Remus wasn't going to be able to sleep. This close to the full moon, he didn't even try. He was too restless, too tightly wound, too aware of the dark magic simmering underneath his skin; too aware, period, and his body didn't quite seem to fit him right. The need to be doing something, to be moving, was overwhelming, and even his thoughts raced ahead of him in a chaotic tumble that needed considerable willpower to calm. Even trying to sleep was a misery. He wondered sometimes what his friends had thought was wrong with him, before they found out; and remembered James, at eleven years old possessed of boundless energy and capacity for making noise, gently taking hold of Remus' shoulders and talking quietly to him as he prodded Remus back up the stairs to bed.
Anyway, it was just as well that he couldn't sleep, he reflected as he locked the door to his rooms behind him. Severus never did anything without six purposes, and he hadn't just brought Remus here to teach Defence; he'd brought him here because a Defence expert was going to be needed, badly and soon, especially with Harry and Draco gone, and Remus might as well start as he meant to go on. There were things that wanted doing that were better done at night than during the day. Still familiar with the corridors after so many years away, Remus headed toward the center of the castle, superstitiously skirting the pools of moonlight on the stone floors.
After a while they'd stopped trying to get him to go back to bed and taken turns staying up with him as he prowled restlessly around the common room; James with his Quidditch magazines, Sirius with his Zonko's catalogues and a neverending supply of Come-here-and-stick-your-finger-in-this-Moony practical jokes, Peter with his chocolate frog cards and endless curiosity about what it felt like to be a werewolf. Lily, toward the end of school, with her calming presence, the only one of them who could get him to sit down and be still. And…
"Severus," Remus said, and slowed to a stop, frowning down at the flagstones. "I'd forgot."
He'd charmed open the door to the library one night, thinking to read himself to sleep, and rather to his surprise Severus was there, curled up on a window seat reading a huge Potions text in the bright moonlight. He'd glanced up at Remus and then back down, uninterested; and after a couple of abortive attempts at finding a book, Remus had climbed onto a table and begun walking along the very edge, arms held out at his sides for balance.
You're going to fall, Severus had said; for once not sneering or whining or arguing, only commenting on something of no more than mild interest.
All the way down, Remus had agreed.
Then for God's sake do it with grace, Severus had said, not looking up from his book, and neither of them had spoken again.
Remus shook his head a little and started walking again. There were too many things to do to get drawn back into nostalgia; too many things, and too few people to do them. He directed a moment's exasperation at Harry for running off like that, but couldn't hold onto the feeling; it was such a jamesandsirius thing to do, and when someone was pulling a jamesandsirius it was better to view it with indulgence and patience. They infallibly failed to understand why one thought they'd done something wrong - or, at best, thought that if they explained often and earnestly enough, one would come around to their way of thinking eventually.
Draco Malfoy. He hoped that didn't end badly. Harry was all that was left of James and Lily; as a child he'd stirred in Remus the vague urge to carry him around by the scruff of the neck and cuff him in the muzzle when he did something wrong, as a man he was a good friend, and Remus didn't want to see him hurt. Odd to think that if anyone on Earth had the ability to tear Harry's heart out of his chest it was Draco Malfoy, but the two of them had never done anything by half measures.
Deep in thought, he made his way to a door near the end of a long corridor, opened it, and went in, blinking in the sudden flood of moonlight.
Unused as the bathroom was, the house elves still kept fresh soap in the sinks; Remus thought about Transfiguring some candles, and didn't bother. "Myrtle," he called.
Silence, but a thick, waiting silence, and Remus was being watched.
"I know you're there, Myrtle," he said calmly. "Come out now."
There was a splash of water from one of the toilets and Myrtle floated sullenly out to hover in front of him, looking like she was about to lose House points for some terribly unfair reason. "If you're just here to make fun of me, never mind," she snapped. "People make fun of me all the time. They think I can't hear them, but I do, I hear them outside whispering to each other and daring each other to go in and telling each other 'Oh, it's nobody, it's just stupid old Moaning Myrtle, don't mind her at all -'"
Remus shook his head and tutted in the soothing manner that he'd found brought children down from incipient hysteria faster than a tranquilizing spell. "I'm not here to make fun of you, Myrtle. I just want to talk."
"Why do you want to talk to me?" she asked, not yet ready to give up her anger. "I don't know you."
"Yes, you do. Or we met a few times, anyway. I'm Remus Lupin."
She eyed him narrowly, drifting up a little to look at him from eye level. The last time he'd seen her, he'd thought her almost grown up, like him. She wasn't. She was a little girl. "Remus Lupin," she said slowly. "I know him. He's that boy who's a werewolf. You're a grown-up, and you look like a professor."
"It's been a long time since we saw each other last," he told her gently, and she looked a little taken aback.
"That long," she said, sounding awed and a little frightened, and Remus hid a smile.
"Yes, that long."
"How long have I been dead?" She looked as if she were considering the question for the first time.
"Quite a while. More than sixty years. Does it seem like a long time?"
Myrtle drifted a little up and away, looking distressed. "Not… not when no one comes in. But they do sometimes, and sometimes I'll see a girl who looks almost grown up and think 'But when I saw her last she was only a first-year and that was just a few days ago.' You lot, you go on and forget about us and you leave us alone. I don't think it's fair."
"No," Remus agreed. "It isn't fair."
She floated toward the window and looked out, silent for a long time. "Even the trees get older," she said finally, very quietly, and where the moonlight fell on her she nearly vanished into the cold white glow. "Everything leaves us behind. I never thought about it before."
Remus was quiet, watching her.
"You shouldn't come back," she said sadly. "It makes it hard for us, when you come back."
"I know," Remus answered, and hitched up his knee so that he was half sitting on the row of sinks. "James Potter and Sirius Black are dead, you know. James has been dead for more than twenty years now, and Sirius for ten. And Peter Pettigrew, I saw him a dozen years ago and I would have passed him by in the street, he was so changed. Of course, living twelve years as a rat will do that to a man," he added dryly.
He looked absently down at his hands. The thin scar running down his left middle finger, James wouldn't have recognized that one; Sirius would have, but not the small nick on the back of his right hand. They were old scars, faded and white in the moonlight. "I didn't think I'd mind," he said thoughtfully. "I don't mind getting older, not really. But this business of me going on and everything else staying behind, I mind that. I think, you know, that being an adolescent and looking ahead to adulthood is like being a very small boy and thinking that when you grow up you'll still keep your toy soldiers lined up on a shelf in your bedroom and have your mum to make tea for you. You'll grow tall and have to shave and have your Apparating license, and everything else will stay the same. But nothing ever does, except you."
Myrtle had half turned, listening, not looking back at him.
