In which Evil faces an insurrection, Good faces an unexpected betrayal, and Harry means to find out which side Draco is on. H/D, R.

September, 2005

"She was always my favorite," Percy admitted. "I used to talk to her when I did my rounds in the Ravenclaw wing. She never seemed to leave her frame."

"Would you?" Lucius asked. "She's surrounded by inferior works. The pastoral scene to her left is one of a score of nearly identical ones, an early-period Beugnot, worthless. The painting to her right is a clumsy eighteenth-century reinterpretation of Lockwood's Court of the Virgin Queen that looks as if its brushstrokes were done with a trowel. Anywhere she goes in that corridor she has to pass through rough brushwork, warped canvas, unevenly faded pigments, and any number of other artistic sins. No wonder she prefers to sit in her garden, brushing her hair and basking in Oesterreich's luminous sunlight."

Lucius sounded rather annoyed on the portrait's behalf, and Percy bit his lip to hide a smile.

"All of Hogwarts is like that, really," Lucius went on. "Astonishing things hidden amongst ramshackle. The brilliantly and deliberately planned coexisting with the haphazard. The Room of Requirement, an incredibly powerful resource, goes almost unnoticed, dormant and forgotten for years, while every day children deal with staircases that shift unexpectedly, dump them into unfamiliar parts of the castle, and make them late for class. The grounds are warded against Apparition but not against portkeys. It's possible to seal the gates so that no one can get in, but there are tunnels to the outside that each new generation of students believes are known only to themselves. It's a study in being sickle-wise and galleon-foolish, in a way."

Percy wished that he had some coffee. The Minister's inner circle and the Aurors had been on edge for days waiting for the next Death Eater attack, unwilling or unable to acknowledge that they were waiting for it; even Percy had begun half hoping that it would come and be done with, and God knew his nightmares were bad enough already. "I suppose any building would get like that, if it grew over a thousand years. Especially one as innately magical as Hogwarts."

"True. It's unfortunate, though - one sees the strengths and dismisses the weaknesses as quirks or eccentricities. It gives a false sense of security that's terribly dangerous." Lucius shifted his hair back out of his face, securing it behind one ear against the salt-scented breeze from the window. It was early, sunlight still sitting on the water like streaks of molten gold.

"But Hogwarts is the safest place in wizarding Britain," Percy argued.

Lucius tilted his head. "How do you know?"

Percy began to answer, then stopped.

"Exactly. You know, or think you know, because for decades Albus Dumbledore went around telling everyone it was the safest place in wizarding Britain. He also, let me remind you, managed to convince everyone that it was only safe so long as he was there."

"Is it safe?" Percy asked.

"Yes and no," Lucius told him. "Make no mistake, the magic protecting it is very, very powerful. But Hogwarts isn't facing an attack by outsiders, by rampaging foreign armies; it's facing attack by its former students, people who know the castle and its defenses as well as the people defending it do. Or better - remember how much you learned about Hogwarts when you were Head Boy, and then recall that Tom Riddle also held that position. And held it with a burning desire for knowledge and advantage and without the slightest trace of scruples. It would take someone extremely well-matched against him indeed to hold the castle's defenses if Voldemort decided to pull them down."

"Why hasn't he, then?"

"Because he was indeed afraid of Albus Dumbledore, as we all should have been, and he eventually developed a healthy respect for Harry Potter. But now… Potter by himself can only hold the castle's defenses, not drive Voldemort back, and that only for so long. There's simply too much area to cover." Lucius spread his hands a little. "Voldemort will attack Hogwarts, not because he believes it to be an impregnable fortress - he knows better, after all, as you do - but because he desperately wants it or something inside it. The wards will hold for a while, and then they will fall. Its defenders simply can't meet Voldemort anywhere else and still protect the school and the children inside it, and I doubt that Beauxbatons will ride over the hill to its rescue at the eleventh hour."

"It sounds like you're saying things are hopeless," Percy said, feeling a little sick.

Lucius laughed. "No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm only saying this: don't fight the war at Hogwarts, nor allow Voldemort to bring it there."

But Hogwarts' defenders couldn't leave it undefended, and the Ministry wasn't bloody likely to march out onto a battlefield and meet Voldemort on open ground, not as afraid as they were to even admit that he'd returned. In Percy's head a chessboard rearranged itself, then rearranged itself again; the white king fell, over and over, until a sequence of moves ended with a pawn reaching the other side and transmuting in a silent shimmer into the most powerful piece on the board.

He found himself wishing bitterly that Lucius Malfoy had never been sent to Azkaban.

 

November, 2005

"Who's a clever boy, then?" Bill crooned at the pocket of George's robes, cajoling.

George's pocket shivered and gave a disconsolate hoot.

"I still think you should let me light George's robes on fire," Fred said. "That'd get him out quick enough."

Bill glared at him. "As if that business with the ward didn't scare the crap out of you as well, Fred. You'd've hid in George's pocket too if you were four inches tall."

Draco sank down onto the steps and yawned, then leaned his head on his fist and regarded the Weasleys with weary disgruntlement.

"This can't be the only way up," Harry said, disheartened. Somehow it hadn't occurred to him that getting from a chamber seemingly miles underground to the surface would require climbing seemingly miles of stairs. But there the stairs were nonetheless, stretching into apparent infinity under arched stone, soaring upward as far as Harry could see in wandlight and the dim glow of luminescent lichen before they vanished into the dark.

"No, there's the other set of nearly endless stairs too," George offered helpfully.

"The other tunnel isn't stairs, not after the first bit," Myrtle said, drifting down to sit near Fred, an inch off the stairs. She made a spiralling motion with her forefinger. "It's just a tunnel, but it goes around in circles so you get closer to the surface."

"You couldn't have fallen into that one, Fred," Harry muttered.

"Come on, Pig," Bill said. "All you have to do is just fly up the stairs for a bit and carry something to the blocked-up part for me. You can do that, can't you? Just fly up a bit?"

There was a flurry of hoots from George's pocket that Harry suspected would probably have translated to "dark and scary!" if any of them spoke owl.

"Tempus," Draco said. "God, my wand must be broken. It can't possibly be only one in the morning."

"What time were you expecting it to be?" Fred asked.

"Wednesday," Draco answered dourly.

Harry caught himself about to say There's nothing wrong with your wand, Malfoy, and stopped himself just in time. "Bill, I don't think Pig's coming out," he said instead. "Let's just rest a few minutes and then get started again."

There was a chorus of tired sighs. Bill poked sternly at George's pocket and sat back. "Stay in there, then, you wretched bird."

"I'd carry it for you if I could," Myrtle said apologetically.

Bill smiled at her. "I know you would. It's not important really. I doubt I could have seen everything I needed to anyway."

"Well, the Extendable Eyes really aren't meant for detail work," Fred noted.

"I wonder how much farther it is," George said, and his words fell into an uncomfortable silence, echoing dimly from the damp stone. Somewhere in the distance water was dripping, a barely audible, tinny sound just irregular enough to be grating.

"Do we really have to do all this tonight?" Draco asked plaintively.

"For God's sake, Malfoy, leave it out," Harry said tiredly. "I've got a bloody Quidditch match to referee in the morning and that demonstration duel in the afternoon, and you don't hear me complaining."

Draco sat up and narrowed his eyes, looking at Harry with cold speculation. "That's right. I'd forgot about that duel."

Harry glared back at him, feeling the atmosphere shift and tighten between them. "Think you can beat me?" he challenged.

"I'm not going to go easy on you, Potter," Draco warned, and Harry heard Don't think that anything has changed.

"You can be as hard on me as you want, Malfoy, and if you think it makes a bloody bit of difference -" he began, stung and pissed off.

"The trouble with you, Potter, is that you're so fucking sure you -"

A brilliant flare of gold flashed between them suddenly, almost blinding Harry. Blinking against the light, he found himself staring at a small, square blocking charm that hung in the air between him and Draco.

"Gentlemen," Bill said amiably. "If the two of you are that tired and cranky, the rest of us will gladly charm you up some milk and biscuits and leave you here with your blankies while we go on."

Harry could barely see Draco through the shimmering charm. Clenching his jaw, he snapped his fingers and sheared through Bill's shield with a flare of wandless magic. For far too long, he and Draco held each other's gaze; Draco's breath was coming a little too quickly, shadows shifting in the hollow of his throat, and Harry's wasn't as steady as he might have liked either.

"Let's get moving again," he said finally, his eyes never leaving Draco's.

Draco sniffed disdainfully and looked away. "Fine with me," he said curtly as he stood and resettled his pack on his shoulders.

 

"Hrm," Bill said, crouching down and rubbing dubiously at his chin as he examined the stretch of stair ahead of them.

The stairs were broader here, a good twenty feet across. Which was a good thing - the wall to the right was fractured, long jagged fissures wider than doorways opening onto a darkness so complete that even Bill's sounding spells couldn't illuminate it. And either natural stalactites and stalagmites had merged over time or Slytherin had left them here when he was creating the Chamber, but slim, irregular pillars of rock took root in the stairs and stretched upward to the stone above them like fragile trees. To Harry's eyes, aided by an imagination that was admittedly, at this hour, a bit overwrought, they looked like human forms perpetually frozen in writhing agony. There were spider webs strung between them like thin drifts of gauze, a whole section of the stair wrapped in sheer curtains of spider silk nearly from floor to ceiling.

"Myrtle, you're sure you've never seen any spiders?" Bill asked.

"I'm sure, but I've only been this way once," she told him. "Shall I go ahead and see?"

"Please, if you would," he said. "They're too thin to be acromantula webs but there's no harm in making sure. And see if there are any holes or cracks in the floor under that webbing, too."

"Voldemort can't have ever come this way, surely," Draco said as Myrtle flitted away. "Not and left that webbing intact. No one could have."

"Not in solid form," Harry said quietly. "But he wasn't always, was he? He was a bit incorporeal there for a bit."

Draco turned his head a little as if his attention had been caught by something in Harry's direction, then shook his head and turned back to watch Myrtle weaving in and out of the pillars. Harry, whose hands were stuffed into his pockets, suddenly realized that he'd been stroking the tattoo on his hip absently with his thumb. He began to move his hand away; then, reconsidering, he pressed a little harder and drew his thumb slowly up along the small dragon's length, watching as Draco shivered.

"No spiders," Myrtle reported, flying back down to them. "And the webs are very dusty. No cracks in the floor. But the wall's solid again not too far up, and the part that's blocked up isn't far beyond that."

"Thanks, Myrtle," Bill said, aimed his wand, and blew away the spider webs with a heavy-duty version of what Harry recognized as a housekeeping charm. He send a thin sheet of sparkling gold coursing up the stairs; then, apparently satisfied with what he found, turned back to the others. "Come on, you lot. Almost there."

Harry started up the stairs behind the Weasleys. As he passed Draco, a hand latched onto his elbow, making him start.

"I've never done one of those tattoos before, Potter," Draco said quietly. "I seem to have done something wrong. You should let me see if I can fix it, or take it off."

Harry looked blankly at him for a moment, then shifted closer, nearly backing Draco into the wall. Leaning forward, he tilted his head, almost nudging the soft fall of Draco's hair with his nose, watching in sharp satisfaction as Draco stiffened and swallowed hard. "Are you going to tie me to the bed and 'fix' it with your tongue again?" he whispered.

A complicated expression flashed over Draco's face, and he let go of Harry's arm. "No," he said.

"Then no deal, Malfoy," Harry said with a humorless smile, and turned to start back up the stairs.

"You'd rather walk around with a magical tattoo that's acting up in ways I can't guarantee are harmless?" Draco snapped.

"I trust you," Harry said without looking back. Then, unable to stop himself from saying it: "I remember telling you that, even if you don't remember."

"Keep up, you two," Bill called back, forestalling what sounded like an imminent explosion from behind him. Harry couldn't decide whether he was sorry or not, and decided that he should have been in bed hours ago. Asleep. Alone.

Oh, God, I'm losing my mind.

