I'd gloat but the shallow crush on his body is heading in inappropriate directions. Stupid saving-people-thing. Come and get me in your most sensible seven-league shoes...
Dear Hermione,
SLYTHERINS IN HOCK TO DARK ARTS STOP NO ONE SURPRISED STOP STAY UP THERE STOP PS VLAD SURE THING
Dear Hermione,
Snape and Malfoy are into something heavy here. Snape's got himself a bag of power on the never-never— I don't know how, Malfoy wasn't saying— it has to be a seriously Dark contract, I think. Anyway, as far as I can tell, they've used Pensieve enchantments on the actual stones of the castle. Like a sort of mad holodeck. I think Snape is using his own memories, but he's losing control of them— they're starting to leak out—he's starting to leak out, Hermione! We're all living in Snape's twisted little head. It's very disturbing. I walked into his adolescence last night and trust me, I'd rather walk back into the arena.
Anyway, you can guess at bits of it, probably better than I can. It's crawling with Inferi round here. The wards, all the protection magics were failing. Snape obviously thought they'd close the school and you know Hogwarts is the only place that will take marked kids. He's patched them up using his memories of Dumbledore's defenses— remember you said it would have to be serious, sustained spellwork? Saturated magic? Yeah, it's bleeding well constant. The castle is the enchantment. No wonder they were trying to keep it quiet.
I think he's spent up, anyway. Juiced. It's not just the memories. The whole place is falling apart. It's rotting. There are hexes seeping out of the woodwork. There's been a hole in the wall of the hospital wing for about three weeks and they've just stuck a bit of canvas over it.
I don't really know what...I don't know what to do, Hermione. Snape might have a point about the Ministry. The werewolves got loose last night. Malfoy seemed pretty convinced it was Professor Ledum's doing, and on the Ministry's behalf. I wouldn't put it past them.
Stay up in Unst, in the library? Maybe you can come up with something. I'm going to have to deal with this mess, one way or the other. Bugger. I thought I was coming home for a holiday. Stupid, eh?
Love, H
PS. Oh, yeah, there's another thing I found out last night: your man Vlad's been working on this for Malfoy. I don't know...I don't know how he's involved, only that apparently he thinks you're great. Do with this what you will. And be careful.
Harry rolled over and pulled his pillow over his head. He'd given Fistleflick his letter, drunk Madame Pomfrey's prescription, and gone straight to sleep in a warm haze and now it was, he looked at his clock, Your Bedtime. Oh, huh. He'd slept straight through.
"Harry Potter is pink all over!"
Harry said, "Argh!" and, "What the fuck?" and then, "Fucking hell, Lumpy. You can't just barge in like this. I've got no clothes on!"
Lumpy made a confused face at him from his seat at the end of the bed. "Why?" he said; his face began to fall.
"Look," Harry said hurriedly, putting his hands up. "Never mind." He pulled the duvet up and tucked it round himself. He was still a bit foggy. "How...how did you get in here, anyway?" he said, reaching for his glasses and putting them on. The world snapped into focus. "I warded—"
The little elf stifled a giggle. "Harry Potter's wards are being very good for a wizard," he said kindly. "Lumpy felt quite a bump coming in!" He bobbed up and down. "Very good!"
Harry laughed, despite himself. "You know what, mate," he said. "It's a good thing I'm secure in my wizardhood." He scooted over to the side of his bed and reached down for his boxers. "What can I do you for, Lumpy?" he said, wriggling into his clothes.
"Well," Lumpy looked shifty. "Can Harry Potter be covering Lumpy's classes? Lumpy has to be hiding in a bucket." He drew his knees up to his chest and began to rock. "For a week!" he said, shrilly.
Harry wrinkled his brow. "Er... well. I think you're meant to sort that out with Professor Snape, really."
"Professor Snape is saying no," Lumpy wailed. "He is saying Lumpy must stay and teach classes and let Lumpy's mammy see it all!"
"Oh!" Harry suddenly realised what was going on. "Your mum is coming to visit." He frowned. "I didn't think house elves normally got holidays."
Lumpy made a gesture of disgust. "Is the law now. Poor mammy is finding it very hard." He began to bang his forehead against his crossed arms. "And now Lumpy will be ruining her whole LIFE AS WELL!"
Harry scrubbed his hand over his face and stood up. He shuffled off into his sitting room. It was suspiciously neat and Harry wondered just how long Lumpy had been waiting before he'd woken up. "How many classes?" he called over his shoulder. "I've got my own duty," he pulled open his diary, "to get back to."
Harry looked sidelong at the teetering pile of paperwork; it rustled at him disapprovingly. He was just about to banish the censorious copy when he felt a sudden, vice-like grip around his knees. He looked down.
"Harry Potter," Lumpy said breathlessly, clinging to his legs. "Is the greatest wizard of all time."
"Right," said Harry uncomfortably. "Ta." He made his way over to his sofa, rather awkwardly as Lumpy was still attached at the knee, and sat down, sinking heavily into the leather. He sighed and said, "Snape's right, though, mate. You've got to tell her."
Lumpy, his face still pressed against Harry's shins, did not reply, simply stretched one hand up over the side of the diary and pointed to the times of his classes. Harry said, "Oh, I can do all of them except this Thursday, do you see?" He turned the diary around and offered its pages to the elf, who looked up at last. "I've got my H&R first-years. Can anyone else do that one?"
Lumpy considered this. He squinted, examining some imaginary chart by his ear. "Professor Flitwick might be helping Lumpy. Professor Flitwick is knowing where Lumpy is coming from."
"Really?" Harry said with interest. "That's funny because, you know, I always wondered about him." He lowered his voice. "Is he...er, is he part elf then?"
Lumpy looked at him strangely. "No," he said slowly. "Professor Flitwick is being only a very short man from Pontefract."
"Oh," Harry said, somewhat bewildered. "Right."
And that was how Harry ended up in the Department of Mysteries with fourteen extremely wide-eyed seventh-years, giving a halting lecture on prophecies.
"Voldemort, right," Harry said, cringing internally at his delivery and wondering why he was so much better at talking teacher in Bulgarian. "He was big into prophecies, because that was his whole thing, see? Birthrights, destinies. Blood. So when he heard the prophecy, he ate it right up." Harry conjured the words of the prophecy and set them up beside him. They glowed, rather self-importantly. "See, this part," he indicated the line and pointed to a small, round student sitting in the front row, who was almost completely buried in his thick winter robes of dark green and immensely long Slytherin-striped scarf . "You, er... there..." he trailed off; damn, he had absolutely no idea of the names of any of these kids.
"Bulstrode, sir," the boy said quietly. "Cyrus Bulstrode." He raised his chin and read the glowing letters in a clear voice that rang out in the gloomy hall. "The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies."
"Thank you, Cyrus," Harry said, in what he hoped was an encouraging, gentle sort of way. "So what can you tell me about this?"
The boy gaped at him. "Uh," he said. "Sir, it's your prophecy..."
Harry turned and stared at the familiar lines. He closed his eyes for a moment; the words hung like flashburn on his eyelids. "Is it?" he said, almost to himself. "I don't know." He opened his eyes and swung round to face the class. "The thing about this prophecy, is that it, like all true prophecies, was self-fulfilling. Voldemort heard the prophecy, he went out looking for the chosen one. And the one he chose, was—" Harry grinned, getting into his stride now, "—me!"
He held up a single finger. "What principle of magic does the Prophecy of (?)Harry Potter and the Dark Lord demonstrate? The principle that Voldemort, like so many others, utterly failed to grasp?"
The class chanted as one, "Id quod circumiret, circumveniat."
"What goes around," Harry said, nodding. "Comes around." He banished the prophecy with a dismissive flick of his wand, and continued. "Voldemort created his own destruction because he did not understand that the universe has a highly developed sense of humour."
He sighed, then, regretful, a little wistful, and one of the students raised her hand, a confused expression on her face. "Sir," she said. "Sorry, sir, but... you sound a bit... like, like you feel sorry for Voldemort."
Harry looked at her. "Shouldn't I?" he said. "Don't you?"
She looked horrified. "Voldemort killed my parents!" she said, her face twisting angrily. "If he wasn't dead I'd, I'd—"
"Kill him yourself?" Harry offered mildly, though his heart was beating a wild tattoo against his ribcage.
The girl drew herself up. She was a rangy, whip-thin girl with huge glasses that covered half her face. She shivered; perhaps it was the cold. "Yeah," she said. "I would."
Harry leaned towards her; his voice was low. "Believe me, " he said. "I know how you feel." He held up his hand again. "But revenge, however natural a choice, is still a choice. And every choice you make goes a little way to making you who you are and the world what it is." Harry fought to keep his tone light. "That is the essence of power."
The class was hushed, holding its collective breath, almost vibrating with concentration. Even the blue flame candles that lined the shelves seemed to still, as if listening in. Harry suddenly felt small, and a little absurd, standing there lecturing people about choices, like he was Dumbledore. Like he could ever be Dumbledore. But then a voice inside him said, in Dumbledore's familiar, amused tone, 'If not you...' and Harry raised his head and said, "Look. What I'm trying to get across here is that you can't just do whatever you feel like and expect there to be no consequences. There are always consequences. What you have to decide is whether, in the end, they're worth it."
Harry walked over to shelf ninety seven and tapped it thoughtfully, affectionately. He smiled. "You know," he said. "This isn't actually the prophecy. I smashed the one that was here originally, and the person whose memory it came from, they died before it could be replaced. This is my memory of being shown the memory of the prophecy. An echo of a echo of an echo."
He turned. Cyrus Bulstrode had put his hand up and Harry nodded to him. "So, this choice thing, is it like a sort of deal, then, sir?" the boy said. "Professor Lumpy says all magic is a contract really. A sort of give and take."
Another boy, nodding, added in a knowing, slightly superior sort of way, "Measure for measure. Did it in fifth year."
"Well," Harry said. "Sort of. I mean, most of the time you're not aware of it. When you're just lighting a candle, or, say, when you're very small and you levitate your toys by accident— these things have, really, negligible effects. They're certainly worth thinking about, but today, I'd like for us to think about large scale, deliberate actions. Things that are meant to change lives." He glanced at the tall, thin orphan girl who had spoken with such feeling. "Murder, for example. Or mercy."
She looked at him, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "Or justice, Professor," she said firmly.
Harry,
I know Vlad knows Draco Malfoy. I told you that. Presumably Draco has engaged him as a consultant, if he's trying to get Snape out of whatever mess he's in. Vlad's really terribly knowledgeable about demonica, all kinds of devil deals. One of the best in the world. Of course he wouldn't ever say that. He's very modest.
Anyway, we had a thought. It might be nothing but... why are there so many Inferi around Hogwarts anyway? Has anyone ever worked it out? I mean, we get a few here, more than a few, and Diagon Alley has a lot of problems, and Salisbury Plain, but why Hogwarts?