He glanced back up and smiled ruefully. "The difference, of course, is that while I could go into a shop and buy toy soldiers if I wanted, I can't buy James and Sirius and Peter back. All I can do is watch James' son grow up and put away his toy soldiers; that, and kill Peter when the time comes. Everything changes, and deep down I always feel I've stayed the same. Sometimes I can't tell whether I've left James and Sirius behind or they've left me behind after all."
"I didn't know it was like that for the living too," Myrtle said, sounding a little awed.
"That's because you never grew up," Remus answered gently.
"I have to tell you something," she said suddenly. "I think it's a secret, but it's not my secret, and I don't think it's a good secret - because if it were then they wouldn't be hiding it, would they? Not something like this. And I've been wanting to tell someone all day but there wasn't anyone to tell."
Remus stared at her, a little taken aback by having his purpose in coming here so effectively anticipated. "What is it, Myrtle?"
"You can't say that I told you, though, or I'll be in trouble. We're not to go outside the castle, you know."
"I won't say you told me."
Myrtle drifted over to settle cross-legged on the sinks, arranging her robes demurely around her knees. "A while ago - this isn't the secret yet - a girl came in here to brew a Polyjuice potion, and she brought two boys with her. They weren't very nice to me, even though they could have got in a lot of trouble if I'd told," she added, lapsing for a moment back into sullen resentment. For a moment, tears glimmered behind her thick glasses, and one escaped to slide down her face to her chin.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Harry had told Remus about the Polyjuice incident after a few too many Piña Coladas one summer. "Go on."
"Well, I saw one of the boys again this morning. He's grown up now but I'm almost sure it's him."
Remus frowned. "Harry Potter? Rather messy dark hair, glasses, a few inches taller than me?"
"No, I'd have known Harry again. He came back to teach here, you know," Myrtle said, sounding a little flustered. Remus got the distinct impression that if she'd been alive she would have been blushing. "The other one. He had red hair."
"Ron," Remus said, and an unpleasant feeling began to develop in his gut. "Where did you see him, Myrtle?"
"Well. Once I found out that the Chamber of Secrets was right under my bathroom - it took me a while to decide to do it, but I started going down there sometimes, just to see what's there."
Remus was rather impressed. "That's quite brave of you."
Myrtle shrugged. "Well, what can happen to me, really?" she said pragmatically. "And I like my bathroom but it gets boring sometimes. But there used to be two tunnels out. They're hard to find, and they look like they've been blocked up for hundreds of years - the living couldn't get through them, but I can. Well, I can get through one of them. The other one comes out outside the grounds wards, and I can't pass. I don't think you could either, even if it were clear. The first tunnel comes out by the lake, not too far from the gates. I don't go out there often because…" She trailed off.
"Because why?" Remus asked patiently.
"Because the sun's bright, and I'm afraid of it," she whispered, shamefaced. "I can't see myself and I'm afraid I'll disappear, or I won't be able to find myself and won't be able to get back." She tugged absently at the end of her plait.
"Anyway, I went out this morning, before dawn," she went on. "And there he was, outside the grounds - you know that little hill that goes up from the gates, the one with all the trees? He was up there, him and a woman, and they were talking. They didn't see me, but I could see them because I can see very well in the dark - and, well, his hair's a bit hard to hide, isn't it? I couldn't hear what they were saying, but after a few minutes he Apparated away but she didn't. I couldn't see her after that so I thought maybe she was hiding, watching the gates. I mean, she might have left, but I didn't see her, and I still hadn't seen her again when the sky started to get light and I had to go back inside."
"Damn," Remus said softly, and Myrtle looked a little scandalized. "Thank you, Myrtle. It's very important, what you've told me, and you've helped Harry a lot by telling it."
"Have I?" Myrtle glowed, literally, brightening ectoplasm casting shadows into the sinks.
"Yes, you have. I need to ask you to help again, though. Will you do that?"
She looked uncertain. "What do you want me to do?"
"I'm going to ask a few of the other ghosts too, but I think after what you've told me that I really need you especially. There are going to be people coming here to attack the castle. We don't know when, but we know they'll come."
"You mean Tom Riddle again," she guessed shrewdly, and Remus couldn't help but wonder just how much the ghosts managed to overhear. "I never did like him like everyone else did."
Remus sighed. "Well, you were cannier than a lot of people, then. But yes, it's him, to the extent that there's anything of Tom Riddle left in Lord Voldemort. What I need the ghosts to do is keep watch and tell me if they see anything suspicious - anyone on the grounds who doesn't belong, any of the students spending too much time around the secret passageways or messing about with the wards, any of the faculty tinkering with the school's defenses. And I especially need you to keep an eye on the Chamber of Secrets. How securely are those tunnels blocked up?"
"I don't think you could open them enough for the living to pass, not without making them collapse," she said. "But that's just what it looks like to me. If it's that important you should send someone down who knows what to look for. I'll show them where the tunnels are."
"Myrtle, you're a love," Remus told her.
Myrtle ducked her head, but not before he saw her smile. "Yes, well, don't tell anyone."
"I won't," he laughed. "I have to go now. I'll talk to Severus about sending someone down to look at the tunnels, and remember - if anyone or anything tries to get through them, come and tell me or Severus straight away."
"I will. Good night," she said, smoothing her robes over her knees; and without the sullenness and tears she was only a pretty child, transparent as glass.
Fifteen minutes later Remus stood on the front steps of the school in the shadow of the wall, hands in his pockets, deep in thought.
It was a damn shame he didn't have James' invisibility cloak. He needed to know how many Aurors were stationed around the grounds and where, and he needed to know before Harry and Draco came back - Severus said he'd given Harry a portkey, but if something happened to it they'd have to come in through the front gates or the Forest, which was probably exactly what Ron's Aurors were waiting for. Easier to wait and find their positions in a few days, with the wolf's senses, but he might not have that kind of time. Harry had been gone more than forty-eight hours. It was no use asking how Ron had known; Harry never had been very good at keeping things from his friends, though he thought he was.
Well, he'd tell Severus about the Aurors first thing in the morning. Setting that temporarily aside, he turned his attention back to the problem of making the castle secure.
Counting the Chamber, there were, at a very conservative estimate, nine ways in and out of the castle that bypassed the main wards: the Chamber, the path from the Shrieking Shack to the Whomping Willow, and seven other passageways. What he needed was assistance from someone who knew those ways inside and out and was very adept at setting unpleasant traps.
Remus grinned suddenly. Someone… or two someones. Another thing to take care of tomorrow, probably after classes. Maybe he could get out of dinner duty and pay a visit to Devon.
The moon was nearly full. He could feel it pulling at him, calling magic usually dormant to race through his blood like the tides. Standing here almost in its light, it felt as if his hair was going to stand on end with it; he felt caught between the moon and the magic it summoned like a rock battered by the sea. He reached a hand out of the shadows and watched silver light crawl across his fingers, and remembered James and Peter circling closer in the days before the full moon, suddenly fascinated in a way that unsettled Remus and rather horrified Sirius - as if they could feel it too, that pull that brought blood and nerves and senses to simmer just below some dangerously thin surface.