It was oddly uncomfortable passing through the slender pillars. Bits of webbing still clung to them, draping down over the stone or floating on a breeze too light for Harry to feel against his skin. Bill and the twins were still ahead of him, lumos-light flickering against the stone walls and drawing out damaged carvings in stroboscopic flashes; Myrtle floated behind them, casting a cold white glow over the stairs under her feet. There should have been enough light but the dark managed to swallow it, pressing crushingly downward. Harry swallowed convulsively and tried to breathe deeply, feeling sweat begin to prickle on his forehead and the palms of his hands.

"All right, there, Potter?" Draco murmured from just behind and beside him. "You're looking a bit green."

"I spent ten years in a closet, Malfoy. I get a bit pissy when there's no light or air," Harry snapped.

"You've been fine this whole way and you're going to have a panic attack within a hundred yards of the surface blockage?" Draco snorted.

Harry ground his teeth. "One, I am not having a fucking panic attack, and two, we don't know how far we are from the surface, do we? We only know how far we are from the rockfall, more or less."

"Hoy, we're there," Fred called back down to them.

"We didn't touch anything," George said.

"Good. Keep on not touching anything," Bill ordered.

The twins were well ahead of Bill, small points of lumos-light flickering in the gloom; a rockfall loomed behind them, revealed in brief stroboscopic flashes and the red light of the torches. It was huge, vast stone slabs packed across the cavernous tunnel and spilling down to crack the stairs underneath them.

"This is the one that comes out outside the castle wards," Myrtle told them, drifting along beside Bill. "There are other wards here too. I can't pass them. The wards start before the rockfall ends, so it can't be far to the surface beyond it."

"Fred, George, get back down the stairs a bit," Bill ordered, crouching in front of the rocks. "Malfoy, stay put. Harry, come here."

Avoiding the cracks in the stairs, Harry went up to kneel beside Bill. Bill stuck the tip of his wand against one of the front rocks and whispered a spell. Something shot out of the end of his wand that looked like a thin beam of purple light except for the bit where it was passing through the rocks as if they were glass, emitting high, sharp pings that got farther apart as the light worked its way back. Bill listened, eyes unfocussed and one ear tilted toward the pings, until the light began emitting a long, clear tone and then fell abruptly silent. "The rocks go back a good hundred yards," he said, then double-checked the tiny numbers hovering over his wandtip. "Beyond that it's solid rock for another ten or fifteen feet, then open air. Finite Incantatem."

Harry frowned and reached out to touch the rocks, sniffing the air. Something was tugging at his senses, setting off an internal alarm, but he couldn't quite tell what it was.

"What I'm going to do now is send back a probe that'll tell us how many air pockets there are, roughly speaking. It'll also tell us if there's anything that's not stone in the rockfall - not bugs and suchlike, that's a finer spell than we have time to sit through and gives too many false positives, but it'll pick up anything bigger than Pigwidgeon. Get comfortable, this'll take a minute."

Harry shifted to sit cross-legged on the stone. Bill muttered a long incantation under his breath, spinning his wand in complicated movements before he brought the tip down with a sharp rap onto the stone floor. A wall of purple mist sprang into life beside Harry, making him jump; it was humming, very softly, emitting a midrange-pitch tone that sounded like an entire orchestra all playing the same note simultaneously.

"Go," Bill said, and the wall moved forward.

As soon as it entered the rockfall the wall began to ping, emitting higher tones from all over the scale where it encountered air. It vanished quickly from sight but the sound came back loud and clear; Bill closed his eyes and listened, clearly building some sort of mental spatial landscape from the shimmer of sound. As Harry listened, the number of pings grew fewer and quieter against the tenor drone.

A sudden harsh dissonance split through the pings. Bill's eyes flew open, and he barked, "Stop! Quiet."

The noise of the probe became barely audible.

"What is it?" Harry asked.

Bill sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. "There's something in the rockfall. Myrtle, can you - Myrtle?"

"Right here," Myrtle said, popping up through the stairs and making Bill start.

"How far back into the fall can you get?"

"Not far really," she said regretfully. "We're close to the wards I can't pass. Maybe fifteen or twenty feet."

"Hm, this must be either trapped in them or just on the other side," Bill said, looking at the rocks. "There's enough room to send Pig in with the Extendable Eye, if he'll go."

"Will it be safe to Accio it out once we know what it is?"

"It should be - it's in an air pocket. Pig!"

Pigwidgeon poked his head out of George's pocket and hooted inquisitively.

"Come here, Pig," Bill called. Apparently forgetting all about the scary dark, Pig zoomed out of George's pocket and came to flutter excitedly around their heads. "Pig - Pig! Listen, we're going to play a game."

Pig hooted ecstatically.

"Here, give me your leg."

Landing on the stone beside Harry, the little owl stuck out one leg and began to hop wildly on the other, careening back and forth with wings flapping until Harry reached out and caught hold of him to steady him.

"It's a wonder Ron ever gets any mail sent," Bill muttered, amused, as he wound the Extendable Eye around Pig's claws so that the broad fishlens eye would point forward during flight. "Here, Pig. Hold this in your claws just like that - right, don't let go. Now, listen, see this spark?"

Bill conjured a tiny floating ball of light. Pig hooted at it.

"Right, it's going to run away and you see if you can catch it. There's a mouse-flavoured Every Flavour Bean in it for you if you do."

The spark darted into the rockfall. Pig stared dubiously after it, clearly trying to decide whether mouse-flavoured candy was sufficient incentive to follow it.

"Go on, Pig, don't let it get away," Harry said encouragingly.

"Mouse-flavoured beans, Pig," Bill reminded him, rummaging in his pocket to pull out the tiny shards of a chopped-up Bertie Botts Bean.

Pig hesitated for a minute more, then darted suddenly forward, snatched one of the shards out of Bill's hand, and flew into the rockfall, discovering to his apparent delight that his hoots echoed oddly in the enclosed space.

Bill held the end of the Extendable Eye up to his own eye, muttering under his breath. "Right, go on, Pig, not much farther… there, just through that… blasted bird, settle down so I can see!"

"Can you tell what it is?" Harry asked.

"No, I - wait, there, Pig's actually staying in one place for two seconds on…" Bill let the Extendable Eye fall, frowning. "Well. There's a thing."

"What?"

"It's an occamy. Dead, obviously. It's a tiny one, too, a nestling, or it'd never have been able to get as far through the rocks as it did. Last time I saw one of those was on a dig outside Panaji."

"Shit," Harry said under his breath.

Bill glanced up at him. "Can you talk to those, Harry?"

"Probably. I can talk to lindwurms, and occamies are close relatives. Shit." Harry raked a hand through his hair. "Bring Pig out, would you?"

Bill gave a jerk of his wand, and moments later the spark flew back out of the rockfall, followed closely by Pig. Bill scattered the Every Flavour Bean bits on the stair, and Pig swooped down on them with a delighted hoot.

"Accio occamy," Harry said, wincing a bit as the occamy fell out of the rockfall to land in front of him.

Even in death it was beautiful, iridescent secondary lids closed over milky eyes, silvery scales gleaming in the torchlight, tattered and decaying wings furled back along its body like thin parchment. It didn't seem to have been dead long, though more than that Harry couldn't tell. He drew his wand over it and found faint residues of dark magic.

"Voldemort?" Bill asked grimly.

"Voldemort. He sent a lindwurm after us, me and Draco, in Cornwall." Harry glanced down to where Draco stood a few yards away with the twins. Cool grey eyes met his before Draco looked down at the occamy and grimaced in realization.

"There's nothing else in there," Bill told him. "I don't think anything else came through."

"Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky," Harry murmured.

Bill gave him an odd look, but smiled. "Or the snakes in the sky, whichever. What do you want to -"

"Er, Harry?" Fred called nervously.

Harry turned, his grip on his wand tightening, and did a double-take. In the seconds since he'd taken his eyes off Draco, the pillars beyond them had become completely covered in spider webs again - spider webs that undulated faintly and unsettlingly in the light of the twins' torches and the lumos-tubes, shadows moving behind the wall of white silk like something swimming under ice. He had just opened his mouth to call Draco and the twins up to them when Draco's head snapped around, orienting reflexively toward movement.

"Something's -" Draco began.

The ward was on them before anyone had time to move, a huge bas-relief snake carving that flew along the wall and surged over the gaping cracks like it was passing through shadow. Its head stretched outward from the wall with an ear-splitting grating sound, its mouth stretched wide, and before Draco and the twins could finish casting it vomited out a solid stream of bones at an incredible velocity, battering them and ripping through still-forming shields. A skull caught Draco in the head and shattered, sending sharp bone fragments flying; the twins grabbed him as he fell, but it took them off-balance, and another bone smashed into the back of Fred's head before he could duck. George grabbed him as well, and for just a second managed to hold both of them, balancing on the edge of the stair; then their weight pulled him over and all three of them were tumbling down the stairs toward the web-thick pillars.

"Petrificus Totalus," Bill snapped. "Mobilicorpus!"

Draco and the twins shot back up the stairs to land in a heap at their feet, all three of them barely conscious, entangled together in a Gordian knot. "Take care of that ward," Bill ordered, kneeling down beside George. "I'll take care of them."

Harry was already moving, sending out a Quasso that smashed the stream of bones back against the snake as it swivelled its head toward them. STOP! he ordered, his throat almost locking up from the effort of shouting in Parseltongue. The flow of bones stopped and the snake drew back - and then struck like lightning, sending Harry tumbling down the stairs as he dove out of its way.

"Hey!" Myrtle shrieked, soaring toward the ceiling by the pillars. "Hey! Over here!"

The snake turned back and struck, passing straight through Myrtle and smashing one of the pillars into rubble.

"Over here, you stupid snake! You can't catch me! Olly-olly-in-free!" Myrtle crowed, darting to the side as the snake's head swivelled toward her again. Harry cast, transfiguring stone into glass; the snake struck again, winding back on itself to strike at the wall, and shattered into a thousand pieces. Ducking, Harry threw his arms over his head and waited for the sound of falling glass to stop.

"Well done, young Harry," Bill said when it was quiet again. "That's one way to take care of it."

Harry lifted his head and saw the staircase littered with glass and bones. The snake's tail was still set into the wall, unmoving, glass glittering coldly against the stone. He let out an unsteady breath. "Thanks, Myrtle," he said. "I owe you one."

"It's all right. This is all very exciting, isn't it?" she said, sounding - for Myrtle - positively chirpy.

Harry groaned and thumped his head on his forearm for a minute before climbing to his feet and back up to the rockfall. The twins and Draco were stirring, wincing painfully.

"All right, you lot?" Bill asked, more calmly than Harry could have managed.

"Ow," Fred said dismally, clutching his head. "Hoy, Malfoy, is that you on top of me? Your hair smells good."

"I am not on top of you," Draco snapped, rather inaccurately, as he tried to struggle out of the pile. "And my hair smells like a fucking mausoleum. I need a shower, a stiff drink, and two days' sleep."

"Well, but besides the mausoleum thing," Fred persisted, opening one eye. "It's sort of like… minty vanilla but not quite. What in the world kind of shampoo do you use, you ponce?"

"Well, Fred's all right," Bill said dryly.

"So's Draco," Harry said, then grinned when Draco shot him a glare. "George, that leaves you. Weigh in."

"I'm picking up a sort of ginger-melon note from Malfoy's hair, myself," George said.

"It sounds yummy," Myrtle said wistfully.

Harry raked a hand through his hair and bit his lip. If he started laughing, he was going to keep going until someone had to slap the hell out of him. "Right. Sit up, you three."

They pulled themselves upright and Harry moved from one to the next, healing bruises, shining the light from his lumos-tube into their eyes with the vague idea that if they were really hurt something would be wrong with their pupils. None of them looked damaged, so Harry sat back, the feeling of Draco's chin under his fingertips still burning his skin.

"What was with bloody Slytherin and his damned snakes?" Fred asked crossly. "I like cats, you know, but I wouldn't decorate every bloody inch of my secret underground lair with them."

"I bet Dolores Umbridge would," George said. "I bet she has a secret underground lair that's all done in gingham print, with cats with sunbonnets and watering cans that -"

" - spit fiery tarlike hairballs of death at you if you set them off -" Fred put in just as George seemed to temporarily run out of ideas.

" - and if you step on the wrong tile coming in a giant stone paw bursts out of the floor and eviscerates you -"

Harry held up a hand, trying to head the twins off before they really got on a roll. "Look, let's just be glad it's not spiders, all right? Bill, can we seal this tunnel the rest of the way?"

