: Astarte Noir, Part Two

Notes:

Hey all! As I warned, chapters will be coming out later in the day for this book. Sorry I can't give an exact time, though they should usually be out before midnight, two days after the last chapter. This time, it will be three days. Sorry! :)

Anyway, thanks for reading, and please enjoy Astarte Noir, Part 2 of 3!

PS- is AO3 acting up for anyone else? It's been very recalcitrant today :(

Chapter Text

"Who are you, Daniel Shaw?"

The world changed from the Hogwarts Great Hall to one of its many hallways. This one looked much like the one outside Charms class, which Dorian Malfoy's complaints would soon confirm. Dorian had Dantanian stopped outside the door, holding up the flow of pupils like no one had anything better to do than listen. The other first-years were gathering around with such interest, he was probably right.

Dantanian waited until Dorian elaborated. "Who are you, 'Daniel'? Because you're not a Muggleborn. That much is for sure."

"Why do you say that?" Dantanian asked, inspecting his fingernails. A long curl of dark hair escaped its tie and fell across his face. He pushed it away absently, and Dorian watched him before answering.

"Because you've done that charm before," Dorian said haughtily. "And you are being a shameless liar, showing us all up, pretending you hadn't- no one could learn Incendio so powerfully without previous magical practice. For more than just a summer!"

Dorian's friends in the crowd nodded and made agreeing noises, enthusiastic in their resentment. It sounded as though Dantanian must have been immoderate in class, demonstrating his command over fire. It must have rubbed many wizards of more illustrious bloodlines wrong, to be 'shown up', as Dorian had at least had the grace to openly put it, by a mere quiet 'Muggleborn'. For his part, Dantanian did not seem inclined to explain that actually, in this case, Incendio as a charm might even be superfluous for him, as a blood-born pyromancer.

"It's in other classes too," Dorian proclaimed, as if this incident was just a last straw. "You have experience. It's obvious. And you don't act like a Muggleborn."

"What does a Muggleborn act like?"

Dorian didn't seem to have a good answer, but he acted like he did. "Naive, and curious. Impressed. They've never seen anything as glorious as Hogwarts. You just spend all your time in the library looking at books by yourself! Being all mysterious, like you're too good to be anyone's friend! You're weird!"

Despite the crowd of children who seemed in agreement, like some kind of high-pitched, low-stakes proto-lynch mob, Dantanian could not have seemed less intimidated. "Thank you," he said, and brushed past Dorian with a curious half-smile.

From Charms to Potions class, with the Slytherin and Ravenclaw first-years again together. The curriculum here seemed similarly unaltered from what it was a century later. Just as all wizards needed to know how to make fire, it appeared they all needed to make Herbicide Potion too, and were nearly done. Back then, even with first years, it looked like everyone brewed alone. Everyone was settled in before their cauldrons, with Lamia Periander assisting Dantanian quietly in the addition of Horklump juice to the brewed mixture, application of heat and Flobberworm mucus, and stirring and final wand-wave to complete the potion.

"Thank you," Dantanian said, and she smiled before turning to whisper with one of the Ravenclaw girls who had also completed her potion. Clearly a popular girl, Lamia, despite that remarkable name. Perhaps Lamia was more a common piece of Muggle than wizarding mythology, although the two often overlapped.

Dantanian had his own mission. With his potion successful, the lime-electric green shade quite apparent, his attention turned covertly towards the Slytherins, though through a thicket of hair, purposefully fallen to shield his face this time. He watched Dorian keenly as he joked and laughed with Slytherins around hanging on his every word, until at last he got around to adding his Horklump juice and turning the burner on. It was only meant to be medium heat. In some timeline or another, Neville Longbottom had made the mistake of more heat than that for too long, and melted his cauldron and anything on the floor within a fifteen-meter radius. Dorian watched his flame more cautiously, adjusting it to what looked the right temperature. And then, perhaps predictably, Dantanian merely blinked behind his lovely long ringlets of dark hair, and the flame swelled at once to twice its size, and went from orange to white-blue hot.

"What- help! Help help!" Dorian cried out comically, and leaped up onto his chair, doing nothing to try and control his fire. Not that it would have likely worked, with a stronger force than his hand on the dial taking it in hand now. But he might have made the attempt, rather than abandon his cauldron to melt more spectacularly than any of Neville's ever had. It sent Slytherins all about shrieking and fleeing with green poison turning thick and curdled dark at their feet, spraying out to encase nearly all of a paralyzed Herbert Burke in a quick-cooling shell of charcoal-colored goop. Most maddeningly for Burke, perhaps, was that when the Slytherin girls used their gloves to try and scrape off the shell and free him, the re-unveiling of his tie proved it had turned from green to red.

Dantanian did not gloat or crow over his victory. He just followed Periander and the other Ravenclaws out in an orderly fashion, as if the accident had nothing more to do with him than the rest of them. That facade of uninvolvement must have been broken quickly, though, and by Dantanian himself, to judge by the next memory the trail of them swirled into being.

Still in the murk and swimming lake-light of the dungeons, Dorian exited from Severus's old office- no, the current Potions professor's office, the disquietingly-named Abernathy Nott per the old-fashioned nameplate on the door. Dorian was sulking mightily as he stalked out, though a brief glimpse of a pale and rather sweaty Professor Nott showed that the rebuke had not been as one-sided as one might suppose. Then Dorian caught sight of someone waiting for him, right around the corner towards the stairs, but still in a length of dungeon labyrinth that placed him almost entirely in stone and shadow.

"Hello, Malfoy," Dantanian said, and gave again that uncanny half-smile.

Dorian took a step back reflexively, then steeled himself, squaring his shoulders and raising his jaw haughtily in a manner that could have been more convincing. "Thanks to you, I've lost thirty whole points for Slytherin! I know it was you!"

Dantanian shrugged elegantly. "You were praising my ability with fire charms. I gave you a bonus demonstration. You're welcome."

"What do you want, Mudblood?"

Dantanian looked at him thoughtfully. "That's the first time I've heard you use that term. Not like the other Slytherins, they say it all the time. But from you, is that slur reserved just for me?"

"And that's the most consecutive sentences I've ever heard you speak," Dorian retorted. "No, as a matter of fact, I have no issue with the sentiment behind the term, only the sound of it. I prefer to speak more elegantly, and both mud and blood are objects of a coarseness I prefer to keep out of my life and verbiage." The corner of Dantanian's lip twitched slightly, before he seemed to remember he was there to be menacing. "I don't have any quarrel with Muggleborns, either. I don't wish any quarrel with anyone, I have far more to lose than anyone else would with-"

"That's certainly true," Dantanian said quietly, and his thick-lashed dark eyes looked suddenly more like Bellatrix Lestrange's in their stare.

"Everyone is perfectly fine with me," Dorian proclaimed, stretching out his arm magnanimously like an emperor granting pardons, "To live their lives, as long as they are honest about their place in the world, and show the proper respect to their betters. Which is where I have found you, Daniel, to be sorely lacking- Salazar!"

Dorian's shriek echoed through the narrow hallway, echo prolonged and eerie in the sudden darkness that had prompted his cry. There were no windows or grates in this well-chosen section, the blue filtering of light from the lake only a distant thing, which meant that it was near-pitch blackness when, all as one, every torch along the walls went out. "Daniel?" Dorian gasped shakily, and then there was the sound of fingers snapping. The hall was so silent, that echoed too.

Snap. Dantanian's young face came back into focus, lit by his fingers. From them grew a lazy spiral of blue fire, almost more like mist, though it whirled tightly into a white-hot coil to hover above his palm, as if just to show it could, before dissipating to a more diffused brightness. The aristocratic features of House Black were thrown into sharp relief behind the large doll-like eyes and lips, and the softness of childhood on Dantanian's Patronus-colored face, pale as if he had cast out all the blood in himself along with the fire on his hand. The effect was only slightly ruined, by him having to twist his small neck to get his hair out of his face again.

Dorian stared breathless as Dantanian stepped once, twice forward. "Do you have something to say to me, Malfoy?" Dorian was speechless, with Dantanian's face tilted up towards his no longer impassive but contemptuous. "Now would be the time. Not in front of the others, not to make some scene to make yourself look important. If you ever find me interesting again, say what you have to say alone." He spoke with an authority only possible from practice. Perhaps he had executed a scene or two like this before, with one or two of the Muggle children whom his grandparents had said bullied him. Dantanian had said, They don't do that anymore.

Dorian seemed unable to form words, even as Dantanian waited. His silver-blue eyes were saucers on his cute young face, lips fallen half-parted, every feature written with astonishment. If not, perhaps, the kind of repulsed, bone-chilled terror that Dantanian must have intended. "You will draw no further attention to me in that manner," Dantanian finally went on, "Because I am not, in fact, interesting." Dorian's eyes registered their confusion, but only slightly, behind mesmerized fascination. "I am the least interesting student at Hogwarts, and you will not raise any suspicion otherwise. Understood?"

Dorian nodded. Dantanian bared his teeth, shark-white in the unnatural light. A large pearl-like bead of sweat ran down over Dorian's face from the proximity of fire, tracing down his cheek like a teardrop.

"Good. Because I'm normal. Maybe I'm shy, but I'm just normal and that's it," Dantanian said while letting the fire wave out in tendrils like fingers, one threatening to caress Dorian's face. "If you try and say otherwise, ever again, you'd be- the expression is playing with fire."

Dantanian snapped his fingers, and the light flew from his fingers, splintering, and reentered each of the ten torches along the hall, neatly falling into place and turning a common orange. Dorian covered his mouth to hold back another scream, and Dantanian looked very pleased with himself. "I look forward," Dantanian said more conversationally, "To us never speaking to one another again," and walked away.

Dorian would not have been Draco's ancestor, if he had not been interested in playing with fire.

30 April 1883 read the top of the newspaper on the table: still first-year. Dorian had a first-year's glee running up to Ravenclaw's table in the Great Hall and interrupting Dantanian's reading. Dantanian gave Dorian an unsurprised glare at this intrusion, no doubt intended to be baleful and menacing, but without firelight, it came off more like adorable pettishness. Dorian was unafraid to plop himself beside Dantanian and announce, "Your friend's an abomination!"

Dantanian turned to look at him, seeming more alarmed at the first part of the sentence. "I don't have any friends."

"Lamia Periander," Dorian said eagerly. "Burke's had a letter from his cousin at Beauxbatons- you know, the one in first year there with my fiancé- and after he mentioned the smartest girl in their year is a pureblood called Periander, Vivienne Burke said everyone knows the name Periander at Beauxbatons! Did you know the Perianders are exiles? That they've just come to Britain from France, and they can't go back there or they'll be killed?"

Dantanian did a poor job repressing his curiosity this time. "I know the Perianders' business. They've been doing it for generations. It's why Lamia works so hard at her studies, so she can follow in her father's footsteps. They're magical assessors and keep a menagerie. Her father does work for families in the Sacred Twenty-Eight like yours, so I had thought you wouldn't find them as objectionable as, say, a Mudblood like myself-"

"A menagerie is right," Dorian cooed smugly. "You think you know everything about your friend, don't you?" He ignored Dantanian's murmur of Not my friend. "But I know something you don't know!"

Dantanian rolled his eyes, another startlingly young expression on that world-worn face. "Of course. That's what you're here to show off and gloat about? Why are you talking to me anyway?"

The Great Hall was nearly deserted, likely a fair bit before supper, but Dorian was indeed not showing the circumspection one might expect, as the heir to House Malfoy publicly speaking to a Muggleborn in those days. "Because I know something you don't know!" he singsonged again, more lilting and smug. "I know that Lamia is going to turn into a beast!"

"Huh," Dantanian said, and returned to his newspaper. At Dorian's crushed look of disappointment, he rolled his eyes again. "What, am I expected to be shocked? It's right there in her name. A snake if it's on the nose. Can't think anyone was trying to be subtle-"

"What do you mean, her name?" Dorian asked.

Dantanian actually looked away, turning his neck around, to keep Dorian from seeing him bite his lip to hold back a smile, and actually approach a real smile.

"British pureblood education truly is superior to any all the world over," Dantanian drawled.

Dorian scrunched up his face. "Oh, so she told you, then? It's good if you're fine with it, because no one else will talk to her now. She's probably going to be a Maledictus, just like her grandmother, and slowly turn into some magical creature until she can't ever be human again-"

A soft noise came from lower down the table, where fellow Ravenclaw Lamia had been working on an essay by herself, cloak up and head down. It fell as she gathered her books and hastily walked away, exposing a face so swollen with tears it was nearly purple. Dantanian winced, then turned to give Dorian a truly contemptuous look. "I would have assumed you would have checked the immediate radius," he said icily, "Before repeating the news that's doubly ruined a girl's life, within a three-meter range of the girl herself."

"I didn't see her," Dorian called, looking genuinely guilty, and pouted down at Dantanian's discarded newspaper, as Dantanian got up and swiftly left Ravenclaw table too.

Unexpectedly, he actually followed Lamia. She stopped walking only when they were almost back to Ravenclaw, and on the last spiral staircase that led to the eagle knocker. "What do you want, Daniel?" she hissed, voice venomous but her arms wrapped around herself protectively.

Dantanian considered. "Would you mind if we spoke a bit? Alone?"

She looked wary, but less wary than she did of the prospect of actually going into the Ravenclaw common room. She followed him to the trophy room, and threw off her hood completely with miserable frustration as they settled down on the floor. Dantanian leaned against the wall, then took off her book-laden bag from her shoulder and put it aside, so the weight was no longer on her. "Lamia," Dantanian said bluntly, "What's a Maledictus?"

Her explanation was delivered at first distrustfully, stilting and cold, but she was fighting back tears by the time she admitted that it was neither certain nor uncertain whether she would end her life as human or animal, or even which kind of animal. "Reptilian, though, surely," Dantanian said, and then brightened. "Lamia, I've always thought dragons were so beautiful. Might you become a dragon?"

Lamia looked confused. "Why would you think- oh, the legend, behind my name? I hate that, it's so stupid, but it's a family name... oh, Merlin, is that why you're here, Daniel? Because you want me to turn into a dragon for you?"

Dantanian considered. "No," he said. "Well, not entirely." Lamia laughed at that, tears escaping her eyes as she huffed out a bit of amusement despite herself. "I'm curious. Your family sounds interesting. Is the curse just in your blood? And the menagerie- is it entirely of Maledictus-is-ay- I don't know the plural. Is it all your kin?"

Lamia looked more shocked, then, at his fearless inquiry, thin lips twisting up like his did, even as there were salty teardrops settling between them. "We say it's all real non-magical creatures, but that's not true. I don't know how much of the menagerie is and isn't... well, and Father's been speaking of selling the menagerie anyway..." The implications of selling their kin as magical creatures didn't seem to have occurred to her. "But the curse- I don't know. It isn't really a curse. Or if it is, it's self-inflicted."

She had the rare pleasure then of actually surprising Dantanian. "The magical assessment we do," Lamia said, wiping her eyes, "Is complex, organic. Old magic, blood-bound. Lunar magic, and flesh magic. The form we're known for requires a deep partnership with a Maledictus. And so... I know there were experiments, lots of unnatural kinds. They got our family driven out of more than just France. Especially if Grandfather experimented on the wrong person." She looked shakily gratified by Dantanian's snort of laughter. "But as long as I can remember, I've known that our family line is almost only carried on by its men. Because- because a Periander woman almost always becomes a Maledictus in the end. It's our role. Of service."

Dantanian tilted his head, nothing pitying in his gaze. "I don't know you. But you don't seem the type to enjoy that. 'Serving'."

"No," Lamia said, hands clenching to fists on her knees. "And I'm my father's only child. He can't conceive another, the doctors have tried everything. Which means that I'm the heir, and there's only cousins to carry on- our family's never deviated from the main bloodline, though, there's all these weird traditions- and someone needs to be the head of House Periander. And that person works as the assessor. To ensure we're welcome in whatever new country we land in. I want to be an assessor, like my father was. A powerful witch, who stays a powerful witch. He did a ritual when I was born, which should prevent me ever transforming. When my father dies, I'll take over for him, and work with my grandmother. She's an Augurey."

"Are you going to do dark and illegal experiments too? Like the rest of your family's done?"

"Well. If the occasion arises..."

"Because," Dantanian said calmly, "If you will, then I would very much like for you and I to be friends."

They were together again in the next memory, sitting down together at a nearly-full Ravenclaw table. Most of the children were milling around excitedly, catching up on their summers apart and running around, while a new crop of first-years waited up front nervously for another Sorting. But a second-year Dantanian and Lamia sat at the most distance available from any other students, and the students in turn gave them a wide berth, though all their stares of hostility seemed towards Lamia. Dantanian seemed unnoticed, beside a girl they clearly seemed to regard as a dangerous freak by now. That dangerous freak was currently doing the nefarious dark work of giving her friend a present, a large parcel of old newspapers.

"It took a while to get hold of all of them," Lamia complained, paging through to show Dantanian every date of the Prophet present between a range of months, mainly the start to the end of 1877 and 1878. "Wizards really are terrible at keeping records. Are you sure you won't tell me why you wanted them? We would have been seven back then..."

Dantanian smirked. "Do you want to tell me why you wanted a copy of your eponymous poem by some Muggle?" She pocketed the copy he handed her of The Poetry of John Keats. "Want to know exactly how the whole world sees your kind, is that it?"

"Shut up, weirdo," Lamia said, and Dantanian smiled.

"You shut up, freak," he said with equal fondness.

"Ha!" a voice above them proclaimed. "I knew it!"

Dorian Malfoy was, predictably, the voice. Lamia looked up at him with uncomplicated irritation at the interruption, while Dantanian's stare seemed to size Dorian up more thoroughly. "This one," Dantanian said to Lamia, as if Dorian wasn't there. "How has he gotten even taller? It's monstrous. Well, he'll likely stop growing by the end of, say, third year-"

"I," Dorian interrupted, with an air of magnificence, "Have finally figured out your secret."

Lamia leaned forward, putting her chin on her hands. "Go on, then. What's his secret?"

If Dorian had been older, or perhaps less rushed by the impending Sorting, he might have noticed the way Dantanian stiffened and looked at Lamia, in real fear that Dorian somehow had something on him. But Dorian was too busy reaching into his bag and producing a Periander family tree. "Here!" Dorian said triumphantly, unfolding a very worn and dog-eared parchment, and pointed to one of Lamia's cousins, on her uncle's side. The name Dionysus Periander, above the same birth year as Lamia, had been circled several times, then crossed out. Beneath it to replace it was written in excited red block letters, "Daniel Shaw", "Muggleborn".

This, naturally, did not provoke the reaction that Dorian had been hoping for. "You have a cousin," Dantanian said incredulously, "Called Dionysus?" Lamia wilted, reddening enough to cover her face, and Dantanian began to laugh, drawing the attention enough of those around them to make Dorian look even more sullen. "Are you serious? Lamia is one thing, but Dionysus? Are you kidding? Do your cousins own a brewery? A brothel? A sewage management facility?"

"Excuse me," Dorian said poutily, "If you notice, I've uncovered your secret, Dionysus. I know your true identity. It explains why you weren't very close to her, until she was in trouble and ostracized, and then you stopped keeping your distance-"

"Or he's just a decent person," Lamia said. "And reached out and befriended someone in need when they were at their lowest-"

"You're secret cousins!" Dorian announced, throwing his arms out majestically.

Dantanian, who seemed to feel well within his rights to laugh at both of them, slid down on the bench, clutching his stomach. "Stop it," he cackled, "I think I'm going to die. Or urinate on myself!"

Dorian's silvery eyes flashed. "If you don't admit your secret identity," he threatened grandly, "I'll tell all of Hogwarts-"

Dantanian considered. "Alright, two questions, and then we really should get settled before the Sorting. One, Dorian, what proof do you believe you have?"

Dorian shifted uncomfortably. "He was born your year! It makes sense! And your, er, names are similar-"

"Not that I wouldn't love that," Dantanian sighed, grabbing at his stomach to hold back more rounds of laughter, "Being called Dionysus. But Dionysus sounds more like Dorian than Daniel." Dantanian ran his eyes over Dorian's frame with a coolly calculated suggestiveness, before cracking up and ruining his dig at Dorian. "It certainly would- heh- suit you more! And two, Lamia! Why did you not tell me you had a cousin called Dionysus? Should I be sending grapes to France? Like Muggles writing to Father Christmas, and leaving him biscuits... Offerings? Perhaps nude sketches of myself? Does he prefer a front or back view? Can I call him Bacchus if I'm nasty?"

"Everyone back to your seats," Lamia sighed, but at least there was far more life and far less shame to her broad face than there had been the past April. "And Malfoy, if you want to make any more of your guesses about Daniel's supposed secret, you get your next one at the Entrance Feast next year. I don't think Daniel's bladder could survive any more before then."

"Neil Palmer," Dantanian said, voice in something of a daze. He picked up the newspaper in its carefully laid preserving plastic, ensured he had dislodged none of the plastic, and then took it along with himself to the furthermost corner of the library. Lamia followed out of curiosity, settling beside him where he sat at the very dregs of the History of Magic section, under tomes about fourteenth-century wizarding skirmishes in Anatolia. "Neil Palmer," he repeated, and let Lamia take the paper from him. She gave him a tense look and cast a dictation charm.

"We'll copy this down in your notebook like everything else," Lamia said, "Though it would help if you ever would just tell me what you're researching-"

"Research is over," Dantanian said blankly, staring down at his hands. His fingernails were digging into his palms, in half-made fists. "I've found what I needed. If it's true. All I need."

"Ministry Junior Liaison to France Sentenced to Life in Azkaban," Lamia read, and her hovering quill repeated the words in writing on the open page of Dantanian's notebook. There was no way to make it draw the picture, though, of the consummately ordinary-looking wizard who had been contentiously convicted- contentiously only because the extradition laws between wizarding Britain and France were still hazy. Ironically, it might well have become the job of one Mr. Neil Palmer to help resolve such contentions, had he not been the culprit. As it was, the story was buried more than a few pages deep in the paper, all facts and little editorializing.

"Mr. Neil Palmer, 31, pleaded guilty on 13 April 1878, for crimes committed 14 February of the same year in his city of assignment, Paris, France. Mr. Palmer was arrested in London, England at the British Ministry of Magic, where he turned himself in on the morning of 15 February for the murder of French citizen Astarte Noir, 31, and her son, Dantanian Noir, age unknown. Upon his confession, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement dispatched Aurors in congruence with French authorities to investigate Mr. Palmer's claims. The mutilated and dismembered bodies of Miss Noir and her son had already been discovered by Muggle authorities. A joint task-force of British and French wizards arrived in her flat and took over the case..."

"Why did you stop?" Dantanian said, eyes coming to life with a feverish glow. "What does it say? Who is Palmer? Why did they kill her? Are they sure it was him?"

"No, it's just..." Lamia flinched, not seeming to want to speak aloud the next paragraph. Dantanian took over for her.

"I would have thought," Dantanian whispered with a show of patently false bravado, "That a Periander would be made of sterner stuff." He spoke louder to take over dictation.

"Aurors discovered that the body of Miss Noir had also suffered aggravated assault of a sexual nature. Upon confrontation, Mr. Palmer confessed to the further charge of assault, as well as an assault of the same nature in September 1877. Mr. Palmer had been prosecuted in Muggle French court on invasion of privacy charges against a Miss Eloise Bourbeau. From the Muggle court, Mr. Palmer received only a fine and warning. Mr. Palmer confessed of his own volition that he had assaulted Miss Bourbeau, and used the Obliviation charm to erase the memory of the incident from the victim."

"Why are we reading this? It's terrible. And what does it have to do with-"

"Mr. Palmer claims to have only intended to commit a similar assault against Miss Noir. In the course of his invasion of her Montmartre flat and painting studio, Mr. Palmer surprised Miss Noir in bed and took her down the stairs without her wand. Upon his attempt to assault her, she physically fought him despite his possession of both of their wands. She wounded his face with her fingernails, leaving his face scarred with dramatic scratch marks. Mr. Palmer claims that Miss Noir was afraid for the safety of her sleeping son, and would not submit to his commands without- without assurances he could not give of her son's safety from him-"

"Daniel? Daniel, are you alright?" Lamia asked, alarmed, and shook Daniel's shoulder when he didn't answer. He was not crying, as the wretched hitch in his voice had suggested he might. Instead, his eyes had gone from the paper, looking nowhere in particular, unless his eyes could see out of Hogwarts and over the ocean.

"Azkaban. He's in Azkaban."

A blink of an eye and months passed, second-years turned to third-years on the cusp of puberty. Dorian Malfoy was there, again grown taller, waiting for them to stop whispering and give him attention. Lamia was still plain-faced and slump-shouldered, her dark hair more of a mess than last year, though she seemed happier altogether. The most notable was Dantanian, whom a year had made look noticeably more like his mother. Perhaps that why he was looking up towards the high table, and an unchanged Headmaster Black, with renewed wariness, before he deigned to acknowledge the heir to House Malfoy.

Eventually, Dorian got his attention, if only with what a summer of thought had delivered him. "You're not really thirteen," he said breathlessly, and Lamia looked tempted to go off somewhere else.

Dantanian frowned. "I'll be fourteen in December, if that's what you mean. I have a rather early birthday. Is that my grand secret? I'm still thirteen now."

"No!" Dorian proclaimed, somehow with full confidence in his answer. "You're not actually young at all! You're an observer- a secret observer, from, er, the Ministry or something- pretending to be young, to spy upon- the youth!"

"The long con?" Dantanian said skeptically. "What, am I just swimming in Polyjuice? Or has the Department of Mysteries developed some truly eye-popping experiments in secret? How does that work in that pretty little head, Dorian? Or is it just air up there," he teased, leaning forward with more engagement than the past year. Dorian made an outraged face, and Dantanian tossed his neck back and scoffed elegantly at him. "That doesn't even have to do with whether I'm Muggleborn anymore, you know. Why do you think there's some secret in the first place if-"

"I," Dorian said haughtily, "Am a clever and learned young man of the world. Enough to know that you..." He brandished his finger. "Are different! Strange! Exceptional! Amongst our year, amongst all the students at Hogwarts, there is something that sets you apart from all of them as- as-"

Dantanian tossed his long curls with his hand then, lowering his eyelashes to give Dorian a more mocking stare. "More attractive?"

"Yes!" Dorian exclaimed, then seemed to realize what he'd agreed to. "Or- no. Wait! I didn't mean-"

Dantanian toyed with his hair with a childish coquettishness. "If you're here to tell me how special and exceptional I am and all that, Malfoy, by all means, but for the sake of your reputation, a more prudent young man of the world might declare his feelings in a slightly less public locale-"

Dantanian watched Dorian storm off in a flushed huff. He found Lamia had indeed grown bored and wandered off to pepper an annoyed-looking Professor Nott with questions. He smiled brightly, watching her, then looked down and smiled more slightly, just to himself, a secret smile.

"You're a time traveler!" blurted Dorian, and the sudden yelp made Dantanian and Lamia start, just as the words used might make any observer of the memories take pause.

"Wait, we're still doing that game?" Lamia groaned, and looked around the Ravenclaw table. Either none of their friends were there, or the two outcasts were still yet to make any more, even by fourth year. "Give up already, Malfoy, the only extraordinary things about Daniel are his ego and his hair."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Dantanian said placidly, beginning a leisurely, unhurried inspection of fourth-year Dorian after another summer. Dorian's growth had indeed, as predicted, begun to slow some already. What was remarkable was his features, which had resolved from pointy and awkward, to high cheekbones and charisma, with skin clear as an oil painting, years and years before that would happen for a certain jealous descendant- if it ever would that dramatically. Dorian looked on the path to grow unfairly handsome enough, he might be fit to inspire the Muggle novel the name Dorian was now most famed for.

"This is not a game." Dorian glowered as Lamia. "And I don't hear a denial there. I think I've got it, haven't I! You gave yourself away last year, mentioning the Department of Mysteries, and experiments!"

Lamia and Dantanian were much like in third-year, only taller and narrower, with Dantanian having contrived to develop a much longer neck in the interim. He seemed intent on showing off that pale swan neck as much as possible, with his hair bound for the first time, more sensibly, in a single long braid down his back. The thick curls seemed liable to rebel and escape it at any moment, and there were always smaller wisps framing his face, but he seemed to have settled on a way to keep his hair out of the way as much as possible. Even if it was one his mother never seemed to have used.

"Shouldn't you be spending your summers wooing your first cousin," Dantanian commented mildly, "Rather than speculating about a perfectly ordinary, innocuous Muggleborn, of no real import to-"

"Anne and I," Dorian said loftily, "Have been engaged since before we were conceived. The custom is for us not to meet until the wedding-"

"What, to avoid the air of incest about it?" Lamia asked dubiously.

Dantanian snickered. "I hate to say it, but it seems that ship's probably already sailed-"

"I," Dorian seethed, "Am questioning you, not the other way-"

"Not a time traveler," Dantanian said nonchalantly, "And I'll expect a guess for next year better than that."

"Don't encourage him," Lamia muttered, but Dantanian leaned forward, hair falling near Dorian's face.

"I'll tell you, you know," Dantanian said with faux-friendliness. "If you ever guess the truth. I'll be honest, and say you've got it right. But you never will."

Dorian indeed looked encouraged. "Oh, you're admitting there is a secret-"

"Or," Dantanian countered, "The secret could be that there is no secret. But you'd have to use up one of your years to guess that."

It was perhaps a not altogether good thing, how much time could pass with places remaining the same. There was the Convent Coven of Ichamore, ghosts unchanged as ghosts tended to be, with their music unchanged as well, save perhaps for a bit more of a somber tinge to it. If Disney movies had existed back then, the coven would certainly not have been playing any songs from them. Instead, the enchanted ever-floating mist of snow over the ballroom palpitated and dispersed to a fugue, taking Dantanian's attention from Lamia's humorless father Hostilian Periander, and back to the silver cellos of the coven, where he stared until Hostilian was swept away to network with far more important guests than his daughter and her scandalously Muggleborn companion.

"You shouldn't have brought me," Dantanian sighed, fiddling with his tenuously-constructed fishtail braid. Lamia looked more comfortable in this rarefied pureblood air, with her fine layered opal-white robes, swan queen make-up and feather jewelry, and heavy crystal-laden make-up showing her if still not pretty, at least presentable. Dantanian did not meet that standard, to judge by the disjunction between his unadorned black robes and the majesty of the gala, with even the ice sculptures of Sphinxes seeming to lose their vacant self-importance enough to gape at his plainness. His face itself might have been a gem in some eyes, and the simplicity of his garb making his naturally striking features stand out all the more in this sea of opulence. But it merely made him a grubby pauper, like Cinderella without a fairy godmother, at Malfoy Manor.

"You should have dressed up," Lamia countered. "I don't want to be here either," she mumbled, though she seemed to enjoy the lychee nectar she was gulping enough to somewhat belie that. "I just have to be for my father. So our family looks proper."

"I know," Dantanian groaned, looking over towards Hostilian Periander, who resembled not so much Pammaque Periander as a purple wig dragging about Amycus Carrow. He managed to keep his dissatisfaction with his friend's father off his face, but it was a transparent struggle. "I know the necessity of ingratiation, with the movers and shakers of this... narrow world. And I wasn't about to let you go to something like this alone." Lamia didn't argue that assertion. They both seemed well-aware he was the only date she could ever have gotten. "I'm sorry I couldn't afford anything better to wear. You know my grandparents never-"

"I would have gotten you something, if you'd only asked," Lamia grumbled. They fell into a comfortable mode of grousing at each other, until she elbowed him and they both fell silent. The Malfoys had climbed up into view of everyone there, on a kind of stage, glittering with so much crystal or diamond or whatever expensive thing could be made to look like ice, they fit the name of Heart of Winter. From a distance, both Selene and her husband John looked generically beautiful, as did her little brother Nicholas and his wife Amelie. The sight was only shaded over by the white-clad, looming figure of the grandfather, Abraxas. The gala quieted in anticipation, but the four adults only stood there waiting.

"Which ones are his parents?" Dantanian whispered, staring up at the two couples. "The one with the dark-haired man, the Potter, right... I still don't get how that works, I know she's older than her brother, but succession is through the male line regardless- and her and Dorian's name should be Potter too-"

"Bastards, that's what," Lamia whispered, with not a hint of awareness about Dantanian's true identity. "Nicholas is Abraxas's bastard by another woman. A good pureblood woman from the Lovegoods, so they had to acknowledge him and take him in. But the talk is- at least, Father says- that when Abraxas brought Nicholas home, his wife Cordula Flint wouldn't so much as sit in the same room with him. They had a daughter and that would be it. So he engaged Selene to a Potter for a strong alliance- and, well, the Potter money- and he took and they both kept the Malfoy name. And they had a son who everyone could be happy with as the next heir. When Cordula Flint died a few years ago- young- Abraxas abdicated the succession formally to John Potter Malfoy, making him Lord Malfoy, and Dorian formally the heir."

She saw Dantanian's stunned expression. "Didn't know much of that, did you? Funny, what people in these families can get up to. Say this about the Perianders and our curses- you'll never hear about us having any bastards."

Dantanian shrugged arrogantly. "Oh, no, I'm more surprised by your characterization of Dorian as an heir everyone can be happy with."

Lamia covered her mouth not to laugh. "Well, people always seem to love him, though. And he looks the part. See?" At his parents' summons, Dorian finally mounted the stage with his family, in opal-blue crepe de chine robes that hung low enough at his throat to show off the most staggering diamond choker any of them would likely see in all their lives, a shock of brilliance even near the back of the room, diamonds at his ears and wrists and the small coronet on his head: something between true royalty, and a Patronus of an Antipodean Opaleye.

Dantanian moved forward with Lamia, closer to the stage to see the Malfoys. He stared at Dorian with frightening intensity, from the small crown of braids on his threaded with real silver, to the tight cut of an obi-like bright crimson sash that pulled his robes taut at his waist, showing off the shape of his exquisite frame. It was intent enough that he missed the beginning of the traditional blessing, by the philandering grandfather Abraxas.

"May your magic, your blood, and your loves be as pure as these snows," Selene Malfoy called out over the gathering, and Dantanian's face went whiter than snow. The crowd let out a customary murmur of agreement, as if in a religious ceremony. Lamia listened placidly, not seeming to notice Dantanian's reaction.

"May your magic, your blood, and your loves be as pure as these snows," said John Malfoy.

"May your magic, your blood, and your loves be as pure as these snows," said the pureblooded bastard, Nicholas Malfoy.

"May your magic, your blood, and your loves be as pure as these snows," said his wife Amelie Malfoy.

Dantanian's steps were already taking him out of the crowd, to the back door and out into the night. But he still heard Dorian call out, with that perfectly weighted, charming verbal deftness of his, that made the words sound to ring all the sweeter, "May your magic, your blood, and your loves be as pure as these snows!"

Dantanian walked into the gardens, out from under the terrace gardens and into the further ground ones, past roses of every color, including gold. They were as well well-kept under Selene Malfoy as Narcissa Malfoy, nearly identical, except for the flowers that Dantanian trampled, cutting through swaths of them without bothering to light the end of his wand or call up any flame. He did not seem to have any particular direction, unless it was the hill that hung high above Malfoy Manor overlooking it, or else just away.

"Toujours pur," Dantanian was whispering to himself through gritted teeth, in a rage-filled voice like a wound spouting out blood each time. "Toujours pur. Toujours putain de pur..."

The sound of Lamia's voice came through from far away, after a time, calling out for him uncertainly. But when she had no response, she must have assumed he had gone elsewhere. The small strip of light from the opened door disappeared, as she presumably went to seek him elsewhere. There was no guilt on Dantanian's face for leaving her alone, though, and perhaps there should not have been, either, to judge by the level of rage there instead. She would probably be safer anywhere else than near Dantanian at the moment. Even though- and one could easily grasp why those words would sting someone with Dantanian's unique circumstances- it was hard to understand how they could possibly have made Dantanian this angry. He cast his gaze as savagely over the flowers he trampled as if he was tempted to cast them alight.

Dantanian only stopped when he reached the edge of the Manor gardens, no small feat, and any light or music was but an indistinct flicker, against the completeness of the Christmas night and its waning moon. He sat then in the snow, with no care for his plain robes or the cold, and withdrew his wand. "My name is Dantanian Noir," he recited to himself, instead of a spell. "My mother's name was Astarte Noir. She was a painter. She was perfect..."

Then he broke off the same words he always spoke, lifted his wand, and hissed desperately out of nowhere, "Expecto patronum!"

There were no Dementors there for a Patronus to fight. Even if there had been, the sputtering of only white, uncertain light from the end of an otherwise potent-seeming wand seemed to suggest that the Dementors would have won that fight.

"Damn!" Dantanian gasped, and threw his fizzling wand to the dark ground. "Nothing? Still? Still?"

"You missed a lot when you left me at the gala," Lamia told Dantanian, as she came up behind him in the Owlery. Their faces were flushed enough, and their bodies covered in enough layers, it was definitely still cold. And the Owlery at Hogwarts could get very cold indeed, in the heart of winter. "I bet you'd be curious about some of the things I saw and you didn't."

"If you're expecting an apology, don't waste your time," Dantanian said, less cold than just absent, the form of one of the snowy owls taking shape with rapidity, especially once he put down his silver coloring pencil and began to wave his wand over the lines instead. "And if you think I could care less about what that self-important, powerless lot get up to-"

"Dorian Malfoy," Lamia delivered, with audible excitement, "Lost his virginity." She looked undaunted at Dantanian's silent reaction. "He just went off at the end of the party with them! Everyone could see! A girl and a boy! Seventh-years! Everyone at Hogwarts knows what happened!"

"In front of his family?" Dantanian asked, without expression or feeling. "With a boy?"

Lamia shrugged. "You know how some of these families in the Sacred Twenty Eight can be. With all the arranged marriages and inbreeding, it's come to be almost expected, fooling around before the marriage- mainly just for the men. As long as it doesn't end in anyone pregnant." Not in more modern experience. Social norms must have shifted since then. "For the real lords, it isn't a problem to be seen with other men like that- if you're definitely going to still do your duty, with a pureblood woman, soon enough. So with Dorian already engaged, he can pretty much do as he likes. And it sounds like he did."

Neither Dantanian's face nor his body had shifted for a long time. The owl's wings were frozen on the parchment, stopped in the middle of being moved.

"Isn't that crazy?" Lamia laughed. "A threesome with seventh-years? I bet before he's sixteen and strictly legal, he's already gone through half of Slytherin-" She stopped as abruptly as Dantanian's sketching had, when she saw Dantanian's full, telling lack of reaction. "Dantanian, you- what's wrong?"

Dantanian looked down fixedly at the sketch. "Nothing. I just think romantic tripe like that is boring. Let him be a child. It's past time I started getting better at drawing wings."

"Expecto patronum!" Lamia called, and the dark Transfiguration courtyard was suddenly lit by the flight of a swooping silver-blue bird. She had to explain to a sullen Dantanian that the creature was an Augurey.

"How long have you been able to cast a corporeal Patronus?" Dantanian whined, sulking on the cobblestone, and she hauled him up by the shoulder. "You make it look so easy..."

"Since I was eleven," Lamia said confidently. "My father started training me in it when I was nine." Dantanian scoffed at her. "I know it's unusual, but he says I'm a prodigy. And you should be able to get it, you'll be sixteen soon... we might do them in Defense anyway..."

"I'm not a prodigy," Dantanian said, and stared up at the full moon with a look of deep personal distaste.

"You are," Lamia insisted, "The spells you'd created by the time you were fourteen-"

"Tell that to my grades," Dantanian said dryly.

"If you ever tried at all," Lamia scolded, "Or even paid attention. Someday I'm going to stop writing your essays for you. And- if you can invent a spell to brand someone before you turn thirteen-"

"I'd rather just get a Patronus down," Dantanian sighed, "Than be able to invent all the spells in the world."

"Or you could bring me along when you might need one. If you'd just tell me why you want to do one so bad-"

"I have told you." Dantanian eyed his wand as if it must be defective. "The second I can make a corporeal Patronus, I'm leaving Hogwarts forever, and escaping to Azkaban-"

"Be serious." She didn't seem to remember the newspaper article they'd read in the library years ago, or at least to connect the two. After all, the newspaper article had said Dantanian Noir was dead too.

"I am," he said, and closed his eyes. "And I am trying. I think of the happiest memories I have, and clear my mind, and it's only ever these sparks. Why is it different for you?"

"What I remember," Lamia said, crossing over to stand behind him and adjust his stance, "Is when Father showed me his moonstone dagger." Dantanian gave her a slightly interested look, which became more intrigued as he continued. "You know, his ritual dagger. The moonstones are the key. They have to be true moonstones. Hyper-concentrated magic, through the form of moonlight. Compressed and compressed, nights and years of moonlight. He said it was the key to the assessments our family did-" Presumably that meant apart from turning their women to magical creature slaves. "And that he was going to start making me my own, too."

"When do you get yours?"

"I don't know," Lamia said, without any doubt. "I'm sure you'll want one yourself someday too."

She had grown to tall and formidable at fifteen, seeming to fill a large amount of the courtyard with her presence. Though her raven hair was cut short, barely reaching past her ears, it suited her more masculine build and features, far less like Keats's Lamia than Dantanian was. She and Dantanian could not have seemed more comfortable if they had been siblings, even as Dantanian 'joked' about abandoning her.

"I don't want anything," Dantanian said stubbornly, "But my own Patronus."

"Well, well, what have we here?" crowed a familiar voice, and moonlight seemed to all cluster around a halo of hair that was moonlight-colored itself, its green snake clasp, and a bronzed P badge. "Students out after curfew! A boy and a girl together, how scandalous. Do we have a violation of Hogwarts moral codes in progress?"

"Yes," Dantanian dead-panned, looking none too alarmed at the arrival of a prefect if it was this one. "You're just in time to save Lamia's virtue, Malfoy." Lamia gave him a dirty look.

"I could give you both detention right here and now," Dorian crowed. "So much detention."

"We're busy, Malfoy, you can stalk me another time," Dantanian said impatiently. "Expecto patronum!" he called, and something more erupted from the end of his wand then. But whatever creature it was, it was too indistinct and twisted upon itself to linger in the air for long.

"I am not stalking you," Dorian said indignantly, toying nervously with a diamond pendant on his neck. "I am a Hogwarts prefect, charged to keep students in their houses after curfew!" Bruises were visible along his throat and collarbones above the silver chain, what looked to be bites from some other boy or girl's amorous attentions. When Dantanian looked up, Dorian seemed to suddenly remember they were there, and tried to pull his collar tighter to hide them. But Dantanian was looking at Lamia instead, with eyes that said, Get this fool out of my practice courtyard.

"We're working on the Patronus charm," Lamia admitted. "You wouldn't give us detention for extra Defense work, would you?"

The sounds of Lamia and Dorian bickering seemed to have already turned to white noise for Dantanian, who cast another few poor attempts at a Patronus. Dorian tried to get his attention eventually, but only succeeded by physically waving his hand in Dantanian's face. "Daniel? I said, are you coming to my family's gala again this yuletide? Lamia and her father are invited again-"

"I've been trying to talk him into it," Lamia sighed, "But he had such a terrible time last time, it's pretty difficult."

"Well, that's too bad." Dorian was like the one trying to charm a Prefect into not giving him detention, not the other way around. "Because if you were to agree to come, then I might see my way to forgiving you and your secret cousin your transgressions."

"Why?" Dantanian turned to eye Dorian with more complete contempt than almost anyone could have deserved. "Why would you want a Mudblood at your pureblood party? Or someone posing as a Mudblood. Whatever you want to call it. What does it matter to you if I come back to your ugly little hovel?"

"Malfoy Manor is not an ugly little hovel-"

"You did guess this year," Lamia reminded Dorian, "That he was secretly a ghost-"

"Tell you what. You're working on the Patronus charm? If I can cast a better Patronus than you, you have to come to my party."

"You sound five years old," Dantanian grumbled, but an intrigued Lamia shamed him into accepting. He went first, concentrating with all his might, and made something that almost looked like a face show up in the air. But it dissipated quickly enough.

"Expecto patronum!" Dorian cast, and out of his wand soared a perfect silver stag. It settled on the ground to watch Dantanian, a silent sentinel.

"Better start working on your wardrobe," said a consummately unsympathetic Lamia.

Dantanian could not be said not to have made an effort. The question was whether that was a good thing. He had been virtually incognito in fourth year, remarkable only for shabbiness and the length of his hair. But his time, he proudly escorted Lamia to the top of the stairs.

The announcer called, "Lamia Adora Periander, Heir to House Periander of the Ancient Knot, and her companion, Daniel Shaw."

When they descended, they had every eye on them, and none left them anytime soon.

"They're all staring at you," Lamia whispered as they walked, and Dantanian smirked.

"Your outfit is better than last year too," he reminded her. It was, in fact, very much the same as last year, save for the addition of a few more diamonds. Apparently House Periander was having a good fiscal year.

Dantanian was something else entirely. To begin with, no one seemed to know what to make of such a plain name, attached to the one person, in a party entirely in shades of silver and white, dressed from head to gleaming toe in pitch black.

The way the staring continued even after they finished the descent, though, and caught up with Hostilian seemed to surprise Dantanian. "Why are they so astonished? You were the white swan last year. And I'm your black swan."

"Did you really think you would get much mileage, out of a reference to some Muggle ballet?"

Hostilian eyed him just as dubiously as the rest, but Dantanian was unperturbed. "You'd think it would be a cultural commonality. It's all over mythology, black and white, and swans. There's got to be something about black and white in the story of Leda and the swan..."

"You'd better not start on about Leda and the swan," Lamia joked more quietly, "If Malfoy is heading the direction I think he is."

"Do you think I'm afraid," Dantanian said disdainfully, "For people to hear me talk about gods who desire sex with mortal beings, and pursue coitus by mystical transformation into swans..."

He waved the sleeve of his robe in neat derision, a dreamy motion of flaring ebony feathers and fur beneath, even as his words made an approaching Dorian nearly spill his lychee nectar all over his diamonds. Dantanian could not, in truth, had stood out any more at the gala if he had come naked, to say nothing of his light arrogant tenor voice that carried so well. "Daniel," Dorian greeted. "You look..."

Dantanian's dark hair was, for the first time in memory, straightened completely, and hung in a loose gleaming sheet of darkness all around his face. The front strands were the only ones secured, by a band of glistening black diamonds almost outdone by the tresses beneath them. He had great stones of midnight blue onyx around his throat like some old Egyptian deity, and long coiling black diamond bracelets up to his shoulders that showed under his robes, translucent where there weren't covered in the feathery fur, real feathers, and scattered black gems that made him a black swan. His dark eyes looked so huge they were unsettling, like some make-up or spell had doubled them in size, and his lashes were so thick they were like wings. He had more black diamonds on than Dorian had white, something like Maleficent showing up to Sleeping Beauty's christening, if the girl had personally invited her. It was hard to believe Dantanian did not have at least as dark purposes as that lady of ill repute.

"Think carefully of how you finish that sentence. If it ends in either a compliment or an insult, you'll regret it."

Dorian looked relieved when he got some imperceptible signal he was needed. "Later!" he blurted, and raced up towards the stage, several pieces of jewelry falling off as he bolted. Dantanian showed no compunction in picking them up and pocketing them. Hard as it was to believe his dark wizard get-up had pockets.

Dantanian went outside during the ceremony, but Lamia was relieved when he returned after it, and swept him up to dance with her. Dantanian could not dance whatsoever, but the heavy-footed, stiff-shouldered girl was a well-trained waltzer, and she had him moving serviceably enough soon for Dantanian to cast ill-boding stares in the direction of Dorian, who had danced with a different lovely pureblood boy or girl with every dreary funereal song.

With all of the staring Dantanian did, one would have expected him to be gratified, when Dorian broke off from his latest partner and strode over resolutely towards him. "May I cut in?" Dorian asked Lamia. She stepped aside with a poorly suppressed laugh, while Dorian's head whipped to watch her leave in shocked betrayal.

"Absolutely not," Dantanian said contemptuously. "I'm not fit to dance with a pureblood."

Dorian stepped forward anyway, and took Dantanian's shoulders with a surprising lack of fear for the 'black swan'. "You can lead, if you like," Dorian said, charming as the rising moon, and by the time the cellos were striking up their slowest, most dreamy melody of the night, Dantanian was letting Dorian lead him into a dance. A ghost's soprano began a languishing melody in Latin, as if lamenting a tragedy yet to happen.

"You can't dance, can you," Dorian observed within a few beats, "Should have let me lead," and Dantanian responded by taking Dorian by the waist and pulling him closer. Dorian stared at Dantanian with wild pale eyes, and none of the composure or style he'd had dancing with anyone else. Dantanian led Dorian about the floor in stilting steps, a circle of his choice. It was graceful enough, or at least Dantanian's grip was strong enough, that Dorian obeyed.

"Why," Dorian breathed, and had to lick his lips and take a deep breath to get his words out. "Why are you in black?"

"You're the one who made me," Dantanian said, gaze as hawkish as his mother's on the boy so close. "You wore red last year. I liked that."

"Not anymore," Dorian laughed, looking down to the replacement that was now merely opalescent gray. Dantanian's hands slid lower on the fabric, tightening, and Dorian licked his lips again, seeming almost to shiver. "My parents- they hated that. Last year." When Dantanian spun him, he gasped and clung to Dantanian's chest, their bodies pressed flush together. Dantanian kept him up. "Don't try and spin when you barely know how to walk-"

"Everyone else was spinning," Dantanian said innocently, seeming to enjoy Dorian's stumbling.

"How," Dorian whispered, leaning to breathe the words venomously in Dantanian's ear, "Did you even manage to afford such an outlandish chicken suit?"

The jibe didn't seem to land as Dorian hoped. "I stole it," he said nonchalantly. Once again, he had to keep Dorian from stumbling. "Are you this clumsy around everyone, or just me, Malfoy?"

"You stole it?" Dorian asked incredulously. "You didn't. Daniel Shaw!"

Dantanian just shrugged, eyeing Dorian like he was trying to memorize the glimmering sight of him so close on Christmas. Like something beautiful he thought he would never lay eyes on again.

"I needed practice," Dantanian said softly, "Breaking into places I'm not supposed to go."

There was no memory of how Dantanian got to Azkaban past all the white-cresting waves. A blink of the eye and the memories had him there, climbing up the side of that great grave-like slab braced too low in the sea like it was meant to be swallowed in it. He had on athletic black Muggle clothes and shoes, with a hood over his hair and half his face. There was some sort of magic Dantanian had securing his feet and hands, with no notable athleticism to him and yet a spider-like ease as he climbed. He was going very slowly, in the direction of a cliff-like stretch of flattered stone, bisected by cells extending out right into the place the waves threw themselves up highest, the foam at the top like hungry tongues even at night.

Draco's cell had been in a similar part of Azkaban, although perhaps on the other side. There was no telling. So many of these cells looked the same from the outside, as much unbroken black as Dantanian in the heart of winter. One could only hope the black swan knew exactly where he wanted to fly. The audacity of his own incredible action seemed lost on the swan, perhaps just newly turned sixteen. He had likely said his mantra, before he made the impossible attempt.

This was not a stormy night, and there was no rain to impede Dantanian as he slid, relieved, from a vertical drop to solid ground under his feet. It should not have been such a relief to him, though, as closer to prisoners also meant closer to Dementors. And they would all, invariably, be attracted one by one to the fresh soul that had unexpectedly arrived, so much more light for them to leech out. They would be delighted to, even if it hadn't been their duty. Dantanian had to find his destination- Palmer, one assumed- before the Dementors found him first.

Muggles had a saying, The house always wins. If there was a betting market in Azkaban, smart money would always go on the Dementors. A single spectral dark form glided into view from further down the cliff, in the direction Dantanian needed to go. Dantanian withdrew his wand, with no sign of shaking or fear, and flattened himself against the edge of the great fortress, inching along the stone walls as if Dementors operated by sight instead of hunger. He seemed to be waiting to try and cast a Patronus, if he even meant to, until the Dementor was close to him. That was a mistake. Whatever he did, Dementors were like bloodhounds. When one caught the scent of a soul, others would never be long in coming.

More Dementors were looming into place behind the first, as if sliding into being itself, born to put an end to the false existence of one nameless boy. Dantanian waited until there was at least two dozen coming towards him, more swooping in flight around the edges of the fortress, before he made his move. He lifted his wand, hood coming off his face in the sea breeze as he straightened to face so many enemies. There was no fear on his face, even still. He looked more giddy than anything, more happy than he had perhaps looked since his mother walked the earth above ground.

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" Dantanian yelled, and this time, he succeeded.

It seemed he had found a memory of happiness powerful enough for a Patronus.

Out of his wand erupted the Antipodean Opaleye that Astarte Noir had wielded too, a great and silvery beast in the air that swooped forward in a blinding flash of light to drive the Dementors away. Dantanian ran following it, shoes threatening to slip on the wet stone as he pursued the Dementors. They seemed to be in the way of the cell he wanted. Dantanian was laughing to himself lightly, only a bit breathless, and only a bit disbelieving, as his eyes focused. He seemed to catch sight, finally, of the cell he wanted. The runes of the prisoner number were indistinguishable, with the black air of Dementors so near, but the numbers were there in the distance: 462...

"Neil Palmer," Dantanian said, and ran faster.

But there were Dementors coming from his other side, a great wall of shadow that stretched all around in every direction. It closed in on every side, except for the part assailed by the dragon.

The Patronus was too small and too lonely to stand against the whole world of blackness drawing closer and closer. Even as Dantanian tried to draw it close, he seemed to feel that drag upon himself from the Dementors, that once felt was never forgotten, that draining that felt inevitable the moment it caught upon you. He shivered and screamed and the dragon disappeared in the sea of black.

Dantanian held up his wand with shaking hands, only a flickering light remaining as he stood with his back to the wall, hopeless. There was the distant sound of a voice- someone's voice- but it was inaudible against the growing sound in Dantanian's ears of his own voice. A child, crying out Maman, maman, maman...

There was no doubt what Dantanian remembered.

Dantanian's eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed before the door of the cell, fingers sliding as they fell along the numbers 462, until they dropped from them.

Dantanian awoke to a voice he had only ever heard from a distance. He had seemed to avoid the man, with presumed success, all through his years at Hogwarts. Until now, laid out in a hospital bed blinking back sleep, after he had done something no headmaster on the planet could possibly ignore from their student.

"I have never heard of anyone breaking out of Azkaban successfully. But nor had I heard of anyone breaking successfully in." The headmaster leaned back in his chair once he was sure he had woken their patient, in a sea of beds so collectively empty, it was like some contagion was feared within. "Until you. But then, I doubt there are many attempts. Tell me, Daniel Shaw. Why would a Muggleborn Hogwarts fifth-year break into Azkaban?" And how, his troubled eyes seemed to ask, Could such a person succeed?

For someone who had so worked to avoid this meeting, Dantanian was not exactly quailing as he sat up. His nightshirt slipped off his shoulder, and he pushed it up before raking his hands through his wild hair. He could not have cast a greater contrast with the man who now held his fate in his hands, whose black robes and short black hair and scowl were all perfectly what one would expect of Phineas Nigellus Black.

"They said," Dantanian began, perhaps putting on more of an appearance of disorientation than he felt, "That one of the human guards found me, and stopped the Dementors. Just in time. That it's a miracle I'm not dead."

"Yes," Phineas said impatiently, as if his student's survival was little matter to him, compared to his student's obedience. "That is a question for the Ministry of Magic. As is the penalty you will incur for your dangerous trespassing, although I am positive that will rest largely, if not solely on my personal recommendation. So you would do well not to try my patience. You have been nursed back to health for days, and there will be no further delay-"

Dantanian's head tilted one way and then the other, eyes failing to fully open. "Hmm. I suspect... you plan to expel me."

"You should," Phineas said viciously, "Already have been expelled, Mr. Shaw. The only reason you were not was the plea given when we contacted one of your guardians, your grandfather. He claimed you had suffered extraordinary trauma when you were very young, and some Hogwarts professors have taken that as mitigating. They think you are not competent to be held responsible for your own actions."

Dantanian seemed to be holding back sleepy laughter. "Hmm... did you talk to my grandmother too? What did she say?"

"I spoke to her myself. She said, and I quote, 'What can you expect from a devil child?'"

That made Dantanian break into delighted laughter. "She has the virtue of consistency, if nothing else." He pushed his knotted hair off his mouth to laugh harder. His comportment, lacking fear or remorse, already seemed to have struck Phineas hard, making him lean forward again to inspect him. When Dantanian turned his tired pale face to him, newly retrieved from hell and yet lovely as an expensive doll, Phineas seemed still more disturbed.

"Do you want to be expelled?" Phineas asked furiously.

Dantanian yawned at that, actually yawned. "You won't expel me," he said with a rueful smile. It was like he had long held this card readied to play. Even if he had not wanted to play it yet, or ever, if he could help it. But lost he had, and played he did. "You were never going to expel me. So will you let me go back to sleep?"

"And why," Phineas growled, "Are you so damned confident of that, Mudblood?"

Dantanian snuggled back down under the covers. "Because," he said through another yawn, "You can't expel your own nephew."

: Astarte Noir, Part Three

Notes:

Chapter Text

My dearest genius,

You must stop these letters and presents. They are unasked for and unneeded. We cannot be together again, no matter what new arguments you try and assail my conscience with, clever boy. My conscience is clear on this point. It is not safe for you to be near me anymore.

I have told you of the circumstances of our son's birth. I can still imagine your horror, as you wrote back denying what I saw with my own eyes. You said it must have been a fire from somewhere or someone else. You even accused my mother, with her fresh in the ground. Since years have passed and you will not put aside the idea of her guilt, you must know the truth. Tell no one of this, and destroy this letter as soon as it is read. This is the truth about our son Dantanian.

Dantanian was the cause of the fire, and my mother its foe. She attempted to stop it from spreading, even as some curse in him attempted to spread it. The minute he emerged from my womb, the world was on fire, and it would not stop until all for kilometres around us but him and I were dead. Should the cord not have been still intact between us, I sometimes wonder if I might not have perished as well. I told Mother to flee, but she tried to use her great powers to contain the fire, and save the many hundreds inside the hospital. But when she would not go, and would not stop, the infant in my arms turned his face upon her, with eyes of purest black, and cut her throat without a touch, with nothing but the blink of an eye. She fell to the ground and I know not still whether she bled or burned to death. Her body along with so many others burned too completely for any sign of death to be left other than the blaze.

I do not know either what it was in Dantanian that set the blaze, or if a newborn could have any choice or will in such destruction. I believe it was either his magic itself, or the curse in our blood, from the House of Black. I am not even sure the magic came from my boy, and not myself. You laughed at my mother's prophecy, when I told you it must part us, but it was proven truer than she would ever know. Without any understanding of the boy I am raising, I cannot have any security in anything, let alone whether you could return to my side without it costing your life.

Let go of me, my faithful genius. Turn yourself back only to your paints, and make pictures fully new to the world, to be hung in the Louvre and great palaces and be admired centuries later by wondering eyes. Or find another muse, a more beautiful woman, who has nothing to intrigue except her beauty, and paint her. For me. I will remain by my son's side. Whatever he is, whatever I am, I love him. And you must accept that makes it impossible for me to love you.

Never and always your muse,
Astarte

Dantanian was with Phineas again, this time in the Headmaster's office, quite different from the days of Dumbledore. Either Dumbledore, or the limp noodle headmaster Dippet between the two, must have done considerable redecoration. Dantanian had in hand the fatal letter, legible over his shoulder, and one expected him to crumple, however restored his health looked by passing time. But he merely straightened in his chair with the posture of a statue, and told his new uncle, "It's a lie, of course."

There was a whole constellation of different stars with their different lights in the hitherto uncomplicated gaze of the headmaster, whose blanket hostility now regarded an object as anomalous as anyone could design. Dantanian was so confident in his dismissal of the letter, it must have seemed daunting to make the boy so much as question it.

Phineas, being a Black, made the attempt. "Did she instruct you she would tell this lie?"

Dantanian shrugged carelessly, hair braided in a long, neat whip again. He seemed to wear his awareness, of Phineas's awareness, of his true identity, as a cloak, protecting him. "I was seven when she died, I wouldn't have understood. She would have told me when I was older, she was telling me everything. But there was no need. It's obvious that she made that up, to impress on a very impressionable Muggle that he needed to leave us alone. This is dated years after my birth, and days before his suicide. She tried to sever ties decisively, while giving him a reason to carry on. Obviously, she was unsuccessful, but-"

Phineas held up a hand, but that didn't arrest Dantanian until he actually spoke over him. "Was that the only part of the prophecy Marie Weston made from her flames?"

It was hard for an onlooker to believe Dantanian did not believe what he said, even knowing the truth. "That was the prophecy, yes. My mother told me everything, even the words, though I was too young to remember them now. She wanted me to be mindful of the strength of my magic, when I was old enough to wield it in-"

"Your grandparents seem to think it true," Phineas pressed, "Or they would not have sent this letter to the Ministry of Magic, along with Muggle papers of disownment."

Dantanian crossed his legs, long slender boot dangling in the air in a perfect painting-like arch of black. "You don't even know if they believe it, or they're just using it like Mother did- to sever a tie that had become too burdensome to bear. Obviously, with the report of my... 'criminal activities'..." Dantanian contrived to make those words sound ludicrous, despite referring to an Azkaban breach. "They had sufficient grounds, but my grandmother is the type of woman to make absolutely sure a message goes through."

"It was appended to the forward papers as a warning, for whoever took on your charge. Naturally, I was contacted as Hogwarts headmaster, and the officials seemed eager to allow someone to take charge. I also took the liberty of removing this letter from your file. I do not believe any eyes saw it but my own." Phineas did not stop Dantanian from taking the letter and pocketing it. "It is still the question what is to be done with you."

Dantanian's foot swayed in the air languidly. Phineas's incensed eyes followed the motion, growing darker. "I'm an emancipated minor, right? In both worlds? And still called Daniel Shaw."

Phineas pinched the bridge of his nose again. "This fire upon your birth-"

"Do I seem like I could do that now, much less as an infant? Let alone kill a skilled pyromancer. The prophecy didn't specify who the flames would come from. I'd imagine it was my mother, she'd had some spurts of spontaneous fire but never been able to control her pyromancy. The pain and trauma of birth likely brought out the latent-"

"You have no-" Phineas looked vaguely nauseated at his own idea. "No pyromancy?"

Dantanian was indeed a fearsome liar. "None," he said, as lightly as if it was no matter one way or another. "But I am of your blood, sir. Do you believe me now?"

"It was only right that I investigate your claims," Phineas sighed, looking between the letter and the sixteen-year-old that it called a murderer at birth. "I have since, and this fire. The conflagration is real, whatever its cause. Over three hundred Muggles died in it. Your mother, though, you say." He seized upon the excuse for Dantanian, as if an infant at the time would even know. "But yes, I do believe you truly Dantanian now- unless you have directed your grandparents in this..."

"Just how much plotting do you think me capable of? I didn't plan to fail at Azkaban. That should have meant death. It almost did. I planned to succeed."

"You never told me why you made the attempt to infiltrate the prison."

"Because it's obvious. I've read about Neil Palmer, and what the papers say he did to my mother. I wanted to hear it from his own mouth."

"His confession was documented fully by the authorities. Was it worth risking yourself against a prison full of Dementors, simply to hear the repetition?"

Dantanian laughed. "Fine, you've caught me. Honestly, I thought to try and hurt him. But now that I've seen Azkaban and real Dementors, I think a lifetime of that is punishment enough. I'll leave the monster to the other monsters."

Phineas looked to have little idea what to do about the walking anomaly- or perhaps anathema- sprawled across the chair before him. "In any event, I must continue to investigate your claims further," Phineas began, and held up a hand when Dantanian opened his mouth to protest. "And speak of this, with my wife."

When the memory ended, Dantanian's confident face changed to a furious one, incongruous with the glitter of so many Galleons. He was back in the headmaster's office, some months older, hair still braided but more strands around his face, as if to reflect a grown disorder within. The origin of the fallen gold became clear, as Dantanian's pale long-fingered hand savagely hurled one last palmful of Galleons across the floor.

Phineas was at his desk looking the same, save a bit paler. "I am not going to pick that up for you, Dantanian."

"Good! I don't want it!" Dantanian slammed his hands on the edge of Phineas's desk. Some of the papers slid off to join the gold. "Money? You're offering me money?" A sizable amount of it, especially a century ago.

"This," Phineas said neutrally, "Should be more than enough to keep you in luxurious comfort and safety for the summer. I said I would provide for you, and I have."

"I thought you would-" Dantanian bit his lip, looking less composed than he had against Dementors. "I thought you'd give me a place to stay! That you'd take me in as your family. I'm your nephew!"

"You," Phineas said more coldly, "Are nothing of the sort. Our bloodline is always pure-"

"You can't undo that your father fucked my grandmother," Dantanian growled, making Phineas flinch back in distaste, "And my mother was your half-sister! It's blood! There's nothing stronger than blood!"

"Precisely," Phineas said, folding his hands. "The purity of blood is the founding principle of House Black. If you are not legitimate, you are not a Black, and not family-"

"So you offer me money. The same as your father, when he threw the woman he got pregnant out of the country! This isn't to take care of me, this is to shut me up-"

"I believe," Phineas interrupted, patience on the wane, "I am treating you more than fairly, mongrel-"

"The citadel."

Phineas leaned forward, a part of the conversation in a way he had not been before. "You know of Citadelle Xaphan?"

"Of course I do! My grandmother had so many pictures. My mother made paintings from them. They covered the walls, when I was young. So you can't acknowledge me, so you probably never said a word to your wife, but- let me stay at Citadelle Xaphan, away from prying eyes or suspicion-"

"Citadelle Xaphan is a sacred secret. Knowledge is reserved only for the heir-"

"But Marie-"

"And the heir's mistress, though I have certainly never taken part in such a disgraceful relation-"

"There's some solstice ritual for the heir's wedding, though-"

"To which traditionally only the heir's father, the lord, and the woman attend. The woman is kept blindfolded throughout-"

"So," Dantanian laughed more shakily, pushing the stray hair out of his eyes with a fitful gesture. "The other woman sees more of secrets than the true one. And I cannot ask admission to the citadel as your nephew, that honor would only go to your mistress-"

Something flickered in Phineas's eyes, not quite threat. "Take your money and go. You will have nothing else from me."

Dantanian picked up a handful of Galleons. One might have expected him to take the money. But he retrieved them to throw them again. This time, right in the face of his uncle, before he stalked out of the office as darkly as a Dementor.

Dantanian was standing in the Potions storeroom, hair loose and face hopeless, when Dorian Malfoy came in. He nearly stumbled into Dantanian before he realized. "Daniel!" he gasped, as he grabbed onto Dantanian's shoulders for balance. Dantanian's body did not register the touch, only his eyes, sliding to regard Dorian's arrival with dull malice.

"Malfoy. On an errand for Nott?"

"Professor Nott told me I could gather the ingredients for Amortentia," Dorian said, and the word made him fidget. "I mean- for Amaranthium- which, er, includes Essence of Amortentia-"

"I know your pureblood tradition. Making it early for your fiancé?" Dorian nodded, and Dantanian's face looked still more displeased with the entire world. "I wonder, though, after how many have graced your bed. What Amortentia must smell like for you."

Dorian looked like he would rather set the storeroom on fire than answer that. "I can, um, come back later. Professor Nott said Lamia should be done gathering the ingredients, for her independent study project, but if you're-"

"She is. We were speaking. I'd asked to stay with her over the summer." Dantanian pulled a handful of amaranth petals from the shelf behind him. When Dorian didn't take them, he laughed and tossed them in Dorian's face. Dorian watched them fall between them like slow-moving snow. "She wrote to her father. He said no. So I am on my own."

"You have grandparents, don't you? Those old Muggles who come to get you each year-"

"Not anymore."

"Oh," Dorian gasped, hands to his mouth, covering very pretty flushed lips. He had somehow contrived to become lovelier since the start of fifth year, which seemed impossible. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know they'd passed-"

"I wish." Dantanian did not explain the remark. "You wouldn't let me stay with you, would you?"

"Daniel, I- I never thought you saw me like-"

Dantanian snorted, running his eyes over Dorian's beauty as if it was fool's gold. "I'm not propositioning you, Malfoy. Not everyone on the planet wants you. I just need some place to stay. Somewhere I'd be safe. I think I might have enemies... enemies I don't understand. But if that's the price of staying with you..." He laid a hand on Dorian's arm, and the flush on Dorian's face went down his neck, lips parting helplessly. "Tell me what it would take."

"No!" Dorian exclaimed, wrenching back violently. Dantanian averted his face, rather than let Dorian see the woundedness on it. "I would never- use someone, and their situation- like- like that. That's wrong!"

"Should I be calling you Potter," Dantanian said with a twisted smile, "And not Malfoy?"

Dorian didn't seem to understand the remark. "My parents would never let me invite a-"

"Mudblood?"

"Muggleborn. My father hates that word too. He's the one who taught me not to use it. But it still wouldn't be seemly. I'm sorry. There's talk besides that we might summer with my aunt in Cannes-"

"The fiancé. What happened to keeping you apart? Avoiding the impression of incest?"

"It, er, seems they might think we're old enough. If you're in danger, though, Daniel, or even if you're not- if you need money, I can give you, no strings attached-"

"Forget it," Dantanian grabbed onto one of the racks, letting out an awful laugh. "Fine! Fine! That's it, then! I have to. I have to!"

"Daniel..."

Dantanian whirled on him. He seemed a decade older than Dorian, or more.

"You have a room of your own, don't you? Unofficially. I've heard rumors. Nott doesn't stop you, because you're a Malfoy. You've fit out some empty chamber in the dungeons, and that's where you hold your liaisons, right? Meet me there at midnight."

"Why?"

Dantanian was already leaving the storeroom. "You're going to pay. For a lot of other people's mistakes."

Incredibly, Dorian turned up at this secret chamber of his that night. His self-preservation instincts were not as strong as his curiosity, or a different force moving him. He walked up warily to find Dantanian waiting. He started back when Dantanian made the nearby torches flare at his arrival.

Dantanian laughed, sounding far younger. "Haven't you gotten used to that by now?"

"I'll never get used to that," Dorian said, shaking his head as he opened the door. It was an impressive illegal private chamber, hard to mistake as anything but a boudoir. It tended predictably towards Slytherin colors, with intricate sconce lights and chandelier in wrought silver, rugs black and green velvet, bureau and chests of deepest mahogany, and a bed the size of seven normal beds in shades of luxurious jade, decadent with velvet and silk and dozens of pillows of every imaginable kind. Dorian seemed to find it embarrassing to show Dantanian. "So I suppose you wanted to talk privately- oh."

Dantanian's hair was still loose, but brushed soft and gleaming as torchlight on black stone. He tossed it out of the way with one twist of his elegant swan neck, before raising his hands to the throat of his black robes, and then the back.

He let them fall to his feet. There was nothing beneath them.

"Daniel," Dorian gasped, voice nearly cracking, and Dantanian toed off his boots. His moonstone-pale feet must have been cold on the crushed velvet, but he didn't flinch, as he used them to slide his boots and discarded robes away. That left him bare before Dorian's gaze, and yet all the vulnerability seemed Dorian's, light eyes drawn as helplessly as if Dantanian had enchanted him.

Dantanian frowned. "Did you think I would come here at this hour for anything else?" He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it out of the way. He was slender, shoulders and hips narrow with defined hipbones, paler than his mother with little of her rosiness, delicate blue veins visible under skin that seemed to show every bone beneath like carved alabaster. He had a small torso, but very long legs, with the only softness to his body visible at his inner thighs, sleek and soft-looking in a way that seemed to invite touch.

He was virtually hairless below his eyebrows, adding to the sloping androgyny of his frame, with long sleek dark ringlets pooling from his head down to his arms and chest. They were out of his eyes, which had never looked more large or haunting, as much an Inferi crawled from a grave as a vision of seduction.

Not that Dorian was looking at his eyes. His gaze had fixed between Dantanian's legs, and stayed on the pale rose shape of his member. It and swelled under his stare, whatever the room's cold.

Dantanian eventually grew impatient with Dorian being less Paris than Tantalus.

"I want you to take my virginity."

"Salazar." Dorian grabbed onto the bedpost. He scarcely seemed able to stand. "You... you..."

"Do you not want to?" Dantanian said a bit whinily, pouty lower lip protruding. "Do you not think me beautiful?" He took tentative steps forward, until he was within arm's reach. Then he gave Dorian a more graceful smile, and let his weight rest against the edge of the great jade bed, palms drawing inviting over the silk beneath. "My mother was beautiful."

"How..." Dorian's disbelief was that of the man who had just seen the heavens open, and an angel come down to him. "You. You want me to. Daniel Shaw. Daniel."

Dantanian did not correct him. He ran a hand down the arch of his ribs, to trace the ridge of his cock where it stood against the flat plane of his pale stomach, aroused and gleaming wet in chandelier flamelight. "I've cast all the spells we'll need. And I'm ready. You could do it right now. It wouldn't take long." His lips pouted more deeply. "I thought- you'll be with anyone. So many Slytherins, and other houses- but you can't do me a favor and just do this-"

"A favor?"

"Even if you don't want me."

"Want you- Daniel." Dorian pulled Dantanian's hand to him. He set it against his robes, then between his legs, letting him feel, and Dantanian's eyes sparked again. "Does it feel like I don't want you?" Dantanian smiled, the slightest curve to his lips, and Dorian leaned to kiss him. Dantanian turned away.

"There's no need for that," Dantanian said clinically. "You can just get it over with."

"Please, please let me kiss you." Dorian's hands went up to touch his cheeks, gently tucking his dark curls out of the way behind his ears. Dantanian looked oddly more nervous than when he thought Dorian didn't want him. "I- I will, I'll do it, whatever you want, just don't tell me I can't kiss you-"

Dantanian linked his hands behind Dorian's neck and pulled him into the kiss he demanded. Dorian's mouth met his still open, breath unsteady and wet and uncertain. Dantanian kissed him with the unskilled excitement of one who had never been kissed before. That did not deter Dorian. He gave in to the kiss and took it over, pulling Dantanian's face up to kiss properly, eyes falling shut while Dantanian's stayed open. It was not in detachment. His pupils were dilating, dark eyes wild, and he was the first one to moan into the kiss. He made a childish protesting noise, and then some little confused ones, when Dorian pulled away.

He moaned again when Dorian climbed onto the bed, blown-out pupils wider as Dorian undressed for him. Dorian's body was nearly as pale as his, arousal just as clear. He was toned and shaped tight and strong, perhaps not by the exertion of anything more athletic than sex, as experienced as Dantanian was new to it, as he climbed on top of Dantanian and kissed him again. They were a startling sight, their combined beauty so surreal it was unsettling. They would have seemed some impossible painting, of two different ideals, were it not for Dorian's still disbelieving murmurs. "You are beautiful, of course you are, you're so beautiful..."

No force seemed likely to part or even delay them, but the memory stayed as they came together, at first nervous on both parts and then just loud, air full of choked moans and whimpers as Dantanian guided Dorian's fingers to feel where he was prepared for him. "You really want me to?" Dorian asked, and Dantanian took him in hand and pulled him inside him.

Dorian was lost, rutting immediately in without any control. He was fully inside Dantanian with one thrust and then rocked in again and again, for all the world like he was the virgin, so overwhelmed he seemed by the feast beneath him. Dantanian did not try to slow him, moaning encouragingly as his head fell against the pile of jade pillows. His hair crested like a waterfall down over the silk, sliding hypnotically as Dorian's thrusts pulled his body all over the bed. Dantanian first bit back his cries, and then could no longer, closing his eyes at last as he screamed. Dorian slowed, asking if it hurt, and Dantanian didn't answer. "Just do it," he ordered, "I want to feel you, Dorian," and there was nothing Dorian could have done but obey.

Dorian did not last as long as one might have thought, for someone with such supposed prowess. But it was likely better for Dantanian's sake, however much he had seemed to love the new feeling. When Dorian withdrew from him, there was blood across Dantanian's thighs. That did not stop Dantanian, though, from cleaning himself with a wave of his wand, and rolling on top of Dorian.

"You should have done it harder. I want to feel you for days-"

Dorian's fingers slid Dantanian's curls behind his ears again. "If you wait, maybe if we do it again, I can-"

"Oh, we're going to do it again. But this time, I want to be the one inside you."

Dorian claimed he didn't often do it that way, but it did not seem hard for Dantanian to convince him. The memory lingered and lingered until Dantanian got what he wanted and made Dorian come beneath him, and they had both spilled their seed inside each other. They were still kissing drowsily, bodies stuck in a way that almost looked permanent, before they fell asleep, and the memory came to a close.

Dantanian was back in the headmaster's office, pleading his case still. The Galleons were in the room, looking the same amount or perhaps more, but piled neatly atop the desk. "I am your blood. My mother was your sister. You knew about her, and my mother, and me, and you just let us stay exiled, even when your father was gone. If you had taken her in, maybe what happened at the hospital wouldn't have happened. Maybe she wouldn't have been-"

"Dantanian." Phineas leaned back in his chair. "I am sorry, but your blood is full of filth. If you think I feel ties of kinship to you, you are as unintelligent as your grades would suggest." His words did not seem calculated to hurt Dantanian's feelings. It was rather as if emotion had never entered the equation. "Take the gold and go on your way."

"Please." Dantanian was almost begging. "Please, Uncle Phineas-"

"Do not ever call me that again-"

"Please let me see the citadel. Please let me stay there, please-"

"I am the head of House Black, and I understand the meaning of that. You do not, as a half-breed, but I do. Nothing will change my resolution. You have nothing to offer me that would change my mind-"

"Don't I?" Dantanian breathed, seeming to force out the words. His face changed as if a decision had been made, and a light in his eyes extinguished. "Don't I?" Phineas looked unaffected, until Dantanian stalked over to Phineas's side of the desk, to stand over him with those miserable eyes. "I know I do, Black. I know."

Phineas's gaze was suddenly far from certain with their proximity. Dantanian braced a hand on the desk, leaning over him, and the edge of his loose Ravenclaw tie brushed the headmaster's shoulder. Phineas shuddered but did not try to move it. "What do you think you know?"

"I know the way you look at me. I know why you want so badly for me not to call you uncle." He laughed mirthlessly. "I know how to get to Citadelle Xaphan."

"You-" Phineas gathered himself straighter. "I don't know what you're implying."

Dantanian's lip twitched, misery in his eyes complete. Then his gaze lowered, lashes lowering with it, turning his stare half-lidded and heavy. "You can do it, Black. I won't stop you. If you'll just promise, that tomorrow, when the term is over, you'll take me to Citadelle Xaphan."

"Do-" Phineas repeated, and licked his lips.

His eyes did not seem to know where to go. But it was unmistakable. There was hunger in them- well-hidden before, but there was no holding back. He stared at Dantanian, and stared, and could not stop staring everywhere, all over him.

"I know what you want from me," Dantanian said, and touched Phineas's hand, and then his face. Phineas did not stop him. "You said it yourself, we're not family. Not blood. You can do anything you want. Right here, right now. You can be my first-"

Phineas grabbed Dantanian by his long hair, yanking him to him in one pull. "Not just a mongrel but a whore?"

"Just promise you'll take me to the citadel. Tomorrow."

Sluggish but sure, Citadelle Xaphan swam into view.

Even if it was hardly recognizable as such. It more closely resembled the plans Gilderoy had found in the library tower. Towers cut the morning sky like raised blades, disrepair and crumbling visible but standing still. Obsidian adornment curled over the roofs of towers and rooms and halls, gargoyles and arches and designs like stucco that caught ocean sunlight with violent clarity. The castle was not whole, but sections were, entire groups of towers with roofs over them. As lonely and forsaken the fortress looked, there was also something inviting to those halls.

The vision was only from a distance. Then the drawbridge went down, with a wave of the wand of Phineas Black. Phineas strode over the bridge, only to see Dantanian still standing alone.

Dantanian looked as paralyzed as Dorian had when he offered himself to him. As glorious as the citadel was, in this much lesser a state of decay, there was a fascination in his eyes disproportionate to it there, like he saw something in the citadel that neither Phineas, nor anyone viewing the memory, could see.

Something like madness was on his face. Or perhaps it was Dantanian himself, questioning whether he had gone mad. It could be that a part of him, as much as he loved looking at the pictures and listening to his mother's secondhand tales, had never truly believed them real.

"Mon dieu," Dantanian breathed, and rubbed his eyes like he could not believe what they were seeing. "Mon dieu. It's Xaphan. Xaphan."

Phineas walked back, with a condescending affection in his gaze that was chillingly new. "Dante," he said indulgently, taking his hand. "No need to look so surprised. It is just as I promised, is it not?"

Dantanian's face went from open awe to something else, when he was forced to remember Phineas's existence. Maybe that look was calculation, as he clearly wanted to let go of Phineas's hand, but did not even try. "Yes. Thank you, Headmaster."

"Call me Finn," said Phineas, and led Dantanian into the citadel.

"Dracosanguis," cast Dantanian, and nothing happened. The snake on the crimson Persian carpet merely peered up, inquiring.

Dantanian sat cross-legged in a bedchamber not unlike Dorian's secret one in the dungeons. But it was in an array of different colors, the red-purple-gold-bronze and deep yellow of the rooms reminiscent of the shades of Astarte's flat in Paris. There was a painting of her on the wall nearby, but not with the skill of Jackson Shaw's, though with just as much care. It was signed Dantanian Noir, as were two smaller portraits of her, hung behind a wall of bohemian and eastern-patterned curtains and gauze. It would have been lovely, but for the half dozen dying snakes riddled over the carpet around Dantanian's feet.

"Dracosanguis," Dantanian cast, and the snake let out a hissing sound of agony.

Dantanian's hair was thick and ample as ever, pulled in a rough, careless ponytail. His body was just as carelessly covered, in a deep crimson silk robe that looked in Japanese style, hanging open across his pale chest. It suited him, especially the subtle bronze wave pattern that decorated the red, but for a tightness across his shoulders, which suggested the robe had been made for a woman. Perhaps it had been, to judge by the open wardrobe in the room's corner, half-filled with far more robes and skirts and trousers and fine dresses than anyone could have acquired, in what looked to be a short time indeed. The historical style of some of the dresses, with one on display on a hyper-realistic blonde mannequin, suggested a different time. With the doubled or many-layered style of its massive bell skirts, low necks, and short flared flounce sleeves, it was likely 1830s or 1840s. These clothes, the robe Dantanian wore, and perhaps this room, had belonged to Marie Weston.

Marie Weston might have been capable of the spell Dantanian was casting. All the dying or now-dead snakes were charred or black or red and open, and the air was misted with a thickening layer of smoke. "Dracosanguis," Dantanian cast, "Dracosanguis, Dracosanguis," and the snake seemed to set on fire, not on the surface but from within. Once the snake's end split and the magic could be seen working right at the arteries, it was clear the spell was setting its blood on fire.

Once the snake was dead, Dantanian let out a yawn, before casting Serpensortia. Another narrow green snake appeared for a swift fate. Except a voice called from outside, "Dante? I'm back," and Dantanian put down his wand with a sigh. Phineas walked into the room with his dark hair and black robes soaking wet, looking in a foul mood.

"Oh, is it raining outside?" was all Dantanian asked. Phineas let out a noise at the contents of the carpet, but Dantanian made no effort to conceal it.

"What," Phineas breathed, pointing with an unsteady finger, "Is this?"

"I'm practicing," Dantanian whined, doll face scrunching up. "It's a spell I've been working on. It's coming along." At Phineas's appalled look, Dantanian laughed shamelessly. "What? I told you I like working on spell creation. Vipera evanesca," he cast, and the remnants disappeared in one wave of his wand.

"You are quite skilled with practical spells," Phineas said tightly, "For the Ravenclaw with the lowest grades in your year for five years running."

Dantanian put his wand on the nightstand. "What's wrong, Finn?" he said, in a cooing, meretricious voice. "It seems you braved a tsunami to see me. Do you wish to quibble over grades-"

"What is a tsunami?" Phineas asked, discarding his wet cloak as he came towards Dantanian. After his initial dismay, there was nothing like real fear on his face. Even if perhaps there should have been.

Dantanian rolled his eyes, startlingly insolent. "Don't you know anything? Dantanian Black was a master of meteorology-"

"Ah, your namesake. I have seen the observatory-"

"As well as the cosmos, I was going to say." Dantanian gave him a playfully judgmental look. "Meteorology means the study of weather. Not astronomy, or meteors. Finn, it's not very attractive, this kind of ignorance-"

Phineas took Dantanian by the collar of his robe and threw him onto the bed. He pulled the tie from his hair and dragged his face back up by it. The tug looked and sounded painful. "Do I seem in the mood for disobedience tonight?" He stared at Dantanian's exposed throat with eyes like Fenrir Greyback, or any savage wolf.

Dantanian lowered his gaze. "No, Finn," he said more softly, "I'm sorry," and pulled his robe open.

"Teach me," Phineas said.

"I'm trying," Dantanian sighed. Phineas pointed his wand at a waiting snake with a scowl.

"Dracosanguis." Nothing happened. "This is the motion, isn't it?" Dantanian nodded. "Dracosanguis. Dracosanguis!" It seemed he had been failing for some time, to judge by depth of frustration. "You have none of your grandmother's pyromancy, you say. The spell should be possible for me, then, if it is for you, inventor or not!"

Dantanian made a face. "Didn't you have a meeting at Hogwarts?"

Phineas cursed and walked straight out of the observatory, though not without grabbing Dantanian's head and pressing a kiss to his long braid. Dantanian smiled at him, though his face turned to irritated relief the moment Phineas was gone. He went over to the shelves full of books, picked one out, and opened it to a marked place. Then he Vanished all the snakes, save the one still alive.

"Diffindo," he cast, and drew his wand in the air over the snake, cutting it lengthwise. Then he covered his hands in the blood, and approached the plainest part of the observatory, a blank dark slab of a door. He did not hesitate to raise his stained hands to it and begin to draw. He had the swift ease of an artist who had been practicing more this summer, making the picture in his mind come right to reality. That picture was of snakes and stars.

He laid the end of his braid on the unadorned stone floor. He cast Diffindo wordlessly this time, severing the end, and left strands of hair. Then he leveled his wand at the door. "Dignusanguine," he said. "Worthy blood. I am the one worthy to claim the legacy of Dantanian Black. I am the true heir to House Black!"

He clearly found his own words ridiculous. He laughed at himself as they did nothing. He did not seem to have expected it to work. "Dignusanguine," he cast, then glanced back at the book. "Cursed for everyone but a worthy descendent, with the power to wield the weapon within. Either I'm weak, or I'm unworthy. Mother, you have some explaining to do. I might have saved the hair."

Then he stiffened, almost like he felt his mother had spoken back. "Might as well give it a shot," he said, raised his wand, and cleaned his hands. Then he cut his left palm open, enough for blood to pool over the skin. He didn't seem to feel the pain of it.

He walked towards the door with a more fatal air, each step seeming to echo despite the small crowdedness of the observatory. It might have been an illusion from the dark gleam of his eyes, as he moved to bring his hands together only to frown. Then, with the same reflexive accuracy as when a very young child, he moved his hand in the air, and blood from his palm lifted in individual droplets, climbing. It settled above the first wheel. Then he began to draw on the air, far more quickly than with fingertips. Another wheel formed on the door, this time in his own blood.

Dantanian didn't bother to heal his palm, just grabbing his wand. "Dignusanguine-"

He barely had time to finish the incantation before the unopenable door opened.

The memory ended before anything was visible beyond the door, save for a distant glow like moonlight.

"Daniel Shaw is not your real name. Because you're not really male."

"What, you mean it's really Danielle?" Lamia said dryly.

Dantanian cast a careful look towards Lamia, before leaning to whisper his reply in Dorian's ear.

"That has to be the worst guess yet," he hissed, "Given your... personal experience, that attests I am."

Dorian flushed, hair still crisp and moonlight-blond at his shoulders, and raked a hand through it before retorting in another whisper, "Polyjuice. Or- some other spell. Maybe one you invented."

Dantanian leaned back, to say in a more ordinary voice, "Just because I'm prettier than any girl you know, Malfoy, doesn't mean I am one."

"Prove it," Dorian said, and Lamia made a face.

"Oh, that makes sense, he's just being a pervert," she sighed. "Wait- Daniel, you aren't actually going to let him check, are you?"

"He'll never leave me alone about it otherwise!" Dantanian let Dorian lead him away towards the dungeon stairs, even as the entrance feast seemed soon to start. Being a prefect and a Malfoy, no one seemed to consider trying to stop him. Dantanian was the one to cast a nervous glance at the high table. But Phineas was speaking to Nott, so Dantanian went.

He stopped Dorian the moment they were out of sight. He cast some wordless charm, presumably to keep them from being heard. "Go ahead, then. Check." He gestured downward.

"I didn't actually mean- are you mad?" Dorian sputtered. "I just- Daniel, I couldn't wait any longer to talk to you alone. I don't know if you got my letters-"

"No. And don't write me any more letters ever again. Are you going to check or what?"

"Fine!"

He gently pressed Dantanian against the landing's stone wall. Dantanian's gaze fixed on him with less surety, proximity affecting him, doubly so when Dorian's hand settled on his chest and trailed downward.

"Go ahead," Dantanian said with put-on disdain, "Make sure it's real," and Dorian's hand slid inside his trousers. Dantanian seemed to put all the effort in the world into appearing unaffected. He failed. His teeth raked over his lower lip, so hard it went white, but he still whimpered as Dorian's hand cupped him. He made an almost protesting noise when Dorian's hand slid back out.

"Everything, ah," Dorian said shakily, "Seems to be in order," and Dantanian glared. Their eyes met, and locked, and then Dorian leaned forward. Dantanian did not push him back, and Dorian kissed him.

Dantanian's arms went around Dorian's neck, kissing him back with enthusiasm, and, if Dorian had been observing the situation analytically, far more skill than the last time. But Dorian was just kissing Dantanian as hard as he could. "I missed you," he breathed against Dantanian's lips, bracing his hands beside Dantanian's face on the wall as he kissed him. "I missed you so much..."

The fingers of his left hand turned to stroke tenderly at Dantanian's braid.

Dantanian pushed him away. "Don't," he panted, "Don't," and Dorian stepped back, looking guilty.

"I'm sorry- I didn't mean to- I thought you wanted-"

Dorian had the grace not to bring up that Dantanian had kissed him back. After practically making him touch his cock.