Remus closed his eyes, bathing his hand in moonlight, feeling the shattering waves under his skin and the slow erosion of rocks in his bones.
Now what? Harry thought gloomily, staring at the shadowy interior of the mausoleum.
Well, he wouldn't find out by sitting here. He got to his feet, shrank down his broom and tucked it into his pack, and headed down into the crypt, shining the light of his wand over the walls in a futile search for torches or lamps. The light was cold and harsh against the stone walls, and Harry shivered in the chill.
There were no names engraved on the niches holding the coffins; only dates and symbols, broken wands and upside-down torches and what looked like headless snakes, other symbols that Harry couldn't begin to guess the meaning of. Spider webs glowed in the wandlight, spun in the corners of the niches and from the edges of the caskets; a spider the size of Harry's palm sat in the middle of one, unmoving until the light fell full on it and it skittered back into the shadows. There has to be something here, Harry thought, moving slowly, shining his light over floor and ceiling as well as walls.
Halfway through the crypt he found the empty casket he'd been expecting, plain black wood with the lid shifted half off. Rotting silk still lined the inside; the latch, none too securely made to begin with, was twisted and nearly fallen off, broken from the inside by a powerful blow. Harry hoped that there weren't any other empty coffins, and wondered if the full ones weren't worse.
Jesus, these were their children, he thought, ill. Their fucking kids, and Lucius brought Draco here…
The light fell on the back wall of the crypt, illuminating a stone slab rich with carvings. Frowning, Harry moved forward to examine it. It shimmered with an invisible web of magic, a warding against dark creatures similar to the ward he'd placed on the door, and Harry's heart beat a little faster.
Words arched across the top of the slab: A porta inferni erue, Domine, animas eorum. A bloody harsh prayer for children whose only crime was being born without magic, Harry thought, mouth tightening as he moved the light downward.
Porta, yeah, okay, I get it, you bastards. Where the fuck have you taken him?
Just below his eye level were four stones that protruded an inch or so from the backing slab, set in a wide-spaced diamond; on closer examination, he saw that each one bore the sigil of one of the four Hogwarts houses. Harry frowned, uncertain - as far as he knew, no Malfoy had ever been in any House but Slytherin, and the Squibs would never have gone to Hogwarts at all.
The stones were set loosely, he saw, and he thought he recognized the spells set into them: the same sort that were cast on the bricks of the wall in the rear of the Leaky Cauldron, that would open a door if tapped in the right order. Well, there was one way to find out, and there were only four of them, it couldn't take that long to find the combination by process of elimination. Harry reached out with his wand and carefully tapped the first three stones - and then stopped with his wand hovering an inch above the fourth, his mother's brooch heating against his skin and a spell gathering underneath his hand, ready to strike if his wand came down. Cursing under his breath, Harry drew his hand back, waiting for the spells on the stones to reset themselves.
All right, so that had been a tactical error, or had nearly been one. It wouldn't be like the Malfoys to put up a lock that easily cracked anyway. Harry hoped that it didn't require the touch of a pureblood hand to open the door; he really didn't fancy having to go outside, find that vampire, and appropriate one of his limbs. But there had to be some hint somewhere about the combination - that or a way to blow the door out of its frame without triggering some sort of lethal sleeper spell. Harry brushed a thick layer of dust off the stones and the space around them, turned up the glow of his wand, and looked closer.
In the center of the stones was a Hogwarts crest carved into the door; Harry glanced at it, moved his wand downward to search the rest of the door, then stopped and moved the light back up. Underneath the crest, where it should have said Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus, it said The Houses at Hogwarts are four for the founders.
Harry frowned as the words tugged at some deep-buried memory. The Houses at Hogwarts are four for the Founders, the… It went on to list the Houses, he was almost sure; he'd heard Ginny recite it once, and seen some of the girls in his first year skipping rope to the chant. Pureblood girls; the Muggle-borns, like Harry, had probably never heard it before they started at Hogwarts, and by that time nursery rhymes had been all but left behind in the nursery, or at least not made much of in public.
His mouth twisted in a grim smile, acknowledging the cleverness. Something simple and innocuous, depending entirely on memorization, and children born to wizarding families would know it but Muggle-borns wouldn't.
Harry didn't know it.
"Son of a bitch," he whispered tightly, and closed his eyes. Gryffindor was first in the list, he was almost sure of it because he remembered being proud of its position. But they had seasons associated with them too, each of the Houses, and he couldn't remember what Gryffindor's was, and he had the vague feeling that he needed to in order to figure out which order the Houses went in. Four for the Founders, Gryffindor in… no, not the House names but their sigil-beasts, the lion. The lion in… winter? No, that was a Muggle movie, and he remembered the image of a raven in the snow. Gryffindor was first, but what season, and where was Ravenclaw? He looked at the Hogwarts crest, willing it to trigger something in his memory; but there were too many ways it could be read, and he didn't dare try another incorrect combination.
Summer, the lion in summer. That might put Ravenclaw third, but Harry wasn't sure how heavily he wanted to bet on the basis of one fleeting image. He needed the rest of the rhyme.
Christ, he couldn't fucking remember, and the harder he tried the farther it slipped away from him.
Harry snapped and slammed his fist into the wall, barely even registering the explosion of pain. "Fuck you, Malfoy," he spat between clenched teeth, not even knowing whether he was talking to Draco, Lucius, or the long-dead designer of the crypt. "I've come this goddamned far, I'm not going to be balked by a goddamned nursery rhyme any pureblood five-year-old would know!"
The light on the end of his wand flared wildly, uncontrolled, and Harry closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and fought for stillness. When he'd calmed a little, or at least covered over his anger with a veneer of something that felt like calm, he whispered, "Okay, try again. The Houses at Hogwarts are four for the Founders, the lion in summer - brave, as brave as his roar… ravens are the storehouse of lore so Ravenclaw is winter… serpents are canny and clever, fuck, are they autumn or spring? Autumn, autumn, because they're right next to Gryffindor - Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, clockwise from the top on the damned crest, please let it really be that easy..." Before he could second-guess himself again, he reached out and tapped the sigil blocks with his wand.
For a long moment nothing happened; and then the section of wall turned on its axis with a grating of stone that was ear-splitting in the silence. Harry sagged a little and let relief wash over him, then aimed the light of his wand into the passage behind it, sweeping the floor and ceiling for wards.
"The penitent man is humble before God," Harry muttered sardonically, and stepped through the doorway.
The door closed behind him. Harry let it close; the sigil stones were repeated on the inside, easy enough to get back out. The passageway was short and opened into a round room with the Malfoy crest set into the floor and, just beyond it, a pedestal. On the pedestal sat a statue of a snake, about two feet high, eyes inset with some sort of green gems that glittered malevolently in the light from Harry's wand… and suddenly he was back in the center of the maze at the Triwizard tournament, staring at the Cup, and Cedric Diggory's voice whispered You're on. Come here, into the stifling air.