"Nothing much bigger than Pig can get in as it is," Bill said. "'Course, a rat could, but Pettigrew doesn't have nearly enough power to get past those wards."

"He's not Pureblood either, or not pure enough," Draco said.

"People keep underestimating him," Harry said quietly. "I'm not going to make the same mistake my parents did. Bill?"

Bill nodded. "It'll take the lot of us working together, though - it won't take much power, but it'll take quite a bit of control. You three sure you're all right?"

Draco and the twins nodded.

"Right," Bill said. "Harry, you and Malfoy are going to hold a bracing shield at the front of the fall. Can you do that?"

"We can do it," Harry answered.

"Make it a bloody strong one. Fred, George, you two and I are going to - carefully - break up some of the larger rocks and pack them back, starting about ten feet back from where we are now. We won't be able to see what we're doing at first, so go slowly."

"How are we supposed to break them up if we can't see them?" Fred asked.

"You know those water balloons you charmed to chase anything larger than the average firstie?"

The twins nodded.

"This runs along the same principle," Bill told them. "What we're going to do -"

Harry tuned Bill out and glanced over at Draco. "Ready?" he asked softly.

Draco summoned his wand from the shadows and nodded, and the two of them cast simultaneously, blending together two barriers into one.

"I'm sorry," Harry found himself saying, and Draco paused in the act of brushing his hair back to look sharply at Harry. "I shouldn't have… I'm more tired than I thought I was, that's all."

Draco looked away, brushing dust off his trousers. "It's all right," he said wearily. "Let's just finish this so we can go to bed."

It's not all right, Harry wanted to say. I promised myself I wouldn't push. I promised myself I could let you go.

Bill and the twins finished shifting back the rocks in the front; Harry and Draco moved the shield back with the rocks, keeping pace. Bill cast, there was a loud rumbling crash farther back in the tunnel, and a cloud of dust billowed out of the rockfall. "Right," Bill said when it had cleared away. "Move the shields away. Slowly, mind."

Moving carefully, Harry and Draco pulled the shields back away from the rocks. The rocks shifted precariously and then settled. After a minute of waiting and listening, Bill nodded.

"Right, take it down. It'll be fine now."

"I don't see why we couldn't have just put up stronger wards," George said.

"For a lot of reasons," Harry answered, sliding his wand back into his sleeve. "They'd be more easily detectable. They'd be newer, and that would give away that we know the tunnels are here. And they might react to the wards that are already here in unpleasant ways."

"If it's blocked, we'd better head down all these bloody stairs again," Draco said, eyeing the path down in weary distaste.

Fred and George exchanged a furtive glance. Harry frowned suspiciously at them.

"Right," he said, aiming Bill's housekeeping spell at the webs to sweep them away. "Let's go. We've still got another tunnel to check out."

With varying degrees of reluctance, they got to their feet and started back down the stairs. "Hoy, Bill," George said as they went back down through the pillars. "Remember Dad was always wanting a flying carpet?"

Bill snorted. "Every time we went to Diagon Alley. I can't tell you how glad he and Mum were when you lot all got old enough to Floo without being held. Not that you two didn't almost have to Floo with a grownup until you got old enough to Apparate anyway, after you deliberately buggered up 'Diagon Alley' before your first year at Hogwarts and Mum finally got you back three days later from the British consulate in Lillehammer."

"Good sweets in Lillehammer," Fred reflected nostalgically. "Pretty nurses, too."

"You're right, though, be useful to have one now," Bill said.

"Ah. Well," George said. "We don't have a magic carpet, no."

"But," Fred said, pulling a small square of what looked like bright orange putty from his pocket.

"Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes to the rescue anyway," the twins said in unison. Before Harry could stop them, they'd tossed the putty back up the stairs.

"Heads up, Harry, Malfoy, you're driving," Fred said gleefully as George cast a charm at the putty.

"We're - Fred, George, wait -"

There was a sound like an air mattress exploding, the putty ballooned to the size of a brick-thick room rug, and suddenly it shot downward hard enough to knock Harry's feet out from under him. He landed half on soft putty and half on Draco, Bill's yowl of protest ringing in his ears, and found himself clinging to the slick surface for dear life as they rocketed down the stairs. Draco yelled something about Weasleys that was fortunately lost in the rush of wind.

"How the hell do you steer?" Harry shouted. There was a turn coming up at an alarming rate.

"We don't know," the twins called gleefully back, and this time Draco's comment about Weasleys was probably audible in the Astronomy Tower.

Harry whipped out his wand and surrounded the edges of the makeshift sled with repelling charms, then grabbed the side and pulled hard, angling it away from the onrushing wall. A modified repulsion spell flew past him, hit the wall, and rebounded, knocking them off-course enough to fly around the corner and smack down on the stairs to the other side. The impact left Harry momentarily airborne. Draco's legs clamped around his waist and yanked him back down - not the first time Harry had been grateful for muscles honed by years of straddling a broom, or for Draco's flexibility.

Draco was laughing, Harry realized as a hard jolt bounced them together. For a moment he wondered if he'd ever heard Draco laugh like that, for the sheer joy of something; then another turn was looming, and the problem of how to avoid smashing all five of them against the wall became rather urgent.

It took Harry, Draco, and Bill working together to slow them down enough that they coursed to a gentle stop at the foot of the stairs. Harry clambered off the putty and dusted himself off, trying to stop grinning like an idiot. Pig whirled around his head in an overexcited, squawking ball of feathers.

"That was exciting," Myrtle said in a voice that would have been breathless if she'd still been breathing.

Bill cuffed his brothers in the back of the head. "Idiots," he snorted.

"You loved it and you know it," George retorted, spelling the putty back down to a small ball and bending to pick it up.

"You might have warned us, you gits -"

"What fun would that have been?"

"Seriously, though, you two, don't play silly buggers down here," Bill said a bit more sternly. "Next time you might trigger something that'll do something nasty to us."

"Probably not worse than what Harry's going to do to us if we've lost Malfoy, though," Fred said thoughtfully, looking around.

"What?" The smile vanished from Harry's face and he looked around to find that, in fact, Draco was nowhere in sight. "Fuck! Draco!"

"Up here," Draco called back absently from the room at the head of the stairs. Harry sighed, relieved and annoyed; went up the stairs, drifted off the ground as one of the Weasleys cast Wingardium Leviosa, and hoisted himself back up through the floor full in the intention of taking a strip off Draco's hide for running off like that.

Draco was crouched on the raised platform in the center of the room, heels hanging precariously off the edge, thoughtfully running his wand around the statue in the center. Sparks glimmered around it like fireflies, then faded; Draco pulled his wand back and rubbed his forefinger over his lower lip, frowning. Harry ran a hand through his hair, rubbed his eyes under his glasses, and went to stand beside him.

"The charms on this statue," Draco said quietly. "They look familiar, but every time I think I've got a handle on them I run into something strange."

"They're a thousand years old," Harry reminded him. "Charms evolve."

"Yes, but…" Draco answered, then trailed off.

Harry drew his wand and began making the first pass for an identification spell. Seeker-fast, Draco's hand clamped onto his, stopping him.

"Let it alone, Potter," he ordered. "If I'm right, the whole structure will collapse if you cast anything on it, and I don't know how to bring it back."

"But you can cast on it?" Harry glanced up at Draco. "Slytherin business?"

"Slytherin business," Draco said absently, and pulled his hand back. His fingers curled for just a moment around Harry's wrist, brushing across his pulse and setting it racing. Harry wondered if Draco realized what he'd done.

"Found him, did you?" Bill asked as he climbed out of the floor after the twins. "Malfoy, don't wander off again or I'll put a leash on you. Myrtle, remind me where that other passageway is."

Myrtle flew past Draco to hover half in and half out of the floor. "Here. But I don't know how to open the door. It's hidden."

Draco half-turned and pointed a finger at the floor. "Imperio," he said.

The floor shifted with a low grating sound, pivoting downward to reveal the top of a shadowed flight of stairs.

"Blimey!" George exclaimed. "That's not what that spell is supposed to do!"

"How did you make it do that?" Fred demanded.

Draco smirked. "Slytherin business."

Grumbling, the twins grabbed fresh torches and followed Bill down the staircase. Draco slipped down to follow them, but Harry caught his arm before he reached the stairs.

"No, really," he said. "How?"

Draco looked after the Weasleys and Myrtle for a moment, indecisive. "'Imperio' isn't just a spell, Potter. It's a word."

"A password," Harry said, feeling rather ridiculous.

"Five points to Gryffindor."

"But how did you know it?"

Draco's smirk returned. "I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you."

Harry's grip tightened. "Malfoy," he said warningly.

"Oh, all right. I guessed."

Harry stared blankly at him. "That was a fucking good guess," he said finally.

"I'm a fucking good guesser," Draco told him, and brushed past him toward the stairs.

Forcibly reining in his exasperation, Harry ducked under the folded-under section of flooring and went down the stairs to where the Weasleys and Myrtle were standing at the mouth of a slightly uptilted hallway. The arch of the opening was carved with the same unsettling reminders of mortality as the other tunnel had been, as if it had been built in imitation of some long-forgotten catacomb. Bill was already testing for curses and structural unsoundness. Harry let him finish and then tested for hidden wards.

"Nothing yet," he reported. "Everyone keep an eye out, though - we still don't know what triggered that snake, unless one of you saw something I didn't."

Draco shone the light from his wand into the hallway. "We'll be done for if another one of those triggers in here, unless this tunnel broadens out. There's not room to fight."

"It doesn't really," Myrtle told them. "This is the one I can get out through - it's this narrow all the way up, except for one or two places where it widens out a bit."

"Damn," Harry said softly. "Well, at least it's not stairs this time. Let's go."

"So we know now that Voldemort knows there are tunnels and that he's tried to find them at least once, right?" Fred said as they rounded the first bend in the tunnel, breaking a vaguely uncomfortable silence. In front of them, the floor tilted upward into a steep incline. "Did he figure it out for himself or did someone tell him?"

"Well, it wasn't me," Myrtle said, sounding a bit affronted. "I didn't know then. And I wouldn't have told him anyway. Not only did he kill me with his stupid great basilisk, he used to make fun of my glasses. He wasn't a nice boy at all."

The Weasleys and Draco blinked at her, looking a bit taken aback by the thought of Lord Voldemort running around the halls of Hogwarts making fun of people's glasses.

"He wasn't always who he is now," Harry said quietly. "I don't know that he was always much better. But he used to be a lot more human than he is."

George tilted his head. "It's strange to hear you of all people not talking about him like he's a monster all the way through."

Harry's face heated like a furnace and he looked away, remembering too well what it had been like to look into Dumbledore's pensieve and see Tom Riddle as a boy his own age, beautiful and self-assured. He wondered sometimes if he hadn't stayed in denial about his own sexuality as long as he had because facing it would mean facing the dreams that had brought him awake in the middle of the night shaking with silent tears, curled around a hard-on so painful that in the end he always broke, hating himself, and reached down to bring himself off. "You don't have to believe a rabid dog is a monster all the way through to know that it needs to be put down," he said, and Draco gave him a sharp, suspicious look. "But that isn't the point. That's a damn good question, Fred."

Draco rubbed absently at his nose. "It doesn't take any great intelligence to realize that there was more of the Chamber beyond that statue," he said. "And I don't think it's in any Slytherin, let alone the Slytherin, to build a fortress with only one way in or out so you can be trapped in it like a rat. Voldemort might not know where the tunnels are, or how many, but he must be reasonably certain they exist. Of course he's tried to find them. From the outside, if he couldn't get in any other way."

"Well, that's bloody unsettling," George said. "Thinking of Death Eaters or something else Voldemort sent creeping around the Hogwarts grounds in the night hunting for secret entrances."

"I'm not sure it's not worse to think of Hogwarts students doing it in broad daylight," Draco commented. He ran a hand along the bone carvings in the wall, his palm hovering an inch above the stone; magic trailed behind him, distorting the air like ripples in a pond, but Harry couldn't tell what he was doing.

"I'm hungry," George complained.

"Eat Pig," Fred suggested.

"No, really. That shepherd's pie at dinner was awful. What in buggery were the house elves thinking?"