"I don't..." Dantanian banged his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. "No!"

"Daniel, I'm sorry. What's wrong-"

The sound of the false name seemed to bring Dantanian back to reality. "You- you've verified, um, what you... wanted to verify," he said feebly, then stood. He looked like he wanted to rub his head, where he'd hit it on purpose like a house elf. "So... that's it."

"I know we have to go to the feast. But you, ah, do you want to, maybe, uh, hang out sometime- you could come to my room tonight- and we, when it's time for it, we could go to Hogsmeade together-"

Dantanian stepped away. "No, Dorian. That can't happen. None of it can." Dorian opened his mouth, looking protesting. "Forget about what happened at the end of last year. Pretend it never did."

"I don't understand-"

"Malfoy." Dantanian pulled from between Dorian's fingers. Their hands had to brush, untangling it carefully finger by finger. They both stared where their hands touched, before Dantanian pulled his away. "I'm not interested. Look elsewhere, to your many, many, many admirers-"

"I met my fiancé, but we didn't- do anything, if that's what you're thinking-"

"You say that as if you expect me to care," Dantanian said icily, though his eyes still had an uncharacteristic tenderness on Dorian's face. "It's alright. Sooner or later, the Malfoy heir will have to be born."

"You'd do the same thing in my position," Dorian said defensively.

Dantanian's face went truly cold, a distance thrown between them that Dorian could never have understood. "Yes. I would. In your position. But I'm not, am I?"

"Is that why? Because I'll be married someday-"

It might have been easier to go with that excuse, but Dantanian didn't. "No," he said flatly. "Even if you weren't, even if you were proposing marriage to me, this? You and me is never going to happen. Accept it and move on."

"Why?" was all Dorian could ask, finally. He looked on the verge of tears.

"I just can't," Dantanian said, and turned back towards the entrance feast, where the headmaster was giving his speech.

"I show not your face, but your heart's desire," read Dantanian, and pouted.

The Mirror of Erised sat before Dantanian in a great obsidian holding case, in a room full of moonstones. The only things in the vast room were shelves full of tomes and notebooks, the mirror and its backing, and those stones. Moonstones stretched along the floor, walls, and ceiling in an oval covering as far as the eye could see. There was no place not covered in their smooth shapes, none exactly identical although all roughly ovals.

The obsidian that held the Mirror of Erised was like a great hollowed and trisected obelisk, the same look to it as the obsidian on the castle, but not suffered a day of erosion since its carving. There was a long slender wall of it behind the mirror, and two to its sides, forming an equilateral triangle at the center of the room, though the walls hid its other two sides from view. It was like a great misshapen wheel that did not turn. The mirror looked almost tawdry in comparison, despite its gilt frame.

That impression was doubled, when the only thing reflected on its long reflective magic surface was blue flames.

They were not small mist-like flames like Dantanian liked to work from his fingers, nor of any particular shape. These were blue-white flames of pure destruction. And that was what Dantanian saw in the Mirror of Erised.

"If you're supposed to show me my heart's desire," Dantanian complained, "Show me my mother. I want to see her face. Maybe then I could finally paint her properly this summer." But the Mirror of Erised, as many would testify, did not bend to any entreaties, nor threats or even attempts at destruction. Nor did it even when encased in what seemed to be its place, or at least a place made for it. "Show me Maman," he said again, voice cracking. "I can't get her right."

He waited for a long time. The flames just kept burning. "At least show me Dorian, then."

He was ignored all the same. "You're as useless as the other two," he groaned. "Finestra!"

The mirror and its flames remained untouched.

"All I want," Dantanian said, "Is to see my mother."

It was his grandparents' house, in the hallway outside his father's old studio. His grandparents in pajamas looked a little older. Elizabeth had her body between Dantanian and the studio door, while Frederick stood behind him. Neither Elizabeth nor her grandson seemed inclined to pay much heed to Frederick's mediation efforts anymore.

"You mean you want to steal from us," Elizabeth said grimly. "I wondered if this day would come. You want to take our son's paintings."

Dantanian had not drawn his wand, but he might not particularly need one. The old Muggles looked as frightened as if he had. If this had been a different country, one of them might have had a shotgun to draw on him. "You mean my father's paintings," Dantanian said, fingers twitching in the air. "I don't want any quarrel. You didn't need to get up, I would have been in and out. I won't take or damage your property. All I want is the pictures of my mother-"

"They're all we have left of him, lad," Frederick said, reaching to touch Dantanian's shoulder, but seeming to think better of it before the touch. "We could have sat down and discussed this- come to a compromise, but breaking in, in the middle of the night-"

"Like we sat down and talked about you disowning me, and sending that letter? Step aside."

"No!" Elizabeth said defiantly, backing up against the door. "You have no right to anything of his! He would still be alive if your mother had never-"

"Speak ill of her, and I will be less patient." Dantanian turned with a softer face to Frederick. "I don't want trouble. Honestly. Even after you disowned me. I know the debt I owe. You did feed and clothe and shelter me for years, and I wasn't- as appreciative as I might have been. You pleaded with the school not to expel me, even if it was just so I'd be off your hands. You let me see your books. And you never hit me." Finishing what sounded a planned speech, he returned to Elizabeth with new spite. "That letter you sent trying to ruin me. Did you find it before you adopted me?"

"Years before." The hall was only lit by the candles, both under lanterns that diffused their insufficient light. Elizabeth's face over it looked indescribably hateful, like an effigy meant to soon be burned. "Years. I've always known what you were, devil child. But I wanted to be wrong. I tried to be friendly when we met you. I tried to be so kind, but look at you You look just like her now."

"I said if you speak ill of her-"

"Don't provoke him, Elizabeth," Frederick pleaded, and was ignored.

"All I want," Dantanian steadily, "Is my birthright."

"No!" Elizabeth yelled. "You deserve nothing!"

"Alohomora." In the tense silence of the hall, they could all hear the sound of the lock clicking open. "You can't keep me out. Give me my birthright, woman. Think about what I can do if you don't. If you believe what that letter said about my other grandmother."

"Please, Dantanian, don't hurt her," Frederick gasped.

"You said my name," Dantanian marveled. "All these years, and you finally said it. I wonder what it would take to get it out of her."

"Call yourself what you like," Elizabeth snarled, eyes darting. "But get out of my house! Or we'll send for the police-"

"I could kill you so many different ways," Dantanian said softly, "Before you came close to making the call."

"Dantanian!" Frederick did try to take his shoulder then. When Dantanian whirled with his wand drawn, he lifted his hands in the air, backing away. "She is your kin-"

"Because that meant so much to her, all the times she hit me-"

"Do not speak of murder, though." Frederick bowed his head humbly. "Remember the times you went to church with us. Remember the verses of the Bible. The golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And the Old Testament, Dantanian. An eye for an eye. Just that."

Dantanian smiled ironically. "I have hated few things, more than I hated going to church. Elizabeth Shaw, I will not ask you again."

"Elizabeth, maybe you should..."

"No!" she yelled frantically. "Jackson was my son! My only child! Mine! I can't, Fred, I can't let him take away what's left of him-"

"An eye for an eye?" Dantanian regarded Elizabeth, with the candlelight casting a glow that did not seem to reach his eyes. And then light was everywhere, Frederick and Elizabeth screaming as the candles flared in their lanterns and made them drop them. Then they were surrounded in that ordinary hallway by a rising wall of orange fire.

"An eye for an eye, is it? I'm only to hurt her as much as she hurt me? But do you know, Grandpa? Do you know how it hurt, for her to keep me from my father's paintings? To burn all the pictures I had of my mother? To hear her call my mother a whore? To have her take away my name?"

"I don't-"

"Don't worry. I'm in control of the fire." Dantanian walked forward, flames leaping a bit with each time his foot hit wooden floors that somehow did not burn. "Remember, I gave you the chance. You could have just let me take the paintings. You chose this." He tightened his hand on his wand. "An eye for an eye, and the whole world is blind. Crucio!"

Elizabeth fell to the ground, convulsing uncontrollably. Invisible strings seemed to pull her limbs in unnatural contortions, fire near her face showing every bit of the agony that seized her, an agony beyond even the common Cruciatus curse. It was like the formless hands pulling her limbs like they wanted to wrench them off her body were succeeding, and yet were cruel enough somehow to keep them on still. Just to keep her suspended shaking in that exact moment when they broke off and her whole body was coming apart.

"Elizabeth!" Frederick screamed. He threw himself onto Elizabeth, shaking her. "What did he do to you? Stop it, Dantanian! Please stop it-"

Elizabeth screamed and Dantanian frowned, unmoved. "No," he said to himself. "No, it's not enough, is it? It's not as much as I was hurt. It's not even close. Grandpa, get out of the way."

"She's my wife, I love her, please, I can't just let her-"

"Then I'll hurt you too," Dantanian said without remorse. "Crucio!"

The convulsions threw Frederick half a meter into the air, jerked by some ghostly hand, before he was rolled over the wood and nearly into the fire. A wave of Dantanian's hand made the flames recede, enough that they did not touch him. "Look at you. You're barely shaking anymore, Elizabeth. Crucio!"

Dantanian watched as Elizabeth writhed, keen dark gaze all analysis. "No," he said after she stilled for a second time. "No, it's nothing close. I'm sorry, Frederick, but you said it. An eye for an eye. It's so kind, the Cruciatus curse. Why is it so kind? Crucio!" He stomped his foot as she screamed and began to cry hysterically, hands clawing at her wet face as if she would give up the skin there to make the agony stop.

"Dantanian..."

Dantanian put out all the flames out around his grandfather. "Petrificus totalus," Dantanian said, voice almost kind. If not perhaps as kind as a Stunner would have been. It left Frederick not writhing but motionless, only able to watch as his grandson cast the Cruciatus curse on his wife twice more, progressively more dissatisfied.

"Dracosanguis," he cast, and screams that had begun to quiet turned shriller than ever. The blood from where she hit her elbow falling began to burn. "Dracosanguis. Dracosanguis. Dracosanguis!" His eyes were sparking finally with excitement. "There, that's better, Elizabeth. Are you feeling it? Do you? Do you understand the pain now?"

Elizabeth had fallen unconscious, presumably from pain, though the blood still burned when he commanded it. He frowned and cast Enervate. She didn't wake up, though when he checked her throat for a pulse, he found it beating.

"Don't worry, she's still alive," Dantanian said to his grandfather. "Finite incantatem." Frederick just lay there.

Dantanian pushed the door open with his foot. His sole tread on his grandmother's white hair on the hardwood, as he stepped in past her. Then he went over with the calm of a man who believed himself unimpeachably in the right, and began to gather his father's paintings.

"Here it is, then," Dantanian said, eyeing seventh-year Dorian Malfoy with poorly concealed curiosity. "Your seventh and final guess. Your last chance to find out whatever you think I've hidden all these years." Dorian looked around for Lamia. "She's late," Dantanian said, tapping his fingers on the Ravenclaw table. "But you're on time. So guess."

"You're a bastard. A half-blood bastard."

Dantanian's fingers stopped tapping.

"Like my uncle Nicholas," Dorian went on without distaste, "But it wasn't a pureblood, it was a Muggle, or Muggleborn. Your father or mother is from some great pureblood house, maybe even in the Sacred Twenty Eight. But they wouldn't acknowledge you, because you're half- Shaw, or whatever the Muggle parent was called- so they had you put aside. So you have had some training, and you have powerful blood. That's your secret. That you were a great lord or lady's bastard."

Dantanian did not hesitate. "I'm sorry to say, but that is incorrect."

One might have thought him a liar. But Dorian was not totally right, just almost. He was a generation off.

"I suppose you'll never know, that supposed secret."

Lamia came up looking breathless. "Oh no, did I miss it? What did you guess?"

"There's no need," Dantanian cut in, "To dwell on Dorian's stupidity any more than necessary." The closeness of Dorian's guess seemed to put unusual savageness in his voice.

Dorian wilted. But he pressed a folded note into Dantanian's hand, before giving up and going over to Slytherin.

Dantanian opened and read it, with Lamia brimming with curiosity. He burned it after with a snap of his fingers. "What?" she pried. "Was it a love note? Is he after you this year? Still?"

Dantanian rubbed ashes between his fingers. "I don't understand why he keeps trying, when he's the one who has so much left to lose."

One might have almost thought Dorian would be absent from the memories then. But there was one short memory more, from what still seemed seventh year. It was Dorian with a trophy, in ornamental green and silver robes that made him grown-up and gorgeous, beaming with what looked the thrill of victory. One almost feared he had won the Triwizard Cup, and was about to receive a kiss to spirit him away to a graveyard.

"Hey!" he called, following Dantanian down a different hall, this one from the marble steps. "Daniel!"

Dantanian turned, and seemed to smile despite himself. "Shouldn't you be at your party, champion? It's not every year that a first-time competitor wins the whole thing."

Dorian preened. "I saw you watching the Hogwarts Grand Duel, Daniel. Were you rooting for me?"

"I was obviously rooting for your opponent, so I wouldn't have to hear about it if you won."

Dorian snorted. "Well, I did win, and you do have to hear about it."

Dantanian began to walk again. Dorian followed him, until they reached an abandoned classroom. "Why are you wandering after me, Malfoy? Do you expect some kind of congratulations? They'll be missing you at that- whatever passes for a festivity- down there-"

"I saw you were there. Watching. So I knew I had to win."

Dantanian's face went at once softer and more unhappy. "You know you wouldn't have won if I'd entered, don't you?"

Dorian just seemed grateful Dantanian was talking to him. "Why do you say that? You aren't even in the dueling club. And you're last in our year at Defense-"

Dantanian snapped his fingers. Fire appeared between them, blue-white curling in trails to form a perfectly drawn spiral. "You wouldn't have the nerve to try and duel me."

"Um," Dorian said, licking his lips. He had much the same look on his face as when Dantanian had asked him to touch his cock. "I, er, I think I'd manage to try."

"But you know you'd lose." Dantanian waved his hand and let the flame expand, lifting until it rose to the ceiling and then a corner of the room, like bluebell flames. Except it was not mere globes and spirals to decorate this room, but constellations, small bursts and clusters of light that refined themselves and soon had nebulas and the space of lightyears between them. It was something like an Aurora Borealis appearing as if it had always been in that empty room, and just concealed. Dantanian smiled at this show of beauty in his indisputable power, and the Milky Way crystallized above them, a sea of stars that looked unending, if you didn't look down.

"Salazar," Dorian whispered, staring up. His gaze soon fastened with more awe, though, on Dantanian's face lit by flame-stars.

"There's your congratulations, Malfoy."

They watched each other, for a very long and protracted moment of suspension, and then Dantanian leaned forward like he couldn't help himself, and pressed a kiss to Dorian's cheek. "Congratulations, Dorian."

Dorian didn't follow Dantanian. One suspected he might have stayed for some time after, looking at the fire.

"Goodbye, Lamia," Dantanian said, and she nearly tripped on hard stone. She was older yet than she had looked at the start of seventh year, as unusually masculine-looking for her gender as Dantanian was feminine. They made an odd pair, descending the Hogwarts entrance steps with excited students streaming out around them. There was the look of the final day of term. The end of seventh year, then, and the end of Hogwarts for both.

"Don't say it like that," she said fiercely, and drew him aside once they were down the steps. "Just because your grandparents won't let you have guests, and my father won't invite you, that doesn't mean we'll never see each other again. I'm not going to let you go before you tell me what you're planning to do after you graduate and I'm sure you'll be alright-"

Dantanian began to walk again, not towards the train but Hogsmeade. Lamia looked dubious but followed. "Don't worry," he said casually, "I'll make sure you get home. I just have something to show you first."

They reminisced as they walked, with Lamia summoning her luggage as well as Dantanian's from the Hogwarts Express. "I left a note for the elves not to put it there," Dantanian whined. She looked at him fondly, as if thinking she would even miss his whining. They talked of times they had spent together, from when she overheard Dorian Malfoy speaking about her family curse and cried, to the looks on the professors' faces, when Dantanian refused to take any NEWTs at all.

She circled back to Dorian. "He's not going to be happy, you know. For you to leave like this, not on the train, and not even give him a proper goodbye."

"Lamia. Dorian Malfoy will be fine. Because he's Dorian Malfoy."

"He's not just that, though. I got to know him, doing our final potions project together- he's a nice person, he talks a lot about ideas his father has about social change- don't make that face, I know you didn't like it, but maybe you could have been my partner, if you hadn't gotten a Troll on your Potions OWL. Because you're better than just a Troll in Potions. And he's better than just a Malfoy."

"If you intend to keep championing a cause," Dantanian said wanly, "Which today has reached its definitive close, then I will not hesitate to set something about on fire and leave you behind." Once they were out of the Apparition wards, he pulled her into a Side-Along Apparition.

At first, the impression was that he had taken her to Citadelle Xaphan, or just outside its walls. They were on a white seaside cliff, with the sound and wind of ocean sweeping over as soon as they arrived. Dantanian made sure she didn't lose her footing on grass and uneven stone, leading her along the bright bluffs. "I'm sorry, but I couldn't just explain it. I had to show you."

There was no civilization as far as the eye could see, only grass and stone and the waves crashing against the cliffs very low below. They reached the edge, and Lamia drew her wand of all things, as if that would guard against fear.

"For someone in danger of someday becoming a reptile," he drawled, "You are frightfully afraid of heights," and laughed and hugged her, at her playful impression of trying to push him off the cliffs.

He led her to the place their cliff met another, looming so far above it shadowed them. In the furrows of the ancient water-worn stone, there were many turns and holes and hollows. Dantanian found one by memory, and pressed his wand against it. "The password," he said, "Is Olympia Par Manet." The small-cratered stone hollow opened out, into a larger hollow of darkness. "Olympia Par Manet," he repeated at her quizzical look. "Remember that. Olympia was a famous painting by Édouard Manet. He was my mother's favorite painter."

"Should I go inside?" Lamia asked nervously, and Dantanian smiled at her.

"Come on, we'll both fit." He wiggled his fingers, making blue fire spring out of them. She smiled at the sight, and let him lead her in by the hand. She gasped, as the flame lit up a hoard of moonstones. They were hidden in a great pile, like a treasure vault in the hollow dark.

"True moonstones? This must be worth a fortune. Dantanian, you didn't steal these, did you-"

"No," Dantanian said, and pressed another into her hand. "They are real, see? And they aren't stolen. They belong to me. They all do." He looked back out at the cloudless blue sky. "They're my birthright."

"This isn't just a fortune, this many," Lamia said, eyes seeming to start the calculation. "This is a hundred fortunes."

"And this the secret to the wealth of-" House Black, he must almost have said, or just A very old family. But he remained silent, then finished, "Daniel Shaw. Who, as you can see, is very much not penniless and destitute, in need of charity-"

"These are beautiful," Lamia said, "And I'm glad you have them," putting her stones back on the pile without reluctance. Avariciousness seemed neatly absent in her. "But Dantanian, this doesn't do a thing to tell me what you plan to do. Or even where you're going. I know you like your secrets, but..."

"Remember where these are. In case you ever need money or currency to trade, if you're in trouble and can't reach me. Or you can use them in spells, as you'd probably prefer." He grinned, baring his teeth. "They're very powerful." When she didn't smile back, he laughed, hugging her broader shoulders. "Don't worry. I know what I want to do, and where I want to go. You know, Lamia. I told you years ago. I'll just need time to prepare, to be sure I get it right this time."

"Azkaban," she said, and his smile grew wider.

Azkaban was tall and dark that night still, with an even greater storm. Some of the stray spray from a massive cresting wave splashed up to slapped the side of Dantanian's face, as he walked across the unhallowed black stone, steps taking him the same way as in third year. He looked older than the last memory, though not more than a year. The burst of water made him smile.

He seemed to be in no particular hurry, though the only greater assistance he seemed to have was a full moon above. Unless the pendant around his neck, hanging over his midnight blue cloak, was something charmed.

It likely was, moonstones melted in the way only magic could forge them. A jeweler's transfiguration, in a charm the size of a large man's hand. It was an Antipodean Opaleye, like his Patronus, and his mother's. Perhaps he thought it would make that Patronus stand up more formidably somehow, to the Dementors streaming around the cliff from either side.

They looked so much like before it had to be déjà vu, like a repeated nightmare. Except Dantanian barely seemed to notice them.

He looked back instead to where a human wizard rested. The man was in Azkaban guard's clothes- one could hardly ever mistake those after a stay in this unholy place- sprawled on the ground, temple bleeding, wand three meters away from him. Dantanian turned back at the sound, and his wand flashed out the red of an effortless Stunner, before he added, "Obliviate!" It might have been overkill, if the guard or the stunned bodies of others behind peaked the Dementors' interest. Dantanian left them behind.

When the ground before him was beginning to not just drip with mist, but form a sheen of ice, he pushed his back to the wall and checked the nearest number. 457. Then he turned towards the Dementors, with the giddiness of a schoolboy on a first date.

"Here we go, Dantanian," he said to himself, "Here we go," and lifted his wand. "PROTEGO DIABOLICA!"

Blue fire surged out from the tip and everywhere, faster than one could have imagined without seeing it, the rush outward of the breath of an enraged dragon. Even if the glow was the same as a Patronus, meant to drive diabolical Dementors away- and Dementors were letting out high wordless screams, like they were burning.

The handful caught at the edge and touched by his flame were beginning to hiss out black smoke. It rose like another shield, behind the blue circle that was forming, and its dreamy mist. The rain that came down around Dantanian's feet, scarcely seeming to touch him, was tinged in black. Except it had to be touching, because as ink-colored flumes went higher, the rain dripped so thick, it streamed in black teardrops over the luminous surface of his opal dragon.

Dantanian had no need to conduct the circle of flame. No reason to perform when Dementors were his audience. He merely had to lift his hand, and the flame compressed and grew higher from itself, so tall it almost bent back in towards him. It looked ready to form a protective half-sphere, like a broken shell. But every Dementor in Azkaban had already become nothing but an impotent shadow behind his fire.

He walked along the stone wall, looking back now and then to admire his work. He read out each number as he passed, looking progressively more impatient. Part of him looked unable to believe this was this easy. And it had taken him frighteningly little effort for him take command of Azkaban.

"460," he read, voice louder with each one, "461," until he pronounced the three numbers he had come for. "462." The door looked a painting-like cerulean blue, from the flames behind. "Neil Palmer. With my luck, he's dead."

Dantanian waved his wand, and the door made a creaking sound but didn't budge. He sighed, seeming to lose any last vestige of patience, and called fire to his hand. He stepped back, then let the fireball grow whiter and thicker in his palm, packing in like a snowball. Then he flung it at the lock.

When it still did not budge, he cried out in frustration, clenching his fists. A great gust of fire, taller than the fire wall, erupted and flung the stone door off its hinges.

Dantanian walked over it, and pulled down his hood, as he walked into cell 462.

It was not clear whether the man inside was alive or dead. Azkaban had whittled him down harshly, for only a bit more than a decade or so under its hospitality. This was what it did to the truly weak ones. He was an emaciated skeleton, tattered rags marked with the number 462. When Dantanian called, "Palmer," his head lifted, but his open eyes did not seem to see.

If Dantanian had seen Palmer on his last visit, perhaps the lies about thinking him already punished enough might have been closer to true.

"What?" Palmer croaked, voice husky from disuse. He sat up on the meager straw he had for a bed.

"On your feet," Dantanian barked. When Palmer didn't obey, he waved his wand and sent Palmer rolling across cold stone, into a puddle of water let through from the storm. Palmer was still half-asleep, but shied back when he felt the cold of the rain. He recoiled further when he saw the blackness on his fleshless hands.

"Who are you?"

Dantanian raised his wand higher. Palmer folded his arms in front of his head as he cringed back, and made the great struggle to pull himself to his feet.

"How can you ask me that?" Dantanian spat, eyes huge and swollen already. It was impossible to distinguish the fall of tears from the beating of rain outside, which he made no effort to protect against.

Palmer didn't seem to dare go closer. "You aren't dressed like a guard. And you don't look like one."

"I look like someone, though," Dantanian said ferociously. "Don't I." He undid his braid, leaving it a mass of curls around his face, wet and dark as the smoke of Dementors dying. "DON'T I?"

"I think... I think- wait-"

"Don't you even remember her?" Dantanian yelled, voice breaking.

Palmer stumbled backwards, until he hit the wall of his cell. It looked to be the only thing keeping him up. "You look like- the girl. The girl I killed. Astarte. Astarte Noir."

"So you don't deny it." Dantanian's knuckles turned to white around his wand. "I wouldn't have believed you if you tried."

"Are you..." Palmer seemed to be counting mentally, a process that took very long. "You'd... you'd be the age, wouldn't you? Her son."

"Tell me why you killed her!" The words seemed to rip out of his lips, before any more considered or planned interrogation could. "Why? Why her? Tell me why you raped and killed my mother!"

"I let you live!" Palmer began to laugh, clutching at his stomach like he had not laughed in years. "I let you live. And this is my reward. Of course. Of course this is my reward. And I suppose it is, isn't it? It is. It is a reward..."

"What do you mean, you let me live?" Dantanian jammed his wand right against that awful deathly face.

"I was meant to kill you both, but she fought. I didn't think she'd fight like that. She kept saying your name. Begging for her son. Dantanian, Dantanian, Dantanian. Do what you want to me, but don't hurt Dantanian. Let him live, he doesn't know who we are, he doesn't know about our blood. He just thinks his name is Dante. Dantanian, Dantanian..." Memory seemed not as gratifying to him as it might have been, for a more enthusiastic killer. "So eventually I gave in, and promised her I'd let you live."

"That's why." Dantanian looked like he was the prisoner then, so young and destroyed. "That's why she died smiling." Palmer nodded grimly, looking between Dantanian and his wand. His were not the eyes of someone considering some desperate lunge, though, some final attempt to survive this confrontation. Rather, he looked to be wondering how long it would take before Dantanian killed him.

"And you kept your word? Why? Was there some magic to it? Some unbreakable vow?"

"No, no. I didn't want to kill you. I didn't want to kill her either, but-"

"But you did. You and just you." Palmer nodded to every one of Dantanian's statements. "You were the only intruder. It was like it said in the papers. You got her wand, took her downstairs, murdered her, violated her- you disfigured her body-"

"I had to do that," Palmer insisted, looking truly guilty. "I knew the Muggles would find her first, and they took you away before the wizards knew one of their own was dead. So I thought the wizards would see all those- those blood and bones- and think her son's body must be part of that pile. I didn't- I killed her the quickest way I knew. I didn't hurt her at all, until- after."

"But you're a pervert. A lunatic. You raped her, because you do that to women. You did it to some Muggle girl-"

"Eloise Bourbeau," Palmer said, showing a first hint of spine. "Her name was Eloise Bourbeau. She was not just some girl. She was special. I loved her. I regretted what I did. I didn't plan it, and I wished I hadn't done it after. I never wanted to hurt her." He was pleading far more energetically, for Dantanian to believe in this love for a different woman, than he likely would for his own life. "That's why I erased her memory. So she wouldn't have that pain anymore."

"I suppose you'll claim you loved my mother too."

"No," Palmer leaned his head back against the wall, like a corpse in final repose. "Eloise is dead- the paper said, a year ago, she's dead and no one can hurt her- but it doesn't matter, it's no use still, no one will believe me- you won't believe me, I killed your mother-"

"Tell me why you killed my mother now, or I will feed you to a hundred Dementors."

"No!" Palmer gasped. "Not Dementors! Not their kiss! Kill me if you want, any way you want, please kill me, but not that-"

Dantanian rolled his eyes at the man begging for his soul, and Palmer began to spill out from the mouth, everything all at once. "I was forced to. Not Imperius, but threats. A man told me he knew about Eloise and what I had done to her. He said he knew I loved her, and he would hurt her if I didn't do just as he said. He told me to kill Astarte and Dantanian Noir, told me everything about you. He said if I didn't, he would kill Eloise- so I did it. I knew he could kill her, or someone else he got to do the job. He said that I would go to the British authorities, turn myself in, and confess what I had done to Eloise, and make it seem the same with Mademoiselle Noir. It would be like I had become obsessed with another beautiful dark-haired woman in Paris, and stalked her, and violated her. But because she fought, I killed her this time, and her son with her. He said- he said I had to rape her so they would believe it. Even though I didn't want to."

"So none of it was your fault, in this version."

"No, but, I just- I didn't have anyone to go to who I thought could stop him. The choice was between Eloise, and the life of a woman and child I didn't know. A woman he said was an evil bitch, and her child an abomination. There'd be life for me in Azkaban, but he promised I wouldn't get the Kiss, he promised, I'm not supposed to get the Kiss for it, that's the one thing he promised. For Eloise's life. He promised he would not hurt Eloise, that he'd let her live her life with Muggles happy and undisturbed- that she would die a natural death, never knowing what her stalker had done to her. As long as I stayed in Azkaban with my mouth shut.

"I made the trade. It was mad, but I loved her. I'd failed her once, out of my own weakness. I wasn't going to fail her again. I told myself I was already a monster, already deserved to die, so I could suffer terrible things- I could do terrible things, anything if it was for her.

"The man who wanted her dead knew it too. He knew me from school, we were at Hogwarts in the same year, though I was in Hufflepuff. He didn't speak to me much, as a Hufflepuff Muggleborn. But before he sent me, he told me he knew I was the man for the job because I was an honest man, and I would go to any lengths for the woman I loved. And I did. That's all."

"The man's name," Dantanian said, and perhaps he should have already guessed. Perhaps it was obvious already. But he looked as shocked as the grave, at the name that came out of Neil Palmer's lips.

"Phineas Nigellus Black."

"No. No! That's not possible! You're lying! You're lying!"

"What would be the point? You're going to kill me regardless. If I wanted to stitch up some innocent man, I wouldn't say one of your family. Do you know him? He was..." Palmer looked away. "I've read he's headmaster of Hogwarts now. But- he was not a good man."

"Why?" Dantanian demanded, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him. Palmer swayed limply back in forth in Dantanian's grasp. "Why would he make you do that? Why?"

Palmer blinked. "You and your mother," he said tiredly, "Were a taint upon his bloodline. He said House Black's strength came from its purity of blood, and he had always lived by that. He said..."

Palmer strained to remember. "He said he had let your mother live as long as she knew her place. But she had come to his son's christening. His first son. Like that witch in Sleeping Beauty, I said, but he didn't know the fairy tale. He said she had come to pay her respects, as the child's aunt, and it was all he could do to keep his wife and all his family from seeing her. He said she demanded that he acknowledge her son Dantanian alongside his own. She threatened to expose the truth about his father to the world, if he named this boy as heir and left her son out in the cold, in exile, far away. She said it wasn't right. She gave him an ultimatum, so he sent her away, and then he sent for me- you don't believe me, do you?"

"No," Dantanian gasped, "No, I do. I think I do. Legilimens!" Palmer seemed to mount no resistance to the intrusion, because Dantanian took little time to see what he wanted.

He let go of Palmer, buried his face in his hands, and began to sob.

Palmer sat on the ground watching him cry, back battered all the while by unrelenting rain.

"The Hat was right," Dantanian said finally, words inane out of context, looking up with swollen but focused eyes. "I betrayed her. I betrayed my mother."

"I'm sorry," Palmer said, and almost seemed to wish he could comfort Dantanian.

Dantanian lifted his wand. "Crucio," he cast without feeling or enthusiasm, but it was enough to send Palmer screaming and jolting. Dantanian waited, pulling his wet hair back, then pulling up his knees to his chest and resting his chin on them. He looked heartbreakingly young, like some helpless beautiful bystander, as he watched the man he was torturing.

"That's enough," Dantanian said tiredly, voice a whimper, and prodded at Palmer with his boot. "So. How do you want to die? I take it quick, not slow."

Palmer's looked as happy as any human could be. "You're going to kill me! You won't give me to the Dementors?"

"No," Dantanian said, swallowing back another sob, "Because you told me the truth."

"Quick," said Palmer, almost eager.

"I know plenty of ways to kill someone, but I've never tried the Killing Curse. I think that would be fastest, though."

Palmer sat back against the wall, obediently closing his eyes.

"Avada Kedavra," Dantanian said, voice a whisper. The green light flashed out and struck Neil Palmer dead.

When Phineas Apparated outside Dantanian's rooms, Dantanian waiting at the door. He had on black everything, robes, cloak, gloves, boots, and hood, though Phineas pushed Dantanian's hood back to kiss him. Dantanian turned his face away.

"What?" Phineas said, looking bizarrely hurt. "What's wrong, Dante?"

"Not yet," Dantanian said, with an awful smile on his lips. "I told you, I've got a surprise for you."

The night was clear and must have been warm, since Phineas went without a cloak, clear enough to see any number of stars above the ocean. Phineas did not seem to suspect anything, not for the entire walk towards the observatory. "Did you finally get that room in there open?" he asked, and Dantanian didn't answer. That just made Phineas watch him more admiringly, eyes following the lines of Dantanian's body under his robes. He only stopped looking at Dantanian when he heard the strangled voices of his children.

His eldest son Sirius bore a striking resemblance to his father, though he was barely a teenager, perhaps on the verge of attending Hogwarts. He was bound at the mouth, ankles, and chest, arms secured behind his back not in rope but strands of blue fire. Also bound with him were the younger Phineas, a child of about seven, the still-younger Arcturus, only five, and a young infant on the ground in black swaddling cloth, with the same pale skin and curling dark hair. He seemed, despite the fire rope around him, to be sleeping.

"Sirius!" Phineas gasped, turning to Dantanian in alarm. "Finn! Arcturus! Cygnus! My sons!"

"I know. I thought it would be harder than it turned out to be, to collect them."

"Dante?"

Dantanian gave him a look of pure and unconcealed hatred. "Expelliarmus."

Phineas's wand flew to him. "Really?" he said after, looking almost disappointed as he pocketed it. "I expected some kind of fight, at least from you. But none of you gave me one. This is a bloodline that deserves to die."

"Dante, is that you?" Phineas gasped, and with a wave of his wand, Dantanian sent him falling to his knees.

"There's a saying in the Muggle Bible," Dantanian said, the waning moon haloing him like an angel. He still looked like one- like he always did, even when torturing or killing.

"An eye for an eye. Revenge in kind. These are your legitimate heirs, who the law says will take over House Black when you die. They're what matters most to you. I would have brought Belvina too, but you never mention her. Nor do I enjoy hurting women- well, most women. And she can't be an heir."

"What do you mean, revenge? Dante, did you bring my sons here? Did you bind them like that? Let them go!"

"I'm not going to follow your orders," Dantanian said softly, "Ever again." Then he strode towards the Black children, laughing. The sound cut the night like a razor. "What do you think, Finn?" Both father and son looked up at the name. "Should I tell them who I am? Should I tell them who their father is, before I pick who dies?"

Phineas looked around, likely for some kind of weapon. "You've gone mad."

"No," Dantanian said, and turned to the boys he'd bound. "Not all of you will be old enough to understand this. Cygnus definitely won't. But you have the right to know, that I am the rightful heir to House Black."

"By what right?" Phineas growled.

"Power," said Dantanian.

Strangled noises came from the boys, most of all Sirius. Phineas tried to grab Dantanian, who sent him to the ground with a lazy Flipendo. "My grandmother prophesized it so. She was a pyromancer. So am I. Even if I cannot see the future. But I saw the past, Finn. I know what you did. See, I know this is... not the optimal way, for me to introduce myself to my cousins. And yet we're all here, boys, when I'm sure you'd rather be snug in your soft beds, for one reason. Your father had my mother killed."

"No!" Phineas yelled, so violently anyone could have heard his guilt. "What are you talking about? Who poured these lies into your ear-"

"Neil Palmer."

Phineas sunk back to his knees of his own accord. "You got into Azkaban. You never stopped trying, even when you said you did. You spoke to Neil Palmer."

"Here," Dantanian said curtly, "Is what you need to know." He looked down at the boys with disdain at their weakness. They seemed mere extensions of Phineas to him. "My name is Dantanian Noir. My mother's name was Astarte Noir. She was a painter. She was perfect. Phineas Nigellus Black had her killed." Phineas didn't bother trying to object. Even the muted sounds from the boys were softer. "He took her from me. I had no one else. So, an eye for an eye. I'm going to take from Phineas Black what he loves most in the worst way I know."

"It isn't true!" Phineas yelled with a burst of courage. "It isn't! Palmer was always a liar! Do you think I would entrust a murder to a Hufflepuff?"

"Are you curious how I spoke to him? How I finally got into Azkaban? I'll show you. Protego Diabolica!" Blue flames burst out again, coming to encircle Phineas with one smooth wave. They did not raise high, only flickering around his ankles. Phineas's sons made sounds of distress like they were watching their father die, loud enough to wake the infant. He might have cried, if his mouth had not been full of fire.

"This is a spell of my own creation. I invented it as a shield against Dementors. A Patronus of fire. But it should shield against humans too- some humans, that is. It will allow most to pass through, unharmed. Every Dementor is my enemy. But not every person. The only person the flames will hurt is someone who is my enemy."

Phineas's legs shook where he stood. "What- what will it do, to your enemies?"

"It will kill. But no, go ahead. If you're telling the truth, if you're not my enemy, then step through the fire, and it won't touch you."

Dantanian waited, and waited, longer than anyone needed, to see Phineas was not going to walk forward. They stared at each other, through the mist and ethereal flicker of blue flame. Then Dantanian waved his wand, and the ring of fire disappeared.

"See, boys? Your father is my enemy."

He did not leave Phineas free long. A razor-thin whip with the brilliance of fire curled out from his wand, encircling Phineas and driving him to kneel. He was soon bound like his sons, except for the gags. Dantanian dragged Phineas by the end of the fire rope to right before his sons, facing them.

"What are you planning to do?" Phineas said with false bravado. "You have to know you'll never get away with this, bastard-"

Dantanian backhanded Phineas across the face. His struck face hit the courtyard hard, a smashing sound that echoed. His sons cried out and tried to inch closer. They stopped when they saw Dantanian's wand raise again.

"I don't actually know if this will work. You'll have to bear with me. I mean, it works in theory. And I think it worked on the animals I tried, but it's hard to judge. So this is multi-purpose." He adjusted the dragon pendant around his neck. "I avenge my mother and claim my rightful place as the head of this house. And more importantly, I further my research."

"Don't," Phineas gasped. "Don't hurt them. Please, Dante, please don't hurt them-"

"You're lucky I even gave you a chance to beg." Dantanian kicked Phineas's face into the ground again. "I was older than some of your boys, but younger than some, when you ordered me dead along with my mother. You must have thought you succeeded, until I told you who I was. Why didn't you try and kill me then and wipe your bloodline clean? Toujours pur?"

Phineas's bloody face stared with bleak black eyes. "You know why."

"Yes," Dantanian said with a shudder of revulsion. "I suppose I do. Now tell me who you wish to spare."

"What?"

"Name one of your sons and I'll spare them. The others die. You pick who gets to live, at least for now. Unless you waste time. Then I'll just pick for you."

The boys began to shriek under their gags. Phineas leaned against his older brother, seeming to weep. Dantanian was looking at their father.

"You are mad. How can you make me-"

"I'll count down from ten, and then I'll make the choice for you. Ten..."

Phineas breathed out hard and squirmed, testing his bonds fruitlessly.

"Nine. Eight. Seven..."

The boys tried to inch away on their knees. Dantanian pulled them back each time with a flick of his wand.

"Six. Five. Four..."

"Please, Dante, I'll do anything! What do you want? Money? Or- House Black- I'll acknowledge you, I'll name you my heir-"

"Three, two-"

"PHINEAS!"

The boys fell silent.

"Your namesake? I suppose narcissism from you should always be predictable."

Sirius wrenched himself violently away from the junior Phineas, eyes hateful. He seemed to have expected to be the one chosen to save.

"It's not that," Phineas said bleakly. "I'm sorry, Sirius. But your brother is more clever. He would make a better heir."

"He would have," Dantanian agreed, and hauled Phineas the younger forward between the line of sons and their father.

"What are you doing? I picked him to save-"

"Didn't you expect me to switch it?" Dantanian said, looking more surprised by Phineas's surprise than anything. "Of course I would do this first, to the one you least want to lose."

Dantanian's pockets were full of moonstones, like the ones in the room with the Mirror of Erised, and his secret hoard. He cast Locomotor mortis on each Black male in turn, and then lay the stones in a circle around young Phineas's kneeling body, eight in total. Phineas the elder raged and pleaded and threatened all the while. Finally, Dantanian finished, and stood over the boy, raising his wand with an unchangeable resolution in his beautiful dark eyes.

"Whatever you mean to do to him," Phineas said bravely, "Do it to me instead."

"You," Dantanian hissed, anger coming at once. "You! You had my mother killed, and then you did what you did with me? You made me a traitor to her! A traitor! I won't do as you say ever again!"

He made the rope around Phineas gag him too finally. Then both the moonstones on the ground and the charm on his pendant glowed, blue and silver.

"Hallow," Dantanian said, and one of the moonstones cracked. Both the bound forms called Phineas jerked away from it, but they could not escape the black smoke that exploded from inside it.

"Wand," Dantanian said, and another moonstone cracked, a loud smashing sound in the air before a whoosh of smoke.

"Stone. Cloak." With each word, another stone burst, following a swift circle around Phineas's body. "Mirror. Desire. Eurydice." Then Dantanian looked up at the sky, and pronounced the word that made the final stone break.

"Eclipse."

The moon went out of the sky. It was there, waning but bright, and then it was gone, as out of sight as if it had never been at all. Moonlight poured down from high above, a searing flood that crashed down upon Phineas the child, like it was all the moonlight in the world, concentrated to a single strike. The ground beneath trembled, but the impact seemed felt only by the child, who was screaming without being heard, and then fell silent.

Slowly, like the stones, the moonlight turned to black smoke. The boy tried to shy back, but he could not escape its hissing touch. Whether it reached turned black, smell filling the air of rot and decay like months of decomposition at once. It touched the boy's face and it collapsed upon itself, black and then grey, scaled and skeletal and inhuman.

It was too thin at first for the ropes to hold it. Dantanian let the smoke sweep them away. Then it would have been too tall, as what had once been Phineas Pollux Black rose from the ground, robes turning plain and lengthening, somber as a shroud but perfect pitch-black. That color would fade and tatter in time. At the moment, it was another eclipse. But it was a mercy, as it hid the rotted thing inside the robes from view.

Not enough to conceal what it was. That much was clear from the cold that filled the air. Once the black smoke dissipated, all that was left was an icy mist, spreading from the tall form hooded in black.

Dantanian examined his work. "Well, it looks like a Dementor."

The two younger sons seemed to have fainted. Phineas was staring in horror at his once-namesake, who floated in his direction with a newborn hunger.

"Dementor!" Dantanian barked, and the Dementor froze. "Stop it." He waved his hand imperiously, and the Dementor moved aside mechanically, as ordered. Dantanian seemed to have a puppeteer's control of the creature.

"It has a Dementor's hunger," Dantanian observed, and let the gag fall from the Phineas Black that remained.

"What! What? What did you do? Salazar- no, what did you do, no," Phineas babbled.

Dantanian looked dissatisfied even as tears began to stream down Phineas's face too. "It's not enough," he said to himself fretfully. "Should I feed him to his son? Would that be enough? Should I change them all first? I don't even know if that would be enough. An eye for an eye. An eye for an eye. Let your sons take your soul? HOW IS THAT ENOUGH FOR MY MOTHER?"

Dantanian's roar echoed through the empty courtyard. No one moved.

Then he took Phineas's wand out of his pocket and snapped it. The loss didn't even seem to register on Phineas's stunned, hopeless face.

"Hogwarts," Dantanian said, like his mind was already made up. "You love Hogwarts. I'll take that too."

"What?"

Phineas did not seem even relieved, when Dantanian laughed and told him, "I'm letting you live. All of you. Even this one, if you can call it a life." He gestured to the Dementor. "There's no reversing it. It's how the first ever Dementors were made. But you can try." He began to pace between his captives, speaking fast and manic. "I'll burn Hogwarts to the ground and make you watch, Finn. I'll kill your wife and every one of your children and make you watch. I am the heir to this house. The last ever heir to House Black. You will watch me burn this house to the last of the embers before I am merciful enough to let you die."

Dantanian looked up at the moon, which had at some point reappeared, then back down. He waved his wand and the ropes untangled from the Blacks. Phineas was sobbing and trembling.

"I swear it by the goddess Hecate," Dantanian said, voice ringing clear and true. "I will not rest until this tainted blood is gone from the earth. I will be the end of House Black."

The vision of nightmare faded, into Lamia Periander's honest sweet face in sunlight. She was stood on the edge of white cliffs once again.

"Daniel!" she exclaimed, and flung herself on him, hugging him with everything she had.

When she pulled back, Dantanian was not smiling. "You look different, Lamia. More- I don't know, delicate."

It was true. Her dark hair was longer, and her face more slender, its bones looking somehow closer to the surface. Nor did her shoulders look noticeably broader than Dantanian's anymore.

Lamia shrugged uncomfortably. She was dressed like a Hogwarts professor, which added to the impression she was becoming someone else. Dantanian was himself, in velvet of black and gray. "It's nothing. I think I've just- lost weight. It's hard work apprenticing under Professor Nott. You don't get any rest-"

"You never told me why you took that apprenticeship, instead of studying to be an assessor with your father."

Lamia was clearly lying as she told him, "It's just a precaution, but I want to do research. Potions and anything else, and Hogwarts is the best place for it. Research on my family's curse. I- everything's fine, nothing's changed, I'm sure the ritual from my birth will hold, I just- I just need to make sure."

Dantanian stepped forward and hugged her, pressing his face into her hair. When he parted, she could tell he was already planning to go. "I took your Portkey and came all this way-"

"I told you I couldn't stay long. I brought you here to make sure you would remember where I kept the moonstones. If anything happens to me, they're yours. And I've left you something else there too. Something that..." He looked down. "I haven't had any use of it. Believe me, I tried. You don't know how I've tried. But I don't think it could- and maybe it could help you. With your curse. Maybe it could help hold your change back, or stop it- I don't really understand what it does, but even just as an outside chance-"

"Daniel, you're scaring me." Lamia held onto his sleeve tightly. She even looked shorter, and ten times more fragile.

"It would be better," Dantanian said, stroking her hand, "If you don't go back to Hogwarts. I'll let you know, when the time comes to leave it. And you shouldn't keep the mirror there either."

"Do you have to go so quickly? You can't even explain?"

"I'm sorry." Dantanian sounded to mean it. He hugged her yet again, as if fortifying himself with her warmth, or the memory of it. "I'm grateful to you, Lamia Periander. You're the only true friend I've ever had. Except for my mother. Just her and you."

"Don't talk like we'll never see each other again," Lamia said, old command coming back to her softened voice. "We will, won't we?"

"I hope we will," Dantanian said, without hope in his voice.

When he let her go, his hands came away from her hair. There was a feather in them. It was grey.

"Where are you going?"

"New Zealand," said Dantanian, and disappeared.

"Daniel, I don't get it," said Dorian, bringing a glass. Dantanian didn't take it, sat back in a plush chair, in what was unmistakably Malfoy Manor. In time, this room would become Narcissa Malfoy's parlor.

Dantanian was dressed as he had been with Lamia, while Dorian was a positive vision, grown at what might be around twenty to something truly magnificent, resplendent in jade and silver. His body looked as whip-tight and inviting as it ever had- more so, but Dantanian was not looking at it. Nor even at Dorian's face very much.

"New Zealand? And that job? You didn't even take Care of Magical Creatures." Dorian marveled. "You actually went and asked the Ravenclaw Head of House if it was possible to take no electives."

There was humor in Dorian's voice, but Dantanian had the same furtive hunted air as with Lamia. "I told you, I can't be here much time. Listen, I've left something that I want you to keep safe. It's in your hall. It's very large. You might want to take it somewhere the house elves can't see it. It will frighten them."

"What is it?" Dorian sounded naive still.

"You'll see," said Dantanian, and rose to his feet. "If you're confused, contact Lamia Periander. I can't stay any longer."

"Wait!" Dorian exclaimed, seizing his hand before he could walk out. "Daniel, I haven't seen you in almost a year! And you're just going to disappear again?"

"I'm not going to disappear," Dantanian said humorlessly. "I'm going to New Zealand."

"Did something- happen?" The levity fell from Dorian's face too. "Something bad? Daniel- what happened to you?"

"Don't call me that!" Dantanian wrenched himself from Dorian's touch. "That's not-"

Not my name, he did not say. Whatever revelations he had considered blurting out, they stayed with him, until the end.

"Call me Shaw," Dantanian said coldly. "And I'll call you Malfoy."

"Don't leave," Dorian blurted, "Please, Daniel, if you knew- if you had any idea what you mean to me-"

"If you had any idea," Dantanian countered, "Of the things I mean to do."

"To me?" Dorian said, arching his head playfully. The light from the chandeliers caught on his beautiful moonlight hair. Dantanian did stare then, and at Dorian's eyes for a moment, the silver sheen of them in the flamelight.

"Never and always my muse," he whispered to himself, too softly for Dorian to hear. Then he stepped away.

"Don't worry," he said impassively. "This isn't goodbye. You'll be seeing me soon. But if you don't, and Lamia needs me, then give her anything she needs, in my place. Promise me, Dorian. I'm sorry, but I have to ask for another favor. If I don't come back, promise me you'll help Lamia."

"I will. Ask anything of me. Anything, and I'll give it to you. Daniel, I lo-"

"Goodbye, Malfoy," said Dantanian, and disappeared before Dorian could finish the word.

Dantanian was still wearing the dragon pendant around his neck. It shone as the point which drew all light, on a vast green mountain slope, amidst a sea of silver dragons.

Dantanian climbed down a hill, with a short, average-looking brown-haired man by his side. "Thank you, Taylor," Dantanian said, "I think I can take it from here."

"It's not an easy thing," the man called Taylor said, in a New Zealand accent. "Picking your first one to get your start. Even with your credentials. I know you must think it beneath you, the trial period, raising one of our lot by hand, when you're trained a dozen Chinese Fireballs."

Neither Dantanian nor Taylor blinked at that statement, despite Dantanian's visible youth. The midday air had a pleasant, almost gilded haze around them. The sounds of dragontamers nearby, all in leather that matched theirs, was one of uncomplicated happiness. The Opaleyes, some dozens or even a hundred of them, all seemed well-cared for, and docile as could be.

"I don't." Dantanian gave Taylor a fake but beautiful smile. Taylor stumbled, foot almost catching in a divet, before he hastened to catch up to his new colleague. "I'm excited to pick her out." Dantanian stopped at the first dragon they found unattended, a gentle and lazy-looking little creature that didn't reach higher than his waist. "What about this one?"

"That's the one I wanted to show you," Taylor said proudly. "No name yet, but here's the sweetest of the bunch. Never snapped those pointy teeth at no one, not even once."

Dantanian bent to examine the Opaleye. The pendant swayed forward, brushing the dragon's growing scales, and it let out a happy little squeal, butting its little head against the moonstone. Both Dantanian and Taylor laughed.

"This one's adorable," Dantanian said with a real smile. "I get to name my dragon?" Taylor nodded placidly. "I'll call her Astarte. Astarte Noir."

"Astarte," Taylor repeated. "That ain't a name you hear every day."

"It's the name of a goddess," Dantanian said, dark eyes already going distant. "It's written sometimes as Ishtar, or Ashtoreth."

Taylor nodded equably, turning to go, before seeming to remember something. "Wait. That's no good. I'm sorry, but this one's not a girl. If you look, your little goddess having a good old time with your necklace there isn't so much goddess, as god or little prince."

"Or angel," Dantanian said, and watched the dragon swish his tail at the necklace, all thoughtless, exuberant innocence. "I still like this one. I'll just call it- there's a male form of Astarte."

Taylor nodded. Once he had gone, Dantanian took back his necklace, and knelt before the Opaleye.

"Your name," Dantanian told the dragon, "Is Astaroth."

: The Gravedigger's Daughter

Notes:

Hey everyone! Printing this and/or binding it for individual use is totally fine! Sending hugs and affection to all readers! <3 Enjoy :)

Chapter Text

"So why did you think that would break me exactly?"

Draco raised his head, automatically glowering again. Severus was in one of his comfortable armchairs, writing feverishly with quill on parchment. He put it aside when he saw Draco finished. He had perhaps never looked more pale and sallow and unlikely to live very much longer.

"Oh, don't let me interrupt. Far be it from me to interrupt the penning of your memoirs. Is that another purpose, to your newfound intimacy with your predecessor? Literary consultation?"

"This is for you. There is much you need to know, to understand what you have seen. I will also give you the books I have kept." Read, that you haven't gone all Astaroth-on-New-Zealand on. It would have alarmed Draco, that lack of self-defensive spikiness, if it had been someone else poking the snake. It still alarmed a part of him he didn't seem able to turn off.

"I know everything you do about what Astaroth did," Draco said defensively. "And Grindelwald's part in making the talon wand. What did you think was so weak about me that I couldn't handle the knowledge of my- connection or something to someone so-"

He didn't know the words for Dantanian Noir. He had thought those anomalous words just a designation for mysterious castle-builder Dantanian Black, or else a code for a person possessed by pure and unadulterated evil. The man whose memories Severus had gone to so much trouble to hide from Draco, he seemed to be something else entirely. Which was in its own way more frightening. But Draco would be damned if he would show it hurt him. Whether or not Severus had been in any way right to keep this from him, Draco would not let him see him squirm.

"You followed," Severus said tiredly, "Much of the same initial research I did, writing to Taylor's descendants in New Zealand, and to Ollivander. With these memories, though, I was able to go further in unraveling the mystery of the talon wand, and then further yet with the books at the citadel. Listen to what I have uncovered, and then make your judgment. I know that is coming."

The idea of Severus being under Draco's condemning judgment seemed surreal, and yet it felt that way. "Go on. Tell me, and tell me now, and maybe I'll care to speak to you again for whatever remains of our inconsequential lives."

It was a jab at Severus, really, but Severus took it seriously. "Not inconsequential, Draco, and therein perhaps lies my fear. You will not believe me, but when I started my research, I intended to share the vial and everything I learned with you. I merely wanted to know as whole a truth as I could beforehand, so you would not torment yourself with incomplete theories, or take any rash action in attempting to fill in the memories' gaps."

Draco crossed his arms. "There's one big gap. It's what did happen to make Astaroth go mad. I take it Dantanian was behind it. Do you think Astaroth ate him, along with all the rest? It makes sense there'd be no memory of him being dragon chow, but-" Then he stopped. "If Dantanian was ingested, and there were years of decomposition... what, do you think some part of him is physically inside this wand? Unless he turned into or melded with Astaroth..." He laid the talon wand on Severus's table, and stared at it, thinking, Your secrets are out, Dantanian, you might as well unveil yourself now.

"I can only speculate," Severus said unhappily, "But I deduced much from evaluating the memories from a perspective of incentives. Dantanian may have chosen them in a rush, soon before whatever mad act he committed that made Astaroth change, or he may have chosen at leisure. But he meant them for Dorian Malfoy, and he meant them to communicate some certain things." He looked at Draco, and it was almost like they were having one-on-one extra Potions lessons again.

"He told Dorian before," Draco said haltingly, "That he needed him to keep whatever he gave him safe, and to look after the Periander girl if anything happened to her. So... he would have put in anything Dorian needed to know about the gift or Lamia Periander." Severus nodded. "And... Dorian spent all those years trying to guess Dantanian's secret. And he almost told him at the end, before he left. Maybe he regretted not saying, and wanted to show him."

"Whether or not Dantanian had feelings for the Malfoy boy," Severus said briskly, "And whatever their nature, it seems that the memories attempted to do so, yes- and to show Dorian the nature of their relationship, and some insight how Dantanian may have cared for him. They paint an autobiography in fragments. And an outline of Phineas Black's crimes. He may have wanted those not to remain unpunished, should he not have the chance to follow through with his vow of revenge."

"But they did," Draco said, a bile coming to his throat different from that for Severus, however personal that betrayal. "He lived a long life, didn't he? There's a painting of him in Dumbledore's office."

"Indeed," Severus said, rubbing his eyes. "I believe he relays messages between the headmaster and your uncles for the Order." He held up a hand to forestall Draco's expression of outrage. "The point is, I believe he had one other purpose. To make obvious what he was about to do. If we take that for granted, we can assume most or all of the keys to understanding what he did are inside these memories, and we need not look elsewhere."

Severus waited for him, then seemed to see Draco would not deduce it so quickly. Absurdly, Draco felt a pang of shame for not being clever enough in front of his godfather. "What did he do?"

"I cannot be certain," Severus intoned, "But after more than a year of research and consideration, my belief is that he attempted to change the dragon into a Dementor." He smiled mirthlessly at Draco's involuntary gasp. "I do not know if he was mad to attempt such a thing, or merely overconfident. But if we make that assumption, and then reverse engineer his choice of memories, it makes a kind of sense. His childhood memories paint his mother and his bond with her, yes, but they also follow his early interest in dragons. The full ritual he does against Black's son is in the memory, along with some of the steps it seems he took, to be able to complete it. And..." Severus waited to be sure Draco was ready to absorb this. "He says two things that indicate this, on the night he makes that Dementor."

Draco wet his dry lips, although his throat was also parched and sore, suddenly sorer. "That he... that he experimented with the ritual on animals, before any humans. And had some success. So... he might have taken it further, and tried it on a magical creature, and he had an affinity for dragons..." Draco's hand reached reflexively to touch the dragon birthmark on his shoulder. He dropped it.

"Three things, actually," Severus sighed. "That is the first. The second is his complete control over the Dementor he made of young Phineas. The third is his vow that he would burn Hogwarts to the ground." Draco actually cried out then. "Am I mad to think so? Maybe he meant to convert more dragons and humans at the reserve, or maybe just take Astaroth. But he did tell his only two friends in the world to stay away from Hogwarts, and expect him back in England before too long."

"But..." Draco closed his eyes, trying to make sense of anything here. It should have been easier for him, if he had some kind of... bond, with Dantanian. "The ritual went wrong? Either he lost control of the- the dragon-Dementor, Astaroth- or it was some unnatural creature that never should have been made in the first place, like-" Like Frankenstein's monster. "You think that- eating everyone was like- like the Dementor's kiss? Some attempt, since the dragon couldn't wield the Dementor's power-"

"I am surprised in a way," Severus said mildly, "That Dantanian did not consider an impediment a dragon would have, that many other creatures would not, in successfully completing the office of Dementor. Dementors take their sustenance from souls. They feed on those, as if there is something incomplete in them, and they need to take from complete beings in some vain effort to restore themselves whole. I have been writing this for you," he said like a professor offering extra tutoring, "In my notes," and held them up. "The Dementor's Kiss is, of course, through the mouth. Perhaps the rest of the draining takes place ultimately through that opening as well. Whereas a dragon's mouth... is already occupied."

"They breath fire," Draco blurted. "So if the Dementor couldn't feed- if it was a- mad homunculus already- it might try to swallow its victims whole-"

"And still find itself," Severus finished, "As hungry as ever. But this is only my guess, put together without real evidence-"

"You're saying," Draco realized suddenly, taking a step away from the Pensieve and the talon wand, "That my wand's a fucking Dementor? An incompetent one?"

"You almost seem," Severus observed, "To find the second worst than the first."

Draco looked away, not wanting to see the wry fondness in those traitor's eyes. "So what, that's why I have these- aggressive urges, or whatever? There's always a Dementor on me, trying to feed from me? But- when I dueled Aunt Bella, she called out for Dantanian-"

"For that," Severus interrupted, "The solution is perhaps more evident, although I only learned it very recently, from materials at the citadel. And its discovery was why I ultimately made the choice to keep this all from you. But you might as well know the worst with the rest of it."

"The worst?" Draco laughed. "What could be worse than my wand having a Dementor in it?"

Severus closed his eyes, as if taking in this last moment with Draco before he thought something would irreparably change in him, and then handed him two books, with bookmarks already inside. Draco opened the first without waiting, and found, of all things, a storybook. This was Tales of Beedle the Bard. Mother had read it to him as a child. The story of the Hallows was in it. But somehow, Draco had never heard this story, near the back.

"This is," Severus sighed, "A very ancient first edition, as you may see from the disrepair. The tale you must read is one that was removed from subsequent prints. I know not why."

The Gravedigger's Daughter

In the days before magic, there were three daughters, born to a woman called Eros, and a man called Thanatos. Eros cared for the daughters, and Thanatos dug graves. They were humble people who cared not for any feud or quarrel, and thought to live peaceful together until the end of their days, surrounded by grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

But there was a high nobleman called Obitus, and he had been cruel to his wife, a common girl. They had only one child before the wife died, a stillborn son without a name. The wife had the child buried by Thanatos in his humble graveyard, before she too passed into the pale. But Obitus demanded the child be exhumed and taken to his castle, so he might bury the child with his great forebears whose legacy would have been his patrimony.

Obitus asked once, offering money, and Thanatos refused. Obitus asked twice, offering threats, and Thanatos refused. So Obitus came to the graveyard at night and went to dig up the corpse. Except his hands were soft and untested, from a life of luxury, and he could not succeed. So he took Thanatos from the bed of Eros, and took him to the graveyard, and when Thanatos refused a third time, Obitus slayed him with his great noble sword of steel.

The next gravedigger delivered Obitus the body of his son.

Obitus was a lord with the world at his feet. All Eros had was her three daughters. So she went to her daughters, and asked how she might find justice for their father. None had any answer, and so they grieved.

The bleak midwinter went on, but Eros could not forget her beloved. She would have gone to join him, had she not cared for her daughters. So she went once more to her beloved girls, to ask how she could carry on living without their father.

The first daughter, Sola, was a woman full-grown, beautiful and womanly and good. She told her mother to make a picture of their father and hang it in their house, so they might look at his image every day, even if it would not speak to them.

The second daughter, Estella, was a woman on the cusp of maturity, soft and slender and feeble. She told her mother to try and make some enchantment to travel back in time, that she might see their father once more and say goodbye, even if that would be the end.

But the third daughter, Luna, was but a small girl, always chattering and at her mother's heels. She was too young to understand her father was dead. She told her mother that she had been wrong to let the new gravedigger put their father in the ground, and that she should dig him back up so he could be with them again.

Eros went mad, and followed the words of the third daughter. She went and dug up her husband. But he did not laugh or smile or dance with her.

She found his body preserved well in the frozen ground, and the veins still full of dried blood. So she took a branch from the black walnut tree over the graveyard, and cut it short and made it hollow. She took the blood and mixed it with the snow from the grave, to make it run again, and poured the liquid inside the wood. This she brought back, to show her youngest daughter that she had heeded her words. She gave it to her as a relic of her father.

One morning, Obitus came to their door. He laughed as he asked for the hand of the eldest daughter, Sola, in matrimony, to replace the wife he had lost.

Eros told Obitus to have shame. Obitus laughed twice and said he would have her daughter instead.

Eros lowered her head. But Luna took out her father's relic and showed it to the nobleman. She told him her mother had brought back her father from the grave, and their father would protect them.

When Obitus laughed thrice, Luna held the relic tightly. She shouted Abracadabra. Those were the folk words for a magic spell in a fairytale, except she was too young to remember them exactly. So she said them as Avada Kedavra. There was a green light, and then the man was dead.

Such was the first true witch born.

Draco lowered the book, growing more impatient with his godfather. "Yeah, I can see why they took it out. Not the best example for children, telling them controlled magic came about because some little girl invented the Killing curse. But what the fuck does that have to do with-"

"The second book." It was a book by Dantanian Black, but this one was not about castle-building. It was called Xaphan and Prometheus. Despite the title, it seemed a sort of encyclopedia, or almanac, with a set of individual entries. The book's subtitle read Ancient Knowledge of Ancient Men.

Draco heaved a sigh, but opened it to the marked page. Severus had written his own annotations, and underlined them.

Coda (A copiates taeda)

The Gravedigger's Torch

The earliest known form of wands is the "coda", as the Romans called it. Interest must have been lengthy, for the name to mutate from "a copiates taeda" in early texts, to "copiataeda," "cotaeda", and finally the common "coda". (Musical term, "ending") If a coda is the "coreblood's last acts", the abbreviation makes slanted sense. Other names in English and Latin: blood branch, kinsblood wood, coreblood branch, desecration anathema, anathamans, copiatamans, copiapactum, (a bargain? for what?) copiatanux (importance of walnut), and most interestingly, primanathema. (First anathema or first sin. Possibly connected to Abrahamic or pre-Abrahamic ideas of "original sin"?)

The tale of the third daughter is apocryphal. More likely is lengthy experimentation, to find a tool to wield wild magic. I see no reason to dispute the status as progenitor, given references throughout wizarding history predating the "wand". A "wand" is a coda with its original core replaced by less troublesome artifacts, first with blood and then heartstrings of magical creatures, and then still less intrusive vestiges like hairs, feathers, etc. Humans are technically magical creatures, but the use of human blood or flesh proved too capricious.

In summary, a coda is a wand-like magical amplification and focus weapon, used in the same manner as a wand, with largely the same spells possible. A wand has an inhuman core, and a coda has a human one. The coda requires special conditions to be "activated" and turned to anything but an embarrassing relic of corpse desecration.

The main condition is kin connection with the first wielder. This may be either by blood ties, or membership of the same magical family or "house". I incline to think a blood connection would be necessary. After the coda is turned to a wand-like instrument through a kinsman wielder, it is then usable by any magical individual, although it will exhibit stronger loyalty to its holder than any wand. Both of the strength of this bond and the magic possible with the coda vary given one inarguable factor, and two contentious ones: the first being the strength of the giver of coreblood, and the second two uncertain and perhaps coexistent: literal closeness of blood connection, or personal affinity with the coreblood giver, or that giver's purposes.

Other major characteristics include a wood of black walnut, although this may be folk tradition, following the apocryphal tale. Solely liquid blood seems to have been the initial coreblood, again in correspondence with the tale, although flesh was soon included often as well. There have also been experiments with coreblood combined with other magical ingredients, such as creature heartstrings, particularly frequent in ancient times of what is now Korea. Still, there is no consensus as to viability or even nature of hybrids, save unusual volatility even for a coda.

The coda's greatest interest is not in itself, but in its absence. It seems to have been a more powerful instrument. Why did the first form of wand pass out of fashion worldwide, so completely that is a forgotten memory, and why are references to such a key discovery only scattered in ancient texts, to the point it may have been deliberately forgotten? I believe this rests in a final rumored condition for the coda: the blood feud. (Possible against one's own blood?)

As in the tale, the most famous codas had blood or flesh of a slain family member taken, a weapon forged in service of vengeance or feud- such as against another family, clan, or magical house. Many also included a formal blood feud, sworn by the coreblood giver before their death, (Dantanian against House Black?) or even the suicide of the giver, to allow a coda made fresh from their corpse. The creation of the coda was a semi-public affair that in itself declared feud. When the coda became unpopular, it was replaced by the less complicated pureblood tradition of the obsidian "black dagger" (see page 77.) (Author claims is named after House Black, not the color. Both common to House Black traditions?)

Even if a wand for these purposes was inherited by another, including one not of their blood, there may have been lingering aftereffects. With the initial wielder, or a member of blood kin, they may have been magnified. (Weakening effect over generations or not?) What is certain is that the possession of a coda is reputed to have driven many wielders mad. Many speak of hearing the voice and communicating with the coreblood giver, who did not exist as a ghost but a phantom presence within them, seeing through their eyes and speaking in their own head.

The giver and wielder seem to have existed in a dynamic relationship, one which could result in dispute, abandonment, or betrayal. Other holders document strange dreams and the periodic loss of control of the coda and its magical output; their own vision, hearing, sense of smell, and priorioception; and disorder conditions such as gaps in memory surrounding difficult events (dissociative and/or psychogenic fugue), unusual morality or a lack thereof (moral turpitude, "Machiavellianism"), a feeling of distance from oneself (depersonalization), and most amusingly, the periodic inability to recognize faces properly (prosopagnosia). The decline of the coda is understandable. (Does the Dark Lord know of such weapons?) It would be interesting to attempt a construction in current times, but I will leave fools' errands to someone with far less to lose.

"What," Draco breathed, letting the book fall from his hands. He had read the entry twice, and still didn't think he understood. "The talon wand- you don't even think it's a wand? You think it's- it's this- vengeance thing? From- what, Dantanian's blood in the dragon?"

Severus looked as though he wished Draco could bring some new point to convince him he was wrong. "Grindelwald had the wands made after years of decomposition. Astaroth likely consumed Dantanian. Dantanian Black mentions volatile hybrids, including heartstrings- and dragon heartstrings are popular, obviously..."

"You think Dantanian was trying to..."

"I think," Severus said, rubbing his eyes, "There was a reason Grindelwald could not use the wands he had made. Either the heartstring was too rotted to be an active ingredient, and only the trace of Dantanian's blood fuels the wand, or else it is a mixture. Either way, he would have needed Black blood to make any of the wands come to life. Which he would have known, if he had any intent of creating a coda. So he probably sought out a powerful dragon as a core, and ended up by accident making something else."

"But..." Draco was grasping at straws too. "Aunt Bella can't have been the first of House Black to walk into Ollivander's shop after that. There would have been others, closer in blood-"

"Affinity. Or... commonality of purpose."

Draco wanted to lean against Severus for reassurance, even as he wanted to cast curses worse than Dantanian's on him. "Aunt Bella looks kind of like his mother. She must have more before Azkaban. Maybe she was more like her inside, too, before- is this what drove her mad? Dantanian in her head? Because he never talked to me." Severus looked skeptical. "He hasn't! I wish he had! She probably hasn't seen the Dorian vial, but she knows his name. And enough of his secrets that the name scared my mother. I wish I had known! Or is it that last part? Vengeance? Did Dantanian think she would be the one to destroy House Black? And then it turned out I'm a better prospect?"

"My godson. If you speak of physical resemblance, he must have had great affection for Dorian Malfoy, to leave him this. You look much like him, and you are the first member of houses Black and Malfoy born since the wand's creation. The first combination of his family's blood and Dorian Malfoy's- even if you are not either's direct descendent. And you are the rightful heir to House Black, which he so desired to be. There need be no darker reason."

Severus's voice rose as if trying to convince himself. "I do not believe Dantanian has real control or influence over you, the way he may have at one time over Bellatrix Lestrange. There are many superficial similarities between him and you, yes, but the only ones that seem surely through hisinfluence are in your magic. Who you are as a person- I believe you were chosen by Dantanian because you had some likenesses in temperament, talent, and thought, and the potential to grow more- not that he has created them in you, or altered you. Do not take those similarities as consequence rather than causation, and think-"

"How many times did you say I was a completely different person after I got my wand?" Draco marveled at Severus's obvious lying, though of course he didn't know there was the pesky time-traveling issue, also to account for changes. But there was still- "How can I trust myself? You're mad, keeping this from me, with the risk to everyone around me! To everyone in House Black! Leaving me aside- Narcissa Malfoy. Bellatrix Lestrange. Sirius Black. Andromeda Tonks. Nymphadora Tonks. And if it's people who marry them, or that they adopt- Remus Lupin. Theodore Tonks. Lucius Malfoy. Harry Potter. I've only assaulted or tortured five out of the nine- five out of seven I've had access to, six of seven if you count Naufragiam- so no worries, that's fine- and look at me! I thought I started growing out my hair and cutting it this length to look like you. But it was just how Dantanian liked it, right? So I looked more like his boyfriend?"

"There's no knowing. I would advise you not to think further into-"

"I'm sure you have!" Draco started away from Severus. "How much time have you spent looking at me seeing him? Cataloguing similarities, trying to see if I'm myself and not him? I thought I came up with the idea for a blood-fire spell, but he must have put it in my head- that dream, it's so obvious, if you had just told me-"

"Blood-fire. Do you mean Dracosanguis? You have become more interested in spell creation, but-"

"I thought I wanted to be like you there too. But it's what he wanted to do, isn't it? His experiments? Merlin, the magic- Theo called me a pyromancer- I did Protego Diabolica on one of my first tries without studying it- who knows if he invented Verniculpa too- and the brand, Periander said he invented a spell to brand things, if that was Cauterizo- Sirius has that brand. What did I do- what did Dantanian do to Sirius- no, shut up, Severus, I'm thinking. He tried not to make friends when he first got to Hogwarts, he couldn't stand being around people, but he made friends with one brainy girl- Hermione- who was one outcast Ravenclaw, from a strange pureblood family, Luna- I never wanted be friends with that kind of person before- before- do I even actually give a shit about Hermione or Luna, or is it just Dantanian, being reminded of his only fucking friend-"

"This is what I feared," Severus said, as Draco began to cry.

"Who am I?"

Draco buried his face in his hands. How much did I change from the blue loop? Is it actually all just one change? That I looked for a wand before I should have, and Dantanian found me? Did I change at all? His mind couldn't stop finding awful similarities.

"I stopped caring about blood purity! I've been doing secret experiments and dark rituals for years- I left home after fifth year to live with other family, a Black- my first time fucking someone was a Potter- and I'm self-centered and sarcastic and cruel! Vain boy. I tortured people and liked it. My own family, the people who raised me- like his grandparents- except maybe that's just him having it in for House Black, and he already started- Father, Mother, I just hurt and mutilated, but I tried to cast Sectumsempra on Aunt Bella- fuck, I tried to cast that on Sirius-"

"What?"

"I am a great candidate for last heir of House Black. That's why he chose me! Because Aunt Bella, she's on our family's side, but me- he's going to have me kill all of us, isn't he? The dragon and the fucking stag! No- Trelawney, the stag-"

"You're not making sense. Take some of your draught of peace-"

"Why should I trust something YOU brewed!" Draco flung all his Potions vials at Severus, as hard as he could. Severus dodged, and they smashed against the wall, a swift blue fall. "Why should I ever listen to another word you say? It's not even the first time you've betrayed me! Alligator! Alligator! He did this! You! Do you have any idea the things I would have done differently, if I had known the truth about me-"

"Any similarities you have with Dantanian are far outweighed by differences. I have, as you said, had ample time to compare. As a start, you relate completely differently to people. He pulled away from normal life, ignoring his classes and grades, while you worked hard and received all your OWLS, and all Os. Dantanian remained an outcast. You are surrounded by friends, people who care about you. You are kind to them, Draco, you look after so many, you try so hard to protect people, more than just destroy them. You could never have done the things Dantanian did-"

"YOU DON'T KNOW THE THINGS I WOULD DO!"

A phantom pulse of the Dark Mark on his wrist. It wasn't there and yet it was. It would always be there, no matter he fooled himself, thinking he had forgotten, or he was somehow redeemed. He would never not be the person who had taken the Mark, who let Death Eaters into Hogwarts, who set up Albus Dumbledore's death and was too much of a coward to finish it- who tortured at Voldemort's command- who led Vince to his death by Fiendfyre- who was only saved from Azkaban by Harry Potter's mercy- the person Harry did hate, when he knew Draco's first and real choices, without Dantanian in play-

"Is that a threat?"

"I wouldn't have killed Cantankerous Nott, if I had known." Draco regained his composure enough to hold back his tears, "I would have done something differently- I wouldn't have burned off my father's hand- wouldn't have let Sirius and Remus adopt me- wouldn't have let them adopt Harry into House Black- wouldn't have let my friends become dependent on a monster-"

"Don't call yourself that. You know not how it pains me to hear that. It is not true. And- the things you said to me, the night when Black was almost given the Dementor's Kiss- when you convinced me to save him- I fear that remains in you, Draco, I fear for you- that is why I held this back from you, because I was so afraid that- let alone whether you try to attempt Dantanian's spells or follow along his path, I was afraid the memories would make you think those terrible things about yourself were right-"

"I wouldn't have been with Harry if I knew! Bloody hell, that's what changed, wasn't it? How you went from supporting me in it at the end of fourth year, to screaming hell when you saw us together in fifth- you knew what I was, knew what it would do to the bloody savior if I-"

"You know I do not have a good history with Potter's father. That was on my mind, nothing with your wand-"

"I WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN WITH HIM! YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME!"

"I thought it would destroy you-"

Draco almost said, And now it has. But he felt his anger almost drowned under shock. It was not Dumbledore but Severus who had held the real answers. It was like he needed to go back in the past again to make up for new mistakes. He'd thought he knew everything about this world, but he still hadn't known a thing compared to Severus. Severus had been the key all along. Severus, the one he wanted to be like- the one he would have died for-

"I have magical exhaustion." Draco made his voice painstakingly flat. "I'm going to be staying in my room in Ravenclaw for the foreseeable future. You tell Flitwick that, make him accept it. Pull rank as my godfather, I don't care how. I still have copies of the Dumbledore letter," he lied. Severus didn't react. "So- so-" His voice broke despite himself. "So you make sure. Ban non-Ravenclaws from coming to my room and visiting me, tell my uncles not to write to me, tell everyone I need rest. Tell Gilderoy if he's a problem that he should just keep his mouth around your dick, instead of trying to pry it off to talk to me now- just get everyone to leave me the fuck alone-"

"May I ask," Severus said tunelessly, "What you plan to do with your rest?"

Draco snatched up the talon wand- he couldn't stop thinking of it as that, even if that wasn't its name- and held it up, making damn sure Severus saw he had both it and the Pensieve memories.

"I don't want to speak to you a word more than I have to, ever again. You're not my godfather anymore. I don't want to speak to anyone in the world, except for one person."

"Dantanian Noir?"

"At least you're clever. That leaves one thing I thought about you that's still true."

Draco used the talon wand to cast his habitual spells on his bed, before he managed to give a thought whether he should or would keep using the talon wand.

Carefully, he took his mother's wand from his other pocket, and tried to cast a simple Lumos.

He was glad he had cast Inmotus. Otherwise, his scream as the wand melted over his fingers would have been heard by half of Ravenclaw Tower.

He had to use the talon wand again, to clear off the melted soot and ashes from his bed and his skin. And heal the burn the swift implosion had left. He almost expected it to leave an angry red mark no matter what he did, like the talon brand, but it healed up more than fast enough. With a healing charm Severus had taught him.

"Wow, Dantanian," Draco said to the bend of the wand, something like a gnarled tree branch, ever out of place on pristine deep cerulean silk. "Seems you are the possessive kind." It was like the talon wand- like Dantanian, if that was the right way to describe whatever was inside- had somehow sensed he meant to replace him, and decided to get rid of the competition now after all.

If Draco had been carrying his mother's wand in hopes of giving it back to her, some futile idea of reconciliation, that dream had just become that much more distant.

She had tried to warn him. If she had told the truth, and she had really wanted to save him, then she had put herself forward in that assault, a Death Eater attack like she never had taken part in during the blue loop, really for his sake. Depending on what Bellatrix knew or had told her about Dantanian- she had risked her life again for him, this time in a desperate gambit to try and warn him. She had warned him, and he hadn't listened, and maimed his father and killed Theo's father before that very night was over.

Mother had warned him. Severus hadn't even tried. Who was it who had betrayed him-

"You know, Dantanian," Draco said more conversationally, poking the wand lightly, "Thinking about you and all your Titus Andronicus bullshit life is really messing with my head here. Now that I know you're in there, and the jig is up, you think maybe you might want to talk back?"

The coda was silent. Funny, given that it could also mean a part of music. If it was called a crescendo, would that have been enough to tip it over the edge?

He wasn't even amusing himself anymore.

"Dantanian," Draco said, and took a deep breath. He remembered how Bellatrix had kissed the talon wand, calling it Dantanian, after she took it from him. He took the wand and kissed both sides, just to be sure, but nothing happened. "Dantanian, I've seen- part of who you were. I'm sure there's more. I'll listen to whatever you want to tell me. When I- when I called myself a monster, I didn't mean you were. Just me. I mean, you turned a seven-year-old into a Dementor, but, like, you had your reasons?"

Draco considered. "Did you know I put him back on the tapestry? I guess that was a cover story. Whenever they realized he wasn't turning back, and he was old enough for it to be plausible, then they blasted him away. 'Muggle Rights.' Although, you know, I never have heard anything about Dementors' political position on Muggle Rights. Maybe they're progressives."

And maybe he had to go about this more formally. "Dear Dantanian," he began, clasping his hands together over the wand. "I am your- your bondmate. Soulmate," he offered, though Harry invariably came to his mind, like it was some kind of betrayal. He might have even offered to break up with Harry, like he knew he should after what he had learned. But that felt still like a promise he had no chance of fulfilling. He'd sooner sear off his own hands. And they didn't even have any brands on them to expedite the process. "I am willing to bargain for- for contact. For information. I want us to work together."

Nothing. Okay, maybe more formal still. "Demon goddess Hecate," Draco prayed, and his mind wandered wishing Luna was here. She'd do this part better. "Please let me speak to my kinsman, my- coreblood giver, Dantanian Noir. I bear his blood, and the blood of his beloved, in my veins." Draco cast a wordless Diffindo and opened one fingertip, smearing it over the bend of the wand. He remembered bringing the minds of the Longbottoms back, and smeared more.

"I will offer any sacrifice of my possessions or myself you demand for Dantanian's allegiance. Or just- for his voice. I want Dantanian- I want him to explain, the things he did, what he tried with Astaroth-" How he ended up murdering hundreds of people, let alone dragons. Not that he didn't mean to kill just as many back in England, if not more. Burn Hogwarts to the ground. "I believe in your power, sacred demon goddess, and in the vow he swore to you, at Citadelle Xaphan, a century ago. Or- more, I don't know, um, years, just-"

He really did need Luna to even approach a coherent prayer. But that would mean telling her something. Suddenly he understood why Severus had spoke of burning materials. He might have tried to destroy the vial, if he hadn't feared it would anger Dantanian.

"Are you in there, Dantanian?" Draco prodded with his foot this time. "I'm sorry if I've done things you don't like. I know I haven't killed anyone in House Black, but I really do want to kill my Aunt Bella. Seriously. It's on my to-do list for this year. And, like, some of the others are, er, negotiable... but forget that, let's talk about you. I thought you seemed very- uh, clever. If you really did invent Protego Diabolica, that's cool. I always thought Grindelwald had- not that I'm calling you a liar..."

Draco groaned and flopped back onto his bed, lying next to the wand instead. He was still dressed in the nice clothes he had worn for Valentine's Day, and knew rationally that he should at least try and face the others before going to bed or retreating into hibernation. He should at least give some explanation to Harry, for ruining Valentine's Day. But he didn't even think he could look at Harry right now. Not that he deserved to.

"Dante, I have more compliments," he yawned. "I saw your paintings at the citadel. They're really cool. I've always liked dragons too. Did you like Imoogi? I bet you would have liked a little stuffed Imoogi, when you were living in Paris, asking your mother for a pet dragon. She could have gotten you a doll of one, at least- I don't know, maybe she did, but maybe you'd like Imoogi. If you talk to me, we can go see Hagrid and visit her..."

He didn't know what he was saying anymore. Just that Dantanian, or whatever lived inside his wand and his head, was saying nothing back.

Draco slept early then, for a long time. He was half-woken by his dormmates, trying to alert him it was breakfast time, and then by Dobby showing up. Dobby told them Draco was ill again and needed rest. He tried to speak to Draco, but eventually just left food outside. Draco knew he should get it, but he found himself just going back to sleep, not convinced enough that anything was not a dream to make it worth it to act.

He woke sometime in the afternoon, and had both breakfast and lunch to eat. He was glad he managed, since he didn't want to worry Dobby. He wondered what Dobby would think, if he knew Draco's kindness towards house elves likely didn't come from Draco himself, but a different presence. Someone who hadn't spent his childhood in a pureblood family, waited on by them. Someone who'd experienced a pureblood family treating him like one. Forget how many of the bad things in him were from Dantanian. That was almost easier, than to having to wonder how many of the good things had been as well.

At least he knew he had loved Harry back in the blue loop, even if it had been in a different way. That was not some artifact of infatuation with a half-Potter Dorian. Amortentia had smelled of Harry Potter back when Draco still had a tame unicorn hair wand in his hand.

"Talk to me, Dante," he whined. He'd started to talk like this as if Dantanian was a person visibly present, just refusing to speak out of spite. The crazy one in that situation would not be the one talking, it would be the silent one, knowing they were seen and yet pretending not to hear. "I know you've helped me. Probably more than I know. Don't you want to brag about it? There's probably times I would have died without you. Or I can talk about how pretty you were. How pretty you are, if you'd like to produce a visual hallucination. That's one thing about you no one can argue. You were, like, stupid beautiful..."

Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing, and Draco kept talking and hearing nothing. He was not sure of the time that night, close to falling asleep after a day of nothing but lying in bed hiding, shuffling to the bathroom, and eating, when his patience snapped. "What exactly is wrong with me," Draco hissed viciously, "That you would talk to Aunt Bella and not me? Am I not evil enough? Am I too much worse than her? What? What did I do wrong! You chose me over her at the Ministry, didn't you? You tortured her! You brand my enemies, you taught me Protego Diabolica, you chose me, why won't you talk to me, what's wrong with me-"

Draco found his eyes were full of tears. He didn't bother doing much with them one way or another. He just buried his face against his pillow and fell asleep.

After a few days, the inevitable intrusion came. Luna could not very well be barred from her own tower. Maybe he'd forgotten to ask to have her barred from the boys' dorms, or maybe he just hadn't had the heart. He regretted it, as his sleep was broken at some indeterminate time of day by Luna's voice calling, "Draco? Draco, are you awake? Cousin, please let me in, I wanna see Cousin..."

It would have taken a heart of stone not to let that sad little whine affect him. The doubts did assail him- What if something went wrong with her and Neville and she's sad? What if it's something worse, far worse- what if she needs me, or someone else does, what if all our friends need me and someone dies because I can't get up the will to get out of bed-

He still didn't move a muscle, until he heard other voices in the dorm. "Oh, hey, Lovegood," said either a Corn-something or an Entwhistle, Draco couldn't be expected to learn these people's names, let alone their voices. "What are you doing in the boys' dorm? Draco is supposed to be resting."

"I know," Luna said, voice anxious, "But he hasn't been answering our letters and notes, we're not sure he's even getting them... Tony said he's never had a chance to give them to Draco in person, he's always locked in bed and Tony has to leave them outside..."

"I was gonna change," complained the other miscellaneous Ravenclaw, who could choke as far as Draco was concerned. "Now there's a weird little girl here."

It was perhaps a measure of how worried Luna must be, that she seemed barely to hear that swipe, let alone react or retort. "I don't know if he can hear me. He's not responding. Draco, if you don't want to talk, please just say so, just thatso we know you aren't dead in there. Cousin..."

One Ravenclaw said to another- probably behind Luna's back, but Draco couldn't see, or tell if she heard- "Guess stupid old Loony Lovegood really is still loony."

"HEY!" Draco yelled. Without thinking, the energy surged in him, and he cast a swift Finite Incantatem on everything and threw his curtains open. "Langlock! Langlock!" Luna dodged, and both Ravenclaws' hands flew to their glued tongues. "What have I always, always said about those who speak ill of Draco Black or cousin? Loony Lovegood? Are you serious? How many times do I have to tell you-"

"Draco," Luna said, coming over and taking his shoulder. She looked very contented, for someone whose honor he was trying to defend. "It's okay. I'm just glad to see you're alright." She glanced back at the Ravenclaws, hovering nervously behind her. As if he would fix the curses for them.

"Go to Snape, he'll know what to do," Draco said coldly. "He could do with more work."

Once they fled, Luna gave him a speculative glance, taking in his sweat-soaked pajamas, tangled sheets, discarded crumb-filled plates, and tangled bird's nest of hair. "Alive. I'm glad to see you're alive, but Cousin, your hair..."

"Who gives a shit," Draco groaned, "About my hair," and buried his face in Luna's shoulder, so he wouldn't have to see the fear on her cute little face grow.

I'm not getting out of bed until Dantanian talks to me.

That was his resolution. Which meant he did not get out of bed for a very, very long time. The only people he saw were his Ravenclaw dormmates, with whom he limited meaningful contact, and Luna and Dobby, whom he could usually convince just to let him be silent and listen to their patter, or in Luna's case lie there and cuddle him in silence. If the sleek feeling of her hair made him miss Hermione's shorter and bushier shield from the world- well, there were things he missed about all of his friends. He even missed Severus, with this treacherous heart, feeling guilty each Sunday after each aimless week feigning illness, when Severus's summons for their weekly check-ins would come and go unacknowledged.

Luna did not ask why his recovery from this bout of magical exhaustion ended up taking longer than any other. Even if she did faithfully relate worried conversations about his absence, increasing in frequency and pitch over time. Sharp-eyed Hermione had speculated that Draco could be malingering, if not simply unmotivated to recuperate, given how Luna had found his steadily increasing supply of angel's infusion unused. Ron's perspective had been that there wasn't any investigation needed, to know something was wrong with Draco: if he really cared as little as Luna said about his hair, his and their personal apocalypse was surely upon them. Meanwhile, Harry had accepted the emptiness of the Periander graves as an explanation for Draco's panic over Severus, since Severus had been the one to investigate Periander and report about him to the Dark Lord. But that didn't keep him from sending long, passionate letters, as many as Luna would carry for him, that Draco couldn't bring himself to answer. Even if, cowardly as ever, Draco couldn't bring himself to tell anyone to make them stop, or throw them away.

Apparently there had been a Prophet issue highlighting them spending Valentine's Day together, full of affectionate pictures. From the tone of Harry's letters, he was pleased with this, despite the tone the journalists were continuing to take about the perceived mismatch. Harry said he was looking at the photos of them all the time, remembering how happy he had been that day, and looking forward to seeing each other every day again.

"Don't you miss Harry?" Luna asked one day, and he considered ejecting his cuddle-cousin from bed like some Muggle sci-fi escape pod. "I would miss Neville if I didn't see him all the time."

"I miss Harry a lot. I miss certain parts of him an especial lot. Just... not enough to get out of bed." Not that it would be right for me to be near him anymore. I should end it instead of keeping him hanging, but I can't, I just can't- "Things still going that well with Neville, hmm?"

"I've been thinking," Luna said cheerfully, "That he and I should have intercourse soon," and Draco's appalled squawking seemed the most fun she'd had in some time. Luna claimed it was a good sign, her desire for Neville, one that showed she was yet further past the specter of Tom she'd seen in the mirror. Draco warned her not to rush to any large step, just to make a point, at which Luna told him, no, it wasn't to prove something, it was, well, a physical sort of feeling...

Draco could understand that, much as he bleated indignantly. His body missed Harry, even as his mind told it not to. Sometimes he would bestir himself to make the effort and touch himself, and then every memory when he and Harry had gone all the way would surge through at once, some animal desperation not yet caught up to the rest of him that had given up on wanting things. But the thought afterwards that Dantanian had been watching cooled things quickly enough.