Harry closed his eyes and swallowed hard. "Draco, you'd bloody well better be on the other end of this," he whispered harshly, then opened his eyes, stepped forward, and took hold of the statue.
The tug of the portkey caught him behind the solar plexus; there was a nauseating jerk and a long moment of disorientation and then he was on his hands and knees in cold, damp grass, trying not to retch. There was a patch of low shrubbery near him, and he rolled quickly into it, curling into the shadow to blink away dizziness and wipe at his mouth with the back of his hand. Portkeys, he decided, were bad when you hadn't eaten in a day and a half.
An examination of the stars overhead told him that he was south and west of Caithness now, by a fair amount but still in the British Isles; Ireland, maybe, Snape had said that the Malfoys owned land there. Harry resettled himself into a crouch and looked around him. He was on the edge of a wooded area that stretched maybe fifty yards in front of him and as far as he could see behind; before him, the trees edged a rolling grassy plain, and a good quarter of a mile away - a quarter mile under a nearly-full moon with no shadow and less cover - a large country house loomed against the sky, only a few windows glimmering with firelight. Firelight, not the steady glow of electricity; Harry was in the right place, or as close to it as he was going to be able to get. He turned and glanced behind him, whispering a spell that would let him see wards as glowing lines of criss-crossing magic.
The entire forest behind him lit up as far back as he could see, thick with webs of magic like the lair of the world's largest clan of acromantulas.
"Jesus," Harry breathed, and turned his attention back to the open sward. There were no wards right in front of him; not, at any rate, until he got closer to the mansion. Harry rummaged in his pack for his invisibility cloak, threw it around himself, and moved out of the shelter of the bushes, keeping low to the ground and keeping his wand at the ready. The cloak might make him invisible but it wouldn't stop guard dogs from catching his scent, or keep him from being heard by something with sharper ears than the average human.
At the edge of the trees he eased down against a trunk and pulled a pair of Omnioculars out of his pack, training them on the mansion. Nothing was moving around it, or nothing that he could see; but he knew in his gut that the mansion was guarded by more than just wards, and he didn't have much time to figure out what it was. He swept the area one more time, slower, zooming in to focus on trees, shadows, alcoves, and -
There. He rewound the view in the Omnioculars, zoomed in some more, and watched again to be sure. There were two people walking a patrol around the front of the lawn, and two more in the rear where the mansion backed up onto a sparse grove. Ahead of Harry and a little to the right was a good-sized ornamental garden that spilled down a slope from a brightly-lit conservatory attached to the house; a risky approach because it was the most logical one, and he couldn't see into the conservatory well enough to see what he'd have to get through once he was in, but when he zoomed in farther he could see large French doors opening into what looked like a ballroom. The wards in the garden were light and mostly around the outer edge, easily and quickly dealt with, and there were guards around it but none inside it.
Harry lowered the Omnioculars, thinking; but the fact was that it had to be nearly three in the morning by now, if he wanted to get into the mansion tonight he was going to have to move soon, and he couldn't see another way in other than the front doors. Even if he could get up to the windows without being seen - and the cloak wouldn't cover him and his broom both - they were too heavily warded to be an easy point of entry. Besides, with his luck he'd stumble right into bloody Lucius Malfoy's boudoir.
"Right," he breathed. "Gardens it is, then."
He timed the movements of the guards around the gardens, then stuffed the Omnioculars back into his pack and began the nerve-wracking trek across open, moonlit ground, keeping low and moving as fast as he dared, skirting around soft ground that might keep footprints, until he was crouched in front of a small break in the ornamental hedge. The break was out of the sightline of any of the guards toward the front and he'd waited until the woman patrolling this length was past and too far away to sense a disturbance in the wards, but he still had less than two minutes to get in and repair the wards behind him. He pulled out his wand, and suddenly realized that he recognized this particular pattern of wardings: Exorbeo to draw in whoever tripped it, Alienus to mark them the way the immune system marked a foreign body and to trigger an alarm elsewhere, Decipula to paralyze them, Elucus to cloud the mind in a hazy, dreamlike state that would prevent any sort of action to nullify the rest of the wards.
Draco. Fuck.
Well, better that than something that Harry hadn't seen him do, in assorted combinations and variations, a dozen times. Harry unwound the wards from each other and whispered them back, not disabling them, only creating an opening large enough for him to get through. When it was wide enough he ducked through and wove them carefully back together behind him, racing the approaching footsteps of the guard.
The footsteps passed without pausing, and he listened to them pass twice more before he turned his attention to the garden.
He would have expected the Malfoys to have a garden as orderly and neat-clipped as the gardens at Versailles; but this one was all but wild, flowers and greenery spilling in riotous profusion everywhere even this late in the year, late-blooming roses climbing over arches and winding up the trunks of trees, nightflowers filling the air with a heavy, drowsy scent. The sound of running water came from half a dozen places. Harry was crouched in the shadow of a slender evergreen shrub half again his own height, and the conservatory was visible only as a bright glow between branches and leaves. There were half a dozen tripwire bladewards stretched across the path in front of him between Harry's position and the bend in the path; anyone without the power to pull off the spell that made wards visible would have found themselves sawed off at the ankles very quickly.
Harry pointed his wand and lulled the wards into momentary dormancy, then began making his way toward the light, wondering dismally why defeating Evil had to involve so damn much work at miserable hours of the morning. Life would be much easier if he could just kick down a door, stun half a dozen of Lucius' stormtroopers, grab Draco, and be on his way.
There were, he saw, more defenses here than wards. That ring of mushrooms in the middle of the path was pretty, but if anyone set foot in it, it would scream like a banshee. The vines winding around those elegant torchposts were carnivorous. Harry saw too many plants he didn't recognize, and wished that Neville were with him. Neville could probably have the bloody place tamed and pointing him toward Draco inside of five minutes. Harry paused, hearing footsteps just outside the garden - more than one person this time, talking in low voices, and he thought he recognized them but couldn't match voices with names. He was far enough toward the center now that anyone on the outside would be a good twenty yards away in any direction, but he waited until they'd passed anyway, then stepped warily out into a small clearing with a quietly recirculating pond in the middle, water cascading over stones to set night-blooming flowers drifting on the surface.
He'd got halfway across the clearing when whip-thin vines lashed around his limbs and stomach with blinding speed and yanked him ten feet back through the air to smash against a thick plant stalk that filled the air with a high, shrill wail.
When he hit the plant Harry was already moving, straining against the hold of the vines to bring his wand up and around and down the throat of the mouth emitting the wail, his wrist scraping and bleeding against rows of thorns like a shark's teeth. The plant's cry gurgled and cut off, and Harry hissed, "Immobulus!" The plant froze, a score of vines still wound tightly around Harry; he just had time to think Oh fucking lovely before voices filled the garden, at least four people calling directions to each other.