Draco blinked blankly at them, clearly having no idea what they were talking about, and Harry felt a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the cold of the Chamber.

"Wouldn't know - I had the chicken," he said casually. "Malfoy, what did you have?"

"Nothing, Potter, now for fuck's sake the lot of you leave me alone and let me get on with this!"

Harry was obediently quiet for a while, keeping pace with Draco as they made their way up the curving tunnel. After Draco's temper seemed to have ebbed a bit, he said casually, "Too busy for dinner?"

"No, I wasn't hungry," Draco said absently, running his hand up and down the wall and leaving it shimmering in his wake.

It's nothing, Harry told himself. It was weeks, Poppy said he had weeks before the charm started making him ill, not days.

"We'd better stop and do another check," Bill said.

Up ahead, the tunnel broadened and then narrowed again, leaving a round open space. Harry didn't have to check to see if there were wards. The walls were glowing with them. "Damn," he said softly.

"No curses, and it's sound enough," Bill said. "Harry?"

Harry rubbed his forehead. "There's a whole bloody web of them, and farther into the tunnel too. This is going to take a while -"

"No, it won't," Draco said. "I knew I felt something in here that answered to Slytherins. I'll take care of them."

"How?" Harry asked.

Moving forward, Draco shot Harry an impatient glance over his shoulder. "I'm going to trip them."

"What?" Harry looked from Draco to the wards, aghast. He didn't need any diagnostic tests to tell him that the spells were lethal. "Draco, wait -"

"Slytherin, Potter," Draco reminded him. "That's why I'm here, remember?"

"No, wait -"

Draco stepped out into the center of the widened area and the glow of the wards darkened, sinking into a blood-red wash almost lost against the stones. For long seconds, nothing happened. Frowning, Draco turned back - and the wards caught him before he'd taken a step, translucent vipers surging out of the ground at his feet and winding around his legs, curling upward around his waist, his arms, sliding around his neck.

"Son of a bitch," Bill said. "Malfoy, don't move."

"It's all right," Draco said, nearly making Harry hex him where he stood. "Let them work."

There were only four of them, Harry saw after the initial rush of movement, but it was more than enough. He could feel the poison in them, a foul rush of dark magic that felt like wormwood. If one of them bit, Draco would be dead before he hit the ground.

"Get back," he said quietly to Bill and the twins, and shifted his grip on his wand.

…blood, we smell blood…

Harry sucked in a breath at the soft hiss of Parseltongue and revised, by a very large amount, his estimate of the amount of power that had gone into those wards. If anything went wrong…

…so long asleep, so long with no prey…

…free now, hunt, strike, kill…

"How fucking long does it take them to figure out he's the Head of Slytherin?" Bill muttered. One of the ward-snakes lashed out toward his voice with a loud hiss, curved fangs bared in a mouth Harry could have fit his hand into, then wound around Draco's leg again.

"I'm not sure they remember they're supposed to," Harry whispered.

…strike, feed, fresh blood after so long…

…kill you if you move, prey…

"Draco, don't move," Harry said hoarsely. Draco's eyes lifted to his, infuriatingly unafraid.

…strike if it smells wrong…

…so long, so long, how hungry we are…

As slowly and unobtrusively as he could, Harry drew power into a cold, coiling center in his gut, letting it feed off his fear, letting it build as much as he could while still hiding it from the wards; letting it fill him like a white singing silence in his core. Spells flashed into life in his head, caught back as well, held in readiness for the moment when he would have to match Seeker reflexes against a striking snake.

…so hungry…

…so cold, so cold we are in the stone…

…you have hot blood and warm flesh, prey…

Ten seconds. Harry would give it that long and no longer before he unleashed that coil, sheared right through Hogwarts' protection and limitation spells, and Apparated Draco out of the middle of those wards.

…smell, does it smell right…

Nine.

…bloodstrikekill…

Six.

…does it smell right, does it smell right…

Five.

…does it…

Three.

Pass, Slytherin.

The wards flared and vanished, leaving the way open behind Draco.

Harry closed his eyes and let out a breath, letting go of the power that he'd drawn. A gust of wind flared around him, tugging at his hair and snapping his robes like a banner and then dying down just as quickly. He opened his eyes to find everyone else staring at him.

"Er," he said. "Sorry."

"Blimey, Harry," George said. "Sometimes I forget about that."

"What the hell was that about, Potter?" Draco asked, amused. "I'm the Head of Slytherin House. Did you think they wouldn't let me pass?"

"You didn't hear what they were saying," Harry said tightly.

Draco sobered, looking thoughtfully at Harry. "I probably don't want to know, do I?"

Harry shook his head.

"Well, they're gone now, at any rate. Let's keep going." Draco turned and headed into the tunnel.

"Off we go, then," Bill said. "George, still got Pig?"

George checked his pocket as they began walking again. "Still got him. He's asleep, the lazy bugger."

Draco glared at George's robes as if he were tempted to fight Pig for pocket space. Harry turned away to hide a strained smile that he didn't think Draco would appreciate.

They went on mostly in silence, Harry and Bill in front sweeping for wards and curses, the twins trailing behind and murmuring to each other about some new joke wand or other. The dark and the endless stone were starting to get to Harry, making him long for the high ceilings and weird green glow of the main chambers if he couldn't have actual light and air. Bill, nervous about walking into some sort of gas pocket, had shielded the twins' torches with a spell that cut down their light by half, and the shadows were deeper than ever. It was thoroughly depressing and prodded at some part of Harry that he wasn't anxious to have woken, and he was relieved when they came around a bend and saw the rockfall packed into the tunnel ahead of them.

"Finally," he sighed. "Bill, it's close quarters in here, can you still -"

"Hoy! Shut up, you lot!" George said urgently, and wary silence fell instantly.

"Can you hear it?" Fred whispered after a moment. "That sort of high pinging sound."

Harry looked around, searching for the source of the sound with eyes and ears both, and saw everyone else doing the same. Draco shifted a little, moving back a few steps to examine the walls.

"Wait, wait," Fred said. "Malfoy, go back and stand where you were."

Draco gave him a puzzled look, but moved obediently back to where he had been.

"It got louder," Bill said. "Malfoy, step forward a bit. Right, keep walking."

Head tilted to the side in concentration, Draco moved forward until the pinging sound melded and flowed into a smooth, high tone; he kept moving until it faded back into pinging, then stepped backward.

"Potter, come here," he said absently. Harry went to stand beside him, and Draco began backing up again. The sound began to fade.

"No luck. It wants you," Harry told him.

"Weasley," Draco said, glancing up at Bill.

"Right, move back where you were. Harry, back here," Bill said, went to kneel a few feet in front of Draco, and cast. Thin gold streamers flew from the end of his wand, up the walls to surround Draco in what looked like a gilt cage with two sides missing. Draco stretched his arms out to the side, spun his wand in his fingertips, and cast the same sensor spell he'd been using on the tunnel walls earlier; gold shimmered and slipped around him like oil sliding on water, the edges of his spell and Bill's knocking against each other and making a hash out of both.

"Damn," Bill said. "Malfoy, stop a minute. Harry, come here. Malfoy and I are tripping over each other. You're going to have to cast this spell."

"You sure those spells will work together at all?" Harry asked a little dubiously, coming to sit beside Bill.

"No, but we might as well find out. It's have you cast this one or have one of the twins cast the one Draco's casting, and neither of them are the head of Slytherin House. Here, watch." Bill demonstrated the wand movements and incantations. Harry watched carefully, then cast, sending gold streamers running along the ground and up the walls on the first try. Draco cast again and this time the ripples of magic shone golden like sunrise on the lake, surrounding him with light until ripples and streamers converged over his head to flare bright silver in a perfect square on the ceiling.

Draco tilted his head back and tested for wards, then cast Wingardium Leviosa. There was a grating sound and the square section of rock trembled for a moment, then moved slowly, grudgingly, up and to the side.

"Finite incantatem," Harry said, and the light went out.

"Good job, you two. Malfoy, step back a minute," Bill said, and cast up into the opening, checking for curses. Harry shone the light of his wand upward and saw that the hole opened up into a crawlspace about three feet high.

"It's clear," Bill reported. "Ready, Malfoy?"

Draco shrugged off his pack, stuck his wand down the front of his trousers, and shoved his shirtsleeves up a little farther. "Ready."

"Wingardium Leviosa," Bill said, and Draco floated upward until he could catch hold of the edge of the hole and pull himself in.

"All right, Malfoy?" George called after a few seconds of silence. Draco's answer was an enormous sneeze.

"Dusty?" Bill asked dryly.

"Bleeding fuck, couldn't Salazar have kept this place a bit cleaner?" Draco's voice drifted down, muffled and petulant. Harry bit his lip in an effort not to laugh.

"Anything up there?" Fred asked.

"Spiders. Incendio!"

"Malfoy!" Bill yelped.

"Oh, all right. Avad-"

"Malfoy!" Harry and the Weasleys yelled.

"Oh, blow me, you lot," Draco snapped. "One of you come up here and get bloody spiders down your shirt, then!"

Bill clapped a hand over his eyes. "Malfoy," he said with iron patience. "Is there anything up there?"

"I don't know, do I?" Draco grumbled. "I can only see a foot in front of my face."

"He's cute when he's sulky," Fred said in a stage whisper.

"Malfoy, keep talking," Harry called uneasily, and could almost hear Draco rolling his eyes.

"Right. I don't think this goes back much farther. If there's nothing up here after all, I'm going to…"

Harry frowned and bit his tongue to keep from asking what was going on.

"Right, I found something," Draco called down. "There's nothing else in here. I'm coming back."

"What is it?" Bill asked.

"I don't know yet. Let me get it down in the light. Well, more light than is up here." There was a minute's shuffling and then the lower half of Draco's body reappeared. Clutching something to his chest, he lowered himself down with a sort of reverse one-handed pull-up and dropped the rest of the way to the ground. There were cobwebs in his hair, a smear of dust across his nose, and dirt everywhere; ignoring all of it, Draco knelt and carefully set an oilcloth-wrapped bundle down in front of him.

Bill sat down across from him. "Preservation spells holding up all right?" he asked as Harry and the twins came closer. Myrtle hovered over his shoulder, peering with considerable interest at the bundle.

Draco shook his head. "They're holding up well enough for being a thousand years old, but they'll have to be recast." He waved a hand over the bundle and the oilskin folded back, revealing two heavy books; another wave and the top book opened, frail parchment sepia with age fluttering briefly and then settling.

Frowning, Harry reached automatically to turn the book a little. Draco's wand and Bill's came down on his knuckles at the same time, sparking where they touched, making him yelp and snatch his hand back to nurse bruised and burned skin. "Don't touch," Draco ordered.

Harry tilted his head and squinted at the writing instead. It was spidery and crowded, all strange angles and unexpected curves, packed against illuminations that glowed like faded gems in the torchlight. "Bloody hell. I can't read a word of that."

"It's Carolingian miniscule, Potter," Draco said absently. "And in a form of Latin that's more archaic than what we use."

"Can you read it?"

"A bit," Draco murmured, turning a few more pages with a wave of his hand. He stopped on a full-page drawing of a human figure spread-eagled and flayed, abdominal flesh peeled back to expose his internal organs, wrists nearly severed.

"Er," George said. "This is a medical text, right?"

Draco glanced up at him, then back down.

"Right," Harry said. "What is it, then? Necromancy?"

"I don't think so. It's a Dark Magic text, though," Draco answered. Pointing his wand, he lifted the book so Bill could levitate the one on the bottom onto the top. When the books were resettled, he opened the cover to reveal blank pages brittle with age.

Harry opened his mouth to say something, glancing up at Draco, then stopped. Draco's eyes were moving back and forth across the page, following some text that Harry couldn't see.

"What's this one?" Harry asked.

Draco gave him an unreadable look, then closed the book and folded the oilskin back around it with a wave of his hand. "These will want curating before anything can be done with them," he said, wrapping the bundle in shielding charms and easing it carefully into his pack. "I'll have Irma look at them tomorrow, if she can be persuaded to give them back again when she's done."

"They're Dark Magic texts, or at least the one is," Bill pointed out. "What makes you think she won't hand them over to the Ministry?"