"How'd you like that?" Draco would ask Dantanian after. Or, "Performance review? You know, I take requests..." But even that was not enough to bestir Dantanian to speech. And so in his bed Draco remained, at a remove from everyone. A safe distance, most of the time, from almost all of his nine names. That was where all the monsters that could hurt them belonged.

He could have tried to keep Luna and Dobby away, but he needed to eat, and he needed that contact to still feel human or alive at all. Sometimes Luna would hold him as he cried, clutching her and weeping hysterically for no stated reason. She would never ask why. She would just stroke his hair, and tell him, oddly enough, that it made her happy that she could be there for him.

When Ron's birthday came, he could have spent the day with him on it for once. Nothing was theoretically stopping them. And he tried. He tried to get out of bed. He did go to the bathroom, and gather up clothes, before yielding to his sense of dull powerlessness, putting the clothes back away, and climbing back into bed.

He should have tried harder. With the arrival of March came the end of Hogwarts' tolerance of their free boarder. Severus had betrayed him enough to allow Sirius and Remus to recall him. Apparently they believed the lies of continued magical exhaustion, and wanted him close enough to their care, and St. Mungo's if necessary, to help restore their adopted son to health. Those two taking parenting seriously was so inconvenient. Seriously, did they not realize he had been traded all of his flashy little powers for the duty to murder them?

He did not resist his exile to Grimmauld, as he resisted so little these days. The only question was what to do with the Pensieve vial. He thought he could keep it safe on his person at Grimmauld, as at Hogwarts, no matter how helpful his uncles would attempt to be- but the thought of even the slightest chance that Remus could see it, and realize what a mistake he'd made adopting Draco Malfoy-

It wasn't fear of keeping it secret, though, that made him do what he did. It was because when Luna came to hug him goodbye in his dorm, lugging his bags for him as if she was not half his size, she said something that made him decide.

"Don't be sad, Cousin." Draco's legs felt almost unused to his weight. He was told he'd grown thinner over nearly a month on his back, like a coma without the mental vacation to recommend it. "You'll be free to have all the fun you want with Neville without me to worry about. Really, you'll be better off without me."

Luna pouted up at him quite severely. "Don't joke like that, then. I know you don't mean it- I hope you don't- but it's not funny at all, so don't. I wouldn't be better off without you, ever."

Draco felt the threat of tears at the back of his tired eyes. These days, they never seemed far away. If he was not destroyed, as Severus had feared, he was crushed, crushed flat and hopeless, and here Luna was trying to build him up still. "I mean, you kind of would be, though. You'd be different if we hadn't ever known each other like this- you wouldn't have done dark magic, wouldn't have suffered so much- if we hadn't been friends, then-"

"You're right, I would be different," Luna said steadily, "I'd be worse," and pressed her forehead against his, not seeming to care about the time passing or the headmaster they kept waiting. "Don't ever say anything bad about yourself, because you're saying it about me too, remember? 'What you are, I am.' You're my reflection. And I'm yours. You're my mirror, remember? Remember?"

It seemed a different person who had so confidently said those words, to comfort her. "I remember. Just-"

"You said you can't have one without the other," Luna said stubbornly. "That we make a set. Like a package deal. That we're the exact same. And you told me I was an angel. Which means you're an angel too. And who wouldn't be better off, for having known an angel?"

The unquestioning faith in Luna's voice made something in Draco finally, finally crack. "Take this, then," he said, reaching into his pocket and shoving the vial at her. "It's Pensieve memories." He grabbed the bag from his luggage where he had put Severus's books, pages still marked, and shoved them at her too. "You can look- I don't know, I'd imagine the Room of Requirement could make a Pensieve for you if you wanted. Whatever, just don't try and use Snape's Pensieve. But look at the memories, and read what the books say after. Try and understand, and then- then try and tell me I'm wrong, that you'd be better off without me."

"I know you're wrong," Luna began.

"Just look," Draco insisted, biting back tears. He pressed it all firmly into her hands. "Then show it to whoever you want, keep it secret, destroy it, give it to Voldemort for all I care, just- stop trying to model yourself after me, Luna, stop mimicking me, stop trying to be like me, because- I'm not who you think I am. Once you see, you'll understand."

"Alright," Luna said, and hugged him again before she let him go. "It won't change my mind!" she yelled as she went.

If only that were true. Her faith made her sound as mad as the gravedigger's daughter who shared her name, telling her mother to dig up her father's corpse to make him alive again.

Draco ran his fingers over the talon wand in his pocket- rudely silent as ever, Dantanian- before he went off towards Grimmauld, and left the memories with his favorite cousin.

: Phineas Black

Notes:

Hey all! To answer questions about my posting schedule, I've decided to change it to every four days, because this book is just taking me longer to write- it's further afield from the books, it's more dense and lore-oriented, etc.- and I want to be sure the writing is still good :) I'll try to have every chapter up by 6 pm EST on that schedule, but if it isn't up until midnight or after, that might happen, don't worry about me ^^

Thanks so much for your thoughts and comments, I love to see all your theories and ideas and opinions! Anyway, enjoy! <3

Chapter Text

Sirius and Remus should never have adopted Draco. That much was indisputable. Taking Draco's stolen power had bound him, in some mysterious blood feud, to wipe every trace of House Black from the earth.

But once the Portkey landed him in Grimmauld, it was hard to honestly regret that this place and these people had become his home. Whatever cost it would have, for those foolish enough to shelter a dragon.

"Draco, we've been so worried," Remus said, crushing him in a hug from one side. Sirius, usually less physically demonstrative, was even more enthusiastic, seizing him too to mess with his already tangled hair, until he made Draco flail at him.

"He's still alive," Sirius said happily. "Looks like reports of him not caring about his hair were exaggerated. Thank Merlin, if he'd given up on that, I would think it the end of Draco Black." He hugged Draco's other side tighter.

"Now it's even worse," Draco whined, but Remus pulled back to give him a look that would brook no argument.

"You'll wash and style it while you have your infusion. We've drawn it upstairs and added the angel's infusion. It should still be warm."

It didn't seem Draco would be allowed to be as lazy in his fake recovery, under this roof.

After the bath and hair-drying spells, Draco put on what they'd left out, new, thick fleece-lined Ravenclaw blue pajamas, with matching slippers with the eagle crest on them. He felt very cherished and spoiled, despite his own resolution to be miserable.

Remus had made the dinner tonight. Sirius assured him that Kreacher had been ordered in no uncertain terms to stay far away from Draco, however long his recovery took. Remus said he'd been in contact with Draco's professors, and would make sure Draco didn't fall any further behind on his written coursework.

"You can afford to miss some of the practical," Remus flattered him, "That's always been your specialty," and Draco didn't have the heart to retort. Something about how useless homework and school were in the face of the Death Eater threat? But given that he had personally responded to the Death Eater threat by spending a month in bed- and not even in the fun way- he probably would have been pushing his luck anyway.

He should have known they wouldn't let him off so easily. Remus came to visit before bed, easing his way in with hot cocoa and affection, before squarely asking what incident had precipitated this exhaustion. Draco fed him the narrative Harry must have, about finding Periander's grave empty on Valentine's Day and fearing for Severus, and then used as much of the truth as he could: finding out Severus was at Xaphan from McGonagall, exhausting himself getting there alone, and then throwing an embarrassing tantrum at Severus for worrying him, which had ended in imaginary "regrettable structural damage to Xaphan".

"I know I was being stupid," Draco finished, "But it wasn't just that one day. It was that I've had to deal with close to two years of him spying for the Order, even after I became one of Voldemort's most hated enemies. And nothing I do to try and protect him changes a thing." Surprisingly, he found his frustration real still. It was all he could do to hold back feeling from his voice, but then, Remus had witnessed his breakdown at Severus about this very argument, last summer. This wasn't a new weakness.

"Voldemort knows about the Naufragiam, and Severus is personally helping with Xaphan, everything is just tightening the net around him. It's too much. I went to Dumbledore-" More truth in service of lies by omission. "I threatened the headmaster about it."

He snickered, one of the few real laughs he'd had in weeks, at Remus pulling back with a comically appalled slackening of his honest face. "But I've just been powerless. I've felt powerless at everything. Helpless and useless-"

"At least," Remus said gently, "We can help you recover your health here, sweetheart. And your usual magical ability. We'll get you back to fighting shape."

That won't help, Draco could have said, feeling the presence of that bent form in his pocket like a condemnation. It was a testimony to his own selfishness being here, embracing a man he was meant to kill. But he just hugged Remus tighter, murmuring his thanks. Even if he did end up turning on Remus before all this was through, he wanted Remus to know he hadn't wanted to.

"That explains why Severus's reports on you have been so secondhand and incomplete. It seems he's always at the citadel with Gilderoy these days. And then there's his dark mood... But do you think this, shutting him out of your life, is the right way to address your fear? Aren't you just hurting him and yourself? Especially if the worst does come- the time you could had. Won't you want that back?"

Draco pulled back, and might have said something violent or cruel. But that failed looking into those kind brown eyes, always well-intentioned however they wounded. He had no answer.

Remus stroked his hair, told him he was a sweet and good person, and put him to bed.

It seemed Remus and Sirius went to check in on the citadel every day now, meeting Frank and Alice there, along with Gilderoy and sometimes Severus. Xaphan's empty rooms had swiftly filled with carpets and beds and wall hangings, chandeliers and sconces and classroom desks. The continued rebuilding of Xaphan's structure went on, alongside efforts to make the sections already refurbished livable. Financed in no small part by the Ministry's gracious damage payments to Sirius, piece by piecemeal the old beast was coming back to life. Presumably, it was currently looking something like when Dantanian lived there.

After a few days, they offered to bring Draco with them to visit Gilderoy. Draco made a face that made Sirius snort in laughter at that revolting prospect.

Unfortunately, refusal to be brought to Xaphan didn't mean Xaphan couldn't be brought to Draco. Remus's kind heart was prevailed on to make the delivery right to Draco's bedside.

He'd been dozing in his far more contentedly than locked in Ravenclaw, but he was woken by that most unwarrantedly peppy of voices. It was hard to imagine any individual alive, capable of being more irritating than Gilderoy Lockhart, when you already did not want to see him.

"Er, hello there," said Gilderoy, and Draco groaned and pulled his topmost pillow completely over his head.

"Sweetheart, Gilderoy heard you were home! He wanted come visit you, and wish you the best in your recuperation," Remus said, in some humble variation of the tone his mother had used to take on, when she thought he was being rude not to greet Great-Aunt Walburga. "Isn't that awfully kind of him?"

"Mmm," Draco mumbled. "Yeah. Kind. Thanks. Now go away."

"I'll go check on lunch downstairs," Remus said. There was the sound of the bedroom door swinging shut, and descending footsteps.

"Draco?" Gilderoy asked tentatively. "I, er, I know you probably don't want to see me right now, or, erm, ever, but if I could-"

Draco rolled over, peeling the pillow off his face to regard Gilderoy balefully. A part of him was glad to have the talon wand in his pocket. If Dantanian could see and hear everything Draco did, a detached part of his mind wondered, drolly, what he must make of the preposterous creature known as Lockhart. A creature clad, as ever, in that excessively fine blue fur Draco had bought him. If Severus was spending more time with the clodpole, maybe he should look to getting him a more expansive wardrobe.

Draco had resolved that he no longer cared whether his betrayers lived or died. And here he was wondering after Gilderoy's wardrobe.

"Just what?" Draco refused to sit up or make an effort to accommodate Gilderoy. He'd tried meticulous politeness with this criminal, and seen where it got him. "Wondering whether I think the same of you as I did on Valentine's Day? Why should you have to ask?" Gilderoy blinked, cornflower-colored eyes unsure. "Of course I do!"

Check this out, Dante. I think you're about to witness one of the great comedic spectacles of this generation... Gilderoy Lockhart making an attempt at emotional sensitivity.

He spoke in an unusually firm and deep tone. "You don't have magical exhaustion, do you?" Draco snorted noncommittally. "You told your uncles you threw some magical tantrum at Xaphan that day. You didn't. And that you tired yourself Apparating back and forth from Hogwarts to Xaphan- Draco, you did that before Christmas, blind drunk, and you were perfectly fine-"

"Severus figured that out, didn't he," Draco yawned. "Did you tell him about that? Has he looked in the Mirror of Erised yet? I take it he didn't see-" You, he had at the tip of his tongue, but the idea of being cruel failed, as it often seemed to in the face of Gilderoy. It was worse than kicking a puppy. It was like compounding someone else's great crime by smaller, more petty bits of cruelty. And what was the point of that? Gratifying his own ego? Whatever he did, there was no salvaging that.

"I knew without him speculating," Gilderoy said indignantly. "And no, I didn't tell him. I've kept all of your secrets from each other-" He did not look to have enjoyed being in the middle. "So if you were worried-"

"Which is a fancy way of saying," Draco yawned, covering his mouth this time, "That you'll still keep Severus's secrets from me as necessary. Kind of makes whatever plea you're going to make pretty tepid. What? You've got to have some reason for coming here, other than actively making Remus's life more difficult-"

"He's very upset," Gilderoy blurted, standing above Draco's bed wringing his hands. "Severus. He's been foul-mouthed and snappish, even for him, and he comes around Xaphan all the time to complain about things, since I'm the only one who knows why you really fell out-"

"You don't know anything about-"

"Or even knows part of it. He hasn't told anyone else, though, not even Dumbledore. He's still on your side. He does love you- but I'm not here to plead his case or tell you to forgive him, so please don't yell at me!"

"You couldn't handle it, could you," Draco sighed, trying not to be amused by the shrillness Gilderoy reached. "Being yelled at."

"Not by you," Gilderoy said breathlessly, missing the joke. "You're too important. That's what I have to say. I want you to come back- to Hogwarts, to the Order, and to Xaphan-"

"Free labor must be hard to come by," Draco drawled languidly, "Without a preexisting prison sentence," and Gilderoy bristled.

"I miss you," he proclaimed, "As a friend!" He gave Draco no time to protest about whether they had been friends in the first place. "And I feel terrible you think I betrayed you, after everything you did for me- maybe I did, I don't know, but I did try to do the right thing! I did! I just didn't know what the right thing was!" He hung his head. "There weren't any good choices..."

"It comes down to choosing sides. And you chose. Severus. Fine. I always would have expected that. Personal attachment trumps objective feeling of debt. That's natural. I just never expected Severus and I to be on different sides-"

"I'm on your side," Gilderoy insisted. His wide eyes brimmed with sincerity, so much the picture of earnestness it almost made Draco distrust him more. How many men and women must Gilderoy have expressed such fealty to, before erasing their memory and making his merry way off to write another book?

"I made the decision weeks ago. I've just been waiting for a chance to tell you. You don't have to forgive me, but please, at least believe in that. I'll keep your secrets from now on, I promise. I'll aid you however I can. I do..." He looked at the wall. "I do love Severus. More- more than I can ever really say. But you're the one who gave me a purpose and took me in and made me feel like a real person again. You're the one who saved me. I'll follow you."

"And what, tell me his secrets?" Draco said caustically, refusing to buy this. For all he knew, Severus had put Gilderoy up to it.

"I would if I knew any," Gilderoy said glumly. He stood there visibly thinking, and then had an idea. "Here," he said, took off his coat, and rolled his sleeves halfway up his biceps. His wrists were as pristine, as unregistering of any past claim, as Draco's own. "I don't know if it's a secret, but Severus has been making progress with my scars."

Draco tried and failed not to feel happy for Gilderoy. "How? Before, he'd just made them fade a little-"

Gilderoy's Adam's Apple bobbed jerkily, signs of repression showing bodily as he maintained a facade of unperturbed cheer. "Antivenom. Or, antivenin, I still don't quite grasp the difference. Ah, ha, silly old me! I'd forget my own head if it wasn't attached. He's tried out all sorts- tried developing a few in reverse from vampire blood or flesh, even vampire bats, or my own blood- then finally he went through Muggle antivenoms, and one just worked like magic, when he mixed it with his vampire antivenom potion thingamajig. It was for the serp verda- the mal- malp- I don't remember the proper name. My mind, I tell you! A serpent local to... to els Pirineus- to the- the Pyrenees. It was amazing that he thought to try it, but it worked..."

Amazing what other people can accomplish in a month. All I accomplished was a lot of Dantanian Noir not talking to me.

"Antivenom. So whatever was added to the bites from Sade, it helps draw that out..."

Draco was reminded of Nagini's venom. He heard Remus in his head, warning him that he might regret cutting out of his life someday, if the worst should come...

"I'm glad."

"It's a shame he has to go to such effort," Gilderoy said sadly, and Draco rolled his eyes.

"Come off it, Gilderoy, you're a hero, aren't you? Isn't that what heroes deserve?"

"I'm not a hero," Gilderoy mumbled, and Draco ignored him.

"Listen to you. You can barely make yourself talk about the snakes around L'Infern, but you got what, two dozen children out, and they didn't get eaten by vampires or snakes."

"I'm not a hero."

"You risked your life and took them into the wild to safety, using the tools the vampires themselves taught you." You didn't even have to take on any blood feuds in the bargain. "I was wrong before, wasn't I? Not by saying you were a liar, but by acting like nothing is different-"

"I'm not a hero."

"Because you did what you couldn't at Hogwarts, I'll give you that: save a child from the depths of hell. So many children. You really are a-"

"I'M NOT A HERO!"

Draco listened for the sound of feet on the stairs. But it didn't seem anyone had heard. "Might wanna keep it down-"

"I'm not a hero," Gilderoy covered his mouth with both hands, tears filling his liquid blue eyes. "I'm not a hero at all."

"Oh, no. Oh, no. Please do not tell me that somebody else actually saved you and the girls, and you Obliviated them and took all the credit again."

"What? No! Nothing like that!"

"Then what," Draco said skeptically. "Why would you say that? Did you not free the girls from the underground prison?" Gilderoy nodded, tears running over his clutching hands. "And take them to an underground tunnel you'd dug?" Gilderoy nodded each time, openly weeping. He couldn't have hidden it if he tried, like he was a hair's breadth from crumbling completely. "And it took you all out into one of the glacier lakes. And you all had to swim for it, and you carried a girl on your back. Helped carry girls on your way through the mountains. Led them down and Obliviated a vampire who found you. Brought them into the town, all the way to safety." Still nods. "Then what the hell about that does not sound like a hero to you? You saved those girls-"

"But that's not why!" Gilderoy blurted. He sobbed hard after, before he could force the rest out. "That's not why I did it! I didn't think I'd succeed. I lied about that. I never thought it would work! Not for a second! I hadn't thought digging that stupid tunnel would work either! I never thought I could get myself or those girls away!"

"Then why did you do it?" Draco fought the urge to hug Gilderoy. He was shaking too violently from sobs, really, to hold onto. "Did you think you were leading those girls to their death-"

"It would have been better for them. Whatever happened in the escape. Freezing to death, or drowning in the lake- being caught and killed by the vampires- however they died in the attempt. It would have been an easier death than what Seguinus had planned. He told me what it was. Anything would have been better..."

So Gilderoy hadn't thought he was leading them to salvation. Just an easier death.

It was still a kind of mercy.

"And what about you?" Then Draco understood. "You thought it would be better for you too? Better than carrying on. You wanted to die with them." A suicide mission.

Gilderoy looked ready to die of shame. "It was just... years! Years and years, and it was never going to end. No matter what I did, I was the one Seguinus kept alive. At first I wanted to live, and I tried so hard to make myself useful, to survive... I don't know if it was the castle-building I learned, the Obliviation that I was always good at, or- or-"

Gilderoy's face contorted in pain. "Or what I- I was for him, Seguinus. But he wouldn't kill me. I asked him to. I told him I was too tired and couldn't carry on. I was a coward, he just wouldn't do it. He would laugh, it was like to spite me that he wouldn't let me die. I thought if I did something that bad, coming even close to escaping, or ruining their ritual- then, when they caught me, I thought he'd finally have to let me go. So I'm not a hero, Draco, I was a coward, a coward to the end..."

Draco hugged Gilderoy, and Gilderoy collapsed on him, sobbing like his heart had just broken, and was trying to force itself in jagged pieces of out of his chest. "You see? I haven't changed. I haven't. I'm still a fraud. Just a fraud. That's all, still..."

Draco feared Sirius or Remus would interrupt and find Gilderoy in this state. He didn't want to have to explain. This was one secret he didn't think he'd ever not want to keep.

"Gilderoy, ssh," Draco heard himself saying, actually stroking at Gilderoy's long tousled mane of blond hair. "It's alright. You can cry. I promise it's alright. And you're not a fraud. You still saved those girls. They are alive because of you. Just because you didn't think it would work- Gilderoy, that makes you more of a hero."

He wanted Gilderoy to believe him, but he couldn't tell if his words sank in.

"You're not a fraud," he kept telling Gilderoy. "You have changed. I was wrong. You're different. That's not you, from Hogwarts, from L'Infern, none of it. Who you are now, Gilderoy, it's new. You can be someone new. Someone who... someone who doesn't want to die."

Gilderoy shrieked as Draco cut his own palm open. Draco rolled his eyes with every bit of gusto Severus had ever put into that expression. "I thought you'd seen the memories. What did you expect?"

"You could have warned me," Gilderoy said breathlessly. Gilderoy's face in more light looked more swollen. After leaving Grimmauld, he must have cried more. But he had still been waiting for Draco at midnight as promised, inside the observatory.

Draco rolled his eyes again, and tried to increase the glow of the candles around them, for Gilderoy's sake. He still had to use his wand to heighten the flames, rather than just wave a hand in their direction like Dantanian could.

"No, I'm sorry, go on..." Gilderoy stood watch as Draco cut his hand open and began to draw with the blood on the stone. "Do you need a picture? Are you sure that's the right shape?"

"I know how to draw Hecate's wheel," Draco said stubbornly, though in truth, maybe he shouldn't have let Luna be the one to draw it back when. He'd only carved it himself with a knife. But who knew how precise Hecate kept her aesthetic standards? There had to be poor sinners on this earth deserving of the blessing of the great demon goddess Hecate who wouldn't exactly make it into an art honors society.

Draco couldn't trust Gilderoy wouldn't report this to Severus, even after today. But this opportunity was valuable. And it wasn't a difficult ritual. The hardest part, after managing a credible impression of some snakes around some stars, was willing himself to do the unthinkable: let Gilderoy Lockhart cut his hair.

"Just a bit, right?" Gilderoy said anxiously. "I'm not qualified to give you a new look, if that's what you're thinking of, to try and look less like Dorian Malfoy, or- or your godfather. I mean, I certainly could use some form of hair treatment myself- a trim at least- but the secret of Xaphan and myself cannot be let loose into the world, Remus says, 'just' because I am sorely in need of a quality hairdresser..."

Draco let himself laugh. Maybe he had missed Gilderoy back. If only for this very real earnestness, even with a face still mottled from crying, complaining about Remus's lack of solicitude for his hair.

It took Gilderoy an inordinate amount of time to cut, but eventually, enough blond hair landed in the stone. "Make sure none of yours got in," Draco warned. Gilderoy solemnly went through hair by hair, to make sure all of it was white-blond and not faded gold. "Step back. Time to see if I'm worthy of Dantanian's legacy."

"Dantanian Black," Gilderoy asked quiveringly, "Or Dantanian Noir?"

Draco considered. "Both, if they're on offer. Alright. Demon Goddess Hecate, hear me." Gilderoy went off and plastered his back to the furthest wall, while Draco cut and healed his palm again. He smeared blood over the whole talon wand. Here, Dantanian, don't say I never did anything nice for you.

"Dignusanguine!"

Nothing happened. Draco tried again.

"Dignusanguine! I am the worthy heir to House Black! Hell, I am the legal heir to House Black! Let me in! Let me in! Dignusanguine!"

He tried several different pronunciations, and nothing. Eventually, he was forced to give up, and Gilderoy stopped clinging to the wall like his life depended on it. At least it seemed activity had helped take Gilderoy's mind temporarily off darker thoughts- as it had, in truth, for Draco.

He brushed off Gilderoy's attempts at consolation, acting like he hadn't ever expected the door to open for him. "I just would have never forgiven myself, if I didn't at least try."

Gilderoy seemed loath to let him go. "So, since it was no luck there... is it, er, back to spending everyday in bed, then?"

Draco patted poor Gilderoy on the arm. "No, it's back to Hogwarts. I'll have to do it, if only because someone'll have to be there for Sunday check-ins, and look in properly on this tragic old Defense professor of mine..."

"Me or Severus?"

"You!" Draco exclaimed. It was hard not to chuckle, seeing that Gilderoy, despite his affections, would readily accept Severus's description as 'tragic'. "I said 'old', didn't I?"

Gilderoy blinked. "I thought you meant Severus is old. Well, I know he's only a few years older than me, but I suppose he seems much older..."

Draco eventually stopped laughing long enough to say his goodbyes. "I'll go back to Hogwarts," he promised as he left. "There's just one more thing I need you to do for me first."

The next afternoon saw Sirius and Remus making their normal trip to Xaphan. Unlike the usual trips, Draco had it on good faith that Gilderoy would keep them there for at least an hour, more if he could manage it. That should be enough time for his purposes.

It had been in his mind since the second he stepped under this roof. He made sure to groom himself and dress for the task, rather than wandering down to Grimmauld's entry hall in his pajamas. He had to look the part of House Black's heir. And besides, the person he had to speak to had a weakness for men with long hair- men of his blood, and young. Too young.

He threw off the drape over the painting, as if uncovering a freshly laid corpse. "Phineas," Draco said softly, "Come out, come out, wherever you are," and poked at the empty painting.

He lost his patience quickly. "Come over to this side, lowlife, or I'll cut this canvas to pieces. This is Draco-" He almost said Malfoy before he caught himself. "This is Draco Black! You know I can do it!" After only seconds, his patience broke further. "Come on, Phineas! How long have you been waiting for a reunion with Dantanian Noir?"

There was that face that should never have been so familiar.

If he was Sirius's great-great-grandfather... no, Draco didn't have the patience to work out what that relation was to himself. There was only relation that mattered: half-brother and half-sister, and the half-sister's child.

How convenient, that there was a painting remaining, so the perpetrator of so much could be called to account. Phineas was older, of course, with his dark eyebrows thinned and a beard grown, although no gray hair evident. It was a pointed beard that proved Phineas must have been lied to, and lied to several times, to not only think it a good idea, but consent to be immortalized with such an offense against aesthetics.

But then, this was a man who had offended against nature, checking so many of the possible boxes of ways to do so. Aesthetics were not even worth the notice.

"What did you say?" Phineas gasped, his dark eyes so much like Sirius's focusing on Draco, through the barrier of canvas. The miniature human before Draco looked strangely more like his great-great-grandson with more age, as if there had been some spirit animating him in his forties, some ill voice within driving him during the lifetime of Dantanian, which had since faltered and given up the ghost. "Did you say Dante- Dantanian-"

"I don't know if I want to talk to you more about him, or Astarte Noir." He pulled out his wand and held it up in front of the canvas.

Phineas peered out at it doubtfully. "We all know you unlawfully wield your aunt's wand, boy. Have you summoned me for such-"

Heat pulsed so fiercely in Draco's hand, he nearly dropped it. His grip would have let go, were it not for the need to show a strong face. "Astarte Noir. You ordered her and her son killed."

"What-" Phineas paled so substantially, it gave rest to any insidious suspicions Draco had mulled over, whether the memories had been false. "What- you- you have no evidence of this!"

"You're on trial, Phineas." The wand felt so alive in Draco's hand, it almost seemed liable to unbend. He had never felt something seethe so unnaturally, as if a blinding rage had overtaken him, but only his right arm. "On trial like you should have been in life. It's been a hundred years- more, and you surely thought you'd gotten away with it, right? Your legacy secured?"

"I'm already dead," Phineas said dismissively, although the painter must have quite closely captured the likeness, to render fear in those distinctive Black half-lidded dark eyes. It was just as they had looked in Dantanian's memory, staring into blue fire. "This is nonsense. You can't-"

"I can blast you," Draco said confidently, "Off the family tapestry." Oh, Phineas did not seem to like the look of that. "I will no matter what you're really guilty of, if you commit the sin of lying to me. You may think that I am only the heir, not the lord, and I can't take on such power. But you must have seen me destroy Walburga's portrait. I have the power to end you on tapestry and canvas, and I will be the only soul in this house for hours." He wrinkled his nose. "Well, there's Kreacher, but he's been confined to his room, he doesn't count. So if you ask how I can take it upon myself to try you? By what right? I'll tell you. Power. Does that sound familiar?"

Draco waited until it was clear he had subdued any resistance. That face's elderliness and its resemblance to Sirius did not make it any sympathetic, only more pathetic.

"If that's still not enough, I speak as the voice of the only one who truly has the right to try you. Dantanian." Phineas actually screamed, the sad old vampire bat of a man. "He's here, you know. Right here. I can feel it, his need to scour every remnant of you from the earth. He's here in my wand. I've spoken to him and heard his story. Now I want yours. But remember, if you lie, I let Dantanian do as he likes."

"No, this can't be happening. After so many years- I thought he was gone-"

"So you heard about what happened in New Zealand."

"Yes," Phineas said, and Draco had never thought paintings could sweat like that. It was almost impressive. "Yes, I did, and- you may not believe me, but- I grieved. I grieved for him." He shrunk back where he stood, at Draco's harsh laughter. "I did! I couldn't help it. I knew he would have been my doom, mine and everything I loved. Even just when I found out who he was and let him live, I thought it, but I couldn't stop myself, Draco." Draco's nostrils flared, at the sound of this creature presuming to speak his name. "I loved him."

"You loved him!" Draco's voice went shrill and uncanny to his own ears. An arm that had been swelling with heat and anger seemed now to be going almost numb. "You ordered him killed at seven, along with his mother, the only person he had in the world. And when you learned who he was, you lied about his mother's death to him. You refused to take him in as family. You would only take him as a whore. You violated him. A child of sixteen. Your own nephew. You violated him with his mother's blood still on your hands, because it is there still, Phineas, it will never leave them! Even if I shred this painting and burn it to ash, the blood of Astarte Noir will remain in the ashes-"

"I know," Phineas gasped, overwhelmed. "And it seems that you know, Draco-" Draco held up a warning hand. "Heir to House Black. You know it all. But I- I have suffered for it-"

"No, your son did," Draco said coldly, "And you kept it a secret, and made your sons lie for you, and cast off their brother as a blood traitor for all the world- did you even tell his mother the truth?" Phineas shook his head, without the emotion that Draco's rant about Dantanian had brought. "That woman was just a convenience to you, wasn't she? No more important than house elves, just a useful accessory to the pureblood lord. No matter how many sons she gave you. Did she never even get the chance to know, who it was you really..." Draco wrinkled his nose. "Supposedly, 'loved'?"

"I did love him! I knew it was wrong- knew it was against everything I believed in, every code I had held to for so long, but in spite of it all- I loved him! I still..."

Phineas didn't seem able to finish that. Nor did Draco's fizzing right arm, or the wand that felt a mere extension of it, seem appeased. "The word for that isn't love," Draco spat. "The best you could call it is obsession, or madness. But you weren't mad, you were calculated. You were the headmaster, and he was a student under your charge. A fifth-year. An orphaned fifth-year without any place to go. It would have been a horrific abuse of power- would have been enough to make you a monster- even without him being your nephew. Even if you hadn't been the one who made him an orphan- how can you try and call that love-"

"It was," Phineas insisted. "I tried to fight it. I did. But it was hopeless. Once I knew who he was, I started watching him, and then I couldn't stop. I just always wanted to look at him." Draco felt his stomach turn. But Phineas went on, as if this narrative would somehow not further condemn, but exculpate him. "I never felt anything for anyone male before, or anyone- young, but Dantanian- he was just- there was no one in the world, there will never be anyone like Dantanian-"

"What, because he was so beautiful? You were drawn to him, no matter how much you denied or resisted it?"

Phineas looked inexplicably relieved. "Yes! I don't know if you've seen him. His hair, his eyes, that pretty, cruel little smile... But unless you saw him in the flesh- living, moving- you would never understand how beautiful he was. More beautiful than any man or woman. It was like he was both and neither. He had this haze around him, like pure power, or moonlight-"

"You're not a poet, so don't try." The nausea was too thick in Draco's throat to carry on with this farce much longer. "All that nonsense adds up to is the same excuse rapists have used forever: I couldn't help it, it wasn't my fault, it was their fault!"

"I don't deny anything," Phineas said proudly. "End me if you must. But I did what I did because of the great passion of my life. No one has or ever will love anyone or anything the way I loved Dantanian Noir."

"Did you tell anyone what Dantanian did to your son?"

"No," Phineas said more tightly, "But of course my other sons had seen. We never talked about it, except to discuss the cover story. And I never spoke the name Dantanian Noir, or let any other living soul set foot on Citadelle Xaphan while it was mine, not until the day I died. Heir of House Black, you must understand- not forgive, but understand- I was not a monster-"

"You were," Draco said unhesitatingly, "Of all the men I have ever known, the most monstrous. Sectum-"

"Wait! Dumbledore- I carry his messages- for the Order of the Phoenix- you're on that side, aren't you- you'd be destroying-"

"You could have no conception," Draco said with quiet satisfaction, "How much I enjoy it, that this also deals any kind of blow to Dumbledore. Sectumsempra!"

It wasn't as gratifying as expected, though, the howling screams of Phineas Black, as he was split open into jagged horizontal lines, living tatters that each writhed in incomprehension of their severing. Eventually, they fell in individual tatters of canvas and were forever still, all without Draco feeling much appeased. Nor did the wand seem ready to give up the grudge.

"It's alright, Dantanian," Draco said, and pressed an impulsive kiss to the end of the talon wand. It was not just heat and the buzz of barely-constrained magic there, but some aftertaste of blood. "There's still a family to cast him from."

Sirius and Remus found Draco with his hands and wand bloody, finishing the process of blasting Phineas junior from the tapestry, after he had already gotten Phineas Nigellus done. Remus let out a horrified sound that alerted him to their presence, before Sirius stalked forward to stand between Draco and the tapestry. "Have you gone mad?"

"I see," Remus observed more wryly, "Your magical exhaustion has begun to improve."

"Who did you blast from the tapestry?" Sirius growled, then turned and started back. "Phineas? Phineas Nigellus? Just like the painting? Draco, he carries messages from us for Dumbledore, and back! If he hadn't, the Order would never have found Arthur Weasley in time, before he bled out in the Department of-" He faltered, at Draco's lack of reaction. "It wasn't random. You knew that, didn't you? Is that why?" Sirius's hand, snowdrop ring glinting with a brilliance that made Draco regret, trailed from the blasted space of the father to the son. "The other Phineas too? What, were you not sure which one? Better safe than sorry, huh?"

"Sirius," Remus said, stepping forward and taking his hand, "I don't think yelling and getting angry is going to solve anything-"

"No! Maybe someone should have yelled at him a long time ago!" Sirius whirled back on Draco, with a ferocious fire in those dark eyes so much like Phineas's recently emptied ones. "What is this? Some kind of childish retaliation against Dumbledore? Your godfather? Us? We've been too coddling as your new parents-"

"Punish me as you like," Draco drawled, "I don't particularly care," and Sirius swore under his breath, before yelling again.

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

"Sirius-"

"It's not just magical exhaustion! You're not yourself, Draco! You haven't been since you came home! It's like you don't want to get better! You haven't been yourself at all!"

"Sirius-"

"I don't know what you're going through, or what stupid grudge against Dumbledore you're playing out, but doing crazy things like this- staying in bed for a month- I don't believe it's just magical exhaustion, there's more-"

"Draco," Remus said, voice quiet and gentle, "If you would let us take you to a Mind Healer-"

Draco far preferred Sirius's bellowing, to that kind of offer.

"You can't just drop off the face of the earth, Draco! We need you! Your friends need you! Harry needs you, the Order needs you-" Sirius saw Draco's eyes drop to the talon wand. It seemed he knew Draco well enough by now, to read his mind from that little. "And not because of your fucking power! Because you're you!"

"Don't swear at him, Padfoot-"

"And even if you weren't even dating Harry, he'd still need you! We all would, Draco, because you're a part of this, like it or not, you can't just drop out now! I need you! I need- I need my nephew who's not afraid of anything!"

Sirius's voice broke on the last words, and Draco stepped forward and hugged him as hard as he could. "I'm sorry," he gasped, burying his face in Sirius's shoulder. He could feel Remus join them, hugging them both. "I'm so sorry. You're right. You're right. I'll go back to Hogwarts. I'm not tired anymore. I'll go back. I'm sorry."

Draco had expected some form of remonstration from the headmaster, when the Portkey took him into his office. Especially after his eyes went instinctually to where Phineas Black's portrait had been. The painting was not yet removed, but it was just an empty landscape now. Even then, Dumbledore just told him mildly, "It is good to see you well again, Mr. Black."

Draco spared the fraud one last glance as he made his unappreciative way out. It looked as if the great Albus Dumbledore's wilting hand had gotten even worse.

"FRANKENSTEIN!" a near-hysterical voice shrieked. Even before her flailing limbs seized him like she would never let him go, he knew it was his best friend.

"Striker." The feeling of comfort as he buried his face in her thick bushy hair was bone-deep. "I'm sorry it's been so long, but Luna was telling me about what was going on with everyone-"

"Are you feeling better?" She pushed him to arm's length to study him. "Luna- she doesn't think you had-"

"Not here." Draco cast a glance back towards Dumbledore's office. Hermione led him towards the stairs. The halls were empty, the world dark outside. It was after curfew, but then, Hermione did have her prefect badge on. And a fine job she was doing, patrolling the corridors for dark and sinister intruders.

"Luna doesn't think you ever had magical exhaustion at all," Hermione whispered as they made their way, down relievingly familiar moving steps. "She thinks it was just that you couldn't bring yourself to get out of bed, after what you saw."

"Hermione," Draco said, stopping her at a landing. "Did you- did she show you the memories?"

"We looked in the Room of Requirement, like you told her." Hermione's faithful pretty face did not falter. "You should have let me see right away, Draco, and told me anything else you know. I have some guesses, but they're not especially educated ones-"

"You know." Draco might have sunk down onto nearby steps, had they not already moved away from him. "You know about Dantanian and the talon wand. You know what's really wrong with me. You know what I am now." He searched her face for repulsion and found none, nor even fear. "Hermione, you don't think differently of me?"

"Why would I?" she said briskly. "You didn't choose this knowingly. And I don't know how many of those symptoms in that book for a coda you've experienced, but you'd told me already what you and Theodore Nott found out, about Astaroth the dragon. That was back in fourth year. This just makes that make more sense. If you've been hiding yourself away because you think you're a monster, Frankenstein, I'd appreciate it if you put that nonsense swiftly behind you. I don't see any monster here."

"Looks can be deceiving."

"Not these." Hermione seized his hand firmly. "You're still my best friend, Draco. That's who you are. And I believe in you."

Draco had to bite his tongue so hard to hold back tears, it made his face fall forward. She let him collapse on her shoulder for a minute, stroking his hair, and then she pulled him along.

"So this is not the time for despair..."

"For what, then? Rejoicing?" Draco asked sardonically.

She gave him a severe look. "If I hadn't missed your bratty temperament so much, Draco, I would be quite cross at you. You must be being purposefully obtuse-"

"Oh, right." It felt like clouds were clearing around him, clouds in the sky that had been blocking every light for so long. "Research. It's the time for research."

"Luna and I have already begun, of course. It would help if you'd answer some questions, so I can see if you're in agreement about my suppositions. First of all-" She looked around, but there was no one else on the staircase out of Hogwarts. It was lucky Draco had Apparated in with a winter coat, and that she happened to be wearing one as well.

"Luna went to your godfather about this. I'm sure you'll be furious, but it was my idea, not hers, and she didn't actually tell him anything. She just asked Professor Snape if you had gotten any gifts recently- you know, acting like she was worried you might have been enchanted, and that might be what's hurting you. He just told her everything she asked. About where you got the vial, that the assessor Periander had left it to you inside that ritual dagger, but he found it and kept it from you until now... Was I wrong to have her do that?"

"I don't care what he thinks. Did he tell her any of his theories?"

"No, but I've been wondering- there's so much that doesn't make sense. So many mysteries I want to solve- don't worry, Draco, I'm going to solve them. The life of Dantanian, that room in Xaphan, the Mirror of Erised- Luna and I checked, but it does seem gone from the Room of Requirement, Dumbledore must have taken it-"

Draco was not looking forward to her finding out he'd been keeping things from her again. He let that lie for now.

"The magic involved- do you think he tried to turn Astaroth into a Dementor?"

She sounded abashed at her outlandish guess, but he nodded. He felt another spark of uncertain hope, at this reminder of his best friend's sheer, indefatigable intelligence. "That's what Severus had decided, he told me." He bet Hermione had figured it out quicker. "And he said that he thinks the talon wand's a coda with Dantanian's blood in it, that Dantanian is the coreblood giver, and I'm his kinsman..."

"Charged with blood feud?" Hermione finished, and Draco nodded more grimly. "Against House Black? Oh, Draco, no wonder you were so upset... but surely, if it was absolute, you've had more than enough chances to kill members of House Black before now. Think about it. I have. Even when you were fighting your parents, even when your father tried to kill you... if the vow Dantanian made really bound you, fully, wouldn't you have killed them at that time? I know you hurt them badly, but..."

She lowered her voice, brown eyes shining wide and sad in the night. "They abused you, Draco, and neglected you. I don't know about wizarding law or opinion, Draco, but for Muggles, it's considered understandable, even defensible, to retaliate against one's abusers. The fact that you didn't do worse than you did- I think that means Dantanian isn't in control of you. And then there's the circumstances around the memories- why he made them, why he left them to Dorian Malfoy, if they remained in the Periander family until Pammaque Periander ended up with them, or there's something more- why Dorian and Lamia were just cut from the Malfoy family tree as if they never existed, but not the Periander-"

"What do you mean, Dorian and Lamia?"

"Oh, we found some Periander family records. Dorian married Lamia in 1895, and they both died early- I forget when, not too long, after the turn of the century- well, Lamia didn't die, she turned into a Maledictus- don't look surprised, Draco, it was obvious from the memories that would happen, the poor girl- alright, we're here!"

Despite the chill night air, so unusual a sensation for the past month, it had taken him this long to realize. Hermione had led him not to Ravenclaw Tower, but out of Hogwarts. They were at the edge of the Quidditch pitch, high towers like great nostalgic colorful ghosts. The closest was, as it happened, the looming expanse of green, which had once been his. "Hermione, what are we doing out here?"

"I know you've had a rough time of it," Hermione said briskly, "But I hope you know we've all been pretty down without you. And I didn't think it right, to not take you to see him as soon as he could." She looked up at the sky. Draco could make out a circling figure, hovering near the brass hoops. His heart began to beat faster, before she cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled, "RON!"

It wasn't clear what that did to Draco's heart then, how much it was disappointment or relief. "It will be good to see Ron, but- Hermione, does he know?"

"DRACO?" Ron bellowed, voice distant but enthusiasm unmistakable. He began a swift dive towards them.

"Luna and I thought it better not to tell anyone else- just Rat Thieves- we felt awful, lying to our boyfriends, but we couldn't put that on them, to keep it from Harry- and if Harry's to know, that should be your choice-"

"How did you find out about the Perianders?" he asked in the last moment before Ron arrived.

"Oh, that was easy, Luna and I broke into his old house- Ron!" she exclaimed, and leaned up to kiss him as he landed.

Ron kissed his girlfriend back, with a naturalness even in midair that spoke to no mishaps there in Draco's absence. Then he was on his own feet, broom tossed away, and Draco got yet another hug like he was a miracle returned from the dead. Ron clasped him unabashedly, so strong it almost hurt. "Frankenstein, it is so good to see your stupid face," Ron exhaled. He tugged on his unruly long hair so much Draco shrieked, and Hermione began to giggle.

"I'm sorry," Draco tried to say, weighted with guilt, "I keep missing your birthday," and Ron just cackled and shook him.

"Who gives a rat's arse? You're here, you're here! It was like you'd died or something! Cor, half the time I suspected you had, and Luna was just lying about seeing you to soften the blow-"

"Ronald," Hermione said sharply, but Draco was laughing.

"Sorry, mate, but you just ditched Harry on Valentine's Day and disappeared!" Ron stepped back from Draco, taking Hermione's hand with casual, unthinking confidence. It made Draco feel more steady, just to see them like this, unequivocally a pair. Even if Hermione had to keep things from Ron, for Draco's sake. "I mean, I can't fault your sense of dramatics, but it was bloody awful on the rest of us, you know? Sorry, I know you didn't mean it, but... I'm not mad, I'm just so relieved. Merlin's beard, you're here!"

"He's here," a different voice said more softly.

"Harry!" Hermione cried. "What are you doing here?"

There he was, the prophesied savior of the wizarding world, the Chosen One, the Boy Who Lived, the famous and powerful Harry Potter. There he was, Draco's nominal boyfriend, Gryffindor Quidditch captain, Hogwarts' youngest ever Seeker, in scarlet Gryffindor Quidditch robes that made him unmistakable in the night, even without the glow off his glasses, and the flush of moonlight across the most perfect face Draco would ever see. The most perfect green eyes.

There he was, Draco's wild, adorable little deranged stalker, clumsy nervous Harry, Harry who loved him, Harry who always wanted to protect him, Harry who never knew the right thing to say or do around him, Harry who made him miserable and made him happy- Harry who he had gone a full month without seeing, for the first time in two and a half years. Harry who he should cast away from him. Harry who he could never cast away.

"Harry," Draco breathed. Harry took a step closer, face uncertain. Either he still didn't have a clue what to do about Draco, or he didn't fully believe Draco was actually here.

"Harry, I thought you weren't allowed to come to the extra flying sessions," Hermione said awkwardly, with an apologetic look to Draco that Harry had to notice.

"That's, er, my fault, sorry, guess I didn't mention it," Ron said sheepishly. "I just invited him tonight, cause he seemed so glum- had no idea Draco would be back all of a sudden, so, er..."

"Ron," Harry said, "Have you had a chance to talk to Draco?"

His eyes weren't leaving Draco for a second. Just the sound of his voice tied Draco's stomach in knots. It was like after so long apart, turning over the idea in his head everyday of breaking it off, it was back to when they were first getting involved, the same suspicions of his own insufficiency. But Harry's gaze held him just as spellbound. Maybe more, now that he seemed was Draco was bound to and yet refused to lose. I should let him go. He should be at Ginny's flying session tomorrow instead, get rid of Millie. It should be him and that brave beautiful stainless girl, not me he looks at with eyes like I'm the entire world. But it's me still, it is, he's looking at me and I can't let those eyes go-

"Yeah, mate." Ron exchanged a glance with Hermione. "So, er, me and 'Mione, we'll just, er, see Draco tomorrow, right? Bye!" He took his broomstick and made a hasty retreat towards the broomshed, dragging Hermione with him.

Draco's insides clenched, some treacherous excitement already at Harry's touch, grabbing his hand the same way and leading him in the opposite direction. They ended up in the stands, in that place where Harry had used to hide to watch him. By the time Harry settled an unresisting Draco there, Ron and Hermione were fully gone.

"God, I missed you. I missed you so much." Harry hugged him like the others had, like his life depended on it. The difference was that Harry didn't let go.

Draco had expected possessiveness and remonstration, rebuke at not answering his letters, however 'sick'. But where Harry placed the blame became immediately clear, mouth forming words against Draco's neck, where his face had nosed aside Draco's hair. "It's my fault, isn't it? Whatever I did, I'm sorry. You were upset at the graveyard, you thought your godfather was going to die, and you got angry at me- was I too slow to understand? Did it not seem I was taking it seriously? Or did you think I would be fine with that happening? I wouldn't, Draco, anything that would hurt you I would fight so hard to stop- please just tell me what I did wrong-"

"Nothing." Draco pulled his face back. Harry made a childish protesting noise against his throat, and Draco pressed a hard kiss to his lips, any resolution evaporating with the unquestionable rightness of this- because he should never have let them be tied together, but they were. There was no untying this knot except in the Gordian sense, Alexander's way. There was no taking back how much kissing Harry felt like belonging.

"You did nothing wrong, dragonslayer, I was just wrong, I was- I was sick." In a sense, it was true, he had been ill. If not in body.

"Draco." Harry nuzzled against his hair, breath steaming hot in the freezing night. He groaned just at the feeling of Draco's gloved hands circling his cold neck, knotting at the collar of his red robes for that bit more security that Harry wasn't going to let go. "You still should have written to me, Draco. Please, if this happens again, at least write. Please don't shut me out again, it would kill me- I think it already did-"

"Never," Draco vowed, "Never," and kissed Harry until he could hardly breathe or feel his fingers or toes from the cold. Harry was the warmth that secured him, the warmth that drove away the encroaching numbness with prickling uneasy life. "I missed you more, I did, I swear, I missed you more..."

"I love you," Harry said, in that way that meant he wanted to be damn sure Draco heard and understood. "I love you more than anything in the world. And that is never going to change. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Draco gasped, pressing a series of hard desperate kisses to Harry's mouth between words. "Yes, I do, I love you too..."

Then an icy feeling down his spine made him wrench away, turning abruptly back towards the pitch.

"What?" Harry's fingers had been toying adoringly at the feathery white fur of Draco's collar, and the hair that fell against it, almost the same color and feel. Now they stopped. "What's wrong?"

"I just- I thought I felt someone watching us."

Harry frowned and pulled out the Marauder's Map, and Draco couldn't help the gasp that escaped. Heading away from the Quidditch pitch, at a rapid pace, was a dot marked Theodore Nott.

Harry drew his wand. "No," Draco said instinctively, grasping his wrist, "No, don't, we're at- the Quidditch stands, he might have just wanted to come practice, and then he saw us and left. He doesn't follow me anymore, right, that's over..."

"Because you've been locked away." Harry's strong shoulders were tensing up, ready for battle, to chase Theo back to Hogwarts and cut him open if necessary-

"He doesn't, or you'd have seen. Harry, the Kingsnakes from last year, the ones who aren't on the team anymore, they do that, they come practice extra at night, so they won't be seen... it's Slytherin in-house politics, I know it, so please, just..."

"What?" Draco could see Harry starting to listen. "What do you mean? Who does that?"

"Everyone," Draco lied. "All of them. So let it go. If you want to go back to the castle, go back with me. It is getting cold." Draco gave him a look through his eyelashes, though he didn't know how much Harry could see the intent in it in the night. "I'll do whatever you want, to make you forgive me, for leaving you alone so long. As long as you take me back where it's warm."

"Dragon," Harry whispered back, "How could I ever say no to you?"

On the walk back, though, hand in hand, Harry asked the question Draco had been dreading. "What did it? What did you do to make the magical exhaustion that bad? It couldn't have just been Apparition to Xaphan, even if it's far. You've been Apparating since what, third year-"

Draco stopped on the path. It suddenly felt an unmarked one, a crossroads that only he and not Harry could see.

"Harry. I'm keeping secrets from you, of course. I always have and I always will. You know that, don't you? I'm always going to have to keep secrets from you. And if you want to be with me, you have to accept that. You can work with Dumbledore, and I'll do my work on my own, that you and the headmaster can't know. That's how it will have to be, I'm sorry."

Harry stared at him long enough that they started to get cold again. He was so adorable when he shivered. Draco pressed a kiss to Harry's flushed icy cheek, and then the other.

Harry exhaled. "Okay, Draco. I trust you. You can keep your secrets."

"This feels like the best day of my life! The Rat Thieves, together after a hiatus, back and better than ever! On another mission to uncover a mystery only they can-"

"Luna, we probably won't find anything," Hermione cautioned, but Luna was irrepressible, even once Draco Side-Alonged them both to the deserted forest from the pictures.

"Here we are! It's Rat Thief in Chief, our founding member, Draco Lupin Black, nee Malfoy-"

"Luna, it's not like I'm not a Malfoy anymore because I got married-"

"Lower your voice, just because it's his mother's house doesn't mean it's any less dangerous than last time-"

"Hermione Jean Granger, Rat Thief Second in Command, the brave undaunted Gryffindor, with her magnificent lion's mane of hair-"

"Oh my God," Hermione groaned, covering her face in embarrassment.

"And Luna Lovegood, Rat Thief Strategist in Chief, back with the brilliant plan to follow the will... I'm like Agatha Christie..."

"Luna, she wrote mysteries, she didn't solve them..."

Draco had to grin to himself, stopping so Luna could finish her effusions before they neared the house. They had already been planning this trip after Hermione and Luna had visited Pammaque Periander's old house, having found some useful records but not the answers they really wanted. It made sense to investigate here as well, again uninvited. Yes, looking over the papers had shown the woman recently dead. But even if the family curse, leaving this elderly female Periander untouched, hadn't been interesting enough... there was, as Strategist Luna bragged, the question of what Periander had left her. And if any of that held secrets like the dagger.

It was a Muggle area, not too far from Newcastle. That meant they were traipsing through knee-deep snow, and dislodging more if they even stepped near the glimmering, drooping white trees that lined the path. Her address from the Ministry registry, though, was so cut-off from the nearby small town, she must have had little fear of breaking the Statute of Secrecy.

They were another ten minutes, following a path Hermione began to doubt led anywhere, before they caught their first glimpse of the cottage. With sheets of ice covering its roof and all its age, it was as lovely from a distance as if it had just been built, for a princess in exile.

Once they neared, Hermione had a different fairytale in mind. "Hansel and Gretel," she said grimly. "That's what this feels like. Don't eat anything."

Luna and Draco exchanged blank looks. "Does that mean I'm not allowed to catch snowflakes on my tongue?" Luna asked dubiously. It had begun to snow lightly, and she had indeed been engaging in such a sin for minutes on end.

Draco couldn't resist sticking out his own tongue to lick one out of the air. Then he cast guilty warming charms on them all. "Well, we can only get poisoned and die once."

"You wizarding children never got told that fairytale either? It's German!" Hermione hissed, cold-reddened cheeks going redder still. "Just- never mind! Forget I said anything!"

They all fell silent, once the cottage loomed fully into view. It was indeed a ramshackle kind of construction from closer up, even with a blanket of white camouflage, but more uniform and ancient in style than, say, the Burrow. It had what looked like miniature turrets at each sides. Draco was caught up admiring them, before Hermione fell silent before the door, footsteps halting in front of the snow-buried steps. She put a finger to her lips and pointed up.

Draco didn't understand at first- he really had been out of action too long- until Luna nudged him, and whispered in his ear, "Smoke! There's a chimney letting out smoke!"

"It could be a curse against intruders," Draco whispered.

"Or," Hermione whispered back, "It's just that someone's inside." She used her wand to melt the snow beside her feet, and found one of the large uneven gray stones that lined the buried path. Draco smiled at her, taking a step back with Luna, and she carefully levitated the stone, wordless, before floating it to the front door. Against the icicle-laden bronze, she twice let it hit.

Knock, knock.

They all kept their wands raised and waited. Draco could swear he heard footsteps inside the house, long before he did.

And then the door opened, not with a face, but a wand. Red light flashed out, a wordless Stunner.

Draco wasn't sure if he cast wordlessly too, or it was the talon wand itself, throwing up ashield just before the Stunner hit. He cried out in shock, spell striking his shield hard enough to make him stagger back. Luna seized his arm, light eyes huge and fearful.

But Hermione was already staring back at the man in the doorway, vampirically pale in his ragged old shapeless gray robes. His dark hair, hanging limply about his frame, was getting patterned in white, as the snow fell down faster on all of them. Hermione had never met him, but she might have recognized him, if just from description. Let alone the faded resemblance to Lamia.

Eyes met Draco's. They were piercing violet.

Then Pammaque Periander turned and fled inside his mother's house.

: Two Gardens

Notes:

Chapter Text

Draco tried to dart right into the house after Periander, but Hermione caught him by the elbow. He thought she would tell him to be careful and not get himself hurt, but her concerns were more pragmatic. "We're here for evidence! There's no point if we destroy it trying to catch him! Don't set anything on fire!"

"He's going to get away," Luna gasped, and Hermione looked at them grimly.

"Luna, stay out front. Draco, go around the back. I'm going inside." When Draco opened his mouth to protest, she was fierce in her conviction. "You've been training us for something like this. I've learned dark magic for something like this! So trust me! And make sure he doesn't escape!"

Draco ran around the back of the cottage, worried his protectiveness might have already cost them a chance to catch the never-dead. He was more fearful with the deep snow he had to race through, the crunching icy pull of it dragging back on every step, and the presence in the backyard of, of all things, a sculpture garden. The eerie air of snow-masked decay to the place was laid fully bare in the buried gardens and barren trees, the statues of Greek gods and goddesses without arms or heads.

He looked down frantically for footprints that were not his own, glad Hermione had shown the sense of making him and Luna dress for heavy snow, and saw the white expanse seemed untouched but for him. He was glad Periander hadn't escaped, but fearful for the two names on his list he had willingly parted from- especially if Periander doubled back and tried to escape back out through the front door, against Luna...

He didn't have to worry long. With reflexes dulled by a month in bed, and going on a year without Quidditch, he only just managed to evade a flash of some wordless curse, likely worse than Stupefy this time. The statue might have been Aphrodite or Athena, for all the distinction that remained in the ivy-throttled stone he ducked behind, art wrecked completely by the explosion of shattered stone outwards. Draco fell just from the impact of stone against his front. Periander was relentless, hissing out Crucio and leaving a trail of dead flowers visible, with the snow the spell hit instead and burned away.

Periander hadn't seemed the Crucio kind, not that Draco had known him well before he 'died'. It seemed Draco's trick with the Sordespiro ritual had not been popular with the undead crowd.

Draco almost cast Lacarnum inflamari before he remembered Hermione's order about not burning anything important. Surely Periander himself qualified, especially if he had anything on his person- Draco couldn't keep hesitating, though. It was lucky he was younger and faster than Periander, as he took refuge behind a massive sphinx, and that met a similarly dire fate as the goddess. "Diffindo!" Draco shouted, severing the feet of what had to be Vulcan with his blacksmith's forge, and a headless trunk that could have been Demeter or Hera, or Zeus himself on a shapelier day. "Oppugno!"

Periander stumbled back as the statues began to come to life against him. It was like in the Fountain of Magical Brethren, except Draco felt more compunction destroying these sculptures, ruined as they were. Nor did he have the searing panicked fear of death he had against Bellatrix Lestrange, knowing Luna and Hermione would soon hear, and then it would be three against one- or at least he thought...

"Confringo!" screamed Periander, and the power blew the enchanted statues to bits. "CONFRINGO!" he shrieked again, and Draco had to throw up a hasty Protego and then Protego Horribilis. Periander willfully prolonged the spell. It strained mightily against Draco's shield, showing obvious familiarity with dueling.

"Aruspices mitte!" Periander yelled after, a sharp scythe instead of radiating pressure. It seemed that familiarity extended predictably to dark magic as well. And Periander didn't seem to have any more compunctions about ending Draco's existence than his mother's garden statues.

Draco cast Everte statum. It sent Periander crashing into the snow-filled remains of what must have once been a fountain. Indeed, there was ice enough frozen under the snow, making his fall harsher than expected. That attested that, up to recently, there had been running water. There were browned autumn leaves frozen in ice that shattered, as Periander evaded Draco's attempt to catch him with Incarcerous. Then the branches that had dropped those leaves fell too. Periander aimed at the sphinx and shot his next curse too high. Unless he meant to bring down branches on Draco, or even the tree itself.

"Serpensmorta!" Draco yelled, not thinking to cast wordlessly, but the curse still seemed to take Periander by surprise. Nor was he readied like Bellatrix had been to cast the counter-curse, even as he ended up in another fountain. Draco was ready to take one of his aunt's tricks and try to secure the ice around him as another bind, but he didn't have to. Periander was struggling and trying to spell the snakes off him before one constricted too much around his wand arm to raise it. Draco sent out a Stunner, and Periander let himself fall rather than be hit by it, collapsing prone on his back writhing in the melting snow and half-broken ice, while the long sinuous green snakes found their way to his throat.

Hermione cast her spell wordlessly, but Draco knew it was her, by the precise way the snakes around Periander stopped tightening, even as Periander kept moving. It took another Petrificus totalus, freezing Periander as well, to make apparent just how exacting she had become: the snakes had been her initial target, not the wizard. They both were laid prone and helpless now in their tableau of dying vines and twice-ruined stone in winter, the serpents binding Periander's limbs and extremities like a set of ropes. Draco was pleased with that state of affairs, but Hermione was not.

"They'll still choke him! Draco!"

Draco raised his wand to vanish the snakes, but Luna had been hiding behind Hermione, chin poking over the Gryffindor's shoulder. Now she darted forward and began to happily untangle the conjured snakes by hand.

"Don't make them disappear, they're such lovely snakes," Luna pleaded. At least she had the virtue of consistency. Draco smiled at her as he pocketed Periander's wand for himself, trying his best to tell Dantanian that he had truly no intent of ever using this one, no melting necessary.

"They'd be dangerous to any home-owners," Hermione began disapprovingly, but Luna shook her head. "And we don't know anything about their species or natural climate-"

"It's only forest around for kilometers and kilometers," Luna argued, and carefully carried each of the five once-vicious predators over the very edge of the property. For a moment, the dead man they had captured with them was forgotten, as Luna's bright red mittens stood out in the midday sun, around green lengths of scales and fearsome banks of snow. Finally, once Luna had them all where she wanted, Hermione undid her enchantment with a sigh, and they slithered away.

"Just as long," Draco said grimly, "As you don't let Periander off that easy." He looked around, grateful at the seclusion, which should leave them free to question Periander. That was, if Periander had no associates or accomplices nearby. Hermione had feared that, she admitted, which was why she'd called Luna to join her in the back.

"You seemed to have the duel handled, so we stayed out of the way," Luna said admiringly, as Hermione began to levitate the motionless body of Periander into his mother's cottage. "But Hermione said she would interfere if she thought you might kill him. Oh, I do want to learn that spell with the snakes!"

Draco was left to reflect on the incidental cruelty of that choice of Hermione's, Petrificus Totalus over Stupefy. It would be leaving Periander fully aware and helpless but to wait, as he had to watch Luna give priority to the conjured snakes first. One doubted he would be in superlative spirits once they let him speak again.

Hermione was erring on the side of caution with such, sitting Periander down in the parlor on one of the antique blue leather armchairs before casting a careful Incarcerous. Luna ran over and happily joined her in minute adjustments of the ropes, which proved a teaching moment for her. Hermione could be heard shrilly instructing their youngest Rat Thief that they would have to be especially careful not to cut off circulation given the man was already damp and cold- oh, wizarding children and their lack of medical tutelage- and no, they shouldn't follow the winding marks left by the snakes on Periander for where to bind him...

Draco was left in the sculpture garden, the talon wand almost seeming to purr displeased as he put it back in his pocket. He hadn't let loose any of the dams on its power, nor leaned into any spells, not like he would have thought he'd need to with the likes of the mysterious Periander. If the assessor could defeat or fake death, one would have thought him more accomplished in merely dueling, but it had been three-against-one, technically speaking.

Or maybe there was more to it. Some of the contents of Periander's tattered robes had spilled out once he was felled, standing out in the glare of sunshine on ice as small confusions of shadow. There were two such items. One was, Draco saw with a shiver, was a dagger, one that looked to have seen a fair number of years of use. At least the hilt looked all wrought metal, and no moonstone. The other was a Potion vial, which had shattered over the ice, and ran a murky brownish-yellow into the snow turning it the dull sheen of sludge on London streets. Draco leaned down to smell it, and then carefully scooped back up some of the potion into the vial, without touching it. It was contaminated, but this was not for use, but evidence. Even if he already had a fair idea of what it was.

"Frankenstein, are you ready?" Hermione called anxiously, and Draco came back, carefully handing her the vial.

"Fell out of his pocket," he told her, before deciding the ropes were secure enough, and signaling for her to wake their captive. She obeyed and heard his maddened snarl, but her attention went to the vial. Luna peered over and looked puzzled, but Hermione's keen brown eyes widened in recognition just from the smell, not even having to look. Periander's sharp violet gaze went from indignant to stricken at the sight of his captors' discovery and their understanding, and the guilt that Draco had felt was blissfully gone. He had to resist the urge to strike the man across the face, just because, as he asked his first person.

"Who are you, and what have you done with Pammaque Periander?"

"What?" said Luna, and then her face brightened. "Oh, it's Polyjuice, isn't it?" she said proudly, her excitement hilariously incongruous with the expression on the face of the imposter, a man halfway to the gallows already. "So it's not Periander. He is really dead? But what about his-"

Hermione held up a finger to her mouth, and Luna stopped. It was smart not to give the imposter any more information than necessary. Even though you would think that any fake worth the whistling would at least keep abreast of whether the man's body he was impersonating had been dug up- except he would have been the one to do that himself, wasn't he? Had that been the beginning of this undead farce? Except then-

"I didn't think you could make Polyjuice with a dead man's DNA," Hermione said skeptically, while a no-longer petrified 'Periander' stayed silent as the grave. "Would that mean Periander is still alive somewhere?"

"What if you made the potion and put the hair or whatever in it before they died?" Draco mused. "Hey, anything to add to the discussion?" he sniped, and kicked lightly at the leg of the chair. 'Periander' yelped as if he had just been the victim of an attempt at Sectumsempra, and earned Draco one of Hermione's withering looks.

"None of that, Draco, we're going to have a civil conversation with the man-"

"I brought Veritaserum," Luna said happily, producing from her pocket, "I stole it from my godcousin's stores! Sorry, Striker, but won't it be useful now! And Draco knows Legilimency. Do you hear that?" she enthused proudly to the imposter. "And my cousin's willing to torture for information if necessary! I don't know if you've heard, but he's got a good success rate..."

Periander did not break his silence, but his thawing face seemed to turn rather greener at the suggestion.

"If this is the graverobber," Hermione mused, "How did taking a dead body actually work?"

"There was genetic experimentation on the Perianders," Luna mused, "So maybe there are things possible with them that aren't with other wizards-"

"No, he's the one who'll be giving information," Draco drawled, "Not the other way around. And we don't even have to use magic to find out who he is. We just have to wait until the Polyjuice wears off. Hey, fake dead guy, is there a kettle in this dump? Dueling is thirsty work in the snow, even if your opponent doesn't put up much of a fight. And I rather fancy a cuppa."

Luna took him seriously, leaving him the Veritaserum before running off to investigate the amenities of the establishment. Hermione inspected the Veritaserum, finding it clear as water in its small vial, and looked troubled. Draco wasn't surprised, he found, that whether or not Severus had suspected or detected Luna's theft, he hadn't acted to stop it. He'd been giving Draco and Luna more dangerous potions for a few Christmases now- hard not to think of that with extreme nostalgia, however many parts of his past he could tell himself were just as dead as the Dark Mark that had once lived on his wrist. Not to mention, if he had yielded and answered Luna's questions about the dagger as easily as reported, he might be too guilty these days to deny them much of anything.

"I'd hope we wouldn't need to use Veritaserum," Hermione told the imposter earnestly. "I'm sorry things had to escalate to a duel, but I understand your reserve given your unusual situation. Hopefully now we can have a more constructive dialogue, and eventually let you loose from these precautionary restraints..."

Meanwhile, Draco was prowling about less circumspectly. It took him mere seconds to find a suspiciously secure-looking and non-dusty chest in one of the antique cabinets. He appeased the talon wand- or Dantanian, he tried to settle the nerves that rose in him at the thought it could be Dantanian fucking Noir himself who breezily unlocked the cabinet and then the chest for him. There were several carefully packed layers of Potions vials, dozens and dozens inside.

"More, prepared," Draco announced, bringing the chest for inspection, while Luna brought over the tea. Best not to get the contents of these two mixed up.

"Are you sure it's alright to drink the tea?" Hermione asked, and Luna made petulant whining noises until she turned to 'Periander'. "Would you mind taking a sip of this for us first?"

'Periander' spoke for the first time, in a voice that sounded like the man's, but a pettish vindictiveness in the tone that was audibly beneath him. "You've laced it with your purloined Veritaserum, haven't you, scheming Mudblood."

Draco had already raised his wand before Luna stepped in the way. "It is sweet how you won't let anyone speak ill of your friends," she said logically, "But we won't get much out of questioning a man who's got his tongue locked."

"Fine. Dracosanguis," Draco cast experimentally, and nothing at all seemed to happen. Everyone just elected to ignore his failed spell and carry on.

"We'll be able to administer the Veritaserum to you regardless," Hermione said logically. "A few drops is the most it will take, and we could hold your nose long enough for you to force your mouth open to breathe. Even landing drops on your tongue would involve sufficient absorption and mixture with saliva to induce the chemical reaction in your brain-"

"Put it in the tea, then," groused the imposter. "Anything to stop this bushy-haired creature from babbling any further about her Muggle 'science'." Odd, the intensity with which he seemed to eye Hermione, as if there was some more specific dislike than just for her blood. Hermione gave the other Rat Thieves a long-suffering but amused look. Luna poured four cups of tea, a rather bracing Darjeeling they likely all needed on this brisk afternoon after what one could only really call tantamount to a minor snowball fight. Then Draco added a few drops to one teacup, and the imposter let Hermione pour it into his mouth without protest.

"You're awfully cooperative," Draco observed suspiciously. "Are you an Occlumens?"

"Always left that," the imposter growled hatefully, "To your godfather."

"Draco! Luna!" Hermione pointed to the imposter's wrist, where a tattoo was slowly fading back onto pale unhealthy skin. Draco yanked up the long flared tatter of a sleeve and found that as had both thrilled and scared him, that was indeed the impression of the Dark Mark being formed again. They had themselves caught a Death Eater. "The Polyjuice is wearing off. Who," Hermione began, only for her hand to fly over her mouth when she saw where Draco's eyes had gone next.

"Is that the talon brand?" Luna breathed in shock, and reached down to poke the curved red mark, eternally fresh-looking, over the aged palm.

"That certainly narrows options," Draco said coldly, "Unless Dolores Umbridge has been busy since her sacking from Hogwarts-"

"He's cooperative because the Polyjuice is wearing off now," Hermione said bossily. "We just have to wait a second for-"

"Too long. Cauterizo!" he cast, and the brand came to life.

Their captive screamed bloody murder at once, trying to clutch at his bound hand with the other one. His eyes had begun to go unfocused and his face expressionless under the influence of the Veritaserum, in the slower working of the potion when ingested in diluted form. But the pain inflicted on him brought his features back to life, enough so that guilt did return at the sight of Pammaque Periander in pain, even if the real Periander could be dead.

"Stop being a baby about it," Draco complained. "You have no idea how much that would hurt you, if I was actually trying."

At least those features were changing- and not into anything more delicate and feminine, so the fear he hadn't known he had receded. It wasn't his mother he had just cast the same evil curse against, a curse he now suspected invented, or certainly caused and enjoyed, by the presence in his wand, whether Dantanian or Dementor. The two words weren't exactly totally different. But it wasn't Mother, and Father's brand had been burned off- no, it had appeared on the other hand, but still, it wasn't on the left anymore, and Sirius would have said something before sending curses at his own nephew and friends, and that left-

"See," Draco said calmly, "I'll do something that will actually hurt you." He lifted up the chest, making sure the imposter could see him in the process, and cast his most delicate Finestra. One by one, the ugly brown vials of Polyjuice shattered. The purple eyes, fast-fading to a dull and then drugged black, flashed in panic at the sight, even before Draco had gotten through all the rows, dropped the chest to the floor, and cast Incendio. "See? Doesn't that hurt worse?"

"I won't survive now," the man said, in that monotonous tone that either meant the Veritaserum was working properly, or else he was a far better actor than anything else so far today had evidenced. "I won't survive without that. This is the end for me. You've killed me."

The man was slender like Periander, but with a rather wispy, unkempt white beard, and similarly thinning and unwashed white hair that replaced the previous length and thickness of Periander's long black hair. His voice went from Periander's hyper-intelligent, crisp poshness to something more cringing and small-minded, with a very slight accent not from these shores.

Not that, once his unlovable face snapped finally back into place, he would have been mistakable as anyone but Igor Karkaroff, once headmaster of Durmstrang Institute, turned traitor on the run.

"Huh," Draco said, Vanishing the ashes of the destroyed Polyjuice. "I thought you were dead or something." Hermione and Luna gave him confused looks. "Come on, didn't it say in the paper this summer that he was dead?" Oh, wait, damn, that had been the blue loop. Draco had assumed the Death Eaters would once again catch and kill Karkaroff, and hadn't paid much mind to the subject. Apparently some change Draco had made allowed the man to survive at least a little longer. "You are Karkaroff?"

"Yes," Karkaroff said, close enough in shape and size to Periander that the ropes still held. Luna still leaned forward and wordlessly tightened them, face tense and nearly as pale as their captive's.

"Let's question him, then," Draco said, and waved a hand to the other two. "Hermione?"

Hermione stepped forward. "Professor Karkaroff, we need to know everything we can about Pammaque Periander. We're going to question you about that. I'll try to start at the beginning." It was sweet, to see Karkaroff have no choice but to listen to Hermione talk all she wanted, and answer obediently to her every question. This, the so-called 'ugly Mudblood' Karkaroff had scoffed disgusted at for having roused the interest of Viktor Krum.

"When did you first meet Pammaque Periander, and what was your relationship?" Hermione asked calmly, and Draco was grateful to her for taking this part on. He leaned over Luna's shoulder to watch her making notes, then got out his own parchment and cast a dictation charm, turning his quill to something like Rita Skeeter's for the moment. Although this was one of those ways that wizards liked to ignore that Muggles had it more efficient. If they'd had one, they could have just turned on a Muggle video camera or tape recorder.

"At Hogwarts," Karkaroff answered after a brief, vacantly eerie pause, and a long breath. "I attended Durmstrang, but I spent my sixth-year at Hogwarts doing research. Pammaque was a fifth-year. He was also interested in the Dark Arts. But I became interested in his family curse and its study, and he rebuffed me. He refused to associate with me until I went back to Durmstrang."

"Were you enemies then?" Hermione asked, and seemed to have to bite back another wave of questions. "What was the nature of your relationship?"

Karkaroff actually looked unsure, as if Veritaserum could not prompt honesty fully where the interrogated himself did not know the true answer. "I considered him a friend. I don't know if he reciprocated, or if he thought I was his enemy after we quarreled. But I was never his enemy. We didn't meet again or speak for many years, but I never thought he was my enemy. He never was."

"'Was'?" Draco said sharply.

"Professor Karkaroff," Hermione said with a frown, "Is Pammaque Periander dead? How do you know?"

"He is dead," Karkaroff said expressionlessly. "I watched him die slowly. I watched him die quickly in the end. I saw the light leave his eyes. It wasn't really there after Maledictum died, but it was fully gone that summer. He laid down and died of nothing I could see just like he said his bird had. He said it was because he was tied to Maledictum, and Maledictum had ingested poison." His eyes turned on Draco, and some spite almost shone through the haze of the potion. "He said it had been in an assessment ritual, from a snake you conjured and killed, because your wand was poisoned."

"Now we're getting somewhere," Draco said fiercely, unsympathetic, rubbing his hands together with a smile for the nervous Luna.

"When did you come back into contact with Mr. Periander?" Hermione asked. Karkaroff's eyes flickered, slow from the drug, a voice being pulled through sludge like boots in knee-deep snow.

"January. He sent an owl, asking for me to meet him in the Hogsmeade graveyard, in January of 1995. He said he had information on a Hogwarts student and he needed my help." Karkaroff's gaze had gone more unfocused, the monotone complete. "I knew the Perianders and their livelihood. I knew their magic and their family curse, from when we had been at Hogwarts together. And I had heard of him working with pureblood families. But I never dared to contact Pammaque after we parted. I knew it would be something grave, for him to abandon his pride, even after so many years. He explained what had happened to Maledictum, showed me the grave, wept, and told me how you had cheated him. He said he had done a ritual called-"

"Hurry it up," Draco said, casting a nervous glance over to Luna. Hermione had heard the story of the Sordespiro ritual, but Luna hadn't, and generally the less dark magic stories they told Luna, the better. Even if she looked dreadfully fascinated all of a sudden. "What did he want from you?"

"I was at Hogwarts," Karkaroff recited blankly, "Near you, with your Potter in the Triwizard tournament. He wanted me to keep an eye on you."

"Why?" Hermione said, anxiety infecting her whole voice. "Because he feared Draco would be a threat to the school?"

"No," Karkaroff said flatly. "He feared the wand's threat to the Malfoy boy and his mind. But I hated the boy, so I showed him the talon brand, and that I refused to help with anything that would help Draco Malfoy." An expression almost threatened to show through, different than spite. "It wasn't the first time I let him down. Nor the last. It was nothing new to disappoint Pammaque."

"You cared about him," Luna marveled. "Didn't you?"

Hermione sighed, giving Luna a shut-up look, but Karkaroff answered, "Yes. I cared about Pammaque. I admired him. If he had asked for my help with his own condition, I would have given it. But he asked for help for the Malfoy boy, so I turned him away. I did not see him again at Hogwarts."

"How did you end up here at his mother's cottage, pretending to be him, then?" Hermione asked skeptically.

"When the Dark Lord came back to power," Karkaroff said mechanically, "I was afraid. I knew they would hunt me." He looked at Draco, as if thinking of Draco's family. "I didn't know what to do. I thought of Pammaque, after I had seen him in the graveyard. He was so intelligent, and so good at keeping secrets. I thought they would not trace our connection, because we attended different schools, the one meeting since school had been secret, and we never were what you could call friends. I got his address from the Ministry. I wanted to ask him to help me or hide me. But he was already near death.

"He was obsessed with the talon wand and its secrets. He wanted to know what killed his Maledictum and himself. He wanted to save the Malfoy boy from it, even though he had tricked and betrayed him. It was the last mystery he would solve, he said. The last case he would ever assess, before he joined Maledictum in the family graveyard. He let me hide in his home, and I told him everything I knew about Grindelwald."

Draco didn't realize he had been the one to gasp until three pairs of eyes fastened on him. "What?" he cried out fiercely, stalking to get in Karkaroff's face, as if intimidation was necessary anymore. "What did he tell you about him? About those connections? Why did he want to know about GRINDELWALD?"

"Draco, calm down," Luna said, hugging him from behind.

Hermione stepped between Draco and their captive again. Karkaroff was already trying to answer Draco's string of questions. "He said Grindelwald had made the wand. That he had followed a trail to New Zealand, and then to Ollivander's. He said if anyone knew the truth, it would be Grindelwald. And he said going after Grindelwald did give him the answers he wanted."

"Did he go to Nurmengard?" Draco blurted, and Hermione's shoulders went ramrod-tense. Luna's grip on his waist turned rather tighter.

"I don't know," Karkaroff answered flatly. "I don't think so. I told him I had been to Nurmengard when I was much younger, when he was still allowed guards and visitors. But he wanted to know where Grindelwald's old possessions would be kept, by the German or Austrian governments or Durmstrang. He said there had been a disaster in New Zealand, and that Grindelwald had gone to the scene of it and taken what he needed for the wand, and that he might have taken some other things from Cathedral Reserve as well. I knew where Grindelwald's things were, and told him the vault and how to get in. So he left for a few days and came back saying he had taken everything, and found what he needed to know. The only other evidence would be at Nurmengard itself, and he didn't have the strength to try and go there. He spent all his time at the Pensieve and reading fairytales, until he died."

"At the Pensieve," Hermione echoed. "Did he find a vial of Pensieve memories in Grindelwald's confiscated possessions?"

"Yes. But he wouldn't tell me what it was or let me see it. When he knew he was almost gone, he gave me orders. He had me put that vial in his ritual dagger's secret compartment, and write it in the will to be left to Draco Malfoy. He wanted the boy to have the answers."

"He still didn't let you see the memories, though?"

"No."

"And you obeyed that? Even after his death?"

"Yes."

"So you took care of his will and possessions? Did he leave you anything to do with the mystery? What did he leave you?"

"No," Karkaroff said, flat as a computer-generated voice. "He left me what he said would help me to survive. He made Polyjuice and made doses and doses for me to look like him. They would have lasted years more. And his mother had remarried and given him her old house as his property. He left that back to her in name, but in principle to me. I went there after his death."

"Then why didn't you hide his death?" Hermione marveled. "Why did you allow his body to lay there dead until Professor Snape found it?"

"That was what Pammaque said he wanted." Maybe Periander had thought his rotting body would leave some final clue for Draco.

"And why did you follow along with his will? Even leaving that dagger for Draco. You hate Draco, don't you?"

"Yes, I hate him. But it was what Pammaque said he wanted."

"And why the hell would you ever follow that?" Draco asked, skeptical as could be. It made no sense to pretend to be a dead man but allow his death to be known, even if you did intend to live in a hermitage situation, one Hermione had likened to some legend called Hansel and Gretel. "Why did you care what a dead man had wanted?"

"Because I cared for him," Karkaroff said just as expressionlessly, and went silent.

Citadelle Xaphan was bright and clear-skied and devoid of snow, in a March whose impending spring was far more resoundingly felt this far south. But for secrecy's sake, the Portkey Draco had made let them out not into the sunshine, but the inside of the library tower, past the secret House Black passage. It was still a risk that Severus might be there on a Saturday afternoon, but a part of Draco had gone back to that dangerous mode of thinking that Hermione had so lamented in him last year: the part that did not care for consequences at all, except in a sort of raw gallows humor about the ironies and coincidences in every human being's existence.

If Severus caught him sneaking a fugitive Death Eater into the Order's foremost stronghold against the Death Eaters, well, what had he and Dumbledore expected, when they kept information from Draco? This was still mild compared to the things Draco could have done. The things he probably would do, before this all was over.

He had warned Dumbledore, hadn't he? He'd told him, all the way back in November, that it wouldn't work, keeping Draco in the dark. He'd told him, "You can't control me, and you can't predict me either." He was succeeding, he thought, in being unpredictable, even if suicidally stupid. But unpredictable nonetheless. Even if there had been no deeper reason- even if there hadn't been Harry's fate and his nine names and Dantanian Noir and the Mirror of Ecidyrue shattering- that would have been satisfaction enough.

Hermione and Luna had stayed behind, with Hermione insistent on scouring the house for any books or evidence that could help, and Draco reluctant to leave Hermione alone. He'd left them a Portkey for two hours later that would take them to Hogsmeade, and he was sure if they fell in enough peril, Hermione would be desperate enough to use her Apparition lessons to get them out of there sooner. He was more uncertain about the reaction of Xaphan to his arrival.

Luckily enough, Severus was nowhere to be seen. Except in the Mirror of Erised. Karkaroff recoiled back in shock, enough of the Veritaserum gone out of his bound disarmed form for him to react indignantly. "Severus? You treacherous Malfoy scum! You told me you were taking me to a place of safety-"

"Okay," Draco sighed, looking between the two hopeless men he had now taken on as his charges. "Number one, Gilderoy, what are you doing? I told you not to spend time staring into that." Gilderoy squawked and quickly recovered the Mirror of Erised, before nervously fluffing at his long hair. "Number two, Karkaroff- no, I think I'll call you Igor- Igor, that was just an image. Not that Severus is as dangerous to you as my other family, and their friends. I told you, Citadelle Xaphan is the safest place on the planet for someone fleeing Death Eaters. You'll never find anything like these wards." Draco decided not to mention the successful attack on Sirius and Remus's wedding. It had, admittedly, shown them places where their security could improve. "The question is not whether you're safe here. The question is how long I will allow you to be."

"Ah," Gilderoy said nervously, eyeing Karkaroff with a valiant attempt at optimism. "What a lovely surprise, Draco. I do love it when you pop in unexpectedly. And you've brought me a guest!"

"Do you have any others?" Draco asked, and Gilderoy shook his head.

"They were all by," Gilderoy said, cautious enough not to say the names, "But they've gone."

"That- glass, or mirror, whatever it was," Karkaroff prodded, the Veritaserum definitely gone now from how he pulled at the ropes and squiggled and snarled. "Some communication device? Could Snape have seen me? Perhaps you believe him loyal to your side, but I wouldn't trust that man's loyalty with a loaf of bread, let alone my own life-"

Gilderoy drew himself up tall and proud, in what Draco was embarrassed to recognize was a decent impression of himself. "Severus Snape," Gilderoy said icily, "Is a man whose loyalty is unimpeachable. To speak ill of him in these walls is to request your own speedy dismissal from them."

Karkaroff's gaze focused on Gilderoy. "Huh. You look familiar." He squinted at Gilderoy doubtfully, which made Draco wonder how many newspapers he'd seen since Periander's death. "Aren't you that book writer? The adventurer? The fraud?

"My name is Gilderoy Lockhart, yes," Gilderoy said, chin tilted haughtily in what, yes, was the spitting image of Draco, "And I have since moved beyond the crimes associated with my name, and reside here in service, in service to my atonement. Pray tell, what of your crimes, Headmaster Karkaroff? Were you not a Death Eater, who once used the Imperius to make half-blood children beat their own mother? How have you atoned for that?"

"How... how could you know..." The blood all went right back out of Karkaroff's face. Obviously from your old Death Eater pal Severus, you imbecile, which you could infer from the fact that you betrayed Severus so he wouldn't be too fond of you. And the man before you is one who just defended Severus like he once would have an autographed photo of himself. Nice to know you're this slow on the uptake.

"I know many things," Gilderoy intoned mysteriously, and tossed his hair and posed.

"Gilderoy," Draco said with his best ingratiating smile, "Do you remember when you told me you would keep my secrets? Whatever they were? That your loyalties were unequivocally to me?"

"Of course. You don't need to remind me."

The face Karkaroff made showed exactly what he thought of anyone who would swear unconditional loyalty to Draco.

"So," Draco said intently, "This here is a fugitive, Gilderoy. Both the Death Eaters and the Order of the Phoenix would want this man dead or alive. But you wouldn't be up on the politics surrounding him- you wouldn't have thought the need, as the man himself is clearly insignificant- oh, shut it, make all the noises you want now, I dueled you and didn't even break a sweat, Headmaster of Durmstrang my arse-"

"You dueled?" Gilderoy gasped. "Oh, no, Draco, are you alright?" Gilderoy looked more serious for a moment, then seemed to glean the state of affairs had turned out quite well for his side, and went cheery again. "Ah, shall I erase his memories of ever seeing you, then?" he said lightly, and a bound Karkaroff tried abruptly to make a run for it. Draco laughed and lazily waved his wand, sending some of the ropes around Karkaroff's arms and waist coiling to attach him to the nearest musty old bookshelf. "It wouldn't be a bother," Gilderoy said earnestly, looking excited at the thought of an opportunity to be useful again. "No, not a bother at all-"

"Much as I indeed would enjoy witnessing you wipe him clean as a slate," Draco laughed, "There are far too many important things in his head. Things I'm going to want him to remember."

"Very well, then," Gilderoy said, undaunted. "Shall we find a cell for him somewhere or other? Xaphan's full of them, the question's just where none of the Order would ever see him- I suppose I could take the paintings out of that room-"

Draco did not even want to look at Dantanian's paintings. Nor would that be safe from Severus. "No, Gilderoy, that would take quite a great deal of effort on our part," he drawled, making sure Karkaroff was catching every insinuation. "And I only go to effort on behalf of my friends, don't I?"

Draco had, in fact, been Gilderoy's benefactor this past year, at a time when their most significant interaction to date had been Vanishing Draco's bones. But Gilderoy nodded all the same, quite enthusiastically. "Oh, yes, Draco has many friends. He can't go out of his way for just anyone. You've got to be special," he said, and preened again. He looked like he wished he had his blue fur on, to fluff and look even more special.

"Then let me go," Karkaroff growled. "I gave you the information you wanted." He said it as if it had been some gracious concession, rather than the fruit of Veritaserum. Seemed that all that time pretending to be his dead friend had somehow failed to dent, if not Karkaroff's heart, at least his ego. "Take me out of here and leave me be. I can take care of myself."

"Can you?" Draco asked nonchalantly. He took Karkaroff's wand from his pocket and twirled it in the air. "Now that you don't have any Polyjuice left?" That was a happy coincidence. "And there's been a new trail to you, left by two of the Dark Lord's three most hated wizards on the planet?"

"Two?" Karkaroff frowned, clearly not up to date either. Well, if Karkaroff didn't know Luna was important, Draco wasn't about to tell him.

"So if you want to go it alone," Draco drawled, "Without a wand... see, I've taken rather a liking to this one... you can, Igor. But I don't know how realistic it is, to imagine you'd survive longer than a few weeks. Should we place bets, Gilderoy, on how long it would take Fenrir Greyback to track him now? Or is that too obvious?"

"Maybe," Gilderoy said with that unimpeachable cheerfulness, catching Draco's drift, "It should be on how many times that Lestrange woman tortures you. Although I don't know how we could know about that..."

"Severus is a spy, he could ask her," Draco said placidly, then raised a hand facetiously to his mouth as if he'd let it slip by accident. "Oh, no, wait, now that you know that, Igor, I definitely can't let you fall in the hands of the Death Eaters like that. I'd have to have Gilderoy Obliviate our entire meeting away from you. You'd be on the run disarmed, undisguised, and hunted with new verve again, not even knowing why..."

"Please!" Karkaroff exclaimed suddenly, worn down to the point where his ego yielded. "Please, Draco, let me stay here. Let me stay at Citadelle Xaphan, where I'll be safe from- from your aunt..."

"You know you'd be luckier," Draco said expressionlessly, "If the Dark Lord has his way with you and kills you first, than if you're first in the hands of my charming and hospitable Aunt Bella."

Karkaroff shuddered, but did not contradict him. "Please. Please, Malfoy-"

"Black," Gilderoy said, and Karkaroff glared at him, seeming to have taken an instant dislike to Gilderoy. Predictably.

"What?"

"His name's been changed. It's Draco Lupin Black now," Gilderoy said proudly.

"Fine!" Karkaroff hissed savagely. "Please, Black, let me stay here-"

"No," Draco said flatly. "Absolutely not. If you want a place here, you have to earn it."

"How?" Karkaroff asked eagerly. For a moment, he looked almost happy, like he thought he'd inadvertently hit the jackpot. With Periander gone, he might look to Draco as another potential protector. That was the nature of so many Death Eaters. Always looking for someone more powerful to hide behind like a coward, so they could deny they weren't powerful and deny they were cowards.