Harry thought fast. His invisibility cloak still covered him, the plant was in shadow, and his wand hand was more or less free; he didn't have time to get free and slip away unnoticed without risking being caught by something else. Cursing mentally and gritting his teeth, he stayed where he was and listened to the voices coming closer.
"I thought it was more over toward the back of the house," someone called, and Gregory Goyle stepped out into the clearing. "That's where most of those bloody plants are, anyway."
"Nothing here," a woman's voice floated to them, sharp and irritated.
"Fucking things, they'll tear one of us apart one of these days, see if they don't," someone else called, with an amount of resentment in his voice that made Harry suspect that he wasn't the only one who had had a run-in with whatever these were.
"They're not supposed to," Goyle answered, glancing around the clearing. His gaze swept over Harry once, then again, not registering anything out of the ordinary either time.
Harry could see the others now, moving closer through the foliage. He shifted his grip on his wand, grasping it more securely and angling it outward toward the approaching guards.
"They're not supposed to go off in the middle of the bloody night for no reason, either. Goyle, you sure there's nothing where you are?"
"Nah, nothing over here," Goyle called back, moving just a little so that - fortuitously - he was between Harry and the others. "Maybe it was just a raccoon or something."
"Goyle, how many times do we have to tell you -" began an exasperated voice, and Harry struggled to place it - Theodore Nott?
"I know, I know," Goyle answered. "I'll finish looking over the garden. There's nothing here anyway."
"Post check in forty-five minutes," the maybe-Nott reminded Goyle, and the sound of voices and footsteps disappeared into the distance. Harry let out a tentative, soundless sigh of relief - as soon as Goyle left…
But he wasn't leaving. He wasn't looking around, either. He was studying a floating flower as big as Harry's head, with a riotous tumble of white petals that released a bittersweet scent into the night air. Fuck, Goyle, go away! Harry thought, gritting his teeth.
"Draco's da is that mad at him," Goyle said suddenly, apparently speaking to the flower, and Harry froze. "He didn't want to come back with me and Theo, y'know, and bloody Theo went and told his da that. Then Lucius sent us out of the room and him and Draco talked for a long time, and just when we started thinking it was gonna be okay they started screaming at each other - well, Draco was shouting and Lucius raised his voice for once, anyway. There was all this stuff banging around, and then all of a sudden it got quiet and Lucius called us in to take Draco to his room. I never seen Lucius raise a hand to his son before, but…"
But what, you bloody great lout? Harry thought, and gritted his teeth to keep from saying it out loud. The plant was starting to move again, tendrils tightening around him, and he didn't dare immobilize it again with Goyle standing five feet away.
"I think he really hurt Draco, and he won't let us get a doctor. He says Draco can bloody well heal on his own as best he can and maybe it'll change his mind about staying here and fighting on his da's side. I don't think Draco will, though. Once he gets set on a thing, he's set on it, and he doesn't think what his da's doing is good. He's going to keep pushing and keep arguing and next time Lucius might kill him - not meaning to, I mean, but he might. They're both too stubborn to admit the other one might be right. And I might think Draco's wrong but he's my friend and I don't want him to get killed, y'know?"
Harry took a deep breath. "All right. Where is he?"
Goyle glanced over at the plant. "So you are there. I knew you'd show up sooner or later. Is that you the plant's wrapped around?" He smiled suddenly. "Would've been funny if Theo'd found you instead of me. Harry Potter, come all this way and then tripped up by a bloody plant."
"No," Harry said between his teeth, "it wouldn't have."
Goyle snorted. "You Gryffindors, you've got no sense of humor. Keep your cloak on, I'll get you out."
He came over and pointed his wand at the nearest plant tendril, sending what looked for all the world like an electric shock arcing between his wand and the plant. The plant gave a squeal and shuddered behind Harry; that tendril whipped free, and Goyle methodically jolted away the others too. "Draco figured it out, you know, about that cloak of yours," he said conversationally. "Wasn't he furious about it, too. Ranted about it until we finally got together and made Pansy distract him."
The last tendril retracted and Harry stumbled away from the plant. "Where is he?" he asked again.
"South wing. You'd never have got there by yourself, cloak or no. Let's get a move on, then, if I'm not back for post check in forty-five minutes there'll be hell to pay. And stay close - the wards'll part for me but they'll close again pretty quick, and I can't get you out of those if you get tangled in them, or put you back together if they cut you in half."
Wishing that he thought Goyle was joking, Harry followed him silently out of the garden.
It was bloody nerve-wracking crossing the wide, well-lit lawn between the gardens and the mansion. This close, he could see sentries stationed along a shelflike terrace above the front doors, crouching in the shadows like crows; four of them that Harry could see and maybe more that he couldn't. The spell he'd cast earlier hadn't worn off yet, and he could see wards opening and closing around Goyle like gateways. This close to the mansion, the wards weren't benign; without Goyle he'd never have been able to make it through them without attracting attention, and he couldn't come back this way. Restlessly, he scanned the grounds, looking for other ways in.
He'd expected them to go up to the front doors; but halfway across the lawn Goyle changed course and headed off to the left, toward the narrow stand of trees lining the lawn. Harry swore inaudibly and headed after him, tightening his grip on his wand. If Goyle handed him over to Lucius, Harry was going to take great pleasure in damaging him in highly irreparable ways.
The sentry post was so well warded by misdirection spells that Harry nearly didn't see it until they were almost on it, and nearly didn't recognize it for what it was when he did; it was a narrow brick octagon about fifteen feet tall, rising to a point among the branches overhead like a church spire in miniature with a small stone platform where the bell tower ought to have been. Goyle slipped a hand behind his back as if he were scratching and flattened his hand palm-out, signalling Harry to stay where he was. Nervous as a cat, eyeing the trees around him for an escape route and wondering what in hell the Malfoys were that they had ever needed this kind of security, Harry stayed put and watched Goyle go up to the sentry post.
"Hoy, Montague," Goyle called.
"Lumos," someone said, and a head poked out of the spire - not the Montague they had gone to school with, Harry saw, but a thin-faced, surly-looking boy no older than Harry's NEWTs students. He wondered if the boy went to Durmstrang. "Wotcher, Goyle."
"Listen, cover my post for a bit for me, will you? I want to go in and see Draco."
"What for? Can't it wait until you're off?"
Harry tensed, but the boy didn't sound suspicious, only bored and curious.
"Yeah, but…" Goyle looked down and prodded the ground with the toe of his shoe. "I want to go check. He wasn't awake the last time I was there, and - I just have a really bad feeling, y'know?"
Montague spat and made a sign against the Evil Eye - a thing Harry had never seen anyone under the age of eighty do, but Montague did it without a trace of self-consciousness. "Yeah, I know," he said gloomily. "Go on, then, I owe you one anyway. But be back by post check or I'm not covering your arse."