I have a theory. You're shocked, I know. Of course it's that they're drawn to magical hot spots, like heat-seeking missiles. They're Muggle things, do you know them? They're a sort of flying bomb that, er, seeks heat. Anyway, we know that but...I don't think we know exactly what it is. I mean, how are they drawn to magic? I can't find anything, anywhere, that actually spells it out!
I really think that we need to be a bit clever about how we work on this. You've got L'Empe at Hogwarts, I hear, and I think you should see if you can rope him into helping. I'm going to work out what it is, exactly, that the Inferi are drawn to...(Because, honestly, that's the real problem, isn't it? No Inferi, no need for all these ridiculous bloody wards, no problem!) You, obviously, need to confront Snape, if you haven't already done so, and get him to tell you exactly what sort of deal you're... dealing with! But if it's a contract like you think then you really do have just about the best person in the world to get Professor Snape out of it. L'Empe did the Gringotts negotiations, you know.
So that's the plan! I'm being very bossy here and giving you homework, I know, but someone has to!
Love, Hermione
"L'Empe?!" Harry muttered into his sandwiches. "Who the bloody hell is L'Empe when he's at home?"
Just then, Lumpy walked into their shared office. Harry stared at him.
"Harry Potter is staring," Lumpy said, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other.
Harry folded his letter and pushed his glasses up his nose. "L'Empe?" he said.
Lumpy went bright red and put a finger to his lips. "Lumpy will pay Harry Potter money!" he said, leaping on to Harry's desk and holding out his two hands, which were, presumably by magic, filled with shining golden galleons.
Harry burst out laughing. "Give over, Lumpy. I don't want your cash! I was just a bit surprised, that's all." He started to giggle again. "I didn't know you were French."
"Harry Potter is being very FUNNY!" Lumpy screamed. "Because Harry Potter is knowing all about having the wrong sort of name, OF COURSE!"
Harry stopped laughing. He felt a little twist of shame in his gut. "I do, a bit, actually," he said, awkwardly. "Er, sorry, mate." He reached out a clumsy, too-large hand, and patted his friend on the shoulder. "I'm going to see the headmaster. Sorry."
Lumpy's head snapped up, his eyes were wide. "Professor Snape is knowing," he said quickly. "Why else would he be hiring Lumpy?"
"Oh! No," Harry said, shaking his head as he got up and made his way to the door. He opened it and looked back at the elf, who was sitting cross-legged and moon-faced on the desk. "Sorry, Lumpy. Your secret is safe with me! I'm going to speak to Snape about something else entirely."
Snape was silent —a stiff black crow perched on the dead wood of his chair —and Harry paced and talked and swore and threw his arms about, but Snape just sat with his chin raised, looking down the crook of his prodigious nose. Harry said, "What did it cost you?" and, "Why didn't you ask me for help?" and, "How did things get to be so fucked up?" and through it all Snape merely sat, and was silent.
Eventually Harry threw himself into the buttoned leather chair that sat next to the bookshelves and said, "Fine." He waved his hands. "You don't want to talk about it, I see. Well, that's fine. We'll just sit here, then, shall we?" Harry thunked his head against the back of the chair and kicked his legs up over one arm, muttering, "You barmy old box of frogs."
They sat and glared at each other. Snape sat with his palms flat against his desk, staring dead ahead. Harry sprawled in the armchair, jiggling one foot, brushing the feather of an old quill back and forth across his cheek. Back and forth. Brush tap jiggle. Jiggle brush tap. Tap tap—
"If you've quite finished," Snape said, in a mild, even sort of tone. "Perhaps you'd be so good as to fuck off. Good day."
Harry bit down hard on his bottom lip to control his fury. "What did it cost you?" He swung himself out of his seat and was at Snape's desk in two long strides. He slammed down his hands and bent to catch Snape's fixed gaze. Power thrilled goosebumps across his skin; his voice was measured, a ticking clock. "What did you pay for this?"
Snape rolled his eyes. "My soul, Potter, of course it was my soul."
Harry's jaw dropped. He had known it was a possibility, likely, even, but to hear it said aloud, so casually, shocked him anyway. He replayed Snape's words in his mind, backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards, blindly hoping he would find some hidden meaning there, some code that would make it mean something else. "But, hang on. I've seen people without souls." He stood up, back from the desk, scuffing at the rug with his shoe. "Kissed, and so forth. You're not—"
At last Snape moved, sat back in his chair. "A fraction," he said dismissively. "As with the Dementors in the old Azkaban. Naturally I retain the greater portion of my memories."
"What?" Harry said stupidly. "Dementors?" The room darkened; his voice was suddenly too loud.
Snape sighed. "Can you really be the greatest of us? It seems almost too horrifying to bear." He drew a circle in the air; it shimmered and rippled like water. "To generate real magical constructions—wards— from memory, one requires they be projected from a perpetual pensieve. And the memory, of course, must be complete. I have lived at Hogwarts for—" Snape paused for a moment. "Thirty-five years, and so possess an exceptionally complete recollection of its character. Consummate, I would say." Snape drew his finger and thumb together to make a narrow wedge, and plucked a shard from his rippling circle. "And the cost was nothing but a few scraps—the odd summer's day, a good book, a few kisses—nothing of any account."
Harry felt sick; his blood pulsed, dulled, in his ears. "You spent all your happy memories. That's the part of your soul you gave up." He looked around the office in growing horror. "You're living in your nightmares. Fuck." He frowned. "Why aren't you mad?"
Snape twisted his lip in a bitterly amused sneer. "I seem to recall being informed not twenty minutes ago, Mr Potter, that I was as mad as a box of frogs."
"Yes, all right," Harry said irritably. "But you're not actually mental like screaming your head off or eating your own knees or something."
Snape shrugged. "The Dementors of Azkaban took everything that wasn't nailed down, emotionally speaking, but there is a great deal of&mdash" he wrinkled his nose, "—feeling that is neither particularly happy nor unhappy. The Demoanors, with whom I dealt, allowed me to retain a large buffer of boredom, indifference, and apathy." Snape gestured vaguely at the stone walls. "It is from those memories that I weave the pensieve."
"Or you were. But you're scraping the barrel now," Harry said. It wasn't really a question, but he did wonder. He hadn't known that memories wore out.
"Things are getting a little patchy," Snape admitted.
"This is the worst plan ever, Snape," Harry said. "What in buggery were you—"
His eyes flashed and he snapped, "This was not plan A, Potter. This was not even plan Z! I assure you, I do not habitually associate with the kind of third-rate, lousy magical trash—"
Harry threw his hand out and a tide of angry air swept clean Snape's desk. "No," he said coldly. "You've always liked your evil to be top drawer."
Harry always had known how to speak to snakes.
"Go!" Snape roared. "Go to your Ministry of Minions and tell them all about the dirty, nasty little Slytherins infesting your precious holiday home. Tell them everything! Get a little party going—I've a very charming pitchfork somewhere, I'd be delighted to lend it to you."
"That's unfair," Harry said quietly. "You know I did everything I could for you. You know I won't go to the Ministry unless I have to."
Snape looked at him sharply. "You will not go to the Ministry?"
Harry waved him away, shaking his head, furrowing his brow as he thought. "No," he said. "I don't think that's what needs to be done. I think Hermione's right. I think we need to break the contract."
"Harry," Snape said slowly. "Without the additional power I would not be able to sustain the integrity of the castle or its wards. And my soul is irrevocably riven. There's no going back."
"We can only go forward," Harry agreed. His eyes were distant. "But unto the tenth generation?" Harry murmured to himself. "We'll never make it."
He looked back at Snape. "I know that," Harry said. "It's not your contract I plan to break." He reached over the desk and gently tapped Snape's arm. "It's that one. "
Things moved quickly, then, and Harry was reminded of just how much could be done when Severus Snape was on your side. Snape had said, "Of course you know these damn things are veritable beacons," and Harry had blinked, stunned, because no, he hadn't known. He hadn't known that the Insignia Inferiosa drew Inferi more strongly than ordinary magical arms and legs; he hadn't known that the Ministry knew, or that Snape had told them. Harry felt slightly dizzied by all the things he hadn't known. Snape barked out a laugh at that and said, "Suddenly the prodigious amount of time you spend in the hospital wing makes perfect sense," and Harry laughed with him, because someone had to.
Snape had six years worth of research to Harry's scant beginnings and he paced the length of Harry's office every night, lecturing his material, breaking off every now and again to argue furiously with Lumpy, who sat at his little desk offering corrections in the most extraordinarily self-possessed manner. Admittedly Lumpy did have to occasionally get up and clean the windows rather thoroughly.
Harry read and listened and read some more and when he eventually burst out, "But why didn't anyone tell me?" Snape blew out a little huff of annoyance and said, "You weren't here, you ridiculous prancing idiot. I told them. I went to the Ministry. I even went begging to that poisonous old toad Umbridge." He folded his arms into his buttoned black robe and said, with disgust, "I don't know how that vicious hag has hung on."
Harry bit his lip. "But they made you headmaster— the board of governors made you headmaster."
Snape sneered at that. "And they made you a commemorative Knut.
Of course Hermione had written saying, 'Harry, it's the Insignia.' just as he had sent Fistleflick to her saying, 'Hermione, it's the Insignia!' and Harry grinned as he showed the letter to Draco, who rolled his eyes and said something rude about Gryffinbores."
Draco was looking ill, in some indefinable way. A little too pale (though he was already pale); a little too thin (though he was naturally raw-boned). Harry had really noticed at Christmas, which had passed in a blur of research and child-minding— there were sixty pupils staying over the holidays, for one grim reason or another— but Draco resisted any inquiry, saying only flippant things about being meant to fly south for the winter. Harry did not push it. Between classes and patrolling and researching he did not have the time, and the memory of their brief, confusing kiss the night the wolves got out slipped away, somehow, into the box marked done.
Lumpy said, one night as he came in from classes, "Barry Stoker is thinking a bloodstone is Unplottable," and Harry hit his forehead and said, "Of course," and then, "Hang on. You've got your kids working on this?!"
The elf said, "Yes? Is that not being right?" He hung up his cloak and long, pointed cap, and turned back to Harry, looking perplexed. "Is vocational qualification, Practical Magic."
Harry stared at him, open-mouthed for a moment, and then said, "Excuse me, I—headmaster—sorry!" and dashed out.
The next day the occupants of the Great Hall were rumbling and clanking through breakfast, in that loud-low grumble peculiar to a very great deal of people people talking quietly, when Snape stood up and rapped the table with his wand. "Pay attention, everybody," he said. "I am going to tell you a story." He looked around the hall, catching the gaze of a student here and there. "Some of you," he said, almost amused. "May have heard it before."
"Once upon a time, there was a wizard called Tom Riddle. He attended this school, as you know, and learnt magic, and fell, very deeply, into," Snape's voice almost caressed the phrase, "the Dark Arts. And later, much later, he went out into the world with the name of Lord Voldemort, and began to gather witches and wizards to him," his eyes flashed, "to make a bid for power."