"Don't you wish you knew," Draco said in a superior tone, throwing Karkaroff's wand in the air and catching it. "That's up to me. It's all up to me. I make the rules now. Do you remember when we first met?" In the red line. "Do you remember when I was sleeping, and you were feeling at the wounds on my back? Not the best first impression-"

"You touched a sleeping child in his bed?" Gilderoy gasped, appalled.

"I was trying to see if his wounds were real, and how bad they were, nothing more," Karkaroff snapped. "Because if his father had truly beaten him, that would mean the rumors about him at the Quidditch World Cup were true. And I feared him as a potential Triwizard competitor, age rules or no. I have no interest beyond that in children."

"I might actually believe him, you know," Draco said, trying to quickly distract Gilderoy from all the potential pieces of information contained in that denial. "His tastes seem to have ran rather to the older male- the long-haired slender light-eyed sort, Ravenclaw to boot, so really, Gilderoy, I think not me but you would have something to fear on that account-"

"I would sooner couple with a porpoise!" Karkaroff exclaimed in his most thorough outrage of the day.

"Anyway," Draco stressed, "I have no liking or ties to you, Igor, so you don't get to stay here. But I won't cast you to the wolves either. I'll find somewhere else to hide you from everyone, until you have the chance to prove yourself to me."

"Where?" Karkaroff demanded anxiously, and yeah, that was the one part of this Draco hadn't really thought through as much.

"Somewhere no one would find you," Draco said loftily, "And no one would think to look for you." Absurdly, what came to mind was Dantanian's hoard, hollowed into a cliff's edge, where he'd left Lamia the moonstones and, presumably, the Mirror of Erised. Although if she had moved to Malfoy Manor with Dorian, it could be the other way around. He didn't know if he could Apparate or make a Portkey, though, to somewhere of unknown place- a Pensieve memory from a century ago...

"You do have a place," Karkaroff prompted, and Gilderoy made a small, muted sound. When Draco looked his way, the optimistic bustle and sunshine had gone from him as if it had never been at all.

"We do. If there's no others. We have to get him out of here, don't we, before Severus comes to check in. He always does, tomorrow morning. So we don't have time to scout, or try and set something up, or-" He turned to Draco with a pleading in his gaze. For what, Draco could not say. "He- he is important to you? What you need? You truly need him safe?" It was like he was begging Draco to just discard Karkaroff, sooner than offer up this place.

"I do," Draco said honestly, and Gilderoy took a deep breath.

"Very well," he said briskly. "I can Side-Along you both there. Just- not so far. Draco can make Portkeys," he told an outraged-looking Karkaroff. "If you don't mind. I'd just need you to make one to take us as far as- as Barcelona."

It was like stepping out of a mirage of an oasis, into the desiccated reality of a true desert, the difference in one instant. They were on the mountain of Tibidado, looking down at the lights of Barcelona. The sea beyond the city bound it on one side, and the mountains the other. They had arrived near a landmark Gilderoy had described to Draco in detail, a wizarding restaurant that sold a specialty of that mountain part of the famous city, the calçots just starting to come into season in this far warmer part of the world. They'd broken into the back, leaving handfuls of Galleons, and watched Karkaroff seize the hanging, huge burned onions, and devour them like they would be his last meal. It was hard not to think it indeed might be, after they had all eaten their illegal fill, and Gilderoy seized both their hands, and took them out of the mirage and into the desert.

From the pictures in the papers, Draco had expected it to be smaller, maybe around the dimensions of Malfoy Manor. It had certainly looked smaller in height than the likes of Hogwarts, with its collapsed towers of mountain stone, the eroded tan and charcoal color making it blend into the jagged peak right above it. But it sprawled out as far as the eye could see, despite the damage of centuries and then much more recently. Much of the castle seemed to have been built and hollowed into the side of the mountain, the original stone directly carved into rooms and floors and small towers.

Newly-felled towers that must have been taller lay in great shadowed stacks of stone under the rising moonlight. That must be what gave the illusion that the ruins went on forever. You could only make out hints, between these great leaning piles, of the great altitude and the steep view down, the piercing blue of surrounding lakes, or even the fading purple-dusk sky, filling each time you looked it with more unsettlingly clear stars.

"What is this place?" Karkaroff finally breathed, while Draco and Gilderoy stayed silent. Draco had thought of this, when Gilderoy said Barcelona, but he hadn't been sure Gilderoy could really bring himself to do it. From Gilderoy's shaking hands as he put his wand away, it didn't seem like he'd been any surer in himself either.

"I'll test," Gilderoy said simply, "To see if the wards are still intact. The question is if the gargoyles still obey me." He lifted his wand, called out a fast incomprehensible stream of what could have been Catalan or Korean, and got no response. So he walked further away from them, on hard unpaved stone covered in pebbles, bones, and ashes.

"What is this?" Karkaroff demanded again.

"The Pic de L'Infern," Draco answered automatically, remembering the article. "It's in the Pyrenees. The Spanish Pyrenees," he added, at the bound and tired Karkaroff's face of growing despair. He seemed unwilling to ask any of the obvious questions, beginning with, Why in the name of Merlin have you taken me of all the random places in this world to Spain?

"What is this castle?" Karkaroff just asked, twitching, as they watched Gilderoy's slight form retreating further.

"Castell de L'Infern, of course," Draco said impatiently, "The castle at L'Infern, it isn't advanced Arithmancy, listen, I'll be right back. But I just have to make sure Gilderoy-"

When he waved his wand and bound Karkaroff's ropes to the most intact nearby pillar he could find, Karkaroff didn't protest that. He just called after Draco, "L'Infern?" as his last question.

Maybe he'd already guessed by the near-cognate, but his face still went satisfyingly slack and open-mouthed, when Draco turned to call back, "Hell, obviously!" Then he ran after Gilderoy.

If this was a desert, then he found Gilderoy in what must qualify after all as an oasis. It was Biblical too, but in a more Edenic sense: an enchanted garden, blooming in the freezing wind that haunted the skies here, almost 3000 meters above the sea. There was even a warmth coming from the ground, of a kind, even if it was patently insufficient. Gilderoy had brought his blue fur, but he still shivered as the wind whipped at the fruit and palm trees, mango and orange and lemon, with vegetables and herbs in great patches in a spiral. Everything was a circle, a path of dazzlingly emerald grass between each part of the impossible little garden, where the wind tossed the branches above them but not one seemed to have ever fallen. There were enough different plants to live off, legumes of every variety and even bizarre luxuries that did not belong in this climate like coffee beans and cacao, surrounding a thick and impregnable-looking grove of hazelnut trees.

"Seguinus," Gilderoy said, from where he stood under those trees, with two dozen faceless, featureless gargoyle shapes flanking around the spiral garden like guardians, "Seguinus, he loved hazelnuts. We had to have cacao here, so he could have gianduja. Blood and gianduja."

"I take it you found your gargoyles," Draco said shakily, but didn't manage to make Gilderoy smile.

"They're so worn," Gilderoy sighed, "And so much fewer, but they still respond..."

"Too bad we can't import some to the Citadelle," Draco joked, "Give the Severus gargoyle some competition," and then gave up on joking entirely. "Gilderoy, I'm so, so sorry you had to come here-"

"The wards are intact," Gilderoy said, closing his eyes. He was not trembling at all anymore, nor was there any particular grief or fear in his voice, but desolation somehow resonated from him all about the garden and his gargoyle servants. "They've brought them back up for me. With Seguinus and all the rest dead, they've recognized me as the castle's owner? Can you believe that? I'm the lord of a castle! If you'd told me that when I was fifteen, I'd have fainted of happiness. Lord Lockhart. Lord of L'Infern."

When Draco opened his mouth again, guilt threatening his chest so much it felt it could clog and stop it, Gilderoy raised a hand. "The wards won't let anyone but me in or out of the castle. I don't know how the Bruixots de Sang breached it before, but anything short of that won't make a dent. Oh, and you can go in and out as you like. I'm like, your, er, vassal lord! Right. So yes, this will keep Karkaroff in. And the garden... the plants will all regrow everything in a week, however much you take from them. If it's tended properly. I'll leave Karkaroff instructions. He won't starve. It was a great problem, you know, food for humans... the laws of transfiguration don't allow its conjuring, and then with the secrecy, and how high it is... letting anyone in or out to bring it, the garden was..."

"Was that one of your duties?" Draco asked tentatively. "When you lived here?" He didn't even want to think of listing any of Gilderoy's other 'duties' here.

"Yes," Gilderoy said with a strange look, "But it's gotten on fine without me, you see. In a way, it's disappointing. I wasn't- necessary here either."

"Gilderoy," Draco said intently, grabbing his shoulder, "You told the Bruixots where this place was. And they took those towers down. You brought down those towers."

"Yes," Gilderoy said, "I did," and tried to hide his face. Draco stepped forward and embraced him, and Gilderoy let out a shuddering sob.

"I just remembered Seguinus," Gilderoy gasped. "Under the hazelnut trees. So many times. So much. So many times, under those trees."

He cried for some time. But before the tears had left his face or voice, he recovered himself enough to ask, "Why is it you need Karkaroff so much?"

In other words, was this worth it, going back?

Draco owed him the truth. "I trust you, Gilderoy. I'll tell you. But you can't tell a soul. You really can't."

"I won't."

"He," Draco said with a smile, "Is my golden ticket, to..." He stopped when Gilderoy stopped crying fully, out of comical incomprehension. "No, that's a Muggle movie. Okay, hear me out. There's this fantastic chocolate factory, by a famous chocolatier, and you can win a golden ticket to go inside, and see its secrets. And a child gets one, a golden ticket, and goes inside. That's Karkaroff. He's my golden ticket."

"Not to a chocolate factory, I take it," Gilderoy said, with a shaky hint of a smile. Draco laughed and nodded. "To where, then?"

"To Nurmengard."

: The Thieves of Xaphan

Notes:

Chapter Text

Draco had forgotten to so much as ask about the match Gryffindor had played, while he was in his penitent hibernation phase. That didn't dent his credibility enough, though, to keep Harry from giving him his invisibility cloak upon his return.

Which was good, given the mission incumbent upon him for the rest of March. March might very well might be his last month ever at Hogwarts, because his actions over spring break were liable to get him expelled. If they even left a person to expel. Yes, these could well be the final days of Draco Black. He had to get his affairs in order. Starting with the people he was possibly leaving behind.

Millicent Bulstrode wasn't one of his nine names, but it was getting progressively harder to pretend he only cared about those nine people's fates. He had done little to help her since the abrupt breakup of the Kingsnakes. But he found himself making sure that even the little he had done was turning out for the good.

He didn't know if she and Ginny were still training together, let alone whether she retained her cautious ambition of playing professionally. He snuck out after curfew in the cloak regardless, to see with his own eyes what was becoming of the girl whose hopes he had so treacherously raised in fifth year, only to send them crashing down as swiftly as Cantankerous Nott.

When he approached the pitch, there was no sign of enterprising students soaring through the night sky, nor any rattling of Quaffles banging about against hoops or gloves. He feared for a moment that they were simply absent, and that he should have done even a modicum of investigation before tromping all the way out here at this ungodly hour. But then he got close enough to see that the Weasley and companion on show had done as Draco and his Weasley had used to do so many times, and were sitting together on the pitch talking instead of practicing. Ginny's red hair shone out distinctly in the night, with the larger shadow of Millie close beside, reclined back in a pose of surprising naturalness, hands braced behind herself as they both stared up at the night sky.

There was an intimacy to the scene, making Draco feel like an intruder, rather than just rationally knowing himself one. But he lingered to at least make sure the conversation was friendly.

It was and then some. "So is Theo still being sketch with Astoria?" Ginny was asking. From Millie's lack of offense at the question, it was not their first time gossiping. "Did he call her a different name again?"

"What do you think? Sketch as all get-out. Some people are cut out to be someone's boyfriend, and some aren't. Theo is definitely the latter."

"Yeah, Dean was too," Ginny snorted. She pushed her hair out of her face and leaned closer to Millie, the moonlight illuminating her cute face and turning it delicate, almost like something from a storybook. "So you have strong opinions on that? What does it take to, er, be cut out to be someone's girlfriend, then?"

Millie rolled her eyes. "Depends on who you're asking. Plenty of blokes would say it takes a pretty face..." She gestured to Ginny's profile, indicating it as an example. "And a pretty mouth that doesn't talk too much." She pulled her hand back, indicating Ginny did not fit that criteria.

Ginny looked strangely annoyed. "You don't think I have nice lips?"

It took someone who grew up with Millie to see the slight embarrassment there, in her stiffening shoulders and exaggerated nonchalance. "I meant that you run your mouth too much, Weasley. I don't have any opinions on the quality of your lips."

"Ah," Ginny said, and gnawed on said lips. "Well, what would qualify someone to be your girlfriend, then?"

It was unclear what Draco should be shocked by: that Millie was apparently into girls, that Ginny Weasley somehow knew, or that Millie wasn't immediately verbally or physically eviscerating this fifth-year Gryffindor, for referencing it.

"Independently wealthy," Millie quipped, "So I wouldn't have to worry when my parents cut me off for having one. Otherwise, being around and interested when I'm a successful Keeper and can support us both. So, many years in the future, if ever." Millie flinched at Ginny's sad look. "What, don't look so pitying. I'm just a practical person."

"It won't be that long," Ginny said loyally, "Until you make it professional." Any doubt whether or not she had a vested interest vanished, once she trailed her fingers over the back of Millie's hand. Millie's eyes flicked up, startled. Ginny met her gaze, ruddy face flushing more deeply than from just the early spring wind whipping over them. "And don't say if. You're going to make it. You're too talented not to. The only one who could ever stop you is you, Millie."

"Careful," Millie said dryly, "You'll risk making me emotional. Are we going to practice tonight or what?" But she didn't pull her hand away.

That was enough spying. Any more and Draco would feel guilty. Eavesdropping, he would have said if asked, was the province of the craven and servile. Which was a pity, given the amount that ended up unfolding in his unofficial Last Month, either at Hogwarts or in the world of the living.

There was the first check-in with Severus and their trip to Xaphan, for starters. It was awkward setting foot in Severus's chambers, for the first time in more than a month. He'd never gone so long at Hogwarts not paying a visit there, even after that one time he blew up Severus's fireplace. He'd done that because he hadn't trusted Severus, back with that disastrous mess over Riddle's diary that seemed simple now, compared to what lay ahead. The memory made him scowl as he faced his godfather, wondering where that distrust had gone. He should never have stopped doubting a man who could fool Voldemort.

"Draco," Severus said, with suppressed emotion in his voice. "It is good to see you looking so well."

"Did Headmaster Dumbledore give you the Portkey to Xaphan already, sir?" Draco asked, engaging in his internal roleplay exercise where Severus was Flitwick to him, except less well-liked.

Severus's face darkened at that careful politeness. Indifference would hurt far more than hatred, after the number of years Draco had spent celebrating Severus's sheer presence as a privilege and miracle. Which made indifference all the more appropriate, then. Aside from the need not to arouse this very intelligent man's suspicions.

"Here it is," Severus said, and Draco took the other side of the teacup. They only had to wait a few seconds before they were whirled away on the scheduled visit.

Gilderoy seemed liable to wilt away spontaneously, once he felt the glacial air between his two visitors: an immaculately maintained impasse. He was ever the party caught in the middle. It was a tug-of-war of a sort. Severus was always quick on the uptake, but he seemed particularly sharp here. It was mere seconds before he seemed to gauge from tones of greeting that Draco had forgiven Gilderoy, the way he hadn't forgiven Severus.

So Severus took up demanding Gilderoy's help with the books in the library tower, which he was now flaunting his open study of, as often as Draco demanded consultation over the castle restoration. By the time their official visit ended, Gilderoy's baffled face looked like taffy pulled out too thin between them.

"Gilderoy," Severus said with unchallengeable command, "I'll stay to read a bit more, but I'll take Draco back first and come back."

So it hadn't been exaggerated, word of how much Severus hung around the library tower. Draco would have been entertained, speculating the extent to which it was not the library but the librarian posing an attraction, if he had not already decided Severus meant no more to him than any unlikable professor. And he had given up on caring about schoolwork whatsoever, the day he saw Dantanian's memories. Remus dragging him through some, or Hermione unhappily doing some for him, that didn't change that.

Nor did Severus cornering him once they returned, in his capacity as Defense professor. "Do not take this excursion, Draco," Severus cautioned, "As an excuse to forget your assignment. Now that you are back at Hogwarts, I expect all of your work in on time and in impeccable form. The essay tomorrow on Dementors is no exception."

Draco neatly dodged past and made his way into the dungeon labyrinth. He amused himself imagining poor Astoria somewhere, bemoaning her woes to Millie and Pansy over Theodore Nott, heartbreaker extraordinaire. He made the merest grunts in response to Severus. When Severus followed more, repeating the warning, and adding he would not be liberal in grading just because Draco was his godson, Draco kept walking. His teeth were gritted tight enough to risk a headache.

"Are you being serious right now? As if I need to write an essay on Dementors."

"You are still a student at this school, and a member of my class- slow down!" Severus snapped, and Draco dodged his attempt to take his arm. "Do not become arrogant, assuming that because you are an advanced student, you have nothing left to learn-"

"Are you talking to me about arrogance? That's a laugh." Draco quickened his step.

"And you will not speak to me this way, Draco-"

"If you're speaking to me in the capacity of professor to student," Draco sniped, knowing himself childish but unable to stop, "Isn't it long past time you start calling me Mr. Black?"

He didn't have to turn to know the way made Severus's face harden. "I will never call you that name," he said icily. "The essay on Dementors, Draco, if you do not have a satisfactory effort to turn in-"

"What should I write it about?" Draco laughed stridently. He would have thrown his hands out, if he hadn't been making for the stairs up from the dungeons posthaste. "I have so much unique expertise on Dementors. Should it be about the way Dementors were first made? Or about known human beings who have been transformed into Dementors, and by whom? Yes, I should, I think that would make a fine presentation to read aloud to the class-"

"You are being," Severus sighed, "Unfair," and Draco wanted to curse the entire world, at the sound of that one single word.

"Or should it just be," Draco snarled, withdrawing the talon wand and holding it out in demonstration, "About how my wand is a Dementor?"

A startled noise drew both their attention. It was naturally the worst person in the world to have overheard, except perhaps for Theodore Nott, or Albus Dumbledore. Harry stood there with a parchment that must be the Marauder's Map in hand, with eyes as wide as an owl behind his glasses.

"Harry," Draco blurted, a half-dozen different lies coming to his lips at once. "What are you doing here?"

"Coming to find you," Harry said, tone and expression numb. "I... I knew you'd be back soon, from the visit. With your godfather. But... I should leave you to- to talk." When he turned to go, Draco ran after him. Severus didn't follow.

Draco caught up halfway up the steps to the Great Hall. He caught him against the wall of the landing, and it hit him with strange déjà vu, though he didn't think they had ever stood here together for long before. He was remembering Dorian and Dantanian.

"Harry, I don't know what you heard-"

"What did you mean?" Harry's eyes were at once both fearful for Draco and resentful of him. "Your wand's a Dementor?"

Draco forced himself to grin. "It's a figure of speech. It means it's a mystery, and that it's bad for me. Like that song I wrote about me being a Dementor for you- expecting your Patronum-"

"You're lying to me." Harry's gorgeous eyes went desperate behind that thin barrier of glass. "I know you said you'd have to lie, and keep secrets, but- what does that mean? That's important, it's about you- and you're fighting with your godfather? I've never heard you yell at him like that, even when he tried to turn Sirius in to the Ministry- what is going on with you, Draco, I don't understand you at all these days-"

"Kiss me," Draco pleaded, and for once, the invitation made Harry unhappy.

"I've told you," Harry said shakily, "That can't just fix everything."

"You'd really rather nag at me," Draco whined, "Than give me a kiss? When I thought you'd missed me so much when I was gone..."

"Of course I did," Harry said fiercely, and extracted Draco's hands from his shoulders, one by one. As always, he was never more radiant than when he was righteously furious. "Don't use that against me. Of course I missed you. But I don't want to kiss you if it means kissing a stranger."

"I'm not a stranger," Draco said miserably. "Harry, please, give me a break..."

"What did you mean," Harry said unflinchingly, green eyes seeing so unerringly through, to the mean, petty viciousness inside Draco. "What does it mean saying your wand is a Dementor?"

"It was just a metaphor," Draco said helplessly, and Harry shook Draco off and stalked up the stairs.

Draco looked between Harry's retreating figure and the steps down, which would lead towards the secret passage to Hogsmeade, towards where he could Apparate back to Xaphan. Up or down. Another crossroads, though one his reeling, distracted mind didn't seem to grasp. Upwards or downwards.

He went downwards.

He needn't have hurried. Hermione wasn't due to Apparate in with Luna for another half hour, nor was the timed Portkey he'd sent to L'Infern for Karkaroff for another forty-five minutes. He couldn't even plan with Gilderoy before the meeting, with him tied up with Severus. Draco was the eavesdropper on Severus and another then. He stood in the library tower in his invisibility cloak, trying to forget his argument with Harry, and trying to mentally will his godfather to go away.

Severus did not seem liable to go away anytime soon. Who else did he have to complain to about Draco? "Once he has made his mind up," he was ranting, "He is less movable than the whole of the citadel. Each and every stone." Gilderoy was perched on the arm of a recently installed armchair, watching Severus pace about with a colorful dismay.

"This is what I feared, exactly why I decided not to give him those memories! He has gone from a catatonic depression to- I do not even know what this mood of his is now! He is more likely to speak to you than me. Perhaps he does not feel the betrayal as deeply from you. Have you any idea of his current mind?"

Gilderoy, who knew Draco's real purposes, would have to be a good liar, his much-maligned skill on demand. "Severus," he said in a placating tone, sliding off the arm to put a tentative hand on Severus's sleeve. Severus's chest rose and fell, a harsh exhale, but he did not try to remove the hand. "He doesn't confide in me how he feels either. I worry about him too, believe me." That almost sounded a truth in service of a lie.

"I want the best for Draco too," Gilderoy went on earnestly. "And it does you credit, Severus, that you care so much about your godson and his welfare- does you great credit indeed, yes- but maybe, well, what he needs now is, er, some space? From you? Maybe?"

He gave his suggestion with the air of a child innocently presenting a stranger a lit grenade. But Severus seemed, wonder of wonders, to think about it. "Letting him spend a month in bed was not space enough?"

"That was, as you said," Gilderoy fumbled, "Not really space, per se- he's only just gotten back to real life- but, er, a Catalunya- Catalonia-"

Severus laughed, a genuine surprised bark, as his seething gaze lifted and softened. "Catalonia? I said catatonic depression. Is the word you're looking for catatonia, perhaps?"

"Right, er, that's what I said," Gilderoy said valiantly.

Severus smiled, that rare sight that made his snooping godson's heart feel lighter, even as he told himself all filial feeling there was dead and buried. "No, Gilderoy," he intoned dryly, "That is not, indeed, what you said." He tried to hold back another laugh and failed.

"I am glad," Gilderoy said loftily, "That my mistakes prove so amusing to you," and Severus was the one to take Gilderoy's arm then, that rare initiation of actual touch between Severus and any other living being. "I know well how stupid you think me-"

"No, no," Severus laughed, "You are not claiming to be an expert on psychology, the way you did on Defense. The things you brag of now, memory spells and castles, you really do know. That is the difference." Gilderoy still had that sulky expression on, the one that made him look more innocent than he ever had as a Hogwarts professor. Severus regarded it with what an uninformed individual might suspect as fondness. "Really. Some ignorance can be charming, as it happens."

"Charming," Gilderoy repeated skeptically.

Severus tilted his head. "If one is willing to be taught."

Gilderoy's face changed. He looked up at Severus through his thick blond eyelashes, with a keenness of attention Severus must have been blind as a bat not to feel. "Are you offering to instruct me in something, Professor Snape?"

"Sadly, I am far too busy," Severus said dryly, seemingly deaf to any innuendo. "Much as you would undoubtedly benefit from my instruction."

Draco's face had gone very hot, by the time Severus finally left and he could emerge from under the cloak. "Why are you so red?" Gilderoy asked, and Draco just shook his head.

"So," Draco said, standing up formally. "I call to meeting this gathering of the thieves of Xaphan."

Hermione could not have looked more skeptical. "Is that supposed to be like the Rat Thieves, just with..." She looked over at Gilderoy and Karkaroff with scarcely-veiled dubiousness. "Our new associates?"

"Thieves of Xaphan," Luna said thoughtfully, "Oh, that's a terrible name. It makes it sound like we're about to rob Xaphan."

"I concur," added Karkaroff.

"Does anyone have a better idea for it, then?" Draco complained, already finding this motley crew troublesome- he almost thought cantankerous, but that word was unusable for him. "Yeah, didn't think so. Okay, come on, we're meeting at Xaphan, and we're plotting to rob Nurmengard. It's not advanced Arithmancy-"

"Just rob Nurmengard, though," Hermione said briskly. "Not to even lay eyes upon any of its inhabitants, right?"

"Of course not," Draco said breezily. "I just think Grindelwald has one of the mirrors I need, Dantanian's mirrors. If not more. And if Periander couldn't find them in the German Ministry's vaults..." He nodded towards Karkaroff. "That just leaves Nurmengard."

"And what if you can't find it?" Luna asked.

"You're telling me," Hermione said sharply, "You wouldn't go asking the conveniently located Prisoner of Nurmengard for assistance?"

"Of course not," Draco said confidently. "I'm not suicidal. Even as a disarmed, doddering old man, Grindelwald is still dangerous."

"You'd be right to be afraid," Karkaroff said darkly. Gilderoy made a scared noise that earned him a withering glare from the former headmaster. "Before I made my visit to Nurmengard- the one visit, so do not expect too much- I was warned thoroughly by no fewer than seven different Ministry employees, of Grindelwald's pernicious silver tongue. It is not his spells they feared, with wards on Nurmengard that blocked his magic, wards he himself designed for his own prisoners. It was his ability to talk anyone he met into helping him try and escape, given enough time with them. And they were lucky, if that was all he talked them into doing. There were assassination attempts traced to visits to Nurmengard- successful murders, even darker deeds. And I laughed it off, of course, but when I did meet him, I-"

He broke off abruptly, looking in the direction of the covered Mirror of Erised. "Are you certain we are not being observed? Last time I was here, I saw Severus in that mirror."

"What?" Gilderoy exclaimed, covering his face. "No you didn't!"

Gilderoy must be making the mistake of thinking Karkaroff had seen Gilderoy's own reflection of Severus. Draco had as well the first time, he'd been in such a rush. Now he was more curious. "Alright, let's see," said Draco, feeling rather unduly sadistic towards his new supposed ally, and gestured magnanimously. "By all means, check the mirror. Take a good look and tell us what you see." He was very glad he had told the Rat Thieves about the mirror theft and brought them around on it before this meeting.

Gilderoy made strangled throttled sounds, seeming finally to understand what Hermione and Luna already had, by their mortified glances to one another. Then Gilderoy looked warier, though surely he couldn't suspect romantic threat from Karkaroff.

And nor was there. "It is Severus!" Karkaroff exclaimed in alarm, jumping back. "He looks just as before, the same tattered robes- I see it now, he's in Azkaban! Why is he imprisoned? And there are Dementors! I thought they were gone from that wretched place!"

Draco's amusement fled. "Seriously? That's what you see in the Mirror of Erised, Igor? Severus Snape in jail? Talk about a meager internal life. Shouldn't you just wish him dead if you hate him that much?" When Karkaroff looked baffled, Hermione graciously explained the nature of the mirror. Once Karkaroff understood that his heart's deepest desire had been unmasked, he began to look cringingly nervous.

"Why do you hate him that much?" Luna asked, looking protective, although it didn't hold a candle, naturally, to the way Gilderoy was scowling. "More than anyone? Even Voldemort?"

Karkaroff flinched at the name like he always did. "I don't," he began to protest, but the nature of the mirror rendered that useless. He covered the mirror again, slumping back over to his seat dejectedly. Hermione gave Luna a squeeze of the hand, seeming to give needed reassurance that the hated mirror was not a threat any longer.

"He was my rival!" Karkaroff finally blurted. "I know he has- ties to you, Malfoy-"

"Black-"

"Has ties to you, but that's just another reason to hate the man! He disarmed me and humiliated me at Malfoy Manor, in your room! He threatened me on my ship to keep your curses and threats a secret! I have good reason to despise him! He sits by the Dark Lord's side in favor, secretly a traitor, while I am forced to hide like a craven!"

"You tried to get Snape put in Azkaban, telling the world he'd been a Death Eater," Hermione observed. "I guess it's not shocking for someone to wish one of their failures reversed."

"And I would try it again!" Karkaroff exclaimed remorselessly. "If I had the chance, I would not hesitate to kill the man! Arrogant, wretched, hideous, half-blood risen above his station-" He seemed to realize he was preaching to the wrong crowd. "But I would prefer he spend a lifetime in Azkaban instead, come to think of it. With all the Dementors. I spent some months in Azkaban before my trial."

"And it's worse than death," Draco finished with bitter knowledge. "Your heart's fucking desire is worse than death for my godfather."

It was mystifying, the intermittencies of the heart. Not an hour after rebuffing Severus and wishing him dead, he was now virtually ready to murder another in his defense.

Draco had worse things to worry about, than lack of understanding of himself. When in doubt, blame it on Dantanian.

"In any event," Draco summarized, "You are no doubt convinced that the mirror is not some spying device. Go on, tell us about your meeting with Grindelwald." It had been a helpful reminder, that however useful Karkaroff happened to potentially be, he was still unequivocally their enemy.

From the story Karkaroff told then, he'd been almost infatuated with the man, if not still bewitched. "Even the Dark Lord," Karkaroff said admiringly, "I have never heard speak like him. He was the most clever man I have ever met. He could turn anything you said around and make you laugh or scream or cry at a moment's notice. He could argue the sky green and the ocean red. And his charm- when he looked at you, it felt like you had just been gifted some of his power. Like you were being rewarded with his notice, even with him the one chained to a wall in a remote mountain cell."

"I think," Gilderoy scoffed, dislike for Karkaroff visible, "His sex appeal will have rather aged out of him by now-"

"It wasn't how he looked. It was his presence. His aura. His voice. He was already an old man then, but I still wanted to follow him. We only spoke once, and I-" Karkaroff looked sheepish, and wouldn't meet any of their gazes as he admitted, "I was full of dreams about the power he had, the power I could have if he rose back to what he had been and let me follow him, I- so, I- I offered to help him escape from Nurmengard."

Draco's eyes shot wide in hope. "Did you have a plan to breach the wards of Nurmengard? Did he?"

"No," Karkaroff said shamefacedly, "And he talked me down. He told me I was a bright, promising young man, and that without the power to change his situation, I should not throw my promise away upon a Pyrrhic gesture. He only asked that I return to see him again, to-" His embarrassment could not have been more complete, as he mumbled, "To help chip away a bit once more, at his lonesomeness. And to bring with me a newspaper."

"He had you wrapped around his finger that quickly," Hermione frowned, "And all he asked for was a newspaper?"

"If he was that clever," Gilderoy scoffed, "Surely he saw at a glance, this man would be of no more use than a paper boy."

Karkaroff seemed to instantly requite Gilderoy's dislike, turning and almost snarling. Luna interrupted first. "Did you return?"

"No," Karkaroff said, looking down once more. "I intended to. But before I could get Ministry permission again, I met a man called- called Tom Riddle."

"Okay," Draco said crisply. "So we've established Grindelwald's a good talker, very dangerous- don't worry, Hermione, I promise I won't go near him, whether I find the mirrors or not- and that while Igor irrationally despises my godfather, he has a hard-on for dark lords of all shapes and kinds. Cool cool. I was looking for more of the logistics, though, Igor." He tried not to laugh, saying that name over and over. Ignorant and xenophobic as it might be, to Draco's uneducated ears, 'Igor' sounded like the villain in some third-rate Gothic or vampire novel- and oh, that couldn't help Gilderoy's opinion of the man either.

"Logistics," Karkaroff said nervously. For a headmaster, he seemed very uneasy being the center of attention this long. Maybe he wasn't as confident when he wasn't allowed to beat any of the onlookers he liked. "There was a passage inside the mountain, these endless steps up and up, out into the center of the castle. They said the passage predated Grindelwald, it was why he'd chosen the location, but it's since been closed- ever since the decision was made that if Grindelwald kept on for decades more corrupting visitors, they just wouldn't allow him any more of them."

"What about guards?" Hermione asked logically.

It was objectively hard not to laugh when Karkaroff sighed, "They had to stop that too."

Draco could extrapolate, but Gilderoy needed it spelled out. "Why?"

Karkaroff sighed impatiently. "Because he kept corrupting the guards too."

"He sounds fascinating!" Luna waved her arms. "Oh, Draco, I would so love to meet him-"

"NO!" Draco, Hermione, and Gilderoy all blurted.

Luna shrunk back, pouting. "It was just a suggestion."

"No, it's just me going," Draco reminded her. "Yes, Viktor would probably let you come visit too- he liked you, the one time you met, and needless to say I think he'd be happy to welcome Hermione too-"

"You will not bring her," Karkaroff said darkly, "Anywhere back near that honest good pureblooded boy, after he had the good sense to escape from her clu-"

"Langlock," Draco cast lazily. Gilderoy covered his mouth when a rather porcine snort forced its way out of him. Meanwhile, Karkaroff began to wave his arms in incoherent outrage. As the only individual there without a wand, they were safe to ignore him.

"But it will be just me," Draco said. "It would attract too much attention, a group trip- especially the three of us, after our plot with Sirius. But justme, I think everyone- Dumbledore being the most important part of everyone- will somewhat buy that I'm just going to ransack the Munich university library like I say I am, for anything about the Hallows. It's how it has to be, if we don't want to be caught."

"As long as Frankenstein promises," Hermione cut in, "Not to go anywhere near Grindelwald."

Draco gave her the least sincere pinkie promise of all time. It was a Muggle way to double-promise something. They'd done it before over inconsequential matters. He still felt a pang over the lie, seeing the candlelight glint off her turquoise bracelet with so many charms he'd made her- including the Star of Ishtar, a.k.a Astarte, god damn it, Dantanian- and then more, at the thought it could be magically bonding somehow.

No. He had too much legitimately to fear without making up more.

"How does he eat," Gilderoy blurted suddenly, "Without any guards there? Have all the employees gone?"

Karkaroff gestured to his throat, glowering. Draco lifted the Langlock with a warning look. "Yes, they have," Karkaroff answered.

Gilderoy got that bizarre look on his handsome, once-vacant face that meant he was actually having a clever thought. "But there has to be some system to keep feeding him." He was clearly thinking of his travails feeding himself and prisoners at L'Infern. "Unless there's some storage he can visit, or a garden- he'd need liberty of movement-"

"No," Karkaroff said derisively. "He had to stay chained to the wall, all the time. It was written right into his prison sentence. They wouldn't deviate from that now. They're too scared of him."

"Then how?" Gilderoy frowned. "Unless there's some system or artifact I don't understand, to transport food in past the wards- but it's a mountain- and you can't conjure food from nothing... someone has to be going in and out of Nurmengard-"

"The orders were clear from the Ministry," Karkaroff interrupted. "No human visitors ever-"

"No human," Hermione echoed. "Human." Then her hand went to her mouth. "Oh. Oh, no."

"What? What's wrong?" Draco demanded.

"I think I've got an idea," Hermione said cautiously, "About how to get you into Nurmengard. But I'm not so sure if it wouldn't be better if I hadn't."

"What? What? What?" Luna cried out, rocking back and forth and bouncing in exhilaration. "Oh, Striker, tell us tell us!"

"Unless he's being fed entirely from supplies inside Xaphan," Hermione said grimly, "Then I might be wrong. Or I might still be right."

"What?" Luna whined, until Hermione caved from sheer annoyance.

"Fine!" she exclaimed. "Who can visit Xaphan anytime they want, without the wards stopping them? Whose Apparition works different than humans? Who might the wards let into Nurmengard- and who might be able to take Draco in with them?"

Gilderoy blinked rapidly. "Can Hippogriffs Apparate?"

Draco could understand why Severus had laughed so much before. He leaned over and hugged Gilderoy in unabashed fondness, grinning from ear to ear. "House elves!" he exclaimed, with the memory of a darker time at Malfoy Manor in the blue loop, a recollection that seemed a blessing now. As long as it didn't get Dobby killed again.

"You're right, Hermione! My best friend is always right! It's house elves!"

It was Monday that week, when Draco failed to turn in any sort of essay on Dementors, and Severus chewed him out in front of their entire Defense class. Draco just sat back and tapped his foot, though Harry's worried stare did give him pause. In the end, all Severus could do was give him detention, and all Harry could do was keep worrying. Draco skipped the detention, and put Harry on the back burner.

The second part was harder once his letter to Viktor paid dividends. He got a message back on Thursday, saying Viktor would be happy to have him. He'd mentioned the Munich library as a pretext, and Viktor had taken it as one, but for another secret purpose: attending the quarterfinal of the European Quidditch Cup. One of the fixtures was somehow featuring Viktor's Münchner Murmeltiere, who had made it through the round of sixteen on a hope, a prayer, and a few semi-illegal maneuvers on the part of the threadbare squad's famous Keeper.

It was the first-ever time reaching the quarters for the inglorious Munich Groundhogs, affectionately nicknamed the Schnauzenspitze, a team with nothing but a city in common with their 'FC Hollywood' Muggle counterpart Bayern. Instead, it was a real Quidditch FC Hollywood, the ever-glamorous and terrifying Panthères de Paris, whom the snout-nosed underdogs would be facing. It would be a long shot, and largely dependent on Viktor to counterbalance vast tactical, technical, and financial inferiority. But Viktor was hopeful, it turned out, and touched and thrilled one of his friends wanted to come support him.

It seemed Draco was the only person to have made any such offer. Poor Viktor didn't seem to have many friends, for an international Quidditch star.

It almost made Draco guilty, to sneak his way to Nurmengard under these false pretenses. But Viktor thought their Quidditch friendship from fourth year had been maintained, through Viktor's long-distance help with the Kingsnakes. And here was his old training partner returned, ready to pay back the favor, and be there to cheer him on, for the biggest club game of his career. Really, it would be wrong not to go to Munich under these circumstances. Especially since a heavy winter and scheduling mishaps had pushed back the first leg all the way to a single week before the second in Paris, allowing Draco to attend both.

That Viktor's club happened to be in Bavaria, not too far from Austria? That was just the kind of coincidence that indicated the universe wanted Draco to go to Nurmengard.

Try telling that to Harry. He was at first simply disbelieving, that after missing a month of life in bed, and being distant with his nominal boyfriend since his return, Draco would even consider skipping two weeks at home with him. Draco's response that he'd just visited Sirius and Remus at Grimmauld, so he didn't need to see them again so soon, was met by so much indignation, it was obvious Harry had expected Draco to think about spending time with him. Then Harry's opposition to the idea crystallized on a more concrete point.

"You won't be safe!" he hissed, and Draco looked around the Ravenclaw table nervously.

"I won't go anywhere but Viktor's flat and the university library," he whispered, "Except for the matches, and there will be plenty of security there, there's no way Voldemort would-"

"Oh, yeah!" Harry exclaimed, eyes flashing. "Because Death Eaters have no history of attacking Quidditch events-"

Draco clamped a hand over Harry's mouth. Harry seemed liable to try and bite it off, but it was sufficient to keep the raging down until they made it out of the Great Hall, and into the first empty classroom that Draco could spell silent and shut.

"If it's so unsafe, Harry," Draco said logically, "You probably shouldn't be screaming about it in front of the entire school," and Harry stepped away from him, crossing his arms unhappily.

"What is wrong with you?" Harry demanded, voice free to rise with Inmotus in place. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

Draco perched on the edge of a desk and tried to think his way out of a minefield. "Come on, Harry, cut me some slack, I've been having a rough few months-"

"You didn't show up to class, see anyone but Luna, or write me a single bloody letter back, for a month," Harry growled, "But you'll go off to Germany for weeks by yourself on a lark, to see a few Quidditch matches?"

"I had magical exhaustion-"

"EVERYONE KNOWS YOU WEREN'T SICK!"

Draco resigned himself to a fight, perhaps a historical one. It probably wasn't worth arguing that point. "Maybe it wasn't as bad physically as I said," he acknowledged. "But I was sick, Harry, just- in the head, okay? I really couldn't get myself out of bed, even when I tried. It was a catatonic depression- Remus wanted to send me to a Mind Healer-"

"You never tell me these things! And you never explain them, even if you do! What happened, Draco? What happened to you in the graveyard on Valentine's Day? What did you see inside that grave? If it made you that upset- if it made you hate your godfather now, when you've always been so devoted to him-"

"You've always hated my godfather, I don't know why you'd mind-"

"It's just another thing you won't tell me!" Harry looked close to tears. He was practically hugging himself, backed against the dusty wall, red and gold tie messily askew. "It's like since we started having sex, all the way, things have changed-"

"It's not that!"

"Then what is it? Why can't you tell me anything? Because of Dumbledore? Sirius told me you wrecked the painting he used to use to communicate with Dumbledore- they have to go through Dumbledore's brother now, and Dumbledore's brother hates him-"

"Aberforth?" Draco was surprised into a lack of circumspection. "I had no idea. I thought he'd sooner spit in his brother's face. What, is Dobby transmitting messages?" Dobby would soon be too busy with another task for that. "It wouldn't work face-to-face. Trust me, however much poor little Albus whines about it, Aberforth must be hating it more-"

"What do you have against Dumbledore?" Harry yelled, and Draco was silent. "How do you know Aberforth Dumbledore so well?" Draco was silent. "You think I don't notice these things? Everything you don't tell me? Why do you hate your godfather now?" Draco was silent. "And why are you so close instead with Lockhart? I saw you with Luna and that catalog, ordering him a whole new bloody wardrobe-"

"Harry, for Merlin's sake, if this is jealousy over Gilderoy-"

"It's not!" Harry groaned. "I know it's not like that with him. It's Krum I'd be more worried about making a move on you, in Munich." Draco opened his mouth to protest, but Harry was working up a head of steam. "Lockhart is just one of all the things this whole year you won't explain or tell me! Why did you interfere and get Lockhart put at Xaphan in the first place? Ron knows, but he won't tell me!" Draco shifted uncomfortably. "I bet you tell Hermione and Luna more than me too. Do they know all those things I don't? I bet they know why you're really skipping out on me to go to Munich, too!"

It was terrible, sitting here knowing himself in the wrong. It made it worse, how perfectly lovable and sweet and unchanged Harry was before him, here and now, when Draco had changed so much. Too much.

"What did I do wrong?" Harry gasped. "Why do you tell them these things and not me? It can't just be Dumbledore. I wouldn't tell on you to him about anything, why don't you get that? I'd always be on your side if you let me." Draco was silent, and a tear slid down Harry's cheek. "Why don't you trust me?"

"I'm not going to fuck Viktor Krum," was all Draco could muster in response.

"That part doesn't even matter!" Harry gasped, taking off his glasses to wipe at his eyes angrily. Draco's chest ached, protectively riled, when the only person to punish for making Harry this upset was himself. "You don't get it! I can't go on like this. It messes so bad with my head. I hate myself all the time for not being good enough for you to trust me! But if I'm not, I'm not! And if this isn't working, then it isn't working-"

"I'm going to meet Grindelwald!"

Draco heard the words come, almost or perhaps entirely outside his own volition. They were blurted nonetheless, and once put into the world, they couldn't be taken back.

"What?"

"I am," Draco said, standing and going as close to Harry as he dared. The words felt like a single-handed destruction of the future, but he was saying them. "It's why I'm going to Munich. It's close to Austria, that's where he is, in his old prison, Nurmengard. I'm going to break into Nurmengard, and I'm going to go talk to Gellert Grindelwald."

Harry was the one silent then, and Draco could have read anything into that silence. Finally, Harry just breathed out again, "What?"

"Hermione and Luna, they don't know," Draco said, a waterfall spilling from his mouth that didn't seem able to stop rushing. "Well- they know about Nurmengard, they're part of the plan, but they think I'm just going there to rob him, they don't think I'm going to meet him too-"

"You're so full of it," Harry said quietly, eyes hopeless. "You're so full of shit."

"I'm not!" Draco yelped. Did Harry not believe him? He was reminded, funnily enough, of second year again, after the emergence of the Heir of Slytherin. Only now it was his guilt he was trying to persuade Harry of, instead of his innocence. Could they really have gotten that distant from each other once more? "I'm going to find answers. I've exhausted every other way."

"Right," Harry said sardonically. "And who else knows about this 'plan'?"

"Gilderoy," Draco admitted, and changed that once Harry looked more disbelieving. "Lockhart. Gilderoy Lockhart. Dobby. And, uh... Igor Karkaroff, so-"

"Karkaroff?" Harry exclaimed. "The old headmaster of Durmstrang? From the Triwizard Tournament?"

It seemed so outlandish and random a lie, choosing co-conspirator of all the possible names he could have chosen, that it had to patently be the truth, right? Except Harry didn't think that way.

"I'm trying to be honest now-"

"By telling me the stupidest lies you can think of? Are you mocking me? Who are you?"

Draco felt bewildered tears of his own threaten at the back of his eyes. "No, Harry, I swear, I'll swear on anything, I'll take Veritaserum- I mean, I know I'm an Occlumens, but I can take it anyway, or you can try and look in my head- I mean, I know you can't, but- Harry, just please, I'll tell you anything you want-"

Harry stared at him for long enough that Draco felt a surge of actual hope, that this was not the end of everything between them. "Why do you hate your godfather?"

Draco knew he shouldn't answer the way he did, but he told the unadorned truth.

"Because he lied to me."

Harry let out a strangled laugh and covered his face, stepping away. When Draco reached out, he evaded his hand. "I... I think I need some space."

"Wait, no," Draco tried, but with a wandless, wordless lift of his hand, Harry broke the barrier Draco had made for the classroom, and made for the door. The smell of his raw power was like no one else's, more intoxicating than ever before, now that he had taken it for granted and found it was about to slip through his fingers along with Harry's heart. "Don't go..."

"I need some space," Harry repeated bleakly, and left him.

It wasn't clear if it was a dumping, per se. But it did divide their friends into the two predictable groups, like the last fight between them had. Except this time Luna and Neville were a couple, as were Hermione and Ron, which made the split much less clean. It was hard to tell, given it was only four days before they would all be leaving for spring break, Harry back to their adopted family and Draco off to die some comically horrible death. When he told Hermione to go tell Harry he was telling the truth, she just shook her head.

"He didn't listen to me when I tried, Draco," she said gently. "He just thinks you're still lying to him, and getting me and Luna to. I do think he needs space."

"That's such a stupid lie," Draco groaned, covering his tear-swollen eyes and slumping down on their library table. He didn't care who saw him. "That's what Gilderoy told Severus, to get him off my back while we plotted. No one actually just 'needs space'. It means I've been an utter prat to him and he's had enough. He's through with me, isn't he?" He instinctively lowered his voice. "Should I just write to Viktor and cancel? If I don't go home to Grimmauld, does that mean I don't care enough and I'm giving up-"

"Draco," Hermione said firmly, "I mean it. He needs space. And the way to make him believe you weren't lying about Nurmengard is to go. You said it was more important than anything to get these mirrors. That everything depended on it. You said it was more than life or death, more important than Voldemort. Was that a lie?"

"No," Draco said miserably. "I need the three mirrors. And more- even more than that, Striker, I can't- can't let anyone else-"

"You can't let anyone else have them," Hermione finished.

"I can't let anyone else have Harry either," Draco whined. The memory of Ginny eyeing up Millie was sparse comfort. If Draco was counting on Millieto wise up and take Ginny out of the pool, he'd be an even bigger fool than he already was. "I can't let him think I don't care. I do. I do! I just-" Hermione gestured to lower his voice, and Draco wished he could just lower himself through the floor and disappear. "I just didn't want him to know about Dantanian. I didn't want him to think I'm a monster."

"He wouldn't have," Hermione said into his ear, utterly confident, "But you can't take it back. You're not broken up, so take him at his word and give him the space he asked for. Go to Nurmengard, Frankenstein, and when you bring back those mirrors to show him, he'll know you weren't lying anymore."

If I really find both of them, he could find out a lot more than that. And so could you.

"In the meantime," Hermione said crisply, "There's your disguise to think of."

It had been Ron's idea, naturally, always the one to think of practical things. It had been for the football matches, and the natural fear that going somewhere so public, away from Britain and all his friends, would be unnecessary exposure for Voldemort's nemesis par excellence. Space from Harry didn't mean Ron didn't count Draco his friend. The very day Harry and Draco fell out so spectacularly, Ron came to him with a very nervous suggestion.

At first, Draco thought the trepidation was on account of fearing Draco's wrath, about the Harry situation. It turned out he just feared it because of the suggestion.

"I think you should cut your hair," Ron said, and Draco's hands flew to his hair protectively. Ron's hands flew to his wand. "Or dye it! Wait, hear me out!"

"Harry loves my hair! Oh, what a great signal I still want to be with him, he asks for space and I get rid of his favorite physical feature of mine."

"Favorite?" Ron asked dubiously.

Draco flushed. "I don't know, second-favorite. Maybe, er, third. Can we get back to what's important here? My hair?"

"You know, you haven't changed that much," Ron mused fondly. He logically explained how the two legs made it a double risk, particularly if word of his presence in Munich made the Paris match an enticing target. Word was less likely to spread if Draco was less recognizable, and even just clueless onlookers not talking about Viktor Krum's new pale-haired friend would help that cause.

"I mean, you're right," Draco sulked. "I'll change up my wardrobe and all. But can't I wear a wig-" He wilted at Ron's look, having already suffered an explanation of how wigs could fly off or be torn off, and how easily magic could change hair length or color back and forth. "It could damage my hair, though, Cannon, magic or not, even if it looks the same on the surface as before-"

"You could die, Frankenstein-"

"But my hair!"

Eventually, Draco caved. It felt the least he could do, once Luna picked up on the idea from Ron and declared herself unsalvageable with fright unless Draco agreed to this reasonable precaution. So Luna got her way, and Draco let her and Ron and Hermione do their worst disguising him. Ginny showed up with some expertise on long hair, which she admitted she'd often thought of coloring- much to Ron's outrage- before deciding against, to stay proud of her roots. Draco was torn between trying to come up with subtle ways to hint at the wonders of Slytherin lovers and Sapphic pleasures, and less subtle ways of demanding whether she still thought Harry Potter's eyes were as green as a fresh-pickled toad. But she was helpful nonetheless, and Draco ended Friday night with his hair gone from chin-length to all the way to the small of his back.

There was no help for it, forget about Death Eaters on his trail. Grindelwald might have researched Dantanian after finding those memories, and seen or even met Dorian Malfoy. Draco intended to lie and pretend to be a Muggleborn, and without chin-length white-blond hair and grey eyes, it would be far easier for an old man's memory not to spot the resemblance.

It still hurt, seeing Severus's face in the Great Hall Saturday morning, with the chin-length hair that Draco had outright admitted was inspired by him now gone. It must in isolation have seemed a further gesture of detachment, which Draco hadn't meant.

Severus must have seen the purpose, though, when Draco showed up to dinner that night with his hair darkened. It had been meant to be jet black, and was more of a dark brown no matter how Ginny tried, which they blamed on Draco's very pale natural hair. But the color was still closer to Severus than before, although it turned out Draco's hair had a natural wave to it at this length. In any event, it was clearly a disguise for anyone with eyes to see. Draco securing Muggle colored contacts dark would similarly make him look less like a godson, and more like a blood son, not that Severus would see that part. He'd buy them in Munich. Maybe Viktor would find it fun, helping Draco dress up as someone else, like a Ministry espionage novel. Or maybe Draco could just sneak off on his own, when Viktor was off preparing for his team's inevitable smashing by the Panthers.

It was enough of a disguise that even Theo didn't seem to recognize him that night, though Theo was quite distracted at the time. Astoria was making such a scene at the top of the steps to the dungeons, it seemed Draco might not be the first of the archenemies being dumped after all. Well, Draco would ask Ginny for the gossip on it later. He quickly walked off, after instinctually fitting himself into the front of the crowd to gawk. He'd done enough eavesdropping recently.

Harry recognized him. He'd stared the past few nights, though Draco had given him that space. Monday morning, with break starting, he lingered in the Great Hall, delaying going off to the Hogwarts Express, in order to ask about it.

"Hey," Harry said awkwardly, with that four days not speaking having already felt like years worth of unwanted distance. Draco drew Harry aside and cast Muffliato for them to talk unheard. "Ron says, er, that's a disguise..."

Draco followed Harry's eyes and gesture to the fall of now-raven hair. "Just to keep me safe. It'll be back to normal when break's over."

"You can do whatever you want with your hair," Harry said, an objectively laudable statement, and just about the last thing Draco wanted to hear out of those lips.

"Do I really look hideous like this?" Draco fretted, and Harry didn't smile. The loss of Harry's usual fond indulgence was a splash of ice to the face.

"You just look like a different person," Harry said, dropping his hand and his gaze. A stranger.

"You can touch if you want," Draco blurted, "My hair," and Harry's eyes shot right back up in shock.

"Ron said you have a Portkey to catch," he said fumblingly. "That you'll walk to Hogsmeade, and it will take you to Munich."

"Yeah," Draco said, wanting to scream at even the slightest pretense from Harry of indifference. "That doesn't mean I don't have a second. It's probably the only time my hair's ever going to be this long."

Harry reached on seeming impulse and ran two hands through Draco's hair, one on either side like he often did before cupping Draco's face. Just that half-touch made Draco's stomach clench with arousal and fear, before Harry's fingers swept lower, traveling longer than before to reach the ends. He pulled one of the curling parts that had formed on a dark wave forward, and stared at it in the light, before curling it around his finger.

Draco wanted to kiss Harry so bad he could have begged for it.

At the exact same time, he realized, Oh, I do look like a different person.

That's who I look like. Dantanian Noir.

Harry let go of Draco's hair quickly, as if waking from a dream. "You should go." He hesitated, eyes assessing again. "To Munich. To Nurmengard?"

"Yes," Draco said, "To Nurmengard," and Harry's face fell with disbelief and disappointment. He stepped back and walked away.

Draco squared his shoulders, waited for Harry to be gone from the Great Hall, then made his way towards the path to Hogsmeade.

He had a Portkey to Germany to use.

: Kaktusblüte

Notes:

Chapter Text

When Draco looked in the mirror, he didn't recognize his own reflection. It was as startling a departure as finding himself eleven years old again. He'd braided all his newly heavy long hair. When it was this long, just a ponytail still made it a hindrance. He had to assume he would need every convenience to duel or fight that he could get. The hair, its style, the eyes, the clothes, his practiced haughty posture and bearing, they all added to someone older than Draco's going-on-seventeen years, though not by as many as Draco may have hoped. It pushed him a few forward, though, past the look of a Hogwarts graduate, leading to right around to- well, to the twenty or so that Dantanian had been, in that last memory in New Zealand, naming Astaroth.

At least Harry had never seen those memories.

Viktor was the only one who knew him who'd seen the full transformation. He'd been enthusiastic at first about the prospect of disguising his friend. But when he saw the reality, it had sent him back into his characteristic gloom. "It is not good, that you have to change this much," he had sighed, "Just to come support me, my friend. I vould not recognize you on the street. If you are truly in this much danger from the Dark Lord, then perhaps you should not come to the match. I vould understand it."

Draco should have taken the out, objectively, but his narrow loyalty to his nine names was being tested more these days, and found increasingly wanting. He hadn't been able to bring himself to flake out on Viktor while still taking his hospitality, not with Viktor obviously lonely and isolated, even amongst his own teammates on the Münchner Murmeltiere. It felt too wrong to see it and do nothing to ease that, even for Viktor of all people, who he hadn't seen in years. He hadn't used to be this way at all. He didn't know if it was what Hermione would call his 'moral conscience', or just loyalty from too many personal attachments. But it had kept him at Viktor's side, for that trip to the guillotine that would assuredly be the home leg against the Panthers.

He had been rewarded for his loyalty by one of the happiest nights of his Quidditch life, excluding those old ruined days with the Kingsnakes. The Murmeltiere had defied all common sense and logic and won, by Viktor's shocking and relatively early Snitch catch. Even if the score had already been run up, enough that the match's final score came in at 160-110. On the night, it didn't seem to matter that they'd only be taking a +50 aggregate to Paris, and that Draco might not even make it there, if his plans for Easter Sunday came to fruition in the wrong way. He bought all the Murmeltiere merchandise he could find, for souvenirs he wasn't sure he'd ever get to give. He'd caroused deep into the night with Viktor and his teammates, for once united with their superstar in the ecstasy of the great European upset. He'd even written Harry an ill-advised letter recapping Viktor's victory from the insider viewpoint, though for once, he was the one doubting he'd get any answer.

Viktor went off to see his family for Easter still slightly sluggish from all the celebration, even though the squad had been placed on a strict regimen to get them in tip-top shape for Paris. He'd offered to take Draco with him to Bulgaria, but Draco had invented a cousin in Paris who wanted Draco to spend Easter with her. So it was that Draco was said to be spending Easter Sunday with the purely apocryphal Lisette Malfoy, while trying to look as little like a Malfoy or ex-Malfoy as possible.

In any event, the stranger in the mirror was left alone, with all the research done in the Munich libraries for his cover that he could wish, and all of the fine details ironed out in brief visits from Dobby, who had been taking back and forth materials from Xaphan and L'Infern. He had to already be exhausted from so much Apparition, even if the workings of that for house elves were mysterious. He still arrived right on time in Draco's guest bedroom, popping in only to give a surprised little shriek, dodging out of sight before Draco could set eye on him properly.

"Dobby?" Draco called. "What's wrong?"

"Draco Black?" Dobby exhaled, and climbed back out of Draco's suitcase with a sheepish look on his face. "Dobby is sorry. Dobby did not recognize Draco Black."

"What, seriously?" Draco complained, trying not to roll his eyes at the friend who would be responsible for his survival in so many senses today. "You've been seeing me, like, everyday this break. What, did you think a stranger had showed up in my room?"

"Dobby had not seen Draco Black with his hair like- like that," Dobby said, walking around Draco in a wary inspection that made Draco feel like he had somehow taken Polyjuice. "Or in those clothes. Ah, Dobby is... er..."

Dobby was looking at Draco's chosen disguise with ill-disguised fear. In his guise as Muggleborn, Draco had taken care when shopping in Munich's Maximilianstrasse and Theatinerstrasse to cultivate the image of a Muggleborn of means: it would be more plausible for a rich Muggleborn to manage a feat like entering Nurmengard, and besides, Grindelwald seemed a man likely to respond at least subconsciously better to wealth of any kind than a visible lack of it.

Draco had ended up entirely in that past winter's McQueen collection, paying an arm and a leg for runway looks that seemed sufficiently intimidating. He was shielded from the soon-to-be Austrian winds by a now-ensorcelled warm military matador coat, with gold piping over black he'd chosen because it reminded him of what he'd made for Sirius's trial. He wore nothing but plain black elsewhere, to keep it from looking over the top, and the well-tailored black trousers and shirt and sweater and boots had combined for a look that read potential Muggle underling for Grindelwald as clearly as he could render it.

It had only been as he was checking out that he took a real look at the signs and materials around the store, and saw the collection had been called Dante.

"Draco Black is looking like Dantanian Noir."

Dobby had echoed Draco's thoughts. He subsequently backpedaled, protesting how Luna had practically forced him to watch the memories, since, Oh, you're a part of this now too, Dobby, you deserve to understand what's at stake. That let Draco drift off complacently, staring at himself. He really had thought he took more after his father's side than his mother's, that he was the spitting image of his father, but if you changed his coloring, he really was a Black. Well, a Black bastard...

Would it be the worst thing in the world, to be Dantanian Noir?

If it weren't for the vow to Hecate against House Black. Against Harry's house.

"Dobby, it's fine, I'm glad you know," Draco laughed, realizing he should put Dobby out of his misery. "She was right. You deserve to." He peered down at Dobby with a sudden rush of misgiving. "Did you think I was Noir's ghost? Dobby, do you- how do you think of me, now that you know the truth about me?"

"Dobby does not care about what Draco Black's ancestors have done," Dobby answered unfalteringly. "Dobby cares about what Draco Black has done. And Draco Black has been protecting Dobby and the people Dobby cares about, and was being Dobby's first friend, and-" Dobby looked almost choked up, that Draco would even question his faith. "Draco Black was suffering, bound to Lucius Malfoy, for years, just like Dobby. But Dobby and Draco Black are both free now. We are free, and we are choosing who we want to be."

"That's right," Draco said proudly, and reached down to squeeze Dobby's hand. At the feeling of contact with that webby, sweaty palm, a rush of misgiving more striking pulsed through him: Here lies Dobby, a free elf. But this wouldn't be like Malfoy Manor, nothing like the past. Harry wouldn't have to try and fail to save anyone in this cursed place. "I don't doubt you. I doubt you less than anyone, even Luna, because-" He found he did, and then he understood where his simple faith came from. "Back in my second year, Dobby, when everyone thought I might be the Heir of Slytherin, except for my godfather, and even he wasn't speaking to me- it was you, Dobby, you were the only friend I had in the entire world. Without you, I would have been completely alone."

Dobby smiled a bit sadly. "Draco Black was terrible at chess. Dobby wishes Dobby or Ron Weasley could teach Draco Black to be a good opponent again, but Draco Black is no good to play games with anymore."

It wasn't the best thought, heading into what he had to consider an interrogation, that he was indeed superlatively bad at chess. This would be a game of chess, in which, unlike Ron's game in first year, he could only hope to not end up the knight. He had faced up to worse than what awaited him in that great mountain fortress, if Dobby could get him in. It had been so much more frightening, for him and Dobby at the end of that bleak year, after the Chamber and Riddle and the Basilisk, to face up to Father. But they had, with Harry and Ron beside them. And here they were, the two of them, without them again.

Dobby seemed to notice Draco's disquiet. "Draco Black is much better at talking to people than chess," Dobby said optimistically. "Draco Black gives wonderful speeches."

Draco squeezed Dobby's hand again. "I miss the Kingsnakes too, Dobby. Have you ever considered trying to play Quidditch?" Dobby looked bewildered, then mortified. "Come on! That could be my way of thanking you for your help here! I can give you Quidditch lessons this summer!"

With infinite dubiousness, Dobby nodded.

I can't die today. I have to convince Harry I wasn't lying to him. And now I have to give Dobby these Quidditch lessons.

So don't just throw it all away, Draco Black. Not if you don't have to.

Don't be too reckless.

There were very few who would not have called both Draco and Dobby reckless, once they appeared in the Austrian Alps. They were amongst the tallest of them, a segment of the Glockner group of mountains magically shielded from Muggle notice long before Grindelwald's birth. Draco and Dobby had both technically been to Austria before, with Draco dragged on vacation to Vienna 'to see some culture', and Dobby accompanying the family. But neither had seen anything like this. There was no wizarding equivalent of skiing. Even if there had been, no one would be doing anything but mountain-climbing or black magic at these heights.

The Pic de L'Infern was the closest Draco had encountered, but that was of lighter stone, it had not been completely covered in snow at its height, and it had been mottled with glacier lakes, not full frozen glaciers. And, one had to concede, from the many maps Karkaroff had produced for them, it seemed that Nurmengard was at least a kilometer taller than L'Infern. No wonder he'd complained less about the altitude of his new hideout than its furniture. The mountain Dobby had taken them to was lower as well, with Nurmengard's great peak and its fortress rising into view before them like storm clouds massing and marring the remainder of the pure white sky.

The best description for either, at least at this distance, seemed only to be sharp, with one side of approach to the castle merely suicidally steep, while the side closer to them was a near-vertical drop, a gap of so much bare black stone before any trees or foliage dared attempt to attach, it was less like a mountain castle and more like Xaphan, cliff-like with the sheen of obsidian off barren smooth rock too tall and almost too evil-looking to be fully encased in white. There was no snow falling, but the air had that ice-crystal chill that seemed to promise it sooner or later, and the whipping of the wind made snow seem preferable to its cuts like ice blades. Nurmengard looked like a place, though, that snow itself would hesitate to settle on...

Draco stared in not so much awe as bleakness, the very scale of their daring suddenly a bad joke, in face of the dark place he had so lackadaisically proposed they invade. He had to make a joke aloud, to shake it off.

"Well, Karkaroff said there was a path there up through the mountain," Draco jibed, "And I was mad it had been sealed off, but look at that thing. If it was too narrow to just fly up- bloody hell, can you imagine how many stairs we'd have to climb?"

How did Voldemort get here in the blue loop? Wait, did he fly or something? Merlin, what an unappetizing image in your head to die with.

Dobby didn't respond. Draco suddenly realized Dobby was no better-prepared, for this piece of wintry hell, than the addition of an adorable puffy down coat and snow boots, both patterned in turquoise-pink paisley that bore the unmistakable mark of Luna. "Focillo," Draco cast, "Focillo, Focillo," and Dobby seemed grateful, but still shivered. With a shudder, Draco took off the medallion he'd bought in Munich's wizarding street market, a tight spiral of thermal amber and garnet that promised 'a hearth within the heart' in winter. It belonged around Dobby's neck.

"Draco Black is needing that!" Dobby protested, as Draco had known he would. Draco just took his arm to be Side-Alonged again.

"Neither of us will," Draco vowed, "Soon," and stared at the sinister summit and towers across the great divide, knowing the real courage in this enterprise as Dobby's. That's what Gryffindors are. He smiled at Dobby and closed his eyes, as another pop took them where fate willed.

When Draco opened his eyes, they were either inside Nurmengard, or Dobby had found another great decaying mountain castle with some of Albus Dumbledore's poorer prose plastered across the front. He picked himself up from the stone floor of the entrance, and against his own expectations, went out towards the cold. He pushed open the great eerie curving glass doors, so he could be sure, with direct eyes, those were the words at the gates.

"For the greater good," Dobby read, and pulled him in to stop letting in the cold. Not that there weren't cracks in the ceiling, with fallen rock visible in piles around ancient faceless suits of armor, armor shaped not for humans but some serpentine-looking beasts. Their reptilian snouts seemed to raise above the crushed masses of collapsed ceiling like they were sniffing out for prey.

Draco hoped that whatever protection was suppressing Grindelwald's magic, Piertotum Locomotor wasn't one of those pesky little spells that could sneak through a loophole.

Dobby's huge marble eyes had never been wider as he took in where they had dared to go.

"Dobby has fulfilled his promise to Draco Black. This is Nurmengard."

Draco nodded, stomach twisting with not excitement but dread. Had a part of him not wanted to make it here? To make the attempt and fail, so he could console himself he'd tried? Was this terrible paralyzing fear, so unlike the past few years in times of real danger, because of unfamiliarity? Or the foreboding of this place, so barren but for the stone and those armored beasts, or of the man that awaited them somewhere higher in this fortress so little defensible against the cold? Or was it just that the truth about himself was something that he didn't actually want to know? Did some part of him- some part of Dantanian- know the truth would bring nothing but more destruction upon him, and want to protect him, every instinct in his body telling him to get out of here, even if it meant running right out over that sheer drop-

"We should be following the plan, Draco Black," Dobby said tentatively, having finished his own intimidated scanning of the area. Draco cast an instinctual Muffliato before getting out the rough floorplan Karkaroff had drawn up of Nurmengard. Karkaroff hadn't known the place with any great detail, but with consultation of various writings from Grindelwald's, visitors to Nurmengard over the years, and plans of castles with similar architecture, they had an idea where nearly everything was- other than the kitchen.

So Draco and Dobby went to the lowest empty space on the map, in search of that kitchen. It might hold the house elf they imagined there, doing his or her loneliest of tasks keeping Grindelwald alive day by day, all without likely being allowed to speak with or even see him. Better to have no contact with the elf, only Obliviating them if they popped in at an inopportune moment. Not just for security, but to keep Dobby from conceiving some humanitarian mission of liberating the help. Though if Grindelwald ended up dead somehow, and no longer in need of feeding, Draco would definitely consider it.

The look of the basements and ramped lower passages was of a grimness beyond even Draco's imagining. They were devoid of the Borgin and Burkes-style dark wizard trappings Draco had automatically imagined, dirty and dusty, and without any torches left in the rusting iron holders, the only light Draco's cautious Bluebell flame in hand. Feet were inevitably louder than they should have been here, impossible to avoid all the bones and skulls and decaying organic traces underfoot, which should rightly have only been upstairs where there were cells.

What was the most impressive was the presence of something organic remaining alive, or else the well-preserved dead- a great massed curling dark viridian-purple vine, clinging to ceilings or walls or floors of each segment of hall, and spiraling down with them. It started the thickness of Draco's two hands and quickly grew large enough around to swallow a hippogriff. Draco had to keep telling himself it wasn't a live snake or about to turn into one. Even though there were dark branch-like blemishes over parts of its surface like brittle papered-over veins.

When Draco accidentally brushed his elbow against one, his shriek was loud enough to rouse the dead. But not the snake, and with Muffliato in place, only Dobby could hear his cowardice.

He couldn't understand why he'd been scared going into the Chamber of Secrets. That place had been the bloody Ritz compared to this, and they'd known a Basilisk was what lay inside it, as its token monster. Now Draco could not decide whether the vine progressively taking up more of their walking space was a beast waiting for them to walk further into its trap, so it could constrict and devour them, or just a whimsical piece of interior decorating. He'd seen Vienna, after all. And Grindelwald was Austrian.

It proved to be functional, at least, when at last they reached a point where the vine completely blocked off the way forward. Dobby sent a burst of house elf magic out to disturb it before Draco could stop him, but the thing didn't seem to even register the touch. "Oh," Draco said suddenly, "This is what Karkaroff meant, when he said they'd blocked the mountain passage off!"

Dobby nodded in agreement. "This has been the way up and down the mountain," he said solemnly, "But magic is keeping us from going further."

"Do you think the house elf is on the other side?"

"Perhaps. This could be a barrier that allows it to transport food through, but not him or herself," Dobby said thoughtfully, then snapped his fingers and conjured a piece of taffy. Another snap of his free hand, and it disappeared. "Dobby sent that past the vines," he said brightly, "Dobby can feel, though Dobby cannot see to check." Draco mock-scowled at him, some sense of control restored by even a merely structural discovery. "We is not needing to worry, then, from the elf."

Draco dragged him back the way they'd come, before that sad look forming on his face could solidify into any ambition to help. When they ascended, they found there was at least still considerable light outside the castle. His analog watch had already told him as much, clock hand ticking normally, to around 11:15 in the morning. But it didn't feel safe to trust even simple things here. Nor was it entirely safe to ever trust time.

"So." Draco drew a heavy sigh. "Looks like we know where we're going," and jerked his thumb upwards.

"Dobby has brought this for the climb," Dobby said brightly, and produced a small broomstick from his coat pocket, which his magic made swell swiftly into Draco's Firebolt. He'd known Viktor wouldn't have time to practice with him, given his own professional commitments, so he'd left it behind at Hogwarts, but here it was. "From Hermione Granger," he said solemnly, and bequeathed it to Draco like some solemn object.

Thank fuck. Bless Dobby and Hermione for accounting for their fearsome Frankenstein's also-fearsome laziness. Draco had already been mentally debating whether it was worth the risk of Splinching himself Apparating an unknown distance, or the risk of Anti-Apparition wards kicking in and possibly turning him into red snow, to avoid what would be a colossal climb. He might have ended up on the side of just taking the risk. He wasn't what he'd used to be, in cardiovascular terms, since he stopped playing Quidditch at Hogwarts... good enough, though, to ride a broom up. If they could find the way.

Their steps took them slowly into what looked to be the real entrance hall, as if the first entrance had just been a hallway. This vast dark chamber with its vaulted ceiling had far more of its stonework and adornment intact, with graceful arches entwining in a serpentine manner up high and over every possible entrance and exit. They reminded Draco of the vine in the lower tunnels, though these looked made of something more synthesized than photosynthesized. Some of the molding on them, which was likely mysterious ancient runes if you looked closer, definitely was done in some kind of enamel or even jewelling. If Draco had been some post-Hogwarts student doing a study on Nurmengard for posterity, and had time and leisure without limit, he would have been tempted to get as close as possible and painstakingly record every marking in his notebook. But he was not here to sightsee. The only symbol of true meaning was the simple shape of the Deathly Hallows, not just visible on unburied reptilian suits of armor now, but embossed over every object in the hall: from the unlit floor candlelabras to the tapestries hanging by thin golden thread from the arches, from the display of a floors-high sculptural gathering of hundreds of chains to the massive ancient-looking stone basin at the room's center. Hallows, Hallows, Hallows. Mirrors, mirrors, mirrors.

Dobby offered to search the grounds for the other house elf, in case they could somehow come inside after all. Draco told him to be careful but agreed, mounting his broom with his heart going suddenly breakneck in anticipation for the meaning of that flight. He didn't have the strength to resist Dobby putting the pendant back around his neck. It would be a clear shot up, with that open ceiling, and staircases to hallways or rows of cells revolving around a set of open central landings. He still had to chug a fair amount of draught of peace to get himself to make the flight. Lucky he'd brought such a bucketload of the stuff, he'd had to cast a Featherlight charm on it to make the pockets of his stylish Muggle coat stop drooping.

"Be careful!" Draco called again towards Dobby's small retreating frame, and flew.

It was a last narrow staircase on foot, from the top landing to the tallest place in Nurmengard. Even flying rather than walking, Draco was rather exhausted by the time he reached it. So he checked his watch and leaned against the half-intact banister, musing absently over the comically excessive number of those armor things lining every landing on the way up, until he had his breath fully back. Then he withdrew a small compact, surveyed himself, wiped or spelled away any dirt or perspiration, and fixed his hair and clothes to perfection, before he made that last climb.

He didn't know why, but he'd pictured a bigger cell. Maybe that was Muggle influence there on him, with their penthouse apartments, and massive suites on the top floors of their hotels. It was nothing like a luxury suite. It was more like a tomb, with the bareness of the rust-gray stone mortar walls, and the narrow window that offered less of any view than a simple opportunity to torture its prisoner with even further cold. He'd taken off any vestige of humanity from himself as he looked in that mirror the last time, sent sympathy away, into a locked cell so far at the bottom of Nurmengard it could never climb this high again. Any sign of suffering represented a mere opportunity for him, in negotiation.

Not negotiation, interrogation, he told himself reflexively, but he found himself awed by the sheer asceticism of the room, there at the mountain's highest of summits. It put more strange, wrong reverence in him to see a hard straw bed without pillows, and a gray blanket so threadbare you could see the straw of the bed through it, than he would have had for plenitude. There was nothing else for the eye to gratify itself upon but a hook in the wall, with a small remnant of broken chain on it- no point chaining Grindelwald like another prisoner, when this fortress and its wards were all his cell- a bowl of half-eaten gruel, and an empty cup that must once have held water.

No wonder, then, with that bare and empty a space to live in for so many decades, these were the first words the Prisoner of Nurmengard ever spoke to Draco Black. "You are a sight for sore eyes, kaktusblüte. But before you see me, you must promise not to judge me. My circumstances are a purgatory."

Draco turned and saw an old man sat in not the furthest corner of his cell, but the one closest to the door, slightly out of eye range when first emerging from the door. He'd removed the Muffliato, and the man must have heard his footsteps on the stair, but Draco hadn't cared. He'd thought, what could Grindelwald do?

Apparently, there was something: move himself at a moment's notice to a better vantage point, so he could see the intruder before they saw him first.

"Purgatory?" Draco echoed reflexively, and was dismayed at what he saw of the man who surely must be Grindelwald, with that canny reaction, and the distant resemblance to the oldest pictures Draco had seen of the man. He tossed his braid behind his back, and Grindelwald's eyes followed the motion like a cat following a new toy, starved of stimulation. "You wouldn't say hell?"

"Why would this be hell?" Grindelwald asked, sounding genuinely curious of Draco's answer. He was not as fearful or eager for real answers about Draco's presence, as one would have expected of anyone in his situation, but this was not just anyone. He already knew some information about Draco just by looking: his apparent age, his accent, his presumed ethnicity and country of origin, thus his presumed magic school, perhaps presumed temperament or sexuality or even blood. That was fine. In seconds, the prisoner had shown Draco perhaps the most key information of all: he was Grindelwald, and Grindelwald is still Grindelwald.

"Isolation," Draco said, gesturing around the small space. Isolation did not seem to have treated Grindelwald well, although he had aged remarkably well given the circumstances. Either there was some charm keeping his bald old head and face hairless, or else he was too ancient to grow hair there, which contributed to the initial impression of ghoulishness Draco had gotten.

Filthy with bare feet in his standard prisoner's robe of faded gray, his wrinkled face had clearly once been handsome. Something in its configuration still held the impression of sharpness, even an air of command. Like Dumbledore, he was more than a century old, and yet he in this hellhole looked younger than Dumbledore. It was like the terrible death of Ariana had started aging Dumbledore from its very moment on, while Grindelwald aged like a regular person with abnormally good genes. Cleaned up, Grindelwald would still look like someone you would listen to in the Wizengamot, like someone who could even do damage if let loose, given his magic had not been wounded or atrophied by lack of use or curses or these wards. Maybe he'd still make Dumbledore's cold hard heart flutter.

Grindelwald looked to have heard, but he was ignoring the proposition, as if long, long term solitary confinement wasn't usually considered one of the cruelest punishments imaginable- even Azkaban had guards, and of course Dementors, who added some interest to the place at least- and the likes of him could never be touched by such petty miseries. "What, that part's fine?" Draco said wryly, and sat himself against the wall that faced Grindelwald. It had the merit of letting him also stare right at the door, which he had closed behind him. "'Hell is other people'?"

"Sartre," Grindelwald said not long after, frown visible in his narrowing wrinkled brow.

That answered how good his memory was, at least on some things. "I wouldn't think you'd know a Muggle play. Or is it just the quotation?"

"No Exit," Grindelwald said smoothly, and Draco called to mind Karkaroff's warnings. "Do you believe from my reputation that I hate Muggles and all things Muggle? I know it's a common misconception."

Smug bastard, acting like he was here playing court, and wasn't inwardly desperately curious about his first visitor in what had to be so many years. Draco knew people like this weren't really as tough and impenetrable as their facade made them seem. He'd gotten that letter and even made Dumbledore, however briefly, drop that superior mask. "No, I know you were amenable to some Muggle inventions. Wagner. Genocide. Patisseries that sell sahneschnitte."

Grindelwald's gaze was so uncannily alive in that worn face, rapid calculation and assessment at a level Draco could only guess- probably one he could only dream of ever matching- all taking place behind that unperturbed surface. "Do you disapprove, then?" What side are you on? Are you here to save me, kill me, or just for some adventurous sightseeing?

"Of sahneschnitte?" Draco put a finger to his mouth to pretend to consider. "I approve of every kind of tart that exists. In the literal and metaphorical sense."

"You know," Grindelwald said patiently, "Of what I speak."

"Oh, right. Wagner? I mean, as opera goes, I do tend towards the more Sturm und Drang variant, but I'm also quite partial to Mozart. Call me unoriginal, but nothing beats the ending of Don Giovanni."

Grindelwald tilted his head, to regard him a bit more personally. "You are rather a brat, aren't you?" he concluded, with amusement in his voice.

"Genocide is as genocide does," Draco said, waving a hand flippantly. "Now, I think this place is rather too dusty for my delicate sinuses. I think I'm getting thirsty." He pulled out his wand and wordlessly summoned the cup and filled it with water.

He'd given up on the idea of hiding the talon wand fairly early in his personal planning process, since he couldn't use any other, and didn't need to have not using magic as another thing to think about. And Grindelwald shouldn't be able to know just by looking what it was. Even if his gaze did stay on the wand and not the water. Once Draco had lifted the cup to his lips and emptied it, Grindelwald's eyes returned resentfully to it finally.

"Quite the brat," Grindelwald said, with less humor in his voice.

"Legilimens!" Draco cast, and drove forward with all his might to try and pierce Grindelwald's mind. Just as he feared, it was useless. It was like trying to get past that vine in the basements, it was so thoroughly blocked, not by a stone wall but something dark and unknown. He tried to look into the abyss, and the abyss tried and failed to look back into him. Grindelwald's attempts at a retaliatory piece of Legilimency were no more successful, and they were forced to both retreat. Draco dearly, dearly hoped that Legilimency was a bit of magic unique in remaining for Grindelwald, and that he had not just made the worst mistake of his life.

There went any chance of just extracting the answers he needed. An Occlumens that strong would make Veritaserum useless as well, though he had a vial of it in his pocket. He didn't know if threats of violence or torture would be very effective on Grindelwald. They certainly hadn't worked for Voldemort in the blue loop. No, it really would have to go from an interrogation, to a negotiation.

"You are," Grindelwald said with open admiration, "Quite the Occlumens for your young age. Though you are a rude young man, to drink that water before me and not offer any."

"But is this a cup," Draco said facetiously, raising it to examine it, "Worthy of the Great Gellert Grindelwald? No, I could never serve you with this, not even if it held the finest wine."

"The house elf," Grindelwald said thinly, "Never sends me enough water." His lips looked very chapped and dry from the cold. "I would drink it if you poured it on the ground."

"No, that's not worthy of you," Draco drawled.

Grindelwald looked irritated now, which was good to see. More human of him. He already seemed a more formidable man at root to Draco than Dumbledore ever had, but here, Draco had so much more of any knowledge or leverage or power all on his side. If he couldn't get what he needed out of Grindelwald regardless of that, he didn't deserve to know.

"Ah," Grindelwald sighed. "You will only give me the best, which I presume also means you will give me nothing. If I can only drink from the finest glass, then..."

His voice trailed off as Draco raised his wand and held it over the empty glass. Then, carefully, he wordlessly cast Pyritaverum. He was resolved to do everything wordlessly in front of Grindelwald, since saying spells aloud might make him seem more of a schoolchild. After only one extra casting, he had the entire cup turned to the appearance of gold. He used so many years of practicing delicate transfiguration to reshape the cup to a glass like a wine goblet, and then carved the symbol of the Deathly Hallows into it. Finally, he cast Geminio, and took a glass for himself, before offering the original to Grindelwald.

"So," Grindelwald said, not taking the glass. "You wish for me to know that you are powerful."

"So," Draco said, imitating his lofty, stiff tone. "You wish for me to know that you are thirsty."

Grindelwald started to laugh, a sound that seemed to surprise the man himself, pulling itself from him and forming his dry lips into what could almost have been mistaken for a smile. "Yes, kaktusblüte, mysterious benefactor of mine. Yes, I am thirsty."

"I'll give you water," Draco said, in a gentle but firm tone he had learned from Remus, to set an agenda that would brook no disagreement. "But not for free. I have things I want from you, and clearly, you have things you want from me. So we'll make an exchange."

"What question?" Grindelwald said, amused tilt remaining to his lips.

Draco had thought about this moment many, many times. It was here the negotiation truly began. He could have gone big with so many things, perhaps to show off privileged knowledge- things about Dumbledore or Aberforth or Ariana- perhaps to cut right at the heart of the mysteries he chased- the Hallows or even the mirrors- or perhaps lay bare where his interests most fundamentally lay, and begin by speaking the name Dantanian Noir.

"My question is," Draco said steadily, keeping their gazes locked the entire time, "Do you still believe in advocating wizarding supremacy over Muggles?"

"If I say yes," Grindelwald said wryly, though the effect was spoiled by his parched throat, "Do I still get water?"

"Of course," Draco said firmly. "I want this to be productive, Gellert- can I call you Gellert? I want this to be productive for both of us."

Grindelwald leaned back against the wall. "Only if you tell me your name. Oh, it is difficult to talk so much, when one is unaccustomed, with sandpaper in the throat."

"You can have my name," Draco said pleasantly, "Or the water, in exchange for your answer."

Grindelwald chuckled, although his eyes dropped to the water, and he greedily licked his lips. "No. No, I don't believe in advocating wizarding supremacy anymore."

Draco eyed him cautiously. "What, all this time alone has given you a chance of heart? Your dead stone heart has softened with loneliness?" he said caustically.

"You asked if I still advocated it," Grindelwald said calmly. "Not if I believe in it. That's a different question."

"Tricky bastard," Draco muttered, but Grindelwald seemed to find his pouty face more endearing than offensive. Draco conjured water for both of their glasses, and they drank.

Never had a man seemed more grateful for simple water, even as the wind cutting in through the window looked to practically freeze it on his lips. "Now. A question for a question. What do you say? Let us share information. You know about the outside world, and I know about myself. A fair trade."

Draco grinned to himself at the arrogance. There was a jauntiness in the way Grindelwald said it that made it more self-deprecation than genuinely braggadocio. "Fine, Gellert. But you have to explain both of your answers. Do you still believe in wizarding supremacy?"

Grindelwald didn't blink. "Yes. Of course. Surely a wizard of that ostentatious power of yours must have some understanding of the superiority of wizards to Muggles."

"But I'm Muggleborn," Draco said, widening his eyes innocently, and Grindelwald gave another honest-sounding laugh, setting down his goblet.

"You couldn't be more pureblooded if you had it written on your forehead."

"Along with, what, an armband with a swastika?" Draco sniped automatically, but it felt like he'd just had the floor pulled out from under him. "Wait- why would you say that?"

Grindelwald looked bemused. "You've got a posh accent, you speak German, you have aristocratic features..." He began to tick the evidence off on his dirty hands. "You were deliberately showy about knowing Muggle opera and theater, like every wizard proud of their Muggle Studies class- you spoke too casually about hell to be a Christian, you didn't hesitate to draw the Deathly Hallows... all of it is nothing much on its own, but taken together, it's a fairly clear profile. But you just told me you weren't."

Draco blinked at him, dumbfounded. "How?"

"By telling me you were," Grindelwald said neatly. "You said information wasn't free, and you wouldn't even tell me your name, but you volunteer that you're Muggleborn. Therefore, you aren't. The question is why you would conceal that."

"Fine," Draco said sulkily. "I'm a pureblood. My name is Lysander Wright. I'm a bold-faced liar. Are you happy now?"

"You shouldn't lie to me again," Grindelwald said mildly. "It would just be wasting your time. Your tells are too obvious. I'd know." With that hint of steel in his unthreatening demeanor, he suddenly reminded Draco of Dumbledore. Which happened to be the most threatening thing he could have evoked.

"Okay, Sherlock," Draco groused, and Grindelwald chuckled. Huh. That was one pop culture reference they would have in common.

"I'm sorry, kaktusblüte," Grindelwald said, with a placating tone and gesture, like he was not a prisoner but the gracious host here. "I do not mean to bully you. You are very kind to visit. Do not let an old man's temper drive you away before I help you however I can."

"Help, then," Draco said, ignoring the silver tongue at work. "Why did you say you didn't believe in advocating wizard superiority anymore?"

"Because the results were not worth the cost. Nor would they have been, even if I did upset the entire order and passing of the world."

Draco looked around them. "Aw, come on, this little old place isn't so bad. It'll be bloody quaint, once I've spruced the place up some for you."

Grindelwald gave a politely appreciative smile at the implicit promise, though he did not speak so lightly of this. "None of the results. From start to end. I was arrogant and short-sighted, and I lost everything."

Draco didn't know if he was guessing right, but it gave him a perfect opening. "Oh, you mean like when you killed Ariana Dumbledore?" Grindelwald's eyes opened wider, if not in shock but some small disquiet. "I'd like you to tell me a story, Gellert. Let's start with you killing Ariana- no need to linger on the details- and let's go on with every single thing you did from then, until you ended up in New Zealand."

"I didn't kill Ariana," Grindelwald said, and heaved a sigh. "Is that what this is? Don't tell me Albus is seeing towards his end of days, and he's hired some personable young man to drop in and charm the truth out of me. Can no one let sleeping dogs lie?"

"You know, I believe you," Draco said thoughtfully, though he could only guess based off that mild reaction. It was still more than most anyone else had to go off. "But you know who did."

"No," Grindelwald said, and his jaw tightened so much, the thought came to Draco, he knows who and doesn't want the world to know, especially Dumbledore. Since Draco doubted Grindelwald would even fully remember the existence of an Aberforth Dumbledore if pressed, that came down to Albus Dumbledore. He suspected Dumbledore was connected to this strange British pureblood, and didn't want him to know of his own guilt, maybe...

"Now," Grindelwald said briskly, "You want the story of what happened after that terrible accident? I fled. Reports were that I fled the country. I gave the impression I had, purposefully. Where did I go, then? What will you give me to tell you?"

"Not asking again," Draco said with encouraged cheerfulness, having found a weak spot, "About who killed Ariana Dumbledore?"

Grindelwald considered. "Fair enough," he said, and surprised Draco into a snort of laughter with his deadpan delivery. The man was charming, there was no denying that. "I went to Phineas Black." Everything in Draco had to push down the impulse to cry out at that name, especially with the way the talon wand flared hot in his pocket.

"Phineas Nigellus was the headmaster of Hogwarts at the time. A man whom, I suspected, not even his pet Crups could bring themselves to love. I'd had no shortage of irritation in our one previous meeting, soon after my expulsion from Durmstrang. I went to meet with him about enrolling in Hogwarts instead, and found out Durmstrang had salted the earth for me there, and most every wizarding school over the world. My reputation had proceeded me, and it wouldn't be good politically, to defy Durmstrang so strongly and openly with me. He was unctuously apologetic, but I was relieved, in a way. I hadn't liked the way the man looked at me.

"But he was the one I went to after the disaster. No one would suspect me to have stayed in Britain, I thought, and I did have one connection, who I thought I knew a way to use. I'd been right, of course. I found him in secret, and it wasn't difficult to wrap him around my finger with thinly-veiled promises of sex." Grindelwald seemed to mistake Draco's uniquely revolted look for disbelieving. "Oh, poor little kaktusblüte, it must be very hard to imagine that men could be moved to folly on my behalf like that. But I assure you, a century or so ago, I was rather devastatingly handsome."

And he said he loved Dantanian.

"Anyway, he had his own justification for asking me to stay, and giving me a place to stay where the authorities wouldn't find me. He kept saying I reminded him of someone, someone dear to him that he had lost."

Draco knew the name before Grindelwald spoke it, but he remained silent.

"That person was an old student of his, with the charmingly Wagnerian name of Dantanian Noir." He seemed to be watching Draco for his reactions, but he never paused for them, to try and pull one out artificially. "He had apparently also stayed where Phineas took me. It's called the Citadelle Xaphan. It's an island castle that House Black kept secret those days- have they let it out yet?" Draco shook his head. "He let me stay in the rooms and wear the clothes of this Dantanian boy. But he wouldn't tell me anything much about him. There was just a disgusting amount of weeping, and lamentation that he would never lay eyes upon anyone or anything again." Grindelwald smirked, voice going lilting in an impression of his teenage self, something like some immature little bitchy gay child. "Can you imagine? I was literally right there!