Draco lifted an eyebrow. "Irma Pince?"

"Hm, right," Bill conceded.

"Why are there books stuck up in the ceiling of a tunnel in the Chamber of Secrets?" George wondered.

"That's a good question," Draco said. "I'd have put them here if I didn't want anyone else to see them and wanted to make sure I wouldn't have to leave without them."

"But he did leave without them," Harry pointed out.

"Or left them here in case they were needed by one of his successors," Bill said.

"My -" Draco began, then stopped, looking suddenly, utterly wretched. He swallowed shakily and went on. "My father might know, or know more than I do. This has to have been passed down to the Heads of House at least for a while, like the information about the existence of the Chamber. Maybe there's something in the library at the Manor."

Harry shook his head and made a mental note to find out what that small slip had been about. "I'm not sure we're going to figure this out tonight. Bill, what does the rockfall look like?"

Bill rose and went to the rockfall, running the probing spell through it. When it was done, he turned back and said, "Nothing's getting through there, Harry. Not unless someone transfigures the stones to tapioca or something."

"I suppose it's a good thing the wards won't let you do that," Fred said.

Bill raised an eyebrow at him. "Yes, or the two of you would have brought down the Hufflepuff wing long ago."

"We wouldn't have turned the Hufflepuff wing into tapioca," George said, injured.

"Cake, now, that's a different matter," Fred added.

"Or gingerbread."

Harry rubbed at his forehead. "Right. Let's get out of this place."

"I'm all for that," Draco said quietly, and wouldn't meet Harry's eye.

 

It was easier getting out than getting in. Harry had dreaded trying to pass back through the chamber with the snake wards, but it was dark and quiet, the flames in the great statues nearly burned down and no sense of magic coiled to strike.

"It probably needs time to recharge," Draco said when Myrtle asked. "The amount of magic that's expended in a ward like that isn't recovered easily."

"Oh," Myrtle said, looking thoughtful and a little sad.

"Something wrong, Myrtle?" Bill asked.

"I was just thinking about how much I never learned," she said quietly. "Because I died, you know."

"I know," Bill said, and Myrtle was quiet all the way out of the chamber and out to the shaft leading upward.

 

"There," Bill said, tugging at the grappling hook. The rope, stretched out, looped through the bottom of the hook and fell back down to make a sort of pulley. "See you lot at the top." He tugged sharply at the rope and it pulled him up, circling back down. Fred and George went up next, leaning sleepily against each other, Myrtle trailing after them and faint drowsy hoots coming from George's pocket. When they were out of sight and the rope had stopped moving, Draco moved forward to take hold of it.

"Malfoy, wait," Harry said. Draco gave him a suspicious glance, but stayed where he was.

"That… when you were talking about your father," Harry said. "You seemed upset."

Draco looked away. "My father's on the run from the Ministry, Potter. The situation is a bit upsetting."

"Feeling a bit homesick?" Harry asked quietly.

Draco looked sharply back at him. "I'm always a bit homesick, Potter. I happen to like my parents."

"You weren't going to tell me about the Hereditus charm, were you?"

His face hardened with an expression Harry remembered from their childhood, Draco caught doing something he knew he shouldn't have done. "No," he said.

"How bad is it?" Harry pressed.

"What business is it of yours?" Draco snapped.

"It's my goddamned business, Draco, because I didn't risk my arse getting you away from your father so you could go right back with your tail between your legs!"

"Potter, it's…" Draco rubbed a hand over his face. "I'm tired, that's all. Leave it alone."

Harry stepped forward and caught hold of the rope just above Draco's hand, letting his fingers trail down over Draco's. "I'll find a way to break the charm," he promised. "Draco, I don't want you to go. I don't care if you believe that or not. I don't care whether you marry Pansy or not. Just… please don't go back to your father, not after what he did to you."

An indecipherable expression flickered over Draco's face. For a long, tense moment they stood watching each other in silence; then Draco made a soft sound deep in his throat and caught hold of the back of Harry's neck, pulling him forward into a desperate, hungry kiss.

Something ignited in Harry's brain and seared outward like wildfire, narrowing his whole world to touch and taste and ohgodplease; Draco was cold and tense in his arms but there, Harry's, and oh fuck how Harry needed him. He pulled Draco closer, tighter, shivering at the way their bodies slid together as if they'd never been apart, at the way his tongue knew the feel of Draco's mouth -

Draco shoved him back, slamming him into the wall, and turned away, raking his hands into his hair. "Oh, God," he said. "I can't. I can't do this."

"Draco -"

Draco swung around. "Stay the fuck away from me, Potter," he said between his teeth, his voice shaking, the Malfoy cool completely gone. "Don't do this to me. Don't waltz into my life, fuck it up beyond repair, and then blow past on your merry, oblivious way without even realizing what you've done. I haven't done anything to you to deserve that. I never did anything to you to deserve that, not when we were eleven years old and I couldn't get away from the goddamned Boy Who Lived and not now."

"We're not eleven anymore! It's not the same!"

"No? What are we supposed to do, then? Pretend we never were eleven, or twelve, or fifteen? Pretend that my father didn't spend ten years in Azkaban because of your lifelong pissing match with Voldemort? Pretend you bloody care that what you want from me would cost me everything I have left?"

"What does szívem választottja mean, Draco?" Harry asked tightly.

Even in the dark, he could see Draco pale. "What?"

"You called me that. Tell me what it means." Harry clenched his fists in his robes. "And while you're at it, look me in the eye and tell me what we did was just a quick bit of trade. Tell me things really aren't any different between us now than they were when we were fifteen and make me believe that you mean it, and I'll never so much as say an unnecessary word to you again as long as I live."

"Oh, fuck you, Potter, what the hell makes you think this the time or the place to have this discussion?"

"I'll have this discussion any time I can get answers out of you, Malfoy, I don't care if it's standing on the Hufflepuff table in the middle of the fucking Sorting Feast!"

Draco closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. "I'm going back up. And then I'm going to bed. And then in the morning I'm going to find Pansy if I have to drag her out of fucking Longbottom's greenhouse by the scruff of her neck, and she and I are going to discuss catering arrangements for the wedding, so do be sure to let us know if you can recommend a good service."

Harry flinched, his face suddenly burning.

"Good night, Potter," Draco snapped, grabbed hold of the rope, and let it carry him up and out of the Chamber.

Harry stood staring at the wall for a minute, watching the way the light from his wand faded into shadow just above a nearly-invisible dusting of scattered bones. When he raised his hand and raked it through his hair, the light from his lumos-tube skittered silently across the wall and ceiling, lighting uneven stone in quick stroboscopic flashes. "Right," he said thinly to the encroaching dark, and took hold of the rope.

Bill and the twins were deep in conversation about the expandable putty when Harry stepped back out into the toilet. Waving the twins off, Bill turned to Harry.

"I can get away again next weekend, probably," he said. "Don't go down before then if you can avoid it. Those two rooms we missed have sat down there for a thousand years, they can wait another week. If they're anything like the rest of the place, they're probably layered in curses -"

Movement caught Harry's attention, and he glanced over Bill's shoulder to see Draco slip quietly out the door. He opened his mouth to call Draco back - and then closed it again, realizing glumly that he had no excuse to.

" - but it's the flying squirrels that are the real danger," Bill said. "Because they throw exploding pineapples. Cause nasty burns, those will, and they don't make for good fruit cocktail."

"Right, of course not," Harry said absently.

Bill laughed and gave Harry a light open-handed smack to the face, bringing Harry's gaze sharply back to his. "Go after him, you pillock. Give him a few minutes to get in bed and then crawl in there with him. He's not going to kick you back out."

His face burning, Harry looked unhappily away. "He loves Pansy, Bill. And he's getting married in a few weeks."

"So he loves her enough to keep his hands off you, does he?" George asked pointedly.

"That isn't -" Harry closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Look, this topic's off-limits, all right?"

"Off-limits?" the twins protested in unison.

Bill gave him an incredulous look. "You must be joking. You pining after Draco bloody Malfoy while the countdown to his wedding gets shorter and shorter and Ron dogs his every step with the stated intention of slinging him into Azkaban? We haven't had this much excitement since Mum caught the twins playing doctor in the garden shed."

No excitement, huh? Harry thought wryly, but didn't say anything. After fourteen years, he was wise to the ways of Weasleys.

"I don't know, Bill, I seem to remember a pretty large to-do when you brought a Veela home," George reminded his brother.

"Hm, yes, there was that -"

There were times, mostly around the holidays, when Harry still secretly wished he had red hair and a whole commune of rambunctious brothers. Then there were times like this. "Right. Bill, are you staying the night here?"

"On the couch in the twins' room, but I have to leave first thing in the morning. I can come back out next weekend if you want me there to look over the rest of the Chamber with you."

"Saturday?"

"Done. Harry…" Bill said, then changed his mind and smiled, a small kindness that Harry was grateful for. "Go to bed. You look like hell."

Harry fought down a yawn and rubbed his face. "I'm too old for this shit. Bloody Ravenclaw against Hufflepuff in the morning, and last time they played their Seekers got into an argument over lip gloss or something and wouldn't look for the snitch for hours."

"Good night, Harry," the twins chorused, herding him gently toward the door.

"'Night, Weasleys," he said obediently, and headed off toward his room.

His bed felt bloody good when he finally climbed into it, a vast improvement over the stone he'd been intermittently parking his arse on all night. And it was quiet - which things rarely were around the twins and Bill - and relaxing - which things never were around Draco.

Draco, in Slytherin's Chamber, meeting Harry's eyes before he turned to walk straight into a ward, shivering when Harry stroked the tattoo on his own hip.

Give him a few minutes to get in bed and then crawl in there with him. He's not going to kick you back out.

Harry groaned in frustration and pushed his hand into his pants, wrapping his fingers around his cock, feeling Draco's sheets sliding against their skin.

 

"Severus, this is ill-advised," Remus said with absolutely no hope of success, scanning the crowd for the twins.

"The students have been looking forward to it," Severus said, mildly but implacably.

"One of them could step out, let the other duel one of us."

Severus gave him a weary look that distinctly implied that all the evils of the world could be laid at the doorstep of Remus Lupin's stunning stupidity. "Lupin, either one of them could wipe the floor with any of the rest of us inside of five minutes, and they both play to win. At any rate, it's a moot point - neither of them will step out, as well you know."

Remus opened his mouth again, then closed it as Minerva's elbow dug into his side. "I've tried," she said grimly under her breath. "I think he wants to see them kill each other."

"Well, he's damn likely to get his wish," Remus said with an annoyed scowl.

The Great Hall was packed to the rafters, almost literally - some of the more enterprising seventh-years had levitated the long House tables ten feet off the ground and stuck them to the wall with what Remus hoped wasn't a permanent sticking charm and were seated on top of them with an excellent view of the large cleared space in the middle of the Hall. Out of the corner of his eye, Remus saw Minerva sigh and aim her wand discreetly at the tables, ensuring that they wouldn't fall onto the mass of students below. If there was a child at Hogwarts who hadn't shown up to watch Harry and Draco hex the living hell out of each other, Remus would be greatly surprised, and probably concerned for the child's life.

"Harry's on his way," George said in his ear, making him start. He turned to see the twins standing behind him on the dais, looking out into the crowd with intent curiosity.

"How is he?"

Fred and George glanced at each other and winced a little.

Remus sighed. "That bad?"

"Well… he's awfully on edge," George said diplomatically.

"Should have had a wank in the shower," Fred added, rather undoing the effects of George's tact.

"Or else he shouldn't have run into Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson in the hall this morning. That might not have helped matters much."

"Sort of like you shouldn't see the bride before the wedding."

George snorted. "I think if Harry has his way, Malfoy's going to spend his wedding day chained to Harry's bed with riding crop welts all over his -"

"Boys," Remus murmured, glancing meaningfully down at the mass of students. The noise level in the room began climbing in a rush of excited murmurs as Filius and Adrienne Vector went out into the middle of the room and began spelling a dome into place that would keep stray hexes from hitting any of the spectators. Hopefully, Remus reflected grimly, it would also keep Harry and Draco from knocking each other headfirst into a table full of first-year Hufflepuffs.