The hall was hushed, stunned at the unprecedented event, of the headmaster, of Professor Snape, telling them a story over breakfast. And what a story. The story. Harry looked out over four double rows of rapt expressions; everyone was listening.
"People ask, 'why? Why would anybody want to ally themselves with such a person?' But Voldemort was a dark lord indeed," Snape said. "He always knew," Snape smiled a thin, bleak smile. "Just what to push inside a person, to make them go one way, or another. That was his genius, beyond his magical abilities." The headmaster rubbed at the sleeve of his robe; Harry could not tell whether he had meant to; he did not seem aware of his thumb circling the place where Harry knew the Dark Mark must be. "To Tom Riddle, people were like pieces on a board, to be moved about and played with." Snape turned his head sharply and his black eyes bored into Harry's green. "And that was why he was a monster, beyond his magical perversions."
A little Hufflepuff began to giggle hysterically as Snape said 'perversions', and a barrel-shaped prefect hissed, "shush! For heaven's sake!" in an intense, embarrassed whisper.
"And then one day, thirty or so years ago, a prophecy was made, you know the one, and Voldemort went to Godric's Hollow and," Snape flung out one arm and pointed to Harry, "made history. We called him Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived." Snape smirked. "Actually, I called him the Boy Who Lived to Drive Me Potty, but that's another story." He took a breath. "And in due course there was a war, and people had to choose sides, and not everyone picked the right one, or not right away, and not everyone had much of a choice in the first place, but that's the thing about wars—someone has to lose."
Snape had been standing, a straight black rail in the centre of the high table, for longer than Harry had seen him stay upright all year. And just then, as Harry realised this, Snape swayed, and gripped the table hard, his bony knuckles pressing out white against his skin. "Voldemort lost, or died, anyway, and we rejoiced, the whole wizarding world, for a whole wonderful, carefree," Snape smiled again, a nasty twist of his mouth, "day. And then another prophecy was made, and this one was not nearly so cheery." He paused, collecting himself.
Then another voice spoke out, from the end of the table. "Blood will out. Even unto the tenth generation. Blood will out." It was Clarice, Professor Claphingale, and she tapped two fingers to her own arm, and nodded to Snape, who looked surprised and then nodded back.
"Voldemort had made a curse, a special kind of curse," Draco told them as he stood, pushing back his chair. "A wicked kind of blood magic, from his own death. Everyone who had ever been touched by the Dark— everyone bitten in the werewolf raids, everyone who ever bent their knee to him— everyone, was cursed, and so were their children, and their grandchildren, and so on."
Little clusters of children sitting at the four tables bowed their heads. Harry's heart hurt. "He made them a kind of Inferi," he said, concentrating on keeping his voice steady. "After they die, their bodies carry on walking around. They attack anything magical, anyone magical." He looked down.
"And the only way to stop us," Draco said briskly. "Is to set us on fire! What a bastard." He ignored the ripple of shock and the whispers that ran around the tables —'Master Malfoy said bastard!' 'Can we say bastard now?' 'Only about Voldemort, I think'— and continued, "And so the whole, newly united magical world got together and had a bit of a moot."
Next to Aries Wulfrickle, Desmeldre said, anxiously, "We all voted!" and beside her Lumpy coughed loudly and said, "All the witches and wizards were voting."
Draco said, with a bright, hard smile and a clap of his hands, "It was decided that everyone who had been cursed would get a lovely badge!"
"Thank you, Draco," Snape said in a warning tone. "Many of you have seen the Insignia Inferiosa." His voice hardened, became more urgent. "It is nothing to be ashamed of. It was intended to be a—"
"Safety precaution!" squawked Desmeldre.
Snape inclined his head sardonically. "When a person bearing it dies, they are cremated quickly. In this way, the curse could be really no more than an inconvenience, although there are, of course, many Inferi still at large."
The muttering in the hall was growing louder by the second and a girl sitting at the top end of the Ravenclaw table said, too loudly, "But why not break the curse?"
Snape pointed at the girl. "You, there, speak up." He motioned with one spindly finger and the girl got to her feet, looking terrified.
"...Sir, sorry sir...but...why didn't you try to break the curse?"
It was Aries Wulfrickle who answered her, shrugging his shoulders and shaking his shaggy head. "It had been a very long war," he said, as if he could hardly believe he was saying it.
"And the Insignia was a quick fix." Harry added. "And it proved to have other uses. But the reason we are telling you all this, today in particular, is because I think it might be possible to break the curse. But I can't do it on my own."
Draco was sitting with Pansy Parkinson underneath a willow tree that rustled and sighed and drew trailing patterns in the surface of the lake. It was green where they sat— the grass a little patch of summer in middle of the snow— and Pansy picked at a daisy and began to split the stem. Draco reached out for her hand, and she clutched at him, whispering something as they embraced. Then Draco turned his head and kissed her softly, and she kissed his lips and the tip of his nose and then his forehead, pulling away to stand up.
Harry stopped a little way off and waited for Pansy to go, feeling clumsy and inappropriate, rather like he'd blundered into something small and precious and made of glass. As she walked to the edge of the grounds, Harry plodded over to the enchanted willow tree, where Draco remained, leaning against the slanted trunk. Harry stood over him and they both watched Pansy as she clambered over the stile to the railway lane, and Disapparated.
Harry looked back at Draco. "I kissed you," he blurted, and then thought, damn, damn, damn.
Draco tipped his head back and appraised him. "Yes," he said. "You did."
"But you hate me. I mean, I hate you. We hate each other." Harry did not know where to put his hands, so he sat down on them, cross-legged, opposite Draco, and said, "It was our thing."
"It was."
Harry thought Draco was about to say something else, but instead he just leant back further against the tree; his pale hair fell across his face and he looked through his fringe at Harry with thoughtful eyes.
Harry said, "Pansy—" and Draco grinned, amused, and said, "Is an old old friend. Unlike you." Draco looked him up and down, and through Harry a thrilling, tingling feeling trailed behind his gaze.
"Oh, righty-o," Harry said, and then thought, 'righty-o? What are you saying?' before plunging onwards. "We've found the place. It's on Eigg."
"On an egg?" Draco said, bewildered.
Harry nodded, "Eigg. It's in the Hebrides, a Small Isle. It's not even that far — we can floo to the MacFusty's, on Fuday, and then fly on from there. There's a cave."
Draco stood, walking his hands up the trunk behind him, and said. "Well? When are we going?"
"That's just the thing," Harry said awkwardly. "The winds... It's pretty rough this time of year, for flying." Harry took a breath and then said very quickly. "Will you be all right doing it?"
Draco stared at him.
"I just mean—" Harry began.
"I'm so offended," Draco said in disbelief. "I can't even mock you. You've outdone yourself."
Harry winced and was just about to try to apologise when he saw the corners of Draco's mouth twitch. Harry felt his mouth break into a smile; he couldn't help it. "Come on, you little shit," he said, laughing and pulling on Draco's arm. "Last one to MacFusty's is a... blast-ended skrewt!" He pelted off back towards the castle with Draco close on his heels.
Draco overtook him, dammit, at the entrance hall, in a triumphant swirl of robes and laughter, and Harry skidded into the antechamber gasping and grinning and shouting, "Cheat! Cheat! Unfair advantage of being a P.E. teacher."
Draco spun round, his face flushed and his eyes shining, and caught his arm, pulling him close. Harry's breath caught and his pulse raced and just as he leaned in Draco stepped backwards, smirking, and declaring, "MacFusty's!" as he flooed away in a great bang of green smoke.
"Bollocks," Harry observed.
Ms MacFusty, 'call me Ada', had given them tea, gallons of tea, and thick pieces of toast spread with marmalade, and they sat by her huge stone fireplace, side by side on a dark wooden settle, eating what felt like round forty-seven. At least forty-seven. Possibly this was actually round four hundred and seven and he'd just passed out in the middle from wheat exhaustion, Harry thought, chewing valiantly.
"Fortifying," she told them, slapping Draco on the back and saying, "I've not seen you since you were a bairn in your da's arms, laddie. How are you?"
Draco stiffened and he said, very politely. "I'm very well, thank you." He paused. "I'm terribly sorry, I was unaware of our connection."
Ada, unmindful of the minatory tone in his voice, continued cheerfully, "Aye, old Abraxas was awfie keen on our breed." She went over to the long, low window, that gave a view to the farmyard and the side of a great stone barn, and pointed out, her stubby pink finger pressing against the glass. "Heb Blacks," she said with pride. "The finest of all, if I do say so myself." She turned and looked back at Draco, her blue eyes glinting. "Your da used to like brushing down the dragonags, when he was just a wee lad himself."
"Lucius Malfoy enjoyed manual labour?" Draco snorted, relaxing a little. "I find that deeply improbable."
Ada covered her mouth with her hand, giggling. "Aye, I don't think there was much labour going on," she agreed. "But he did like to sit with them." She stopped laughing, then, and looked suddenly sad and a little fragile, standing by her kitchen sink, in her slippers and a flowered apron, looking out of the window to the stormy grey skies. "Bad business," she said. "Awfie shame, awfie waste."
Draco gulped his tea.
It was too choppy in the Sea of the Hebrides to try for Eigg as it was. Ada had been somewhat bemused by their story of a spontaneous mutual desire to go caving, but if she suspected anything was amiss she was far too well-mannered to say so. Instead she threw them some old, patched work clothes and told them to makes themselves useful while they waited for the wind to drop. Harry struggled into his overalls and followed her down to the barn, which was huge, the size of a bus depot at least. Ada laughed and said, "Aye, that's about right. Maybe a wee bit smaller— I'm not awfie sure on buses."
Harry got stuck in, shovelling manure into sacks that that stood up stiffly on a battered wooden pallet. "Hey," he said to Draco over his shoulder. "I think we use," he wiped his arm across his forehead, "this stuff at Hogwarts. Yeah, I'm sure this is what we have at ho—" he turned and saw Draco leaning against the open barn door with his arms crossed, a work robe folded over them. "Hey!" Harry said. "Aren't you helping?"
"Certainly not," he snapped. "That's poo, Harry. Actual poo."
Harry rolled his eyes. "It's rotted down. You might as well say the ground you're standing on is poo."
Draco looked down at the well trodden dirt path and then back up to Harry. He looked utterly revolted. "I'm going in, " he said, pushing off from the door and slinging the green waxed robe over one shoulder. "I hate the countryside. No amount of arm porn is worth this."
"You big skiver!" Harry shouted after him, and then, "Wait...arm porn? What?" He made a move towards the door but Ada's tea sloshed in his stomach in a great splash of reproach, and he stopped in his tracks. Sighing, Harry turned back to the sacks of dragon dung, cursing his essential goodness and purity with all his heart. And some other parts.