"Cheeky bastard," Goyle said amiably. "Right, back in a bit."
Harry fell into step behind Goyle again as they headed back toward the mansion.
The doors were huge and solid, hard iron clearly designed to withstand anything from a well-cast Quasso to a battering ram; easier to take out the walls around them. Harry stuck close to Goyle as they climbed the steep front steps, moving in his footsteps. There were no guards in front of the door; they weren't necessary, not with the guards on the terrace above, but Harry was grateful for the lack. Unchallenged, Goyle opened the door and walked through another ward, surreptitiously waiting for Harry to clear before he turned and closed the door again.
They were standing in a large, high-ceilinged foyer that glowed in the firelight with dark wood and crystal fixtures; in the daylight it would probably have looked elegant, but lit only by the light from torches and a fireplace big enough to floo a Quidditch team, it only looked gloomy. Voices drifted into the foyer from one of the rooms opening off to the side behind French doors, voices and the light rippling of what sounded to Harry's untrained ears like a harpsichord. Goyle was still for a moment, head cocked, listening to the voices; apparently satisfied, he headed across the foyer to the broad staircase, moving as quickly as he could without looking hurried. Harry followed him up and into a long hallway, then down a side hall. There were no portraits, he noticed.
"Still there?" Goyle muttered.
"Yeah," Harry whispered back.
"That door at the end of the hall, Draco's room is past that. It's locked, and it's charmed to only open to his parents' voices."
"Then how -"
"Watch," Goyle said as they came up to the door. Sliding his wand out of his sleeve, he pointed it at the door and said "Alohamora," in Lucius Malfoy's voice.
Harry's heart bloody near leaped out of his chest, and for a moment he had frantic thoughts about Polyjuice before he noticed Goyle smiling wryly in his general direction.
"It's not so bad, you know, being stupid," Goyle said as he stowed his wand back in his sleeve and opened the door. "Nobody ever expects anything out of you. Then when you can do things, they're always surprised. Vince - Vincent Crabbe, you remember him - he can pick any lock in this world and most of 'em in the hereafter. We used to get into the seventh-years' trunks when we were first-years and hang their underwear up in the common room." He closed the door securely after them.
Harry caught his arm, watching Goyle blink in surprise as a disembodied hand clutched him. "Goyle. How did you know I was coming?"
"Draco left a note, didn't he? Theo didn't know that was what he was doing or he'd have put a stop to it, but I saw him fold it up. I tore its head off, too, so you'd know to look at it."
"Was that his blood on it?"
"Yeah," Goyle said grimly. "Theo split Draco's lip when he said he wasn't going. I gave him a good thrashing for it later, too, the fucking wanker. Draco said you wouldn't come, that you and Pansy would figure out the note and tell Snape where he was and leave it at that, but I knew better. Bloody Gryffindors, you're always doing things like this."
Harry drew his hand back. "Thank you," he said quietly.
Goyle waved him away, abashed. "Come on. There's a light under his door; maybe he's awake."
There were two doors set across from each other toward the middle of the hallway; Goyle went to the one on the left and tapped softly.
"Come in," Draco called. His voice was thin and strained, but he was conscious, a thing Harry was starting to be grateful for.
Goyle opened the door, letting Harry move into the room past him. Draco was standing by the window, across a bedroom easily three times the size of his room at school; standing too still, holding himself at too awkward an angle, looking drawn and pale and awful. "Goyle, it's the middle of the night. Is something wrong?"
"Nothing wrong, boss. Brought you a present, that's all." He reached out a hand, found Harry, and tugged on the invisibility cloak, sending it spilling down Harry's back onto the floor.
Draco's face went blank. "Potter," he said in a strangled voice. "Oh my God. Tell me you didn't come here by yourself."
"Stay here and keep an eye on things," Harry told Goyle, then stuffed his invisibility cloak back into his pack and went over to examine Draco. A quick glance was enough to convince him that Draco wasn't currently in any shape to go anywhere.
"On the bed, Malfoy," he ordered.
"Really, Potter, right in front of Goyle?" Draco said dryly, but the sting was rather taken out of his mockery when he winced and moved an arm as though he would have wrapped it around his ribs if they weren't too sore.
"Do as I say. We don't have time to argue. It'll be light in a couple of hours and then we'll be screwed."
"You're screwed regardless," Draco informed him, but let himself be helped over to the bed and eased down on top of the coverlet anyway. "Bloody hell, Potter, what were you thinking? This place is a fortress. You might have been lucky enough to get in but you'll never get back out; that portkey in the crypt only goes one way."
"Look. You left me a note with some goddamned riddle about where your family buries their sins -"
" - which you could have found the answer to by asking Pansy -"
" - which Pansy did not bloody know the answer to, clearly not being as steeped in Malfoy family history as you think she ought to be," Harry told him, and Draco paled a little. "You damn near outsmarted yourself there, Malfoy. I'm not even going to tell you what I had to go through to figure it out. But the point is that you can't just leave something like that on a goddamned blood-smeared headless origami crane and not expect me to come after you."
"And leave Severus with no one to cover three courses, and sow even more panic amongst the students when not one but two of their teachers vanish, so you could come and rescue someone you've never liked from his own father? Yes, Potter, I bloody well could!"
"Told you so," Goyle said mildly, and Draco shot him a glare.
"Then you should have known better," Harry said quietly, and sat down on the bed beside Draco. "Here, let me take a look at you, maybe I can fix some of this before we go."
He reached for the fastenings of Draco's robes, then froze as Draco caught hold of his hands. "I'm not going anywhere," Draco said softly.
"Yes," Harry informed him, "you are."
"No, I'm actually really not," Draco answered, and there was steel in his voice now. "Look, I know what my father's planning, and if he's not talked down from it the results will be very, very bad. I can reach him, he'll listen to me, but not if I'm not here."
"How are your ribs, Malfoy?" Harry asked tersely. "Doesn't look to me like you've had much in the way of success so far."
"I've only talked to him once. He's been planning this for years, it's going to take time to get him to let go of it."
Harry was tired of arguing. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the pouch with the pocket-watch portkey. "You're coming back with me," he told Draco, grabbed hold of his wrist, and turned the bag upside-down, spilling the watch out into his hand.
Nothing happened. "Son of a bitch," he whispered.
"The house and the grounds for about a hundred yards out are warded against portkeys, and the entire property is warded against Apparating," Draco told him. "There's a very narrow band between the grounds wards and the forest wards where a portkey will operate. Take it there and try again, it should work. Just hold it in your hand and walk toward the forest wards until the portkey triggers."
Harry was tired. He was hungry. He was frustrated and his nerves had had more of a workout in the last twenty-four hours than they'd had in years, and he had now reached the limit of the extent to which he was willing to argue with Draco Malfoy. He planted a hand on either side of Draco's shoulders and leaned over him, and asked, quietly and deliberately, "What part of 'You are going back to Hogwarts with me' am I failing to convey to you, Malfoy?"