"Here's Harry," Fred observed. Remus turned to see Harry coming up behind them, and winced - between his rumpled clothes and the dark circles under his eyes, the boy looked like he hadn't slept in days, and he was nearly vibrating with nervous energy, tension, and determination.

"Down, Harry," George said in mild alarm. "You're doing a demonstration duel with Malfoy, not facing down You-Know-Who in mortal combat."

"I know that," Harry almost snapped.

"Harry, you don't have to do this," Remus pointed out. "If you're not feeling well -"

"I feel fine," Harry answered, a little more calmly. "I'm going to leave my robes here, all right? Keep an eye on them for me."

Fred obligingly stretched out a hand for Harry's robes, began to fold them up in a haphazard way that would have brought Molly's wrath down on him in seconds flat, then frowned and fished something out of the pocket. "Hoy, Harry. What's this?" he asked, holding up something small and golden. Looking closer, Remus saw that it was a dragonfly-shaped brooch.

Harry turned to look, and Remus wouldn't have wanted to bet that he could get any paler but he did. "It's," he began, then paused and swallowed. "It's got a protective charm on it. One Filius invented. Don't lose it. The brooch was my mother's."

Fred immediately handed the brooch off to Remus, who took it with a sigh. Delicate filigree wings fluttered against his hand, and for a moment he thought he smelled lilies of the valley. A brief memory flashed into his head - Lily laughing in the cold spring sun, James reddening and trying not to swear as he fumbled with the dragonfly's clasp in an increasingly problematic attempt to pin the brooch onto her robes. Sirius had sat on a fencepost waving his wand in the air and making a great show of timing how long it took James to defeat a simple jewelry clasp in single combat. Peter had been…

Where? He couldn't remember now.

"Your mother was very fond of this brooch," he said quietly. "It took days of hinting from her and a slap to the head by Maireadh Finnegan before James caught on that she wanted him to give her one. So he bought this on the next Hogsmeade weekend, but she'd got tired of waiting and bought one herself before we met up. She took the one she'd bought back to the store and never told him she already had one."

He glanced up at Harry, pulling himself back to the present. Harry was wearing that wistful, starved-puppy expression that he always wore when someone talked about his parents - but he looked a little calmer. Remus just had time to be glad of it when Harry looked past him toward the doors of the Hall, and suddenly the tension was back with reinforcements.

"Malfoy's here," George said, rather unnecessarily.

Remus turned to see Draco wander into the Hall, deliberately casual. Next to him, Pansy rested her hand gracefully in the curve of his arm as she smiled sunnily at the crowd of children and appeared to be delivering a pointed lecture to Draco through her teeth.

The chair near Remus trembled where it stood, and the brooch heated in warning against his palm.

"So who won the Quidditch match, Harry?" Fred asked rather loudly.

It took Harry a moment, but he managed to tear his eyes away from Draco and Pansy. "Hufflepuff."

"Really, the Huffleduffers?" George asked in feigned surprise.

"They've got a damn good lower-tier team this year, and Ravenclaw's Seeker was out of training for a month with dragon pox."

"Whose chances are good for the cup?" Fred asked.

Harry grimaced. "Not Gryffindor. They're having an off-year. It's going to be Slytherin and Ravenclaw, I think, today notwithstanding."

"Hello, Professor Lupin," said a rather nervous voice beside him, and Remus turned with a smile.

"Hello, Neville. You're a professor yourself now, you know - you should call me Remus."

"Remus," Neville echoed, looking shy and pleased as a small boy granted a treat. He'd gained a good deal of self-confidence, Remus thought, but he'd always be a bit diffident. "What a crowd!"

"Yes, this promises to be quite the event," Remus said grimly. Neville looked worriedly past him to Harry, then down to where Draco stood talking to Pansy. Pansy happened to glance up just as he did. Her face lit up and her arm shot into the air, waving cheerfully at Neville. Neville waved back, glowing, and Remus saw Draco's face darken a little. Only for a moment, though; then his face settled back into a neutral expression and his eyes drifted to Harry as though Pansy and Neville had been only a momentary distraction.

Remus was getting a bit dizzy.

"Well, since both our combatants are here, we might as well get on with things," Severus said. Harry's head snapped around so fast that Remus wouldn't have been surprised to hear it crack, nor to see sparks coming off the sheer blinding flare of nervous energy he was emitting.

"Severus, this is a very, very bad idea," Remus said hopelessly.

"Why?" Harry snapped. "I'll fight a clean duel if he does."

"I think it would be a better idea for you to fight a clean duel even if he doesn't," Remus said firmly.

Harry managed to both hold his tongue and avoid rolling his eyes, but it looked like a near thing.

Severus gave an exasperated sigh and moved closer. "What do you suggest I do, Lupin?" he asked, too quietly to be heard by the nearby children. "Send the students away because two of their professors can't control themselves and behave like adults long enough to do a simple demonstration duel? Tell them that we're terribly sorry, but their Defence professors are too immature to do their jobs, and in the future we should be obliged if they'd do as we say and not as we do?"

Well, put like that, Remus had to concede that Severus had a point. "Yes, I suppose you're right. But the timing is… unfortunate."

"There, Lupin, you and I are in complete agreement," Severus said, moved away, and tapped his throat. "Sonorus. Your attention, please, students."

The room fell silent immediately, or as silent as hundreds of overexcited children could get, at any rate.

Severus ended the Sonorus spell and gave Harry and Draco a distinctly warning glance. "As you know, I have prevailed upon Professors Potter and Malfoy to demonstrate the use of the spells you have been learning to cast and defend against. Professors Flitwick and Vector have kindly erected a shielding dome, so none of you need worry about being hit with a stray hex. Potter, Malfoy, take the floor, please."

With one quick, cold glance at each other, Harry and Draco obeyed. Filius and Adrienne closed the shield behind them. There was a soft rush of air behind Remus and he glanced back to see that the twins had conjured a tall sofa and were sprawled comfortably on it.

"Sit down, Remus," George said, tugging at Remus' robes.

Remus was feeling rather too unsettled to sit. "I'm fine, thank you, George."

The twins looked woebegone. Inwardly shaking his head at himself, Remus compromised and leaned back against the front of the sofa, cushions pressing comfortably against his lower back.

On the floor, Harry and Draco were standing two feet apart, facing each other, unmoving, gazes locked. The air around them looked like it was about to ignite.

Draco took a step back and raised his wand in a terse salute, echoed by Harry. That should have been their cue to turn and take half a dozen paces back; instead they began circling each other, prowling like hunting cats. Things were off to a bad start already, Remus thought with a sigh, and noted out of the corner of his eye that Pansy had come up onto the dais and was standing nervously beside Neville.

Harry moved first, firing off a Rictusempra at Draco, his mouth moving silently behind the soundproof shielding dome. Draco didn't even bother lifting his wand; he just brought his hand up and flung out a Protego, wandless, deflecting Harry's hex. Harry smiled grimly and cast again, three spells in rapid succession: a wandless, left-handed Rictusempra, a shield-ripping hex that he started with his wand hand nearly before he'd finished casting the Rictusempra, and a conjunctivitis curse right behind the shield-ripping hex. Draco managed to halt the first curse before the shield-ripper tore through his Protego and met the conjunctivitis curse in midair with a Serpensortia, resulting in a thoroughly annoyed snake with sore eyes flying toward Harry. Harry banished it without taking his eyes off Draco.

You bore me, Potter, Draco said as he circled around to face the dais.

Remus didn't have to see Harry's face to know that the jibe drew blood. It was clear from the thick flurry of hexes that flew at Draco, increasingly complicated and increasingly damaging. Draco was fighting defensively, clearly hoping to wear Harry down, firing off maybe one spell to three of Harry's; regardless, he was the first to land a hex, flinging Harry through the air back toward the edge of the dome. Harry twisted and somehow managed to cast from midair, upside-down, yanking Draco's feet out from under him.

Both of them scrambled to their feet, and that quickly the battle was on in earnest.

Within a minute the air inside the dome was literally crackling, incandescent with magical discharge from blocked and deflected hexes - and from ones that had found their targets. Harry had drawn first blood - an Incarcerus that split around Draco's Protego and opened a whip-gash in the side of his forehead - but Draco was right behind him with a severing charm that missed Harry's wand and sliced the side of his arm instead.

"Severus," Minerva said between her teeth. "They are bleeding."

"Not badly," Severus said absently, eyes fixed on the duel.

George shifted uncomfortably on the couch behind Remus. "Stupid git," he whispered.

"Hush," Remus said absently. "Harry and Draco are grown men. They'll know when to stop the duel."

Fred's hand clapped onto Remus' forehead, testing for fever.

On the floor, Harry and Draco were both breathing hard, sweat trailing down into the fronts of their shirts, staying in motion - ducking, dodging, circling, throwing hexes at each other that were now well beyond even the NEWT-level courses. Forced back on the defensive again, Draco dodged an immobilizing hex with a roll that took him straight into Harry's path; taking advantage of his position and reach, he kicked Harry's legs out from under him. The back of Harry's head hit the stone with what would probably have been a sickening crack if it had been audible.

"Can he do that?" Neville protested frantically.

"Of course he can," Pansy snapped, not releasing her deathgrip on Neville's arm.

Harry disagreed. Clearly furious, he blasted Draco back to slam against the barrier, struggled to his feet, and threw a curse at Draco that Remus recognized with a chill as one intended to cause a great deal of pain - not as much as Cruciatus, but debilitating nonetheless.

In the split second Draco had to see the spell coming and react, an explosion of dark magic slammed against the boundaries of the shield in every direction and left Harry curled around himself on the floor, choking.

The entire Hall erupted in instant pandemonium, Gryffindors shouting at Slytherins, Slytherins shouting at Gryffindors, Ravenclaws shouting indiscriminately at both. The Hufflepuff prefect conjured an icy rainstorm over a particularly bellicose group of Gryffindors, and the Head Girl was firing off cheering charms into the crowd.

Harry scrambled to his feet and sent a flurry of bladewards flying straight at Draco. Draco dodged, rolled, and came up bleeding from the leg and hip; he aimed, cast, and the stone under Harry's feet exploded upward in a fountain of razor-sharp shrapnel.

"Silence!" Snape bellowed in a Sonorus-enhanced voice, and to Remus' astonishment it worked.

The oily aura of dark magic was swirling around Harry and Draco both now, curses flying between them that were just short of Unforgivables; they were both bleeding, covered in bruises and burns, stumbling now as they blocked. Draco was visibly slowing - he countered two curses in rapid succession but missed the third, a blunt-impact curse that knocked him off his feet and back across the floor. He landed hard on his back and elbows, his wand flying out of his hand to roll nearly to the edge of the barrier. Harry either didn't notice that Draco was unarmed or didn't care. His wand, still trained on Draco, swept through the first pass of a hex that made bones as brittle as glass.

For half a second Draco looked like a trapped animal. Then, in the blink of an eye, he… didn't. His head tilted downward and a slow smile crossed his face, and he shifted in some way that drew subtle but irresistible attention to his spread legs. He said something to Harry, looking up at him through long lashes darker than his hair, with a look in his eyes that went past inviting to commanding. Even dishevelled and sweat-damp he was beautiful, all blood and mock-submission and the intimation of the prizes of war.

Harry froze, staring at Draco with an expression somewhere between horrified fascination and hunger.

Every Slytherin in the room grew quiet, watching with thoughtful avidity. They were taking notes in their heads, every one of them, right down to the eleven-year-olds craning their necks to see past their housemates, and Remus was going to think I told you that duel was a bad idea every time he looked at Severus for the rest of his life.

Not even a tiny flicker of postural change gave advance warning before Draco launched himself off the floor and dove for his wand, summoning it to meet him halfway. He rolled to his feet, taking aim - but Harry, whose expression had flashed from dazed hunger to surprise to white-hot rage in the time it took Draco to get to his wand, was already there. He caught Draco momentarily off-balance and slammed him back into the barrier, lifting him off his feet, and broke his nose with one solid punch.

"Severus, this has gone far enough!" Minerva snapped.

"Fred, George," Remus said. They nodded and vanished into the crowd; a minute later they were flying off the ground, landing like cats on tables stuck to the wall on either side of the room.