"How can you hate the countryside? You're from the countryside," Harry said, flopping down next to Draco on the settle and buttoning up his robes. The settle was not really designed for flopping upon, and he winced as he hit the hard wooden back.
Draco frowned. "No, I'm from Wiltshire." He made a curious, rolling motion with one hand and muttered something like 'very civilised' as he stood up.
"Where're you going?""The wind's dropped," Draco said, nodding to the window. "It's nearly four. It'll be dark in another hour."
Harry groaned and stood up himself, saying, "We should make a move."
They walked a way away from the farmhouse before unshrinking their brooms. The sea was a grim, gunmetal grey that matched the sky, and underfoot the scrub was stiff with frost. Their feet crunched down the spiky blades of grass and left sharp prints in their wake, tracing their steps from the house to the shore. Harry felt strangely jumpy, excited, like it was the beginning of a race. He glanced at the man beside him. Draco's spare, slender shoulders were set firm against the wind; he leant into it, his head down, as he strode towards the sea.
Harry said, "Are you ready?" and the weird, jumpy tension that he'd been flirting with all day leapt into his mouth; he tasted tin. He shook down his charm bracelet and looked back at Draco.
Draco said, "Yes. Let's do this," and put his hand to his sleeve. His broom was a cufflink, not silver—dull, like pewter and smoothly moulded— and Draco unclipped it with sure fingers, threw it, and caught the full size broom in the same movement.
Harry threw out his own broom and mounted it, and they took off, lying flat along the handles as they circled up through the unsettled sky. The wind was still fierce for flying and Harry cast a thin windscreen around himself, to break the worst of the weather. Draco was rising quickly on a warm column, up up, higher and higher. He called out, "Hey! Hey! Don't go too high." But the wind whipped his voice away and he knew Draco had not heard him.
It was barely fifty miles to Eigg from Fuday, but on the winding, wave-roll path they were taking, it seemed like hundreds. The cold bit into Harry's face and numbed his fingers. He Charmed his robe to wrap around him tighter, to warm a little, but still the air was bitter; the sky was a forbidding slate slab over a dangerous sea. Draco was flying slightly higher than he was, up and to the left, and Harry urged himself up to catch him. Draco's fine-boned face was a shocking white, his body stiffly clinging to his broom, but his eyes were alert and he raised an eyebrow at Harry, as if to say, 'Yes?'
Harry fumbled in his robe for his wand, grasped it and said, "'ear 'ere," and then, "Hello hello!"
Draco yelped, and nearly fell off his broom. "What the bastard bollocking fuck are you doing?" he demanded loudly in Harry's ear.
"We can talk this way," Harry explained. "I've swapped our ears."
"Oh," Draco said, mollified. "We're nearing the shore, anyway, look." He jerked his head towards the island they were approaching; it was much larger than Fuday, and dotted with little houses, grouped here and there.
Harry said, "There're Muggles everywhere!" He hadn't thought there would be Muggles, somehow. If he'd thought at all, he'd thought the place would be like Fuday — just a wide empty rock in the middle of the sea, but there were houses and boats moored and little red blobs of cars trundling along between them. He reached for his wand again to cast a Disillusion, but Draco said, in his ear, "Let me," and the familiar dripping, gluey feeling ran down his head as he turned to see Draco flying so closely their broom-brushes nearly touched.
Together, they turned their brooms downwards, tipping forward and making for a quiet cove away from the harbour and the Muggle fishermen. They were low on the water now, barely ten feet from the white tips of the breakers, and Harry grinned as spray burst through his thin windscreen and stung his lips with salt. "Land ho!" he yelled, and put on a great surge of speed and bang! hit...something, he did not know what but it was a thick wall of resistance that threw him backwards, tumbling over and over on his broom like a rag doll and—
The world was a swirling, dizzying cold like burning wet and Harry plunged down through the sea, desperately trying to think, to get control, to get up. His blood was hammering in his head and his lungs were aching to take a great gulping breath but he held it, furiously thinking capaero, capaero! until a bubble of air popped out around his head, and he gasped in relief. Harry kicked out, upwards—he was being pulled about in the waves— and his broom slipped from his hand and he was just thinking where is Draco when he was suddenly flattened against a wide, scaly flank.
Harry blinked, and held on! Held on, as tightly as he could, to the thick-muscled back of a small green dragon, which was beating its wings and pulling away into the air. The dragon flew in a steeply arching line and then snapped its wings out, rigid, gliding on them to land in the cove.
Harry slipped off its back, fumbling around in his sodden, freezing robes for his wand, because this was a dragon, never mind anything else. He stumbled backwards across the sand in a wild, flailing stagger, arms clumsy, and suddenly noticed that the dragon had...the dragon had a human ear. Harry said, "Wow... Draco?" and then mentally kicked himself and cast the light of true form from his wand instead.
The light flashed and the dragon shrank down into the shape of a man. A slight, spare man with grey eyes, who was raking wet hair back from his head and chanting, "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck—"
Harry wiped his glasses, said again, "Draco?" and Draco looked up, bit his lip, reached for his wand and said, "Obliviate!" in a savage whisper. Harry frowned and brushed the hex aside, stepping closer and saying again, "Draco?"
But Draco did not reply, did not say anything, just reached out with shaking hands and pulled Harry to him, mashing their salt-stung mouths together, kissing him, hot and so dirty, with a grind of the hips. Harry moaned and pressed himself close, one hand snaking up Draco's back, and then coughed, spluttered, pushed him away, spitting out bitter water and wiping his mouth. His breath was ragged; his lungs were burnt, aching, abused.
"You're a fucking unregistered Animagus!" Harry threw out one hand, shouting, "Fuck, you sly—" he gripped Draco's jaw between his thumb and forefinger, yanked his face up, looked deeply into his eyes. "How long?" he said, pushing the question forcefully into Draco's mind, but Draco just stared back at him, a blank, high wall behind his eyes, and whispered, "Fuck you."
Draco tore himself away, shrugging himself out of Harry's grasp. He kicked at the sand, his robe slipped a little down one shoulder and Harry stared, caught, at the tiny trickles of water dripping from his hair, running down the back of his neck. Draco said, "Two years, just about." He kept his back to Harry. "I was working on it when Snape asked me to come back to Hogwarts— this is what I was doing."
"And you're a dragon," Harry breathed. "Hang on, why haven't you—"
Draco laughed, a painful bark. "Gone after the Inferi?" He picked up a rock and threw it, hard, into the waves. "Can't bastard flame, can I?" He turned and looked at Harry at last. "I'm...imflammable." He spread his hands wide and gave him a hopeless sort of smile; it did not reach his eyes.
Harry heart was still pounding, adrenaline keeping his breathing heavy and his vision sharp in the deepening dusk, but he shivered violently in his wet robes. Draco rolled his eyes and said, "Siccio!" pointing his wand first at Harry and then at himself, drying them. "Stupid melodramatic wankers," he said, a real smile tugging at his reddened mouth. Harry leant forward and kissed it— it was surely the only thing to do—and Draco brought his hand up, rubbed his thumb across Harry's cheek, kissed him back sloppily, eagerly, and Harry hurt from the sudden wanting, like a hook in his stomach dragging him home. He urged himself closer and they stumbled across the sand, hit the rock face at the back of the shallow cove.
Draco said, "So, now you ask me why I'm unregistered," but Harry shook his head, slipping down on to his knees and pulling Draco's loose robes away as he went. He pressed his face against the hard length in Draco's trousers and above him Draco gasped, the sound almost lost to the crashing of the sea. Harry raised trembling fingers, scrabbled at Draco's fly, pulling it open, tearing through the fabric and freeing Draco's cock. He licked a broad swipe up the underside and Draco grunted and threaded one hand in Harry's hair. Harry looked up. Draco was leaning his head back against the rugged stone, his hair stiff with salt and sticking up in mad spikes, his robes still hanging off one arm; he looked utterly open, and Harry hooked his thumb into a belt loop, dragged down on it, and sucked hard on the inside of Draco's thigh, on the high ridge of the muscle there.
"You have enough marks," he told the perfect skin of Draco Malfoy, and Draco gave a needy moan and shoved into his mouth.
Harry had thought about them doing this, idly stroking himself in the fuzziness of the early morning, or jerking his hips through the filthy scrap-end of a dream chasing him out of sleep, on and off, over the years. Malfoy with his school tie pulled loose from his neck, Malfoy in the court chair, chains wrapping around his arms. He'd pictured Malfoy with long hair tied in a sleek queue and a sneer twisting his face, or shaven, dirty, shackled to the same wall as Harry and spitting curses. He'd pictured Malfoy, wide-eyed and repentant, begging to come as Harry sucked him off behind the changing rooms, but as Draco's cock butted against the inside of his cheek Harry suddenly knew that those Malfoys were paper-thin, were sketches of a stranger, that he could never have pictured this at all.
He sucked down, began to move, and Draco moved with him, fucking his mouth, numbing it with the hastening friction of cock against lips. Draco was pulling, pulling on his hair, and Harry swirled his tongue around the tip of Draco's cock and moaned against the hard length of it and Draco said, "Fuck, Harry," and shoved harder.
Harry could feel the bitter breeze at his back, the wet grit of the sand seeping through to his knees, could hear the waves breaking on the beach, but it was all dulled against the throbbing in his groin, and in his mouth, against the heat of their bodies pressing together. Draco said, "I'm—I want—" and Harry reached up, gripped round the base of his cock, stroking it tightly, faster and faster, and Draco came, spurting hotly into Harry's mouth and gasping, panting, his name.
"Is this yours?"
"Mmmm?"
"And these are, I think. I don't think my trousers do that.
"Thanks a lot. Hang on, I think I've still got your ear."
"No, I swapped them back. Hm, when did I swap them? Last night anyway."
"Oh...This is my ear? Gosh."
"Hurry up. I think they're coming over the rocks."
"Well, pardon me for being irredeemably bourgeois, I'm sure. We can't all throw ourselves into savagery at the drop of a hat. It's all right for you, you've got the hair for it.
"Shut up about my hair. Shut up about everything. The Muggles will hear us."
"Oh, honestly, bugger that for a game of soldiers. Muffliato! Repellamundo! You know what I've been wondering? Why you didn't end up with a dragon ea—"
They'd been walking for about half an hour when Harry screwed up his heart and blurted, "Look, Draco, about that—"
Draco clapped him on the back and said, "Oh well, heat of the moment. Jaws of death and so forth." He sighed. "I'm a terrible slut for the jaws of death." Draco's eyes darted sideways to Harry's and he said, very carefully, "But here we are, now. Back to reality."
"Right, right, yeah," Harry agreed, nodding, trying his best to sound casual. He'd been there. He pushed the memory of the underneath of Draco's jaw, of the stretch of his neck and the way it looked when he flung back his head, of the sound—he pushed that down into his corners, his unexamined places, and said again, "Yeah."