"I wasn't very interested in this lost love, not with all of the citadel to explore. Eventually, I coaxed out the story of Dantanian's end, and it was mildly intriguing, the business with the mad dragon, but nothing in face of the citadel. Can you imagine that, stumbling backwards into such a treasure trove for a boy like me, full of darker secrets than even the ones that had barred me from Durmstrang? I was fascinated by the place, and stringing along the old whimpering blowhard was a small price to explore it. It took some time, but I found something eventually that made me leave right away- yes, to New Zealand. It was a journal left in some half-broken cupboard in the observatory, written in too intricate a code not to be interesting, even if had the name of the lamented paramour on the inside cover.

"When I deciphered it, I knew I had to follow the ghost of Dantanian. Ever since I had learned of the Deathly Hallows, I had been waiting for destiny to come take my hand, and lead me to them. It seemed like they finally had, Death himself reaching out to extend the invitation to his superior. It might defy belief, how pompous I was back then, but yes, I thought it fate, another sign of my great destiny. I went with high hopes to the site of Dantanian's death, and was disappointed to find that no matter what digging I attempted, I could not find anything but the mad dragon's remains, and buried low in the ashes, a chest. It held Dantanian's possessions, things it seemed he meant to leave to what few friends he had." Periander had done better at that. "He must not have considered that he might commit whatever mistake he made with the dragon so badly, it would leave his last objects unable to be delivered."

Draco had gone into this with such a high opinion of himself. He hadn't reckoned on his own extreme lack of patience. "Don't play dumb," he snapped. "That's the last thing you could pull off. 'Whatever mistake he made'. You know what he did."

"I have always been curious, in truth, what led such a talented wizard to such a premature end. It always was such a regret of mine, never to have met him. He seemed someone who would provide endless entertainment, if I could have controlled him." Grindelwald regarded Draco thoughtfully. "If you are confident you have the answer, Mr. Wright, by all means. Answer one of my last nagging curiosities- if there was some opportunity here I missed- and I will tell you everything I found and everything I did because of what I found in Dantanian's box."

"How could you not have already figured it, if you saw the Pensieve memories," Draco began, and then laughed at himself. "Right, of course you didn't. You'd never have tried to make a wand out of Astaroth's remains if you did."

Grindelwald leaned forward, like for the very first time he had found Draco interesting in himself, and not just because he was the first human being he had spoken to in years. "You have seen the memories of Dantanian? The ones he left for Dorian Malfoy?"

"Yeah, and they make it obvious," Draco sighed, though he supposed the behavior of the talon wand and the coda research made it more obvious. "Seriously? I'm going to lose all respect for you, Gellert, if you really never figured this out, and you aren't just testing me. He tried to turn Astaroth into a Dementor. Duh."

It was impossible to tell, whether Grindelwald had been testing him, or just ignorant. Grindelwald likely preferred it that way. "Fascinating," was all Grindelwald said. "So I followed the trail of the memories, the one useful item I found in the box-"

"Now you're the one lying obviously," Draco said impatiently. "I've seen the memories. I know he had the mirrors. He gave one to Dorian, and one to Lamia, and there was one more, Espilce. I think it was small, and he had that in his dragon pendant, the one he used to turn the small Phineas into a Dementor." Grindelwald's face was a thing to behold then, as it shaded over with- most impossible of all things- something like fear.

"I was not lying," Grindelwald recovered without much delay. "The Mirror of Espilce was useless, I assure you. I found no immediate use for it-"

"You tried to turn someone into a Dementor, first chance you got," Draco said in a conspiratorial, utterly non-judgmental tone.

Grindelwald indulged him, leaning in to whisper, "I tried to turn someone into a Dementor the first chance I got. Oh, the embarrassment I felt then, after that whole ritual and no eclipse and no change in the farm boy but how he pissed himself in fear. I don't know if I've ever felt such a fraud. I Obliviated him, of course, but one never forgets these largest humiliations."

"I would have done the same thing," Draco said lightly, and was not sure whether or not he was lying. Harry, whatever you think of me now, I'm glad you aren't listening.

"So I assumed that possession of all the mirrors at one point was necessary for use," Grindelwald went on, "A kind of activation, and left the Mirror of Espilce alone. I would never find any use for it, but I thought I would in time. I had an errand of a sort to run first, of no consequence, but eventually, I took back up the mirror question, with how obviously tied they were to the Hallows-"

"The Elder Wand to the Mirror of Erised," Draco filled in eagerly. "The Invisibility Cloak to the Mirror of Espilce. And the Resurrection Stone to the Mirror of- Ecidyrue." Somehow, his tongue let him say that word. Maybe because it was something Grindelwald already knew. It might not have been so laissez-faire if he'd tried to finish that sentence with, you know, that big ugly silver thing I time-traveled through. "And don't bullshit me. You went to make a wand from Astaroth's heartstrings, with Gregorovitch, which is how you knew about him to steal the Elder Wand from him later. I guess you didn't have it yet."

Grindelwald cast a glance at Draco's watch. "You are remarkably well-informed, for someone who went to all the trouble to break into the fortress of Nurmengard. Ostensibly for information."

"I don't know the rest," Draco urged him. "Come on, hurry up."

Grindelwald smiled. That was one thing Draco had counted on from the first. This was a man who thrived off having an audience. "Well, as you said, he had delivered the mirrors to Dorian and Lamia Malfoy. I braved England once again, to pay the lovely young couple a visit. I forged a letter of introduction from some cousin too distant to check, and walked right into that shabby house they called a manor."

Oh, the effort then not to grit his teeth or snap at that. Was that a test too? I never know when he's testing me, or just being droll.

"The two of them would have been worth the trip in themselves. They weren't lovers, nor had they ever been, one could tell at a glance, but they were happy nonetheless. He was protective of her, well as he should be. That pesky family curse in the memories? Well, it had been advancing since then. She had lost all her hair, and there were signs her scalp might begin molting. What an entertaining freak of nature! And her bloodline had purposefully inflicted that upon themselves?"

"And Dorian Malfoy?" Draco asked impatiently, hating the twinge in his heart at the sound of that girl in distress, that girl who had felt like some melding of so many of the best qualities of Hermione, Luna, and even Millie.

"Dorian Malfoy," Grindelwald said, with audible satisfaction at the memory, "Was beautiful. No more, and no less, or so I thought." He laughed at the face Draco pulled. "We all have our vices, kaktusblüte. Admiring him was not my mistake. We had a very private dinner together- word of Lamia's condition was being kept secret as the grave, and they swore me to silence- and I had so many questions for them about their dear old friend they thought called Daniel. So many they were yawning before I was through. But I had to know what they had done with Dantanian's mirrors.

"Well, Lamia had taken Dorian's to Hogwarts, back when she worked there, and kept it in some secret room there. I intended to break in and steal it from Hogwarts, even if I had burned my bridges with Phineas Black abandoning him as I did. But I was distracted soon by the rumors of the Elder Wand, and after I had it, there were far more distractions. I was beginning to build a following- but you aren't interested in excuses for my incompetence. In any event, by the time I remembered the Mirror of Erised's place and desired to make the attempt, Albus Dumbledore had already taken up permanent residence there.

"The Mirror of Ecidyrue? That, Dorian still had. It was right in their cellar. And he could show it to me, whenever I wished, he said, and I listened, and there lies my mistake. It may have been the greatest mistake I ever made in my life, although I am not the one who suffered the most for it."

"Didn't you go right to see the mirror, and take it?" Draco asked anxiously.

"You would think," Grindelwald sighed, looking miffed at his old self. "But you see, we'd had more than a few tumblers of sherry by then, and Dorian Malfoy was- what you saw in the Pensieve could not hold a candle to what he became. He seduced me, and we made love so many times I fell asleep in his bed."

"He didn't slit your throat in your sleep?" Draco said dryly. "I take it that was his mistake."

"He could have tried," Grindelwald said placidly. "I would have woken first. But he did not attempt an assault in that bed. He merely left it. He used the time I dropped my guard to wake his wife, and they accomplished a ritual together that put the Mirror of Ecidyrue forever beyond my reach." He paused, not for dramatic effect but to shiver, and Draco summoned his blanket and began to transfigure it thicker.

"When I woke, I ransacked their cellars, but there was no finding it. Nor would there be, they said, because they had performed a spell learned from the books of Dantanian, books he'd left Lamia along with the Mirror of Erised. It was a spell of worthiness, to render the Mirror of Ecidyrue a possession of House Malfoy, and only accessible to those of that house who were worthy of it. An honor to which it turned out, Dorian was not equal, nor had he expected to be."

"There were other Malfoys," Draco said, heart in his throat. "You could have tried them."

"A cursory investigation of such," Grindelwald said dryly, "Proved that if Dorian had been unworthy, no other Malfoy was likely to come anywhere close. Not the brightest of houses, Malfoy. Their surname should have been Malhabileté." With what hung in the balance, Draco barely even noticed that potential goad. "But he was bright enough to trick me, and do it properly. I got out of him what he had done with little trouble, but only because he knew I could never use the knowledge. No matter what I did to him, demanding he retrieve the mirror for me, there was no way. He was screaming that he could never reverse what he had done, up until the very moment I cut him open for his insolence."

Draco cried out, and Grindelwald eyed him with a grandfatherly dubiousness. "Really, what is this show of morality? So blasé before, and now you grow squeamish?" No, my bloody wand is just actively trying to burn a hole in my thigh. "I had to kill him after he did that to me. No doubt he expected me to when he did it. In a way, he might have felt let down if I hadn't. We all knew the script we were to play."

"I think he might have forgiven a little deviation on your part," Draco said as facetiously as he could, but his heart wasn't in it.

"Certainly to save his wife," Grindelwald said curtly, and if Draco had thought the wand hurt against his leg before... I get it, Dantanian. I promise, we can kill him for this if you feel, like, super strongly about it, just wait until we get what we need, yeah? "The Cruciatus Curse can do strange things. I had every intention of using it over and over again on that freak until she perished. My only regret was that I had not had the forethought to leave her husband alive to watch the process. But I miscalculated yet again. Do not think too harshly of me, I was virtually an amateur. Something about all that pain and convulsion speeded her... transition, perhaps one should call it, into a bird. She was fully an Augurey before I had my rage nearly sated."

"Quite a mess you left behind you," Draco said thinly. "But I suppose no one saw you visiting that secretive house."

Grindelwald shrugged with elegance of a sort, the insouciant carelessness Draco always attempted for his own such gestures. "I made the throat-slitting look like a suicide by Dorian. I left a note for it, saying he'd been experimenting on his wife, using Unforgivables to try and force the evil out of her, and he'd turned her into this creature. So he'd killed himself of shame, naturally, and his family believed it. I heard they had wiped him and the girl from their family tree and every mention in every history book. I don't know about the Perianders. I just know they took in the Augurey. She was useful, for their little side business, assessing. Those birds can live hundreds of years if they're a Maledictus. They had a custom to name them Maledictus, which shows how little they thought of them, but they did have the virtue of changing that last us for each, and replacing it with some fitting sound from the woman's old name."

"Lamia." He killed Dorian, but how can I judge him? He didn't kill Lamia. I did.

"Yes. Maledictum. I liked that name. Now, if you don't mind, I would appreciate if you begun some room improvement."

"Not until," Draco said, tasting bile, "You tell me why you gave up on the mirror."

"Oh, that? The Elder Wand seemed good enough. In the end, but for that, the Hallows seemed like what I used them for. A symbol of power."

"You didn't want to be Master of Death?"

"I have always wished to leave a better world behind me. Not to linger overlong in it."

"How noble of you," Draco said caustically, and Grindelwald leaned forward to stare at his watch again. "What is that? Why do you keep checking the time?"

"Two hours," Grindelwald marveled. "Unless there was a trick with the water, 'Lysander Wright'." His pronunciation was exquisitely derisive on the false name. "The time limit you would have changed back has elapsed. So it's something more intricate than Polyjuice. I had feared that."

"What are you on about now?" Draco's hold on civility was fast deserting him, but Grindelwald looked nothing but mildly curious in response.

"You are not," Grindelwald said confidently, "Who you are showing." Draco thought absurdly of color contacts and hair dyes, until Grindelwald finished, "This is not your age, 'Lysander', nor is this your true body or true face. Whoever you are, it is someone else, and you merely inhabit this form." He folded his hands before him, then said with a wolfish grin, "Why don't you tell me who it is you really are, Mr. Black?"

: The Song of Orpheus

Notes:

Chapter Text

If Grindelwald wanted to know who Draco really was... well, Draco would have to figure that out himself first, before he could give any kind of real answer to the second-darkest wizard that ever lived. So far, he liked said wizard better than the first-darkest, though if he kept on being so annoyingly perceptive, that could change.

"What do you mean by that?" Draco asked, with what he thought admirable composure. "This 'isn't my body', even though I haven't taken Polyjuice? You perceive some kind of disjunction?" He tilted his hair and posed rakishly where he sat, taking refuge in what Grindelwald had called brattiness in lieu of any other option. "Is it that hard to believe that someone of the tender age of twenty could have so many talents to recommend him? Intellect, wit, the width and breadth of my magical acumen, not to mention a certain sophisticated sensuality that bewitches every eye and ear... is that where you perceive this discrepancy, between who I am and what I show?"

Grindelwald's intelligent eyes had shown humor at Draco's mock preening, but he didn't hesitate to keep delivering precise little blows. "No, kaktusblüte, in your head." Draco touched his head of now-dark hair, biting his lip and tugging on his long braid. Grindelwald laughed aloud, at what must have been a very young and dumb picture. "You are an exceptional Occlumens. Too exceptional. No training can make any wizard have the kind of walls you do- walls that make penetration not merely incredibly difficult but inherently impossible, to any intruder of any power. I felt them as you pushed at mine, and even Albus was never my equal at Legilimency. Have you ever wondered why your mental barriers are of such an unnatural strength, which I imagine require uniquely little to no effort to maintain under duress?"

Draco kept chewing on his lower lip. It's like the Langlock, I can't be allowed to give away the past. "No," he said churlishly.

"It is because a different mind lives in the head of the body before me. Something of the usual connection between a physical body, and the soul and magic of that body's owner, has been severed. Like an umbilical cord, cut after birth. I have only felt such a severance rarely before, and only so strongly in a Maledictus late in the process of her transformation."

"Lamia," Draco breathed, stomach rolling over inside. He had come to Grindelwald for answers, and so far it only felt he was piling up more confusion.

"So," Grindelwald concluded, "This is not your body. And if you have seen Dantanian's memories, surely you are aware of this body's exceptional resemblance to Dantanian. If this is not, indeed, that young man's spitting image. My memory is not what it used to be." His eyes narrowed, until a more childish glee illuminated them, once there was a pop in the air that made Draco jump back. "Ah, time for the animals to be fed!"

Draco watched with surreal wariness as a grimy old bowl full of gruel appeared. That prompted Grindelwald to spring on it with great aplomb and devour it, only half by spoon, the rest by hands and gravity. Table manners seemed one of the first things to deteriorate in long isolation. "Didn't think you were hungry," Draco said, jerking his head towards the half-eaten breakfast.

"The breakfasts are the worst," Grindelwald said through mouthfuls of food, "Nearly inedible, I only eat them if I'm truly thirsty, though they make it worse in time. But that makes me hungrier for the other meals." Draco leaned in to sniff, and quickly scooted back as far out of the scent radius as he could. There was some kind of thick fetid meaty smell mixed with an unnatural sweetness that made him threaten to gag.

"Oh, it's rancid as well," Grindelwald said contentedly, "Not fit for pigs, but I've grown accustomed to it." Draco could only imagine the taste of the breakfast, if such stoicism had not been able to similarly accept that. "Only the worst for the mass murderers, it's in the civic spirit. As I told you before, sweet boy, we all have our scripts we must follow. Now, where was I? Ah, yes. You look like Dantanian, or you are him, or at least in his body. Quite a thrill for me. I did always wish so very badly I could have met him, even if this is some poor shadow of him."

Draco's fingers stroked uncertainly over the talon wand in his pocket. "If I was a Black, though," Draco said unsteadily, "Why the fuck would I take up the face of a Black bastard as a 'disguise'?"

Grindelwald had to process a particularly large mouthful before he could answer. Draco wrinkled his nose and conjured him a napkin. Grindelwald used it and ate and talked on, full enough of life to make anyone who believed him an easy mark think twice. "Small hints, like for your pureblood status. And my deductions, like those of that Muggle detective you named. Sherlock Holmes. You've laid them out for me like delightful breadcrumbs, beautiful young ghost."

He spoke as if he would have ticked off items on his fingers, were they not occupied. Draco conjured him water to help wash the food down, only now starting to feel how very much he was in over his head.

"Why would you care so much about the Dantanian Noir story? Yes, there's the mirrors and the Hallows, but I wonder, was Dantanian's vow to Hecate truly unnoticed?" Draco's nails dug into the bend of the talon wand so hard, for a moment he feared he'd break it. "Has there been no curse wrought upon the legitimate branch of his bloodline? No consequences for that fatal impurity, in the always pure?"

Grindelwald was quite the rhetorician. He seemed to spend twice as much time as necessary saying things, if he could say them with a flourish. He was rather like Draco that way. "I wonder if there has been some blight upon House Black, and Dantanian's shadow does not loom large over that house still. I should hope so. They all got such a reprieve, what with that accident. I do believe Dantanian would have succeeded in destroying them all. And you would never have been born, to hide your vested interest in the story with some ridiculous tale of being Muggleborn. You might as well have gone by Daniel Shaw. You are lucky to have even seen Citadelle Xaphan, which you clearly knew of from your lack of reaction."

"What I hear is that you're guessing-"

"And what I hear," Grindelwald countered, "Is that you aren't denying it. Surely, even if it happens not to be true, you must concede it makes a great deal of sense-"

Draco felt a rush of real rage. "Tell me everything you know about the mirrors, now, or I will torture you, you ignorant genocidal piece of shit!"

Grindelwald's eyebrows raised, looking more tickled to have gotten out that reaction than he would have been by obsequious praise. "So genocide is not as genocide does. Very well, I have finished my midday meal. Commence the torture at your leisure." He pushed his bowl and goblet obligingly out of the way, and opened his arms invitingly.

"You won't tell me?" Draco asked, hearing his voice distressingly powerless.

"Given your mendaciousness, we should codify a more solid deal, for an auspicious exchange of information between two openly conniving parties. Would it not be easier, to have clear expectations when it comes to another dark lord?"

Draco's mouth fell open. "I- I'm not a dark lord!" It had all been posing and showboating, that dark lord in training shtick, compared to the man before him.

"And I told you before that it was pointless for you to lie to me. I can hear the lie. So. This is the deal. I do not think you will find it objectionable. I will speak to you today of the Mirror of Erised. These are not matters that can be glossed over quickly, nor will I be content to give away such treasures of knowledge without recompense of my own. For the other mirrors, you will visit me again tomorrow, and the day after-"

"Today's Sunday. And I'm busy until Thursday." Draco internally cringed at himself, though it was true. He'd be on his way tomorrow night off to Paris, and then be coming back on Wednesday. There was the second leg of Victor's tie on Tuesday night, and then celebrations if they won. He should have gone to Nurmengard earlier, but he'd thought he'd only need one visit. Bad enough he would be asking Dobby to lug him around the bloody Alps more days, let alone try and coordinate uncertain times of arrival and departure. "I could come back on Thursday and Friday. We'll see after that."

"You commit," Grindelwald said evenly, "To Thursday and Friday then? And perhaps later?" There was an eagerness in his voice Draco did not trust.

"Friday," Draco said tightly, "Is the year's first total lunar eclipse. Any special reason you want to see me then?"

"Is there a reason I should not? I assure you, any sliver of a view will not distract me, through this dismal window, in my dreary cell. Unless you fear something more nefarious, from the captive Squib centenarian. What is it you imagine the lunar eclipse will let me do to you, kaktusblüte? And how much do you overestimate me, to think I would have any means to know its precise date, after so many years without any charts?"

"You're not actually a Squib. You might- I don't know, feel it or something, like you did with my Occlumency." Draco narrowed his eyes. "That is the day we'd be discussing the Mirror of Espilce. The mirror of eclipse, according to your schedule."

"Ah." Grindelwald sounded uncannily like Dumbledore as he reflected, "What a charming coincidence." Then it was back to the more open, bleakly humorous jaded dark lord, as he leaned forward to add, "If you are even correct about the eclipse falling on that day."

"Hey!" Draco protested. "I got-" An O on my Astronomy OWL, he almost said, but he could already hear Sherlock over there's response in his head: Oh, so you're a Hogwarts sixth-year, to value OWLs so highly. A seventh-year would be thinking too much towards NEWTs by now, and any wizard past that age would reference NEWTs instead of OWLs. He didn't give himself away, but found he had little else to say. "It doesn't matter. So. Your 'deal'."

"It is a deal that you will find nowhere else in the world, kaktusblüte, and I ask for nothing in return, save you answer a few of my questions as well. I have privileged knowledge. Gleaned from Dantanian's coded journal, which I destroyed a century ago."

Just like Severus. Fucking old men and their trigger-happy Incendios. What is with everyone destroying Dantanian's things? Even his body got burned up and eaten. Sorry, wand, guess you aren't getting that back either...

"Fine," Draco said, and conjured himself a great number of pillows. Grindelwald admired them, Draco's sumptuous aristocratic default of black and gold and bronze of silk and velvet with fringed edges. Or perhaps he was more admiring the figure Draco cut lounging back on top of them.

But the pillows claimed at least some of the lust in Grindelwald's eyes, as he mused, "I don't suppose you'd see your way to leaving those in my cell on your way out tonight?"

"Depends on how I'm feeling at the time," Draco said with faux-friendly, rather demonic brightness, and drew a full-throated laugh from Grindelwald, out from deep in the diaphragm.

"Do not fear, then, young Mr. Black," Grindelwald said congenially. "I will not disappoint my generous benefactor. Only fill in your true name for me, and I will begin my unfolding of the first mirror."

Draco probably shouldn't, but he was tired trying to play mind games with someone so much more patient. "Draco Black," he admitted. "Okay? My real name is Draco Black. Now spill."

"A constellation," Grindelwald mused. "Gone more into vogue than demonological names, with House Black, I believe."

"After Dantanian, it's been all constellation-type shit," Draco said impatiently. "So? Desire? Hello?"

"Your understanding of this," Grindelwald began, falling into an almost professorial mode of seriousness, "Will depend on what you already know, of the stories. But it is here I will begin. You know the story of the three brothers, and the Hallows." Draco nodded, trying not to give away his overblown excitement, his racing heart and desperate anxiety that any moment, hellfire would rain down upon him and stop him from getting his real answers. Any second, Langlock would stop Grindelwald's tongue or close Draco's ears or the whole tower would collapse beneath them with the weight of secrets that should not be told.

"What is often left out of the story is the full story of the second brother. He begins in the tale of the Hallows a cold and arrogant man, but with a broken heart behind that sneer. The tale tells of a girl he hoped to marry, and her early death that prevented their love. But she is just a placeholder, an object of motivation, as women are so often in these unspeakably boring tales, of the hero's journey of young men and their ever-plodding Bildungsromans. She was not such, in the fuller story. Her name was Estella, and her father was a gravedigger."

Draco didn't try to hide his knowledge, when it came to just a myth. "Thanatos," he supplied.

Grindelwald smiled. "Yes," he said, with a queer silky savor in his voice over the name. "Eros and Thanatos. Inseparable and doomed. And the story of the brothers was inseparable from the three daughters of Thanatos, because as you will remember, it is Eros who created the first wand."

"The coda."

"Precisely. And the three brothers- their names were Pictor, Sculptor, and Pavo- came to the house of Eros to learn from her, how to craft such tools of magic for themselves, and to learn from the third daughter Luna, how to wield these tools. She is the first witch, and she made the first wizards. The brothers had the power to use magic, to cross the river by a conjured bridge, because Luna had given them that power. And Death was so angered, because humans had never before wielded such powers to defy death."

"But didn't Luna-" It was hard not to speak the word and picture his cousin, which put an irrational affection in him for this mythical figure. "Didn't she take from death, when she used magic to save her family from Obitus? Wouldn't the nobleman have killed some of them if they kept resisting him, to save him from stealing the first daughter?"

"Yes," Grindelwald said with still that over-happy smile, "I imagine the man would have had to kill the mother, to steal the daughter. One death. But see, unlike the brothers, when Luna took a bounty from Death, she returned one to him of equal value."

"She did it by killing Obitus," Draco reasoned out. "A death for a death?"

"You are quick, kaktusblüte," Grindelwald praised, though it had been patently obvious. "Death's magic is less like today's wand-waving, as we think of it, than ancient alchemy at its base. Chemical, even. Equal exchanges."

"What, is Death, like, some businessman trying to balance his checkbook?"

Grindelwald leaned forward, the air in the room going colder. "Would you not be aggrieved," he said with a soft menace, "If someone stole from you?"

Draco's chest clenched in something like terror, or guilt. "Fine. So the brothers knew the daughters. The second brother- Sculptor, you said- wanted to marry the second daughter?"

"Yes. It's not clear how Estella died, although there are references in different places to different plagues. Dantanian believed those were metaphors, and it was all part of Obitus's cruelty. That the nobleman had first become enamored of the local peasant girl Estella, and sought to couple with Estella before he ever did her sister Sola. He had killed her for resisting him, and made her body disappear, but his lady wife knew, and that is why she would not let their stillborn child be buried on his family's land. And Obitus killed Thanatos not just for refusing to exhume the boy, but for his daughter's resistance to her 'rightful lord'."

"I really wish you hadn't burned those damn notebooks."

Grindelwald laughed in what seemed sheer pleasure. Mystic rigmarole had him happy as a pig in shit. "So, Dantanian believed that the brothers had known the gravedigger's family before Luna ever became a witch. That Estella had refused Obitus, even once he offered to put aside his pregnant wife and wed her properly, because she had been engaged to her childhood friend, Sculptor. And so when Estella disappeared, Sculptor grew bitter because he believed his beloved had fled sooner than marry him.

"It was only once Obitus came to claim Sola, and made wild statements about all of the girls on his lands belonging to him, that Estella's sisters suspected him in Estella's death. So once Obitus was dead, Sola summoned Sculptor, who brought his siblings with him. Eros made the other four young people codas, and Luna taught them to use them, to help her find the truth about Estella's death.

"Soon, the five watched the burial of Obitus, thought stricken dead by some curse from God above for his iniquities. After the funeral was done and the sun was down, they intruded in the dust. Before the sun rose, their new magic led them to Estella's slain body, buried in the grave meant for the lord's son. So they took her to Eros, and buried her together in the way her father the gravedigger had once buried so many, in the graveyard with her ancestors, where the lord's son still lay as well.

"The brothers lingered to learn more of magic from Luna. The impetuous and gallant first brother Pictor fell in love, with the bright beauty Sola, who had so boldly summoned them. He asked for her hand in marriage, she accepted, and the wedding was set to be held in Eros's village. Sculptor had declared he would never love other than Estella, and Pavo the Hundred-Eyed had declared he never meant to wed, however much Luna would watch him, when she did not think she could be seen." Grindelwald's smirk had a world of implications in it, a brief human intrusion into the near-biblical tone. "So the brothers returned to their own village, where all their kin were long dead, to retrieve their mother's wedding ring and all her trousseau for Sola. Except it was the time of year where the river between their villages was highest, and the banks most flooded, and it is there we find the brothers acting in defiance of death."

"It's like ancient Greek myths, in a way." Draco was feeling an insidious comfort in Grindelwald's company beginning, now that he had told the man his real name. "Arachne and Athena, you know that story? Arachne is those brothers and sisters. They dared to live in defiance of the powerful nobles of the land and the natural social order. The force of nature too. And their audacity- of course- brought destruction down upon them."

"The poor girl who challenged the goddess to a spinning contest, and had the misfortune to win. Yes. So in the basic myth of the Hallows, Pictor quickly uses the Elder Wand to slay a rival, and brags about it to all and sundry, resulting in his speedy death. But in truth, the brothers only separated after the wedding, and some other tasks. Pictor married Sola with the Elder Wand in his pocket. But he was driven to violence when a man rose in objection of their marriage- another peasant, but one long-enamored of Sola, who had once thought her his own. Though Sola pleaded for him to forgive, Pictor felt himself humiliated, and challenged the man to a duel on that very wedding night. She could only prevail on Pictor to wait a bit more and set the duel for the next month, after their honeymoon.

"Pictor claimed he was at no risk, with his wand invincible. But Sola went to her sister, who studied the Elder Wand, and Luna found it incomplete. She claimed it was not invincible, because there was a half of it missing. And no, there is no clear understanding, what she might have meant! Women do not tend to be called Luna who are overly open and clear about things," Grindelwald said dryly, at Draco's look of curiosity. Fair enough. Poor Neville. "At Luna's advice, Sola spent the month devising an object that would complete the work that Death had deliberately left half-undone. Sola is the one who crafted and entirely constructed the Mirror of Erised, and bound it to the Elder Wand."

"Why?" Draco breathed, mind reeling. "Why would the Mirror of Erised make the Elder Wand complete?"

"Because at its core, the Elder Wand is an instrument of omnipotence, for a child. The power to defeat anyone- an elder branch coda filled with the uncanny blood of Death himself, never before let into the world, whose spilling gave birth to Thestrals, changing the later legend to a regular wand with a core of Thestral feathers. It is the instrument of a sadist, a madman, a living paradox-"

"And it's not invincible. Because Dumbledore beat you."

"Indeed. And what use is it to be able to win any duel, when that turns all of life into a duel, where the wielder of the wand must be ready at any moment to fight at all strength, to make his invincible weapon of use? Any man can be killed in his sleep, before he is given the chance to wake up for a fair duel. Any man can be robbed before he can duel. Any man can duel, without his full heart in the fight, and make the wand's power weak when he will not wield it properly. No, the Elder Wand might more aptly be named after its fellow Hallow, not a cloak of invisibility, but one of invincibility, a cloak that can be taken on and off. Because when you take off an invisibility cloak, any eye can see you."

"So... desire," Draco tried. "The Mirror of Erised shows what your heart desires most. It can give real invincibility if that's what you want, and that's why it makes the Elder Wand perfect?"

"No, no," Grindelwald laughed, swatting a hand playfully through the air, as if all of this was child's play, purely intuitive. "There is a Muggle term- see, I am well-versed in the works of those such as Freud, whatever you think of my believes on Muggles- known as omnipotence of wishing." Draco felt a chill up his spine, and drew his knees in closer to his chest. The pillows were beginning to no longer feel soft enough underneath him, as his right calf from long sitting started to go numb. "Yes, the Mirror of Erised 'shows' desire in a mere image, for those who do not own the Elder Wand. But for its owner... it can do more. Far, far more."

"Like put a Philosopher's Stone inside?" Draco blurted, and felt exceedingly stupid after.

"What?" Grindelwald looked thrown, until Draco explained the story of Flamel's resolution to die and Voldemort's pursuit of the stone. Grindelwald had known of Voldemort, Dumbledore's opposition to him, and the circumstances of Voldemort's defeat and the Boy Who Lived, though his knowledge seemed to have been cut off well before he could get much further than that, to, say, Voldemort's return. He looked more animated than ever, at the chronicle of Dumbledore's ownership of the Mirror of Erised, his unorthodox use of it, and the way it had worked in his favor with the pure heart of the Boy Who Lived.

"He was testing him," Grindelwald surmised. "He wanted to see if he was worthy of it, and whether he really was enough of a paragon of heroic virtue to live up to that exalted title. These tests of worthiness do grind my gears, to parrot a more modern expression. But that is very much like Albus. I would have thought him less of an idealist in his elder years. Or at least I would have hoped."

Draco tried not to let his face betray any of his thoughts, about how cold-blooded an 'idealist' Dumbledore really was. "Or," Draco said thinly, "He thought it a good way to test the boy's use."

"Not a fan of Albus?" Grindelwald actually scooted forward, to eye Draco in shameless assessment. "You would have attended Hogwarts with him present, unless you are truly as old as Dantanian Noir or in that range. How well do you know Albus? Do you believe he has plans with this Potter boy? Do you disapprove?"

"I think there's always several reasons Dumbledore does anything, though he'll only give one, and only half the time will it be true. And that though he may face setbacks, like you," he gestured towards Grindelwald, with a curtness he rather meant to be insulting, "That man will always get his way in the end."

"As if he had stepped through the Mirror of Erised," Grindelwald mused facetiously, "And we all live here in his chosen world."

"Through?"

"The Mirror of Erised is a portal," Grindelwald explained. Draco's heart was ready to rebel and burst his chest. Sparks of fitful fuzziness sputtered, not just at his sleeping leg, but static all through his limbs, tips of fingers and toes fizzing, asking, Are all the mirrors portals? Are all the mirrors portals?

"Legend holds it that the holder of the Elder Wand can walk through into the image of his utmost desire and reside in a world where it is fulfilled. Hence the promise of invincibility. He would live in a realm of pure desire, where every wish was reality."

"There are stories," Draco said cautiously, "Of men whittling away to death, staring at the mirror in longing-"

"Men," Grindelwald finished, "Whose minds may have crossed the threshold, never to return. It is a psychological world, not a true one. Sola, perhaps, was the least skilled of her sisters. And Dantanian thought that when she showed Pictor the mirror she had made him, he rejected it angrily, because he did not like the desire it showed him. He believed it faulty. He went off to his duel, and died not long after, and never got to properly use the mirror."

"What would it have showed him?"

"Dantanian didn't know, but whatever it was, it's no surprise. Few adults ever look into that thing and see what they think they want to see, or else what they think they should want to see."

I don't understand anything. I don't understand a thing. I'm so completely at sea. I'm in so far over my head. And I'm so, so cold.

"I've never seen the mirror," Grindelwald went on, "And it's not clear, how omnipotence is implemented, but I'd imagine some form of portal use is possible, at least theoretically, for anyone connected to the Hallows, or even just the other mirrors, either owning now or just having once owned. Perhaps those trapped in their own dying bodies misused it, or they were those without the Elder Wand- or perhaps they were. Maybe that is the limit of desire, even to the highest and most evil of magicks- the limit being the mind. In any event, the fact that Albus could store something in the Mirror of Erised, and have it only react to desire- that confirms every theory I have had, so thank you for that. Within the threshold of a portal, I'd imagine..."

Draco's mind was a whirling and yet numb thing, exhausted from all the information being pushed into it, from the sheer enormity of what he was taking on, a world Grindelwald seemed to find some light entertainment to pass the time. No one will live or die based on his grasp of this bloody material. Draco was almost grateful when he saw the gold of sunset beginning behind the ledge of the narrow window, and had to make his apologies.

"You will return tomorrow," Grindelwald prompted. "To hear of the Mirror of Ecidyrue. And you'll leave the cushions."

"Yes," Draco echoed mechanically. "To hear of the Mirror of Ecidyrue. And I'll leave the cushions."

Grindelwald looked thoughtful. "I don't mean to be greedy, but since you'll be out and about in the world, perhaps you could bring us some... choicer comestibles."

Dobby was less put-out than Draco had feared, to hear Draco's ambition to return in a few days. "Dobby has been thinking," he said shiftily, "That it might be useful if Dobby made a map of the castle." He held up Karkaroff's one drawn from conjecture and memory, already with some of Dobby's corrections. "Dobby has been being useful fixing it!"

Gryffindor elf. "Far be it from me to disappoint your ambitions."

Dobby took them out of Nurmengard, then out of the Alps, and back into Munich, where he left Draco within the heart of the university library. Draco emerged to find Viktor waiting to walk him home with no suspicion in his dark-eyed gaze, only anxiety about the coming fixture, and a quickly-growing crowd of onlookers and well-wishers, hoping for autographs from their sporting hero.

Viktor seemed preoccupied enough by the weight of this duty that he noticed nothing amiss with Draco. Nor did he at dinner, however shaken Draco was, from having dueled wits with Grindelwald all day, and then right to eating dinner intensely analyzing the European Quidditch Cup over lean chicken and asparagus.

Viktor did pick up, though, on a certain weakness in Draco, once he asked about Harry, and Draco was too mentally exhausted to equivocate. He just heaved a long sigh and stared at the tablecloth.

"Is your relationship not going vell?" Viktor asked sympathetically, giving Draco one of those broad-palmed shoulder pats that felt less like comfort than a rather fraternal assault.

"I don't know if is." Draco moved the remaining asparagus around his plate. When he realized he had formed the triangle, central line, and part of the circle of the Deathly Hallows, he hurriedly pushed it all about randomly and stopped. "He put us 'on a break' or whatever- said he needed some space- and I think he's going to break up with me after break. He's spending Easter with our adopted parents. They'll probably tell him to dump me. And they'll probably be right."

It might be cruel of Draco, to go on about his romantic troubles when Viktor had historically far worse luck. But Viktor just looked grateful to be pulled out of his own apocalyptic musings regarding Parisian Beaters. "Vy vould they be right? Harry is nice, but he is lucky to have you! Vat vould make him not like you anymore?"

Sweet of Viktor to look so baffled, but then again, this was the most time they'd spent together since fourth year. He wasn't exactly caught up on the person Draco had become since then. Draco hadn't referenced the murder of Cantankerous Nott in any of his letters, and he was still trying to covertly figure out whether Viktor knew about that or not. "Well, for starters, I'm a compulsive liar." Viktor repeated the phrase blankly. "Pathological liar?" Draco tried, then wracked his brain. "Erzlügner, I guess." It was close enough.

Viktor eyed him thoughtfully. "Like ven you and Hermione vere making that secret potion, for your uncle Remus?"

Yeah, Viktor really had known a much, much more benign version of Draco, than the one that sat at his table with him now, under his roof, eating his food, pretending he hadn't just hung out with the man who murdered several of Viktor's not-too-distant ancestors.

"Yeah, stuff like that," Draco sighed, "And worse," and put down his fork. His picking and playing at his food was beginning to reach Grindelwald levels of table manners.

"Vy must you lie to Harry Potter so much?" Viktor asked thoughtfully, and Draco squinted at him.

Langlock for a start. Except Harry was right, that Draco confided more in everyone but him. "I just... he thinks I'm an angel, Viktor. An actual angel.I've seen inside his head when I was teaching him Occlumency. He just has this image of me, and..."

"Draco. Harry is not as clever as you, but he is not blind. He might think you look like an angel. But if he has been your boyfriend for more than a year, then he must have learned by now. You are no more an angel than Voldemort."

Draco spat out his coffee all over his food, surpassing Grindelwald in poor manners as he laughed helplessly. The decaffeinated brew of finest Ethiopian dark beans sprayed up into his nose as well as onto their surroundings. "Bah!" Draco sputtered, wiping at his face. "Oh, Merlin, Viktor! You made me..." Viktor was laughing too, a heartening sound from someone usually so hunch-shouldered and shadowed. "And you said the name! I didn't think you did that!"

"Vell," Viktor said reasonably, "It vas necessary to fully make my point."

The Parc de Château was not, strictly speaking, in Paris, but just outside it, in a town that had looked quaint and welcoming during the day. The spring was well on its way here, in brilliant contrast to the brutal chill of Nurmengard, where April seemed like forever the heart of winter. The stadium's setting inside Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye was also the most awe-inspiring sports arena Draco had ever seen, especially in person- that was, except for Highbury. Draco had to keep his allegiances straight. But even he had to admit that the famed Parc de Château, with its sixty thousand seats all filled, made the humble Murmeltierstadion look like such a dump, Muggles with garbage trucks would be liable to arrive any minute with more trash for the landfill.

Draco arrived there on the team bus with Viktor, which proved a mistake. For the occasion of a European quarterfinal, the Ministère des Affaires Magiques seemed to have gotten overexcited and gone overboard- as if they didn't have these, like, every two or three years for the Panthers- and closed off the entirety of the Saint-Germain-en-Laye area to Muggles, with visual as well as physical blocking and masking, and many officials manning borders with great aplomb. That was, except for during the arrival of the team bus of the Murmeltiere, which received the traditional bus welcome from the Parisian ultras, the so-called enfer violet. The officials and policeman joined in as devils.

Draco had expected the show to involve wizarding flares and fireworks, yes. But he didn't appreciate the number of them that seemed customizable ones imported special from Weasley's Wizarding Whizzes. Especially a persistent magenta one that wrote Pierre le Victor, Viktor le masturbateur over and over across the sky. Pierre Ginaud was the Panthers' world-renowned Seeker, who had been trash-talking Viktor all over the papers in the run-up to the first as well as second leg. Once Viktor had beaten Ginaud to the Snitch once, it had gotten personal. In a much less comical way than the Weasley fireworks.

There were chants of Pierre le Victor, Viktor le masturbateur as their bus neared masses of young, mostly all-male supporters. The ultras were in their distinctive long jackets, the Muggle French flag with an added horizontal stripe of purple, and held their flares high, of the Panthers' blue and purple. Many of those flares soon hit the bus, with some light explosive spells just to be hospitable. As did many bottles of Butterbeer and stronger substances, and larger indeterminate objects made of glass. The barrage of smashing had some of the youth players in the squad trying to hide under one of the seats. Draco called out to scold them, though even he ducked instinctively when someone threw their bicycle against the front windshield.

"They have hung me in effigy," Viktor complained morosely, as they finally made it into the basement entrance of the Parc de Château beneath a live-size doll of Viktor, dangling off a violet rope by the neck. "Vell, they do that every time I play here, but still." Draco caught an eerie flash of the caricatured scowl of Viktor outside, beside a scowling Viktor inside, from purple fireworks above before they all plunged into shadow.

Draco was thus thrown into a European quarterfinal, with more access than he could have bought. Viktor dragged him around like a security blanket, before finally letting him go off and find his seat. Viktor insisted he take one near the president of the Murmeltiere. Yeah, it had been a good idea by Ron, to camouflage him. He was there before, though, to listen as Viktor delivered the least inspiring pre-match talk imaginable, dwelling morbidly on their many comparative shortcomings against the Panthers, first in experience and then much more. Or it seemed so, from what Draco could catch of the German. Everything sounded drearier in German.

"Vell?" Viktor asked, adjusting his captain's armband over his brilliant crimson robe, while the other players clumped back into little clusters of sinners awaiting the apocalypse. "Vat did you think?"

"Er. Very inspiring."

Viktor frowned darkly. "You say you are Erzlügner. But you are not very good at it."

Draco shrugged. "I mean, you were better than the manager." It was true. The manager had gone on about the new tactical system, which half of the Murmeltiere patently did not understand, and then delivered so many platitudes about the victory of the underdog against all odds and the power of spirit and self-belief, Draco could have hurled over the Firebolt rack. "I can see why you went realistic, after that we-can-do-it positivistic dreck. But I, er, just hope you didn't swing the pendulum too far the other way."

"Vat vould you have told them?"

Draco closed his eyes, imagining the Kingsnakes in this position, about to take on Paris- because in truth, the gap between Kingsnakes and Groundhogs was likely less than the one between Groundhogs and Panthers. He imagined Millie's sharp-eyed impatience, wanting to believe behind her feigned full cynicism, Vince and Greg competing to hide behind each other and making the other guffaw nervously, Blaise's showy arrogant overconfidence making Pansy whimper but giggle, Astoria staring fixedly at a small photograph of her sister from her pocket- and Theo, yes, Theo, Theo watching him with those brilliant deep blue eyes that held all the unwarranted faith in the world. Because they had- well, they had used to.

"I would tell them that they just have to do their part, and keep the deficit below 200 before the Snitch is caught. That the Snitch can get caught anytime, and a group of charmed Nifflers riding Hippogriffs could keep even the Panthers out for long enough, if the Snitch gets caught at the right time. Because you are going to catch the Snitch, Viktor- not if, when, and when you do, if they've only let Paris put in 19 more past them than they've put in, their Seeker is going to fuck these little prissy-faced snot-nosed frog-eating French snots up the arse so hard for them, they'll be shitting out the Marseillaise on their way out of the Cup. Ja?"

Viktor blinked at him. "I vish you could give the speech."

"Go on," Draco said with a shrug. "Try it out. What do you have to lose?"

"Um," Viktor called in his quick fluent German, "Hello? Attention!" They quieted, looking back to their Seeker with their young, mainly German faces owl-eyed with fear. "I just have one more thing to say. It is possible we will lose, and possible we will win. I am not as sure we will win as our manager." There was derisive laughter, seemingly at their manager's expense, that Viktor didn't look to have expected. But soon, he plowed on. "But I just wanted to let you all know, there is a better chance we win than you might think. Because I am going to catch the Snitch. So your job is just to keep the deficit below 200."

They did not seem used to this level of confidence from him. "How can you be so sure?" the Keeper Waldsmidt called. "Pierre Ginaud is the best Seeker in the world! Yeah, maybe you beat him to the Snitch once, but how are you so sure you can do it twice-"

Draco's ire raised. "No, you whiners, it's Viktor! Viktor Krum!" he exclaimed, in his rough but eloquent German, most skillful in it when he was angry. "So get behind your captain!"

That didn't get the reaction he'd hoped. "Oh," one of the youth players said. "Krum's just confident now because his girlfriend got him all pumped up."

"Girlfriend?" Waldsmidt said blankly. "Draco's a guy." He peered over at him. "I mean, I think."

The youth player looked confused on an existential level. "Then why does he have such long hair?"

It may have been at Draco's expense. But the laughter then still seemed to change something in the air.

"I have such long hair," Draco declared- Because I tried and failed to disguise myself to Gellert Grindelwald- "Because I don't give a fuck what anyone thinks of me!" Blaise was in his head saying, Right, that's why you curse the tongues of anyone who talks shit about you, but he pushed that aside. "You all shouldn't either! Yeah, all those people out there at the bus, they think you're losers. Maybe the pundits and prognosticators all think you're losers. Maybe your own supporters think you're losers!"

"Uh, Draco..." Viktor tried, and Draco shook off his arm.

"Maybe I think you're a sorry bunch of losers too! But you know who doesn't think you're losers? Viktor! Viktor thinks you're more than that, Viktor's staked his career on that! You can be losers on the night because of what he did for you in Munich! Just don't be big enough losers to wreck the aggregate, and you can pay Viktor back for that belief! Because you know what's worse than a loser? A coward who gives up before it's even begun! Even with a cushion in place for their sorry arses! So what's it gonna be? Are you gonna just be losers, or are you gonna be cowards too? What? Are you gonna be fucking cowards?"

There was a long, uncomfortable silence, as the echo of Draco's shouting faded in the small away dressing room. And then one of the Chasers leaped up, a Muller with a broad grinning face that looked like he'd been waiting for his time, and it was now. "No!" he yelled. "We're not! We're not going to be fucking cowards!"

"No!" yelled the other players, rising to their feet with him. "No! We're not going to be fucking cowards!"

"240 to 280," Hermione sighed fitfully, and Draco pressed the landline tighter to his ear to hear her. "Oh, your team really cut it close, didn't you?"

"They did," Draco groaned. "I swear, Striker, when I saw Viktor come up from that dive with the Snitch in his hand, half his teeth out from hitting the hoop- here he is! Viktor! Viktor, say hi to Hermione!"

Viktor had his teeth newly restored and a jubilant air with them, double-fisting what passed for beer steins in France. That name, though, made it fall away, and Draco wave a tipsy fist at him. "Come on, I know she's your ex-girlfriend, but she was your friend too, wasn't she? She listened on radio with her family! Come on, let them congratulate you- her parents too, they're Muggles! They love football!"

Draco sat back and let Viktor talk to the Grangers, breathing in the smoky air, the red-hot atmosphere, the Euro pop and dance blaring so loud his eardrums throbbed along with the bass. He let his mind drift. He could see the Parisian streets outside the curtains of the club, dark and shining reflective with the rain which had graciously waited until Viktor's victory to fall. He stared at the stretch of the pure white and yellow lights, wondering about nothing in particular, just wondering.

Eventually, Viktor got off the phone, with stories of Mr. Granger's confusion between Seekers and football ball-boys, and Draco joined him in another round. Then they were called over for an umpteenth round of the revised Panthers chant, in their deliciously clunky-accented French: Viktor le Victor! Pierre le gran fraudeur! Viktor le Victor! Pierre le gran tricheur! And on and on it went, monotonous but a thrill every time...

Draco yelled it out with the same enthusiasm as the rest, players and friends and family, as the night went into the morning, thinking all the while: I wish Harry could have been here. He would have loved tonight.

And remembering the signs of green and silver, on the day he would never forget- on the sign he would never forget- the Gordian Nott.

Theo would have loved this too, before I...

Theo would have loved this too.

"The Mirror of Ecidyrue," Grindelwald began, "Was said to be the last created of the- mmm, sorry, this really is a delicious cut of beef. In case I ever escape, you have to give me the name of the restaurant that makes such delicious sauerbraten."

"It's sweet of you, to try and find out my location that way," Draco said dryly, "But no thanks. Do you think I transferred it from the restaurant wrapping for no reason?"

Grindelwald peered up from his rather fancier plate of today, his beef all mixed in with the sauerkraut in a way that made Draco cringe, but he looked deliriously happy with the way it tasted like that. Draco tried a bit together as well, and nearly spat it out. He'd forgotten how much he bloody hated authentic sauerkraut. "I do know now," Grindelwald intoned mysteriously, "That you got it from a restaurant."

"Come off it," Draco snorted. "That's a weak point to try and score off me and you know it. You could have gleaned that I've had some recent proximity to civilization, just by the impeccable state of my hair." He'd taken pains to dress nicely again that Thursday, so he remained a sight Grindelwald would appreciate. And today might be the most important day of his life. He owed it to himself too, to at least look like he knew what he was doing.

Grindelwald got a good laugh from that before he got back on topic, about the Mirror of Ecidyrue as promised. Draco's ears were primed, even as he ate with all the casualness he could muster, as if Espilce was the one he cared about, per Dantanian, and the other two just had to be got through first. Any moment, Grindelwald might let slip one nugget, one parcel of information, one single word or turn or phrase that would explain what Draco had researched so much in first year and never managed to answer: why the Mirror of Ecidyrue had taken him into his own past.

"Estella had always loved the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Or maybe it was Sculptor, but the legend loomed large over the two of them. I reckon Sculptor thought himself Orpheus, without even the trouble of a song, when Death gave him the Resurrection Stone. And the Stone did bring Estella back to him, seemingly whole. But of course, she was not whole, because the Resurrection Stone is not like the Philosopher's Stone: as much as it gives, it takes back. Estella gave herself back to Death soon enough. Most think Sculptor soon followed her.

"He did follow her in a way, just as Orpheus descended to the gates of hell to call for his stolen bride. But where he followed her was to her old self- to his old self." Grindelwald gave a smug look, before delivering what he seemed to think a prospective hammer blow. "To the past. See, incredible as it is, this tale of overreaching humans includes time travel too." Draco couldn't bring himself to feign surprise, too impatient to hear the rest. They were silent, Grindelwald finished his plate, Draco conjured him another napkin, and then they got back to business.

"Sculptor confessed to Luna his intention to rejoin Estella in death. But Luna stopped him. See, Sola had always maintained that her husband would have lived, should he have let himself explore the secrets of the Mirror of Erised, and make the Elder Wand complete with it. And Luna had already had ideas about a mirror of her own. But she was willing to do- what is the expression in English that I heard a visitor utilize once? 'Double duty'. You must use such idioms as well around me, kaktusblüte. I find such vernacular charming- no, I promise, no more digressions. Luna was willing to do double duty.

"She remembered when the three of them faced Eros's grief over their Thanatos's death, and Estella's suggestion Eros travel into the past to see Thanatos again. So she proposed that the Resurrection Stone was not all that Death had said it was, like the Elder Wand had not been, like she already believed of the invisibility cloak. A Hallow was only a half-completion of their requests, but she could finish them with the other half- the easier half to make, a duplication of the Hallow with its own reflection. A phantom half like the dark side of the moon.

"So Luna made the Mirror of Ecidyrue for Sculptor, named after Eurydice. Like Sola had with the first mirror, she inscribed words for its use of guidance and warning. And Sculptor went before the mirror, but it would not work for him, no matter what he did. So he grew dark again, and called Luna a fraud. But she told him she could do no better with his fables of Orpheus and Eurydice than a trade, and if he was not truly willing to make it, the mirror would be as useless as if he did not hold the Resurrection Stone."

"A trade?" Draco felt at the precipice of something fatal. He Vanished their plates and napkins, so the unveiling of fatal destiny would not take place over sauerkraut.

"Orpheus had a fundamental flaw, and so did Sculptor. These sensitive young men believed they loved these women more than themselves, more than life itself. But in their hearts, what they wanted back was not her, but the two of them together again. A life with her, not with her alive and him dead. And there was no space within the implacable will of Death for such a trade.

"Orpheus, I think, was offered a bargain in hell by Hades, another name for Death- a bargain Orpheus refused. He was arrogant and thought he did not need to trade his own life to recover Eurydice. So Death tricked him to punish his arrogance, and sent what he thought was Eurydice back with him, cautioning him not to look back. Because when he looked back, he did not see Eurydice after all. And some think looking back like Lot's wife is the sin he made, the sin that lost his love with a lack of faith. But it was never Eurydice behind him, echoing his steps on the winding windy way up out of hell."

"What was behind him?" Draco was staring at the talon wand in his own lap, fixed on the bend as if that was the precise location Dantanian lived. As if Dantanian could tell him differently than what Grindelwald was surely about to tell him. As if Dantanian could shield Draco from what he should have known already.

"A shade," Grindelwald answered enigmatically, "Or a ghost, or a shadow, or a daughter of Death itself, the tales vary. I prefer the one that explains that follower of his as Eurydice's body, given back with the soul left behind. When parted with a violent fissure, the body without soul or magic would quickly wither, and become the dark hideous thing called the world's first Dementor. Hence why Dementors hunger for souls. I believe they are seeking their own soul, one out of so many, without the ability to distinguish between human shells. Only hunger, that hopes one day to be filled with a soul that will restore all it has lost. It is like the same prelapsarian fantasy of Orpheus, then- that fantasy of so many religions and politics, perhaps even the fantasy I held, desiring an end to the Statute of Secrecy. But that dream is all that was left to Orpheus and his soulless Dementor, when he was too selfish to sacrifice himself and make the true Orphean Bargain."

"The Orphean Bargain?"

"What Luna had written into the mirror, and named for him. The only deal Death would accept. 'Only one may climb back out of hell: Eurydice.' It means, only one of Orpheus and Eurydice can ever end up alive. There must be the will in Orpheus for it to be Eurydice, at the time he enters the mirror at least. If the would-be Orpheus wishes to live his old days again, he must be willing to die in Eurydice's place, though his heart may change before the time comes. The Mirror of Ecidyrue will only come to life, and begin the Song of Orpheus, for he or she with that true conviction in their heart." Grindelwald peered at Draco with impish humor in his wrinkled eyes and brow. "Needless to say, very few if any have likely approached the mirror with such genuine sentiments. Dantanian believed that his namesake, the founder of the citadel, made this bargain, entering the mirror and going off to die for some Eurydice of his, but then chose in the end to live rather than 'stay in hell'. Hence his isolation and strangeness, hence his dark experiments- and most of all, hence his writings' unusual mysteriousness and bitterness towards the Mirror of Ecidyrue."

"So... 'only one may climb out of hell'..." Draco felt about to throw up on the stone of the cell, or burst into tears, or else into laughter. Laughter was the closest, threatening to bubble up out of his throat independent of himself and never, ever stop. "It means that only the time traveler, or the one they went back to save, can live. But couldn't the- the Orpheus, by going back in time and reliving everything, change more than just that one life or death, of their Eurydice? Couldn't they, with foreknowledge, protect or kill others?"

"Trades," Grindelwald gave a dismissive shrug. "The calculus of Death. A life for a life. If Orpheus wished to save others, then he would have to take other lives in return. Dantanian wrote... I think he wrote, 'with his own hand', but there is no telling if it is that drastic. Dantanian could be so infernally dramatic."

"Look who's talking," Draco said, the most mechanical little jibe he had ever delivered.

"We do," Grindelwald agreed with a sweeping gesture, "Both find ourselves in dramatic company."

"Then- what's the problem? Couldn't he kill someone else for Eurydice?"

"That's not the deal, sadly," Grindelwald said flippantly, and made a face of faux-sorrow. "Alas, poor Orpheus, unable to murder his way out of this quandary! For any other person on the planet, yes, he could trade a life for a life. But for the Orphean Bargain, which bought him passage back in time, only the original deal will do. Orpheus for Eurydice, or else Eurydice will die again all the same, at the same date and time she died before."

The Battle of Hogwarts.

Severus.

"Orpheus or Eurydice," Draco echoed, to be sure with that last dying bit of hope he had not misheard. "Orpheus or Eurydice."

"Yes," Grindelwald said patiently. "Orpheus or Eurydice. I am quite sure. There is no other trade."

Draco Black or Severus Snape.

Me or Severus.

Only one may climb back out of hell.

"But of course," Grindelwald finished, "There is one comfort for Orpheus."

Draco's head shot back up. "What?" he demanded feverishly. "What?"

"That the decision remains, in the end, Orpheus's own choice."

: Blutmond

Notes:

Chapter Text

"So, the Mirror of Espilce," said Grindelwald, with poppy seeds between his teeth. He licked them out leisurely as he reclined back on his vast pile of gold and bronze cushions. He seemed to be enjoying his reheated breakfast of mohnzelten with Kaisermelange, from the finest Viennese bakery Munich had to offer. It was Draco's third visit to Nurmengard, and he already had Grindelwald living like a king, or a Kaiser. Draco wouldn't think Fuhrer.

By all appearances, said Kaiser was quite content to deliver the mysteries of the most unknown of the mirrors to Draco. Too bad Draco could barely bring himself to listen.

Light filtered in from the narrow window, although that would that would fade to mere moonlight, and by the time midnight hit, a total eclipse. That probably had some significance for the Mirror of Espilce- Draco didn't believe in coincidence when it came to Grindelwald, even if this was a truly incredible coincidence- but all Draco could think of was the revelations of yesterday.

"The Orphean Bargain," Draco interrupted, cutting off the explanation he had been tuning out. "You said you regretted not finding the Mirror of Ecidyrue. That means you thought of using it, right? Did you think of any way around it?"

Grindelwald's eyes narrowed as he sipped his coffee, the smell of the cognac unpleasantly pungent. "I thought of using it, yes, when I read what Dantanian said it could do. But that instinct faded once I saw the cost, and no, I could not think of any way around the bargain. Nor was I willing to pay that price. I wanted the third mirror so I could assemble all the mirrors. I thought it would make something impressive happen."

"Who did you want to save?" Wherever Draco positioned itself, it felt precarious. He'd snapped at Viktor at breakfast this morning. He was so on edge, it was strange no one had been cut.

"Ariana Dumbledore," Grindelwald said simply. "You know the story, Kaktusblüte. I wanted to take back what happened. But not enough to forfeit my own life as a trade." So you and Dumbledore could go on being kinky dark wizards in gay bliss, no dead sister in the way. That doesn't work if you're in the ground, huh? "Regret is an admission of weakness. Now I have been honest, more honest than I have been in many, many years. I ask you to take a leap of faith in return, with honesty. Were you planning to ever tell me you held one of the mirrors?"

"What do you mean?" Had Draco been too obvious in his familiarity with the Mirror of Erised? How could Grindelwald guess he had purloined it-

"Because you went through one. No?" Grindelwald asked in a casual tone, and finished his coffee. The poppy seeds were all out of his teeth.

Draco sat paralyzed for a while, consummately impotent despite whatever promise the talon wand bore. Grindelwald cleaned up his breakfast, put the detritus aside, and said, "The Mirror of Ecidyrue, of course."

He had to be guessing. There was no reason for Draco to feel as if that vine in the dungeons had cut the castle's foundations and the tower was crumbling beneath them.

"I-" Draco expected his tongue to lock up whatever he did, but not denying it would be as good as an admission. "I'm not." The words came out feeble, but he hadn't expected them to go from mind to tongue at all. He presumed that usual seizing sensation would come if he tried to admit it, though. Why was that thought tinged with a mad disappointment? So many years no one knew, I couldn't tell anyone, I've practically lost Harry because all I do is lie and lie, but I've had to be a liar because I couldn't tell- and now this-

"You are," Grindelwald said, and folded his hands in his lap. His serious air made Draco's stomach plummet further. "I might have suspected as much, when I felt the disjunction between your mind and body. But I did not connect it, until you were so transparent, in your devastation about the mirror's true nature. You are devastated still. And to think you struck me as intelligent." His lower lip curled. "Did you really walk into that mirror without understanding what you were doing? The rule is obvious. Only one. Inscribed right on the mirror. How could anyone miss that?"

It didn't feel real, someone else speaking of his circumstances. It had to be his own voice in his own head where he had been isolated for so long. It was like this was not Grindelwald but some figment of his imagination, with the choice of Grindelwald to voice this derision no doubt psychologically interesting. "I was drunk," Draco said in dazed defensiveness.

"Drunk," Grindelwald echoed in near-awe. "One of the three most powerful objects on the planet, and you used it so drastically while drunk. So it was an accident?" Draco nodded, dazed, and nothing stopped the motion, just as nothing had stopped his tongue. "I do not know what I am more impressed by, the sheer power that would have taken, or the sheer stupidity. My, my, Draco Black. My, my. Mein Gott."

"Everyone always thinks I'm this brilliant dark wizard." Draco thought aloud, in what he rationally knew was no longer his own mind. The Langlock had somehow failed. Is there no point in it since he already knows? Has the mirror given up on me in disgust? Am I just hallucinating? No, I can still smell the cognac, in the dregs of that cup. "They all fall for the act. I guess you must have too, huh? But I'm just making up everything as I go along. I've never had any idea what the hell I'm doing."

An admission of weakness to requite another. For regret, a trade of gross incompetence.

"You fooled me, you say? No, I was not wrong in my assessment of your potential. Whatever you were in your future, you must have changed since then into something different." Grindelwald leaned forward, with the untroubled excitement of someone presented with a new puzzle that had nothing to do with him. "So the Mirror of Ecidyrue works, and you made a deal. For whom? I take it you're experiencing buyer's remorse? But how could you have made the mirror work without consciously offering the bargain?"

Draco tried to drag himself to reality. "I shouldn't- I'm telling you too much." It didn't matter that Grindelwald was the only expert, or the only person he'd been able to speak to about it. It didn't matter that some presentiment of relief was there, at unburdening himself of his most unshakeable lie. It was the relief he'd sought so many years ago on Christmas Day, going to Severus in the dungeons, but... "We're supposed to have a deal, for exchanging information-"

"Oh, Kaktusblüte." Grindelwald's dark eyes were uncomfortably full of knowledge. "Are you really in a position where you can afford not to utilize every resource you have? I take it from the pitch of your dismay that however it happened, you know whose life you have traded yours for." Draco nodded miserably. "And that the date of your Eurydice's death is not as far away as I would hope, for a young man so prepossessing in manner andpresentation."

"Next year." Draco was feeling at his tongue with his teeth as he spoke, convinced it would catch up and go into overdrive any moment. "A bit more than a year from now. The start of next May."

"What do you have to lose? Either you will die, or you will lose someone you loved enough to once prefer their life to your own. Oh, poor boy. I will try and help you to understand this."

"In some way that will benefit you. I know your game. How many visitors did you convince to help you break out over the years? You'll find some reason I need to get you out. If you don't, you'll always be worried, that I'll come kill you to silence what you know." Or bring Gilderoy to Obliviate you at least. Not exactly the kind of labor the Ministry had in mind, when they remanded him to private custody. "I can't trust you. I can't."

"If you distrust me so," Grindelwald invited, "Talk to me now, and kill me after." He laughed at Draco's disbelieving look. "Can you call what I have here a life, young old man? I have grown old and bitter alone. I expected to die of old age alone. It would be a pleasure of a kind, to die at the hands of someone strange and beautiful."

"Fine. But I'm not some do-gooder. Don't expect me not to take you up on that." Once the floodgates opened, there was no constraining them. "I think it was my godfather. I was thinking about his funeral that night."

"Godfather?" Grindelwald wrinkled his already wrinkled nose, let down. "No tragic love? That would be more poetic. And not even a real family member?"

He is my real family, Draco almost said, but he remembered how he'd cut Severus out of his life. Was Severus his family? Did he owe him his life, not out of debt, but from forces beyond debt and payment?

"My godfather. It's me or my godfather."

"So you travelled back in time. How far?" Grindelwald's eyes seemed to be calculating potential timeframes.

"Seven years." Draco laughed aloud at the absurdity he could finally say this, to Gellert Grindelwald. "I was eighteen before. I woke up as an eleven-year-old. I had no idea what had happened. But my Hogwarts letter was on the table waiting for me."

Grindelwald looked appalled after a split second of calculation. "So- not twenty, then? Seventeen?"

"Almost. Or- I don't know, almost 25, depending on how you look at it."

"Well. I don't know how much of a dirty old man to feel now, for admiring you. But in my defense, you are the spitting image of Dantanian, right before he died... yet you are still a Hogwarts student?"

"Sixth-year will be done soon-"

"So you're in the same class as the Boy Who Lived. Do you know him, Harry Potter? Are you friends? Is that how you know about the business with the Mirror of Erised and Dumbledore, and Voldemort, trying to return?" Grindelwald looked abashed not to have connected the dots sooner, though his mind did work lightning-fast with enough information.

Draco could have reached under his shirt and pulled out the initials necklace, on a longer chain for the occasion. But some things he would keep in reserve. "Don't you dare grill me about your beloved Albus now. I need to figure out what I'm going to do, now that I- now that I'm faced with a choice. In a year, but things do tend to sneak up on you. There will be a war in between, a real war before too long. I won't have much time to think then."

"You know the future," Grindelwald said in beaming happiness. "Do tell me about one subject, then." Draco shot him daggers. "Myself only. You cannot begrudge me that curiosity." Draco agreed, and Grindelwald's impishness made him look positively young. "Did we ever meet in- what should I say, the past timeline? I take it you've been sent back into your old body. Did we have other encounters?" Draco shook his head. "Do you know anything of my fate?"

Draco squinted. He hadn't exactly held onto Grindelwald's death date as premium information. "Um, let's see, I forget when you die. I think maybe... next April? March? I don't know. It was a really..." It was hard to find words for these things, now that he was allowed to give them voice. "It was not the funnest of wars."

"I take it, then, I didn't go naturally." He reminded Draco strangely, in that moment, of Neil Palmer.

"No. Worse. You get killed right here, by Voldemort. He's back already, and uglier and snakier than ever. And trust me, you won't enjoy dying at his hands, at least not aesthetically. He used to be a real looker, Tom Riddle- gave Dantanian a run for his money- but all the fucked-up dark magic and rebirth shit has turned him into this sort of noseless living sperm."

"Voldemort?" Grindelwald looked insulted. "Surely not. That ideologically bankrupt posturer? I die at his hands?"

"Yeah. Guess that makes him the best dark lord of all time. Transitive property."

"Is that why he did it?"

"Nope." Draco watched for his words' implication to make their way to Grindelwald's face. "He wanted to be sure of his ownership of the Elder Wand."

It took maybe two seconds for Grindelwald to understand and his detached glee to be gone. "So Albus was already dead."

"Should I be humming something from Tristan and Isolde right now?"

"I take it Voldemort killed him."

"No." Draco took on Grindelwald's flippantness. It was something like the pleasure of superiority he'd felt when betting on the Quidditch World Cup, already knowing he'd get the Minister's pocket watch. "That was my godfather."

He'd actually surprised Grindelwald. You always knew when that happened, because he'd stop running his trap for more than a second or two.

"So. There is a war to come, and your godfather was a combatant, who eventually died in it. I take it he was on Voldemort's side?"

"No, actually." The giddiness of his own stupidity fueled him on. "Not really, Voldemort just thought he was. It was a whole thing, it was complicated. But my godfather is pretty much the closest person to Dumbledore. The only one he actually tells his true plans." Grindelwald got a sour look. Draco had to be amused by that hint of somehow, of all things, jealousy still. "Don't worry, your Albus is still an eligible bachelor. My godfather is-" Gilderoy popped into his head. He'd been about to say is already spoken for, and Merlin, there was someone more than Draco it would break if Severus died- "My godfather is way too young for him. He works for Dumbledore as a professor at Hogwarts."

"Does your godfather know you're here?"

"No. Other people do, though."

"Does he know the deal you made for him?"

"No. No one does." Grindelwald gave him a look like he hadn't been born yesterday. "Really! There's this block on me, that kicks in and won't let me tell anyone. I don't know why it doesn't work with you. Maybe because you figured out on your own."

"Not even Albus? With your confession or not... if you've been his student for this many years, and have ties to the Boy Who Lived... how could he not have figured it out? You make it obvious. I knew after three days."

"It doesn't matter much. He dies in, like, two months. And no, I don't have any interest in stopping it. Or helping you contact him, or have some sentimental reunion with your long-lost love you lost over all the sister-murdering. This is about me. About the Orphean bargain. I think-" Draco bit his lip. "What you said about saving other lives, that's- I know other people I care about, who die in the war. And people who already should have died, and haven't. Do you know anything more about how it works, that trade with Death? Is Death, like, a person, or just a metaphor? Why did you have to burn Dantanian's notebook?"

Grindelwald laughed at Draco's consternation. "I seem to recall it was because, like you, I believed those were secrets I would take to my grave. Is this crisis really epistemological or ethical? Are you looking for a way to make the bargain not apply, or an excuse not to fulfill it? A godfather is, in truth, not much of a bond-"

"Shut up!" Draco lost his temper more quickly than he had thought possible. And Grindelwald had been going on about his shows of weakness. "He's- he's not someone you can easily throw away, okay? But I'll have to choose, me or him... this is what I came back for. Not to help someone, not to save someone, but to die for him. I came back to die for him, and I don't know! I don't know what to do, I mean it, I've never known what to do..." He buried his face in his hands, losing control. Grindelwald made soothing noises, like if they'd been closer he would have been stroking his back.

"If my input is not thoroughly unwelcome, with my limited knowledge, I would have to put myself on the sight of not completing the bargain. You are the one I know, and you have given me foreknowledge along with coffee, but most of all, you have given interest to my endless repetition of subexistence. It would be hard for me not to wish you the one to survive over a stranger-"

"And he killed your Albus," Draco groaned into his hands. "In another world." He forced his face up, though he felt close to tears. "I can't just trust emotion, either! I have other people I need to save, not just him-"

"Indeed, I would appreciate some form of rescue from perishing by means of Voldemort-"

"Not you. Merlin, I have a war to win- we do- and I've changed too much already- I don't know what's coming really now- there's my aunt, there's-" Theo came to his lips after the word aunt. Then my mother threatened to come out too. "If Dantanian really has hold of me, and he wants what he swore to Hecate, then maybe the best answer would be for me to die sooner, if that would still fulfill the bargain. Blast that window open and fling myself from this tower-"

"Kaktusblüte." Grindelwald rose to his feet and touched his shoulder from behind, gentle, almost paternal. They stared together at the narrow sliver of light from outside, like the outside world threatening to encroach in. "Now is far too early for despair. Particularly despair involving damage to Nurmengard's structural integrity that you wouldn't be alive to fix for me. Putting aside that intriguing remark about Dantanian, and the mystery of just how you got hold of the second mirror... If you lack a clear picture of the future, because you have altered this rendition of the timeline- violating all the known laws of time travel in the process, my congratulations on that- then there is an answer that must present itself." Grindelwald let go of him, to gesture with both hands towards the perilous light. "If you have something of Dantanian in you- I presume what you said, about those wands I had made, has something to do with it- have you shown any ability at pyromancy?"

"Only the fire manipulation part," Draco said sullenly. "I've never seen anything in it."

"Neither did Dantanian, as far as the memory showed. But he did not have a proper tutor. He had no one to initiate him into the fire's mysteries. True pyromancers, of the like of Elizabeth Weston, require a significant event to awaken to the call outside the normal stream of time in the fire's fluctuation of light. You said tonight is a lunar eclipse?" Grindelwald bared his teeth in a grin Draco still could not trust. "Come back tonight during the eclipse, and you will find your answers."

Draco did not trust. That didn't keep him from feigning the need to sleep early, barring his door, and Apparating out for a prearranged meeting with Dobby, who'd hung around sightseeing clandestinely in his break. Dobby seemed tired once they arrived once more in that ruined hall with the whistling razor-cut wind, and the cold of the alps at night was a senseless beast. But above them, the partial eclipse had already begun. Midnight was the hour they had set, in the heart of the total eclipse.

Draco took a final swig of his own coffee-and-spirits, before tossing the thermos away and taking the short flight upwards. Dobby, faithful as ever, promised with no difficulty to stand by far away.

Grindelwald had his face pressed to the slit of a window. Draco was seized with a reckless impulsiveness. "It's the wards that hold you here, right? Not these walls?" Draco asked the Prisoner of Nurmengard, with the belated thought that he was not exactly asking a disinterested party.

"The wards," Grindelwald said, with enough resentment in his voice that Draco took his word for it.

And hey, if he did manage to inadvertently be the one to finally break Grindelwald out of Nurmengard- he had promised Dumbledore he would pay, for keeping Draco Black in the dark.

"Bombarda!" Despite the unhoned percussive force of the spell, his control was enough so that the shape it blasted in age-old stone was something like a window, albeit a circular one.

"I'll close it after if it makes you too cold."

"No," Grindelwald said quickly, "I want to see," and reached his hand out the window. He had to recoil, as his fingers came up against an invisible barrier, which shimmered red in the air until he moved away. Draco tried to touch it and his hand just slid past, unbalancing him enough to nearly fall out the window before Grindelwald steadied him.

"I cannot escape," Grindelwald said, letting him go. "But it is something, to see more than shadows of these great old mountains."

"And the eclipse," Draco said eagerly, watching the moon be blotted from the sky, and the mountains turn more and more into mere silhouettes. "Is it really such a magical night, the lunar eclipse?" He enjoyed on a visceral level the sight of uneven blasted stone outlining the progressively more shadowed sphere of the moon, the dust of rubble beneath like he had only just begun the work of bringing castles down. "I have the branches."

He gave Grindelwald the branches from black walnut trees gathered with Dobby- such a Gryffindor, he'd assisted without even explanation- and conjured a wide shallow iron basin for the wood. Grindelwald arranged them not in a natural teepee shape, but a thin circle, then a triangle inside- "Why are you putting those in the shape of the Hallows?" Draco complained. Grindelwald just raised an aged eyebrow, with a look like only the inhuman would deny the old and decrepit their small pleasures.

Draco laughed, uneasy about that word over and over again in his head, trust, trust, trust, when no one around him could ever trust him to tell the truth-

"This is the stupidest thing I've ever done," he sighed, after Grindelwald stepped away and welcomed him to set the fire. "And there are so many contenders for that position."

"Such as going through the Mirror of Ecidyrue drunk?"

"I'd just gotten out of prison, see." Draco felt compelled to set the record straight to one person at least, in case he ended up somehow setting himself on fire, or hurtling after all from this new hole in the tower. "Azkaban. Only a few months, but I'm a sensitive sort."

"Ah. So you've been in prison yourself, Kaktusblüte. I never would have thought. But I suppose it explains..." Grindelwald gestured around at the new finery and creature comforts of the space, the pillows and transfigured bed and furniture- and by implication, all the food Draco had brought to him. "You had an intimate knowledge, of the bitter unfriendliness of bare stone walls."

Draco nodded. "Incendio!"

Grindelwald was watching his wand instead of him now- yeah, he'd definitely started putting things together about the talon wand, without having to be told- and looked cheered. The flames first illuminated a rough shape of the Hallows, before beginning to grow high enough to make it indistinct.

"Want it back?" Draco traced his hand in the air after pocketing his wand, and confined the flames to the Hallows shape. They turned blue-white from compression. The clean circle all around, glittering like aquamarine at the bottom edges of the basin, made him think of Protego Diabolica. He had missed an opportunity, not giving Grindelwald shit about having stolen that spell, first chance he got...

Draco's wristwatch alarm went off for midnight impending, the same way it had for Naufragiam with Luna. He cast instinctive warming charms on both of them, even with Grindelwald in the large thermal down parka Draco had brought him. A look at the watch reminded Draco that it was from Harry.

Harry's intrusion into his mind made his self-questioning start up all over again. What am I doing, this ritual could be anything, why am I obeying a man like this, he's as bad as Voldemort- worse, and a caged panther still has claws, there are just bars to keep him from rending you open, and if you let the panther choose the location of the bars-

"The total eclipse," Grindelwald said, with his Austrian accent thick, the aesthete showing in the emotion in his voice.

Draco waved an inviting hand and the neat stenciled picture in flame turned to one wave-like roar upwards, that swooped high with the tide and never came down. He approached it close enough to feel its tendrils dancing in the air right beside his face, and toyed at its face absently like a kitten curling yarn- as if he could bend the angry shell of the moon, behind the heat, and turn it from orange-red to blue as well. As if he was Dantanian, and could pull it down from the sky.

"The blood moon," Grindelwald said, warming his hands while feasting his eyes greedily on that sight. "The German is more eloquent. Blutmond. Many Muggles and wizards in ancient times thought it presaged evil. Like a king, a god, or the moon itself had been attacked and brought down. Savaged by a jaguar." Or a panther. "The Christian Bible speaks of it in the Book of Revelations, a harbinger of the end of the world. The moon will turn to blood. We have an hour likely now, while it will be strong enough."

"What magic does it have? What will its magic do?"

"Ah, the bloody acts a young man called Gellert Grindelwald committed, once upon a blood moon," was the nostalgic sigh in response. "It is fairly straightforward, for all the mysticism and Muggle confusion. The moon is blocked, yes, but there is still light, and that bloody light... it delivers upon the most fundamental building block of existence."

Studies sprang to mind, undertaken with Hermione for spell creation. "Carbon?"

That gave a baffled Grindelwald a good laugh, at the drunken time-traveler, before he finished, "Power. Look into the flames, and capture the rhythm of the flames' light, controlled by hands and heart. In time, the light may coalesce into shapes, and then hallucinations. If it seems vague, I knew a pyromancer once- a follower of mine- who found it much like attempting to perform Legilimency. Not on a person, but a pyre."

"Will you see anything?"

"No. The pyromancer's visions are his alone."

Draco closed his eyes, with the world that greeted him steadily more pulsing and flesh-red. When he opened them, the flame went red. First was a natural orange color, then it intensified, like it was shifting purposefully to match the blood moon, dark patches appearing so there was almost no way to distinguish between them.

Legilimency on a pyre. It had to be worth a try.

Legilimens, Draco mouthed, gathering his mind, and heard Bellatrix's voice in his head instead of his own.

Your mind is a dagger. Not a thing to be cut.

He imagined his mind as a Black Dagger, with the obsidian catching every gem-like glint of flame, and plunged it into the fire of the blood moon.

Fire. The warmth of fire and its insufficiency. Fire builds in veins. Fire in the veins of a dragon where the burning shall not be burned. A dragon's veins. Silver dragon. Fire silver like the dragon. Fire sparking opal and kaleidoscope upon mountain snow. Where every red light will become white and then shatter. Where dragons dare not fly for fear of what sleeps beneath the mountains, in the hand of the devil of snow-

Snow fell on L'Infern. Fire was breaking into an endless snowfall and laying on the empty ruins, where the spiral garden was overgrown with anger. Its green spilled out, eruptions of life between broken stone and opal frost, caught in places, like fossils in white. Draco's feet tread through the fire on the ground, before he was knee-deep in the accumulation of flame. Its wet numbness sunk right away into his heavy black clothes and cloak, which settled on him as if apologetic for their insufficiency.

Draco fell forward until his face crumpled against the icicles of the hazelnut tree, gianduja, the taste of chocolate and hazelnut paste melting on the tongue faster than the slow thawing of snow around human warmth, and he was crying. He had been crying already. He was himself, on his knees in a garden destroyed by magic. The unnatural pattern, of where roots were ripped away, told of human force. And he was that force, and the snow, the cotton candy-thick drops of fire that gathered on his pale hair as Luna's voice asked,

"Did you bring me back Tom Riddle?"

The heart of winter.

Every year at Malfoy Manor was the Heart of Winter gala, and the ritual of the ancients behind the pureblood posing and forgetting of winter's promise and threat. The heart of winter is made of flame. Winter spread across the land like wildfire, but follow the fire backwards in its trail of impersonal fury and the hand that holds the fire is the heart of winter, the price of Malfoy, the body whose veins flow not with blood but winter-

The smell of hazelnuts was melting and the smell of fire was the true one. The warmth turned inverse, as the snow of Castell de L'Infern became the ice in the eyes of Draco- no, it was not Draco, though the eyes were the same. That was Father, who had also been wrecked by a human will. Father was crumpled on his knees gasping with his eyes melting, pain making tears escape involuntary. A small handprint was written across his cheek, with one hand clutching his cheek and tears escaping over it. Melting and yet the ice in that stare grew instead of thawed, hardened into something immoveable and hateful. Hatred impotent as the stump on his other wrist.

"What have you done, Bella?" Lucius was demanding in hysterical repetition. "How could you. How could you!" When he pulled his hand from his face, his tears gleamed over the talon brand, as if the salt would crystallize, only to be broken by the force of his walking stick being cracked across Draco's back- but Draco was his father, and Father was more frightened than he had been in his entire life as he shrieked into an empty room, with footsteps stalking away. "How! How! How, Bella, how could you, what have you done, what have you done..."

"What have you done?" Severus asked, the true father's voice as composed and cold as the false father's had been trembling and cracking. Summer sunlight breathed into the library tower like the ghost of an old conflagration, at the hands of the owner of Citadelle Xaphan, its true owner still. "What have you done, Gilderoy?" Severus demanded. Gilderoy fell to his knees before Severus crying, whimpering incoherently. "Have you no answer?"

"No answer," Gilderoy gasped, lovely melancholy face stricken with terror. "No answer, just- I didn't mean to betray you, Severus. Not you. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry-"

"What is this begging and cringing? Do you imagine I will hurt you?" Severus paced around the small confines of the tower, where paintings of dragons hung, capturing fire from sunlight with unmoving eyes beginning to move. "Do you imagine I am like the man whose initials you still wear? Do you? You may well, those initials are mine too-"

"I wish they were yours!" Gilderoy cried out, and Severus's pacing ceased.

Severus steadied himself on a bookshelf. Books fell without noticing, and caught aflame in the leaking liquid fire of the summer light.

"I wish I was yours." Gilderoy raised his face, cornflower blue eyes the heart of summer. "I wouldn't ever try to betray you, Severus, because I love you."

The fire rose from the books, to the sound of Narcissa Malfoy's screams atop the tower. The dragons stirred uneasily in their frames, dormant too long, as Dantanian Noir set their brand alight again and again-

The fire burned high and true in the fireplace of Slytherin house, where it caught upon the opal in the necklace Theo had given Draco when they were both still human. The opal hung in the air beside Theo even as he and Blaise sat with Pansy laughing. Astoria was watching from behind the green sofas, alone. Her small pale hand tried to reach the opal and slid through. It was only as she walked away that her fingertips began to bleed small jets of flame that melted in the lakelight.

She didn't see. All she did was nearly trip over the sake the three of them had been drinking between them. The bottle said silver dragon.

Blaise got up and tried to take the opal out of the air, but his hand went through. He went anyway, leaving Theo and Pansy alone.

The world outside Slytherin was dark, long past midnight. The clock was ticking loud enough to wake whatever dead lay beneath the stones of Hogwarts. Pansy's wild, giddy, terrified laugh was a strike of opal fire in the air as she jumped forward the moment Blaise was gone, and hugged Theo like they had both just won the Quidditch Cup again.

"How did you do it, Theo? I can't believe it!" Their gazes were lit with flame together, green flame leaking through sterile silver cold. "I wish we could tell Blaise-"

"No one tells anyone. Not even Professor Snape. Not until it's over."

"And when it's over?"

Theo smiled, face unbearably handsome in the firelight. His deep blue eyes held the balance of every constellation in the sky frozen in them.

"Do you think-" Pansy hesitated, in face of eyes at a place beyond where any mortal or immortal could them. "Do you think it will make it better? Do you think you'll go back to- to who you used to be? Because I miss that person, Theo. I miss the old quiet bookish Theo. The bloke who gave me so many assists, when we played Quidditch together. The Gordian Nott." She bit her lip, looking to try to hold back tears. "Will you write a book then, do you think? You're Lord Nott, you won't have to worry about money, you can just rest and write. You always used to say that, that you wanted to be a real author someday."

"I will write a hundred books," Theo said, "And every one will wear my father's face."

Fire was shaking. Fire was coming apart. Fire was struggling against the cold cruel wind like Voldemort against the Cruciatus curse, writhing half-rotted open. Voldemort-skeleton was shaken by invisible fingers to quiver and yet dance. Fire danced.

Dantanian Noir's fingertips danced along Draco's palm, like the aftertaste of a nightmare of wildfire, before his lips met Draco's own.

Dantanian tasted of blood. When he pulled back from the kiss, he was licking his lips.

The truth licks at the edges of the blood moon as the night returns to itself and the dragons return to their frames and the dead to their graves-

"Sectumsempra!" Draco yelled.

Death was in the air, like the ice crystal chill in high winter air that foretold snow.

Even as his fingers let go of the talon wand, letting it fall upon blood, to close around a vial in his pocket.

Harry was in flame, striding through the blue unhurt, fourteen and then sixteen, while voices called for his death. Draco's hands shook before he tasted both Harry and Dantanian in his lungs, while somewhere not too far away, Bellatrix's laughter was enough to make any fire break that was not beloved of the moon-

"Avada Kedavra!" Draco yelled.

Severus was rounding on him, pulling him back from voices that called for his head, voices and voices as the ground crumbled beneath and the pulse of summer burned and burned.

"What have you done, Draco?" Severus cried out wretchedly. "You promised me. You promised me! What have you done?"

Fire is green light. That is the secret of fire. Fire is nothing more or less than the green light of death, as something burns to make the light. The destruction of every small bit of matter in little fragments smaller than snowflakes in the brilliance of sun on snow as fire seeks the death of everyone and everything that has blood in its veins, fire hates any blood it cannot burn-

Hogwarts would never burn, or perhaps it could.

It was not a question of possibility, but will, as its burning hovered into being above it, all of its screams and blasts of light silenced, every broken stone erased by a falling shadow. A shadow with vast sweeping wings that erased the ruins where Hagrid's hut and steps to the Great Hall had once been. The shadow had a head so bright, it made the shadow shimmer, like lakelight on the walls of dungeons that might burn with the rest of this place that was once the center of the world.

Astaroth flew above Hogwarts in a firework of opal flame.

His head was long, with his snout fully forward, gray eyes wide, dizzy with the expanse of places to burn. Astaroth flapped his wings and wet palpitating shadow pulsed over Hogwarts like drums of peace or war. Hogwarts faced Astaroth at last, fire offered above, and fire eternally blooming beneath. Astaroth had burned fire into the foundations of Hogwarts already. Astaroth soared and thought of burning the blue itself from the sky of summer.

I can burn the Great Lake dry. There is nothing that cannot be burned.

Tonks was standing in front of a mirror, holding her stomach with a child inside made of fire.

Except it seemed Draco had mistaken her for her aunt.

Narcissa Malfoy was the face in the mirror, the Mirror of Ecidyrue risen before Narcissa with tears streaking the blood in falling patches over her face. Narcissa held her stomach and stared at the words on the mirror.

"Only one," Draco's mother read out, "May climb back out of hell." Then she turned and said, "When did we climb down?"

Fire was hellfire and hellfire was fire. The tautology beyond tautologies, if hell was suffering or other people. Hermione was reading from The Tempest with Ron's head leaned on her shoulder, and Harry was holding Draco's hand uncertainly in firelight.

"Hell is empty," Hermione read, "And the devils are here."

Draco reached forward and stole the book from her. "Hey!" she exclaimed in indignation, and Ron and Harry laughed as the shadow of the dragon fell upon them.

Draco's shadow was tall enough to blot away the flame, even as it soared at a wave of his haughty fingertips.

"No, Striker, this is the part I wanted Harry to hear. 'Full fathom five thy father lies. Of his bones are coral-'"

"Do you think Neville is still alive?" Ron blurted.

Draco dropped Hermione's book into the fire.

He was the words that burned, before she could cast Aguamenti and put the fire on it out.

But doth suffer a sea-change-

A sea-change.

Draco's hands held either side of Mirror of Ecidyrue between them, glass cold against his forehead as it reflected a different face.

Fire is snow.

Draco's hands were as covered in blood as his mother's face. They held a mirror covered in blood and gore, organs freshly ripped apart to bless the words Even death-

Fire is the siren call of the blood moon into these veins that fire will one day love.

The room was like the one in the Room of Requirement, and not like it. It was the room in Malfoy Manor where Draco had learned Occlumency.

Aunt Bella sat there in the chair where she had taught him, an obsidian dagger between her pale hands that reflected the fire.

She smiled, as the door closed, and Draco's footsteps came to a halt. She folded her hands, leaned forward, and asked with her askew smile,

"Were you expecting someone else?"

Draco only opened his eyes once the total eclipse had ended. Grindelwald gave him as long as he needed to learn how to breathe again, before he asked him what he had seen. Because surely he must have seen something, to stare into fire for so long-

"Nothing," Draco breathed, mind as fragmented as the view piece of any kaleidoscope. "A fat load of nothing. Nothing that makes sense." Grindelwald made a noise of disagreement.

Draco lifted his hands to be sure they were clean. They were, and were also cold, with the fire gone out.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing I can use."

Draco's sixth visit to Nurmengard was on the fourth, as the Portkey back to Britain neared. It marked an occasion which should have been at the fourth visit- the secrets of the final mirror.

"How are you doing, Kaktusblüte?" Grindelwald asked with every appearance of sympathy, even as he got cream from his Kaisermelange temporarily on his nose. "I might have pushed you too hard, powerful as you are. True pyromancy can be overwhelming for even-"

Draco had scarcely slept a wink. Bits of the vision were embers that could never be extinguished save by more time. Even as the words themselves rested, as easily on the pages as any other, in his sixth notebook. No, he was scarcely in a mood to humor the world's chattiest mass murderer. "Stop nattering and tell me what you promised. The third mirror."