Draco twisted like an eel in Harry's grip, dodged a second blow, planted his feet in Harry's stomach and shoved. They both fell, and neither of them managed to get up straight away. Harry recovered first and aimed a curse at Draco; Draco rolled away just in time, and Harry's curse hit the stone where he'd been, ripping a gouge a yard long in the floor and sending rubble flying everywhere.

"Harry, stop!" Remus shouted in desperation. The twins were watching intently, wands aimed, ready to launch stunning spells the moment the barrier weakened or fell. Out of the corner of his eye, Remus saw that Neville had drawn his wand as well, looking for an opening with that hopeless-yet-determined look he got; Pansy was clinging tightly to his other hand, taking awkward, left-handed aim with her own wand and unable to cast without hitting one of the students.

"Students, return to your dormitories immediately," Severus' Sonorus-enhanced voice boomed through the Great Hall. "Prefects, see to it that everyone gets there. Anyone still in this room in thirty seconds will have detention for the rest of the school year."

Draco didn't quite dodge a hex that slashed down the front of his arm, cutting his sleeve and drawing blood; Harry, in return, nearly didn't get out of the way of a focused Incendio that blistered the side of his neck and burned away the hair behind it. His return hex made Draco double over, choking a spray of blood out onto the floor.

"Oh my God, what are they doing?" Minerva sounded frantic, and Remus couldn't blame her.

Harry raised his arms in an instinctive defensive move, and the bones in his left forearm visibly shattered.

Severus pointed his wand at the doors to the Great Hall and dragged them closed. "Filius! Adrienne! Take down that barrier, or at least weaken it!"

Draco slammed back against the barrier, bright scarlet blooming on the front of his shirt, and slid down hard to his hands and knees. Harry raised his wand again.

"Potter!" Severus shouted, his still-enhanced voice nearly shaking the tables, just as Adrienne and Filius collapsed the barrier. For a moment Remus thought that Harry had managed not to hear him anyway; then he blinked, looked around, went white, and sank to his knees. Draco was already curled into a ball on the floor, breathing in shallow pants, surrounded by a shield that a third-year could have broken through.

Severus ended the Sonorus spell, glaring down at Harry and Draco with a barely-controlled rage that Remus hadn't seen in him in years. Fred and George were kneeling by Harry, healing his forearm; Severus strode down to the cleared floor, grabbed Draco by the back of the collar, hauled him to his feet, and gave him a shove that nearly knocked him down again.

"Get up, you stupid boy!" he snarled.

"Severus Snape!" Minerva roared. "Look at him, he's hurt!"

"He can damned well stand up under it, because it was his own fault," Severus snapped. "Minerva, go tell Poppy that these two idiots will be coming to the hospital wing - after I'm done with them."

Minerva reached out and caught Pansy's arm as Pansy hurried past her on the way down to Draco. "Come along, Miss Parkinson," she said briskly. "I assume you still want to have some respect for Mr. Malfoy remaining by the end of today, so I suggest we forego the dubious pleasure of watching Severus give them weekend detention with Argus for the rest of their natural lives. You can come with me to the hospital wing and help Poppy get things ready."

Pansy hesitated, looking down at Draco, who nodded. Her mouth firmed in an expression that strongly suggested that Severus was going to be the least of Draco's reckonings; then she turned and swept out after Minerva through the door behind the dais, pointedly refraining from slamming it behind her.

Harry stood up painfully, braced between the twins. Draco pushed his hair back out of his face and swayed on his feet. Remus hurried down from the dais and caught him around the waist, settling Draco's arm over his shoulders and trying not to wince as Draco leaned a little too much weight on him. For a moment he thought the boy was going to faint; then Draco pushed away, balancing shakily with Neville hovering next to him making vague hand-wringing gestures.

"I'm all right," he said, lying so blatantly that if Minerva were still here she'd have washed his mouth out with soap. "Severus is right. It was my own fault." The look he aimed at Harry suggested rather clearly that he was perfectly willing to share the blame, however.

"Back into the hall, both of you," Severus snapped. "We're not going to have this conversation where any of the students can hear."

Remus went to prop Draco up again. "I don't care whose fault it is," he said firmly when Draco began to protest. "You can't make it out to the hallway under your own steam. In fact, I'm not sure you can get out there under your steam and mine both, but let's try it, shall we?"

Draco closed his eyes in resignation and let Remus maneuver him out the door.

 

Hurting over every inch of his body, Harry pulled a little away from the twins and watched Draco move away from Remus and Neville. He couldn't decide whether he should be more distracted by the increasingly intense flashes of pain, worried about how deep in the shit they were, or furious with Draco, so he wound up with a bewildering mix of all of them.

"One of you," Severus said, dangerously quietly, "had better have an extremely good explanation for that little display."

Harry and Draco glared at each other.

"No, I didn't say to start it up again out here. I said to explain yourselves, and I strongly suggest that you get started."

"Things just got a bit out of hand," Harry said between his teeth, still glaring at Draco.

"And how, Mr. Potter, did they get that far out of hand?" Severus asked, still too quietly.

"Severus, maybe they should just go to the hospital wing," Remus said.

"It got that far out of hand because bloody Potter still can't control his temper," Draco snapped, and a sudden flare of rage pushed pain and Severus right out of Harry's head.

"I can't?" he snapped. "I don't recall you making any move to stop the duel!"

"I was -" Draco's breath caught and he almost doubled over, clutching his ribs. He was deathly pale, and Harry was so torn between wanting to hold him and wanting to beat the living fuck out of him for throwing Harry's own sexuality back in his face to win a duel that he couldn't have moved if Voldemort had popped out of thin air in front of him.

"I was a bit fucking occupied, Potter, what with you throwing slashing hexes at me and all!"

Oh, that was bloody rich. "Malfoy, you're the one who -"

"Did I not say," Severus interrupted, "that I had had enough of this? I'm sorry, that was a dreadful oversight on my part. Allow me to say it now. I have had enough of this."

"Maybe that's a skill you should teach Malfoy, knowing when he's had enough," Harry snapped. He'd meant the duel, but the look in Draco's eyes told him that he'd taken it entirely differently.

"Is that so, Potter?" he spat. "Funny, I rather think I had enough of duelling you the first time. It seems a bit common, not to mention pointless. I've had better."

Harry had slammed Draco back into the wall before he even realized he was moving, pinning him there with the weight of his own body, fully intending to break his jaw to match his nose; rage, hurt, and betrayal coalesced in a red mist in his head until all he could think was that if Malfoy had forgot which of them had spent the night begging for more cock up his arse, then maybe he fucking well needed to be reminded. Barely aware of what he was doing, Harry dove forward.

His mouth was a fraction of an inch above Draco's when a steely grip took hold of his collar and yanked, sending him tumbling head over heels to land on his back in the middle of the hallway ten feet from Draco. An Expelliarmus hit his wand hand before he could block it, sending his wand flying into Snape's grip. Shaking, Harry looked up at Snape - then looked away, lowering his eyes.

"Don't think I don't know what this is about," Snape said in a voice that could have flash-frozen the Whomping Willow. "I should have castrated both of you years ago."

Fred and George winced.

"In all my years of teaching mentally deficient adolescents with rampaging hormones, I have never seen anyone's intelligence, judgment, and experience so utterly overridden by what was happening in their trousers. You're a disgrace, the pair of you," Snape told them. "Let me make very clear that you will settle this once and for all between you, and you will do it within the next twenty-four hours, or one of you will leave."

"I'll go," Draco said quietly, rubbing at his neck and not looking at Harry.

"Draco!" Harry protested, unable to stop himself.

"I'll have to leave anyway, Severus, you know that," Draco said; for once he didn't sound cool and collected, only defeated.

"No, you bloody won't!" Harry told him, getting to his feet.

"Potter, shut the fuck up!" Snape roared, stunning everyone in the hallway to absolute silence as effectively as a wide-field Stupefy. "Draco, go to the infirmary. If I hear one more word out of you, you're going to have to go there on a stretcher."

Draco pushed away from the wall, wavered, and steadied himself against it. Fred and George glanced at each other, made identical resigned faces, and moved forward to brace him from either side.

"Come along, Malfoy," Fred said sternly as Draco flinched away with a look of weary distaste. "Don't make us stun you and carry you there."

George leaned over and whispered something into Draco's ear. Draco went still for a minute, clearly arguing with himself; then he sighed, nodded, and let George slide under his arm and hoist him more or less upright.

When the twins and Draco were around the corner and out of sight, it suddenly became rather urgently clear to Harry that his own legs weren't doing a very good job of supporting him. Wincing at the white-hot stabs of pain from seemingly everywhere in his body, he slid down the wall, managing to stay sitting upright instead of curling up on the floor like he really wanted to.

His wand rolled toward him and landed by his feet. Harry picked it up, clumsy with his hands shaking, and stuck it in his pocket.

Snape sighed. "Potter, have you any idea what you've done?" he asked tiredly.

Harry looked silently up at him.

"It would have been better for him if you'd left him with Lucius," Snape said, and Harry flinched. "Lupin, get him out of my sight. I suggest the hospital wing, but keep him away from Draco."

Harry rubbed a hand across his forehead as Snape's footsteps receded. A hand moved into his field of vision and he looked up to see Remus looking down at him, kind but exasperated.

"Can you stand, Harry?"

"He didn't mean it, did he?" Harry whispered, almost hoping he'd said it too quietly for Remus to hear.

"Severus? I'm sure he won't once he calms down a bit. Come along, now, you're looking dreadful."

Neville was hovering in the direction of the hospital wing. "Remus, do you need me to -"

"No, I rather suspect you ought to go rescue Draco from his fiancée. She looked like she wouldn't be averse to knocking some sense into him, and the boy's in enough pain as it is," Remus said. Harry flinched, suddenly feeling uncomfortably guilty. "Harry? Can you stand?"

"Has Snape ever even said 'fuck' before?" Harry asked as he took Remus' hand and climbed painfully to his feet. Neville shot him a rueful smile and headed after Draco and the twins.

Remus eased Harry's arm around his shoulders. Mindful of Remus' bad hip, Harry tried not to lean too heavily on him. "Oh, dear. It's a good thing his temper has mellowed a bit since we were at school; you'd be surprised what he used to say when he really got going."

Harry laughed, then winced and wished he hadn't. "You know, as many times as I've seen him lose his temper, that's still hard to imagine."

Remus made a thoughtful humming sound. "There was a boy in our year - Aidan Flickwood, Slytherin, terribly competitive but not terribly bright. He used to make tiny inkbombs and throw them onto other people's notes just before the end of class. Well, one day during potions we were making - oh, I can't remember now what it was, something terribly complicated - and Severus had finished far in advance of the rest of us, as usual. There he sat, looking terribly smug; but, sadly, not looking terribly smug in the right direction. Aidan came up behind him, pretended to trip, and dumped an entire jar of grindylow hearts right into Severus' cauldron."

"Ouch," Harry said, mostly talking about the grindylow hearts.

"I have never, ever been privileged to see a potion explode that spectacularly," Remus told him. "It turned a ghastly burnt yellow color and shot out of the cauldron straight up to the ceiling, and it just kept shooting out, gallons more potion than the cauldron should have held. Then it started spreading along the ceiling and raining down on the rest of us - if your father hadn't already had his wand out and been damn quick off the mark besides, all of us and your mother too would have spent the weekend in the hospital wing with everyone else in the class. The whole room smelled like sulfur and the lip of Severus' cauldron started shooting off sparks."

"Wow."

"Well, there the five of us sat, crammed underneath a potions bench that your father had shielded like a battleship and watching toxic yellowish-brown goop rain down all over our classmates. We could see Severus from where we were, just. He looked at Aidan and took in a huge breath; Sirius clapped his hands over your mother's ears, as if it would have done any good, and Severus went off like he'd had a Sonorus spell cast on him and was breathing through gills. By the time he was done he'd insulted every part of Aidan's body from head to toe, dragged every skeleton out of the Flickwood closet for six generations back, listed a good dozen reasons why not one member of Aidan's family was suited for anything but being ground into fertilizer - with an interesting excursus into the reasons they wouldn't be adequate for use in vivisection - and cursed every male descendant of Aidan's blood to have a two-inch-long penis and every female descendant to be born with a half-ingested twin. Sirius was awestruck."

Harry was a bit awestruck too.