They walked across grasslands, heathers and scrub. It was miles, four miles, maybe, down to the southern caves. Harry and Draco, slipping into old habits the both of them, avoided the paths. There only seemed to be one proper road anyway, as far as they'd seen from the air. Just one road that cut from the harbour to a little group of houses across the island.
This really was, Harry thought, the back of beyond.
There wasn't a great deal of green on the ground, and clumps of the heather were stiff and frost-broken, but it was milder than the weather they'd left at Hogwarts— when the wind was down, anyway— and Harry thought it was pretty wonderful, in a lonely, strange sort of way. He gulped the crisp, fresh air into his lungs. They still felt battered from the sea, but the burn was a good sort: a sort of thrilling aliveness that breezed through him, left him tingling.
They reached the crest of the cliffs and Harry stooped and rubbed his fingers against the sweet-smelling grasses. He liked this place, he decided.
Presently he said, " I can't stop thinking about your dad, Draco."
Draco's mouth twitched; he looked out across the waters, shading his eyes. "Well, there's a passion killer."
Harry grinned and sat down with a little oof on the cold earth. He said, "I just can't imagine him in that barn, in overalls, brushing down baby dragons. It's too mental. All I can think of is, right, a kid's body with your dad's great big head stuck on the top."
"That's...that's very frightening," Draco told him, stretching out next to him and Charming the chill off the ground with a casual sweep of his wand.
Harry lay back, pushed back his glasses, let go the tiny clench of tension that had been gripping him all morning and said, "Right, isn't it?"
"Lumpy says it'll be inside a few things, like, a box in a box in a box," Harry said. "There might be lots of magical objects around it—I dunno, really—but it's only the actual stone that we'll need. We're just to take it back with us; we'll work out how to break its curse back at home. There'll be tasks, an obstacle course or something." The track was steep and the two men had their arms out like aeroplane wings, tipping back and forth for balance. "There's always a riddle so thank fuck you're here because I'm generally pretty hopeless at them."
"Yeah, well, I've been thinking, I mean..." Draco slowed a little behind Harry. "You most likely won't need me to actually go in this cave, will you? I mean, you're the expert in this game. Been doing it years! I thought, best thing, I'll wait outside, and then, if you get in a bit of a mess I—"
"What?" The track flattened out abruptly at the raw edge of the land. There was a pebbly, grass-tufted shore and bits of Muggle rubbish littering it, all bright colours and hard edges: a coke can, sweet wrappers, screwed up old fag packets. Harry's stomach grumbled reproachful things about breakfast but he tried to ignore it and looked round at Draco, saying, "What are you going on about, not going in?"
"I can swoop in and rescue you after the, er, fact." Draco fell over his legs a bit at the bottom of the hill and stumbled and hopped around in a circle, recovering his balance. "I'm getting rather good at it," he said, as he blinked up at Harry with an odd, bright look. "It could be our new thing."
"What? I don't—"
Draco was quiet for a long moment. He wandered around the stony beach, scuffing at things, until he settled himself at the cliff face, leaning, apparently casually, one heel pressed back against the rising rocks. Draco frowned against the diffuse brightness in the cloudy grey sky and sagged a little. "I'm not a brave man, Harry," he mumbled.
Harry frowned back. "You don't have to be. Be a dragon." He crouched at the mouth of the cave and stuck his head inside.
Draco suddenly bent over at the waist, wheezing with suppressed laughter. Harry looked up at him blankly. He made to speak but Draco, still bent double, flapped one hand in his face and said, "You're really like this, aren't you? It's not an act... I always thought that, you know, underneath you'd be a bit human, but no, you're—"
"Oh, yes," Harry snapped, suddenly viciously annoyed with the whole tedious bloody conversation. Apparently he had to have it with everyone. He'd thought, he'd thought Malfoy was one person who might— he pulled himself to his feet, drew back his foot and kicked a bent and rusty can; it clinked against the stones. "Hero rock, that's me. Bite me all the way down. Merlin!"
Draco straightened. "Aren't you ever, you know, a tad trepiditious? Sensibly concerned?" he waved a hand around his head, his finger following a squiggly, meandering line. "Mindful of one's mayfly mortality?"
Harry shouted, "What's being scared got to do with anything? I don't...Things have to be done, somehow, by someone." He stopped. With a great effort, Harry lowered his voice and said in a tumble, "I wanted to— After the war I— it's funny, really, because I spent half my life pushing against..."
Harry was babbling, he knew he was, but he never could put these words together properly. It was too big a thing to just say, easily, in a sentence. It couldn't be thought of easily. "Dumbledore died—suddenly it really was down to me, and— After the war I wanted to get away from it being me all the time, and they had that stupid vote and I thought, okay, fine. I didn't want to know, I suppose." He bit his lip. "And I left and went to the continent and that was good, you know? It was really good. I liked the work. But now I'm come back and everything's just rotten and—" Harry took a deep breath and said, "It's got to be me who does this stuff. Because no one else can. And I don't mean that in a big-headed way, it's just true: for whatever reason, it's got to be me. It always has been. Feelings and things don't...being scared doesn't change anything—it's irrelevant."
Draco shoved his hands down into his pockets. "Bloody hell, Harry," he said to his knees. "Do you lecture like that? How does anyone pass their exams?"
Harry threw a crisp packet at him. "On your knees, Malfoy," he said grumpily. He jerked his head to the narrowing, dropping mouth of the Massacre Cave. "We'll have to crawl our way inside."
Malfoy had been behind him, he had. Harry had heard his robes brushing against the cave floor as they crawled, had heard him chewing his lip in that particular way that meant he was biting back something scathing, had known Malfoy was there, and now, just as surely, Harry knew he was alone, and his heart sank, a stone-filled sack.
The tunnel opened out, roof rising, into a high, wide cave, and Harry got to his feet, wand out, whipping his head around, taking in the place. Malfoy was gone, and so was the cave mouth, replaced by a flexing, flickering wall made of something smooth-faced and weird; Harry could not look on it very long. Bubbling up to his conscious mind were shield spells, locatricks, foe-lights, and he cast them in a hurried, mumbling chant as he squinted around. The Massacre Cave floor was strewn with ghostly bones, glowing green, and Harry bent, hefted a rock, and tossed it at a grisly pile; it bumped and rolled along a clear floor. Ghost bones for sure, then.
The cave was quiet; his foe-lights hung, dark, in the air around him. Harry whispered, "Malfoy?" and then when there was no reply, "Hello? Hello?" and then louder, too harshly, "Draco?" There was no answer. His locatricks snapped back to him, tumbling and turning on the cave floor, spelling out Nothing and No-one and You are here. The last one finished every somersault with a triumphant Here! and poked him cheerfully in the shin, which was a bit much, really. He tried to ignore it as he ran over Lumpy's instructions.
"Lumpy's class have been unravelling the wards of the sea and the sky so Harry Potter can be flying in very easily from the west!" Lumpy had said. Harry thought, grumpily, that he would have to have words with certain small elf-type persons about their definitions of words like 'easily'. He'd said, "It is being a stone. There will be being blood, somehow involved, we cannot be telling."
Harry filled a deep pocket of his robes with a few loose handfuls of pebbles. He began to walk around the wall of the cave, with every step throwing out one or two stones and murmuring revelios over them as they fell.
He'd almost got to the opposite end when a pebble suddenly exploded in a shower of pink sparks and Harry stamped down his feet, his body suddenly rigid, trembling with the effort of staying completely still. Keep still, he thought. Keep solid, Harry. Bite down and breathe. Pink sparks mean... what? He racked his brains. Something hidden in front of him. Harry said, "Concealed...o... er Revelio!"
A box appeared in front of him, perched on a jutting shelf of rock. A very ordinary wooden box about twenty centimetres in length, breadth, depth, with a very ordinary looking padlock, shiny and Muggle-looking, with CHUBB engraved across its face. Harry stared at it. He'd sort of been expecting something a bit grander. Voldemort usually went for basilisks, altars, not Muggle locks and wooden boxes with tar splashed on the corners.
Harry tapped his wand to his glasses, saying, "Focus!" sharply to his lenses. They blurred for a second and then Harry could see, overlaid on the box as the bones were overlaid on the empty cave floor, a web of red thread that made a tight-woven net around every part of the box. Harry squinted a moment, following the pattern of the thread with his wand, and then he reached forward, hooked his wand into one open diamond, and tugged, very gently.
The mesh unravelled, easily slipping loose and falling into a messy pile on the ground, and Harry breathed out, blowing up his cheeks and making a great puff of relief. Right, he thought. Okay. Get this sorted, find Draco, and get home.
He laid his wand against his left wrist, drew a short line along a vein there, rolled his wand between his fingers to coat it in his blood, and then drew it back along the wound, sealing it up as he went. "Always a bit keen on the old self-harm, there, Tom," he muttered. "You want to get out a bit, mate," he told the box as he pressed his bloodied wand into the keyhole and turned it with a loud clunk. "There's a whole world of bodily fluids to be explored."
Harry stepped closer, carefully avoiding the red threads that twisted and throbbed gently at the side of the shelf. He flipped open the lid, ready for whatever might come screaming out of there, but nothing did. The box was still. Harry frowned, puzzled, and looked inside.
"Harry!" a voice boomed from the box. The cave shook. Stones rattled along the ground. In the bottom of the box, instead of a bottom, a great grey eye blinked.
"Christ on toast!" Harry shouted. "Keep your voice down!"
In a whisper as loud as the sea crashing against rocks, Draco said, "Where are you? I'm in the Massacre Cave." He gulped. "There's a dragon here. It's dead—it's been thingied, exsanguinated."
"I'm in the Massacre Cave," Harry said, scrubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. "My entrance is sealed— that's why I didn't come back out when you disappeared."
"I disappeared? You disappeared. What's it like in there? I can only see, hm, grey around you. Can you climb through the window?
"What window? What?"
"The window of the mugglehouse at which you are standing," Draco whispered slowly. Excessively slowly, Harry felt.
"Mugglehouse, mugglehouse... like a dollhouse, right? But with those ridiculous mugglemogs running around inside them. Ugh. I thought they'd been banned."
Draco snorted; it was like a foghorn. "Oh, yes. I'm sure the Dark Lord was ever so upset when the Ministry banned mugglehouses. I bet he cried into his pillow for simply weeks." He took a breath. "Oh, hang on. I think we're both in the Massacre Cave—in a box in a box in a box, right? And a riddle?"
Harry nodded, listening.
"So I think the cave is inside itself, then, most likely. You're on the inside and I'm on the outside. We'll have to connect the two parts somehow. I'll see if I can open...Usually the whole front opens on these, like a door? But this one is locked. The clasp is—" Draco's eye blinked and moved off. All Harry could see was the blue-blurred wall of the cave. It seemed impossibly large and far away, like a distant mountain with its peak lost in clouds. "It's a serpent clasp," Draco said in his amplified underbreath, and Harry could indeed hear sibilant mutterings, remote and indistinct. "They're hissing at me. I can't understand them."