"Espilce," Grindelwald corrected, and smiled at the death glare that earned him. "So we are to dispense with pleasantries. It seems staying up late does not agree with you." Not when Viktor gets me up at six a.m. to go for a bloody jog around der Block, no.

"Then I will be brief. We have exchanged so many words already, the virtue of concision might as well insert itself at this juncture. Well, the third mirror is one of the three Dantanian had, and as you know, the only one he figured out how to properly use. But the properties of the mirror allow much more than the mere creation of Dementors-"

The mere creation of Dementors, as if they were discussing the unimportance of an intramural Quidditch friendly.

"Where's the whole story with the gravedigger's daughter?"

"The Mirror of Espilce is the least known and least understood of the three mirrors. Even as he used it to deadly effect, Dantanian wrote the least about it. A mere tenth of what he said of the other mirrors. There was only one reference to it besides, in the materials I found at Citadelle Xaphan. Dantanian Black wrote, Of the Mirror of Espilce, the less said is better. I am of the unshakeable opinion that it should not have been made."

"Sounds like exactly my kind of mirror," Draco deadpanned.

Grindelwald's eyes sparked with humor. "When I was a young man like you, I thought the same thing. As much as anything else, my trip to New Zealand was in search of it." He put aside his food and began to speak more intently. "There is a story of this mirror, as relates to the other stories. It forms the end, although not much of an end. It will not satisfy you."

"Go on," Draco urged, curiosity peaked nonetheless.

"After Luna's mirror failed to deliver Sculptor his dream of Estella reborn, he left the house of Eros. Sculptor took his own life soon after, throwing himself into the river where a bridge had once taken him high over the grasp of Death. But the river was swollen over the banks, so Sculptor's body was not found for some time. Before then, Pavo was the only remaining of the brothers, in this world and at the house of Eros.

"Pavo, if you recall, is a constellation. Pavo the Hundred-Eyed, as myths recount of the origin of peacocks. I believe many pureblood traditions may stem from the legacy of Pavo, particularly those of Britain, without wizards today remembering. From naming by constellations to the keeping of peacocks." Draco remembered his Boggart in the blue loop and felt uneasy. "He was so influential because the myth called him a great wizard. Some say inventor, some say necromancer. Some say a generous man of charity, some say a cold-blooded killer. Some say he was the world's first truly good man, and some say he was the world's first ever Dark Lord. You can imagine which version I prefer.

"In any event, however dark his magic may have been, he seems to have been possessed by enough personal charms to render history's first witch desperately in love with him. Luna assisted him in his studies of magic, and even in what the story only calls 'passing strange' or 'more unusual experiments'. But however Hundred-Eyed, he had no eyes for her. So Luna seems to have resorted to desperate measures to make him stay, once he tired of the house of Eros and began to plan to go home. She told him Death had tricked his two brothers, and would him. So she would make him a third mirror. This one would work, she said, because unlike the others, he would be capable of using it properly, and have the patience.

"Pavo stayed- I imagine out of amusement if nothing else- and Luna made him the Mirror of Espilce, which she said would render the invisibility cloak a perfect Hallow, and truly protect him from the eyes of Death and his grasp. She aimed high, for a mirror that could not just absorb light from the world around it, but pull light from the sky, the sun and the moon and stars. As her name suggests, she seems only to have succeeded with the moon. Perhaps she should have consulted with Sola.

"In any event, the Mirror of Espilce could be used to make an eclipse. But it could do more, and the pull of what more the mirror could do led Pavo away nonetheless, down the path towards the world. And- that is all. Luna and her mother found the body of the second brother and buried him, then lived together until they died. Pavo ended as the tale of the Hallows tells, successful, and eventually marrying a different woman, who gave him a son that inherited both the cloak and mirror.

"If it is a fable, it is of the foolishness of love. Luna may as well have handed over her heart whole to Pavo- control of the moon and its light- and Pavo walked away ungrateful, forgetting her quickly. Some say it was the possession of that third mirror that did let him live a long life, and only die when he chose, rather than fall prey to Death's deceptions. Just as her mother created the first wand, and Luna created magic and witches and wizards, Luna created too an unspeakably precious thing, out of love. But he took it as a weapon, no better or worse than if she had bought him a blade. And one does not worry over much of the origin of most blades. Simply of their sharpness."

"What is the mirror like, though? How am I supposed to find it if-"

"That part is easy. I have it."

"What?" Draco demanded. Grindelwald let the decorated stone room echo his yell in smug silence. If not perhaps the echo there would have been before Draco made the larger window. "What do you mean, you have it? You don't have anything! You mean it's in your possessions? Because those were ransacked, and Dantanian's memories were found and taken, but the third mirror was nowhere to be found. All else you have is in this castle-"

"Exactly. In this castle. Do listen, please, this will make this clearer. If you had asked, I would have told you at any time. I came into possession of the Mirror of Espilce, as you know, and kept it for some time. I did not succeed in my first experiment to make a Dementor, but with a later experiment I did. I suspect because I had gained possession of the Elder Wand. Before, the mirror had not done anything particularly magical or interesting. After, when I tapped it with my wand, the symbol of the Hallows would appear glowing between words. It is a small mirror, very unlike the other two. Not much larger than my palm."

He held up his hand, and Draco tried to imagine one of these ghastly mirrors having the same gravitas if it was pocket-sized. Not an easy task.

"I completed many experiments with it over the years. I did not only make and control Dementors, I controlled the moon. For instance, I could summon a false blood moon if I wished, if not a true one. Oh, you wouldn't believe how it makes poor unfortunate souls tremble, to watch the cackling, diabolical dark lord blot out the moon and turn it red!"

"Excellent for branding purposes," Draco said numbly.

"Exactly," Grindelwald beamed. "Eventually, though, I realized it was less a gift, and more a curse. After a serious accident, I decided it must be destroyed."

Any detached part of Draco abruptly woke up. "You? You tried to destroy it? Something that gave you more power? What was this accident?"

"That," Grindelwald said evenly, "I will not tell you yet. But I will tell you what became of the mirror. That is what matters. Anyway, I failed in every attempt to destroy it. I imagine they all might be indestructible." As if I'm going to give you the satisfaction of telling you you're right. "Eventually, I knew I had to hide it instead, somewhere it would never be found."

"Where?"

"Were you not listening?" Grindelwald sighed like an exasperated parent. "Where I put everything I owned that I wished to confine and keep secret, but not wipe off the earth. Nurmengard."

Draco's face broke into an involuntary smile, but Grindelwald got this condescending little smirk at the sight. Draco closed his mouth.

"You will not be able to simply look around and find it. I took more precautions. It is a mirror of concealment by its nature, tied to the invisibility cloak, so it has a mechanism, so to speak, in itself for its secreting. When you come to visit me, you surely notice the room beneath the staircases with the vaulted ceiling, and the artifacts with the Hallows. I hope at least some remain. For your sake, I hope there remains a great stone basin, with the Hallows on it, at the room's center. That is where the Mirror of Espilce can be found. And that is only sometimes. The ritual I completed has cast it to nowhere. Unless a certain ritual is done on a very certain time, there is no retrieving the third mirror."

"Are you going to tell me when this is possible?"

"The same time as I did the ritual to seal it there," Grindelwald said with every appearance of forthright good-heartedness. "What is the mirror called?" he prompted. Draco made a threatening gesture that encouraged yet more forthrightness. "Very well. The total lunar eclipse."

Draco was silent for so long it felt he had passed out. There was a ringing in his ears, or perhaps a roaring. "The eclipse," he finally said, and Grindelwald nodded. "The blood moon." Another nod. "Your beloved Blutmond." Nod again. "A ritual has to be done, to get the third mirror. A ritual at Nurmengard during the total lunar eclipse?"

"Kaktusblüte," Grindelwald observed, "I fear you are becoming a bit agitated."

"YOU BASTARD! YOU LYING FUCKING BASTARD!"

Draco got up and leaned out of the window, trying to let the icy air calm himself, trying to tell himself murdering Grindelwald would be counterproductive. However much it would make sense to add another life to his tally with Death, and how damn good it seemed it would feel at the moment.

"You treacherous piece of shit," he marveled, and any calming felt impossible. He didn't know if he'd ever been quite this angry. The lit torches on the wall, he could feel, had their flames doubling in height, even before he whirled on Grindelwald.

"You are always quite fetching, Draco. But it seems you are at your most magnetic when angry."

"You couldn't have told me about the mirror and some goddamn ritual last night? You must have had such a good laugh, doing a different ritual with me, all the while knowing that the one I needed could have-"

"If you recall," Grindelwald said, patient as a saint, "The initial plan was to discuss the Mirror of Espilce, yesterday morning. It was your agitation, at the revelations about the second mirror, that required that discussion's postponement-"

"Oh, so it's my fault?" Draco snarled. He put on a show of sneering, even as a part of him began to reel at how monumentally he'd screwed up. "Bastard! BASTARD! I should kill you for this!"

"Kill me," Grindelwald said confidently, "And all knowledge and ability to retrieve the Mirror of Espilce dies with me."

After that chilling statement, he took on a more soothing tone. "Come, there isn't any need to be so down. You said there were two total lunar eclipses this year. The other one is..."

He trailed off, and Draco wanted to burn the entire world down, from just how badly he knew he had been played.

"As if you don't remember! September!"

"Ah. I can't say it won't be a pleasure to have that to look forward to."

: Absolution

Notes:

Hi, everyone! -wave- I'm back from hiatus, I think. I apologize for dropping off the map for a while. I had a lot of mental health issues that to be honest, I'm still grappling with, but I've been missing this story a lot, and I want to start updating again. I am doing better. I should be able to update every week or so, although don't worry about me if it's later, because it might be. I promise to announce if I'm going on a hiatus again.

Thanks so much for all of your kind messages of concern and understanding, they've really helped me. Thanks to everyone, and I hope you enjoy.

Chapter Text

After Nurmengard, the crumbling towers of Xaphan looked almost welcoming. Except they were not quite as crumbling as they had been. More towers had risen, tall and true, to the point there was a genuinely full area of the castle looking restored, immediately behind the drawbridge. Aside, of course, from the pesky issue of a ceiling. The library tower remained more isolated, still flanked on every side by rubble that reminded Draco of different times there. But no one more troubling than Gilderoy awaited this time.

Except perhaps the greater share of the repair could be attributed to the presence of Gilderoy's visitor. He must have been coming often during the spring break. It was, of course, Severus, whose presence made Draco hastily close the tower door as soon as he opened it. Just a fleeting glimpse of sallow skin and dark hair, along with the intelligent purr of that unmistakable voice, had Draco's heart going mad, and not from fear of discovery.

Being found here by Severus or not, it was much of the same, whatever suspicions of plotting it might arouse in Draco's godfather. Because he would not remain that godfather for much more than a year longer. Either godfather or godson would be removed from the equation.

Neither man inside seemed to notice, though Gilderoy knew Draco was planning to come check in at sunset. But in fairness, once Draco carefully eased the door open a crack to spy, it did seem Gilderoy was trying. Severus just looked very comfortable in his armchair, with Gilderoy perched on its arm no apparent obstacle to that comfort. No matter how transparent his hints were towards Severus's departure.

"Really, er, it is getting late, it must be near sunset soon..."

Gilderoy glanced in the direction of a window, filtering in more low and golden light. Sunset was the arranged hour of his meeting with Draco.

"You have the attention span of a soused Niffler," Severus observed, though his sharp gaze was softened by that unusual feel of comfort to him. "I am trying to assist you here, as it happens."

"Well, yes, and I'm, ah, very grateful, but..."

Severus looked over Gilderoy critically. "You went on about the crystal dome so long, we haven't been able to discuss the progression of your scars."

"We have, though- I've told you, they haven't meaningfully changed, so..."

"Pardon me if I do not take your judgment as gospel. Truly no alteration since last Sunday, despite the additions made to the solution? And you have been assiduous in its application?" His eyes ran up and down the lean form perched beside him, a stare of clinical and scientific assessment that would have made more sense if he could have seen Gilderoy's scars through his clothing.

Gilderoy squirmed under that gaze, threatening to upset his precarious perch. "Not, well, ah, meaningfully," he said, sticking to that word like a byline. "I am getting a bit peckish as well..."

"Go on, then, prepare us supper." Severus waved an arm imperiously, a neat gesture of his plain black sleeve as if ordering a Defense student to demonstrate a spell. But there was indulgence in his dark eyes, a humor that did not belong on his face around Gilderoy. Yet it had come to be there, and in a short time.

"What?" Gilderoy squawked.

Severus laughed, a low rich sound like a cello's bow drawn across the strings while tuning. "Was that not an invitation to dinner you just gave me?" He tilted his head at an almost facetious incline. "Or did I mishear you? Do let me know. Poor hearing would be an occupational hazard for a spy."

"N-no, your hearing is fine, just..." Gilderoy did not seem able to withstand Severus, even when it was just- was that playfulness? In its face, Gilderoy was such an incoherent, flushing mess, they were all lucky he hadn't lost his head and declared his love- but wait, hadn't he?

No. Draco had seen him say he loved Severus, on his knees as he begged for forgiveness, but that had been in the fire. A portent along with many.

"Then why am I not being lavished with your culinary expertise? Before that, we have yet to have any useful update on the progression of the healing project. Very well, if you are incapable of articulating, I will inspect for myself."

Gilderoy blinked dewily, uncomprehending. Severus's keen dark eyes narrowed. He made another imperious gesture, this one up and down Gilderoy's body. "Up!" Gilderoy stumbled to his feet. "Well?"

Gilderoy's hands went to the top button on his shirt, looking scarcely able to breathe. "You want me to- to show you my scars?"

"Have you not done so before? You may be accused of many things in your life and times," Severus said, with audible relish in teasing, "But never of being modest. From whence this bashfulness now?" Probably because he suspects, correctly, that your godson is hidden nearby, waiting to talk to him. "What effect do you imagine will unfold from this unveiling?"

Gilderoy was speechless, tongue sliding nervously over his lips. His eyes had gone very wide.

Severus looked to mistake Gilderoy's reluctance as from a darker source, given whatever he knew of the history there. "Gilderoy," he said more softly, corner of his mouth turning up ruefully. He slid to his feet, voice of an unfathomable gentleness. "A jest. I have no intention of frightening you." He told Gilderoy, "You should know that I would never hurt you."

Draco pushed the door shut as quietly as he could. Then he rushed away from the tower, taking refuge in the closest section of castle that put a roof and walls around him. He grasped onto an unlit torch and felt his nails slide over the old wood and threaten splinters. He was more worried about getting glass in his other palm, as he forced down the draught of peace from his pocket.

"What have you done." He let his head fall against the cold stone, harder than he meant to. Stop banging your head into walls, Draco, even Dobby doesn't do that anymore. "What have you done, Draco Black? What the fuck have you done?"

What he had done to Gilderoy- and what had Draco done to Severus?

Maybe there was something there, and not just on Gilderoy's side.

And maybe- and this thought was just as constricting and stinging- whether or not it was romantic, Severus had actually found that most rare and unthinkable of things for him- a friend?

I'm going to have to choose. Me or Severus. Orpheus or Eurydice. Only one may climb back out of hell.

Gilderoy found Draco sitting on the ground with the torch laid across his lap, aimlessly playing with a flame at its end. No visions had been forthcoming from its flickering, but what had Draco expected? Some newfound brilliance at pyromancy to provide an image of May 1998 and the war over, with either himself or Severus walking the world above ground? No, the fire had not been there to make the choice for him. Only to swirl in heatless tendrils around his fitful fingers, in the way Harry liked to- had used to like to- play with Draco's hair.

"Sorry about that," Gilderoy said breathlessly. "I had some, er, difficulty getting Severus to leave..."

He looked to expect teasing or admonition, but Draco had little heart for it. "Here." Draco got to his feet, putting the torch back on the wall. He waved his hand, and it went bright enough to see clearly.

Gilderoy squinted downwards, only to do a double-take once he processed the location and contents of the Polaroid in his hand. "Is that..."

"Yup," Draco said, a smug satisfaction in his voice he didn't feel.

Gilderoy brought the picture closer to his face. "This is that Muggle photograph you were planning to use, as evidence you'd really... but what is it that you're doing behind his head?"

"Oh, that? Bunny ears." Draco put up two fingers and held them behind his own head in demonstration. "It's a Muggle thing. A joke. It's just a childish thing they do in pictures sometimes. To make like the other person's a bunny."

"Grindelwald doesn't look like a bunny at all."

"Oh, never mind," Draco laughed more honestly this time. "I have more."

Gilderoy was not long at studying them before his gaze rose back, unexpectedly gloomy. "So. You did it. You made it to Nurmengard. I imagine Miss Granger will be quite cross you met with Grindelwald, but I think she knew you would."

"Try not to overexert yourself celebrating my victory. What, do you fear her wrath that much- oh."

"I am very glad you're not dead. And I hope you've gotten the answers you wanted. But if you were successful, that means- there was a promise made if you were, of refuge here for..."

"For Karkaroff."

Gilderoy looked to be contemplating the potential poisons one might find in a deserted castle on short notice. "Yes. For Karkaroff. So he has to hear of all this..."

"And then," Draco said, with a sense of heavy obligation, "So does Aberforth Dumbledore."

"What am I supposed to be seeing here, boy?"

"The results of your assistance." Draco flashed a rakish grin. "Grindelwald."

Aberforth squinted down at the Polaroid doubtfully. "That's just you with your ghastly new hair, and some unfortunate old man you're accosting."

Okay, maybe this was not the ironclad proof he'd envisioned. There was the fact that very few had seen Grindelwald in over a decade. And there had been a great many decades since his defeat, or the publication of any contemporary images of him.

"It's Grindelwald," Draco insisted. "I used the information you gave me, and this is where it took me. I went to Nurmengard and talked to Grindelwald."

"Stop saying that name!" Aberforth hissed. He picked up a candle and drew Draco into the private part of the Hog's Head, even though the pub had already been closed by the time Draco arrived.

Draco's legs were heavy beneath him. He'd had to make a Portkey to travel to L'Infern and back. Karkaroff had thankfully elected to stay put, believing the place safe and fearing detection at Xaphan with more visitors. It had certainly been a relief for his prospective host.

But still, the travel was wearing after so much recently. Draco told himself he would stay at Hogwarts for the foreseeable future, save normal Sunday visits to Xaphan. He'd stay near his friends, near Harry. He only had to push himself a little further.

So he forced his legs to work and followed Aberforth up the steps, knowing it the way to the secret passage. He hoped he wasn't about to be ejected immediately for being a lunatic.

"Why shouldn't I say his name, though?" Draco whined once they were up the stairs. "I know he was, like, a Dread Dark Lord. But he's not Voldemort."

"Around my brother," Aberforth said grimly, "You'd be far better off saying Voldemort's name. The Order has been using the passage into Hogwarts, and-"

"That's right, I heard. You actually had to talk to your brother for that, right? So are you and Albus not actively seeking each other's deaths anymore?"

"Stop being flippant, boy." Aberforth came to a stop in the parlor, where the portrait of Ariana Dumbledore stared out with her pretty vacant eyes, eternally young. "If Albus wanted me gone, I'd have been moldering in the ground for decades already. Now what new madness have you inflicted upon this earthly sphere?"

"Madness? Come on. You're the one who told me to do all the damage I could."

Aberforth regarded him with those unsettlingly bright blue eyes for a long interval. "Aye, and you imagine that," he gestured crudely to the Polaroid, "Is what I had in mind?" Draco managed not to flinch. "I can't imagine how you ever managed to get into that godforsaken place, let alone get that monster to cooperate with you. You shouldn't believe a damn word he said, you know. Not a one."

At least Draco'd had the sense not to lead with the bunny ears one this time. "I came here to thank you," he said more seriously, "For all your help, Aberforth. I did- put the letter you gave me to use, and it helped me find the answers I needed. Well- some of them, but- that's not the point. What it is, it's that I owe you a debt, and if you're ever in trouble or need a favor, you know where to find me." Aberforth remained silent. "What?" Draco pouted. "A favor from a wizard as powerful as me is no small thing to-"

"Why did you go see Grindelwald?"

"The Deathly Hallows."

Aberforth looked liable to begin banging his head against the wall now. "Of all the bloody nuisances- am I ever to be free of hearing about those damned Hallows-"

"And about my wand. Grindelwald is the one who had it made."

"Bellatrix Lestrange's wand?"

"I'm not here to freak you out." Draco had pulled out the talon wand to demonstrate, but he pocketed it along with the photographs. "I just wanted to tell you something I learned on my little excursion to the Austrian Alps that I thought..." I thought might interest you, he almost said, but Aberforth was right. There were some subjects you just couldn't be flippant about. "I thought you deserved to know. Just hear me out, alright? And then I'll get out of your hair, and I won't ever ask for another favor-"

"I'll believe that when I see it," Aberforth said wryly, and settled into his chair. "Go on."

Draco stayed standing, not entirely confident that so much as mentioning this hornet's nest wouldn't get him cursed or worse. "I asked him about your sister." He waited to see if Aberforth would draw his wand, but he just settled deeper into his chair, looking like the one who'd been hexed. "About- the way she died. I asked him if he knew who had done it."

"You- you can't be sure of anything he says," Aberforth said fiercely, hands clenching to fists in his lap around his old ragged gray robes. A universe of pain was forming its constellations all through the room, more solid than the three people in it, or at least the two men. Ariana watched on, unmoved.

"I can, though," Draco said confidently. He was confident he was right, as he faced the man whose life had ended the day his sister died, and told him the truth about that death. "Because he didn't tell me everything. He just told me who it wasn't."

"Himself, I take it," Aberforth spat virulently.

"You."

Aberforth's wrinkled old lips parted wordlessly.

It felt unexpectedly momentous, an act that had occurred to him offhand at his arrival in Hogsmeade. It went from an incidental benefit to something real.

Maybe it was even something that Draco would have thought, Yes, this, this is what I was brought back in time to do. If he hadn't have known the real reason.

"He wouldn't exculpate himself or your brother. He claimed he didn't know which it had been. But he said he knew it hadn't been you. And if he had been going to just lie, it wouldn't make any sense to clear you but leave himself as a possibility. I could tell it's the truth that you're not guilty. You're not." Aberforth's knuckles had gone so white, Draco feared he would faint. "I wouldn't lie about this. I'm telling the truth when I say you did not kill your sister."

"Oh," Aberforth gasped. His shoulders heaved and his composure broke, a wave tearing through with the force of the understanding. "Oh. Ariana. Ariana. I didn't- I really didn't..."

"You didn't, Aberforth. I promise." Draco knew it had to be bittersweet.

Aberforth looked so wracked with the shock of it, he seemed beyond tears, blue eyes dawning with something Draco realized he had never seen in them- something almost like hope.

"It wasn't me," Aberforth gasped, and nearly doubled in half, collapsing upon himself, even as it seemed a weight had been lifted off his back that he had been carrying for a lifetime. "Oh, Merlin, I never knew... I struck Albus at her funeral, so he must have thought I blamed him, and I did... blamed him for bringing that evil man into our lives, our family... but I could never be sure who had struck the blow that killed her- I thought I would never know if I'm the one who did it, if I failed her, if I killed my poor sweet little sister with my own hands-"

"You didn't strike the blow," Draco said gently, a lump come to his own throat again. He could only imagine how it must feel to have, that deep and real an absolution. "Your hands are clean, Aberforth. Her blood is not on them. It never has been. You don't have to wonder. You don't have to feel guilty anymore."

"So-" Aberforth's face lifted, shoulders squaring. "So it was Grindelwald?" Draco blinked, trying not to give anything away. "If he knows it wasn't me, he must know who it was. Why else would he not tell, between him and Albus? He wasn't willing to try and lie, because you might catch him, but- it was him, wasn't it? It- it wasn't Albus, either." That seemed to have stripped the last weight finally away. "It wasn't my brother," Aberforth marveled. He sounded almost as relieved to hear that as he had his own innocence.

Grindelwald had shaken Draco's faith in his own abilities at lying, to be sure. But some lies were too important to not at least give his best. "You're right. I'm sure it was Grindelwald."

Aberforth exhaled a breath it sounded he had been holding for decades. "Oh, Gods. Oh, Gods. Oh, our sweet Ariana. Oh, our poor little sister," he breathed. "We just- we should have protected her. We didn't. We're still- we're still so guilty, there will never be redemption, never, for none of us, but- it was Grindelwald who ended her life." Draco nodded. "I didn't kill her," Aberforth said finally, after another long pause of unguessable thought, and slowly, eyes focusing on Draco again, his lips turned up in a smile.

"I didn't kill my little sister."

When Draco stepped out of the passage into the Room of Requirement, he was not alone. The Room had been shaped into the small room with armchairs and a fire that he had used for Occlumency training with Harry, a room that seemed to welcome him still. The once-green chair was blue. And in the Gryffindor-red armchair, Harry was there, his lap piled with homework he was not doing. His glasses had slipped down his face. He'd fallen asleep. And there was a parchment on his lap, in all likelihood better than Draco could have done.

Marie Weston - Cygnus Black - Ella Carrow Cordula Flint - Abraxas Malfoy - Iphigenia Lovegood

(illegitimate) + + (legitimate) (legitimate)+ +(legitimized)

Jackson Shaw - Astarte Noir Phineas - Ursula Flint John Potter - Selene Nicholas - 'Amelie'

(Muggle) + (illegitimate) + + +

Dantanian Noir Sirius, Phineas, Cygnus... Lamia Periander - Dorian Scorpius

+ + +

McMillan - Arcturus Crabbe - Pollux Scorpius Abraxas

+ + +

Orion - Walburga, Cygnus - Druella Rossier Abraxas

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Sirius, Regulus Bellatrix, Andromeda, Narcissa - Lucius

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Draco Black

The handwriting wasn't Harry's. But Draco recognized it anyway.

He stumbled and drew his clumsy leg against Harry's knee. Harry awoke to him with a smile. There was no accusation in those green eyes behind their clouded frames, not even when he noticed the direction of Draco's stare.

"Are you shocked? Luna made it for me," Harry said, voice and gaze steady. Say this for the Boy Who Lived, he didn't tend to tarry in letting Draco in on his secrets. "Over break. She came to visit us and wouldn't leave. She told me everything. I know you were telling the truth."

Draco must have looked much like Aberforth had tonight. Flummoxed, with a touch of comedy he could feel in himself, as he inwardly flailed. What was it that Viktor had said about Harry? He knows you're no angel?

Oh, but there's a distance, isn't there, from there to the devil?

If the devil could ever be found staring his own death in the face, in the presence of the one who most made him not want to die.

"Draco," Harry said, breaking Draco's stricken silence. "I'm saying I know you really went to Nurmengard, alright? Where they're keeping Grindelwald-" He hesitated, and asked with a Gryffindorish show of irreverence, "Is that a name you're not supposed to say, like Voldemort's? I've never been clear on that."

"You can just say it," Draco said automatically.

"I believe you." Harry watched as Draco collapsed into the blue chair before him. "You really did go off to the continent to..." Harry shook his head in admiring amazement. "Rob Grindelwald. So when you said that- you were trying to stop lying to me."

"Luna corroborated it all," Draco said, reasoning it out for his own benefit. Harry nodded, looking repentant for his previous lack of faith. "Don't say you're sorry you were wrong, though, because it was still my fault. It was all my fault. Like that Muggle story- the boy who cried wolf." Harry laughed at that reference from Draco, eyes sparkling. Draco's chest hurt like it had watching Severus promise Gilderoy he would never hurt him.

Harry, who had somehow come to believe in him still, at the worst possible time. And here Draco was, irresponsibly chasing more of that belief. "I brought proof, if you want it, anyway," he said as planned, and deposited a Polaroid in Harry's grasp. Harry peered at it with bemusement, while Draco used the opportunity to seize the parchment with the family tree and look at the story it told: the invisible red lines trailing up and then down again, from Dantanian and Dorian, to where they met and proved themselves to have just been one line instead all along- in the person of Draco Black.

"If you really mean to be open... Is that old man Grindelwald? Are you giving him bunny ears?" Draco nodded, glad the gesture had photographed, and Harry looked more fondly exasperated than surprised. "Oh, I figured you would do this. So did Luna. Even though according to her, you promised Hermione you weren't even going to talk to him."

Draco had to scoff at that, and then fight the urge to bump at Harry's calf with his shoe- too flirtatious and personal, from someone virtually a walking ghost, or something worse than a ghost- something capable of that order of magnitude of selfishness. "It's like you said, none of you lot actually thought I'd pass up by the chance. Even Hermione didn't really believe I wouldn't. Don't be disappointed in me for that, you have so many superior options."

"Luna was right. I can see it even more in a picture like this. I might not have recognized you," Harry mused. When Draco tilted his head quizzically, Harry held up the picture for him obligingly, presenting Draco the ghastly vision of himself. "With that hair, you do look just like Dantanian Noir."

At least Draco would be spared the decision of whether to continue anything romantic, maybe even anything friendly with the Boy Who Lived. A Pensieve had made the choice for him.

He must have started breathing with less regularity, as the sharp acid hunted feeling that jabbed right behind his eyes was reflected by Harry's alarm. "Draco? Draco, it's okay. Don't panic, but yes, I saw Dantanian's memories. She had to give me them, to make me really understand why you'd acted the way you had this year. She said- she thought I had a right to know." Harry sounded defensive of Luna, of all the minutiae to distract them now. As if Draco could truly muster up an ounce of acrimony towards Luna no matter what she had done or ever would do, now that he knew his time with her could be so much more limited.

"A right to see it," Draco echoed, not sure if he meant to be comforting. "Well, yes, I suppose most would deserve to look upon the true face of the man who ruined their life."

He shook his head to Harry's obvious question of Dantanian? He made an elegant sweeping circle in the air, a neat circuit of his own face.

"What do you mean?"

Draco tried to neither panic nor erupt in anger. He might have failed, if Harry's steady gaze did not exert such an anchor on him. "Didn't Luna tell you the best part- what my wand is, what that vow to Hecate meant-"

"You didn't ruin my life, you're mad. The number of times you've saved it- dragon, I don't mean times you saved me from death, either-"

"I didn't want you to see what I did, bringing you into my family," Draco said bleakly, and saw himself in his mind's eye getting up and leaving the room, though of course he didn't. "I didn't want you to know that this whole time, I've been bound to murder them and you, for-"

"I don't believe that curse has the power you think it does," Harry said, and Draco couldn't help but admire the unyielding set of his jaw in the firelight.

"You wouldn't."

"Luna doesn't either," Harry protested, and Draco had to heavily roll his eyes, if not with the slow panache of Severus. Draco's fan club were perhaps not the best of judges.

"Hey, maybe it won't come into play," Draco mused aloud, and fortunately, Harry didn't ask what that meant.

But it put Draco half in the conversation, half out of it, because he didn't know why he hadn't thought of this before: If I die, what becomes of Dantanian Noir? What would be done with the talon wand? Who would get it? What if it was Voldemort who managed to claim it, and in saving Severus, Draco damned the entire world? Then was Draco meant to destroy the wand, raze the last remnants of Dantanian from the earth before he too was erased?

"Draco, look at me, don't go into your head again. That's why you didn't speak to me for a month? You didn't think I would accept you?"

"You accept that part of me is Dantanian."

"Part of me is Voldemort, isn't it?" Harry left Draco without easy retort. "You know there's that connection. In my dreams. In the graveyard. And Dantanian- he did monstrous things, but he was no Tom Riddle. More than Voldemort... Dantanian reminded me of myself." Because he was an orphan? Or because you think you could turn as dark as him, if the world took what you loved most but made the mistake of leaving you alive in it?

"You probably saw it too." Draco had seen no such thing. "You know everything about me. You've been at my side and in my head for the worst of it all." Harry's speech took on a more regular and yet strained tone, like he'd spent a while thinking about these words but found their speaking unexpectedly difficult. "You couldn't trust me enough to do the same? To give the chance to l- to accept you, the way you've always accepted me? When you were the only person I could tell about... something dark, inside me? Because it's there, you know it is-"

"You don't deserve to be around someone who has anything like Dantanian inside him-"

"If you start up about deserving, I swear-" Harry's eyes looked frustrated enough to be remembering the way they had ended off fourth year together. "Leave that aside. Aren't we friends? Couldn't you trust me as one of your best friends, to know you well enough to be sure that whatever your secrets, you're good-" Such momentous words, on a matter so very much as yet undecided. But Harry brushed past them as if already written in stone, towards another uncertainty. "Except that's been the problem all along, hasn't it? We aren't friends, we never were, not truly."

Draco's throat no longer was threatening to close, not now that he had this unexpected reprieve about Dantanian. But it did choke up at that, with an almost worse feeling. If you're going to reject me, reject me because I'm Dantanian, not because I'm me. "That sounds like something Remus would say. What, we're not as good as him and Uncle Sirius because we weren't best mates first like the bloody Marauders-"

"No, he didn't," Harry protested loyally, "Though you are right that I talked about you and me a lot, to Remus. It feels like all I did over break was talk and talk, till my throat hurt, and it's all I can do even now, but- it's paralyzing when you're such a mystery, Draco, all of us just trying to puzzle out anything that puts us on solid ground. You're like this riddle I have to solve-" He held up a hand. "I swear, no pun intended. It's harder than any of the riddles into Ravenclaw. You know it is."

"Maybe it doesn't have an answer."

Harry shook his head. "No, just- listen, please- Remus helped me realize how you've always kept me at arm's length, calling us rivals and all- and I was just as bad. I did the opposite. I put you on a pedestal, really, but I didn't mean to-"

Merlin, it was like Harry had been hauled to a Mind Healer. Meanwhile, Draco had been confessing all his secrets to Grindelwald.

"Is this a break-up monologue? Because before you bring this analysis to its natural close, at least consider two relevant pieces of information. One, I don't want to break up, not at all-" It was news to Draco himself as he said it, but he found himself tripping over his words then at Harry's involuntary smile. "And two, this, er, this- next great young dark lord look," Draco gestured to his hair, "Is soon to be gone, so..."

"I don't."

"You want to be with me again?" Draco leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands, and gave Harry his undivided attention.

"Don't look at me like that. It makes it harder."

"Isn't that the idea?"

Harry buried his own flustered face in his hands. "Oh my God. That is so stupid. How can you make something that stupid sound sexy? Why do you have to be so cool?" Thankfully, the prophesied savior of the wizarding world managed to compose himself before going on any further in that vein. "No, Draco- I think it was right for us to, just, um, take a break for now, so maybe for the first time- we can actually try and be friends, without me always being so- distracted- it's the right thing to do. I want to actually know you. Not just the other way around."

Maybe Draco should have told him that was impossible, but instead he found himself as immature and snippy as if the fate of the world rested upon how soon he could get Harry into bed again. "Any idea how long this break is supposed to take? Did Remus dictate that too?"

"No, this is what I think," Harry insisted, then softened at something he seemed to see on Draco's face. "Dragon, it's not that I want anything or anyone else. I think I just need some more time to- I don't know, clear my head..."

"You know how I clear my head," Draco said cavalierly. "I take it you wouldn't want me with anyone else either-"

"No! Of course not! You haven't-"

"Don't get jealous, not-boyfriend..."

"You're trying to make me jealous," Harry protested, accurately. "That's too easy. Bad dragon," he said lightly. The rebuke hit an unexpected place in Draco, one that made him meet Harry's gaze with deferentially lowered eyelashes and a demon behind them, a heat that seemed to double the work of the fire beside them. Harry hastily averted his gaze.

"What, are you expecting me to stake my claim?"

Even Draco's pettiness failed, in the face of a deeper feeling than lust or the mere satisfaction of leverage. Why should I make him suffer at all if he doesn't have to? "Already subject to claim of possession, as it happens." He fished out the necklace to show to Harry, initials glinting as if being magicked into the air before the firelight. "Without any intention to contest or appeal it."

"And that isn't changing," Harry said heatedly, as Draco thought, Maybe I'll die with these initials around my neck.

"I won't change it. It never will. Not unless you want it to. Listen, I'm sorry if I haven't been a good enough friend to you, or- a friend at all, really, and I haven't trusted you enough, I know, but- I swear I've loved you enough. More than enough. I'm not planning on ever loving anyone else."

Harry looked like he desperately wanted to kiss Draco, a vibration between them like a pull at a tightened red thread linked invisibly between their hanging fingertips, as real as the line from Dorian to Dantanian.

But whatever world of passion Draco read into those firelit green eyes, Harry's words were more circumspect.

"I, er, think very highly of you as well."

Harry quickly wilted at the force of the glare that provoked. "Okay, now I want you to talk to me. I want to hear about Dantanian, all you know- not from Luna like before, right from your mouth- I want to hear about Nurmengard from you first. Tell me about Grindelwald!"

"Your wish is my command," Draco purred, with a sultry look that earned an admonishing one in return. "I know. I'm a bad dragon. Well, the first thing you need to know is that our relationship is not exactly the only thing I've fucked up recently. There's the small matter of an eclipse."

"So the lunar eclipse, that's when it has to be," Ginny reasoned out, finishing Draco's tale for him. "And he tells you the morning after the lunar eclipse."

"And that's bad?" Neville surmised.

"I'll have to wait until September!" Draco wrote the month's offending name out in large indignant letters on the board Hermione had brought for his explanations. The ignominious month finished the massive scrawling web he'd drawn them, from the Hallows to Dantanian to Grindelwald. The board would be burned before they left the room, it had been decided, however much Luna had wished to keep it as a souvenir. "Does this strike you all as the sort of situation that can be safely put on hold until September?"

His irritation echoed through the Room of Hidden Things, with the six figures around him hardly fitting objects for it. That Tuesday night felt at once too short and to stretch eternal, with their shadows projected high up towards the ceiling like they were being sucked towards something unnatural. The shadow of the board was one solid mass of useless darkness.

"Wait, why?" Neville interjected. "Merlin, I'm so confused."

"Get with it, Neville." Ron's face was set in determination after the story he'd just heard. "Cut past the fancy bit, forget the mumblygook, what it comes down to is, Draco wants this mirror tied to his wand. A mirror only the old German sod's got a way to get hold of. And Draco missed his chance to get it from him. Now he's got to worry whether someone else- like, say, You Know Who..."

"Or," Hermione said, her hand in Ron's, "Less Naufragiam-stricken associates..."

"That gloomy gothic lot," Ron helpfully explained, "Could get a hold of the sod from inside the great old mountain prison and pull him right out from under us, sod off with him and all his know-how and mirror ritual before we can."

"But- none of the adults know anything about this?" Neville marveled. It is terrible, Neville, really and truly it is. A whole other front for the war to be fought on.

Luna looked rather pale, and not just from the cavernous room's irregular light. "My love, Severus is the only grown-up who even knows about Dantanian."

And yes, Draco was so fond of having Ginny Weasley know that story too.

"No one else, yeah, and no one else is gonna, not even in the Order. Secret evil mirror from secret evil wizard is, well, secret, wotsit?"

"Oh, Ronald, you do explain things so succinctly," Luna complimented him sincerely. "Nev, will it be too hard not to tell Frank and Alice..."

"Oh- I hadn't thought of- no, I wouldn't tell on Draco, though," Neville stammered, looking eager to assert his loyalties. "Nor on any of you-"

"Good. Cause snitches get stitches!" Draco tried to lighten the mood going pew, pew in the air with his finger guns. He took out Neville and blew at the end of his index finger after. When he saw Harry staring with a compromising intensity, he winked. Harry flushed and stared very determinedly at the parchment on his lap.

"Draco Lupin Black, no more Muggle films for you," Hermione said, unimpressed.

Neville, though, left his chair to instinctively cower behind Luna. "Er..."

There was a laugh in Ginny's voice that left it before her question was done. "Sorry, I'm new to all this, but the one thing I don't get is why the whole, um, moon Dementor mirror is so important?"

"Come off it, Ginny, you, that's-" Ron's momentum left him. "Well, er, actually I'm not clear on that myself. Is it that we can't let it fall into the hands of the enemy, and they might get it from Grindelwald if we don't?"

"Or is there something we have to do with it?" Ginny pressed cannily.

"Oh, you think once we've got it," Ron caught on swiftly, "Draco with his possessed dragon-fancier wand will be able to use it? I mean, maybe it can do things other than, er, turn small children to soul-sucking demons... presumably..."

Hermione forestalled the Draco Malfoy, dark wizard at large bit with her swift, authoritative knowhow. "We have one of the other mirrors already, there's three. Draco's connection to Dantanian, that might give him some special in, but really, there's no telling whether they might not be useful to Harry." Draco nodded, glad to get that spotlight off himself. "Gathering all three, or even just two, could synthesize a powerful weapon, for good or evil, beyond what we saw one mirror do in the memories. Maybe even without the last mirror, or any of the matching Hallows. To me, the most mysterious and the most fascinating is this Mirror of Ecidyrue-"

Alright, maybe it wasn't the best idea to let Hermione dominate the floor.

Sharp as a tack, that girl. Merlin would I miss her, if I chose... though I don't know if really you end up able to miss anything- alright, Hamlet, save the existential crisis for the shower...

Ron was gracious enough to interrupt, albeit with more unflattering assumptions. "Cor, this is just all because Frankenstein wants to become Master of Death, isn't it?"

"Oh, come on, if I was going for that, don't you think I would have kept the dark lord in training look intact?" Draco demonstratively fluffed his restored hair in its shorter, blonder glory. He was gratified to see Harry's eyes tracking it the closest, as they indeed had in periodic, furtive bursts since he arrived. Ginny had done a good enough job making him look like before, it seemed, for the boyfriend of before to take note.

"Though if it turned out that way... would that really be so bad?" Draco wheedled. "Not the worst thing, to have the Grim Reaper be your mate at pick-up footie on Saturdays."

"This is a job we have to do. A loose end we cannot leave unfinished, now that Draco's gone there himself and spoken to Grindelwald." Hermione gave Draco her obligatory death stare at that. "Like it or not, we're in it."

"Especially," Draco had to admit, "Because I might have told that old blowhard more than I should have. More than any of us would want the enemy hearing from that fucking silver tongue."

"It's alright, Draco, he knew about Dantanian already," Luna chimed in. "That's too much to let Voldemort know from the start. I don't want you being the biggest target because of your wand."

Assuming I'm not already. There they three were, Draco and Harry and Luna, Frankenstein and prime admirers- unfortunately both prime platonicadmirers at the moment- in Voldemort's top must-kill list. Like fuck, marry, kill, except it was all kill.

Well, hopefully.

Neville went back to his old theme, snitches get stitches be damned. "We really can't tell any of the Order? The things we've learned from Grindelwald, even just the existence of these mirrors- could we let the Order know without letting them know the source was Grindelwald?"

I gave you back those parents of yours, Draco thought ungraciously, And you just have to go and get so attached to them it makes you less useful, huh?

Hermione didn't seem to buy in. "Oh, yes, and we'd have to hold back about Karkaroff and Periander too, that's the chain back from it."

"And the duel with Karkaroff," Luna said cheerfully. "There's the blood magic with Periander in fourth year that killed Lamia, then the other blood magic with the corpse." Ginny's eyes went wide, but no one was forthcoming with an explanation. "And all of us abetting a fugitive Karkaroff in the old vampire lair and deceiving Professor Snape. That wouldn't end well for Professor Lockhart."

Ron got into the spirit of things, piling on. "There's Draco stealing the bloody Mirror of Erised straight out from under Dumbledore's nose."

"You don't have to sound quite so pleased about that part," Hermione sniped. "As I recall, you were too occupied hurling on my shoes at the time to contribute."

"Oh, and there's the blackmailing the Pensieve memories from Professor Snape," Luna sing-songed merrily. "And what that letter proves about the headmaster, and no, Draco won't tell me that part either... but anyway, Professor Snape, as far as we know, still hasn't even told the headmaster of any of this. And really, you should talk to him, Draco..."

"To say they have grounds to expel me is a pretty quaint understatement. Azkaban would almost seem too merciful, you would think, for the likes of me."

Neville was somehow undaunted. "If we just tell my parents, maybe they'd keep it to themselves-"

"They'd tell Sirius and Remus," Harry of all people was the one to throw up as an objection. "Alice could never not tell Remus for very long. Do we trust Sirius and Remus not to go to Dumbledore?"

"You kidding, mate?" Ron snorted. "They're far too loyal to him. Dumbledore snaps his fingers and they spend a year outfitting Sirius's own ancestral castle for Dumbledore's use."

"You really don't think an adult-"

"Neville, we have an adult involved already," Draco interrupted, and received a room full of stares. "Professor Lockhart?" he tried, and then it was a room full of laughter that awaited him.

After a collective bout of hysteria that made Draco defensive of Gilderoy, Luna wanted to be sure then that Gilderoy wouldn't tell Severus. Draco rather stiffly assured her he would never do any such thing. It prompted one of Ginny's many I'm so out of the loop looks, at the thought that would be a point where the line of information could be compromised.

"And my godfather," Draco said, a bad taste in his mouth, "Is obviously too loyal to Dumbledore to trust he wouldn't tell him. And- he's held back information from me before."

"We could," Harry said, like Draco had been hoping and praying he wouldn't, "Just tell Headmaster Dumbledore. Aren't we supposed to be 'Dumbledore's Army'?" To which Draco wanted to retort that the Grindelwald situation was too personal to Dumbledore for the man to be objective, but he held his tongue.

"Or," Luna threw out, because if they were just throwing out their favorite adults' names, she had one, "We could ask my father for advice. I don't think he'd talk about it to anyone. Except the mirrors are so interesting, he might want to publish an article about them in the Quibbler."

"Dumbledore-"

"Hates me," Draco cut Harry off, and enjoyed the miffed look Harry got then. Don't you wish you could just come take it out on me after, baby? he thought towards Harry with his eyes, and Harry just simmered more at him in return. "I did try to blackmail him."

"I still can't believe that part." Ginny looked like it made her fonder of Draco, even as the reminder soured Harry's face more. "Oh, won't you tell us what information-"

"A story for another time. I promise I will tell, then," Draco said airily. "So that leaves us to figure this out between ourselves. The seven of us, right here, right now. Gilderoy owes me so much, he'll follow whatever path I choose for us, so let's choose it." As Dumbledore's Army against Dumbledore.

Hermione cut through all any feeble objections. "It comes down to three choices. Option one. Get the mirror somehow earlier than September. Option two. Find some way to prevent any chance of Voldemort wanting to get to Grindelwald in Nurmengard, or at least of succeeding at it. And option three... well, option three isn't on the table."

What was on the table was Apparition lessons, which Hermione somehow had convinced herself Draco needed to make a token appearance at, despite him having Apparated perfectly competently since, as far as she knew, third year. Hermione insisted it was the appearance of the thing, although Ron was of the opinion illegal Apparition was hardly on top of the list, when it came to negative suspicions one could harbor about Draco Black.

Ron was full of opinions on the matter, as it turned out. After a notice went up in the common rooms, Ron was suddenly more anxious about the Apparition test than both dark lords put together- Draco supposed he should say all three, according to Grindelwald, although much to his displeasure it now seemed likely for Grindelwald to survive the other two. And Draco promised to give Ron some pointers, although he was privately of the opinion that Ron might just be better off letting Hermione take him places. Apparently, he hadn't managed any Apparition yet, not even once.

"Harry has," Ron said gloomily, "Though he acts like we're in the same loser's boat," and when Harry tried to protest, Ron chucked Draco's Potions textbook at him. Which had once been Severus's, but Draco didn't have the heart to put a stop to any of this sophomoric everydayness. Even when it earned their corner of the Ravenclaw common room dark looks from Padma Patil. Those might just be for Ron's existence anyway.

"Harry can't participate," Hermione reminded Ron. "He won't be seventeen in time."

"You'd think they'd make an exception," Luna said cheerfully. "With the darkest wizard in history on your tail, Harry, you think they'd be willing to fudge a few dates to give you the right to Apparate away from him."

"Maybe Draco can give you some pointers too," Ron offered, "On the sly." Draco gave him a mock-offended look, to mask how good it felt to be caught back up in the swing of pretending to be a sixth-year. Only sixth-years were in their common room, up late studying and fretting over Apparition, with Harry himself opening the textbook and poring over its pages.

"Is this your way of building up to asking for illegal Apparition lessons?" Draco teased, lowering his voice. "Striker wouldn't need it, she's already done it twice, but there's the blunderbusses to think of. You planning to sweeten the pot with Harry?" Harry did look up sharply at that. "Not that there's anything to sweeten the pot with," he added, hastily raising his hands, and that didn't seem to please Harry either.

"Oh, wouldn't it be nice if they just got back together already?" Luna complained shamelessly to Neville, loud enough that Padma and Tony could likely hear from across the room. "If this is what we were like when we were broken up, Neville, I'm astonished no one took drastic measures."

"I did," Neville said with embarrassed pride, and was rewarded with an open-mouthed enough kiss to elicit gagging noises from Ron, and a supercilious look from Hermione.

"That's the thing about having mates," Ron sighed. "Insufferable when they're dating," he jerked his thumb towards Luna and Neville, "And insufferable when they aren't." He jerked his thumb the other way towards the more morose Harry and Draco. "Remind me why we bother with this lot? Right, Apparition lessons from Frankenstein... no, I don't think even that could help."

He peered over Harry's shoulder. "Anything in there about Apparition? That's Draco's text from his godfather, right, the one with all the secret recipes and spells? Reckon Professor Snape could Apparate before he could walk." Harry was staring instead at a place that made Draco's throat constrict. "'Sectumsempra'," Ron read over his shoulder. "'For enemies.' You think Slughorn's an enemy?"

"He is," Harry said resentfully, "If he keeps stonewalling me about-" He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Tom Riddle. Sorry, Draco, I know you don't like hearing about my work for Dumbledore, but it's driving me crazy, I just can't get it out of him..."

"Sectumsempra," Hermione said quietly, "Would hardly be the way to get anything out of anyone." She put down her dry quill on her finished Defense essay, with the feathers pointing incidentally towards the name Professor Snape like some oblique accusation.

"Oh, right, that's the spell that killed-" Neville began, but broke off instantly at the look on Draco's face.

"None of you," Draco said tightly, "Are to use that spell. Ever."

Especially once- if- I'm gone.

But I don't want to be gone. There's no telling what idiocies this lot will get up to without me-

"No Sectumsempra," Draco insisted, and Luna blinked at him dewily.

"Oh, but I've already spent such time practicing it," she said, unrepentant.

"Did your godfather invent it?" Harry asked, eyes narrowing like he was trying to figure something out. Draco had no idea. Nothing incriminating there he didn't know about him already.

Maybe the memory could have assaulted Draco then, of Harry using that spell that seemed to so attract him on Draco himself, in a different lifetime. But that was- well, from a different lifetime. Draco's frustrations with Harry were of a far pettier and more personal nature, and his real disquiet was elsewhere. Towards the once-owner of that Potions text.

Draco rose to his feet. "Speaking of my godfather," he said with a forced smile, "I think you've been right, Hermione, that I should talk to him. Bury the hatchet and all. It's bury the hatchet or bury the hatcheted, right?"

A traumatized silence greeted Draco.

"I don't think anyone says that," offered Neville, and Draco left them to their burdens and puzzles, Harry to Slughorn, Ron to Apparition, Hermione to her usual academic hysteria, and Luna and Neville to each other. He only flinched as he heard their conversation turn back to Apparition in his imminent absence. Hermione asked if anyone else besides Draco had missed every single Apparition lesson.

Harry's voice followed Draco out of Ravenclaw Tower. "No one in our year but Theodore Nott."

Descending to the dungeons with that name in mind was hardly a pleasant affair, with the magic against him it conjured up in his own head. Every floor he went down felt instead like the dungeon had climbed up that amount closer to him, looming in upon him, with some invisible miasma pooling at its corners and depths that awaited him. I won't see Theo, just Severus, Draco told himself. He was right, though the presence of something that hated him was palpable, like a Black Letter with the dagger already out of the envelope, poised waiting.

He had to shake the ridiculous feeling he was being watched, as his feet made their way by muscle memory towards Severus's chambers. Harry often looked at the Marauder's Map, enough to know if Theo or indeed any other Slytherin or ally had been following Draco around- enough to indeed see whether there was suspicious movement from them anywhere. Draco knew Harry watched it for that per his dark intimations, and even in April there were no signs of the sort. Certainly, there were no congregations near the Room of Requirement, and no dark presence to dog Draco's steps as he approached his godfather's chambers. Perhaps there were eyes of some dark spectral being on him, just as he imagined, but the creature was his guilt.

When Severus opened the door, Draco was hit by a doubled feeling of unwelcomeness. That sallow face and sunken dark eyes looked as fearful as Draco's, for his godson to be down here where he had once so confidently called home.

"Draco?" he said softly, then looked around rapidly for onlookers or eavesdroppers. "Muffliato. What are you doing here? Has something happened?"

"I thought," Draco said, casting about for an excuse, "That we were meant to have check-ins each week, right? That didn't formally stop, just because-" You betrayed me were the careless words that came to mind, but he didn't finish the sentence.

"If you have something to impart," Severus hissed, practically sub-vocalizing despite the covering spell, "One might have thought the session at Xaphan would have sufficed. Draco, I did not expect you, or I would have told you not to come." Draco couldn't hold back his childish consternation from his face, and Severus did smile at that, a thin sort of rueful one. "Ah, how typical. Vain boy. You would have resented the invitation from a man you now despise, but you also resent a lack of invitation."

"Is something wrong?" Draco whispered. That was his first instinct from Severus's demeanor: Something's changed with Voldemort. Something's gotten worse. Draco had made a mistake, he was realizing, cutting Severus out of his life the way he had, putting this difficult distance between them, almost as much of a mistake as he had done wasting a month in bed trying to talk to Dantanian. But how could he have known there would be so little time left?

"You must not be seen here. It is not safe for you, and it is not safe for me."

"Near your chambers, or in the dungeons?"

"Yes," Severus hissed with a baring of his teeth. Incongruously enough, from up close they looked whiter and straighter than Draco ever recalled seeing, like Severus had taken some unusual pains with his appearance over break. Draco tried not to connect that in his mind with Gilderoy.

There were far darker things that could have unfolded against Severus Snape over Easter than an increase in interest in dental hygiene. "Did Voldemort-" Severus's look made him drop his voice to the utmost quietness as well, so much that he had to repeat himself more than once. Draco was starting to think he should have used a Disillusionment charm to come here, along with the Muffliato Severus had put on them and yet somehow was paranoid enough not even to trust. "Did something happen with the Dark Lord that no one's telling me?"

"Nothing as intriguing, one is sure," Severus intoned, as contemptuously as he could manage while whispering, "As your jaunt off to professional Quidditch matches. Do not concern yourself with those affairs. Although I suppose you are no longer any sort of willing recipient of my orders."

Draco wanted to tell Severus he was forgiven, that he had no animosity left for his decision to hide the memories, but he couldn't find the words. Forgiveness was not absolution, and the world had no absolution for Draco or Severus, in the zero-sum game their respective existences had become with one another.

"Your presence is truly perilous..."

"But there's Apparition. I've just seen the notice posted of the exam. I should take it, shouldn't I? I'll need my head of house to register me for that licensing, I have been remiss in the practicalities of being a Hogwarts sixth-year-"

"The Hogwarts sixth-year in question," Severus said smoothly, "Has another Head of House. And the distance he has placed between himself and his former head of house may only be judged as prudent, in the present moment."

Draco's mouth snapped closed. He didn't understand how he could have forgotten. "Sorry," Draco whispered, "Sorry," and turned to go, even as he heard Severus make a noise to forestall him.

"It is I," Severus said, quiet as the grave, "Who should be the one to apologize, without excuse," and Draco turned to regard that pale bleak beloved face without even a fragment of understanding between them.

"Remember, Severus, you're not supposed to apologize for things, to me," Draco said weakly. "You're supposed to be a cool godfather. So..." He tried to remember what he would always used to say. "Be cool."

"Take care," Severus whispered to his departing back. "Draco Black."

Draco left to go right up to the Room of Requirement, unaccountably agitated. There was something he had to do that he could not even trust to his own safekeeping, nor his invisible ink after the Langlock had failed against Grindelwald. He got the usual small room, which had used to be the place where Harry would await him. His insides sickened at the sight of the blue chair, as if some blazoned sapphire reminder of everything he had lost and would lose.

"Colovaria," Draco hissed, and the chair turned emerald green. When Draco climbed onto the green, he felt an uneasy magic in it. He took out a parchment and quill, the firelight sufficient for relatively few words, and wrote words he knew that before he left this room he would have to burn.

Draco Black

Severus Snape

Danger of the talon wand in other hands

Danger of the talon wand in Draco Black's hands

Heir to House Black

Hecate's curse

Younger (physically more so)

More intelligent

Draco saved lives

Severus saved lives

Draco helped prove Sirius's innocence

Severus saved his worst enemy's life,

for Draco's sake

Draco restored Frank and Alice Longbottom

Severus saved the wizarding world

Draco saved Gilderoy from Azkaban

Severus had to do everything alone

Severus was always alone

Severus was a Death Eater

Draco was a Death Eater

Severus was cruel to Harry

Draco was not a spy for Dumbledore

Draco murdered four people

Draco used people

Draco is always a liar

Draco ruined Theodore Nott's life

Harry Potter, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black,

Hermione Granger, Luna Lovegood,

Ronald Weasley, Neville Longbottom

Gilderoy Lockhart

Draco might have better spent his time working on something practical. When he did not have his Dementor essay in Defense, his own godfather did not hesitate to give him detention for it. Detention, it later turned out, to secretly be spent on extra hours assisting the unloading of supplies, at the built portions of Xaphan. But detention was detention.

He almost wanted to rise to his feet, bitter at Severus sending him away the past night and bitter for more than that. Everything for Draco's safety, right? Even willing to be friends again, Severus still had him at arm's length, 'safe' and drowning in irony.

He could call out something like, Really? Because I could just give a verbal presentation instead. How would you like it if I told the class everything I know about Dementors?

He held his tongue. It was one thing to contemplate his death in a year, and another thing to actively seek it, today.

Still. He could have done without the gleeful spree of laughter it sent through the class's Slytherins.

"Now open your book at page two hundred and thirteen, Mr. Black," Severus said, face blank as he spoke the name, "And read the first two paragraphs on the Cruciatus curse..."

On the weekend that followed, Ron, Hermione, and Neville went off to Apparition lessons, which Harry clearly wished he could attend. Draco had detention, so was not in a place to offer any illegal lessons. Nor did Harry seem overly fond of the offer, from the only other of their group to remain in the hall with him: Luna proposing Harry and her practice illegal Apparition together, from Hagrid's hut. "It will be just like we're fleeing for our lives," Luna said excitedly.

That offer was somehow rebuffed.

"I have to get you-know-what," Harry hissed to Luna, "From you-know-who." Draco knew he meant the memory from Slughorn for Dumbledore, but Luna was left blinking, and then hurrying after her departing cousin for an explanation.

"You would have noticed if you were in our Potions class," Draco explained as she trotted after him. "He's been staying behind to waylay Slughorn every day about it, but that old bugger's a slippery one. Merlin, by now half the class must think Harry's ditched me because he fancies Slughorn."

"No, don't worry," Luna said helpfully. "Everyone thinks Harry ditched you because of your personality."

Harry had little luck in his Slughorn project after, but with Draco's help alongside Frank, Alice, Sirius, and Remus, the citadel was coming together more nicely. What an indignity, to give so much aid to the one of Dumbledore's projects that was actually working.

Beyond the citadel, what Draco found that sunny seaside day of impending summer left things worse.

Draco had been sent to fetch Gilderoy after an afternoon of heavy magical lifting and heavier avoidance of Sirius and Remus. There was some minor consultation needed, as to the exact shape of the domed ceiling they were constructing for the official entryway. Behind the drawbridge, the stone and stained glass would rise, red and gold highest set to come aflame at certain slants of light. But that needed the citadel's architect or at least construction director par excellence, none other than Gilderoy Lockhart, holder of the plans for Xaphan in both his tower and his head. At the very least, Gilderoy would have to come up and show the plans' location in said library tower to the others. They had done a perfunctory search, and found nothing but ointments from Severus, which had cost Draco pains to explain away.

But Gilderoy was down patching up the walls, on the outside close enough to the sea for high tide to threaten boot leather. Severus had risked the threat, despite not having any role in this menial task, and despite it being already finished from what Draco could see, no reason for anyone to be held up except outside curiosities. With Severus and Gilderoy's backs leaned against a wall so well-repaired it bore no marks of decay, throwing them both entirely into shadow, that curiosity found voice. It was a question Draco had asked himself, and the question Gilderoy would surely be asked the most, should he ever find legal absolution and be unleashed back out onto the world.

Severus Snape turned out to be the only one to have the courage to ask it.

"Why did you do it?"

"Seguinus?" Gilderoy said blankly. Severus had to specify, a pained look crossing his face. Draco opened his mouth to announce his presence, only to close it once Severus asked,

"Why did you choose to become an imposter?"

"Ah, you mean my literary sojourns as Gilderoy Lockhart, monster-hunter extraordinaire?" Gilderoy laughed.

Severus was never likely to be moved by such frittering. "Your adventures," Severus drawled, "As Obliviator of the wizarding world's best and brightest monster-hunters extraordinaire, as you put it. What launched you upon this singularly foolhardy and unworthy venture? Even had you not made the stupefyingly imbecilic choice to become a Defense professor and beg to be found out, you would have been uncovered surely before long regardless, and without my godson to intercede for you then. You are not suited by character, Gilderoy, to that height of deception."

"I suppose I should be honored," Gilderoy laughed nervously, "For a man as blunt as you to characterize me as honest."

"Only," Severus corrected mildly, "Unwittingly so. You try to conceal, but against your own judgment, you reveal all your treasures. So answer the question, Gilderoy. Why?"

Gilderoy fidgeted, drawing his legs up closer to himself. His chin rested on his knees, golden fall of hair over Ravenclaw-blue fur a distracting sight which failed to distract. "Are you bringing this up to- I don't know, embarrass me? There's no need, I've been shamed every way there is for a man to be shamed. I didn't go and hunt the monsters myself because I didn't have the talent or the will for it. But I did have a natural talent at memory charms, so that was my route instead."

"That is how," Severus scowled, with a voice like in class scolding a Weasley, "Not why. Had you no fear you would be unmasked?"

"No," Gilderoy said, tossing his head with a hint of his old arrogance crossing his face. "I had faith in my charms, and I had faith that even if somehow one did get undone, the person would come to speak to me before the public. And then, well..."

"You worked your way in with these individuals," Severus intoned, "In the main, by charm, one extrapolates? If necessary, by..." Severus's lip curled distastefully, as he pronounced the word like some foreign virus. "Sensuality?"

Gilderoy's shoulders slumped, pretense of pride deserting him. "I am aware of the irony of my eventual fate, given the methods I frequently utilized. I am well aware indeed. Perhaps it was the only fitting punishment for-"

"It was not," Severus interrupted coldly, "Fitting. None deserve that punishment, whatever their crimes. True punishment cannot be given by another crime, only by legal justice. And that is what met you in absentia, Gilderoy. Attribute not the rest to some cosmic karmic nonsense. You suffered, as so many suffer, due to a simple set of twin forces: ill will and poor luck."

"My luck had to run out sometime," Gilderoy tried to laugh. Severus leaned in, fixing him under those piercing dark eyes of his like a microscope, intent upon the squirming perpetrator as Draco had hardly seen him be on anything. "I don't know what to say. We- we were at school together, though I was enough years behind I suppose you never noticed me. I wasn't the most noticeable, in truth." Severus waited, as if this sentimental bit was white noise. "I wanted to be, though. I wanted everyone to notice me. I always fancied I would grow up to be special, and yet I found myself mediocre, the most mediocre soul Ravenclaw had seen in many years. Nor did anyone hesitate to remind me of that fact."

Dare one think that sympathy on Severus's eternally harsh face? Perhaps just understanding. As if that was such an easy thing itself, to come by from Severus Snape.

"I was ambitious, but I couldn't see any way to accomplish my ambitions except- the underhanded way. Many better men than I in that position have made my choice."

Severus looked frustrated to find Gilderoy so well-prepared with words, where perhaps he had hoped to break him down and dissect him for some deeper truth. "But you have the ability to learn a discipline and excel in it. You have shown that not just with memory charms, but with castle-building. Yes, under unimaginable duress, but you must not truly be the worst Ravenclaw in decades. Not centuries, at least. If nothing else, there was Dantanian Noir." Severus looked unwittingly pleased to draw a shaky laugh, for what he hadn't meant to be a bon mot. "You would have had means to support yourself, if not reach the levels of wealth and fame you-"

"I thought I deserved it!" Gilderoy turned his face away from Severus. "You wish the truth? Fine! I felt I deserved to be famous and adored and rich, that I had always been meant to be seen as a hero, and that in my own way- I was! I really did think myself a hero! Laugh all you like at my self-deception."

Severus did not laugh, did not move, just waited.

"I would tell myself," Gilderoy finally admitted, "That it was like a game of stakes, between myself and my victims. Stakes they were unaware of, yes, but they were in the game regardless, they'd put themselves there by being exceptional. I told myself that with these great men and women, these real heroes- if I could deceive them, if I could get the jump on them and successfully Obliviate them, then I was just as good as them. Better! I might as well have done what they'd done, if I could conquer them. I don't know why I let myself believe that, that stabbing a dragonslayer in the back meant you had slain a dragon, but... I did. I was not ashamed. As it happens, I was very proud of myself. I thought myself the cleverest man alive. Now will you cease toying around with grave dirt and leave me to my prison walls?"

Gilderoy's voice had risen to a serious volume before he realized, and he hastily shut his mouth when he did. "I'm sorry," he said, cornflower-blue eyes wide and wild. He wrapped his fur coat around himself protectively, hugging his knees as if expecting any variety of punishment, and comforting himself before the inevitable was the only right response to that eventuality.

"Sorry to have done what you did," Severus said, unreadable, "Or merely sorry to have raised your voice, at a man whose good will you find convenient for the healing of your scars?"

"Both." Gilderoy sounded to be fighting tears. He was not hard to shatter these days, Gilderoy, although perhaps he had never been. "I did come to regret it, all of it, at L'Infern. Because it made me realize how hard it really was, to- to actually face a monster. To fight one. Even to- to escape- to get away from one- I realized I'd stolen their deeds, written books about them, and only when it was too late did I understand them. Because backstabbing wasn't brave like I thought it was. I had never known real fear, until-" He snuck a glance at Severus, the kind that seemed not so much to be judging whether he would be hurt, as how badly he would be. "Until I met someone really to be afraid of. So I'm sorry. I am sorry. I swear I'm sorry."

"Enough," Severus said abruptly. "No more apologies. They..." In that strange moment, the spying Draco could see Severus likely remembering Draco's words, though they came out differently. "They do not suit you. I prefer you smiling."

Gilderoy tried weakly to smile. "I am quite a bother, aren't I? I know myself a burden, but I am trying- you don't know how I'm trying, Severus-"

"I know," Severus said, and took Gilderoy's hand. Gilderoy stared at him hard, then leaned forward and gave a kiss to Severus's hand, leaving Severus looking thunderstruck. "Gilderoy?" he said, frowning. Gilderoy's crumpled frame leaned against Severus's, seeking it out as if for reassurance or just further warmth. The sound of the ocean made the motion more natural, as if Gilderoy could not help but be drawn in like the tide towards the shore, like a moon to its orbit. As if Severus did truly mean comfort now, for one other person in the world besides Draco, instead of always just eternal uneasy threat.

"Thank you," Gilderoy said, "Thank you for listening to me," and Severus shook his head wryly, staring down at his own hand as if the imprint of Gilderoy's lips there had left a mark.

"You are," Severus observed detachedly, "A different man to the one I knew at Hogwarts. One can hardly believe you the same person. And yet here you are. The only real thing left unchanged those-" The corner of Severus's lip turned up. "Eyes of such excessive blue."

"Um, sorry?" Gilderoy said weakly, and dropped his face to his and Severus's linked hands. Severus's other hand lifted and drew close, looking almost like he meant to stroke Gilderoy's hair. Then it dropped away. When Gilderoy's face nuzzled down against the back of Severus's hand, though, Severus didn't stop him, just let out a soft sigh.

"Thank you," Gilderoy said again, then leaned over and pressed his hands to Severus's face. When Severus didn't pull back, just stared at Gilderoy's mouth, Gilderoy impulsively pressed his lips to Severus's.

It was hard to tell what either man felt in the kiss or drew from it. They made a picture of absolute contrast, Severus dark and Gilderoy as golden as his name in the beach light, Severus dressed plainly and austerely but perfectly clean, with Gilderoy fluffed up like a peacock in his unseasonable fur coat but strewn with dirt and sand and dust. Severus motionless, lips half-parted against Gilderoy's, while Gilderoy was leaning into the other man with the force of his body, lips together a soft wet sound under the roar of the waves. The only sure thing was that Severus did not pull away, or shove Gilderoy away from him, as anyone who knew an iota about the man would have expected. Gilderoy was the one to finally pull away, closed eyes flickering back open. They met Severus's half-closed stare and they regarded one another with a gaze at once like they were lovers and like they had never before met.

"Gilderoy, what are you..." Severus said, voice coming out embarrassingly husky. It must have been the first time he had been kissed in any number of years.

Gilderoy jerked back in shock at what he had done, the spell broken. "I'm sorry! I don't know what I was thinking, I'm sorry!" he yelped. His fingers went to his mouth, as if unable to believe the lips under his fingertips had reached and touched such a venerated place. "I didn't mean to, I was just- ah- um-"

"Grateful for my acceptance? Your standard payment for kindness?" Severus said wryly, and then more forebodingly, "Or perhaps you mistook me for someone else."

Gilderoy shook his head fearfully, struck mute.

Draco could no longer in good conscience keep spying. In genuinely good faith, he would have announced his presence minutes ago. Now he had seen something he never should have known. The least he could do was rescue Gilderoy now. He walked into the filming of high tide before them on the beach, feet breaking the over-bright reflections of light on white water.

"Severus? Gilderoy? There you are," Draco interrupted, as if he had just arrived, and his deception was a success. Neither distracted man seemed to suspect a thing.

Draco only had to face Gilderoy over something more serious once Severus was gone, and that was thankfully not related to Draco's godfather. It was, perhaps, just as dangerous, but at least it would not cut at Gilderoy's pride. Only at Draco's, to have to ask such a thing of anyone, and reveal the depths of desperation he had found in himself, with the capacity that depths in turn unfolded in him.

"Gilderoy," Draco asked, catching his arm before they could follow Severus back towards the castle. "One second. I wanted to talk to you about..." He lowered his voice. "The night you escaped L'Infern. How you did it. How you broke past the wards. Because as I see it, the wards are the greatest issue with that, aren't they, if they're calibrated to keep someone in. That's what your captor had, which is why you were left at such liberty inside the walls, right?"

Gilderoy seemed too distracted to even think what his benefactor might want with that information. "I- I can write you an account of it, if you like. Or when we're at more leisure, you can interview me. As you said, right now, I'm expected for the matter of the dome at the entrance-"

"I'll interview you later, then. As soon as possible," Draco said, and began the walk back with him, calculated so that they were out of hearing range from Severus, though they were silent, preoccupied with their own thoughts. As no doubt was Severus, as the dark straight back that Gilderoy watched so ponderously was as stiff as Draco had ever seen it. Only once they were outside the entrance hall, Severus gone inside to squabble over what sounded to be absolutely nothing with Sirius, did Gilderoy come back to reality enough to question Draco's request.

"An, er, an interview? I'm flattered, Draco, but..." Gilderoy looked around nervously, as if worried Draco was really ready to rip into him as soon as possible for the affront of laying lips upon his godfather. But Draco had a simpler purpose.

Hermione was right. They were getting no closer to any solution. At some point, they had to admit there was a third option.

"Tomorrow," Draco said, and when Gilderoy looked too anxious to function, took pity on him. "I'll talk to you about it tomorrow. Just to think. To brainstorm ideas." They were too close to the others to say any names, so Draco just lowered his voice to the smallest it could go, and repeated three times in Gilderoy's ear for him to understand:

"There's a man I'd like to break out of a castle."

: Coming of Age

Notes:

Hey all! Thanks so much for all your thoughts and comments, I definitely read them all and they mean a lot to me! <3 Hope you all are doing well and have a good weekend! :)

Chapter Text

"Aigua infernal," said Seguinus Sade. "You have heard talk of hellfire, no doubt. And this is hell's water."

Draco had expected the most monstrous creature out of the pits of hell, worse than Grindelwald, worse than Voldemort, worse even than Draco's father. But the man in the Pensieve was not frightening. Perhaps because he was like a more confident, put together, self-possessed version of Severus, with long dark hair and pale skin and eyes darker than obsidian daggers. And there was his deep soothing voice, not a schoolteacher's but a sovereign serene in his unquestioned domain, educating his guest Gilderoy without the hint of a need for violence ever crossing its shadow.

They stood on the shore of a glacier lake that proved the more foreboding sight, with the chill of impending autumn sending shivers over the water's surface already from such a bracing altitude. Are we still in Spain? Gilderoy had asked breathlessly. Their winding trek to the predictably-named Estany de L'Infern took them higher than he professed he had ever been, here at Seguinus's charming mountain chateau. Are we still in Spain, Gilderoy asked, awe-struck by the moonlit view, Or are we in France?

Seguinus stooped down and ran his hand through the water, a shiver of wind coming from high above to vibrate the clear surface over the pebbles, as he touched ever-bitter cold. "What did I call this water to you? El agua? L'eau?" Gilderoy did not look likely to produce a worthy answer to the question, but then, it had been a rhetorical flourish. "No, it is aigua here. So we are not in either France or Spain. We are in Catalunya."

"Oh, so Spain," said Gilderoy.

From the look Seguinus leveled at him then, it was a miracle the arch-vampire hadn't drained him dry that instant, sending the shore of the lake momentarily red with it. Let alone keeping him alive with him for years, against his will at times.

"No. Catalunya is Catalunya. But let me tell you of more interesting things. Can you hazard a guess why this is called the water of hell?"

"No, let's see," said Gilderoy, bending down to touch it. Seguinus caught Gilderoy's wrist in a grip so tight, Gilderoy cried out in surprised pain. When Seguinus obligingly let go of Gilderoy's more delicate wrist, taking just a split second longer than he had to, there were thick finger marks drawn perpendicular over the veins of his wrist.

"I did not set out to hurt you, but to stop you," Seguinus said by way of apology. It might have been true. "You are so careless. Touch your wrist and grimace as you might, Gilt, if you understood you would thank me for stopping you from contact with this lake."

"But you just splashed at it," Gilderoy said naively.

"Yes," Seguinus said patiently, "And I am different from you in what singular capacity?"

"You're not as famous," Gilderoy tried, and Seguinus didn't bother to feign a smile at Gilderoy's inanity. "And you're not quite as devastatingly good-looking."

"Oh, not quite," Seguinus purred, and stroked a rough palm- the dry one- down Gilderoy's cheek, before letting Gilderoy's face go dismissively aside. There looked to be real appreciation there, with any darkness behind an envelope of barely maintained civility. Far smarter people than Gilderoy had been must have easily fallen for this man's looks and presence. The aura was palpable, even in a memory, of a fascinating control.

"And you're a vampire," Gilderoy said breathlessly, sounding as if he found this fact much more stimulating than he soon would.

"A vampire whose years have taught him there are places where humans must tread lightly," Seguinus said with benign enjoyment, "Or be tread upon. My home is such a place. And it is not the Castell and its faded glory but the Estany de L'Infern at the center of its malignity. Have you questioned yourself why this castle is called the castle of hell?"

Gilderoy blinked dewily. "Because the mountain is called Pic de L'Infern," he said earnestly, in full confidence.

Seguinus was admirably patient. "Yes, and why is the mountain called that?"

Gilderoy tilted his head. "Because it's very tall and has a steep slant," he mused, "Making its ascent uniquely difficult? And there's that smaller peak, on the end of the long, flatter descent to the other side, which you said makes it look like there's the body of a great snake buried beneath, or a dragon-"

"Not a bad answer," Seguinus coached him on, the world's kindest Socratic dialogue between monster and future victim. "But a Muggle one, Gilt. Not a magical one. Did you know that Dante Alighieri was a wizard, and knew of this place when he wrote his Commedia Divina?"

"Dante?"

Seguinus explained about the poem's narrative, which he characterized as a living man taken down into hell, then shown purgatory and heaven in turn, "the drowned and the saved", in order to teach him about sin and salvation and save him from his own future damnation. Gilderoy was compelled, as Seguinus clearly cued him to be, by Dante's notion of hell, the name and spiritual reference themselves taken from Muggle religion, but organized by the more wizarding principle of circles.

That led to a slight digression, as Gilderoy just had to know what the other places were made of, and the answer of terraces and then spheres proved costly for Seguinus, as Gilderoy did not know nor could apparently conceive of what a terrace is. "We are standing on one right now," Seguinus prompted, but to little avail. Eventually, Gilderoy was coaxed to abandon this grand perplexing question of the terrace for the greater good.

"Seven circles," Seguinus eventually concluded, "Spiraling further and further downwards, each holding a different category of sinners to suffer in a contrapasso, a punishment that exactly fit the crime. The deeper the circle, the worse the sin. And the deepest circle was not full of hellfire. What do you imagine could be found there instead, for the worst of all imaginable punishments?"

Gilderoy had the grace to catch on here. "Not hellfire, but- hell water?"

"Exactly," Seguinus said, "Aigua infernal." He once again lifted a handful and let it trickle down, where it shone like unhinged stars in the moonlight.

"And what is it about this water that makes it so terrible a punishment?"

"It's water, to be sure, but Dante visited in the winter months. You can find the Estany de L'Infern at the bottom of his hell, but the glacier lake is frozen. Immobility, cold, the constant immersion of drowning and freezing to death at once, for eternity. That in itself would be a formidable punishment. But hell is relinquishment. Of control, and of what one values. What is the most valuable thing a wizard possesses?"

"His magic?"

"Exactly," Seguinus hissed, the dark glimmer in his lovely eyes more sinister for a moment. Not long enough, though, for the eye not to question whether it had seen it at all, on the face of such a sweet and kind man. "Immersion in aigua infernal robs a human wizard of his magic, once and for all. There is no reversal, no appeal, no authority or power in the world to restore what has been lost. Even Death. Even time. His magic dies in every time and every possible world. That is the peculiarity of this lake, and the reason that the castle was constructed here. That is why this is the castle of hell. Because- despite much testing, there has never been an answer known as to what- let alone how or why- this is the hole in the world where magic goes to die. Now give me a kiss, little one. Are you so aggrieved by some pretty marks on your wrist now?"

Gilderoy stepped up and kissed Seguinus eagerly, erotic fervor greater than any thirst for knowledge. Seguinus smirked against his mouth. He made Gilderoy draw back in alarm when he leaned his left hand behind himself, crouching and pulling Gilderoy with him, and drew his fingers once more over the water.

"You- you don't mean all that, it was just a story," Gilderoy said breathlessly. "You wouldn't be- having me so close, playing with it like this, otherwise-"

"Shall we test it?" said Seguinus, and flicked his fingers in Gilderoy's direction. Gilderoy yelped and tried to scamper away, but Seguinus held him fast to his side with his other hand. No doubt, he'd left more marks. The water touched only Seguinus, but Gilderoy was shaking from head to toe.

"Why- why would this be a place to build a castle, though? Such a horrible place- you said- experiments to find its origin, or-"

"Or perhaps," Seguinus said mildly, stroking Gilderoy's golden hair, "For humans, it proved an effective barrier. And threat."

"It was a lie, though," Gilderoy said anxiously, as soon as the memory had ended and Draco pulled his head out of the Pensieve. "I tried to avoid it- tried to dig under it- but I didn't get far enough, and in the end we had no choice but to risk it. And myself and all those little girls swam and struggled through half of that terrible lake and its cold, but once I was out of it, in time, my magic returned. I can't remember how long. Only that they wanted me to make a fire, and I could. So I told the Catalan ministry, but they don't think I've turned all the girls to Squibs- but even if it had, they agreed it was preferable to keeping them in place..."

"You said after, it came back," Draco surmised, "But during, it stopped your magic?"

"It did," Gilderoy said, hanging his head. "I tried to use it to help the girls swim, lift one of the tired ones, and I couldn't do a thing. I couldn't feel any magic in me when I tried to pull on it, either. While I still had that water on me, I was without magic. But permanent? It wasn't that."

"Do you think he was lying to keep you in line," Draco asked carefully, "Or that he simply didn't know how it really worked? I mean, maybe people who entered that water... didn't tend to come out."

"I think he knew," Gilderoy said, lips drawing together thinly and going white.

"And you think it was actually the water that saved you? That broke the personal tie to the wards that Seguinus had placed on you?"

"It was a tie on my magic. When my magic stopped, there was nothing left for it to hold onto. For it to have returned when my magic was reborn in me, I believe he would have had to tie that knot again. But no, I don't think he knew the water would have that effect, sundering the bond, or that I would ever dare go into the lake."

Gilderoy was staring at the surface of the Pensieve, as if into the clear limpidity of recollection housed there, so little and yet too hideously much. Draco had asked too much of him with this, but then, he always did with Gilderoy.

"So this is something specific to Castell de L'Infern," Draco concluded, "And not transferable to Nurmengard."

Far too much to have asked, if it was a mere interesting factoid.

"Do you know if the water would work if it was transplanted outside the lake, or outside Pic de L'Infern? If it could, and it had the magic-neutering effect..."

"He told me another time that it wouldn't. But... I did hear him and his people once speak of constructing another castle elsewhere if they were discovered and Catalunya became untenable for them. They spoke then of the prospect of another hell lake, or one all around the castle as a natural moat. But even they weren't aware how to do it. They thought Seguinus might know... but that knowledge is buried with him under the stones of L'Infern."

There went that idea. Draco tried desperately to change the subject, if to another fraught one. But surely not as painful as the subject of that memory, or at least Draco could only hope. "I still can't believe you got Severus to bring you a Pensieve to set up here." Draco looked at the great charcoal-colored basin then with the amazement it deserved, for its origin in the largesse of one Severus Snape.

Gilderoy looked displeased rather than gratified at the reminder. "He seemed," Gilderoy said quietly, "Grateful to do something for me, rather than spend any time with me, when he has to be here for Dumbledore's check-ins. A surprising fount of conversation topics, a Pensieve." Gilderoy laughed mirthlessly. "He thinks I want to store memories so I can write my memoirs."

"You'd think your rehabilitation would have involved going cold turkey on the literary front," Draco jibed, but Gilderoy didn't smile. Draco could see why Severus would find that absence so vexing, when it was usually so easy to bring one flashing across that solicitous face. "Why is he avoiding talking to you?"

It was cruel to ask when Draco had a good idea why, but he'd asked. Gilderoy was predictably evasive. "Ah, well, we've- to be frank, Draco, he and I have quarreled, which shouldn't surprise you given the quarrels I've witnessed between you and your godfather. Though I do detect less animosity in you when you speak of him these days. Not that he's interested anymore in sticking around long enough to hear my opinion about it-"

Gilderoy roused himself out of his bitterness to give an unfortunately forced smile, just as their topic of conversation entered the library tower. The presence of Severus, noticeably awkward and stilted around Gilderoy as well as Draco now, put an end to all productive discussion.

The afternoon of the tests for Apparition licenses, which had slipped Draco's mind he would still have to attend, Harry brought news that seemed to be depressing him. Even more than their copies of Common Apparition Mistakes and How to Avoid Them seemed to be depressing Ron. Though Draco was privately of the opinion that if Ron had lived through Draco's sixth year nightmare of trying to help Vince and Greg with Apparition, last minute- not in the worst experiences of sixth year, but definitely in the top three or four- well, Ron would be more sanguine about his own chances.

Nor did Harry have any reason in Draco's mind to lament the news that Dumbledore would be discontinuing their private lessons until Harry got Slughorn to cough up the information. As far as Draco was concerned, being relieved of spending time with Dumbledore- that was, Albus Dumbledore- and not celebrating it was akin to the poor penitent in purgatory, informed the path to heaven was now open to him, instead gloomily inquiring of the angel as to whether the steps to paradise had proper guide-rails.

"I know you hate the man," Harry hissed, while Draco tried and failed to hide his pleasure. "But this is important!" He lowered his voice and glared. Likely his ire was really fueled by resentment he couldn't join taking the test. "A lot could depend on those lessons. On that memory I need from Slughorn. So don't look so chuffed at my failure."

"Oh, my boyfriend's failure, that I wouldn't countenance," Draco agreed equably. "But my good friend's? That I might find myself able to bear."

No, the real news to lament was the passing of Aragog the great spider, once mistaken as the monster of the Chamber of Secrets. Hagrid sent Harry a note bewailing the loss, a note Draco promptly snagged for him and Luna. Bafflingly, Luna commented she would indeed have loved to have met the poor Aragog fellow. She was alone in that, before Harry had to tell her she wasn't invited.

Draco was, and he immediately began to concoct any desperate excuse he could to skip proceedings. Hopefully Apparition testing would somehow go long.

"He's mental!" Ron exclaimed. "That thing told its mates to eat Harry and Draco and I! Told them to help themselves! And now Hagrid expects us to go down there and cry over its horrible hairy body!"

"If I wasn't a fair hand at manipulation," Draco agreed- read, if Aunt Bella hadn't been so competent a tutor at the Imperius curse- "We might well be long-decomposed contents of that corpse's stomach." Just like Dantanian in Astaroth. "But sure, R.I.P., hell-spider."

"It's not just that," Hermione added, looking around anxiously before Draco cast a belated Muffliato. "He's asking us to leave the castle at night, and he knows security's a million times tighter and how much trouble we'd be in if we were caught."

Ron and Hermione began to make excuses for themselves, while Harry peered at the missive from Hagrid with that unfortunate do-gooder look dawning on his handsome face.

Thankfully, Hermione said no in Draco's place. "Harry, you can't be thinking of going. It's such a pointless thing to get detention for."

Unfortunately, Neville was off somewhere, so Luna was fully attentive to Aragog's plight. "I don't know, Hagrid has been awfully kind to-"

"And we will find ways to requite that kindness," Draco cut in, "That do not involve risking ourselves and our- in my case quite dubious- academic careers for the interring of a creature who was happy to serve his sentimental benefactor's friends to his brood for a light spot of nibbles before bed."

"Well said, well said," Ron said, and Draco gave him a surreptitious little high five behind Luna's back.

"Look, Potions will be almost empty this afternoon, with us all off doing our tests... try and soften Slughorn up a bit then!" Hermione offered Harry, which did the job of distracting Luna as well. Irrepressible girl was always up for a good mystery, and was more curious than the lot of them what skeletons her Potions master had in the closet.

"Lucky. Harry, that's it- get lucky!" Ron said suddenly, and proposed that the use of Felix Felicis might not go amiss as a trial strategy. Hermione seemed stunned at her own lack of innovation, and hastily seconded the notion. In retrospect, it was obvious to use up a bit of the gold stuff, for such a presumably key task for the fate of the wizarding world.

Although that didn't keep both Draco and Luna from exchanging a sour look at the mention, remembering their escapade with the potion in fourth year and the eventual result. Well, it wasn't the potion's fault they'd taken it too early to get the job done. Still- unlucky in the use of luck!

"I dunno... it's not actually mine, Ron. Remember, Draco's the one who won it. He just gave it to me back then for- for safekeeping, I suppose?" Harry looked unclear on that point.

No, because you're the bloody savior, and you're the one who won it in the blue loop. "It's yours, Harry. I'm not taking it back. Whatever you see fit to do with it, it's up to you, not me." Maybe this was how you got it out of the old sluggy bastard the first time round, and I've just narrowly averted ruining any chance of overcoming the old snakey bastard, by not stealing it from you.

"Are you sure, Draco?" Harry said anxiously. "That potion is rare, and expensive, and-"

"And given your current terms with your godfather," Ron said cannily, "Doubt he's going to be giving you any more out of the blue any time soon. But you see how important this is, right?"

Ron and Draco were on the same wavelength that afternoon. "Yes, and even if it wasn't, it's Harry's. What's mine is his." At the disbelieving look they all gave him, it seemed at his unusually accommodating manner, Draco smirked and shot a half-lidded look over at Harry, more effective through a sleek curtain of pale than dark hair. "If you think it a bribe for your affections, Potter, by all means, take it as one."

It was a long time Harry spent staring at Draco, red-faced and speechless, before any of his attention could be returned to Ron's plan. "Come on, listen to him, you gormless lot," Draco urged. "He's the one who had the plot to save Harry from the Death Eaters at the Ministry last year, and here you see the Chosen One before you, putting up noble obstacles to his own success as ever. It was a great plot, all I had to do was murder one person in the process. Yes, Cannon's the brains of this operation." He put in the stress for Hermione, and with a bit more coaxing, Harry agreed that after one last try that afternoon, if he failed, he'd put the stuff to use that night.

"Just be careful," Draco cautioned. "First gulp, it gives you such a rush, I lost my footing, first time-"

"Given that only a drop or two is necessary at a time, for one person," Hermione said sharply, "That shouldn't be a difficulty."

After Hermione had her own ego satisfied, by haranguing a richly deserving Draco and Luna for profligacy during the Triwizard Tournament, the bell rang for the test. Draco threw an arm around Ron's shoulders and promised Ron success. "It's inevitable," Draco whispered dramatically, "Given the droplets of Felix Felicis I put in your water this morning," and Hermione let out a muffled shriek.

"Draco, that's cheating! That's illegal!" she hissed, but Ron ruined Draco's fun with his damned sensibleness.

"Sorry, Frankenstein, that's only going to work one time," Ron laughed, not slow to sense a recycled trick after a childhood with Fred and George.

He still sounded glum, but at least he'd been distracted by Draco's subpar attempt at deception. Hermione kept sputtering about Draco's lie, not quite convinced. That kept Ron's spirits up all the way up until they reached the Entrance Hall and found Neville. The four test-takers parted from Harry and Luna, with sadly a kiss goodbye only for Neville, and Ron boldly strode into the jaws of his personal Armageddon.

Armageddon was kind to such intrepid challengers. Granted, Ron did contrive to leave half an eyebrow behind, near Blaise Zabini at that. But a look from Theo of all people silenced Blaise from calling out the mistake. Maybe that was a sign vengeance did not burn eternal, or maybe Theo just felt them beyond such childishness.

Despite this rare show of Slytherin mercy, the approaching examiner did seem liable to notice it hanging in the air in Ron's wake, until Draco stepped forward with a lilt in his voice and a toss of his hair. By the time he was done his offensive of flirting at the man, Draco didn't think the bloke would have missed one of his own eyebrows left behind.