"The part where I'm supposed to believe that your wanting me to go back is more important than my keeping my father from doing something we're all likely to regret."
Harry gave a furious hiss that turned into a curse in Parseltongue halfway through and shoved against the mattress, levering himself up and off the bed. "Look. You're needed. Your students are frightened, Snape's worried, and your fiancée is bloody frantic. You remember her? Because I sure as hell do, it's more than my life is worth to go back without you."
"Snape and Pansy will understand once you've gone back and explained things to them, and Snape will know what to tell the students."
"She said you wouldn't want to come back, you know. I should have listened to her and knocked you out as soon as I walked through the door."
Draco smiled a little. "Wise woman, my Pansy."
Something twisted in Harry, and a silver candlestick flew off the mantel and clattered to the floor. "Malfoy, for fuck's sake! Your father beat you half to death. Whatever it is you're trying to tell him, he's not going to listen."
"He will," Draco said in a tone of utter, infuriating certainty. "He needs time for it to sink in."
"Time enough for him to do this again? To kill you next time?"
"He won't kill me. I'm his son. He -"
"Malfoy, I swear to God if you say he loves you I'm going to -" Harry choked, then caught himself. "Why would he do this to you?"
Draco sighed and closed his eyes, rubbing a hand over his face. "Because everyone knows you better than I do, it seems," he said wearily.
Harry blinked, feeling as though he'd been slapped. "That made no sense at all. What do I have to do with it?"
"Potter, never mind. It's nothing to do with you. You need to leave now."
"Yes, and you are coming with me," Harry said between his teeth. "Do you have anything you need to pack?"
"I am not leaving until I've talked my father out of doing what he thinks he wants to do. You can either accept that or you can stand here and rant at me all night until morning comes and someone finds you here. My suggestion is that you get out while you can, before unpleasant things befall both of us."
With frightening suddenness, Harry's frustration boiled over into rage. "Fuck, Malfoy, you don't know when to fucking quit!" he shouted. "You've never known when to quit! You lose at Quidditch, you get turned into a ferret, you get hexed into bloody oblivion, your father beats the living crap out of you, and it still doesn't fucking sink in!"
Draco's wand was suddenly in his hand, pointed straight at Harry. "Shut up, Potter," he said between clenched teeth.
"What the hell are you going to do? Hex me? Turn me over to your father?"
"You're assuming I won't do both," Draco snapped.
Harry yanked his wand out of his robes and threw it across the room to clatter against the wall. "You want to win one, Malfoy? Fine! Here I fucking am! I'm not armed, take your best shot! Turn me into whatever you bloody want, hex me unconscious, use every Unforgivable in the book, I'm right here, do it!"
"Potter, what in holy fuck are you -"
"I won't let you walk away like this!"
For a long, tense moment there was silence, and Harry's breathing was loud in his own ears. Then Malfoy's gaze turned thoughtful and he slid painfully out of bed. "Then don't," he said, coming to stand in front of Harry.
Even injured, he moved as if he were flying.
"Potter, do you understand what you are?" Draco asked softly. "You're like a force of nature. You change everything you touch, even if you don't mean to. Everything around you gets pulled into your orbit whether it wants to be or not. You change the dynamics of a room just by walking into it. You change the universe just by standing still and being who you are. It's a rather amazing thing to watch."
Harry swallowed convulsively. "I don't understand."
"You and I between us could rein in my father. Maybe I can't do it alone, but the two of us together could. The three of us together could crush Voldemort into the dirt."
Already shaking his head, Harry whispered, "I can't believe you're saying this."
"Potter, for fuck's sake, do you want to be right or do you want to win? Stand with us and Voldemort won't know what hit him. There'll be time for you and my father to settle things between you when Voldemort is gone." Draco's hand flashed out to catch Harry's arm as he tried to turn away. "Potter, listen to me. You can either fight a war on two fronts at once, standing by yourself, or you can use my family's strength to put you in a position where you cannot fucking lose. You tell me I don't know when to quit, but look in the bloody mirror - you've been floating around Hogwarts for five years like a goddamned ghost waiting for someone to tell you where to stand and look heroic, waiting for someone to use you as a figurehead because that's all you've ever known. I'm giving you the chance, I'm asking you, to stop being a pawn and fight the war you've always known you were going to have to fight, on your own terms -"
"Bullshit! You want me to fight on your father's terms. Jesus, Malfoy, do you think I don't know that your father needs me as his pawn if he's going to take on Voldemort?"
"And you need him to put paid to Voldemort and his armies before the wizarding world gets destroyed in a three-way war!"
"I don't need him!"
Draco gave him a humorless smile. "You don't need me either, Potter, and yet here you are."
Harry held Draco's gaze for a long moment before he spoke again. "Malfoy, you have two choices. You can turn me over to your father and let him kill me, which he will, because he can afford to face Voldemort without me better than he can afford to have me standing against him, or you can come back to Hogwarts with me. I've already put my life in your hands, and I'm leaving it there."
Draco's face hardened and he stepped back. "Goyle, get him out of here."
Moving forward, Harry closed the distance between them again. "That's not one of your options, Malfoy. You leave here with me or I stay here and die. I don't think you want me to die or you would have raised the alarm when I first got here."
"You won't die," Draco said contemptuously. "Not dying is what you do best. It's what you're famous -" His voice caught suddenly and he sank bonelessly to his knees, one arm tight around his ribs, his cough spraying blood onto his hand.
"Shit, Malfoy -" Harry dropped down and caught Draco in his arms, supporting him while the coughing spasm racked him. Draco stiffened but couldn't pull away, too weak and too preoccupied.
"Malfoy," Harry whispered into his hair. "Draco. Please. I've never asked you for anything, but I'm asking now. I'm begging. Your father did this to you, he'll do worse if you keep trying to balk him. You're asking me to choose between my life and yours and I can't do it. Please, I need you on my side, please just stop being so goddamned stubborn and come back with me."
Draco wasn't quite leaning against Harry, but couldn't quite sit up on his own either. Wearily he rubbed a hand over his forehead, brushing his hair out of his eyes and smearing blood on his skin. "What difference does it make to you what I do, Potter?"
From the door, Goyle sighed. "Draco, you are dumb sometimes."
"Goyle!" Draco protested.
With one more glance out into the hallway, Goyle closed the door and came to kneel beside them. "Listen, don't be mad at Potter. He's not a pureblood, is he? He doesn't know what he's asking you to do."
Harry opened his mouth, then closed it again as Goyle shot him a warning glance.
"No, I suppose he doesn't," Draco answered wearily. "But -"
"But the thing is," Goyle interrupted, picking at a loose tuft in the carpet, "I am. Pureblood, I mean."