Harry almost yelped. He hopped from foot to foot. "Can't you..." He snapped his fingers. "Is it on a chain? Can you hold the clasp any nearer? Maybe I can make it out."
"I shall try," Draco murmured, and then he screamed.
The sound was shocking. It was the loudest thing Harry had ever heard, so loud the sound crushed him: a physical weight pressing into his head from all directions. He put his hands up, pressing them over his ears, but it was too late— blood trickled between his fingers and a ringing, hammering pain battered at his brain. "Fuck!" Harry said. What else was there to say? Oh, except...He bit his lip, gathered the words tympanum reparo to the front of his mind, and Charmed his eardrums whole. Still bloody painful, though, Harry thought bitterly. How come no one had ever come up with anything half-decent to stop simple pain? "Are you okay?" he shouted into the box. Draco was nowhere to be seen; blankness stared back at him. "Tell me you're all right, mate."
Shakily, Draco whispered. "I'm alive. I'm..." He gasped. "This is crucious. I'm...fuck...bleeding out here. I can't stop it, Harry. These snakes are going mad. They bit me! I—"
Harry shouted, desperately, "Draco, change! Animagus! Maybe you can speak—" but Draco had gone silent; he did not reply. Harry roared with frustration. He spun round, fixed his eyes on the sheer, flickering seal on the cave mouth, pointed a trembling finger at it and yelled, "Open! Open! Open, damn you." The seal remained, unbroken, unperturbed, the spells bouncing off to hit the cave walls, splintering stones; a shard hit his cheek and gashed it deeply. Blood spurted, running down his face and neck. He had blood all over him. Harry growled, a rumble of furious anger, and took a running jump at the box, crying, "Transeo!" and the box, the ordinary Muggle-looking box with tar splashed on its corners, opened like a mouth, and swallowed him up.
It was like being drunk, Harry thought muzzily, or being everted, pushed through yourself and turned inside out without your skin breaking, but it wasn't just him, it was the whole cave, it was the whole bastard world maybe, gulping and warping itself outside in. He blinked, saw scales, a gigantic mass of scales rushing towards him, and in loops and ribbons twisting about caught glimpses of wooden box, of stony cave, of Draco's robes, of struggling snakes hissing, "Keep Out! Muggle-lovers, vow-breakers, keep out!" and distorted, rubbery lengths of mugglehouse.
It was all happening so fast. Harry could not make sense of anything, could only reach blindly; he could only gasp out small parts of words— he could not make a spell, or a thought, or a sentence. Harry screamed. He squeezed shut his eyes and gripped his wand and just tried to hold on, ride it out, keep breathing. Breathing. He took a breath, opened his eyes, and Draco, dead white and bloodied worse that he was, slammed into him. Harry grabbed Draco, throwing both arms around him and pulling him close. Draco's head lolled horrifyingly; his eyes were blank. Harry just gripped him tighter. They hit stone, rolled, heard the sound of the sea.
They were out. A small stone, perfectly spherical, smooth and unblemished, rolled towards them where they lay. It butted against Harry's cheek and he squinted at it.
Like them, it was bleeding.
Harry drew in a deep breath and then stuttered out Sealing Charms and Healing Charms, kneeling and running his hands up and down Draco's gashed arm, pulling open his robes to look for more wounds because, surely, this much blood could not come from a single snakebite. It could, you know it could, Harry told himself viciously, driving his mind along the raw, deep-grooved track of Fred-under-the-rubble, Susan-on-the-altar, Justin-falling, scraping fiercely at the old, scabbed-over images of all the easy ways to die in a war. "Careless, careless," he hissed to himself, pressing two anxious fingers to Draco's neck.
A pulse. Yes, a pulse. Weak, though—Draco was still so pale, grey-tinged and clammy. Harry rubbed his wrists, slapped at his face, said, "Wake up and tell me how much... how much blood did you lose, dammit?" Draco did not answer, but he rolled his head from side to side weakly, snatching shallow little breaths, pants and hurried gasps.
Harry gathered himself, ran over his options: (1) he could side-along to Hogwarts and carry Draco to the infirmary, (2) he could cast his best stab at a diagnostic here and hope Draco could last while it diagnosed, and (3) he could try conjuring potions. He discarded them: (1) too public and too risky, (2) too bloody slow, (3) too hopeless at potions, and left himself with only one idea. He tore a ragged strip from the bottom of his ruined robes and sat back on his heels. He put his wand to the new-healed cut on his own wrist and reopened it in one firm slash.
Blood welled up, more blood. Harry felt like the day was drowning in it. He slit Draco's wrist along the same vein, grasped his limp hand in his own, and bound, with his rough bandage, their forearms together, pulse to pulse. Harry whispered, "Transeo?" and he felt a surge of warmth passing out from his body, towards Draco. He could swear Draco visibly pinkened, a flush running up his arms as Harry watched. He waited, counting off the heartbeats that throbbed in the pads of their entwined fingers. "Twenty one elephant two elephant three..." Harry reached with his other hand for Draco's neck, but, dizzy and sparking, he overbalanced, crashing inelegantly into Draco's side, crushing their bound hands beneath him.
Draco moaned and shifted, dragging Harry onto his chest, taking the weight off their arms. Harry scrabbled his fingers back up to Draco's neck, felt for the pulse and found it beating, strong and well paced. He sagged; he dropped his head onto Draco's chest and sighed out, "Finite Incantatem".
Harry blinked, opened his eyes, and his vision was filled with the amused grey eyes of Draco Malfoy, who said, smooth and unhurried, "Hello, Jaws of Death," and kissed him, tongue flickering, tasting him like he was something new and strange. Draco pulled back a moment, frowning. "We've—" he kissed a corner laughline. "Simply got to—" he licked along the join where Harry's lips met. "Stop meeting like this," he told Harry's mouth.
Harry could not help but agree; the want leaping in his chest was shouting, 'Danger, danger'. He sat up, crossed his legs, began to unwind the rag that bound them. Draco's hand flashed out, caught his in a sure, Seeker's grip, and said sharply, "What is this? What is this binding?"
Harry said, "Oh, transeo, blood transfusion. I'll be all right in a minute."
There was a sharp intake of breath and Harry looked round in surprise. Draco had leapt to his feet, holding his wrist close to his body. He stood in the open mouth of the cave. Sunlight outlined him with a fuzzed white-gold halo. His face was a picture of horror. Harry said, "What is it?" and Draco swallowed hard two, three times, and mumbled, "Your... blood." He looked sick. "Half-bl—"
"All that's a bag of shite and you know it," Harry said flatly, turning away.
Draco walked back towards him, sat down, leaning his back up against Harry's. "I know," he said, his voice smooth again, all its cracks papered over. "It's...thank you." He shuffled his feet, pulling his knees up higher.
They sat for a while, not saying anything. Then Draco reached out for the bloodstone, tossed it from hand to hand and then over his shoulder. Harry reached out and caught it, without thinking really, and Draco said, "It's rooted, that stuff, I think. Part of one. Inside. One can't stop feeling it, even if one...even if I don't believe it any more." Draco shrugged and Harry could feel every complex movement of his shoulders, pressed up against his own back.
They got to their feet, rising together. Draco was looking at the floor but Harry caught his gaze as it flickered upwards, grinned and recited, like a playground rhyme. "It's not who you are," and Draco grinned back at him, boyish and easy, finishing, "It's what you do, Master Malfoy."
The cave they staggered from was utterly mundane, the magic fully broken from it, but when they tried to Apparate nothing happened. Harry said, "Bugger. This island's still up to its neck in protection magic."
Draco scanned the skies and said, "We had better wait until night time if we're to fly back; Disillusionments aren't much use on dragonhide." He swept his wand over the cave mouth. "Repellamundo!"
Harry conjured camping chairs to sit next to each other on the cobbled shore, and unshrank the rest of the provisions from his charm bracelet: a cauldron of stew, some bottles of mead, a bit of cheese, and a very small bottle of Percup, of which Draco drank by far the greater portion before throwing off his robes and wading into the sea.
"You're off your head, Malfoy," Harry called, laughing. "It must be—"
"Fucking freezing!" Malfoy whooped, dipped his head under, and came back up, teeth chattering. "Merlin in fishnets, I'm freezing my bollocks off here. Warm up the water!"
Harry said, "Oh! Right." He waved his hand vaguely towards the sea, saying, "Warm," and Draco tipped his head to one side. "That's very unsettling," he remarked. "Can't you at least make a show of using your wand?" Draco flopped onto his back and stared at the sky, sculling at the water with his hands. "It's a bit demoralising."
"Sorry," Harry said absently, his eyes fixed on Draco's pink toes as they bobbed on the surface of the water.
He was drunk, of course, when he said, "I think I always wanted to fuck you, a bit," as Malfoy came dripping and laughing out of the water, hopping about on the sharp, rocky ground, pulling his green winter robe around himself.
Malfoy was certainly drunk when he rolled his eyes and said, "Oh, please, you despised me. We despised each other. We were perfect little replicas in our perfect model war." He upended the bottle and emptied the last drop of Percup into his mouth. "To Daddy dearest," he said, toasting an invisible crowd. "In his infinite wisdom!" Draco chucked the bottle over his shoulder and collapsed into his chair. "Unto the tenth sodding generation."
Harry said, "I'm having no more of it," and Draco said gleefully, "You can't anyway, I've drunk it all," and Harry grinned and said, "I didn't mean—" but Draco cut him off, reaching his hand out and yanking Harry forward by the front of his robes, drawling, "If we're going to do this, let's just get on with it, yeah?"
Harry looked at him, at pushy, prickly, sarcastic Draco Malfoy, this person he could never quite work out, and felt like he was back in the sea, flailing, lungs bursting. He pressed his forehead against Draco's, hand on the back of his neck, and said, low and serious, "I had to forgive him, that was the worst part," and Draco nodded, rocking their heads back and forth. Draco slid a hand up Harry's neck, fingers raking through hair, thumb rubbing circles in the tender base of his skull, and said fiercely, "I'll never forgive you." Draco tugged his head so their eyes met. "I promise."
And, oh, Harry moved, rubbed his face against Draco's day-old stubble, tangled his fingers in Draco's hair, in the fine strands that stood out from his hairline, dragged on the heavy-woven material that Draco had wrapped so casually around himself. Draco moaned and bit his lip and Harry's earlobe, then went nipping and biting along Harry's jawline until he found Harry's mouth.
Draco rested his closed lips against Harry's; he smiled against him. Harry could feel the pulsing in Draco's lips, could feel the tiny wet heat of every shallow breath he took. Draco said, "I'm drunk," and Harry nodded. He was too: drunk and tired and aching in his gammy leg and so turned on he thought might burst, actually properly burst, if Draco didn't kiss him again. He opened his mouth—to try to tell Draco, to warn him—but Draco licked into its corners and kissed Harry's words away.