So they all four passed, Draco and Hermione as a matter of course, though Hermione was ecstatic anyway, and Ron and Neville too in something of a surprise victory. They even managed to surreptitiously recover Ron's half an eyebrow on their way out. It had them in a celebratory mood at dinner that night, with Luna insisting they all congregate at Ravenclaw for her to give a proper toast to the victors. Harry, unfortunately, was not among the number of the successful, having gotten Slughorn alone for once and still not dragged it out of him.

"F," Draco hissed in his ear, "F," and gave a meaningful glance. After Harry just stared at Draco distractedly, Hermione nudged Harry in the side.

"That obviously stands for Felix Felicis, for the record," she whispered, and Harry managed to get his mind out of the gutter long enough to agree to put Ron's plan into action that night.

Draco let the Gryffindors part from them as they all headed to their common rooms, though Luna and Neville's affectionate farewell had Draco linger near Harry as well. To think Draco could ever find himself jealous of the love life of Neville Longbottom.

"You want any other gifts for luck?" Draco teased lightly, and Harry just smiled at him, tension written across his jaw and shoulders.

"It's good to see you back with all of us like this now," Harry said quietly. "Back in all the swing of things, like you're part of it again."

Draco could have hit him. "Harry," Draco whispered, "If you're going to patronize me, I'd just as soon as offer a kiss for luck to the Ravenclaw eagle knocker."

Harry contrived to look resentful even of that magical object, if it were to get a kiss from Draco. "No," he muttered, shifting, the fate of the world on his shoulders and yet as artless and open when it came to his feelings as the day they met. "I didn't mean to. I just- I mean seeing you happy, or even just seeming a little happy, for a moment- that's gift enough."

Draco wanted to kiss him. He bit his tongue and stood there instead, to give Harry the chance. When he waited enough to embarrass himself and found nothing forthcoming, he gave Harry his most contented smile, and left with Luna for Ravenclaw.

The next morning found him in Charms with the Gryffindors, and Harry abuzz with a victory of his own. Horcrux, the word came through, within the bubble of Draco's Muffliato. Horcrux, a word Draco could not remember if he had heard in the newspaper or in Hogwarts the day Harry killed Voldemort all those years ago, but it had a resonance beyond its mere sound, even before Harry explained its awful truth. Maybe Dantanian had already known what it meant.

Harry ended his narrative with Dumbledore's promise to take Harry along, should he find another Horcrux to pursue, and Draco was filled with misgiving, though he didn't know why. He stared at his flask and turned it into wine with distracted ease, matching Hermione's completed one. If they'd had an infinite supply of vinegar, swill that the transmuted stuff was, he'd have happily gulped down them both before making new samples for Flitwick.

Maybe that was why Flitwick hadn't given them an infinite supply of vinegar.

Horcrux still echoed in Draco's head distractingly, until he found he had gotten out the talon wand, and was staring at it more fixedly than even Harry or the wine. "Draco," Hermione whispered in his ear, "What's wrong?" and followed the direction of his gaze.

"Are any of you thinking it?" Draco said to all the Gryffindors, gesturing to his wand. Harry blinked, always slow to pick up when it came to something negative about Draco- damn the eternal trust in those green eyes- but Ron understood after a few significant jerks of Hermione's head.

"I don't think it's, er, anything like that, mate," Ron said uncomfortably. "The whole, um, situation you've got there, with..." He seemed to be having the same difficulty saying the name as he would have with Voldemort.

"Dantanian Noir," Hermione said in a stage whisper, reproaching Ron's hesitance. "Of course there isn't. You are not carrying about a part of Dantanian or Bellatrix Lestrange's soul with you, so don't even think that. This whole business with the codas... I can see why you'd remember that, with the business of Horcruxes, but there's a key difference-"

"Contemporaneity, and intentionality?" Draco said wryly. "At least according to the myth?" Whatever superficialities, it seemed indisputable they were at least similar.

"Splitting the soul, they said," Harry said, catching on, and touched the talon wand as fearlessly as he ever had, to put it in Draco's pocket. "And Horcruxes aren't for casting magic. They're for immortality. Dumbledore explained it like that."

"Isn't Dantanian immortal?" Draco hissed, an awful feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Draco Black," Hermione said adamantly, still more confident, "Don't torment yourself unnecessarily. Dantanian Noir is dead."

"Flitwick," Ron warned hurriedly. Draco's Head of House was coming towards them to check their work, and only Draco and Hermione had accomplished the task at hand. Draco took down the Muffliato, but first-

"You're right, though," Draco agreed with Hermione hurriedly, to get her off his back if nothing else. "They're different."

His self-reproach made him careless. He thought he had time to charm Ron and Harry's vials into wine for them, without Flitwick noticing. He didn't.

He left the classroom with yet more detention, Hermione's severe disapproval for so much as making the attempt, and Harry's mood dented, due to Draco's self-absorption. Draco decided to finish denting it for them all. Before he and Hermione parted from the Gryffindor boys, he caught Harry's hand and said, "I don't care what this all means, really, Harry Potter. Just know that if you get yourself hurt chasing after all this shit for Dumbledore, I'll be the one doing the splitting apart." He made the straight wand gesture and mouthed Sectumsempra before he pulled back.

Harry didn't let his hand go that quickly. Draco's attempt at menace seemed to have had an opposite effect, as if he'd just been shockingly sweet. "Don't worry. I won't," he said quietly, and shot Draco a smile like a kiss before he let him go.

The enticing but elusive notion of hellwater from Gilderoy's Pensieve was not one Draco could let go of. The next time he could make it to Xaphan, at a time he was sure Severus wouldn't be there, was Sunday, right after their official visit. Draco made the irritating trek and Portkey journey all the way back. Then it was another Portkey, much to Gilderoy's unsteady reticence, to the place of nightmares, L'Infern in reality.

The reality did hold a none-too-kind dark wizard. This one went by the name of Igor, with a face like his Animagus form would be one of the gargoyles of L'Infern. With the sun still up in the sky but setting, Karkaroff looked particularly like something carved out of stone. Still, the man could be unexpectedly useful, like the gargoyles. Draco explained they had come to search for any useful clues on the aigua infernal, the hellwater that filled the Estany de L'Infern, and Karkaroff's response was like a thunderbolt.

"Oh, that? The water? I know all about that." Karkaroff assumed an ire for both of them without specificity. "It was considerate of you to warn me about that, before you abandoned me here. That my magic could be taken for one small swim."

"Did you go inside it?" Gilderoy gasped, hands to his mouth dramatically, and Karkaroff scoffed.

"No, I did not go for a swim," Karkaroff said pointedly. "I read about it in a book I found. I have been collecting them from the ruins." At Draco's half-incredulous, half-accusatory look, wondering what plotting had led Karkaroff to want to stay here, Karkaroff raised his hands defensively. "Why not? What else have I to do here all day? Some men are intelligent enough to learn about the hell castle where they have been put!"

He sounded like a nasty Hermione then, and like her, it did not take him long to produce said book from a stash. L'Infern was in better repair than Draco had realized, from where Karkaroff took them to get it. Karkaroff had scrounged together a solid roof over his head and walls out of mixed gray and tan stone, the same slate and limestone that composed the upper ridges of the Pic de L'Infern, like the dragon's spine. His ability to manipulate the ruins to do so became immediately clear in its provenance, once Karkaroff produced his own copy of a book. Disappointingly enough, it was one both Draco and Gilderoy were more than familiar with: Construction and Deconstruction by Dantanian Black.

"We know that book," Draco said with a sigh. "We're using it ourselves."

Karkaroff gave an almost Severus-like eye roll as he opened the tome, flipping straight to a section near the back. He handled it with a familiarity not even Gilderoy could boast of. "Peculiarities," Karkaroff read in a meaningfully bored tone, "Of L'Infern."

"Dantanian Black knew about Castell de L'Infern?" Draco gasped.

Gilderoy put a wondering finger to his temple before he abruptly nodded. "Right! Right, I suppose he must have, for there to be a section in this book!"

"You never showed it to me! And I've been using this to help you with Xaphan!"

"Well, it never would have crossed my mind," Gilderoy said, the one on the defensive now. "As it says," he pointed out, head leaning over the shoulder of Karkaroff, "Peculiarities of Xaphan. That means... things unique about it."

He sounded almost sure about that point. One could not tell if Karkaroff's visible performance of nausea was for the proximity with Gilderoy, or that slight doubt.

"So what use would it have been to you?"

"Of use now that I need to know about the hellwater," Draco said, trying to keep his own irritation from his voice. But really, Karkaroff should not have had to be the one to point this out. "Certainly a peculiarity of L'Infern, one would have to say. Now, where does it mention it, and what does it say?"

"I don't have this to memory," Karkaroff groused. He eventually produced the page, which had an entry several pages long in the encyclopedic catalog of peculiarities: early, since Dantanian too used the word aigua for water. "Aigua infernal," Karkaroff read, and when Gilderoy made a face at his pronunciation, ah-EE-gah in-FER-null, Karkaroff threw the book in Gilderoy's face and demanded he read it aloud instead then, if the peacock was such an expert.

Gilderoy touched his face where the book had struck it, and sought assurance from Draco it hadn't left a lasting-looking mark, before he would indignantly fluff his blue coat and pick the invaluable tome up from the dust. Perhaps not quite so invaluable, though, if it was the same as the copy they had at Xaphan, and why had Draco never considered there could be a connection? It wasn't like the castles were dissimilar, and the gargoyles were identical, with identical spells controlling them for Gilderoy... identical spells very useful in the construction of Xaphan, with the almost suspicious speed of Gilderoy's rebuilding perhaps aided by architectural and structural similarities with L'Infern...

"Did Dantanian Black help build L'Infern?" Draco blurted. "Or did a person who did it help him with Xaphan?"

Gilderoy was cut off in his reading, so far much the same as Seguinus had told in the Pensieve, though Draco had been kind of tuning him out. "I don't know, honestly," Gilderoy said, hanging his head. "There's references to both in books- I used some building plans for Xaphan in reconstruction here, when there were none for L'Infern. There is, erm, a likeness... but I can't work out when each man lived. Seguinus always claimed he'd built L'Infern, but I didn't know if that meant he'd helped this Dantanian Black, here or with Xaphan, or vice versa- or even that before they had been born, they could have been the same person..."

"And you've kept this to yourself?" Draco said in disbelief. "Bloody hell, Gilderoy." He heard notes of Ron creep into his voice. "You had a leg up in rebuilding Xaphan the whole time, and never told us. Trying to seem more impressive than you really were?"

It didn't quite make him a fraud. But it wasn't exactly reassuring to keep discovering these small details that changed Gilderoy's story about L'Infern, over and over. If only because it might turn out as so key to option three.

"Forgive me," Gilderoy said in a small, wounded voice, "If I did not want to dwell upon the connection."

He didn't elaborate, but he didn't need to. If he'd played the victim card, so to speak, at least he'd played it too well for Draco not to at least stop and take notice of his point.

"You didn't want to think," Draco surmised, "You'd sworn an Unbreakable Vow to the descendants of a man who was friends with Sade, whose castle and wealth might have been built upon some relation to Sade. Or even..." Draco's own blood seemed to rebel in its confines at the notion. "Of Sade's blood ourselves. You didn't want to have gone from rebuilding a castle Sade made to rebuilding another castle Sade made. From serving him to serving... his descendant." It was easy to forget Karkaroff's quiet, resentful presence in the rush of sickening realization, all the many things Gilderoy must have had in his head that he wouldn't say. "I don't remind you of him, do I?"

Gilderoy looked bewildered at the idea. "No. Not in the smallest particular. The only person who reminds me of him is- not important," he cut himself off, though Draco was sure he'd been about to say Severus. "It might not be so significant. Dantanian lists L'Infern as one of his seven great fortresses of Europe, and he has insider knowledge of all seven, without specifying how. There could have been limited contact, between Dantanian and someone else who knew L'Infern, or even just letters, or a third party between him and Seguinus. My idea that Seguinus could have been the practical founder of House Black as an institution was ridiculous-"

"Even though," Draco said tightly, "Dantanian Black never married, and disappeared one day without explanation. And... what are the chances, that you'd flee Hogwarts, only to end up in the proximity again of one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, one of the most key to Hogwarts and the war?"

"Not very unlikely," Gilderoy said with a nervous laugh, lest Draco think the coincidence some sinister contrivance. "Given that my friend Jordi-" read, his conned ex-lover and victim Jordi- "Was a monster-hunter, and I was following his path to try and find him. House Black does seem to have had a proclivity for monsters."

The dark hair and eyes of House Black- the coloring could be Spanish- Dantanian could have gone to Spain before his disappearance, or have had family or ties there already that drew him back, before he was turned here- the visual resemblance isn't absent- he could have had contact after his turning, or sent money- our wealth- and more than any other in the Sacred Twenty-Eight, our naming by fallen angels in the older generations, our obsession with blood- I don't want to believe this- and there's the pyromancy- no, that was from the Weston girl, the grandmother, I have to stop thinking of this or I'll go mad-

Karkaroff let out a yawn. He could not have seemed more bored if he'd been listening to third-year Hufflepuffs gossip about the Yule Ball. "What do you want to know about this hellwater? That is why you are here, no?" He skimmed through the pages, looking eager to rid himself of his unexpectedly emotional, rambling blond visitors. "Here's a passage on its effects. He says there's a lot of misconceptions, but that brief contact with the water is usually harmless for a wizard, unless there's full immersion. Then the magic leaves the wizard, but only for a matter of hours or minutes, depending on the strength of the severed magic clamoring to return. The fabled robbing of magic only takes place permanently with immersion of the wizard for a longer time- it says it varies due to strength again, but it would take at least the rise and descent of one moon, immersed up to the throat. Maybe faster if the water freezes. Then there's a passage on its duplication-"

"Duplication?" Draco gasped. "That's what we need. Duplication!"

Famed dark wizard Karkaroff gave Draco a look that seemed impressed by how dark a wizard Draco was. "You wish to create another hell lake?"

"Not lake," Draco wheedled. "Just a little bit of water. Like, a hell-pond. A hell-puddle."

"A hell-puddle," Karkaroff breathed, looking so traumatized he was regretting ever learning the English language.

"Höllenpfütze," Draco added helpfully, in case the English wasn't clear. His recent trip to Berlin had taught him both nouns, for the weather and for the Paris Panthers. "No lake needed. Only enough to submerge one person. Just one."

Karkaroff gave a shudder, then looked between the two as if suspicious he would be an intended victim. "Well, you're out of luck there," he said maliciously. He tossed the book over contemptuously. "The ritual requires the highest concentration of hyper-concentrated moonstone. Ulles de 'milluna'. And mil is a misnomer. Far too small." Karkaroff's pronunciation was only decipherable by looking at the words, but the English was written there clear as day, the level of moonstone quality needed. "So much," Karkaroff pronounced with sadistic glee, "That the shattered moonstone from the ritual must cover every centimeter of ground that one wishes to transform into the pit of aigua infernal. So needless to say, impossible-"

He broke off at the sight of Draco and Gilderoy exchanging meaningful looks, for once both totally Ravenclaws at work. "If," Draco said warningly to Gilderoy. "If."

Gilderoy still waved his arms about in a bit of a dance, and let out a small restrained, "Yay!"

"What?" Karkaroff barked in alarm. "You don't have that? Do you? Do you?" He leaped to his feet after Gilderoy and Draco rose, suddenly fearful to see his unwelcome visitors depart. "You couldn't possibly replicate that, could you? Who are you planning to-"

"Karkaroff, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but if we wanted to drown you in hellwater, we'd just cart you off and chuck you right into the lake over there, yeah?" Draco jerked his thumb in the direction of Estany de L'Infern. "No new Höllenpfütze necessary. Now rest assured in the knowledge that you have been exceptionally helpful, once again, and found my favor."

If was indeed the operative word.

Meanwhile, there was Harry, and the distance remaining. Between them, for one, stood the great divide of Quidditch, which had once been so instrumental in forcing them into contact, like two sticks striking sparks between them. Now Harry was in the thick of it again, and Draco couldn't even pick who to properly support.

The Quidditch championship had, like last time, fallen between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, with Slytherin nowhere in the running. Draco wished he had a way to contact Millie, and see if her non-spying for him extended to telling him whether anyone in light of this underperformance missed the Kingsnakes.

At least slightly.

Three hundred points for a victory margin- read, 150 aside from the Snitch catch, that would give Gryffindor the Quidditch Cup. Ron was obsessed with this huge margin, and remembered the Kingsnakes obliterating teams with the Quaffle, so much so they'd made up for a whole missed Snitch catch to win. That meant Ron pestered Draco as well as Harry endlessly about tactics and brainstorming, which put Draco in an awkward position with all his Gryffindor friends, given that he was at least ostensibly a Ravenclaw now. That certainly was enough to keep him from giving Ron any of the diagrams he'd used from Viktor last year.

"Come on, isn't it enough that I had to put up with that sod romancing my girlfriend the whole year?" Ron groused, while Hermione's cheeks turned a faux-cross pink at Ron's show of jealousy. "Can't I get some benefit out of it, other than a place for you to launch your continental adventures?"

"I can't turn on Ravenclaw completely," Draco sighed, wording a betrayal of where his allegiances truly lay, whatever color of tie was around his neck. Even if they'd never gotten close, he really was grateful to his dormmates. If only for putting up with him during this year's mental breakdown. But more than that, turning his back on Ravenclaw would feel like a betrayal of Luna, who remained firmly enough behind her own house to render Neville's loyalties murky- however much she urged Draco to root for whoever he truly wanted to win.

The Kingsnakes. I'm like Millie. I wish the Kingsnakes still existed, and that we were going to win.

But that sentiment was hardly constructive.

"At least look at this play I drew up for our Chasers, then," Ron needled, and Draco was guilted into compliance.

Unfortunately, a knot of other seventh-year girls passed through the Great Hall at that very moment. Cho Chang came to an abrupt halt at the sight of the famed Kingsnakes manager, caught red-handed assisting the enemy. She stood there silently, pretty dark eyes accusing, but her following was not so circumspect.

"What are you doing? Aren't you supposed to be a Ravenclaw?" Marietta Edgecombe called bluntly, and Draco didn't have to even think before giving a retort to the likes of her.

"Weren't you supposed to be a part of Dumbledore's Army?" Draco called back, imitating her intonation and pitch.

A great deal of his year in Gryffindor and Hufflepuff burst into laughter, remembering her far realer betrayal, squealing to the hated Umbridge.

Even from a distance, Draco could see the girl's eyes fill with tears- deserved ones, good riddance- before Cho put an arm around her friend's back and led her furiously away.

Ron gave Draco a wordless, speculative, hopeful look. It was clearer in intention than Harry's almost wounded look, as if he'd seen the part of Draco he didn't like so much.

"No, Ron, just because there are nitwits in my house, I will not give you Viktor's plans."

"But really, if you want us to beat Cho Chang's lot..."

Draco gave Harry his most reassuring smile and toned Ron out.

The world had gone Quidditch mad. He'd even overheard Gilderoy asking Severus for an update about the big Gryffindor-Ravenclaw match once it was played. Frank and Alice had told Gilderoy of it. Apparently these ostensible parents, restored with the psyche of recent Hogwarts graduates, were major enthusiasts. They wouldn't be attending, though, and Sirius and Remus also meant to keep to their policy of not attending any school Quidditch, after the debacle in fifth year at Gryffindor-Slytherin.

Harry complained to their friends that he could have used the support, with his own boyfriend in the opposing house, before he jolted, realizing his mistake. Apparently spending all your time in a tight conspiratorial knot of six or seven friends was not conducive to disentangling from a romantic relationship with one of them. Draco certainly could never have guessed that, or counted on that to his advantage.

His planning really had suffered, it turned out, when it came to academics. Not only was he severely behind in all of his classwork, after disinterest and outright missing a month, his memory of anything regarding memorization and dates was the worst of his Hogwarts years. No wonder, given the greater interval of time, as well as his greater distraction this year in the blue loop. Unfortunate, though, given that the work was now NEWT-level, meaning anything beyond practical and spellwork seemed outside his usual intuitive grasp. Some classes, he'd simply stopped trying. After all, he'd never had to face sixth-year exams.

Maybe a part of him was counting on Hogwarts to fall whatever he did, his monitoring of the Room of Requirement notwithstanding: with Voldemort's intactness or very life on the line from Naufragiam, the hourglass was running out of sand. He didn't know what else stuck out as a potential route of invasion, apart from the Hog's Head, which was supposedly thoroughly well-defended. But he wouldn't put it past the snake bastard to launch an outright frontal assault if need be, and succeed at it.

Unless- well, unless Draco could save Albus Dumbledore, and he really needed a better plan for the endgame than he'd thought up. He hadn't decided how much to follow the old timeline, and accept that Dumbledore's death was a condition perhaps necessary for Harry to defeat Voldemort- or admit he might have changed things enough that saving Dumbledore was paramount, in keeping their side strong enough to ever give Harry the chance now to-

That wasn't his affair. What fell on him was what to do about Nurmengard, and he wasn't any closer to an answer there either. He would tell the others what he and Gilderoy were up to as soon as they had anything concrete, but there was embarrassingly little to show, save the need for moonstones they couldn't find or get to. As it was, the only yield for their sneaking about was Harry developing a disturbing if hilarious preoccupation with how much time Draco spent with Gilderoy.

At least the question of who to publicly support at Gryffindor-Ravenclaw was solved for Draco: namely no one, as his godfather had other plans for him. With that lack of planning or effort academically, Draco inevitably missed his next Defense essay. The purr of "Detention, Mr. Black," was not long in coming. What was a surprise was Severus's smooth drawl after, "You will serve this detention at 10 o'clock on Saturday."

"But then he'll miss the Quidditch match!" Harry protested from his seat on the other side of Hermione, loyally raising his voice to the last person who would ever want to hear Harry's cause. Especially when it was protesting keeping him and Draco apart. Even Ron looked taken aback by Harry's misjudgment. "It'll decide the cup!"

"Mr. Potter," Severus said silkily, crossing over closer to regard Harry with a far realer ire than Draco had received for failing to write an essay. "Apart from your decision to speak out... of... turn. If it has escaped your notice, Mr. Black happens to currently be a Ravenclaw. Worrying, such gluttony for punishment, Potter, to fight to keep another supporter at the match against you..."

The Slytherins and a fair number of the Ravenclaws broke into laughter. Harry, being Harry, did not shrink back, but stiffened up straighter at that. He glared at Severus to show he wasn't intimidated. Even if he didn't offer a retort. That might just have been because he couldn't think of one.

It was only once Severus had swept past with a majestic flick of his robe, and begun the class, that Draco realized. That might have been his chance to make a grand public gesture for Harry. As Neville had once done for Luna, to win her back. Drastic measures, he'd called it.

The only thing drastic was Draco's personal and physical frustration. He ended that day and the next up to the night before the match possessed by the conviction he had to do something about Voldemort, about Grindelwald, about Harry and this damnable gap between them when every day wasted could be from such a limited supply, and yet there was nothing to do but wait.

Pretend to be a normal Hogwarts sixth-year, as he'd once lamented to the headmaster- How long do you expect me to keep playing possum- but play he was again.

He thought of trying to invite Harry out for a night flight that Friday night, a midnight interlude between just the two of them like in years past in the opposite roles. But he lost his nerve at dinner that night, and spent midnight alone, tossing his wand in the air half-hoping and half-fearing it would somehow fall and break.

He saw Harry at breakfast that morning, but couldn't bring himself to leave Luna and go over to sit at Gryffindor. Harry showed none of his distress, not the way Ron and even Ginny seemed to near him- Draco wondered if a certain ex-Kingsnake also had a vested rooting interest for Gryffindor as well- but Draco knew Harry too well to think his nerves would not be absolute murder right now.

He wished he had given Harry some piece of jewelry to kiss for luck, some inane gesture that would mean a great deal to Harry. He dwelt gloomily on the memory of the golden rose ring he'd made to track Harry in fourth year, and what had become of it. Remembering it on his father's hand and how he'd burned it right into the seared flesh turned his stomach. And it sent his mind rattling down the road of inventorying so many other mistakes, so many things he'd done which put him at disadvantage. It made him hate to remember himself in that position acting as he had, a stranger, whether tainted or vindictive fool.

He filled the second role soon, in part. He whispered a quick message of luck in Harry's ear, and went back to Ravenclaw tower to grab a book he meant to give to Gilderoy from his dorm. On his way down the staircase, though, a shrill female voice arrested his motion. "Him! It's him! It's his fault! I bet he's the one who set them up to work together!"

Marietta Edgecombe was standing near the foot of the stairs, pointing at Draco accusingly. She seemed to have spoken with her audience in mind. A great number of Ravenclaws, many in ostentatious supporter garb, were piled around the common room in various states of unhappiness. Luna and her eagle headpiece were nowhere to be seen, probably already in the stands with a number of her housemates. But for those that remained, it seemed that end days were nigh.

At not the eye but the epicenter of the hurricane was the most important Ravenclaw in the world today, sprawled across one of the blue velvet armchairs with her face red and swollen as a great pustule: Cho Chang, who lifted her face and shrieked, "That's right! Him and his whore of a cousin!"

Draco went from bemused to homicidal in an instant. The talon wand came out and he shoved his way through the crowd towards Cho, people soon parting from him in alarm. "How dare you?" he bellowed. "How dare you? What did I say the day I became a Ravenclaw! The past was the past, but no one ever speaks ill of Luna Lovegood-"

"Not Lovegood!" one of Cho's friends yelped. "Cho doesn't mean Lovegood, please don't hurt her..."

Draco reached Cho in time to see her face contort in frustration as well as despair. "That's right," she hissed, looking less afraid of Draco than the tear-stained parchment on her lap. "It's Nymphadora." She enunciated each syllable like a separate epithet for whore.

"Tonks?" Draco said, blinking bemusedly. "Oh." He lowered his wand. "Well, that's alright then." He considered a bit longer. "Wait, why is cousin Tonks a- word you shouldn't use for another woman whatever the circumstances, Cho, really, I would have thought a sportswoman like you would conduct yourself as a feminist-"

"Look!" Cho groaned, shoved the parchment at him, and buried her face in her hands. Draco looked down, wondering if the letter was from Tonks. He didn't recognize the handwriting. It didn't look whimsical enough for her. It was steady and masculine, with a resolve behind the words, as well as style, that spoke of a decision made in full confidence. It read,

Dear Cho,

I feel terrible writing this to you right before your final match. I didn't intend to leave it this late. I don't want to hurt your chances. I wasn't sure if I should come before. Now I've realized that to be honest and true to myself and both of us, I can't attend and support as your boyfriend. I can't be your boyfriend anymore. I'm so sorry.

Cho, you didn't do anything wrong. There's nothing wrong with you. You're an exceptionally sweet, bright, and brilliant young woman. I'm sure that one day you'll find someone else just as incredible as you. But I'm not in love with you anymore. I'm not sure I ever was, now that I know what real love feels like.

I'm in love with my mentor, the master Auror Nymphadora Tonks. You would always get angry about how much I talked about her, and I guess you were right. I was falling for her and I didn't realize it. I know it's wrong, that she's my superior. Nothing should ever happen between me and her. But I can't help it. She is all I can ever think about.

This is not her idea, or her fault. Nothing has ever happened, and she has never encouraged me. When I told her how I felt last night, she rejected me completely. She said it was impossible, because of our positions at work, even if I were single. But I should be single regardless. I can't lead you on, Cho, and I can't pretend I feel something I don't. That's wrong. It's not fair to you. So I'll tell you the truth, that my heart belongs to someone else.

I didn't choose to love her, I couldn't help it. I hope someday you will understand and that we can be friends again. I wish you all the best, in your match and in life.

Sincerely,

Cedric Diggory

It had taken everything in Draco not to burst into laughter in several parts. Finally, he folded the letter in half with an impassive look, and handed it back to her. "Well?" Cho demanded, another tear streaking her red cheek. She could not have looked any more different in that moment, one had to acknowledge, than Tonks. "What do you think?"

"I think," Draco said honestly, "That if I were you, I wouldn't be showing that all about the common room."

"But you understand!" Cho exclaimed, arms sweeping out wide as if to gesture to the cosmic injustice of everything that existed. Draco had to admit in himself, he very much wanted Harry to beat her to the Snitch. "That bi- that woman, Nymphadora, she's seduced him away from me!"

Draco squinted. "The letter, er, rather said the exact opposite, didn't it?"

"That's how I know she did! She's in your family, isn't she?"

To Draco's surprise, there were murmurs and nods of agreement all around the common room, particularly from Cho's little coterie. "What's that supposed to mean? You mean House Black?"

"Of course!" Cho exclaimed. "Everyone knows how- seductive all you are, how you can get people to do things they wouldn't normally do, with people they wouldn't. There's Harry Potter and you-"

"For your information, not that this isn't thoroughly disseminated through the rumor mill," Draco said tightly, less amused, "But Harry and I are currently on a break-"

"And there's the best Defense professor we ever had," Cho went on, "Good old kind Professor Lupin, throwing away his job and his pride for some swaggering murderer-"

Draco managed not to draw his wand right in her face, but it was a close thing. Still, a number of people shrieked and ducked behind others at the sight of his wand in his pocket. Cho broke off, paling. "You wouldn't," she said hastily, looking to regret every word spoken in the irrational haze of heartbreak. "You wouldn't- curse me or my tongue, you can't, I'm your house's Seeker, about to play for the cup-"

"That's right," Draco agreed with faux amiability. "I can't." He pulled out his wand and raised it instead to the face of Marietta Edgecombe. "Langlock!"

Marietta's half-shriek was quickly locked away, and Draco was free to stroll out of that common room like his uncle, with only one small first-year yelp of, "But she didn't say anything!"

Draco turned and faced his house, wondering if they'd be about as friendly to him as Slytherin were after this. Collective culpability, he could have said, or just, That's my parents. "Oh, but Marietta has said so many things she shouldn't have in the past, hasn't she? Say that about House Black. We might be a great lot of swaggering murderous whores, but we know how to keep a grudge. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm late for detention."

Severus ignored him during his detention period, which seemed to stretch on forever without any news of the match. Except then he looked over from where he was floating rubble out of the future dorm area, and he knew. He remembered how bitter it had made him- had it really been just last year? - to see Sirius and Remus celebrating their minds out for Gryffindor winning. Now he had to draw closer, abandoning the last bit of his job to find out for sure what they had doubtless somehow learned.

Frank had picked up Alice and was spinning her around before kissing her, both of them startlingly young and muscular after their year of occupation rebuilding Xaphan. And so alive, at what turned out to have been their son's updates: Luna had sent them her protean coin from Dumbledore's army, so Neville had been writing the score for them all match. Alice called Draco over and gave him Luna's coin to give back, before letting Frank sweep her up in his arms again.

Draco stood there shyly, unsure if he should join in the revelry. Remus abruptly detached himself from trying to snog Sirius's face off to regard him fearfully. "Oh, Draco, there you are! I hadn't realized- didn't think- oh, you are a Ravenclaw now, after all. Everyone, we shouldn't be celebrating like this-"

"It's okay," Draco said carefully, "I wanted Harry to win." Even now, he could not quite bring himself to say the words, I wanted Gryffindor to win.

"Then come here, dragon-face," said Sirius, and enfolded Draco in a hug he knew he did not deserve in any timeline or universe, but Draco leaned into it the same.

"I just didn't think I had a right to celebrate with you," Draco said in a small voice, and Remus rubbed his back, with the unfathomable comfort of his gentleness soothing for Draco's racing thoughts.

It almost made him guilty for what he was planning without them.

On June 5, 1997, Draco Lupin Black officially came of age. Turning seventeen, he was now a legal adult, with all the rights and responsibilities- and dangers- that status entailed. Hermione said the world should be quaking if it knew well enough to. The ground literally trembling beneath them, for fear of Draco all grown up. It was not a joke very like Hermione, but then, despite her rueful smile, she hardly seemed to be even half-joking.

Unbeknownst to her, he had plans for his birthday beyond just the party that night he pretended would be a surprise for him. (Luna was singularly bad at keeping secrets from her cousin.) 17 years old marked him as different in some ineffable way according to the wizarding world, perhaps with his magic. But more than that, it marked so much time as passed. There was no hesitating anymore to try every recourse, however potentially humiliating.

The only difficulty was how Harry had taken to watching Draco on the Marauder's Map again. He knew Draco heading to the Room of Requirement meant Draco sneaking out through the Hog's Head. With permission of Aberforth, the one of Draco's previously secret collaborators who didn't make him pouty, and usually towards the one who bafflingly did. Draco's jaunt to Hogsmeade and then Xaphan was cut off by Harry at the pass. He caught up to him and demanding to know what he was doing before he could even get the Room of Requirement open. Damn that Seeker speed.

"Where are you going once you leave Hogwarts? On your birthday, no less?"

It was a Thursday, which meant Draco had cut a pretty clean path from their shared Transfiguration class up towards the secret Hogwarts exit.

There was one natural lie. But Draco had just seen Sirius and Remus during his approved hours at Xaphan, a castle it felt like he'd attended school at more than Hogwarts this semester. And if he'd been going to see them, Harry would have known about it anyway...

What am I thinking? It's easy now that I've dropped the veil. Tip to posterity, forget about moral questions, lying is overrated because it turns out to be so much work. Why don't I do something novel and just tell the truth? So Draco told the truth, to the extent he could quickly explain: he had a plan for Grindelwald, but to do it, he needed hyper-concentrated moonstones, and he knew where to find them.

Harry looked rather gobsmacked at Draco's revelation that he planned to attempt to follow Dantanian's footsteps at Xaphan in any particular. Let alone genuine, if comparatively mild, blood magic. But it didn't keep him from demanding he get to come along, and have it all explained to him on the way.

"You know this probably isn't going to work," Draco told Harry, as he fiddled about with a stone transfigured to Portkey on that warm June day. The back alley of Hogsmeade kept anyone away with his large Inmotus, but it still felt exposed. Then, he always felt personally a bit exposed around Harry Potter. "I mean, leaving aside that I already tried a few months ago and nothing budged-"

"You don't think you've changed at all since then?" Harry said earnestly, and Draco somehow doubted he just meant today's birthday.

"Unless meeting Grindelwald somehow infected me with something transformative, no. I'm still just me," Draco said, and did try not to make that sound like a death sentence.

Harry's response was as simpering as a Hufflepuff's. "I think that's something to say for already. Just being you. If it were up to me, I'd say you were more than worthy."

Draco couldn't just let that stand. "Huh. Interesting standards you have there. More than worthy to be the rightful heir to House Black and this whole castle around us, including what the door hides. But not worthy to be with Harry Potter."

"It's not- I told you before, it's not about worthiness. I just want to figure out if we me as people work together. Not just," Harry ducked his head shyly, "Our bodies."

Draco thought just that was not the smallest thing to discount, but he knew it was a lost cause on that front. Better to just tease Harry. "In any event, Gilderoy thinks I'm worthy of House Black, and that's more than affirmation enough. If Gilderoy thinks it."

"You really are a slimy bastard," Harry muttered. "As if Professor Lockhart is a decent judge of anything. You spend too much time together."

"Do we?" Draco said, amused by a new proof of Harry's jealousy, albeit towards the most unlikely recipient. He supposed it didn't help that now, he couldn't explain his real reason for saving Gilderoy in the first place: Gilderoy's feelings for Severus. Not now that they stood even a chance of bearing fruit. Still, Draco had never witnessed anything quite like the spectacle of a half-single Harry Potter, chomping at the bit with rage, over how much time Draco spent with Gilderoy Lockhart.

Draco activated the Portkey after deciding he'd goaded Harry enough. He was pleased to see that with the amount of experience he'd been getting, he was accurate enough to deposit them more specifically where he wanted in Xaphan: right at the threshold of the observatory. Draco raised his gaze from the rubble where they'd been unceremoniously dumped, right to the etching of the name DANTANIAN at the observatory's entrance.

"I don't know what it says, you know," Draco admitted as Harry gallantly helped him up. "That this place let in my Dantanian."

Harry shrugged, not indifferent, but truly unable to provide reassurance, when put so far out of his depth. "This looks just like in the memory. I watched it a lot, you know. Trying to understand you, what influence Dantanian might have had on you-" Draco tried not to flinch at that. "But I kept coming up empty. You two react to things so differently. What I did notice was this place. I've wanted to come see it. It felt... I don't know, like somewhere where..."

"Where wars could be won or lost?" Draco swept out a hand to encompass the rounded building, including the fatal name at its height. "Where it's decided whether or not the moon rises or falls from the sky?"

Harry, incredibly, bit his lip and flushed darker under the June sun, as if Draco had just overtly propositioned him with those unremarkable words. "See, I don't need to kiss you and all sometimes. I don't even need to touch you. Not when you can talk like that. You don't know how you get my heart racing. There's no one in the world like you."

Draco scoffed. Fine talk without action. "Isn't that you putting me on a pedestal like you said you wouldn't do?"

Harry's lips scrunched up. "But I really do think you're exceptional. Am I supposed to lie?"

Now Draco was the one who had to struggle to keep his composure, even looking down, where he was struck by the way that Harry's afternoon shadow fell onto his own over the broken stone. "And I really do think you're deluding yourself, but in any event, the observatory is real enough. Come in and see the place that rejects me but accepts Dantanian Noir."

"You are seventeen now. Officially come of age. Maybe that can mean something, magically. My God, this place..."

Draco looked around, unable to find what so impressed Harry in the broken astronomical instruments and dusty shelves. It was, one had to acknowledge, incredibly well-preserved in comparison to the area immediately outside the observatory, as if some spells had kept everything preserved but for the natural floating of dust. "It looks barren, I know. But I think this is what Xaphan was built for. To house and protect this observatory. This one room. And the things that were meant to dwell inside it."

Harry's gaze drifted to the solid obsidian floor, which alone gleamed enough to show back his lovely reflection, and through the open ceiling, to the brilliance of a deep blue summer sky.

"The three mirrors," Harry said, with healthy reverence in his voice. "Dantanian really had them all?"

Now Draco was the one disfigured by jealousy. "And he scattered them, the fiend. I'd almost rather he turned more children into Dementors. Joking!" he hastily added, at the face Harry made. "So yeah, if I somehow get this open, there'll be more use to it than just the moonstones. This is where I'll put the Mirror of Erised. And anything else we end up needing to keep safe."

"Are you ready to try? Don't put it off," Harry urged. He watched as Draco withdrew his sixth-year notebook, better-prepared this attempt with a brighter state of mind. He skipped past the list of goals at the front to try and avoid disturbing his faith in himself. But really, taking stock now at his birthday as a mark of a year almost ended, he'd left more many ends loose or failed than he could ever recall: he wasn't sure there were no secret ways to enter Hogwarts, he hadn't gotten Severus to stop spying, he had let Harry out of his clutches, he hadn't won his mother over to their side, and he hadn't killed Aunt Bella. Say this for him, though. No one valuable to him had died, and he hadn't killed anyone. Though the year wasn't over yet.

But maybe he could keep it that way, if he got into this inner sanctum of Dantanian Black's. The mirror sanctum, one might call it. With all the power it held, and the secrets more he might come to own.

"I have the form and words from the memory written down," Draco said, showing Harry the relevant pages near the back of the book. "It's like Dantanian wanted someone someday to be able to replicate it." Draco thought of Dorian then. "Not House Black, he wanted us all dead. But yeah, someone, for another twisted old family."

"Go ahead," Harry urged, sensing Draco's stalling. That made Draco just more eager to stall on.

"This is strange. Have we ever done this, just you and me, a nice casual mid-afternoon blood ritual?" Harry's appalled stare made the words all the sweeter. "We should have done this sooner. This is nice. As a date, it beats Madam Puddifoot's."

Harry collected himself enough to get a bit of a smirk back, though that face on him was always a cute one. "Oh, so this is a date?"

"Of course," Draco said, and pulled his moonstone dagger from his pocket. Not enough moonstones on its hilt to make a good enough Höllenpfütze, not even if he tried to requisition back the moonstones he'd used for Sirius and Remus's rings- oh, to see the looks on their faces if he tried to explain that one- but certainly enough to freak out Harry Potter.

"I walked out on you on Valentine's Day, didn't I? I'm sorry. We'll finish that date here," Draco singsonged, playing as if they were still together, as he toyed whirling the blade about in the dusty air. The blade glimmered in the sunlight, as did the very particles of dust, floating in a haze like summer had come too hard too soon. "If you like, before the blood of House Black is spilled, you can hold the blade up again to my neck."

Harry's pupils dilated, green eyes darkening, but he only dignified that sensual memory with a mutter of, "Evil dragon. Just do it."

"No, here. Do it for me." Draco held out the dagger, with the moonstones in the hilt glimmering the most brilliant, true millunas as any there could be. He admired his memory of those stones against Harry's palm, hilt in his hand as Harry did threaten him with it for the fun of it. He hadn't drawn blood then, but he had to now. "I want you to cut my hand. I hate having to do it to myself. And if anyone's going to do it..." Harry looked away, perhaps excited or perhaps disgusted, but Draco insisted, "I want it to be you. I want you to cut me."

It seemed Harry's reaction better conformed to the first option. "See. The things you say, dragon. If you could hear my heart right now..." Draco lowered the dagger and stepped forward, reaching a hand out for Harry's throat. "That wasn't an invitation!"

But he stepped closer to let Draco encircle his fingers over that place on his neck, thumb beside his Adam's Apple with two fingers landing on the pulse point. Draco resisted the urge to poke playfully at that sensitive place, just to see what would happen, and felt Harry's heartbeat. It was a discernible vibration against his fingertips, a soft rhythm that seemed to increase further at the proximity.

Harry's heart was beating faster for him. Right there, under his fingers, a discernible bit of physical life, undistinguishable from the golden thread of Harry's potent magic near the surface, Harry inclining towards him, feeling for him still whatever they called themselves or did together, whatever way they touched. Harry's heart was his.

I don't want to die when the time comes. Please, I don't, I don't want to die. I don't want to sacrifice myself, that doesn't make any sense, I can't give up-

Shut up, Malfoy.

"Do it. Cut my hand," Draco ordered. "My palm." He pulled it back and offered the skin to Harry. "Cut my palm. Just a little cut."

"Okay, fine. You'd better hold still." Harry took pains to do so with the least actual blood liberated possible. When Harry cut him, it hurt less than a paper cut.

"Well, that was anticlimactic. Open the book for me to copy, to make sure I get the Wheel of Hecate exactly right. That is one place Dantanian had me beat." After a second, to be clear, Draco added, "Painting like a Muggle, you know?"

Harry nodded, looking concerned for Draco. But his palm barely hurt even before he healed the wound for himself. With it closed up, he used the blood that had pooled as his paint and smeared it down onto the obsidian, making the Wheel of Hecate from the diagram with ease. Far harder was parting with a bit of his hair, and letting the light wisps fall where they would over the red wheel.

"You can do this, Draco. I know you can," Harry said intently, though there was a certain anxiety in his words that belied his confidence. Maybe Draco should have explained that the worst that could happen from a failed ritual was Draco's embarrassment.

Except not being able to get Grindelwald out of Nurmengard could result in far, far worse. "It's not a matter of trying hard enough or wanting it enough. I'm being judged somehow. Either I'm good enough or I'm not, and I don't exactly get to plead my case."

"Sorry," Harry said, abashed, and Draco relented.

"No, I'm just going to hate failing at something in front of you."

"What, like the times I beat you to the Snitch?" Harry teased, and Draco remembered the frustration, but also catching a different Snitch and transfiguring it for this incredible boy, into a golden rose.

"Exactly like those times," Draco agreed, avoiding the bait. "Alright, prepare yourself not to laugh at a real fucking anticlimax. I am the rightful heir to House Black." He let out the words as flippantly as Dantanian had in the memory, as little convinced of their possible efficacy. "Dignusanguine!"

And then the door opened, and the sanctum of Citadelle Xaphan opened to Draco Black.

"See, I knew it," Harry breathed. "Didn't I tell you that you could?"

"Don't be smug, gorgeous."

Harry reached out and gripped Draco's hand, keeping him with him in front of the luminous threshold. His face descended, like he meant to kiss it, but at the last moment he rubbed his cheek against Draco's palm instead, breathing out the words against his skin as he nuzzled it. "Admit it, Draco. This proves it. You can do anything. You are worthy."

Would Draco ever be able to tell him why he wasn't worthy, or at least why he hadn't used to be? He had to wonder ruefully at that, moment of success undercut as so many of his were by his own head. Would this Langlock ever break? Before the Battle of Hogwarts, whatever I choose, will I ever get the chance to tell you who I actually am, and then you can choose whether or not to love me?

But then, someone else could tell Harry. If he took Harry to Grindelwald, Grindelwald knew. And maybe even once Harry did know, Draco's Langlock could break with him. I could tell him the whole truth like he's always wanted. Give him all of me. Before the end.

Draco took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and walked into the chamber that shone like the entire moon.

The effect was like an aquarium, as cavernous as it was liquid, the light above and light below. The memory had not captured the way the obsidian floor, without a speck of dust to hide its reflective surface, was a perfect rounded mirror. Like there were stones underfoot already to crack into fragments of glimmering helldust.

The room was at once unending, with moonstones smooth and slick like stepping underwater, and claustrophobic. It made the dust and decay of the observatory outside surreal in comparison, as if impossible in such a fantasy world, where the abundance of magic was the guarantor of threat...

Time to walk the steps of Dantanian Noir.

Draco went towards the center of the sanctum. Harry followed him.

It was a bracing but thrilling feeling, like climbing down willingly into a great abyss, with wonders and terrors of the world unfurled to your every side. Every moonstone was so bright, they were like the prophecies in the Department of Mysteries they'd broken too. Each must also have their own story- and they surely did, if you counted the unfurling of thousands of moons on certain historical nights- but these were unlabeled, all together. At once a hoard and the most wasteful, decadent decoration imaginable, as if in the heart of winter one had to purchase with moonlight every single flake of snow.

Draco took the dagger from Harry and looked. The stones were the spitting image of one another.

Even the threefold pedestal that marked it as the sanctum for the hallowed mirrors was awash in glittering reflections. The moonstones themselves refracted small images of Harry and Draco as they braved this crystal grotto, with its full shelves of notebooks and its three alcoves that were its reason for being, all empty. One would be filled, and one from the looks of it could hardly miss being filled. As Draco had suspected from the memory. Based on the high obsidian stand in the third alcove, with a rounded slot at its top near eye level, the Mirror of Esplice was not much bigger than Draco's palm.

"Oh my God," seemed all Harry could say.

There was nothing really to say, in the face of that kind of beauty, and danger. But Draco spoke anyway, a weak little jest. "Looks like the Mirror of Erised has found a new home."

"All to plan, you madman?" Harry laughed, looking shaken too by what Draco had been able to uncover. Or maybe that it had been Draco who had been able to do it.

"Everything in time. Each piece in its place in my design." When Harry frowned, Draco made a playful face at him. "You know madmen have their own mad designs."

"It's so beautiful," Harry exhaled, then added incongruously, "It looks like your room at Grimmauld. Or- like you. Pale, and shining."

Draco reached out to a rounded object of similar size to the Mirror of Espilce's holder, the closest moonstone on the wall. With a light, hissing sound, it came off cleanly into Draco's hand, leaving an egg-like impression in the bare gleaming obsidian wall that had held it. The walls behind the hoard were not flat, but seemed shaped to each individual stone. It held them as precisely as Draco had shaped Sirius and Remus's rings to hold their stones, cut small.

See, Father. I can't be so useless and disappointing if I'm worthy of all this.

Even if Dantanian was too, whatever that meant about worthiness, if it was ever just more than power. And of course Dantanian had his stash somewhere Draco don't know. The stones must have been two or three thick in places along the walls, if some still weren't already.

"All this is yours?" Harry asked, dazed, and reached out to take a stone out of its holder right by the hollow Draco had left.

It didn't budge. Harry pulled hard, time and again, and didn't so much as make a dent, palm gliding over it as ineffectually as if he was trying to turn a liquid solid with only touch.

"Yes, then," Draco said, and handed Harry the stone that had so willingly surrendered itself to his hand. "I suppose it is."

"What are you going to do with all this?"

"Have you ever wondered why the Castell de L'Infern is called that?"

"Castell de L'Infern?"

It looked as if they were in for a long explanation.

But it wasn't one he minded giving, nor a secret it pained him to give away. Not to Harry beside him with the light off the moonstones flickering across his face like it shone most strongly from him alone.

It was sweet to celebrate a birthday party, catered exclusively by Dobby this time, with all his friends. But today it was a mere pretext for what Draco had to tell them, once the festivities were over. They all clustered together, and from how quickly they launched into serious talk, Draco wasn't the only one who'd had business on his mind.

"With every day that passes," Ginny began unceremoniously, "Aren't we risking more and more that You Know Who could go find Grindy? Even just because- sorry- Draco's movements somehow have drawn attention to Nurmengard? Like a self-fulfilling prophecy? Hermione, you said there were what, three options..."

"Option three is not up for discussion," Hermione said. But Draco fancied a bit more doubt in her tone.

"We all know what option three is here," Draco drawled. "Right?"

"It's worked with Karkaroff..." Luna said in a devious little voice, rubbing her fingertips together.

"Option three? No clue, mate," Ron said. Neville looked similarly lost.

"Then it's better not to say it," Hermione said, as if speaking the mere words would let evil out.

"Is it to just kill Grindelwald?" Ron asked. "So if we can't get the mirror, no one can? I mean, he's a-"

"Continued liability still," Draco finished, "If we haven't figured out about the mirror, though, exactly, we'd still have to get his corpse out of Nurmengard-"

"A helpless old man," Harry finished instead, "Who we'd be killing without giving a chance to fight for his life. Whatever terrible things he's done in the past, we're not executioners."

"Premeditated murder is never an option," Hermione said, horrified. "Of course not. That's against everything we stand for. If we stoop to that, between us and the Death Eaters, there's not enough difference anymore."

Draco shrugged. "Well, we do have better hair."

At a room full of glares, he turned serious again. "Of course it isn't an option. Hermione, if you have a better idea than option three, let us know, but the clock is ticking."

"Option three would be terribly exciting, if that's a point in its favor." Luna clapped her hands together. "Oh, what a feat to achieve!"

Neville watched her glee with a familiar-looking helpless fondness. "To achieve what, darling?"

"To break out the Prisoner of Nurmengard and take him for ourselves!"

That got crickets.

At the silence of the others, Hermione's like the grave, Draco joined in on Luna's light tone. "Castell de L'Infern is pretty big. What's one mountain dungeon fortress to another in the end?"

Harry was already informed to a point. "Your plan would be to hold him captive still, but at that castle in Spain where they held Lockhart?"

"Gilderoy is now technically its lord, and controls its wards," Draco explained, and Ginny held up a hand.

"But are we really considering staking our lives and futures," she asked with a visible shudder, "On a plan which hinges upon stealing the magic of Gellert Grindelwald?"

"Um," Draco considered. "Yeah, pretty much. You wanted to be part of this, Ginevra Weasley, well, welcome to the show."

"Guh," went Ginny, and buried her face in her hands.

None of the others were fully on board at first either. But Draco was resolute.

We should do this. We have to, for the mirror. And for Harry. Because I have to. There has to be someone who can tell him the truth about who I really am.

You wanted to know me, Harry? Come with me to Nurmengard.

: Höllenpfütze

Notes:

Chapter Text

For the one who had done this before, Draco was the most unaccountably anxious about their plan for Nurmengard. The other moving parts seemed calm and confident. That was, as calm and confident as Gilderoy Lockhart ever seemed to get.

Gilderoy and Harry each seized their sides of the globe Portkey with far less apprehension than Draco inwardly harbored. "Aren't you terrified to even lay eyes upon the dread fortress of Nurmengard?" Draco prodded- aren't you terrified that the ritual rests squarely upon your shoulders, Gilderoy- but the answering laugh had no more than a healthy amount of nerves present.

"I know it could end up worse than L'Infern, but..." Gilderoy briefly lifted a hand off the Portkey to gesture about with expressive incoherence. "One mountainous hell prison to another is, as you said, 'not that much of a stretch.'"

"What he's saying, Draco," Harry said, touching his shoulder with that ever-steady potency of presence, "Is that you've got him in a positive state of mind. Because he believes in you. We all trust you, dragon. And we'll follow you."

"It is not so scary, Nurmengard," Draco agreed for their sake, not sure if he was lying.

The Portkey came to life, startling a quiet and contemplative Dobby, who gripped tighter. Gilderoy squawked and lunged forward just in time not to miss it. Their four were whisked away from the chosen midpoint to somewhere far colder.

The globe dropped from their hands, and might have shattered if Harry hadn't nimbly caught it, just before it could rebound into a second craggy snow-scattered rock. "My word," Gilderoy was saying as Harry gave back the globe, which rather resembled a snow globe for a moment. Harry and Draco's hands touched, a moment of suspended time as Harry's fingers lingered on the back of Draco's hand.

"My word," Gilderoy repeated. "Nurmengard is quite something, isn't it? Well, I suppose, in fairness to my own craftwork, they do say it's more difficult to keep an ancient castle in spiffy repair- as opposed to just up and building a new one, like the nouveau riche..."

"Gilderoy Lockhart is needing," Dobby interrupted solemnly, "To take Dobby's arm to be Apparated inside Nurmengard. So Gilderoy Lockhart is needing to stop talking."

They all obediently took hold of Dobby, huddling together against the force of the alpine wind. Draco put one hand in Harry's, the other in Dobby's, and steeled himself for more than what came. He dreaded the jump, as if somehow this time, the wards would slap into place and tear them in two for their affront. But there was only the exceptionally crisp, clean snap of house elf Apparition. Just like that, the Boy Who Lived took his first step inside the crumbling halls of Nurmengard.

Draco had been awed by these surroundings on his first couple visits, but thus preoccupied with his company, he was hardly impressed by the cracked open roof, or the wind it let in slapping tangible ice crystals against his lips. It would have been expedient, for him and Harry to warm their chapped lips on each other's, but not yet. Maybe soon, maybe never again. That was what hung precisely in the balance, above the small matter of Grindelwald's life and death, and a mirror.

"We'll do this in the foyer," Draco ordered, taking them to a room which scarcely deserved the appellation. Still, there was space enough of relatively unbroken dark stone for a surface, in the entrance to the great spiraling center staircase of the tower. The only real adornment to their ritual would be that mysterious dark basin marked with the symbol of the Hallows, which Gilderoy gave a look like the nest of a venomous snake.

Harry obediently laid down his heavy, heavy pack, at the center of the rough floor, while Gilderoy dropped his load of brooms with a relieved sigh. "Be careful, two of those are Firebolts," Harry cautioned, as if Firebolts had been released before Gilderoy was sucked into his vampiric self-improvement camp of sorts. As it was, Gilderoy just looked very simple in his blinking confusion, blue eyes squinted hard still from the blow of the past wind.

"Okay, Gilderoy, you lay things out here. Dobby, you'll be keeping an eye out for any intruders. I mean, the worst possible should be Apparated in by the place's house elf, and their main menace is alimentary, but keep watch anyway. If there is trouble- well, you know what to do."

"Return to Xaphan," Dobby recited, "And tell Hermione Granger and everyone what has happened. Dobby is not to involve himself in any fighting." Dobby hesitated for the first time. "And if no one is at Xaphan..."

"That won't happen," Draco said lightly. "Hermione promised, and she's far too stubborn to be shook loose. And hey, someone's gonna have to stay to look after the less exciting dark wizard we've taken into our captivity." Dobby as well as the others grimaced at the reminder of foul-spirited Karkaroff, who had been moved to the cellars of Xaphan for at least the beginning of Grindelwald's inhabitance of L'Infern. Best to break the Prisoner of Nurmengard gently into the idea of having a roommate.

"Harry, you're with me. You've got the raw power to blast down any smaller wards keeping Gilderoy in his cell." Draco felt absurdly like he had as the manager of the Kingsnakes, clapping his hands and calling, "Let's do this, people! Let's move!"

There was an echo to his voice that he didn't remember here before, reverberating off bleak walls once so full of suffering. But even as he heard it, he was sure it was his nerves talking. He grabbed his Firebolt and mounted it resolute against his own trepidation, and Harry seemed to copy his reserve.

"You know this place, don't you," Harry observed. "You really know your way about."

"Just try and keep up!" Draco rose into the air and Harry followed. The departing form of Dobby and the gleam of Gilderoy unloading moonstones faded into the distance below them, as they shot straight up the center of the spiral, towards the tallest of towers. Not the worst thing, to once again find himself flying at top speed beside Harry Potter.

Goading Harry had him chasing Draco closely on their spiraling way up, as if they were nowhere more bracing than a Quidditch pitch. Their soaring was much like the alpine wind had been, carefree and scything through the air with intent purpose. In response, Draco heard his own laugh picked up over the walls like a shrill and awful thing, maniacal or perhaps just manic in sound. Harry's laugh was somehow lower, purer, as he called out, "So this is what you've been doing this year instead of your Defense homework!"

Draco was left playfully sputtering until they reached the summit, the threshold of full and total disintegration of this uncomplicated happiness between them. The door where it waited, death, the death of the person Harry had thought he loved, and the birth in those eyes of the Death Eater who'd taken twice to get it right...

Maybe Harry would pity him, at least.

At the start, though, Draco was more worried about Harry erroneously pitying decrepit old Grindelwald, in his sad squalor- but no squalor was actually forthcoming. Draco had forgotten many of the room improvements he'd made in that longtime cell during his first visits, lavishness in trade for secrets of the mirrors. He was like the world's most eccentrically paid interior decorator. As it was, they found Grindelwald comfortably housed, draped in deep blue fur robes in place of rags, from the same shop Draco had bought Gilderoy's. The mass murderer was calmly sipping water from a garishly transfigured cup, embossed with the Hallows.

"Hello, Draco Black," Grindelwald intoned, not looking up until he had made sure he'd finished that share of the day's water to the last drop. "Hello, Harry Potter."

It was a good thing they'd propped their brooms up outside the cell, or Harry would have dropped his precious Firebolt, potentially a long way down. Grindelwald's nonchalantly informed greeting had on Harry what was clearly the intended effect. Harry jolted away, nearly all the way back out of the cell, and the corner of Grindelwald's wrinkled lips twitched.

"How do you know my name?" Harry gasped, and looked at Draco in confusion. "You said he hasn't seen any papers since- since back when we were little, so-"

"Don't panic, Harry, it's just his omniscient act he likes to try and pull off," Draco said impatiently. "One of his parlor tricks. Easier in an improved parlor." Grindelwald lifted the gold goblet in archly grateful acknowledgment. "Grindelwald can't read your mind. He can just use observation well. Sherlock bloody Holmes here..." Another twitch of those sly lips as Grindelwald put the goblet aside. "Last time, I told him you were in my year at Hogwarts, so looking at us he could have guessed. That is, if he didn't overhear you bellowing about our shared Defense class." He gave Grindelwald his best lofty, unimpressed look. "Or he could just be looking at, I don't know, your lightning bolt scar."

Harry brushed his dark bangs over it quickly, abashed. "Oh, right," he blurted, starting out off-balance, no doubt as intended. "Sorry. Er..."

"As I was about to say- I had no intention of hiding it, believe me, I am not accompanied by a seasoned master of disguise and deception- Gellert Grindelwald, Lord of Nurmengard-" He seemed to like the ironic title. "May I present to you... the slayer of dark lords, Gryffindor at large, victorious Quidditch captain, Boy Who Lived, the prophesied savior of the wizarding world up to and including your gawping neck, Harold James Potter."

"He has very green eyes. You might do well to add that to his list of accomplishments. Yes, quite the specimen indeed," Grindelwald cooed, as if he had a pet Rottweiler who'd just brought him back a particularly intriguing decapitated head. "But- the slayer of dark lords? Should I be quavering?"

"Only," Harry said curtly, "If you don't intend to cooperate."

Draco could have smacked him. Talk about exactly the wrong approach. That direct, strong-arming tactic against this man was about as likely to get the man talking to them as casting Langlock. "I apologize for my companion, Grindelwald. He's a bit overawed by your castle."

"No worries, my dear. Such a fascinating creature he is. And how time flies," Grindelwald marveled showily, and raised his wrist as if checking a nonexistent watch. "Could it be September already? How quick the summer in the alps, and how long the winters."

"We're not here for the mirror," Harry began, but Draco raised a hand to cut him off.

"So you have him in the know," Grindelwald observed. "I would have thought you a more solitary operator, Kaktusblüte. Is he appraised of all you know about the mirrors?"

And there it was, the real reason Harry was up there at the cell. That Grindelwald cut right to Draco's weakest point, and in such a pleasant tone- any reaction of Draco's part would tell its own story. But then, this was a story Draco wanted told. After so long. Finally. Finally, finally told.

"Do I know everything?" Harry asked Draco uncertainty, the remainder still there of- not distrust, precisely, but inevitable misgiving. "I should, shouldn't I?"

"Unless there's something else that Grindelwald could tell you," Draco said, none too subtly. "That only he could tell you."

Grindelwald's face broke into a broad, rather ghastly grin. It looked rather like Draco's manic laughter sounded as he flew. "My, my, Kaktusblüte. And that is why the Boy Who Lived dogs your footsteps? Careful, or I may grow infatuated with you, Mr. Black. Such daring! A life with you seems in little danger of becoming boring."

"It's not that. I just don't have much time to waste," Draco said, as casually as he could. But that would be let out to Harry soon too, through this dark lord's mouth as well.

"Don't you?" Grindelwald's eyes went keen, searching. "Is that your decision? How personally disappointing."

"I haven't made one yet."

Harry made a valiant attempt to get included in the conversation. "What are you two even talking about?"

Grindelwald folded his hands with a singular smugness. He might even have looked pleased, to hear Draco had not definitively settled upon the course of self-sacrifice. "Mr. Potter, it is precisely the inquiry at hand. Information you indeed must not be appraised of, regarding the Daughter Mirrors."

"Tell him," Draco urged, all his vocal cords drawing taut enough they felt they would tear. "Just get it over with. Bitte."

"If I must. Poor little poison flower. Well, my newest visitor, what your companion here wishes to impart is that- mmm. Mmm? Ah."

Grindelwald reached up, mouth opening. It seemed his tongue had locked.

"No," Draco breathed. "No."

His wand pulsed in his pocket.

Grindelwald tried again, once his tongue dropped from the roof of his mouth. "Draco was- hmm. Ah. Oh. It seems my tongue won't work when I try to tell him that you- urgh. Ah ah ah. It won't! It won't work!" He sounded, the old bastard, positively delighted, perhaps by the sheer novelty of this news.

"This had better be some sick joke," Draco snapped, drawing his wand and feeling it hot in his palm, impregnated with a rising hysteria. "You had better just be playacting to scare me."

"What's going on?" Harry asked naively. "It's like you have Langlock, but only sometimes." He turned to Draco, with no conception of the immensity of the prospect that had just gone up in flames. "Does he have some kind of curse on him?"

No, I do. "No, I don't," Grindelwald answered promptly. "Apart from the bondage of my magic to this overblown rock heap, which has retained me here all these years. Oh, Kaktusblüte, amusing as this is, I would be quite pleased to see the look on your pretty pet hero's face when I tell him- mmm! Argh." Once more, the rush of famously silver-tongued honeyed words died in the throat.

"What is he trying to say to us? Do you know? Could he write it?" Harry asked tentatively.

"No, that wouldn't work either! He's trying to say that-" When Draco's tongue locked as faithfully to his own mouth, as always, he concealed it, waiting for it to unlock. "Damn it, Grindelwald! Damn it all! You could say, before..." Tears of frustration threatened to prick at the back of his eyes. Was it his fate, then, to remain forever separate, forever lying, to everyone but the most evil man he had ever known?

"I'm sorry to have disappointed you, Kaktusblüte-"

Harry was ever a wealth of ill-considered curiosity when it came to Draco. "What is that you're calling him?"

"Oh, that? An endearment well-suiting such a sociable and high-spirited young man. Kaktusblüte. No?" he laughed, seeing Harry's German-averse stumped face. "It's much like the English. Cactus bloom. Cactus flower. He is rather like a cactus, with its sting. And with this new lovely light hair I have been so remiss not to comment on earlier, so very much the flower." He paused then with a calculated look, watching Harry, before adding, "So very beautiful-"

"Don't talk about him that way, you're too old to notice how he looks," Harry sulked.

"Well, young gentlemen," Grindelwald said smoothly, while Draco impotently pocketed his wand, and put both his hands to fists. He dug his nails into his palms to hold back the wetness from his eyes, the complete and irretrievable bereavement, because there was nothing else to say. "I will speak however you like, if I only may look forward to more of these droll tête-à-têtes in the future. Even if I was not as helpful today as I naturally wished. It does become exceptionally lonely-"

"You won't be lonely much longer," was all Draco said in return, out of patience.

Harry caught his drift. "Maybe later you could prove more helpful, too."

"You'll be alive in the future, for one. I think all of us here can agree we want that," Draco said wryly.

Grindelwald picked his goblet back up and raised it gracefully. "Here, here."

There was a conspicuous silence, then, before Draco nudged Harry. "Oh, yeah," Harry reckoned out. "Definitely, ah, no murder. Murder being, er, not good."

"And how do you intend to protect this old sack of bones," Grindelwald sighed melodramatically, "From the attentions of some ill-famed ophidiophiliac, upon whom this one here did what one must class as a questionable job murdering. Protection, I do assume, with an expiration date of September. But what is the direction of these hints? The inferior pretender will search for me here- but my Kaktusblüte is surely too clever to think it remotely possible to shelter me outside Nurmengard."

Draco merely arched a blond eyebrow at him, regarding proceedings now from a distant sort of detachment. There was no time for mourning a thing he should never have thought possible to begin with.

Grindelwald took on a genuine frown, to go on about more impossible things. "You do know it can't happen. The wards are simply impossible to bring down. Hundreds made the attempt, against magic I myself designed, to undo the binding of a wizard's magic to unbreakable wards. But they are strung and plaited together so soundly, they are knots, so intricate and taut it would take fifteen hundred lifetimes to untie the half of them. Surely you know how many hundreds have tried within and outside Nurmengard to liberate me, and failed. Surely you are not about to disappoint me by being boring."

"Sorry, Grindelwald. I think you'll have to put up with being bored again for a little while."

A dual Bombarda broke Grindelwald out of the cell easily enough. It was more difficult to get the yawning dark lord onto the back of Draco's broom and down to the foyer. It became more difficult to keep Grindelwald cooperative once he saw what awaited them. The great mass of millunas had been laid out in what was... some sort of misshapen oval, hardly inspiring excessive confidence, in its resemblance to-

Bloody hell. Gilderoy had shaped the moonstone covering, meant to be the shape of a circle, to a more Valentine's-themed variety.

"Why is the hell-puddle going to be a heart?" Draco hissed into Gilderoy's ear, and Gilderoy started and gave his work a fearful once-over. Grindelwald was looking at it far more appreciatively, seeming taken aback by the quality and beauty of the moonstones on display. Let that occupy the old blowhard for a while. It had been many years since he'd seen such beautiful things.

"It's not a heart, is it? I suppose there is a bit missing from the top, where I was sitting as I arranged the stones..."

"Gilderoy. This is a perfect bloody heart."

"Oh, no," Gilderoy said sadly, and enlisted Draco and Harry's help in quickly reshaping the moonstones into a more reputable form, as close to Resurrection Stone-perfect a circle as could be made. It was, Draco judged as he tilted his head, a surface area more than sizable enough to contain a wizened old dark lord in his first bath in far too many years. Enough even, perhaps, to contain two wizards, should the aforementioned dark lord prove obstinate in his relation to the hell-puddle.

Then the universe encountered a sight that Death himself could perhaps not have predicted.

Gellert Grindelwald, asked to put his faith in the magical abilities of Gilderoy Lockhart.

"So," Grindelwald said, neatly cutting off Gilderoy's attempts to introduce himself. "It seems that the sanctum of Dantanian Black has been opened." There was no other likely explanation readily available explanation for the hoard on display, and Draco didn't insult his questioner by making the attempt. "By the rightful heir to House Black."

Grindelwald nodded in acknowledgment to Draco, then his gaze went back with fierce, almost longing intensity towards the moonstones, and perhaps the concentrated power and danger they embodied. They would need to keep an eye on that urge in the dark wizard, to be sure. And his reckless curiosity, to immediately walk amongst the stones towards the circle's center.

"The rightful heir, who would kindly thank the Prisoner of Nurmengard to keep from dragging his big feet in the ritual site," Draco appended.

"Frankenstein, he's upsetting the arrangement," Gilderoy fretted, loud enough for Grindelwald's surprisingly keen ears to overhear. "He's ruining the Höllenpfütze!"

"Höllenpfütze," Grindelwald echoed contemplatively, and Draco heaved an inward sigh. "Perhaps I should not be stepping here so easily." His steps took him with unusual rapidity out of the mass of moonstones.

"Professor Lockhart, maybe it's not the best idea to tell him it's..." Harry began in tentative criticism, and Gilderoy puffed up his cheeks.

"Well, that's why I said it in the German," Gilderoy explained, as if that was perfectly logical.

"He's Austrian," Draco groaned, and got no reaction. "Where everyone, you know, speaks German?"

"Ah," Gilderoy said, cheeks flushing. "Well, er, that would do it, then, hmm? Apologies, Draco..."

Grindelwald's lip curled, looking caught between disdain and alarm. "My dear Kaktusblüte, do you travel exclusively in the company of physically blessed but intellectually stunted Gryffindors?"

"Hey," Gilderoy said defensively, drawing his faded blue furs about himself. "I am a Ravenclaw."

"Indeed you must be," Grindelwald concluded distastefully, clearly noting the resemblance between their gifted garb. "Mr. Black, tell this flaxen-haired subordinate that I have no intention of taking part in any ritual that would admit him as a participant." Gilderoy let out an indignant squawk, but Draco put a comforting arm around Gilderoy's shoulders, and gave Grindelwald a shark's smile.

"Don't worry, my lord," Draco soothed him. "No need for you to take any part in the ritual. Alright, people, look alive, let's get this show on the road! The Quaffle won't put itself in the hoop!"

They all gathered in front of the circle of moonstones after undoing Grindelwald's damage, the sheer glow off the millunas a more powerful light than the filtered outside impression of day. Even Grindelwald sidled up to try and get a look at the relevant page in Construction and Deconstruction, though this time Gilderoy had the sense to shield it from his eyes. "Oh, quite simple, really," Draco concluded. Compared to other rituals I've done. If he'd had to arrange the moonstones in the shape of the wheel of Hecate, then he could have been worried.

The only one to balk was Gilderoy, perusing it more closely this time and seeing the mention of his blood. "Don't worry, don't worry, we'll heal you right away," Draco soothed him, but in truth, the stiffening of Gilderoy's shoulders seemed to be for the memories that evoked, whether of general blood rituals or the more specific requisitioning of his personal blood. Well, he'd have to persevere through. Mr. Keep it from Grindelwald by saying it in German.

It really was simple compared to some Draco had done. That didn't keep Harry from giving Draco an admiring look as Draco took the book along with the lead in the situation. "I can't believe," he whispered in Draco's ear, "I finally get to see one of your famous rituals," and Draco suddenly wished it involved far more impressive magic.

"The moonstones do all the work," Draco admitted reluctantly. "Alright, let's do this. Madam Hooch's blown the whistle, time to fly. Gilderoy?" Gilderoy held out his arm, and looked relieved when Draco cut directly at his palm rather than up at his offered wrist. Severus had indeed done a good job clearing the scars, at least this far up the arm, and Draco resolved this ritual would leave no more- well, on the skin, at least...

"What a beautiful dagger," Grindelwald commented, from his perch on the base of the Hallows basin at a safe distance. "It does look mightily familiar. Lamia Periander..."

"No one gets to yap until the ritual's done," Draco said playfully, "You're ruining the gravitas," and Grindelwald laughed and held up his hands.

"Far be it from me to interfere with the workings of a fellow dark lord."

Harry seemed not to want to think about that too much. He helped Draco lead Gilderoy about in a circle, letting the blood drip down to mark roughly the far points of an X through the millunas. Draco gathered more blood in a vial before letting go and healing Gilderoy's palm with Severus's song spell, though he felt a hurriedness in some sense to impress his audience. He just hoped Dobby wasn't poking a head in to witness his substandard dramatics.

"Blood of the lord of hell," Draco intoned, "Freely given," and knelt uncomfortably on top of other stones. He carefully upended the vial over the trio of what seemed the most central millunas. It ran loosely, a lovely dark crimson in truth over the luminous smooth surface, until Draco recited the operative part with his best pronunciation: "Gilderoy Lockhart, el Senyor de L'Inframon, sang escalpada per les seves venes."

The three stones all at once shattered.

They let out a hissing black smoke as they broke, much in truth like the smaller quantity of moonstones used in the memory by Dantanian, for the small matter of pulling the moon down from the sky and turning a human boy to a Dementor. That memory clouded the excitement of prospective success, as if by resorting to these ends, Draco was nearing the resemblance to Dantanian within rather than without that dogged him still- but what the stones became, there, that was different. They cracked like eggs, and where Draco had expected them to become dust, whether sparkling or foul no more than the consistency of ashes, they became blood.

Blood, the same healthy dark red as Gilderoy's, spilled from the stones, and over Draco's fingertips before he could remove them. He took that as perhaps necessary cross-contamination, but shifted backwards still, sliding as quickly as he dared over the assembled millunas like unlaid cobblestones. Draco looked up, and even from across the room, Draco could see Grindelwald mouthing, 'Lord of hell?' incredulously over at him, with a jerk of his head towards Gilderoy. Draco gave him a warning look, though thankfully he'd remained silent. Harry, for his part, was watching with more than enough healthy reverence, standing beside Grindelwald as a silent guard to keep him in line.

"Blood of the lord's friend, freely given," Draco recited, and Harry was the one to break the eerie silence with a gasp. Maybe Draco should have warned him it would involve Draco's blood as well, with Harry's damned protectiveness likely driving him half-mad, to witness Draco cut open his own palm. He began to drip his tainted blood of House Black all around the ring of moonstones around the center, while the foyer echoed with the sound of Harry's aborted cry, and then his harsh breathing to control himself.

"Draco Black, L'amic de L'Inframon, sang escalpada per les seves venes," Draco recited, and it took everything in him still not to jerk back as the stones seemed to implode rather than explode this time, turning so rapidly to hissing red blood, it was like they'd dissolved. All those thousands of nights worth of moonlight concentrated in each milluna, and now they were nothing but the reflection of the blood still dripping from Draco's palm, which he had yet to heal.

He healed it, and didn't manage to slide away without getting more blood on his hands, and this time his knees. The blood was pooling from the cracked empty shell of each stone and running in thick rivulets between them, joining each other to form puddles and then one great flow of blood seeping from the center outwards. Draco had the instinct that he didn't want to let it reach the edges before they were complete. Even if Harry was shaken by what he had witnessed.

When Draco looked away from himself, Grindelwald was watching not the ritual now but Harry, with a canniness in his eyes like he thought he understood everything between Harry and Draco. And damn him, with the things he knew about Draco, he likely did, better than Harry himself.

So Draco didn't bother to hide the tenderness in his voice as he beckoned Harry over, and reached over with blood-slippery hands to brace Harry where he could reach him. Draco skipped the English and pushed forward with more urgency. "Harry Potter. El mag amb al poder com L'Inframon, sang escalpada per les seves venes, la tercera i més forta sang," Draco recited. Harry obediently let Draco guide him by the wrist to drip over the next ring, the final one.

This time, the stones seemed to go up in smoke, an instant contraction from beautiful and luminous to joining the dark hissing morass already sliding in ribbons of red beneath them, joining the pool so quickly Draco shoved Harry back, out and away from the circle. Draco followed as quickly as he could, but he was still drenched in blood up to his knees, so much his robes and trousers were sodden and heavy with it.

Only a step worth of time after, and there was enough filthy blackness rising into the air from the pool of red, it resembled nothing so much as a pit of great dark snakes writhing in the air, trying to breathe before being sucked under to drown in blood. So, a cheery sight. Something in its mixture of blood and smoke reminded Draco of the snakes that Dantanian had killed with Dracosanguis, a spell neither Draco nor Phineas fucking Black had ever been able to cast- well, not yet...

"Gilderoy!" Draco barked, and say this for the man, he must have had more than any lifetime's fair share of blood rituals, to leave off his gawping and advance to Draco's blood-weighted side and kneel unhesitatingly beside him.

Gilderoy squared his shoulders, tossed back his unruly gold hair, and recited in far better Catalan, "Aigua de l'estany, possessio del senyor, flux! Estany infernal, estany de L'Inframon, estany de L'Infern, flux! Flux! Flux!"

Gilderoy's voice echoed like a thunderbolt on his last cry of Flux. Yes, definitely one well-trained in the ceremony of blood rituals, that one, unfortunately for his sake. But this one was at least to demand no more of his blood, only the vial of water that he had carefully upended into the pool of blood.

Even Grindelwald let out a sound of pure astonishment as the black and red and brown and muck left the pit of reptilian brimstone and purity began to assert itself, of all things, an icy and unforgiving purity. Draco could feel the coldness of the water near him, radiating out its forbidding frozen glow near enough to his hand to threaten its own freezing. But it did not threaten to leave its circumscribed circle, because as the blood turned to water, it sunk. The stone itself creaked and gave way as the unnatural weight of the hellwater overwhelmed the aged stones of the fortress and made its own smallest of lakes, the clarity of the water soon asserting itself, until it mirrored the spiral staircase above it as perfectly as a mirror. Draco's one fear was that it would too quickly somehow freeze.

"Yes," Draco hissed, "Yes!" and leaped up, casting Aguamenti over himself to wash the blood off. Grindelwald advanced a mere step forward. He seemed to almost shiver in fascination as the red of the drying blood upset the surface of the water, then was taken in without leaving any of its redness apparent, the unimpeachable bleakness of the pond remaining itself. "Don't touch it," he whispered as quietly as he could to Harry, and then turned to the victim of this ritual and gave his most charming smile. "There we go, my lord. Just hop right in and we'll be off in a jiffy. There it is, your way out of Nurmengard!"

When Grindelwald didn't move, Draco feared his flippant attempt at lightness had been too idiomatic. "All we need is for you to get into that water and submerge yourself completely, and that's your way to freedom."

"By my death?" Grindelwald exclaimed, drawing back in what looked real affront. "Quite a show, Kaktusblüte, but do not think I have forgotten the name you gave this new body of water you have chosen to place so inconveniently in Nurmengard for posterity. Why in the name of Merlin would I ever consent to enter a body of water called a Höllenpfütze? Höllen?"

"It's just a pithy nickname," Draco coaxed, coming over with hands raised in placation. "Just a funny way to say it. It doesn't mean death, I didn't think you had such a literal mind. The only thing dying will be the connection between you and Nurmengard."

"And what does this water do?" Grindelwald asked icily. He'd drawn himself back behind his furs against the furthest wall with the airs of a king in exile. "Break the wards on me, you say. How? How does it accomplish this?"

"It won't hurt you, it's perfectly safe," Draco promised, and Grindelwald looked at him sideways.

"That's why you told your lover not to touch it," Grindelwald said curtly, with far better hearing than one would expect for a wizard of his years. "Have him touch it, then, if it is so safe."

"Don't," Draco snapped over at Harry instinctively, only to wince at Grindelwald's grim smile of confidence. "We don't have time for your games, Grindelwald. We're here to help you. Do you think we would have gone through all this trouble and used so many stones that precious just to hurt you? Because I can demonstrate my ability to hurt you creatively, no puddle needed, should you continue to delay proceedings."

"Torture me all you like," Grindelwald said firmly, "I will not get into that water."

"Imperio!" Draco cast in a fit of rage, still squishing blood and water out of his shoes. He had no more luck at overpowering Grindelwald and controlling him, though, than he had found at Occlumency against him. "Fine, then, fine! Let's just cast Petrificus totalus and dump him in, he can protest all he likes, he's one old man without a wand and we're-"

"The water is very cold," Gilderoy said, teeth chattering from sheer proximity to a pond which, if Draco's eyes didn't deceive him, did seem to have slightly expanded in diameter. "We'll be lucky if this doesn't kill a man of his age upon immersion, even with his cooperation. If he goes in petrified, I fear he'll simply drown. And even if we float him in and out..."

"We can't let a drop of it splash on us," Harry said anxiously.

"I'm content to wait here while you discuss my fate," Grindelwald called, "Although I am flattered, Kaktusblüte, that you've gone to such troubles to come up with such an exotic way to murder me."

"No one is murdering your stupid old arse!" Draco bellowed, frustration at this last unexpected obstacle making his composure desert him. "Fine, Grindelwald, you whiny old croaker! What will it take to get you into that pond?"

"One of you," Grindelwald said flatly, eyes not leaving Draco's, "Goes in first."

There was no guarantee that a ritual of that power hadn't already been detected, not by wards of Nurmengard's strength. There could be wizards of any number and strength coming to arrest them for their attempt to help this thick bugger, the long arm of the law rearing itself. Or, worse- the Order of the Phoenix, primed for Death Eaters to make the attempt. There was no bloody time-

"Gilderoy!" Draco barked. "Get in! Show him it won't fucking kill him!" Gilderoy hesitated, of course, knowing what it would do, and that the temporary nature of that magic loss was only something attested to in a very old book.

"Why do I have to-" Gilderoy began nervously, only for his eyes to dart about and go over Harry and Draco in reluctant understanding. He had to know that despite their ages, he'd be so much less useful in any fight, should Grindelwald prove difficult outside Nurmengard, once his magic- likely quickly- returned. "But-" He swallowed, and the memory from the Pensieve shot through Draco at once in an aching chill of sympathy, the sort he'd never used to feel for anyone in the blue loop but himself- he remembered Seguinus Sade playfully tormenting Gilderoy with the threat of the hellwater, and felt ill.

"I don't want to, please," Gilderoy gasped, and this was not exactly calculated to entice Grindelwald to cooperate.

"You'll go in together," Draco said decisively. "He'll help you in and out, to make sure you don't freeze or drown, isn't that nice? Remember, Gilderoy, complete immersion."

"Well, far be it from me to deny the embrace of a dashing young man," Grindelwald observed, without moving a muscle. Nor did Gilderoy, while Harry's gaze fell on all of them troubled. He looked as if he might intervene in his do-gooder way on Gilderoy's behalf any second.

"Gilderoy, I need you to do this," Draco said, walking over and clasping Gilderoy's hands to his, and letting just a hint of his real desperation into his voice. "Please, I need this from you. Please. Can't you do this one thing for me, after everything I've done for you? I've risked so much to help you, Gilderoy. I've been your friend, your only friend. I've trusted you so much. Please don't betray my trust now."

It was a horrible thing to do, that way of calling in the debt, but call it in Draco did. And it worked, as Draco had known it would. "Yes," Gilderoy said with a fearful glint in his blue eyes, gone wide and haunted and slightly distance. "Yes, you're right. Yes, I'll do it." He walked over to Grindelwald and offered his hand. Grindelwald seemed surprised and a bit pleased by the texture of Gilderoy's palm in his. He wouldn't have expected it to be nearly as rough and worn as his own.

They went into the hellwater together, peacock and prisoner, in a tentative creep and then a single great fall. The water splashed into the air, but mostly vertically, and nowhere near Harry and Draco, who had retreated into the threshold of the entrance hall. The two light heads went under together, and thankfully, it was only a few seconds before they both surfaced, Grindelwald gasping for breath and shivering, and Gilderoy struggling to get his hair back in order.

Draco reached into his pocket and withdrew the amber warming pendant he'd bought in Berlin, handing it over to Gilderoy while carefully not even touching the man. He'd meant to give it to Grindelwald, and maybe the aged man needed it more, but he felt guilty enough about Gilderoy already. "Here, this will help," Draco said, and Gilderoy gave him a tired but untainted smile, turning his back and leaving the freezing pool behind them.

"How will we know if it's worked?" Harry asked, going over to Grindelwald's side as if the sundering of the bond would be somehow visible. Perhaps it would be palpable to Grindelwald, though. They all peered at Grindelwald, who let out a strangled cry.

"I can't feel it. I can't. The anchor. The weight of Nurmengard, the cursed bond- it's gone! After all these years, it's gone, it's not tied to my magic- my magic- I can't feel my magic either! Scheisse! Black, what have you done to me?"

"What I promised," Draco said, bracing himself for a thunderstorm of a reaction. What could Grindelwald do now to retaliate against them, anyway? Try and give one of us a great big hug with his hellwater-covered furs, for starters. "I did what hundreds couldn't. It's like you said. I must truly be a spectacular dark wizard-"

"YOU STOLE MY MAGIC!" Grindelwald bellowed, and made an unsteady lunge in Draco's direction. In that moment, there was no more gravitas or composure to him than Marietta Edgecombe, afflicted for the first time with Langlock. "Give it back! GIVE IT BACK!"

"It will come back," Gilderoy said hurriedly, raising his hands and inserting himself between them. "I wouldn't have gone in if it wouldn't. Please, we'll just have to wait. In the meantime, let's get out of Nurmengard. Don't you want to see some other place before you die?"

"Not without my magic!"

"He's telling the truth, it will come back," Draco coaxed. "Now, aren't you interested in how I've done that? Admit it, aren't you a little curious?" Grindelwald, incredibly, seemed to calm a bit at this angle to proceedings, tilting his head and eyeing Draco more analytically. "See, I knew it, you want to know. You want to know what that ritual was, how I managed it-"

"The secrets of Xaphan, clearly," Grindelwald scoffed, but seemed rapidly less hysterical. "How long until it returns? Whether or not I can use it at the moment, the feeling of its absence- you can't know-"

It did take a few more minutes of sweet-talking Grindelwald and both him and Gilderoy drying for things to get back in order. But with the promise of an explanation, along with warm clothes, warm food, and a warm bed where they were going, they had Grindelwald walking alongside them underneath the open roof of the entrance hall, marveling at its disrepair. "Goodbye, old bones," Grindelwald intoned to the broken stone. "Goodbye, my first and only castle."

You might be surprised.

"With its manifesto at the front," Draco teased, refusing to let there be any heaviness. If Grindelwald was someone of sentimental attachment for him, this would have been an objectively weighty and moving moment, the release after so many wasted decades from the same prison. As it was, the Prisoner of Nurmengard walked out of his internment without a flourish or flare, only ordinary footsteps, the anchor that had tied him to it so long merely a memory.

"See, there it is," Draco said with a laugh, turning to gesture at the sign atop the rotting entrance. "For the Greater Good-"

"Accio dagger!"

Draco knew that voice. It didn't mean a damn thing whether or not he did, of course, when the just-used ritual dagger was flying out of his pocket, and into the hands of-

"Draco!" Gilderoy exclaimed, as he was seized from their side.

A knife was put to his throat by the slender, pretty, pale hand of Theodore Nott.

"Theo?" Draco gasped, at the same time as Harry gasped, "Nott," Grindelwald went, "Who is this," and Theo said, "Hello, Grindelwald."

"Hello," both Draco and Grindelwald echoed automatically, then looked at each other with a start. Theo let out his distinctive, lovely laugh.

"Oh, that's right. I suppose that is redundant here." He tilted his sandy blond head in gentle humor. "Hello, actual Gellert Grindelwald. Did Draco ever tell you that was his nickname on our Quidditch team? Grindelwald."

"Kaktusblüte, we haven't been introduced," Grindelwald said, remarkably calmly. "Do recommend me to your charming friend here with the knife."

"Let Lockhart go," Harry said, stepping forward, and Theo scoffed at the sight of him, pleasant facade short-lived.

"I knew you would come. I was sure of it," Theo said enigmatically, eyes on Harry full of hate. "You can't ever leave him alone, can you? Not really. And so here you are. I suppose it is convenient." He seized Gilderoy by the side, dragging him closer to him and positioning the knife higher on his neck, right at the jugular. After a moment, finding the warming pendant hot, he took it off an indignant Gilderoy's neck and threw it aside. "No, I'm keeping hold of Professor Lockhart. I'm sorry for the imposition, sir, but really, I have to say, you were the worst Defense professor we ever had. Sonorus," he cast on himself, to be sure his voice could be heard over the wind, and there went the hope that touching Gilderoy would nullify his magic. It seemed just fine, from the way it boomed then over the great ruined fortress.

"Incendio! Incendio! Incendio!" Theo didn't bother not to recite the name of the spell. It boomed out too instead, a cataclysmic tremor, as he cast it three times, once for each of the three brooms they'd brought, behind them still in the castle. All three went up in dramatic flames, heat at their back.

"What are you doing, Theo?" Draco said in a terrible hollow voice, and barked, "Stop!" in the same empty growl to Harry, when he saw Harry taking out his wand. "Don't provoke him, he has Gilderoy. Theo, what do you think you're doing?" Except Draco already knew.

The alpine wind whipped keenly over them all, making a still-damp Grindelwald shiver and stumble against Harry. The sun illuminated Theo's light hair from behind, and showed off his deep blue eyes to perfection. Never must anyone have looked more like an ancient painting as they held a man at knifepoint. Theo was dressed almost exactly as Harry and Draco were, though- in the ordinary everyday robes of a Hogwarts student, except his tie and badge were, of course, green, as Draco's had been once...

"What does it look like?" Theo said lightly. "Come on, Grindelwald, don't ask stupid questions." The real Grindelwald let out a soft noise of affront. "Sorry." Theo's voice went wry. "I do have to try and break that habit."

"Theo," Draco said, stepping forward even as his awkward legs felt they would shake and give way under him, at the immensity of what he'd missed, of this mistake. If Dobby saw him, he must already have gone... "Theo, whatever you want, we can talk about this, like civilized people-"

"Not at all ashamed to be caught absconding with the Prisoner of Nurmengard?" Theo asked drolly, attention fixed solely on Draco then, in that serious, intent quiet way that at times could belong to Draco alone. That was the most awful thing. There was no horns grown on his head, no maniacal laughter, no demonic creatures at his beck and call. It was just Theodore Nott, Kingsnakes Chaser, who had been attacked by one of Draco's peacocks when they were children.

"Then, I suppose you don't feel shame for very much. And of course you've succeeded at it. Good job, Draco. I really expected no less, from you."

"Draco," Gilderoy gasped, looking around frantically, as if hoping invisible hands would come out of nowhere and extract him from the confident grasp of his former student.