"Anyway, 'fuck' and similar words featured prominently in that tirade, so yes, he has certainly used them. It just rather doesn't seem like he ought to."

The world swam around Harry suddenly and he stopped in his tracks, closing his eyes and swallowing. "Remus, I - can we - "

"Wingardium Leviosa," Remus said briskly, let Harry's feet drift a few inches off the ground, and tugged him along. "I'm sorry, Harry, but I really do think we should get you to Madam Pomfrey as soon as possible. Those curses Draco was throwing at you weren't ones you can afford to let go untended."

"Right," Harry said faintly, trying to figure out if it was worse having his eyes open or closed.

"Harry," Remus said. "What did happen?"

Open, definitely. Except that when his eyes were closed he didn't have anything to distract him from the pain shooting through the rest of his body. He wondered if one of his internal organs had been liquified; it rather felt like it. "I don't know," he said wearily. "I just… we've always been so competitive, even worse with each other than we were with anyone else, and now things are so - I lost my temper, that's all. I don't even remember how or why now."

"Well, you lost it in a rather spectacular way," Remus muttered. "You know, don't you, that Severus is right - you and Draco are going to have to do something about this."

"I don't know what to do," Harry said miserably, and they were silent the rest of the way to the hospital wing.

Once there, Remus ended the levitation charm and set Harry gently down on his feet. Fred and George were sitting out in front of the ward, playing some variant of Exploding Snap; at Harry's entrance they put the pack away and came to examine him critically.

"All right, Harry?" George asked.

"Because you probably wouldn't be if Neville hadn't got Pansy off the ward," Fred told him. "I think she's decided that she wants to flay you alive first, then give Draco a proper ticking-off."

"How's Malfoy?" Harry asked.

The twins grimaced at each other. "Good thing he didn't go by himself," Fred said. "He got about forty feet before he passed out cold and started bleeding from the nose."

"Right gusher it was, too." George sounded impressed. "Wish the Skiving Snackboxes did half that much damage."

"We were a bit afraid he was going to die on our watch, but he'll be all right. Madam Pomfrey whisked him into the Inner Sanctum," Fred said.

"I need to sit down," Harry said faintly.

"You!"

Harry looked around, alarmed, to see Poppy bearing down on him like a warship under full sail. He took an involuntary step back and bumped into the unforgiving bulwark that was Remus and George. "Poppy, I really don't -"

"Be still!" she snapped, shooting out a Seeker-fast hand to clamp onto his ear in an iron grip.

"Ow!" Harry yowled, inadvertently and embarrassingly loudly.

"Come along, Potter," she said grimly, hauling him by the ear onto the ward. "You and Malfoy are going to help me fix each other up -"

"Wait, but Malfoy can't -"

" - and if you ever feel the urge to engage in this kind of stupidity again I will bloody well leave you to heal the Muggle way! Really, in all my years of treating the staff for ridiculous things I have never -"

"Poppy -"

" - even Severus and Remus managed to avoid tearing each other apart with hexes that certainly ought to be Unforgivables if they aren't already - sit down, Mister Malfoy!"

Draco sank back down onto the bed, looking warily at Poppy. He was shaking and white as a sheet, Harry saw with a hard-to-squelch pang of guilt, and his shirt was still stained with drying blood.

"Really, why two professors - and a Head of House, no less! - can't act like the grown men they supposedly are instead of hotheaded little boys fighting over the snitch -"

Harry stopped, overcome by a sudden, blinding wave of dizziness and nausea. He swallowed hard and squeezed his eyes closed, sweat breaking out on his forehead and palms. The world shifted unpleasantly around him as Poppy pushed him into a chair, shoved a potion into his hands, and made him choke it down. It tasted dreadful and made his mouth flood with saliva, but after a few seconds the nausea ebbed. Harry opened his eyes to find himself sitting beside Draco's bed. Draco had been watching him, but looked away as soon as Harry caught his eye.

" - you first, Mr. Malfoy, so kindly lie down and close your mouth this instant - really, when I think of the things I could be doing that are far more worthwhile than repairing two grown men who don't have enough self-control to do a simple demonstration duel without turning it into a brawl of the worst kind - Mr. Potter, you broke his nose, now get your wand out this instant and heal it while I see what kind of ghastly damage you've done to his internal organs -"

Harry fumbled his wand out of his sleeve, not daring to move with less than alacrity with Poppy in the mood she was in. "Er… I'm going to have to sit on the bed?"

"You can hang from the ceiling for all of me, just fix his nose!" Poppy snapped.

Wincing as the movement pulled unpleasantly at every muscle in his body, Harry eased out of the chair and onto the bed. Draco was watching Poppy warily, and jumped when Harry cupped his chin.

"Harry!"

"I just had to hold his head steady," Harry protested. "What's the spell?"

"Nasus emendo. I can't imagine why you don't know that, you certainly broke it efficiently enough."

"He didn't break it with a spell, he broke it with his fist," Draco muttered.

"Nasus emendo!" Harry said hastily, before Poppy could take his head off his shoulders.

"Ow!" Draco yelped as his nose straightened out again.

"Be still," Harry murmured. "Let me take care of the bruising."

Focusing as best he could with every nerve ending in his body hurting, Harry cleared away the bruises on Draco's face. This had been much easier when he'd been rested and didn't have Poppy grumbling furiously behind him, he reflected.

"All right, that's the worst of it taken care of," Poppy said. "Draco, up. Harry, on the bed."

Draco sat up and moved over as Harry, exhausted and ridiculously grateful, settled onto the bed. Fighting to stop the room from swaying, Harry watched as Draco slid off the bed - and nearly went straight onto the floor as his knees gave underneath him. Harry's arm shot out reflexively and caught Draco around the waist, pinning him to the side of the bed.

"Poppy, he can't help heal me. He can barely stand."

"I'm fine, Potter," Draco snapped.

"I'm not going to trust him with anything more complicated than salve, and he can certainly manage that," Poppy informed Harry. "Draco, sit on the bed. Here, take this and put it on that burn on Harry's neck. You're lucky he's not a Muggle, he'd have needed skin grafts."

"What are -" Harry began, then closed his mouth firmly as Poppy glared at him. Clearly it was going to be some time before they were forgiven for this. Of course, it was going to be quite a bloody while before he forgave Draco for -

Cool, slick fingers touched his neck, feather-light, and Harry's heart jolted into his throat.

"Draco!"

"The salve's cold," Draco told Poppy, irritable and defensive.

"It's all right," Harry said, wishing that his voice didn't sound so strange. "It was cold, that's all."

"Turn your head," Draco ordered.

Harry turned his head obediently to the side, away from Draco, and closed his eyes. Draco's fingers smoothed over the burn on his neck, leaving cool, tingling relief behind them; worked down over his collarbone and onto his shoulder, easing his shirt aside, pushing the pain of the burn down into a smaller and smaller area until nothing was left of it at all. Draco's fingers left his skin and came back seconds later with the salve cleaned off to thread into the hair behind Harry's ear and pull gently downward, whispered Hungarian drawing new growth out behind Draco's hand until it curled again around Harry's neck.

Harry bit his lip and tried to shove away the memory of Draco's fingers clenched in his hair, pulling him closer and faster and more, because he was not going to get hard right here in a fucking hospital bed with Poppy Pomfrey doing vaguely unpleasant things to his spleen. Then Draco's hands were back again, rubbing a different salve into the bruising on his face, smoothing it into the cut on the side of his lip.

Draco's hands were shaking a little. Harry tried to channel the turmoil of his emotions into vindictive satisfaction, and kept his head turned away when Draco's fingers brushed accidentally across his mouth.

"All right, that's the worst of yours taken care of," Poppy said briskly, and Harry opened his eyes. "You don't want to know what I had to clean out from around your pancreas. You're just lucky it didn't take root, you and Draco both. Draco, back on the bed."

"I'm fine," Draco said sullenly, and was so obviously wrong that Harry felt another stab of guilt.

"Take this," Poppy ordered, pushing a glass of greenish liquid at Draco. Draco raised it to his nose, then jerked it sharply away.

"No," he said flatly.

Poppy drew herself up to her full height and glared down her nose at him. "Mister Malfoy, do not suppose for one minute that you are too old for me to owl your mother. Or, for that matter, your Headmaster. Drink it."

"It'll -"

"Yes. It will. So I strongly suggest that you get on the bed that Mister Potter has obligingly vacated."

"I have things to do," Draco said tightly.

"Malfoy, just take it," Harry said, suddenly unreasoningly convinced that whatever it was Draco had to do, it would be better for everyone if he didn't do it.

Draco glared at him, then eased unwillingly into the bed and drank the potion down. His eyes glazed over almost immediately, and he would have fumbled the glass if Harry hadn't caught it.

"Lie down," Poppy ordered. "You'll spend the rest of the afternoon in here. You, Harry, will fix his arms while I get one of the isolation chambers ready for you. No, you're not contagious, I just don't want the two of you on the same ward. I'll be back in a few minutes. If I see even one new bruise when I come back, I'll have both of you in quarantine until you can convince me that you're grown men, and I'll let Argus pick the décor. Understood?"

Abashed, Harry and Draco nodded.

After she'd left, Harry hesitated for a minute and then drew Draco's left arm to him and pushed up the sleeve. His forearm was covered in cuts, bruises, and burns, defense wounds. Harry took a deep breath and started healing them.

When Draco's arm was whole and unblemished again, he moved to the other side of the bed and began healing the other one. "I'm sorry," Harry said finally, breaking the silence. "I lost my temper. I didn't mean to hurt you. I was just…" Angry. Hurt. Stupid.

Draco's eyes blinked slowly open and focused, with difficulty, on Harry. "Just what?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't know. It doesn't matter. I… didn't think you'd use that against me, not to win a stupid demonstration duel, that's all."

Draco lifted an eyebrow and looked at Harry with groggy skepticism. "Potter, in case you hadn't noticed, we were well past the 'stupid demonstration duel' phase at that point, and I, unlike you, was unarmed. I wasn't trying to win a demonstration duel. I was trying to keep one of the most powerful wizards in the world from seriously injuring me before I could get my wand back and defend myself. I'm perfectly willing to fight dirty in the interests of the salvation of my own skin."

Harry paused in his healing, stricken, wanting to say I'd never hurt you and agonizingly aware that he had hurt Draco.

Draco sighed and closed his eyes. "All right, it wouldn't have got to that point if I hadn't helped push it along. I'm sorry. I lost my temper too."

"Goyle's going to crack open my head with a Quidditch bat, isn't he?" Harry asked wryly.

"We'll just have to hope I'm out of the hospital wing before he gets back," Draco said with a ghost of his usual smirk. His voice was dreamy and distant, not quite connected to reality.

Harry glanced up at him and frowned. "Back? Where is he?"

"Ow, Potter," Draco complained softly. "None of your business."

Well, that was probably true. Harry healed a burn on the outside of Draco's elbow and rolled his sleeve back down, feeling awkward in the silence. He glanced at the door, listening for Poppy's return; when he looked back Draco was asleep, limp and boneless as a rag doll under the weight of whatever Poppy had drugged him with, his hair falling in his face in a way he would never have tolerated if he were awake.

"Malfoy," Harry whispered; then, "Draco."

Draco didn't stir. His breathing was slow and heavy from the sleeping potion and probably from exhaustion as well.

Harry settled Draco's arm back down across his waist and pulled the covers up over him. Poppy was going to be back any moment… and it didn't matter, because Harry could no more stop himself from leaning down and kissing Draco than he could have stopped his own heart from beating.

Draco tasted like sleeping potion, tangy and grass-green. Harry slid a hand along the side of Draco's face and sucked softly at his lower lip, flicking his tongue out to dart along the center, tasting blood and the tingling remnants of healing magic. "Draco," he whispered, wanting, needing him to wake up.

At the sound of Poppy's footsteps in the hall outside he jolted upright, confused and miserable and rather horrified with himself. By the time she came back onto the ward he had settled into a chair by the bed, carefully not looking at Draco.

"Come on, then," she said peremptorily, but with a tone in her voice that suggested that if Harry played his cards right he might at some point be forgiven. "Let's get you settled in and dosed up as well."

Not daring to look back, Harry followed her.

 

 

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