Draco kissed him shamelessly, wholeheartedly, sucking on Harry's tongue and biting his bottom lip, pulling away and then pressing back deeper into him. Harry's cock hardened, straining against his trousers. Draco tipped forward on the front two legs of his chair, working his hands up under Harry's clothes, grabby and eager. He raised an eyebrow, eyes mischievous, and murmured, "I'd forgotten how twiggy you are."
Harry poked him. "You're not exactly a man mountain yourself, you know."
"Oi!" Draco grinned, his fingers busy with buttons. "I haven't spent—" he pulled open Harry's robes. "All that time&mdash" he trailed his fingers down Harry's chest. "In the company of elves and small children just so you can—" he slid his hands down further. "Stomp—" he shoved Harry's trousers past his hips as they both stood. "On my delusions of stature—" he cupped Harry's arse, jerked him closer so the solid line of Draco's cock pressed into his belly. "Like—" he kissed him. "This."
Harry kissed him back hungrily, grinding against him. "Like this?" he said, huskily, and he really thought he was going some special flavour of bean because, honestly, this was going too far to ever laugh off. He gasped, his breath coming ragged. He felt—He wanted—
Draco's chair clattered onto its back.
The shore was uneven and strewn with rocks, and Harry slipped about as he pushed Draco's robe away from his smooth, muscled chest. "Aperio," he blurted, and Draco jumped as the chairs, the cobbles underfoot, and all of their clothing were swept away, piling up at the tidemark, leaving them naked and panting on a bare, quartz-grained beach.
Draco buried his face in Harry's neck, laughing, and Harry muttered, "Sorry, got a bit carried a—"
"Fuck me. Seriously," Draco said into Harry's ear, and Harry's knees went weak.
They tumbled, rolled, and he nudged Draco's thighs apart, knelt between them, and ran his tongue down the white-ridged scarlines that criss-crossed Draco's back. Draco went rigid, his head snapping up, but Harry pressed him down, rubbing out the tension, a hand between his shoulderblades, mumbling, "It's okay. It's okay. I'll show you mine," because that's what someone had said to him once, a long time ago, on another beach in another war.
Maybe nobody had ever said it to Draco, Harry thought, from the way he groaned soft and broken, and thrust up against him. He moved downwards, licking into the cleft between Draco's cheeks, pulling him up on all fours, pressing close, pressing glistening fingers—one, two— into him. Draco was burning hot, clenching around Harry's fingers as he slid them in and out, and Harry thought he might not make it, might just come right there, laid close against Draco's back, knees grinding into the sand, rubbing off against Draco's muscled thigh.
Harry crooked his fingers, sliding deeper. Draco said, roughly, "You need to fuck me now."
Harry thought, Yes! It's so true! and nearly burst out laughing. His heart was pounding, a mad, wild beat in his chest, and he felt an electric, sparking thrill across his skin as he pushed into Draco, as Draco pushed back, urging his cock in deeper, as Draco moaned and gasped out, "Fuck, Harry, that's so—"
Draco was braced, his head straining up; his hair was still slicked back and wet; sweat glistened in the groove of his spine. Harry thought he looked glorious and he gripped Draco's hips, slid one hand down and grasped his long, gorgeous prick. His hands were tingling, clumsy and tired, but Draco was making little noises—little growling panting noises—and Harry just wanted him to keep on making them so he stroked and squeezed, jerking his hand as he jerked his hips, faster and faster, oh, pounding and, god, Draco was coming—he was clenching around Harry's cock, so tight—and he was panting and coming all over Harry's hand, and Harry lost it, right there, and came, shuddering, buried deep and thinking, This is reality.
They landed on the farthest side from Ada McFusty's farmhouse, though on tiny Fuday it was still really almost within spitting distance. Draco transformed, coughing and spluttering and saying, "Midges! Gah, I've swallowed a million!" and Harry frowned at that, thinking it was too early for midges. And that it was too late for sunset, and too warm for February, come to think of it, surely?
Draco tugged him along, up to the house, and home they went, stepping floostained and ragged into the antechamber at Hogwarts, where Hermione exclaimed, "Harry! Oh! Harry!" and threw herself at him.
Hermione chattered nineteen to the dozen all the way across the entrance hall and down the short flight to the kitchens. "We thought the worst, we really did! We did nothing but search for weeks." Harry picked up a supper tray: sausages, fried tomatoes, potatoes baked in cream and anchovies. "We've been here for about three weeks, of course we came as soon as." They climbed the stairs. "Between the three of us we've got practically the whole thing worked out." Harry turned down the second floor corridor, suddenly realising that they'd lost Draco somewhere along the way, and ducked into his office to grab some marking. "Oh, Harry, I thought you were dead." Hermione clutched his shoulder as they stood at the door to his rooms. "Tell me you got it."
Harry took the bloodstone from his pocket and tossed it gently into Hermione's hastily cupped hands. "Hermione," he said, unlocking his door and standing away to let her past. "You're going to have to go slower than this." He put down his supper tray and flopped onto his battered leather sofa. "First things first," he said, taking off his glasses and cleaning them. "How come it's May?"
The flickering seal across the cave mouth was a Time Trap, they worked out between them. Harry spread out his marking in front of him while Hermione interrogated him about the Eigg trip. "How did you know to use Transeo, anyway?" She caught him up on everything that had happened. "We had to slightly, er, pretend you'd gone on holiday. The governors are furious." And explained their curse strate&mdash"I can't believe you're really marking homework at a time like this!" she burst out at last.
Harry's mouth twitched. "I know," he said, laying a tape measure along the side of a scroll and writing 3" owing across the bottom. "You'd think someone would have picked up the slack, bastards."
"Oh, well, it's all these curses. We've just been cleaning and cleaning," she said.
Hermione went quiet, then, and Harry looked up at her. "Hermione? What is it?" he said.
She stood up, walked to the mantelpiece, tapped at the clock that sat there. "I've got some news, actually." She turned and looked back at Harry, saying, "Personal news, you know. It's a good thing! I think it's a good thing. It feels like a good—"
"What?"
Hermione held up her hand, smiling. "I got married," she said, in a small, pleased voice.
Harry felt about a million things, so quickly he was dizzied in the rush. First: a wave of shock, then he felt furiously, sickeningly angry, not at Hermione, but at the small, reasonable voice inside him that said, Well, it's been nearly eight years, mate. He swallowed, let his happiness for Hermione show on his face and said, 'Oh, that's great, Hermione, really. Congratulations."
Then he frowned and said, "Hang on! Who on earth did you marry?"
She laughed. "Vlad, you idiot! God, sometimes I think you need subtitles." She sat down on the sofa again and stared up at the ceiling. "I know it seems sudden. In a way it is sudden, but really it's been eight years—It's eight years since Ron—" She took a shuddery breath. "I should have married him, and then when we heard you were missing I thought, that's it! It's all starting again! And I didn't want to hang around—You know how it is in a war: everyone goes a bit mad but... it cuts through all the nonsense, somehow." Hermione pushed her hair back from her face. "You just go for it."
Without thinking what he was doing, Harry nodded and said, "Right. That's how it is with me and Draco, I think."
He'd slept, he'd simply had to.
Hermione rapped on the door, calling affectionately, "Get up, you lazy article."
Harry groaned, reached for his glasses. His clock was pointing to twenty-five to Save the World and Harry rolled out of bed, grumbling, and opened the door.
An enormous stack of papers confronted him. Around its edges, Harry could just see the frizz of Hermione's hair. Why was it, Harry wondered, that fighting evil always involved such vast amounts of paperwork? Twenty years and it still seemed so wrong.
"It's the Inferiosa Register. Desme came through for us," Hermione said, stepping through the doorway. "Believe it or not, they used..." She gulped. "Basically, they made a map with... the same hex-hold I put on the D.A register. But you know, with a tattoo instead of— "
Harry touched her shoulder. "You were fifteen. The Ministry..." He rubbed his forehead. "Desme?"
"Desmeldre Ledum? Anyway, I want to leave these here where they'll be safe. How are you? Sleep okay? Come down to breakfast."
Harry nodded and was almost at the door when Hermione burst out laughing. He looked round and she threw a pair of jeans at him. "I recommend," she said patiently. "We conquer trousers before we go for the full-on world-saving attempt, what do you say?"
There were so many people at breakfast they'd had to double the kids up and give the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables over to the guests. Perhaps he'd at least get to have a cup of tea before his Gryffindors completely embarrassed him in front of everyone, Harry thought darkly.
"Put him down," roared Clarice. "Ten points from Hufflepuff!"
Oh, thank Merlin, Harry thought, and drank his Lady Grey.
Snape stood up. Draco, beside him, put his hand on Snape's arm and squeezed it, but Snape tugged away. "Pay attention," Snape said. He looked shockingly weak: emaciated and with a deathly pallor. "We are joined at breakfast this morning by some very... foolish people. Professors Kolev, Popovich, Chevalier, and Ug." Harry looked to Carol and Petar, who waved their toast at him, smiling. "The Hopelessly and Laughably Un-Secret Order of the Phoenix." Tonks started laughing so hard her hair went bright red and Percy tutted at her over the top of his newspaper. "The Brotherhood, the Gurg of Gwynedd, the Orcing of Brodgar—"
In unison, Terry and Thumpit rumbled proudly, "That's my da, there."
"The..." Snape rubbed his eyes. "Er, the Chudley Cannons?" A raucous group of witches and wizards at the farthest end roared and clapped each other on the back. Snape shrugged minutely, almost imperceptibly, and continued down the next row. "The..." he trailed off.
"I don't think we've got a name," Jeremy Bigglesworth said cheerfully. "I think we're just Assorted Nobodies." The Assorted Nobodies waved to their kids.
"You will recall," Snape said to the children, ignoring half the hall. "That in January we had a similarly dramatic breakfast assembly, during which I told you the story of the Dark Lord's Last Hurrah. I understand this may now be lost to many of you, sunk as it is to the murky depth of four whole months ago, so I shall recap.
"We are." Snape smiled a thin sort of smile. "Gathered here today to attempt a curse breaking. Professor Potter has decided, as Professor Potter has a habit of doing, that we can no longer go on with the Insignia system—"
Goblins from the Brotherhood coughed and whispered to each other disapprovingly, "Apartheid! It's the road to apartheid. You'd think they'd have learnt."
Snape pressed on, saying loudly. "The plan is to... overload the bloodstone that controls Voldemort's curse&8212; literally to fill it with more blood than it can contain. This is completely unsanctioned by both the School Governors and the Ministry of Magic, and is, most likely, illegal. Therefore, after breakfast Professor Ledum will take those of you who wish to leave to the Ministry. Meet her in the antechamber off the Entrance Hall at nine o'clock." His eyes glittered as he surveyed the squashed clump of Slytherin House at the farthest end of their usual table. "Frankly, this would be the sensible thing to do."