"Goyle -"
"Potter isn't going to help you with your da," Goyle said, cutting Malfoy off ruthlessly. "And you can't fix this by yourself. And he's right - you'll stay here and you'll keep trying and you'll piss your da off until he does something really bad. I never asked you for anything either, Draco, but I'm asking you for this. Go with Potter."
Harry glanced down at Malfoy, prepared for a peremptory dismissal, and instead saw defeat and misery in every line of Draco's body.
"God damn it, Greg," Draco said wretchedly.
"How long've we been friends, you and me and Vince? And now Vince and his family are off with Voldemort. Me and my family are here. If you go back to Hogwarts, that'll be one of us on each side ready to pull the other two out of the soup. It just makes sense to have the smartest and richest one of us on the side most likely to win."
Dear God, I guess Goyle was in Slytherin for a reason after all, Harry thought, bemused.
"What makes you think Potter's side is going to win?" Draco asked caustically.
Goyle looked up at Harry. "It better," he said grimly. "'Cause I don't know if me or Vince either one have enough favors to call in to haul a Malfoy's arse out of the fire, not yet."
The Draco Malfoy Harry had thought he knew wouldn't have deserved something this deep and fierce; not from Goyle, not from Pansy, not from his parents. And he couldn't think about that right now, because he was too on edge as it was and there was no time. "We have to go, Draco," he said, and Draco eyed him narrowly.
"Fuck. For now," Draco said, and Goyle patted him on the knee.
"There you go," he said encouragingly. "Come back when your da's had a chance to cool down."
Harry helped Draco to his feet. "All right, sit down for a minute on the bed and I'll see what I can do about a quick painkiller, at least."
"That," Draco said, wincing, "would be helpful. Greg, can you -"
He paused for a minute, flinching away from a twinge of pain in his side, and in that silence the sound of the hall door closing was as clear as a firecracker.
Harry dove for his pack and wrapped it and him both in his invisibility cloak; when he looked back, Goyle had vanished into thin air and Draco was sitting on his bed. There was a quiet knock at the door, and Harry thought, Please, please, not Lucius.
"Come in," Draco called before Harry could summon his wand back.
The door opened, and Harry breathed a sigh of relief - it was Narcissa, looking barely older than she had the last time he'd seen her, with her dark flowing robes and hair spilling unbound to the middle of her back. With a small, tired smile, she came to sit beside Draco on the bed.
"Hi, Mum," Draco said, and the tone of his voice snapped Harry to attention. Draco was looking at his mother as if he were trying to memorize her every feature, as if…
As if he might not see her again.
"Your father's still furious," she said, and her voice wasn't what Harry would have thought - it was gentle, a little sad, nothing like Molly's voice but a mother's nonetheless.
"I thought he might be."
"Give him another day or two. You know he can never stay angry with you."
"I think he might this time, Mum," Draco said softly.
"He won't tell me what you said. It must have been awful," she said a little sternly.
Draco gave a small, miserable laugh. "I didn't think it was. You're angry with me too, aren't you?"
Harry closed his eyes, trying to rid himself of the memory of the photographs in Draco's trunk.
"No, love," Narcissa sighed. "I just wish that one or the other of you would be a little less stubborn. And your father will be lucky if I don't put ground glass in his food," she added in a voice that was suddenly cold enough to flash-freeze a giant.
Draco gave an unhappy wince. "Don't do that. The house elves will never be able to get the blood out of the tablecloth and they'll be ironing their fingers for weeks." He picked up his wand and pointed it at the dressing table. "Accio brush."
Narcissa turned and moved back a little toward Draco; he settled more comfortably on the bed and began to brush her hair, an act that had the feeling of a small ritual. Narcissa was facing Harry now, and he saw with a sinking heart that she looked stricken for a minute before she recovered her composure. Stupid to think that he'd be able to read Draco better than Narcissa could; if Harry had seen Draco saying goodbye to the mother he clearly adored, Narcissa probably saw it the minute she came in the door. Harry was a little in awe of the strength that enabled her to let Draco pretend there was nothing wrong for just a while longer.
Harry was so used to thinking of Draco as Lucius' son, and forgetting that he was also Narcissa's.
Draco lifted a strand of hair from his mother's temple and drew his fingers down it, "Increti," he said; and the strand curled behind his hand, falling into a ringlet when he let it go.
Narcissa smiled and ran the cool linen of Draco's coverlet through her fingers. "I love the magic you learned in Budapest. I wish you'd had time to teach me more of it."
"So do I," Draco whispered, and Harry heard his voice come perilously close to breaking.
Harry looked down, away from Draco and his mother, and squeezed his eyes closed. God, how he'd hoped never to feel this kind of crushing guilt again.
We need him. Hogwarts needs him. Our side needs him.
Take what you want and pay for it, says God.
Oh, Christ, how he hated himself right now.
"Here, let me do yours now," Narcissa said, and Harry opened his eyes again involuntarily. Narcissa was running the brush through Draco's hair, angling around his head with the ease of long practice. The two of them sat in companionable silence until she pronounced him presentable in a voice that only wavered a little, and set the brush down.
"Are you all right?" she asked, touching his cheek.
Draco smiled and covered her hand with his. "He had his reasons. It'll be all right."
Narcissa leaned her forehead against Draco's. "I love you, my dragon," she whispered. "No matter what decisions you make. Your father and I will always love you."
"I love you too, Mum," Draco answered, and the hopelessness in his voice hit Harry harder than tears would have.
Narcissa took a deep breath and kissed Draco lightly on the forehead. "Well. It's late. You need sleep and I need to get back downstairs and keep Aunt Iphegenia out of the sherry."
"Dear God, shouldn't she be in bed? She's ninety-five years old."
"Darling, she's never been to bed before five in the morning in her life. She says she keeps watch. I don't dare ask her what she's watching for." Narcissa rose, clinging to Draco's hand for a moment before their clasped fingers fell apart. After so slight a hesitation that Harry wondered if he'd imagined it, she headed for the door - and then stopped, eyes fixed on the floor by the wardrobe.
Harry followed her gaze and his heart nearly stopped. She was staring straight at his wand. Oh, we are so screwed, he thought dismally, and could do nothing but wait and hope that things wouldn't go as pear-shaped as he feared.
"I won't ask if you understand the gift I'm giving you," she said finally, and her voice was icy now, no longer directed at Draco. "But I will expect you to take more care with my son's life than you would with your own."
Harry sighed. Bloody invisibility cloak, it wasn't doing him much good tonight. He shrugged it off and stood. "I will," he told her.
Narcissa's eyes closed for just a second. "You. I might have known."
"I'll keep him safe," Harry said, because it was important that she believe it.
Her eyes, as grey as her son's, were unreadable; after a long moment of holding Harry's gaze, she turned away. "The wards are weakest to the southeast. Keep off the ground if you can."
She left without another word, closing the door behind her, and Harry was shaking.