Snape took a long shaky breath and sat down, his head bowed. Everyone stared at him, unsure whether to speak, or even to breathe. "But make no mistake," Snape said, and his voice was cold. "That the sensible thing is what got us here, with hordes at the gates and brands on your classmates' arms." His head snapped up. "As some of you know, we discovered something very interesting during the last four months: Voldemort's curse, vicious as it was, was, in fact, only cast for one generation. It was our sensible precaution, our Insignia Inferiosa, that perpetuated, amplified, this monstrosity. We just kept marking out his victims and, in doing so...fulfilled the prophecy." Snape swallowed painfully. He seemed to be gasping for air. His hands were spasming, jerking around on the table in front of him. "Those are our monsters at the ga—"
Snape went rigid and toppled backwards, crashing to the floor. His chair splintered across its back as Draco yelled, his voice breaking in terror, "Professor!"
It was lunchtime before Harry got time away from the Great Hall. He took a tray of sandwiches and strode up to the hospital wing. A Tarantallegra got him on the first floor and he squashed half of the sandwiches into his face before he broke out of it, but the fish paste was still mostly all right, he thought. He pushed through the doors of the hospital wing and paused at the top of the ward.
Draco was sitting on the end of Snape's bed. Snape was lying perfectly straight, on his back, with the sheets and blankets pulled tight across his chest. He was still fully dressed, buttoned up to the neck in black cotton, and he looked utterly, blindingly furious at the indignity of it all.
Draco was saying, "If I'd just...been here, you wouldn't be in this mess. I still had piles of memories we could have used."
"Back on this again, Draco?" Snape sounded bored. "Don't blame yourself. If Potter the Unready hadn't rushed you off with his head full of glory then&mdash"
"Don't." Draco tensed, his shoulders a sharp horizontal line through his robes. "Just... don't."
Snape stopped, mid-sneer and said, "Oh, Draco. I am disappointed. I thought you were all for the Potter Persecutionary Front. Our most generous supporter!"
Draco said nothing and Snape sighed, looking at him closely. "It's like that, is it?" he said softly, and Draco stood and paced to the end of the ward.
Harry, still standing there, bounced on his toes and said, "Er, hi." He showed them his tray. "Fish paste."
"So it is," Draco said, eyeing the sandwiches with disdain. "But why?"
Shoving the tray at him, Harry made for the bed. "Professor Snape?"
"Harry," Snape drawled. "Your fondness for eavesdropping remains evergreen, I see."
"Can you—" Harry stopped. "Sorry, hi, yes, eavesdropping. Sorry. Bad habit. You okay? Good." He took a breath, and asked seriously, "How long can you maintain the castle Pensieve, the wards? Realistically?"
Snape pursed his lips. He stared at a plaster moulding in the corner of the ceiling. "Perhaps two more days," he said stiffly.
"Without dying." Draco slammed the tray down on the bedside table.
Curling his hands into the sheets, Snape whispered, "Not even 'til dawn."
By teatime, Hermione's hair had frizzed into an enormous, alarming puffball. She sat, drenched in sweat, in the place of the Headmaster at the high table, the bloodstone on a green baize cloth in front of her. Vlad, a tall, thick-bodied man with complex sigils etched into his tight, black curls, sat on her right, chanting protection ceaselessly, his hand rubbing in the small of Hermione's back. Some ninety or so of the volunteers milled around the Slytherin table, packing up to go home, but more were still waiting to complete their ritual. The bloodstone was now the size of a beachball and it oozed horrifically, thick redness dripping from it.
Lumpy was at the front of the queue, whispering to a goblin who stood there. He was turning in a tiny, frantic circle, wringing his hands, saying, "Grubstake must be sure! Grubstake must be sure!" over and over until the goblin snapped, "For Interest's sake! I'm sure," and grabbed Lumpy's arm, two long fingers digging into his forearm. "It's not just them it happens to, is it?" Grubstake demanded, and when Lumpy shook his head, he said, "Right then," and stepped up to the high table.
"Please read your adoption papers carefully," Hermione said in a weary voice, handing Grubstake three scrolls rolled up together. The top scroll was writing Grubstake of Gringotts, age 178 along the empty line at its head. "And sign at the bottom."
Grubstake peered at the scrolls, then signed with a flourish. He moved along the table. "Just so we're clear," he said brusquely. "You're not getting a discount."
Harry smiled through his fatigue. "I'm not inheriting Lumpy's bit of coal either. 'S'rubbish, this family lark. Dunno what everyone was going on about." He held out his hand and the goblin gripped it firmly.
"Asisco!" Harry said, as Grubstake said, "Ascio!" And into the leathery skin of Grubstake's forearm, the Insignia Inferiosa etched itself.
The bloodstone swelled.
Night fell and Harry left the hall to check the perimeter. He went to the games room to borrow a broom and met Draco in the corridor. "Where've you been?" Harry scowled at him.
Draco raised an eyebrow. "There are these inconvenient people," he said. "All over this place. You may have met some." He measured off his hand from his chest. "Short, uniformed, insist on calling you sir?"
"Oh, right," Harry said, rubbing his forehead. He'd almost forgotten. "Yeah. Listen, about before—"
Draco stepped closer, put his hand on Harry's chest. "I was thinking," he said casually, his breath a gentle heat against Harry's neck. "This place has beds: numerous and various. It could be a new adventure."
Harry turned his head, mouth drawn towards the sharp edge of Draco's jaw. "Ye—"
"Malfoy, old chap!" called Spart, the Chudley Cannons Seeker. "There you are! Come and tell these silly old tarts how to unhex their brooms. We've swept up Wobble-Whammies and no-one can shift them."
It rained, oh how it rained. Harry flew high over the forest, scanning for movement, dipping low every now and again, trying to pick off as many stragglers as he could spot. There were great clusters of Inferi around the grounds now; he could see them pushing forward from the forest, swaying and stumbling. Something sickly curious in him urged him lower, darting looks at the faces shadowed in dark hoods. His stomach lurched as he caught a flash of red hair— he could swear it was red, even in the blued-murk of the rainstorm he could swear it was red— and he sped off, wet-faced and rain-soaked, back to the castle.
He burst through the doors. Hermione looked up, her face ghostly, and said, faintly, "Harry, will you? I think I'm a bit..."
Hermione slipped gently to the floor.
The bloodstone swelled.
"It's not enough," Harry muttered to Clarice, who was transfiguring a teacup into a large hoop to hold the bloodstone, now grown huge: the size of a Muggle dome-tent. He counted the people remaining at the Gryffindor table. "Not enough," he said again, and enchanted another adoption scroll.
There was a cry from beyond the main doors. "They're breaking through! They're breaking through!"
Harry could hear crashes and crackling explosions and Vlad chanting and Percy Weasley barking orders. "Bring the children here. Get up to the ward. Where is that Malfoy?" but all he could do was enchant a scroll, grip a hand—he'd stopped looking at the names— and incant, over and over, "Asisco! Asisco!" Enchant, grip, incant. "Asisco!"
His head was spinning.
The bloodstone swelled.
Children, white-faced and bleary-eyed, were filing silently into the hall. Draco was marching along their ranks, pressing broomsticks into the trembling hands of the older boys and girls, speaking softly to the prefects. Harry blinked, dizzy, and enchanted, gripped, incanted, "Asisco!"
A rangy, whip-thin girl with huge glasses, tugged Draco's sleeve and he bent his head to listen to her urgent question. A fireball burst overhead in the enchanted ceiling and the smaller children began to cry.
Enchant, grip, incant. "Asis—" Harry looked up, the hand he held was small and thin. It was the orphaned seventh-year—Harry suddenly remembered her from Practical Magic— and she bit her lip and said, "We're... there are forty of us orphans that still aren't marked, sir. Will it be enough?"
Harry gripped her hand again.
The bloodstone swelled.
The castle walls began to drip and crumble. Someone screamed, a piercing, chilling wail, and people were shouting, "Get up. Get higher!" The children were rising, three to a broom, into the enchanted ceiling. But it wasn't a ceiling any more, Harry suddenly realised: the Pensieve had broken, and the ruined Hall was breaking through.
The bloodstone was throbbing, belching violently. One would hardly know it was ever a stone, so engorged with blood, so unpleasantly, obscenely spongy it was. It pressed outwards, straining; blood globbed and seeped from it, thick like creosote. Harry took the last scrolls from his file and looked through the hand stretched out to him.
Myrtle shrugged, and through her misty form Harry saw Nick and the Baron do the same. "It's worth a go," Moaning Myrtle told him.
Enchant, wave, incant. "Asisco!"
The doors fell in, massed Inferi pressed forwards, grasping desperately towards the bloodstone and the marked people around it. Tonks ran at them, screaming, "Incendio! Incendio!" and a dry, cold little voice inside Harry observed that, really, she had no chance in hell.
"Fly!" he roared. "Everyone fly!" He stood up from the table and staggered sideways, knocking into the chairs. Harry threw the chairs aside and ran to Draco. "Take the kids," he hissed. "Get everyone out."
Draco stared at him for a moment, then nodded and ran.
Harry took a deep breath and turned towards the Inferi. "Incendio!" he cried, raising his wand. "Incendio!"" There were so many, too many to count, and they pressed towards him, bearing down. The hood slipped from the Inferius closest to him and Harry stared, horrified, into the blank eyes of the Chudley Cannons Seeker, before gripping his dead hand and yelling, "Incendio!"
Harry turned his head and saw the last of the broomsticks disappear into the night. He was alone, all alone in the ruin of Hogwarts Castle and the Inferi just kept coming. He ran through a side door, into the remains of an antechamber and then ducked through its other exit.
The great marble staircase stood in jagged pieces in the devastated hall but Harry climbed it anyway, digging his feet into cracks and holes and pulling himself up to the higher steps. "Incendio!" he cried, again, endlessly, and sent a wall of flame shooting across the open hole, blank like an outscooped eye, of the front doorway.
He felt a cold hand on his leg. The Inferi were climbing, sending off wild, intentionless, spells that burst around him. Harry croaked, "Incendi..." But he could not go on. He was so tired, so very tired, and he felt the cold hands dragging on his feet, on his legs, stroking him, pulling him downwards and Harry struggled, kicking out as hard as he could, thinking, 'I won't. I won't go quietly,' fierce and desperate, but there were so many. So many. They just kept coming.
Harry thought, wildly, 'Fifty points from everyone!' and his head slammed against the stone steps.
A great roar from above made him jerk up and he caught a flash of green scales reflected in his glasses. Harry choked out, "Protego," just in time to cover himself from a streaking sheet of flame that took out the Inferi smothering him in a single, white-hot blast.
Harry's vision was a blurring, melting confusion and reached his arms out blindly, staggered, and leapt.
And landed, face first, on Draco's green-scarred back. Draco roared again and breathed flame, a long roiling tongue of flame that licked into every corner of the entrance hall, pushing orange light into every dark place. There was a deafening crack from the Great Hall and the bloodstone, finally gorged beyond limit, burst apart.
Draco roared. And Hogwarts burned.
The End