"What, mad we beat you to it?" Draco hissed, a deep, bilious rage stirring in his insides. "If you want Grindelwald, you can't have him-"

"Stupid sometimes, though, for a 'Ravenclaw'," Theo said calmly. "This isn't just by chance, Draco. I'm not here for the prisoner. I'm here for you."

"If you want to kill me, that's not exactly news," Draco bit out, words from the Black Dagger flitting through his head with the new voice of deadly fatality. "But I congratulate you on the novelty of setting. Just let Gilderoy go, and then-"

"You could," Theo said softly, "Only be so lucky. And no, I won't let your pet go. I'm holding him hostage so you don't take this chance to slice me open the same way you killed my father."

"What are you doing, then?" Draco asked for what felt the first and hundredth time, never having felt so impotent and hopeless in his life, and Theo shrugged elegantly.

"Mainly," Theo said, "Stalling. Finite incantatem," he cast on his Sonorus charm. "Ah, here she is," and smiled to himself, a genuine closed-lipped smile, as a dark-robed figure with wild dark hair dropped from the ramparts of the castle to stride up eagerly to his side. He kept hold of Gilderoy and the knife with one hand, and used the other to pull close and press a kiss to the lips of Bellatrix Lestrange.

It was an indescribably awful sight, like anyone who witnessed it would never be clean again. Bellatrix was a fair-faced, dark-eyed demon seizing upon Theo and kissing him viciously, with all of the feeling a woman like her could have had in her. Her lips and tongue and teeth were all at once involved in this savage show of greeting, as Theo returned the kiss with equal enthusiasm, seeming to delight in the showiness of it. It was a hungry kiss. It also looked, already, a triumphant one.

Harry darted forward faster than Draco could track and a jolt of red light shot from his wand- Stupefy, Draco recognized, and clearly, Theo could recognize it too, from how he pulled Gilderoy into its way, just in time to intercept it, without letting his mouth leave Draco's aunt's for a second. Gilderoy crumpled into Theo's arms, and the kiss reluctantly parted, with humor on both of their faces, like an old married couple who'd just been questioned on a subject exceedingly obvious to both.

"I would stop that, if I were you," Bellatrix laughed, "If you don't want to lose your little pet pretender," and dragged her long sharp nail down the cheek of Gilderoy. The scratch blossomed a bright scarlet with blood, which it seemed everyone was letting from Gilderoy today. "That's right, you're going to behave now, aren't you, poppet?"

She leered at Harry, gave Draco at his side a more hateful look, and then her gaze fastened on Grindelwald, who had contrived to conceal himself behind Harry as much as possible, before Harry had bolted. "And you must be Grindelwald. I have to say, I expected more. Are you ready to fight with your new friends? You're not the sort of man to choose the losing side. Join us and we-"

"Apologies, my love," Theo interjected, "But his magic has been taken. The ritual Draco did to get him out of Nurmengard," and she let out a shrill, bone-chilling laugh.

"No wonder, then," she said with a queer smile, "He cowers like a little worm. And what is this?" she squealed, as Draco placed himself in the way between her and Grindelwald. "What value has his life to you, hmm? Well, we'll have all our answers soon enough, my love." She turned back to Theo with a bright light in her nasty dark eyes. "Bring them."

Draco hated the sound of that, and kept his wand out and pointed in their direction. But with them still holding Gilderoy, there was nothing else he could do.

Theo handed Gilderoy over completely to Bellatrix, and the dagger with her. Draco's insides clenched even worse at the sight of his dagger in those hands, especially after she gave it an impressed, satisfied look that said, This is mine now. And turned it so the flat of the blade faced her, and gave it a long, appreciative lick.

While Theo rolled up the sleeve of his Hogwarts robe to reveal the Dark Mark beneath.

He turned to give Draco a small, lovely smile first. "I will accept no restitution," he said, "But your life," and pressed down.

It was the familiar gesture used to call the Dark Lord's followers. Then there were the pops of Apparition all around him, face after face emerging into the blistering wind, familiar and each more terrible. The Carrows. Uncle Rodolphus, who might have a bit more than evildoing to worry about these days. Fenrir Greyback...

Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy.

Narcissa was on Lucius's arm. Against her rested a familiar-looking silver hand on Lucius's wrist.

"Take the old man and the Potter boy alive," Bellatrix ordered the Death Eaters. "The Malfoy boy, I will kill myself."

: The Battle of Nurmengard

Notes:

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Chapter Text

"Professor Snape?"

Dobby appeared with Draco's godfather, in between the Death Eaters and their intended victim, and the newest and prettiest Death Eater let out his Head of House's name with utter shock. The appearance of Karkaroff at Dobby's other side, long missing and marked for death, seemed barely an afterthought for him or for those behind him. "Severus," Bellatrix breathed out, with hatred and wariness, while Theo stiffened like he had been caught cheating on a Defense essay.

Whatever this little Death Eater sightseeing soiree was, it was clearly taking place without the intended knowledge of one Severus Snape. As evidenced by the gobsmacked look on Severus's face, who clearly had no warning as to the preposterous arrangement of so many of his supposed allies from either side, at the most unlikely place on Earth. The same ignorance, of course, could almost certainly not have been said for, say, Voldemort. The Dark Lord must have kept his supposed favorite Severus in the dark.

Dobby ran from the Death Eaters to Harry and Draco's side, to whisper for Draco and Harry's ears only. "Dobby is bringing everyone who is at Xaphan!" A cowering Grindelwald behind Harry heard as well. Draco registered the intrigued smirk on Grindelwald's face, before he turned back towards his godfather, who was situated right in the line of fire.

"Theo?" Severus called in shock, over the murmurs and cries of his fellow Death Eaters. That precluded any doubt Draco might have had as to lies on his godfather's part. The most unbelievable thing of all, in this scene Severus had been Apparated into in media res, seemed to be the presence of one of his Slytherins in the midst of the combatants. Severus's eyes went with baffled incomprehension, for everyone to see, to Theo's exposed arm, the sleeve still rolled up showing off the Dark Mark.

Theo pulled down his sleeve, posture turning defensive, much as his voice tried and failed not to be. "You're not always the authority you presume yourself to be, Professor."

"The Dark Lord," Bellatrix said through gritted teeth, "Has seen fit not to appraise you of certain secret matters, given the questionability of your loyalty. Which seems to have been fitting of his great wisdom. Severus, you were not meant to be here!"

"And yet I am," Severus growled, "And what is this?" His gaze seemed to alight for just a moment, with a trace of outrage he could not quite hide, on the knife Bellatrix held to an unconscious Gilderoy's neck.

"Your foremost Slytherin, Theodore Nott," Bellatrix proclaimed, with an awful note of pride in her voice, "Discovered the intention of your godson to free the Prisoner of Nurmengard! We loyal Death Eaters, on the command of the Dark Lord, have seized the opportunity to strike a crushing blow at his meddling, and at his disgusting lover Potter! So I ask again, Severus, what are you doing here?"

"I've come as well! Karkaroff! I've returned from the dead!" Karkaroff proclaimed, seeing his moment, and everyone up to and including Dobby ignored him.

Only Grindelwald seemed concerned by his presence, a foreign one to him despite their meeting many years ago. He prodded at Draco's back in curiosity, as if this was no more than some light fare at the cinema, in a series he had dropped in on mid-run. "Who is that?" he whispered, but a transfixed Draco ignored him.

Severus's gaze darted before and then behind himself, still uncharacteristically at a loss. When he made out the presence of Grindelwald behind Harry's back, most decidedly outside the famous welcoming inscription over Nurmengard, he scarcely seemed able to add that into his calculations. So hazardous already was the current inconceivable arrangement of players and dangers on the board.

Briefly, as an observation not immediately pressing, but inherently alarming, it went through Draco's head and left it: if Dobby had brought everyone at Xaphan, where had Hermione and everyone been?

Bellatrix's impatience was justified, in the sense that with any sense, Draco would have been taking the chance to edge away behind Severus and Karkaroff and back into Nurmengard. But as long as she still had Gilderoy in her grasp, that wasn't going to happen. She ruined her own quite penetrating questions, as well as a bit of leverage, by hopping from interrogating Severus to a brusque "Enervate!" at Gilderoy of all people. The stunned wizard in her arms blinked back to reality, gaze going from his captor to the glimmering dagger at his throat, so recently at his own hand- I could try and summon it back, but what if it slashes Gilderoy's throat on the way- and alighted inevitably on the paralyzed figure of Severus. He stared at Severus helplessly, with those eyes Severus had called- what was it? So preposterously blue?

"Take the wands of Potter and Malfoy," she ordered Severus. "If they resist, they know I will slit their pet peacock's throat. As will I if you do. None of them are leaving here to tell Dumbledore whose side you are truly on. If your loyalties truly lie with us, show it today!"

"So this is the godfather," Grindelwald observed softly, and Draco shot him a death glare every bit as vehement as the one he had been leveling impotently at Aunt Bella. It also helped him avoid meeting his mother's eyes.

"The Dark Lord has placed you in command here?" Severus asked tersely, and Bellatrix gave a smug nod. "As you wish," he hissed, and stalked towards Harry and Draco.

Draco didn't know why he was so shocked that Severus actually did it. Harry certainly looked betrayed enough to make all the Death Eaters cackle, save the forgotten Karkaroff to the side, simmering at the sight of his hated enemy back in the fold.

Severus took that famous phoenix feather-core wand from Harry without a second of hesitation, only to pull up when it came to Draco. "I have no interest," he called grimly towards Bellatrix, "In acquiring one of those brands to match the boy's parents."

"You evil traitor," Harry spat at Severus, and Draco had no idea whether he was acting. For Draco's part, this shook none of his faith in Severus's loyalties. In the current situation, there was nothing else Severus could do.

To think Draco, and even Severus, had been so thoroughly checkmated- by Theodore Nott...

"Not if he lets it go willingly," Bellatrix said with satisfaction. "Dantanian, you have more sense than that, don't you, sweetheart? Unless he wants to see this artery severed-"

Gilderoy let out a heart-rending little whimper of fear he seemed to be trying to conquer, then, incredibly, did choose despite his earlier protestations to play the Gryffindor. "It's alright, Draco!" Gilderoy yelled over. "Don't give it to him! Not for me! It's alright! I always expected to die of bleeding from the throat!"

Severus ignored Gilderoy as if he hadn't spoken. As did Draco. "Here," Draco said, fishing out the talon wand and throwing it forward, only just out of his own reach. Severus made a show of knocking it with his foot, without really putting it much further from Draco. He was unharmed, before turning back to the Death Eaters and returning to Bellatrix's side.

"Now, Severus," Bellatrix ordered, well-pleased. "If you truly wish to prove your loyalty, prove your cruelty!"

Oh, how much Draco did not miss the time training to be a Death Eater under that woman.

"Cast Cruciatus on Lockhart! Show these worthless scum our lord's power!"

She shifted back the knife to toss Lockhart at Severus's feet, unceremoniously launching him and ending in a pained cry. Lockhart landed in an undignified heap there, hand once freed at the neck gone instinctively to his wand pocket, but then it slumped out of it dejectedly, seemingly remembering his immersion in the hellwater. So he had no choice but to sit there and wait to see whether he would be tortured by the man he loved. How circular the world could become.

But not in this. Where Severus had played his role with Harry and Draco, performance failed when it came to Gilderoy. No curses were forthcoming out of those tense thin lips. Maybe that surprised Harry, and certainly Dobby, who made an astonished sound down at Draco's side. But Draco understood. He understood with an awful certainty, that Severus was simply not capable of hurting Gilderoy, and that it may be Draco's godfather too added to the list of people Draco's own folly could lose him.

"Give me both wands, Professor," Theo ordered with a sudden start of doubt, stepping up, "Give me Potter and Draco's wands," but Bellatrix and Severus ignored the teenager, in favor of that ever-compelling prospect of to torture or not to torture.

Gilderoy didn't seem to know what to do, waiting for the curse to descend, only to peer up at Severus in confusion when he was left unhurt. He'd pulled his dirty Ravenclaw-blue furs tighter around himself with white-knuckled hands steeled against the pain, as if that could protect him. Now his grip loosened, face falling open and unguarded at the sight of Severus staring down at him. Both men looked surprised, neither in truth seeming to expect Severus's clemency. Severus, it seemed, simply could not, even if Gilderoy would likely have wanted him to, if he understood what was in stake in that horribly selfish act of mercy-

Except, wait, Gilderoy was in Severus's grasp, not Bellatrix. The drying blood felt as if it had glued Draco's legs to the ground unmoving, but actually, they were no longer practically trapped by the hostage-taking. If Severus could just get himself and Gilderoy over to their side and they could get out of here, just Apparate away with them all unscathed and-

Karkaroff was there, Karkaroff who Draco after a moment had forgotten too, Karkaroff who it seemed was unwilling to ever again let himself be forgotten.

"He's a traitor!" Karkaroff exclaimed, running over and throwing himself at the feet of Father. Karkaroff must have regarded him as the real power there, even if he should have heard that the one put in charge today, the one still in favor, was Bellatrix. "He's a traitor, you see! He's on their side! I am not! I am loyal to you, Lucius! I am loyal to our great Dark Lord, I never lost the faith, I have been waiting for his return, I will prove it you-"

"Silence," Father said coldly, looking merely irritated at the distraction from the show at hand. Draco had the small satisfaction then of watching their newest defector be backhanded across the face, by a silver hand that packed far worse a blow than Father's hand ever had before. Except perhaps when wielding a walking stick.

"He is on their side!" Karkaroff bellowed, perhaps fearing for his life once the Death Eaters he had spent months fleeing got around to acknowledging his existence, or maybe just that determined to take his chance and get the vision he saw in the Mirror of Erised realized: Severus Snape suffering.

"Igor," Mother said, with a gentle tone that could pass as kindness from her, "Quiet, we all know Severus is a spy for both sides-"

"But his true loyalties are with them! With his godson! I've been with them, you know! They've been protecting me from you! Draco Malfoy, he's let me in to Xaphan, he had me help them get to Nurmengard- at Xaphan, where the Order is building their base, and Snape is always there! At Xaphan!" Karkaroff seemed inordinately proud of himself just to know the word Xaphan. He got to his feet and stumbled forward towards Bellatrix, belatedly understanding the true power balance. "He's helping rebuild their citadel, he's always with this blond vampire-whore-"

"Hold your tongue, Karkaroff," Severus hissed, and this seemed to spur Karkaroff on like nothing else.

"You see! Ha!" Karkaroff exclaimed, tottering until he could jab an accusing finger right into Severus's chest. Severus jerked away to avoid the touch as he would have any madman's, which Karkaroff in truth had come to resemble. Just over his time with Draco, the stringy overgrown hair around Karkaroff's face seemed to have turned grayer and wilder. Karkaroff's unshaven face was contorted into a hideous caricature of his usual merely grumpy and contemptuous self, alive as he had never seemed with a hatred greater than anyone could have known- but Draco should have known, should have known protection would have done nothing to win the loyalty of a man whose sole drive in his remaining life did not seem in truth survival, but revenge-

"All you say," Bellatrix said skeptically, "He might have done in the service of preserving his cover. You are the one we know turned from our side, who revealed poor Barty and damned him to Azkaban..."

Draco edged ever so closer to the talon wand where it sat on the ground. Only Theo seemed to notice. "Professor Snape," Theo said, "Give me Potter's wand," and didn't even seem to be heard.

"You see how Snape defends Lockhart!" Karkaroff crowed. "You see how he will not torture him! I will torture him if you like! I will kill anyone you like! Can Snape say the same? Could he torture his godson? If you ordered him to kill him, would he?"

"The Malfoy boy is mine, to take my vengeance," Bellatrix spat, but she looked less certain. Draco inched another step. Again, only Theo seemed to notice, and inched a wary step of his own towards the talon wand. Then he withdrew his own wand, and levitated the talon wand into the air towards himself- slowly, as if not wanting to be insubordinate by disturbing Bellatrix's conversation.

"Severus Snape is a traitor to us," Karkaroff shrieked, "Not me, never me, and he must die!"

"Wait, Karkaroff," Bellatrix tried to say.

"I have waited so many years to do this," Karkaroff seethed, before his face was lit with a brilliant, obscene smile. "And to think I get to do it in front of you, Frankenstein, you murderous little brat! Oh, that you will watch as I take your godfather from you- this is for what you did to Pammaque! Pammaque Periander! Avad-"

Theo leaned forward and jerked his wand to bring the talon wand the rest of the way to him, reaching out as if for the Quaffle, but it was too late. Draco leaped forward like a Seeker to a Snitch, reflexes still there, and seized the wand out of the air right in Theo's face. Theo stumbled and fell onto his hands and knees.

"Cauterizo!" Draco screamed, but the pain that erupted in Karkaroff's hand did nothing but restart the awful, final, unshieldable syllables from that hateful visage- there was no uncertainty what he meant as with Nott, this was a face that would never stop until Draco's godfather was dead, as long as he lived-

Karkaroff pointed his wand right at Severus and hissed, "Avada Ke-"

"AVADA KEDAVRA!"

Green light shot from Draco's wand for a third time in his life, out from nearly point blank range, past Theo's shoulder into Igor Karkaroff, who was flung high enough into the air to block the sun for a moment, before he crashed down dead at the feet of Bellatrix Lestrange. Bellatrix shrieked and jumped back from the body, falling against her sister and screaming out Draco's name. Theo's brilliant deep blue eyes went huge in horror as the body crashed by him as well, staring mutely at the sight of a man killed, by the same man who had killed his father.

Severus rounded on Draco and lunged at him, seizing him by the arm as if fearing he would let out another Killing Curse from it. "You promised me you would never use the Killing Curse again!" he bellowed, self-preservation overwhelmed for that single moment in devastation at what he had just watched his godson do. "What have you done, Draco?" he cried out wretchedly. "You promised me. You promised me! What have you done?"

"We have to run!" Draco screamed, and then, where they had all been paralyzed, everything seemed to happen all at once.

"Confringo!" Bellatrix yelled in pure rage, seeming to think anyone on the other side good enough prey to be blown to blood and bone. The curse exploded just in front of them as Draco seized Gilderoy from Severus's feet and tried to drag him backwards. Severus cast Nebulus, joining with the smoke and debris thrown into the air from the stony mountainside to turn the world ashen charcoal-grey. It threw the immediate stream of exploding rock from him, Draco, and Gilderoy to behind them. Dobby lifted a hand and snapped his trembling fingers and shield came into being just in time to protect himself, Harry, and Grindelwald. Then Father cast some curse that flew past Draco's face in the smoke. Draco would never know what it had been.

Draco cast Fumos as Severus took Gilderoy's arm and the two of them ran together. They were stopped for a moment as Draco caught up, which Draco couldn't understand until he saw Severus putting Harry's wand back in his hand. Curses flew through the smoggy air at them, but it was easy to dodge them by hitting the ground and inching backwards towards Nurmengard. The difficulty was Grindelwald, hardly able to duck up and down without Draco's assistance.

Draco was the one who had to make sure that the raison d'être for their whole fatal enterprise was not forgotten in the eruption of violence. He grabbed Grindelwald's robe, finding him in the fog they'd set which had blinded himself as well as their enemies, at the same time as someone on the other side cast Meteleojinx recanto, and another set a gust of wind to clear the smoke. New smoke rose in the air as Harry let out such a powerful gust of flame from Lacarnum inflamari, at least one or two figures looked as if they had been set alight.

Draco felt rather than saw as they reached the threshold of Nurmengard, passing under the words For the greater good without reading them still. "Wait, Severus!" Draco called, helping Grindelwald backwards as they tried to race to some place of safety, some higher ground, even as they trapped themselves behind the anti-Apparition wards of Nurmengard. "The pool-"

"There's a pool, it blocks magic, I don't have my magic, Grindelwald doesn't," Gilderoy gasped out somewhere ahead of them to Severus.

The others were gaining distance on Draco and Grindelwald through the entrance hall, whose open roof made Draco surreally fear curses raining down on them, though the outbreaks of red and yes, green light seemed to be coming only from the front and from distance still as they tried to put out Harry's fire. Harry sent another gust of fire and just managed to miss Draco- but he'd caught the edge of Grindelwald's furs, and then Draco had to outright drag Grindelwald towards the others, into the foyer where the pond awaited.

"You caught him on fire, help me!" Draco screamed, no doubt a heartening sentence for their enemies if they overheard it. Grindelwald had the astonishing nimbleness to solve the problem for himself, once near a body of water, rolling himself to the side of the pool and plunging the edge of his furs and robes into the hellwater again. It let out a truly hellish singing sound and puff of uncanny smoke as it was immersed, but the active flames seemed to go out, even as the gleam of embers like coals seemed to linger right at Grindelwald's side.

"I'm sorry!" Harry called, "I'm sorry!" sounding frantic. Dobby snapped his fingers and made stones of the broken roof of the entrance hall cave in at the threshold to the foyer, falling on the wild dark-haired head of Bellatrix. Draco's dagger flew out savagely in response, and she was almost upon them. The dagger missed but she called it back with her magic, as Draco tried to help Grindelwald back up where he was panting and water-logged and smoking, trying to pull off the furs he had once cherished so dearly, ruined now.

"I'm sorry!" Harry called, and ran over and helped Draco drag Grindelwald to them, behind the pool where the others had stopped, waiting. Then he raced back towards the advancing figures of Bellatrix and Theo and yes, the brighter white-blond heads of Draco's parents, the image of suicidal Gryffindor heroism. "Lacarnum inflamari!" Harry screamed, and at first Draco thought Harry had missed somehow, even with the enemy right almost upon them now, only the hellwater between them. But when Harry's flame hit the pond instead and let up a great mass of tainted black smoke, Draco understood.

"Confringo!" Draco screamed, and finished the process Harry had begun of caving in the Höllenpfütze.

It missed Bellatrix and Theo, damn their luck, already far enough towards them to be at one side of the pond, Father and Mother on the other, but for those a step slower, they fell to the destruction of Nurmengard being torn apart. The combination of the fire and blasting sent the burning water and stone further, and from the looks of the conflagration and sinking that transfixed Draco for a stalled moment, the collapse in the floor was reaching the entrance hall, as onrushing Death Eaters plunged screeching face-first into the smoking hellwater.

It seemed their group had somehow managed to avoid getting drenched, at least fully, but then Severus shot out a blasting spell of his own, this one targeted, to throw water from the surface and splash out to fully immerse Father and Mother. Draco's heart fell into his stomach as they both fell headlong into the pond, but he had to run- it's just taking their magic, Mother won't be killed, it's just taking their magic so they can't hurt us-

"Draco!" Harry screamed, as the power of Severus's blasting spell skimmed past Father and Mother and caught the side of the threshold, which caved in a great groaning of rock into the water. The rebounding splash soared out at all of them, and Harry shoved Draco and Grindelwald with him to the side just in time to avoid being fully soaked. Draco couldn't tell if the water caught Harry and took his magic from him, leaving him helpless. There was no way to see through the hissing brilliance of the silver-black water. A moment later, Grindelwald was the one stumbling to his feet and helping Draco up, dragging him to the right away from the floor which seemed in danger of completely caving in. A cutting curse sliced just where they had been, leaving further rock scored with the marks of the battle, and the vindictively exacting flash of the cut had Theodore Nott's name written on it. They hadn't stopped Theo from coming for them, if anything could stop him now.

Grindelwald pulled Draco towards the closest way out, which wasn't the staircase, where Draco could see Dobby leading all the others up in a frantic rush, but into darkness- the open hallway with its ramp-like series of hallways down. There was nowhere else for them two to go, though, with the water having cut them off from Harry. Draco could only hope Theo hadn't seen them scatter this way, and everyone would think their side had fled upstairs- except that was a cowardly thought, he should want the Death Eaters off the trail of his friends- but he had to protect a soaked half-burned magic-less Grindelwald who was inevitably panting for breath and slowing after so many years never leaving a single room, and now he had been thrown into a hellscape of his allies' own making. Draco cast Lumos, holding up his wand with his free hand to guide them, and they ran.

They rounded a second corner and Grindelwald's wet shoes skidded and nearly fell on the cobbled but smooth dark stone underfoot. Draco caught his arm just in time, and they both slid downwards further down the hall, like a deliberate slide down a staircase banister, and crashed into the wall at the end of the second hall. Draco hit stone and tasted blood, but he'd at least sheltered Grindelwald from the blow- except the contact between them set pain searing through him. Pain seemed natural from the fall into the wall, except this pain was different, pricking and sparking, this was the embers on Grindelwald's fur starting to catch against Draco's side-

Draco helped Grindelwald rip off the fur, leaving him in his soaked dark robes and more able to run without the water-logged weight, although still not much more. It left a marker behind of their fleeing this way, but it almost felt their feet would have already, with Grindelwald wet and such thick a coating everywhere of filthy, lung-clogging dirt and dust. Anyone in pursuit of them would be able to swiftly catch them, and Draco would have to defend both himself and Grindelwald in their escape, against however many came after them with their magic still intact.

His ears were still ringing from the crashing sound of stone into water and the hiss of fire and smoke, face stinging from pebbles of stone slapping into the air with the whip-hard wind from outside reaching into the castle more and more with the collapse, the bleeding from his mouth from the wall, but he couldn't focus on himself, he had to focus on getting out of here-

Except they had chosen a path with a dead end. Draco had known that, he'd explored this way with Dobby on his first visit. The realization sent him stumbling, although this time his fall was caught by the great purple vine he remembered, shaped like one huge organic tentacle snaking through this part of Nurmengard solely to ensnare them. Grindelwald's ankle slipped and seemed to nearly give way beneath him at the abrupt stop, as his feet crunched down on an abandoned skull. "No way," Draco gasped, "How, we can't go this way, Grindelwald, there's no way out," and then there was the sound of pursuing footsteps.

"They went this way!" a male voice called that Draco couldn't recognize in his panic, and they were perhaps finding the discarded fur.

"There's no way out! They'll catch us!" Draco hissed, furious at Grindelwald for having led them this way, towards death if they were too outnumbered- there was no telling, and if they ended up pinned at the dead end of that hideous horrible plant, more and more could come at him until he folded and Grindelwald would be taken and Draco slaughtered, unable to protect anyone- unless he left a trail of bodies and bodies- "Don't you remember your own fucking fortress-"

"I know!" Grindelwald cried out gleefully, and a brief glimpse over as Draco dragged the dark wizard down a steeper hall downwards confirmed what he should have already suspected- bodily discomfort notwithstanding, Grindelwald was enjoying this. "I KNOW!" he yelled, loud enough for their pursuers to be sure they were on the right track, and indeed there were answering cries. "I'm counting on it!"

"YOU MADMAN!" Draco screamed back, stopping where they stood ready to curse Grindelwald himself if this was what it came to. "Do you want me dead? Do you want to die?"

"Quiet! Listen! This is you! You can do this!" Grindelwald cried out joyously, waving his arms. Draco leaned against the plant, knowing the Death Eaters by their pounding footsteps crunching on bones underfoot only seconds away. He was thinking of the protection spell to cast- if Grindelwald was expecting Protego Diabolica out of him, this space was likely too small, and there wouldn't be enough time. Maybe it would be more fitting to just cast the Cruciatus on the second traitor here, who'd led him to a dark and nasty death with him. "Cast Serpensmorta!"

"You really want to die with snakes around your throat, be my guest," Draco growled, raising the talon wand, and the Death Eaters were in the closest hallway, feet pounding, pounding, pounding...

"Not on me, on the vine!" Grindelwald said excitedly.

"Serpensmorta!" Draco cast, obeying without thinking, and nothing happened whatsoever.

"You can! You can! My little dark lord! You can!" Grindelwald cried out in ecstatic, bloodthirsty confidence, "I cannot, you can, Kaktusblüte-"

Rounding the corner with their wands already raised were Crabbe, Goyle, Avery, Rookwood, Greyback-

"Serpensmorta!" Draco screamed, pointing his wand to the vine with no expectation of anything, and yet. And yet. The plant bloomed.

The vine came alive, the veins that throbbed right at its surface separating beneath Draco's gaze, soaring out to lunge at the Death Eaters. At the head of each tendril were snakes, hissing at the screaming men before wrapping their constricting bodies around their ankles and writhing upwards, extending the purple plant flesh in coils to ensnare them. Smaller bits like thick hairs stretched out to touch them curiously before the entire length would circle around like rope and squeeze.

A horrible stench filled the hall as black filth dripped out from the underside of the snakes, which fell onto the ground with an acid touch, and seemed to sear at the skin of the Death Eaters, who began to scream their heads off. "What is this?" Goyle exclaimed, panicked, while Greyback growled and vowed he'd have Draco's head for this, before a coil snuck around his neck and made any more speech impossible. His eyes rolled back in his head, bulging, tongue hanging out of his mouth.

The men were left pinned in a thicket of unliving snakes, acid dripping over their bodies where they touched, corroding through their robes and leaving them writhing in agony. Crabbe was uppermost along with Avery, piled on top of the others with the weight bearing down forcing more of the acid into Rookwood's skin, as they all howled as if under the Cruciatus. "This!" Grindelwald exclaimed, and strode right into the face of the trembling Avery and snatched the wand from his unresisting hand. "You dared pursue me? I? Gellert Grindelwald? In Nurmengard? THIS IS MY CASTLE!"

"Come on!" Draco cried, pulling his wand back from the plant, and Grindelwald did not follow. He took another wand, this from Crabbe, and stood with wands in both hands with a grin splitting his filthy, sweat-soaked, bloodied face from ear to ear, a single drop of black acid running down it unnoticed.

"Finish it first!" Grindelwald insisted, driving his aged fist into the spasming face of Fenrir Greyback with a pained gasp of satisfaction. "Finish it! Cast Serpensmorta again and kill them!"

"I am not," Draco hissed, "Going to murder anyone else today! Let alone any more of my friends' parents! Come with me now, you evil bastard, or be left behind!"

They made their slower, more cautious way back up the halls, the sight of the vine undulating along the stone filling Draco with stomach-churning revulsion. "You should have killed them, like you killed that man who tried to kill your godfather," Grindelwald panted. "You were right to, they could get loose and attack us from behind-"

"Worry about what's in front!" Draco screamed, and drew the attention of the knot of Death Eaters at the foot of the staircase, who were shooting curses up at Severus and Gilderoy. Rock had caved in above them, cutting off the exit of the staircase.

Theo was shooting a cutting curse that looked terrifyingly like Sectumsempra up at Draco's godfather and the defenseless Gilderoy, while Bellatrix blasted at their feet, cackling madly. By their side, Yarrow screamed Crucio like it was the only word in his vocabulary, and a stumbling Severus just barely managed to get both him and Gilderoy out of its way. Then Theo was charging forward at the staircase with hatred in his deep blue eyes, ignoring Bellatrix's sharp call that they had Severus penned in. "I'll do it myself!" Theo screamed. "Take from him what he took from me!"

What drew attention the most, though, wasn't the Death Eaters immersed in a decidedly lopsided mass duel. It was the ones still pulling themselves out of what had gone from a Höllenpfütze to a true lake now at the entrance to Nurmengard. Helpless to intervene, deprived of magic, it must be a salutary bit of education for them all. They were trying to help one another from the water or just sitting there glumly, watching the proceedings with sullen interest. In the latter group were Draco's parents. Neither they nor the active Death Eaters noticed Draco and Grindelwald's arrival, though you would think the magic-less ones would at least have kept a lookout. But no, Draco could do anything without being noticed at first, anything- another Killing curse hung on his lips for the frantic figure of Bellatrix, throwing up a shield to protect Theo from the gust of flame sent out by Harry, who had been crouched behind Severus with blood pouring from his head-

Draco had the shot, but he had to disrupt them all, including Theo, now-

The Death Eaters liked to levitate people, throw them around? See how they liked the same done to them!

Grindelwald laughed and clapped his hands like a child at a country fair as the forms of the helpless Death Eaters soared one by one through the air into the fighting ones from behind, propelled like a series of heavy black-robed bullets.

"Yes!" Grindelwald called, "Get them," and it was always nice to have an appreciative audience. Especially for the humiliation of those who wanted to take those Draco loved away from him. In that moment, he might have killed them all if he could, if he didn't just need to get everyone out alive and unharmed-

"The woman!" Grindelwald prompted, when Theo remained standing at the front of the stairs, his own shield now straining against Harry's red light of Expelliarmus, while Bellatrix and the others crashed together down stunned in a great heap of evil like someone had scored a golazo, Bellatrix's face smashed by the flying impact of Father's new silver hand, and Mother remained standing, her new wand in hand though they all knew it was useless-

"No! Go!" Draco screamed, and Narcissa raised her other hand, trembling, and flung the moonstone dagger in their direction. Maybe she couldn't have thrown it harder, or maybe she could have, and it was only a token gesture of resistance. The dagger only flew halfway across the water before falling in with a soft splash and disappearing.

The red light of a Stunning spell came from Severus, felling Mother cleanly, and she fell. Not, though, as Draco's heart desperately feared, into the water. Just onto the stone, where she collapsed, slumped over herself with her bright blonde hair like a felled banner. The elf Stunning spell sent Theo's way by Dobby was less successful, as Theo hit the floor, crawling rapidly to the side out of the line of fire completely. Draco shot a spell in his direction that fell short, hitting someone in the heap of dazed Death Eater bodies, and Theo's gaze lifted in a panic of his own now, locking onto Draco's.

"Run!" Severus ordered, and they all followed Severus's lead, the previously encircled combatants racing down from the stairs and literally over the Death Eaters' bodies as their final steps, Harry's shoe satisfyingly trampling the unconscious dark head of hair of Bellatrix, who it seemed Draco's spell had caught instead.

Draco ran over and crashed into Harry and felt Harry's wild desperate arms around him steadying him, Harry's lips against his forehead, even as Harry's blood dripped from Harry's face onto Draco's. But then, Draco hardly knew whose blood was whose anymore, and what was blood or water or sweat or acid or tears, as if they had been all fighting against the very castle of Nurmengard only for it to turn on their foes instead. The wildest fancies went through his mind of shooting Killing Curses backwards towards the heap of bodies, where some had rebounded while struggling and fallen backwards into the water too- killing everyone if that was what it took to take Bellatrix down while he could, but they had to go, that was all-

There was a pathway remaining to get out of the foyer around the lake. Draco led the way, pulling Grindelwald with Harry while Dobby and Severus shielded Gilderoy with their wands. The ceiling of the foyer had already begun to cave in. They barely managed to dodge one of the last remaining stones overhead once they were in the entrance hall, the sight of bright blue sky open to them with only a slender path forwards, but they were taking it. No one seemed to be coming after them. The only one he'd seen for sure intact with his magic was Theo- but no, there were a few more footsteps after them still, dark silhouettes crossing the same threshold and climbing after them over broken stone...

The five of them ran out of Nurmengard and Draco nearly stumbled over Karkaroff's cooling body. He didn't trample it, but it was a near thing.

"Are we outside the wards?" Gilderoy asked anxiously, only for Severus to dive in between him and the entrance to Nurmengard when flashes of light still flew out at them from it. But the curse to fear was one from Theo, who screamed Sectumsempra like he would happily die if it hit its target, wand pointed solely at Draco-

Draco didn't know if Grindelwald deliberately blocked Draco from the curse, or if he had just already been stumbling. As it was, the panting, exhausted body of Gellert Grindelwald took the curse meant for Draco Black. It was only his arm that did, though, catching him somewhere on the side, making him howl in pain from it, but not hesitate very long indeed before raising in each hand a stolen wand and majestically bellowing,

"PROTEGO DIABOLICA!"

Fire poured from both of Grindelwald's wands, blue fire nothing like Draco's had been in the Department of Mysteries: it was twice as thick, twice as pure and hot-looking a brilliant blue, bluer than the sky above them on that windy summer day. Curses were cut short by the eruption of flame between them over the alpine stone, the mountain beneath them itself seeming to rumble as its uneven stone glittered and shone Patronus-blue, reflections like fire flowed not just from Grindelwald but from beneath their very feet, from the mountain itself, from Nurmengard, protecting his own...

"This is my castle!" Grindelwald screamed at the top of his lungs, laughing in exhilaration, his bleeding red arm still lofted as high as the left as the flames arched into a semi-circle. He turned with the magisterial flourish of a conductor and finished a circle around them that looked geometrically perfect even under the circumstances.

It was worthy of a white opal as the world around them went from deathly to beautiful, a cocoon of blue safety where none who wished them harm could pass. Draco had only ever seen this spell cast before so beautifully in the memories of Dantanian Noir. Dantanian had cast it the same way, with the same sweeping sideways motion making not jets but sheets of fire like waterfalls.

"Draco!" Theo's voice could distantly be heard screaming, as if screaming for his help, or more likely his head. "Draco! DRACO!"

"Can we Apparate out?" Gilderoy gasped, tears running down his face from pain- Draco had no idea where or how he was hurt, but all it meant was they needed more desperately to get out of there, before Voldemort might show up, Naufragiam or not, because he'd showed he could break Protego Diabolica- just Draco's, but still-

"Yes!" Grindelwald called, throwing his head fully back in one last spasm of pure happiness. The flames soared high above them in response, as if sharing in his joy, the blue of them shooting high enough to blend in completely with the blue of the sky. "Go! Go! Now!"

And then Grindelwald had seized Draco's arm and they were no longer in a world of fire and screaming. They were still staring out at blue, but it was a different blue: the unmistakably keen green of turquoise water, what Draco knew from experience of L'Infern to be a glacier lake. An alpine lake, it was, reflected with the evergreen trees all around the craggy stone rising high above them reflected on the water. They were no longer on stone, but the pure virgin white of never-touched snow. Grindelwald pressed his filthy face into it and kept laughing, as the blood poured from his arm into the snow.

"Did we do it? We escaped?" Draco asked in sheer disbelief, and Grindelwald nodded his head, laughing like the funniest joke in history had just been told.

"Is this not beautiful?" Grindelwald asked through his laughs which sounded almost hysterical now, the distinction between them and sobs almost indistinguishable- because they were sobs. Grindelwald's hurt arm was clutched to his side, where blood was pooling not just from the arm but the torso beneath. Theo's curse had cut him worse than Draco thought. "Could there be a more beautiful place to die?"

"What are you talking about?"

Grindelwald rolled over to lie on his back in the snow, not seeming to feel the cold as anything but a relief. He was covered from head to toe in filth and blood, and yet the brilliance of his eyes was undiminished beneath the fall of sweat-soaked hair. Draco pushed the hair out of them and found them dazed, wider than they should have been. "What? What?"

Grindelwald's tired lips creased up into a smile, and his hand fell from his side. The cut into his side extended all the way up, and into his chest.

Draco screamed. And realized that Protego Diabolica Grindelwald had cast under such pain had been his final spell. He'd already taken the deathblow.

"No," Draco said unsteadily. "No, I'll heal you, I know a spell, there's a song..."

"It's too late!" Grindelwald exclaimed, and tried to raise his other arm in some gesture, but failed to have the strength. "Can't you see it's too late, Kaktusblüte? Now, you stubborn boy, will you listen to me? Listen, Draco Black, because I do believe these will be the last words I will ever say."

"NO!" Draco yelled. "I'll take us to- to a hospital- to St. Mungo's, I'll make a Portkey, there's another way, there has to be, you're not going to die-"

So Draco had ruined everything. Everything. And now another man was going to die because of him. A man who still smiled at him and called him Kaktusblüte.

"That boy," Grindelwald said hazily. "That boy, what was his name, the boy who killed me? He cannot have been the one. Not him to kill me, no."

"Theodore Nott," Draco gasped, more of a sob, a broken feeling erupting in his chest he did not understand, a feeling like a hand had seized upon everything inside it and twisted it as sodding and bloody as Grindelwald's chest, that cut so deep he thought wildly he could almost make out the unsteady rhythm of the heart still beating. "He's Theo. Theodore Nott."

"It can't be him," Grindelwald said, with a surreal confidence. "It has to be you, Kaktusblüte. You have to be the one to kill me."

"No!" Draco shrieked, scrambling away from him in the blood-soaked snow. The reflection of the trees on the lake before them remained no less hatefully beautiful. "No, what are you talking about? No, I can't! You are not going to die! This is my fault! This is all my fault!"

"No, my dearest boy," Grindelwald said, reaching out a limp, bloodied hand as if beseeching him not to leave. Trembling, Draco crawled back towards him, knees soaking in melting red. "No, as you told me, sweet boy, I was already doomed to die. Now it will have been at the hands of a beautiful young man, and that other- that other dark lord will not have the satisfaction-" When he coughed, blood came up, as if his lungs had been punctured too by the cut, filling his mouth. The thought made Draco feel so ill it was like he could taste the blood in his own mouth, clogging his own throat. "I only ask you be the beautiful young man to finish off the job, Mr. Black. You cannot imagine how unhappy I will be if you- if you deprive me of this last gift."

"Gift?" Draco cried, and his hands shot out to grip on Grindelwald's shoulder before he remembered the way the man had been cut. He was trying so hard not to look at the wound, looking only at that hideously blissful face, and yet he could not escape it in his peripheral vision like the whole world was filling now with the dripping of red, not flame but blood springing up from mountain stone. It was blood on his own hands, whether or not he struck the final blow. "Gift? You call it a gift?"

"I will not be trite," Grindelwald coughed, "And waste my remaining time, expounding how meeting you has been the final, most unexpected, undeserved pleasure of my long and wasted life. But yes, that is one gift you must give me. I demand it of you, Draco Black. And I must demand one more thing, and then you will kill me with a smile still on my lips."

"Is it- what to do with your body?" Draco gasped in horror, and Grindelwald kept on that sobbing-laughing again. He tilted his head to look past Draco, as if trying to burn the sight of the alpine lake onto them as their very last sight.

"No, a body is a body," Grindelwald coughed impatiently. "Do with it as you wish- bury it- throw it in the lake- feed it to dogs for all I care, I will be dead, what is it to me? What you must do is- forgive me for my lies to you. I wanted to live. And I must ask- ask much. And Albus. And Albus."

"Do you want me to tell him that you love him?" Draco gasped, and their gazes met for such a long time that Draco thought Grindelwald was silently agreeing with the proposition. Then Grindelwald laughed again, a harsh wheezing sound that was drawing up blood too, and Draco realized the hesitation had been because the man was truly in his death knell.

"No!" Grindelwald exclaimed, letting his head fall back into the snow, last effort to see the world done, where he would only stare at a crystal-blue, completely clear sky. "No. I want you to tell him he did not kill his sister. Tell him- tell him I killed Ariana Dumbledore."

"Did you?" Draco asked, leaning over Grindelwald still barely able to understand or process what was happening, and Grindelwald made one mammoth final effort to jerk his head yes, even as Draco could see clear as the man was dying that the man was lying.

"Tell him that," Grindelwald insisted, and Draco nodded. "Use his curse, so none blame you, Kaktusblüte. Make sure when you cut me open- cut me deep," he said, and Draco's trembling hands raised.

"I can't," Draco said numbly. The word, the thought just wouldn't come. He could barely recall the syllables of Sectumsempra.

"You must," Grindelwald said, and closed his eyes peacefully, turning his head to the side as if he was going to sleep in the snow. "Do not forget and tell Albus."

"Sectumsempra," Draco sobbed out, putting his wand right to Grindelwald's chest and slicing through. Then he dropped his wand into the snow to the side of the body and began to sob.

It was only as Draco finally lifted his bleak gaze, tears dripping down over the body, that Draco noticed the gleam of something inside Grindelwald's chest, beside the red mass of what had once been his heart. Draco thought he must be hallucinating, but he reached out and took it, and the silver shine under red was real between his fingers. It was something the size of his palm, and fit there like a still-beating heart.

It was impossible to tell what it was for some time, uselessly wiping at it with his hands and sleeves, only getting it filthier and bloodier. Then he realized how he could see what it was, and plunged his arm with it elbow-deep into the snow. When he pulled his arm out, finally, he was shivering as well as sobbing, and the object he had taken from inside the torn chest of Grindelwald's he had cut open was showing him back his own reflection. It was a mirror.

It could not have been a simpler, plainer mirror, perfectly silver and reflective on both smooth circular sides, save an inscription carved in a circle all around the mirror's front.

Espilce ehtfog ninwa dehttae idyamht aedneve.

Even death may die at the dawning of the eclipse.

: Grindelwald's Gift

Notes:

Chapter Text

"Draco! Oh my God, dragon, it's you! We were terrified when you didn't come back here with us- we thought- I don't know..."

Harry flung his arms around Draco and pulled him to him so tightly, Draco lost hold of the body in his arms. There was still a wound on Harry's temple which Draco hadn't seen him receive. Harry had his share of blood and filth on him, but nothing compared to the blood and guts and muck and snow that Draco sullied him with by his embrace. Nothing compared to the corpse that the embrace sent falling at their feet. It kept Draco from hugging Harry back, still in a hazy sort of dream where he had killed Gellert Grindelwald and taken the third mirror from inside his body, where it now illusively rested in his lower right robe pocket.

"DRAGON-FACE!" Sirius virtually wailed, and plowed into Draco from the other side, embracing him forcefully. Remus came forward to touch Draco's arm reassuringly too, but was responsible enough to take charge of the body at their feet, pulling it up and staring into the peaceful cold face with its eternally closed eyes.

"Aren't you angry?" Draco asked Sirius meekly, not even sure which guilt he was attempting to assuage, and Sirius shook his head.

"Draco," Sirius said, voice thick with feeling, "I'm just so, so grateful you're alive."

"We love you, Draco," Remus said, and recklessly let go of Grindelwald to press his forehead to Draco's. "We just love you ever so much. We can talk about what happened later. For the moment, like Sirius said- we were just terrified we'd never see you again, except perhaps as..." His gaze drifted down again to the lifeless form fallen below them.

"Gellert," Albus Dumbledore breathed, in a stunned wondering voice somewhere nearby. Then he strode quickly towards them, eyes all calm competence behind his spectacles. "Gellert Grindelwald," he identified more neutrally, false face already in place as if it had never fallen. "This is Gellert Grindelwald. Poppy!" Poppy was Madam Pomfrey's first name, it seemed, and she was standing near where Harry had been, previously seeing to that head wound. "Poppy, you must see if he is-"

"He's dead," Draco said, to forestall any self-torturous attempts at useless revival. "That's why we took longer than the others. He took us to this beautiful lake where he wanted to die."

"Theo!" Harry gasped. "Theo got him? That cutting curse?"

Draco inwardly thanked Harry for establishing guilt other than Draco's as soon as possible. Another still more detached part mocked himself for the retained ability to look to his own advantage, even after everything that had just happened. Everything he had just done.

"Severus?" Draco asked, pulling back, while Dumbledore solemnly levitated the body upwards, joined in a moment by the ashen-faced Madam Pomfrey and a sharp-eyed Professor McGonagall. "Dobby? Gilderoy, did they all make it-"

He answered his own question whipping his head about. He was glad for Harry and Sirius's hands on his shoulders to steady him, as the world reeled in senseless order, like the situation had already begun to take stock of itself and resolve while Draco had been at the killing. There was Dobby, sitting on a great rough stone boulder in the center of the empty courtyard, head hung in what looked disconcertingly like shame. There was Gilderoy, sat right on the ground nearer to the library tower, with a thousand-yard stare in his bright blue eyes. Once their gazes met, that stare turned relieved and comforted, presumably at Draco's survival intact. Gilderoy gave a bright smile that almost steeled Draco enough to face the man standing over Gilderoy: Severus, the one of the combatants who looked the least devastated within or without, even as he must have already admitted to Dumbledore that his position as spy was no more...

It was exactly what Draco had wanted. One of the goals for the year, even. Unless it meant he had broken something irreparably that had once led to the Order's victory. Draco's eyes went in confusion to Dumbledore's departing back as he wondered, I suppose then Severus won't be murdering you?

Get with the program, Draco, seems you're the one who does all the murdering now.

His gaze finally made the full circle to alight upon the rest of their friends, together in one great mob. They were being seen to by their relatives, a great pocket of Weasleys hovering protectively over Ron and Ginny, the Longbottoms over Neville, and Xenophilius with his arms around both Luna and Hermione's shoulders. The students looked unharmed, at least physically, but they were in the process of being fussed over nonetheless, as if they had experienced some great ordeal as well...

"Hermione, are you alright?" Draco called, and she nodded, with a face tight with stress.

"I'm sorry!" she called, voice lashing and strident. "I'm so sorry!"

Draco had no idea what for until Harry reminded him, as much for Sirius and Remus's ears as Draco's, "They were supposed to be waiting here, in case Dobby came back to bring more help. But they got a letter from Bellatrix Lestrange- everything the same as the letter you got from her with the Black Dagger, except no dagger-"

"A letter that told us you'd been abducted and taken to Godric's Hollow," Luna called miserably, "So we all went there, and we searched for you so long, and then when we finally realized no one was there..."

"We came back to Xaphan, and Karkaroff was gone," Neville finished, and Severus's gaze was like lead on Draco.

"Indeed," Severus intoned. "Karkaroff is gone."

"And you're not," Draco said fiercely, unwilling to apologize for what he'd done. In Sirius's case, the implicit challenge in Severus's words made him practically snarl at his fellow member of the Order, before Draco pulled him back into a fiercer embrace, Remus holding Harry's face and speaking to him quietly at their side.

"So that was Grindelwald, and he's dead?" Ginny called despondently, and Hermione seemed to answer her in the affirmative. "So it was all for nothing?" The mirror felt like it was burning a hole in Draco's pocket, even as he fought to keep his exhausted face level and sadly nod.

"Can I hug my cousin now?" Luna asked, and barely waited for her father's answer before sprinting over and thudding into Draco. "Oh, Draco, we are, we're so, so sorry, if we had just waited at Xaphan longer and ignored the letter, then we could have come to protect you all like we promised..."

Draco only realized Luna's distress was partially performative when he felt her little hand prod him secretively in the chest. "If you have anything you don't want found, give me," she whispered, before letting out another set of apologies, one Hermione joined in full sincerity.

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Luna, we did the best we could. But Frankenstein, we are sorry," Ron said, approaching. Draco took the chance to seize Ron at one side, seize Luna back at the other side and press the mirror into Luna's pocket, unseen. Who on the planet could Draco trust more with his secrets, now that he had been relieved of even the corpse of Grindelwald?

There was much fussing and crying then, and chairs were eventually found for some from the now-crowded library tower. All of the combatants were seen to by Madam Pomfrey, though only Harry and Draco were injured, and Draco minimally, his busted lip quickly healed. Dumbledore and McGonagall remained elsewhere.

The insistent Weasleys departed first, Molly Weasley looking torn between relief and fury at her children's secret activities. Hermione had no parents to take her back to her home or Hogwarts, but Remus stayed near her, once she had gotten her fill of hugging Draco and apologizing to the moon and back, as if every drop of blood on Draco's body was personally her fault.

Draco put together the rest of it in pieces from different people: once the others had returned to Xaphan and found no one there, they realized they must have been had, and any Death Eater threat must be at Nurmengard itself. They had wanted to go right to Nurmengard, to charge into whatever awaited come hell or high water, but they couldn't without Dobby. So Hermione had Apparated all the way back to Hogwarts, stopping in the empty back lot of Highbury on her way, and rushed to Dumbledore's office to tell him everything. Understandable, under the circumstances. Despite her anxious whimpers, he didn't begrudge her the choice.

All he had needed to hear was that Harry was in danger and he and McGonagall had followed her right to Xaphan, where they knew Severus had been going to check in on Gilderoy. Waiting for them there had been not only the others of the Xaphan contingent but the newly arrived Dobby and Harry, and then appearing before their eyes had been the mortally exhausted Gilderoy and Severus. Word was sent to the families, the danger seeming over, except for the small fact that Draco and, yes, Gellert Grindelwald had still been missing. What Dumbledore, king of the world, had made of all this, there was no telling.

The effusion over their truly lucky survival was starting to wear off, with the adults beginning to come down off that high now and process exactly how reckless the students had been, along with Dobby and Gilderoy. Gilderoy had still not gotten up, and when Draco went over to him, all he could get out of him other than relief at Draco's survival was, nonsensically, apologies, and the repeated refrain, Your godfather is going to kill me.

Draco had to risk that. When McGonagall departed, taking a Portkey back to Hogwarts along with the remaining students, he left his well-wishers to look for a body that had been taken out of his possession. And the man he found still lingering over it, staring at Grindelwald's contented, frozen visage without recognizable emotion on his own aged face, still in Draco's eyes so much less full of life than Grindelwald had been.

It was the most unspeakably bizarre thing, how Draco had been something like fine before, and yet at the sight of that body, he found himself on the verge of breaking down, in front of the last person on their side he ever wanted to show weakness. Dumbledore didn't break the tense mournful air to greet him. That silence unnerved more than any words.

Does he know? Oh Merlin, of course he knows, he has to, it's written on me like a brand, what I did. It marks me and it's indelible. Like the word thief on his palm had been in third year, but now it was Murderer. Whore, Blood Traitor, Murderer was written confirmed in the aftershock of green light over Karkaroff and then the wrenching tearing open of Grindelwald, and after all, Draco was already scheming, already looking towards concealment with Luna for his prize from yet another murder.

Dumbledore broke the silence after some time, without warning. Not looking up at Draco, he said, "You did warn me."

He startled politeness out of Draco as a default. "Sorry, sir?"

"You did warn me," Dumbledore intoned, "That if I sent you away without the information you wanted, that you would ensure I would regret it."

"I didn't... I never imagined anything like this," Draco stammered, staring down at that body magically suspended in stasis, with a surge of guilt that had his heart beating fast in his ears. "I didn't want this," he said, even as the presence of the mirror he'd wanted so badly in Luna's pocket made it feel like a vicious lie.

"You went to him for answers," Dumbledore prompted gently, both of them looking at Grindelwald rather than the other. Dumbledore hadn't said anything to hint Grindelwald was any more to him than an old enemy, but after all, after that blackmail attempt, Dumbledore knew Draco knew.

"I didn't want him dead. I didn't even want him hurt," Draco said quickly, as if that was what Dumbledore had been accusing. "I didn't- I know he was- like, a monster, alright? I know you did the world a service bringing him down and getting him locked up, but- it wasn't a monster, who he was now." A stifled noise of surprise put Draco further on the defensive, wishing he'd left Dumbledore well enough alone. "He was- I don't know how to explain it, but he was kind to me."

"Kind to you," Dumbledore echoed, with no inflection to the words except perhaps a hint of irony.

"He was charming," Draco tried to excuse himself, since if nothing else Dumbledore had to remember that about the man. "And when I asked him if he regretted the things he did, fighting for wizard supremacy, he said he did." Damn it all, he found himself somehow Grindelwald's advocate, to the man Draco despised but Grindelwald must somehow have still loved, for the last word on his dying lips to have been Albus.

"He lived longer than he thought he would," Dumbledore reflected, corners of his lips twisting up in something nothing like a smile. "He believed when he was young that he would go out early, in a blaze of glory. It must not have suited him, all those years in Nurmengard as a slow death."

"He did deserve it, though," Draco decided to say at last, and brought out the gift he had come to pass on. "Because he killed your sister."

Dumbledore's gaze jerked up like Voldemort had just arrived to pay his condolences.

"I think that's why he really took me away, when he knew he was dying," Draco said, pressing his advantage to get it all out while Dumbledore was still listening, and not trying to leave or murder Draco for the affront. "He wanted to confess what he'd done back then. He wanted y- wanted the world to know the Dumbledores were innocent."

"He said this?" Dumbledore breathed, detachment gone, despite the sound of disbelief wrenching through every word he spoke. "He was certain. You believed him. He was history's greatest liar-"

"But this is different. He was dying, he had no advantage left to gain," Draco embellished, doing his own share of lying now, for all it indeed was worth to the dead man now. "What good would it do?"

It was his final present to you, you stubborn ungrateful man he loved so much, so take it and don't ask questions you don't want answered. I'm not the only one that the Great Dread Dark Lord Grindelwald left behind a gift.

"So that is why you linger here. To fulfill his dying wish, by telling me the fate of my sister Ariana," Dumbledore summarized, sounding like he wanted to believe almost more powerfully than he disbelieved. His hands had gone down to grip the side of the slab where Grindelwald wrested, as if holding back from seizing the corpse and trying to wrench the truth directly from him.

"And to pay my respects. I asked him for the Resurrection Stone, you know. And he never had it, but he did say he searched for it once, because," and here was a piece of truth that might win the day for the lie, "He told me he would have used it to bring Ariana Dumbledore back."

"No," Dumbledore said, gaze snapping to Draco's like a firebrand at that of all things. "You are lying, Mr. Black, you are lying about things you will never understand-"

And Draco could insist with a clear conscience, "No, I'll swear on anything you want, he said those words to me. He would have brought your sister back to life."

Thankfully for the sake of both of their sanity, someone arrived to break the tense impasse between them. Even if that person had to be Severus, the one Draco was least looking forward to facing. "Hi, Severus," Draco said, putting on a face like he couldn't be happier or with a more untroubled conscience to face his godfather. "How are you doing? Do you have any news for us? Do you know what will be done with the body?"

"The Austrian ministry will anonymously be told he is dead," Dumbledore answered, after a brief exchange of glances with Severus. "There is no question of returning the body. He will be interred here at Xaphan."

"He would have loved that. He was very fond of Xaphan," Draco enthused, only to regret the slip.

"Grindelwald had been to Xaphan?" Dumbledore asked sharply. "When?"

"A long time ago," Draco hedged. "It's not really important."

Severus barked out a sardonic laugh. "No doubt my formidable godson has learned a great deal about Grindelwald, sir. I do hope it was worth the cost." He looked at Draco like a first-year Neville Longbottom. "Empty your pockets."

"What?" Surreally, it was like déjà vu from Nurmengard, when Bellatrix had been giving the orders.

"Grindelwald may have imparted some final gift that we are unaware of," Severus said to Dumbledore, with an intensity like the thought had just come to him and refused to leave him. "Empty your pockets, boy."

"Grindelwald's final gift has already been given," Draco protested, but after making a show of reluctance, he emptied all his robe and trouser and jumper pockets to reveal nothing but the talon wand, a draught of peace, his copy of Construction and Deconstruction, and Severus's old gift to him, of the liquid Fiendfyre.

Severus stared at him still like he could see through him, and knew he was holding something back from the professors, but as Draco gathered his things back up, he had no recourse but to bite out some sarcastic comment and sweep his way out. Draco's jerky glug from the draught of peace as he left threatened to goad him further, from his glare, but he managed to control himself and depart nonetheless. No doubt he had other questions in his mind to answer.

Draco should have taken the chance to make his own hasty retreat, but he had the worst question left to ask. "Sir, I don't mean to disturb you much longer, but- if I can ask, do you know what will happen with Theo now?"

"He will be expelled from Hogwarts," Dumbledore said in a tone of surprise, as if he had thought it obvious. "Your godfather's earlier testimony to me of Mr. Nott's actions had already sufficed. But I do not imagine he would attempt to return."

"And me? What will happen to me?" Draco heard the selfishness in his voice, and made the effort to amend it, weak as he was beginning to feel. "I want you to know, Headmaster, that everything was my idea, and any punishment to come, it shouldn't be on the others. It should all fall on my head. Not Dobby's, you must still employ him at Hogwarts, whatever the penalty that incurs for me-"

"Brave indeed, Mr. Black," Dumbledore said with that glimmer of irony. "And not over-keen on self-preservation. Not so much the Ravenclaw as the Gryffindor." It was hard not to think back then to the Hat telling Draco he would never belong in Gryffindor. Did I win my place on the bench of suicidal idiots at last?

"Well, it's not like I'm going to be expelled or something," Draco laughed. Except Dumbledore did not laugh or smile, and a silence loomed that proved far more weighty than one would hope in that context.

Draco tried again for levity. "It's not like I'm a Death Eater or something, so..."

"Indeed," Dumbledore said softly, "You are not, Mr. Black. You are perhaps something even more dangerous." He let that sit in the air for a time before proceeding briskly, "Go to your godfather, he will take you back to Grimmauld Place. And he will be the one to ask you any further questions."

The difficulty with Dumbledore's command was not finding Severus, but what he found Severus immersed in. Severus seemed to have gone straight from Grindelwald's body to the library tower, and by the time Draco located him there, the sinking feeling in his gut was becoming a palpable thing, as world-jostling as his own guilt. That shadow of flames before a moon eclipsed became reality as Draco made his way into the tower only to stop at the threshold to the inner chamber, hearing voices speaking in hostility.

He shouldn't have watched and listened, like he shouldn't have spied on so much between these two. But he wanted to protect Gilderoy, should things come to true humiliation or even violence. He owed the poor man that much. And the fire had showed him this already.

"What have you done?" Severus asked, voice composed and cold. It was sunny in the tower, which the recent time in Nurmengard made look a well-built and secure and even cheery place, but the air was glacial here too nonetheless. A look over at Gilderoy showed that this must not be the first times Severus was admonishing him. There were tears in his eyes, whimpers issuing from his trembling lips, neither of which seemed to touch Severus's vicious outrage. It seemed Severus had finally found someone to blame for the mammoth betrayal of the Nurmengard expedition, and it was not Draco but Gilderoy.

"How deep does the betrayal go? I thought- I suppose I must have thought us something like friends." He spat out the word with baffled disgust at himself. "Have you been playing me from the start? Why should I have expected anything different from Gilderoy Lockhart? Well, see what your lies have wrought! What have you done, Gilderoy?"

Gilderoy's knees had already been trembling along with his weak lips. Now they folded, taking him the short distance from hunched over down to the tower floor. He fell there, left knee onto a discarded old book that had to be prodding into the side of his leg. He didn't seem to feel it, caught in wordless appeal of supplication to a man he regarded like the personal arbiter of his fate.

"Have you no answer?" Severus demanded scathingly.

"No answer," Gilderoy gasped, looking as terrified as he must have ever in his existence. "No answer, just- I didn't mean to betray you, Severus. Not you. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry-"

"What is this begging and cringing? Do you imagine I will hurt you?" Severus began to pace, full of nervous energy he seemed to want Gilderoy sure would not be vented on him. "Do you imagine I am like the man whose initials you still wear? Do you?" Gilderoy shook his head, but Severus seemed to have taken his obvious fear and kneeling as a further affront. "You may well," he snapped sarcastically. "Those initials are mine too-"

"I wish they were yours!" Gilderoy cried out, truth forced out of him now of all times, and just like that, Severus's pacing ceased.

He steadied himself on a bookshelf. Books fell, somehow without his noticing. The tower might as well have been empty for both of them, of a thing save each other.

"I wish I was yours." Gilderoy raised his face, confident in the strength of that feeling if nothing else. "I wouldn't ever try to betray you, Severus, because I love you."

Severus stood there for a long moment, watching one small tear glide from Gilderoy's melting-blue eyes and trace a trail over his flushed cheek. Then he stood up straighter and drew his robes tighter about himself, like putting on an invisibility cloak, or at least some kind of armor. "You mock me. Or you disrespect me, to think such lies would ever be believable to me now."

"SS," Gilderoy insisted, voice gone feverish now too, not moving from his knees. "That's what I want on me, that's why I kissed you at the beach, Severus, it's you, I've wanted you for so long, and now you just tell me I'm a liar-"

"'For so long'," Severus echoed contemptuously. "I suppose you expect me to think that includes your brief disastrous stint at my job at Hogwarts? That between signing autographs and answering fan mail, the lauded hero Gilderoy Lockhart was pining away of love for me-"

"I sent you a letter!" Gilderoy blurted, and Draco put his head in his hands, as the last piece he had warned Gilderoy not to admit to was thrown out into the open too. "I asked you to come meet me at midnight, at the Astronomy Tower, and I would have confessed everything, but you never came. Do you not recall it? I sent you gilded roses. Gilded, like Gilderoy, for my name. And a gilded tapestry. Have you forgotten-"

"The tapestry, I burnt," Severus admitted in a dazed tone, face fallen slack in pure shock. "Such ridiculous gestures? I do not recall its color."

"It was gold," Gilderoy insisted, "Like me, I'm gold!" Then he seemed to take stock of himself and amended, "I was gold. I- I loved you then, Severus, and I love you now. Sometimes it's enough to drive me mad-"

"Are you mad?" Severus gasped, hands going to his mouth, as he backed away from Gilderoy, towards the farthest distance the small tower room would allow them from each other. "You must have gone mad."

"Why? Do you still not believe me?" Gilderoy said sadly. "Or- mad to think you would ever accept me? Believe me, Severus, I have no illusions of that, not now that I betrayed you, not before, not ever- I just wanted you to know that what I did for Draco, the way I hid it from you, it was just for Draco, because he was my savior and I owe him everything- not against you, Severus. Never against you. If I had my way, I would never have lied to you, not once in my life- I am sure you wished you had never had to lie to your godson about the memories, as I wished too, but things can all get so muddled-"

"You are mad," Severus said curtly, cutting through Gilderoy's babble with the stunned look remaining on his pale face, "To hold such... sentiments towards one such as I."

"Why?" Gilderoy asked, sounding in full innocence. He bent his head lower, as if to make it abundantly clear how far below Severus he believed himself. "Why should someone not love you, Severus? I love you. I love you more than you will ever know."

Severus stood there for some time, understanding seeming finally to sweep through him, and pacify him, even as it left him looking yet more unhappy. "Oh, Gilderoy," he said tiredly. "Get up." When Gilderoy didn't immediately obey, he went over and took both of Gilderoy's hands to haul him up himself. Gilderoy inclined towards the touch like a plant towards sunlight, and when Severus tried to let him go, Gilderoy brought both of their linked hands together and tried to kiss Severus's. Severus yanked them sharply away, and Gilderoy's face crumbled.

"Sorry," Gilderoy said quickly, "I just want you to believe me-"

"I believe you," Severus said quietly. "I believe you are mad, but I believe you. Oh, Gilderoy. What have you done to yourself? It is impossible. I am sorry. I am truly sorry, but it is impossible. It will always be impossible."

"You mean- you and I?" Gilderoy ventured, and Severus nodded. Maybe there had still been some remote glimmer of hope in Gilderoy, because Draco could see it in the air there, gilded, fading. "I- I accept it, just- why not? Because I lied?" Severus shook his head, looking more troubled and tired and haunted than any man should ever have had to be. "Because- do I have nothing to appeal to you? Because- Severus, I would- I would demand nothing. Only to be near you, to try and make you happier."

Severus shut his eyes tightly, as if against an unexpected pain. "Please, Gilderoy. Don't."

"Is there someone else?"

Severus's eyes opened. "Yes," he said quietly, "There is another. There will always be another."

Gilderoy let out a gasp like he'd been slapped, but Severus just stared at him hopelessly. "I am sorry, Gilderoy. But my entire life, I have only ever loved one person. I will only ever love one person. I am, indeed, most sorry."

"Who?" Gilderoy breathed. "Do they feel the same, or-"

"She is dead," Severus said, turning his face away. "It changes nothing. It is only her I have always loved, and her I shall love to the end."

Sirius and Remus received Draco at Grimmauld with more hugs and affection, not quite out of the yay-you're-not-a-corpse phase of reactions. Draco took them gratefully after what he'd just had to witness. Even if it seemed Severus could use them far more. Let alone Gilderoy, back at that great empty castle alone.

Severus left them alone, and it was not long before Draco was bustled up to his bedroom for some much-needed rest, and the ominous echo of Severus from Remus that they would talk a great deal tomorrow.

"Here," Remus said, and waved his wand with the ease of clear practice. The ceiling filled with Patronus-blue wisps of light, not quite the way Draco did them- the way it seemed Dantanian had, one of so many habits of his that turned out not to be purloined... But Remus's innovation was more than welcome, compared to the dead magic-less aspect of before, which had made the space seem barely his own.

"Thank you," Draco said, with feeling. "You must have worked hard to get it that pretty." It was true that the feathering of the light at its edges showed a delicacy and refinement absent from Draco's intense creations. "I like your version, Remus. The way the whiter parts-"

"Draco," Remus interrupted, face tight with self-enforced detachment. "I am tired. We may speak more on the morrow." He left Draco's room without another word, and Draco instantly felt like crying. Which he supposed did make this an effective punishment, this presumably brief but quite icy June exile.

When Draco went back out, thinking to extract one more hug, he found them already halfway down the stairs, quietly arguing with each other from the sounds of it. He didn't want to do any more eavesdropping that night, so he went back into his bedroom. He was too tired to put up the Patronus-colored lights and bluebell flames.

All he did before he changed for bed and fell into it, nearly unconscious from exhaustion the moment his face hit the pillow, was ensure that his gift had gone safely from robe to pajama trouser pocket. Luna and her father had been lingering to see him off, since Sirius and Remus had already gone off to take Hermione and Harry to Hogwarts. Another hug, another maneuvering of Luna's deft little hands, and the third mirror had returned, what the universe had yielded from this long nightmare. Who indeed was more trustworthy than Luna Lovegood?

He slept with it cool and motionless at his side, the talon wand ever-secure beside his pillow nearby. He would show it formally to the wand, offer it to Dantanian as a bribe to speak to him tomorrow.

He knew, of course, even before he made the offer the next morning, that Dantanian would not respond. Indeed, the talon wand itself stayed unimpeachably still.

All the same, he was lucky that he had tried it so early in the day. Remus announced flatly that Draco would be handing over his wand until further notice, with Sirius in the background making apologetic faces he quickly stopped when Remus looked in his direction. Draco handed the talon wand gingerly over to Remus, thinking all the while at it not to hurt him. Remus was able to lock it away in a small magical chest put on the mantelpiece in the second floor parlor. A chest for which Draco was not given spell or key to unlock.

Draco thought that the loss of his wand would be the worst of the day. He had not, though, had to face Severus yet. Severus had the grace not to demand Draco's person searched again, and his baggy transfigured-blue pajamas concealed the mirror well, but Severus had not the same forbearance when it came to the room itself. "I haven't been here for months," Draco protested, to no avail.

"If there is no reason for me to search," Severus said silkily, "Then why do you wish me not to search it?"

The reasoning was indisputable. "Wait," Draco said, before something turned up to make an amiable Severus completely inaccessible to him. I would settle for having him accessible to Gilderoy, really. If I have the temerity to ask what's going on there, is it less a question of whether I'll be verbally emotionally eviscerated than how much it will hurt? "Wait, just let me ask one thing."

Severus let the door fall shut behind him, with a rather louder slam than Draco hoped he had meant. "Very well, then, formidable godson-"

"Stop calling me that," Draco said in a small voice. "I preferred 'burdensome'. Anyway, I just need to know one thing. What you did at Nurmengard, protecting me and Harry and all, you can't excuse that away as keeping up your cover, can you?" Severus shook his head curtly. "So you've been exposed to the Death Eaters."

"We are here to assess the level of your foolishness," Severus said tightly. "Not my own. If there is a point here-"

"So you can't be a spy anymore," Draco prompted. "That's all over. You won't be going back the next time the Dark Mark calls you. You're not going to pretend to be a Death Eater anymore. Because you can't. No double agent, no torture, no Voldemort, you're just part of the Order like the rest of us now."

"If you are done your gloating-"

"You are, aren't you-"

"Yes," Severus gritted out. "Much to my dismay, I have indeed been rendered useless in that manner-"

"Yes!" Draco howled, punching the air before him. He fell to sit on his bed with a wide baring of his teeth in incredulous laughter, the soaring feeling of his own happiness even more bracing than he would have expected, even more of a reward.

Even if he and Severus were a year or so away from becoming mutually exclusive.

"Yes! YES!"

It felt like winning the Quidditch Cup had in fifth year, felt the same as handing Severus the trophy for it. Even as Severus regarded him more balefully each time he punched the air and crowed in victory. "Yes, yes, yes-"

"That is more than enough of that," Severus said crisply. He began to open and shut Draco's drawers without further warning. Draco was laughing to himself, until a certain presence struck his memory, and then he could only laugh with a sane man's chuckle rather than a madman's.

"Wait, wait, Severus. Wait, I'll show you something, you just have to promise not to freak out-"

"I will promise no such thing," Severus said darkly, but there was no remedy regardless. Draco had no wand to burn or Vanish things away. And eventually, Severus would have made it to such an obvious hiding place as the closet.

The painting of the Antipodean Opaleye was prettier than he remembered, more of a three-dimensional sheen to the opalescence of the dragon. It was not perhaps as completely wrecked as he had been picturing it, either. But that did not make it any less chilling to see the words there again, carved in so deeply. And with such vehement feeling, as if Theo had done it himself with the dagger he had stolen- no less recently than yesterday, sneaking here in the night.

"'Whore'," Severus read impassively, with the painting hanging from his hands like an effigy. "'Blood traitor. Murderer.' One presumes you did not do this in a fit of self-castigation."

"No, it was- like the Slytherin table at Hogwarts, still- it was a Black Dagger, held back by a shield. It carved this dragon instead. Those were the words from it."

"So Bellatrix Lestrange was more generous a correspondent than you led us to believe," Severus observed wryly. "Another secret you bring. How recent was this Black Dagger? For the death of Karkaroff, or-"

"It's for Mr. Nott," Draco blurted, heart in his ears, "And it was a year ago, last June, soon after I killed Mr. Nott, I'd been sent home, like I have now. It was- it was from-"

"Theodore Nott sent you a Black Dagger," Severus breathed, almost a real gasp from such an unflappable man. "Before sixth year even started. And you neglected to so much as inform us he-"

"You're the first person I ever told," Draco admitted, lest Severus think it had been an open secret in their group of friends like Nurmengard. If Harry ever hears of this, he'll kill me himself, for not protecting myself enough. "Theo wrote- he said that I killed his father, and he would accept no restitution but my life. In his letter. I didn't- I kept it to myself, because-"

"You had feelings for the boy, still?" Severus said in disbelief, and Draco shrugged weakly. "You pitied him," Severus surmised, and Draco nodded.

"I don't know who he's told," Draco began. "Probably Bellatrix Lestrange- from the look of them, you've heard they were kissing, maybe she was part of it from the start, even then, guiding him- the word whore, that's not like Theo, that's-"

"The Dark Lord kept any knowledge of Bellatrix's activities with Theo from me," Severus began, in a tightly-drawn, furious exhalation. "I believed him grieving but harmless. You allowed me to think him so. I allowed him back into Slytherin, as his Head of House- I took him on as my student in a NEWT-level Defense class, after he had told my godson he would kill him for what he had done- are you smirking?"

"No!" Draco exclaimed. "I just- I don't know what to say. I'm glad you care so much. That makes me happy." He put a hand over his mouth. "It just- it didn't seem like a big deal to me after a while. I've always known Theo wanted me dead for what I did. It was just obvious. And it was right he did-"

"Did you mean to let him kill you for it?"

"No. I couldn't have. I had nine names," Draco said, since if he was letting Severus proverbially into his mind, he might as well try and make him understand it. "Remus and Sirius. Harry, Ron, Hermione, Luna, Neville, Dobby. I had to keep them alive no matter what. Even if I was wrong, for what I did to Mr. Nott." Draco thought of that awful Pensieve memory in Severus's chambers, Mr. Nott saying Incarcerous and Draco killing him for it. "Even once I knew I had been wrong."

"That is only eight names."

"And you, obviously," Draco said impatiently, avoiding looking at whatever expression that put on Severus's face. "Are you going to tell Sirius and Remus that I kept this from them too? And that, from before- that I was wrong to think Mr. Nott had been going to kill Sirius- that I didn't really save Sirius's life, I just murdered an old man-"

"No," Severus sighed. He dropped the painting and sank to sit behind Draco, pinching the bridge of his nose. "There is no practical need. I repeat to you, that is our secret. No one must know the truth of Mr. Nott's death." He hesitated, eyeing Draco with something like sympathy, then of all moments. "Is that why you wished so powerfully to find the Resurrection Stone? To bring back Mr. Nott?"

It came back to Draco, then, that the Resurrection Stone was what he'd tried to blackmail out of Dumbledore, and sworn that Dumbledore would regret denying him. Combine that with his obsession with the Hallows last summer, and his visits to Grindelwald became explainable even without admitting about the mirrors. Who was Draco to let that luck go?

"Yes," Draco said, in a lie that felt true. "Yes, I wanted to find the Resurrection Stone with Grindelwald's help, so I could bring back Mr. Nott, and make things with Theo- I know they'd never be right again, not even with that. But so- so I could give Theo his life back. Make him Theo again. He's like a shade of himself. He's- he's a good Death Eater, isn't he? He'll do well... the perfect little dark wizard, he can already brag about Grindelwald to Voldemort..."

"Will you brag of the death of Karkaroff?" Severus asked thinly.

Draco had expected the sympathy to last a little longer.

"I take it that even with the supreme power you desire over the life and death of all, he is not one that you would restore if you could."

"No," was all Draco could say. I wanted him dead, because he would always have been after you. He had to die for that. I told you, you're one of my names. That part's simple if you just listen.

Severus did not tell him that was wrong. But he did put the painting aside, and, of all things, put a thin arm around Draco's shoulders, more weary than angry. "You are taking too many lives, Draco. You have taken too many already. No, Karkaroff will not be held against you either. Another death in combat. But this blood on your hands- it is too much. Not for the sake of the world, my boy, but for you. You should not have to carry the weight of so many dead on your shoulders." He squeezed the shoulders, as if to demonstrate how heavily the weight must press. Draco stared down at his hands, feeling like Severus had just cast Verniculpa on them.

Severus didn't even know what he'd had to do to Grindelwald. Perhaps because Grindelwald wanted to be sure ownership of the Mirror of Espilce passed to Draco instead of Theo, or perhaps just because Grindelwald wanted Draco to be the one to take his life. Severus didn't know that the weights on Draco amounted to- how many? Had he somehow lost count? He didn't even know how to count if he wanted to.

"My parents were there, you know," Draco said unsteadily, biting his lip to hold back unseemly tears in front of his godfather. "My mother too, not just Father. You saw them, didn't you. They saw me kill Karkaroff. Mother saw. They must think-" But then, how could they have had any illusions remaining? "I tortured them. Last summer. I tortured them both. That's worse than killing Karkaroff, isn't it, fighting my own parents- torturing my own parents-"

"Draco," Severus said, withdrawing his arm sharply. "Do not misunderstand. I am aware you saved my life. Why you used the Killing Curse instead of a Stunning curse, I do not know." Draco opened his mouth, and Severus held up his hand. "You will say you wished to be sure. As, perhaps, you did with Mr. Nott. All I mean to say, Draco, is that I know you will not keep your promise to me, to never kill. I know the war is far from over. It is only just beginning. I only ask that, as I pleaded with you before, that you use Sectumsempra instead. The Unforgivables can put you in prison for life, if the authorities find out and take it ill, no matter the circumstances..."

Draco could hardly listen after that, only nodding weakly in agreement to use Sectumsempra if he must kill. He could hardly resist the urge to tell Severus he had used Sectumsempra for Grindelwald, as if to receive House points for his judicious choice of killing methods.

House points would, funnily enough, have come in handy, given the points that had apparently been taken for their collective actions. It 2was more from Ravenclaw than Gryffindor despite the greater number of Gryffindors. 50 each for Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny, and Luna, but 300 for Draco. So, 350 points from Ravenclaw. What a blessing Flitwick and the others must find it, to have had Draco Black sorted into their house.

Dobby was to suffer no disciplinary action. Apparently Dumbledore had come to that conclusion quickly. He had told Severus, both Dobby and Gilderoy were in the same position of deep debt to Draco, and could not be faulted for falling prey to his manipulations. The fault and the responsibility was Draco's, not theirs.

Well, Draco had asked it all be placed on him. And Dumbledore was right, wasn't he?

After that news, the rest of their conversation fell to details, like Draco's dagger, lost at the bottom of the artificial lake at Nurmengard, but no doubt recovered by the Death Eaters. Draco's throat was sore from talking by the time Severus was rising to leave, and even then, Draco had more to say.

"Thank you for not telling anyone else about Dantanian, not even Dumbledore," Draco blurted, forestalling Severus's unceremonious exit. "Thank you. I- I don't hate you for not telling me, anymore. I forgive you, Severus. I really have for a while, you just- you said it was good to keep my distance, so... anyway, I really don't hate you for it anymore."

Severus seemed to have to struggle to keep his face impassive, but he managed. "You have found, as I have long known, the utility of keeping secrets from those important to you. Whether or not in a case whose circumstances lead you to believe the secret to the benefit of the deceived." Draco nodded, rising. Severus's shoulders rose and fell in a shrug of assumed insouciance.

"And certainly that secrets do not necessarily preclude-" Severus wrinkled his nose, as if sullying himself to even speak the word. "Affection."

That was more than enough to make Draco seize Severus and hug the life out of him, despite the man's indignant protests. I'm sorry, Draco thought fiercely at him, with the words he couldn't say right now: neither I love you, nor I'm sorry I'm a murderer.

The aftermath of Severus's departure saw more words exchanged. And the exchange, or in this case even just the receiving, of words of censure from Remus Lupin? That was no light matter. Usually blessed with near-saintly equanimity, to draw harsh words from that long-suffering demeanor was a terrible accomplishment to claim. Even when they came in jest, they retained the power to make Sirius, for one, quail before them like a condemned sinner on the scaffold.

So Draco braced himself after Severus's brief conversation with his guardians and then departure, expectations of even so much as not angry just disappointed- a gutting thought. Remus called him down into the entry hall to formally bid Severus farewell, and after the Portkey's whirling lingered only in memory, the dreary hall of portraits terrified of Draco was the setting of a dressing-down the likes of which Draco and perhaps not even Sirius had never seen.

Remus's voice never rose once, nor did his tone go harsher or his posture alter. He leaned beside the tatters that had been Aunt Walburga's portrait and told Draco some things about himself. Things, he said, which he himself had only recently come to fully understand, so now he could impart to Draco. Things that Draco, one could infer, would most definitely not want to hear.

Draco tried to listen only as much as he had to, in order to avoid the appearance of not listening. Remus was certainly thorough, one could give him that. It mainly consisted of a litany of the advantages that Draco had over others. The power he wielded, not merely superficially- through finances, blood, connections- nor merely through personal appeal and friendship, but also through the twin pillars of debt and manipulation. Draco, Remus calmly stressed, needed not to misuse these powers of his, not to merely suit his own fantasies of power, because he was so capable, when it came to undermining the Order of the Phoenix and the work it was meant to do. Leading overall to the impression that if the wizarding world fell, it could very well be Draco's fault.

Which was a conclusion Draco could hardly dispute. After all, he'd just nearly gotten the savior killed.

After Draco was done being dressed down, he headed resolutely towards his bedroom, trying to hold back tears until his arrival there. But he was not quick enough to avoid hearing Sirius asking, "Do you think you were too hard on him?" at the same time as Remus asked, "Do you think I wasn't harsh enough?"

Frostiness between himself and Remus- as there was subsequently between Sirius and Remus- was far from his only punishment at Grimmauld. Without his wand, he was without means to secretly contact any of his friends. He had no doubt how such a lack of contact would affect Hermione with her worrying habits. Remus, who had forbidden contact as a punishment, assured him that Sirius was speaking to Harry regularly, and keeping everyone at Hogwarts appraised of everything that was happening with Draco- read, nothing- while it was deliberated what consequences awaited Draco. No magic and no Harry already felt like the kind of consequences he couldn't endure for much longer.

No magic was almost more of a gall than the latter, with what he had found himself in possession of, a mirror he kept perpetually on his person sleeping and waking. He wished he could go to Xaphan to bring it near the Mirror of Erised and see the results, not even to mention how much he wanted to check on Gilderoy after the scene witnessed between him and Severus. But Xaphan was flatly forbidden him, and the lack of wand made Remus's decision final. No secret Apparition away from this bedroom, for once.

The mirror looked like the simplest thing, hard to believe it could be the same instrument from the memory, capable of raising Dementors and pulling down the moon from the sky. When Draco had his wand again and some time to himself, he wanted badly to recreate the way Dantanian had carried the mirror, inside a striking dragon pendant, rather than bare and defenseless in one's pocket. But that had to wait, as would any investigation into the powers the mirror could bestow.

At least one would assume. But lacking a wand had little to do with Draco's (Dantanian's) innate skill of pyromancy. There were no bluebell flames in the facsimile of Draco's (Dantanian's) ceiling light display that Remus had provided. But Sirius had surreptitiously given him a set of tapered silver candles in their stead, after extracting a promise to be sure not to burn Grimmauld to the ground.

It was a vow Draco mostly intended to keep. But boredom so often seemed to mean taking risks for him, and in lieu of any other experiment, he would happily take the risk of fire. With trust in his (Dantanian's) control, he was soon lighting candles by match, then picking up handfuls of sunset-colored flames right off the silver wax.

He completed his usual ritual of linking the fire, drawing it back and forth in strings between his palms. Then he left it to float in the air, orange-gold glow from the exponential replication of a single spark soon overwhelming the room's characteristic silver-blue. Heat made the air pulse and wetly distort the scenery behind it, a dreamy haze in front of old Polaroids, which Draco trusted in his (Dantanian's) skills enough not to melt right off the walls. Finally, the reflection of the flames on the plain mirror led Draco to apply the first test he always seemed to throw at these mirrors: destruction.

Except it didn't turn out that way. With the mirror dropped on the center of the floor and flames dropped upon it, what rose from the contact almost seemed water- but no, that crystal-blue alpine clarity belonged more precisely to stronger flame, along with a broader haze of distortion above. Another rivulet of yellowish fire down upon the unchanged mirror, and it poured off it in brighter blue- not the heatless, eerie sterility of a blue Protego Diabolica or Patronus, but real fire that seared the floor and could have easily gone out of control without a pyromancer's grip upon it.

Draco sat himself beside the site of experimentation without fear. He could only wish Hermione was there as he did what she likely would: experiment. Whatever heat the flame bore, even great compressed gusts of lethal blue-white, seemed to intensify from the mirror, sliding off its smooth surface like blood over an unblunted sword. Whether the fire was large or small in quantity- and Draco tested this at length- or the side of the mirror up, or Draco's personal distance, always the same answer to the question of fire, without any spells involved to prejudice it. Just blue color, and more heat.

The mirror itself, though, did not heat from any of this. Although everywhere around was left dangerously warmed, shimmering with embers, the silver metal was untouched, its inscription and curved reflections delivered to the eye unaltered. He could detect no change in the Mirror of Espilce at all, even after all that, save that- and this might just have been his imagination- perhaps it felt to his fingertips the slightest bit colder.

It was an interesting day to wake up on, June 21, the day Dumbledore died. It was a Saturday, but that meant little in the ascetic purgatorial existence Draco was living here at Grimmauld. Breakfast and lunch by himself, save their serving by a superlatively glowering Kreacher, dinner early with Sirius and Remus come back from Xaphan, rather quiet and grim as always, and Draco with no way to explain the unaccountable anxiety that Saturday's date happened to put in him. Well, if Dumbledore died tonight, it wouldn't be because of Draco this time.

Draco managed to tire himself out regardless, though, with further experimentations with the Mirror of Espilce and fire. He felt unaccountably exhausted after his labors of testing, so he dragged himself to bed for a well-earned nap.

He was woken by lips to his forehead, not kissing but slowly drawing across it, warm breath like a benediction. They could be no one's lips but the ones he loved the most. "Harry," he breathed, and so it was. He heard his own name issue in return, startled, from that beloved mouth, as if not expecting him to wake so soon. Then their faces were close, Harry leaning over him and staring down as if Draco had unveiled some secret to him.

"It's been a while," Harry said softly, "I missed you. We all did."

"I wish it could always be you to wake me up," Draco said drowsily. "You look sleepy too. Maybe you should lie down here with me." It was an unduly suggestive way to speak to a boy he had sworn to give all the time and space he needed to figure things out. But in Draco's defense, he wasn't totally sure this wasn't a dream. It happened to feel like one.

"Don't tempt me, dragon," Harry sighed, looking less vexed by Draco per se than by his own desire to crawl into the warm, drowsy bed and not come out. Once lured in, Draco could think of some ways to keep Harry there without magic, ways to draw him underwater and make him never want to surface. Harry was the one who shouldn't be tempting him, waking him from dreams of Harry with lips on his face.

"Aren't you meant to be at Hogwarts?" Draco sighed reluctantly. "Unless this really is a dream... in which case I'd like to formally thank my subconscious..."

"It's not a dream," Harry laughed, face gone flushed, set off attractively by the red in that Gryffindor tie that Draco wanted to wind around his hand and not let go. "I made enough of a nuisance of myself about wanting to talk to you, I guess Professor Dumbledore eventually took pity on me. The headmaster has a task for me, but first, he sent me here to talk to you. Not long, though. I'm just meant to deliver the news."

Draco thought about asking, Do you have time to get your cock sucked on your way out? But no, he would be good. He sat up and obligingly prompted, "News?" News from Hogwarts was liable to contain information about his fate.

Harry's eyes fastened on Draco's bare torso so keenly, it was like looking at Draco was one of the major things he'd been missing. "News. Right. I should just spit it out, shouldn't I?" He pushed up his glasses and leaned forward, managing with a valiant effort not to direct all his words directly to Draco's chest. "You're not going to be expelled."

Draco shuddered theatrically. "I should hope not. I hoped that wasn't a serious possibility." But Harry just bit his lip and shrugged, and Draco realized, I really did go beyond the pale this time, didn't I? "Like Hagrid? Come on, with the war on, would they ever have seriously expected me to meekly submit to having my wand snapped? Or even if I did agree, that they could succeed at it, with this wand?"

"That might be why you're not expelled, that's what Hermione says," Harry said logically, "Just suspended," and Draco heaved a sigh of relief. "Even if it sounds pretty similar, Ron says. Like expelling you without the wand-snapping part." Draco raised his eyebrows, and Harry's brow creased in sympathy. "It's for at least till the end of semester. Then, well, 'indefinitely' was the word used. I didn't like the sound of that. But they brought in all this stuff about your prior activities like this... you know, when you made the Naufragiam for me, and when you and me went off to Gringotts to the Lestrange vault without permission and all..."

"It's okay." If things went anything like they had in the blue loop, there wouldn't be much of a Hogwarts to be banned from by next year. "I guess I won't have to take my exams. Probably for the best, given how little work I really have put in on anything this semester except for Dantanian and Nurmengard."

Harry looked more affronted than Draco, on his behalf. "Anyway, you're allowed back just for tonight, to get your things and all. I've already told Sirius and Remus. That's why I'm here in person, to escort you. I don't think they trust you to go places on your own anymore." They likely suspected- not without merit- that if Draco was left to his own devices, he was likely to stop at Xaphan on his way over at an absolute minimum.

"You're a good escort to choose," Draco sighed affectionately. "Somehow nothing sounds very bad if it's you saying it. I missed you too. Rather catastrophically, you know."

Harry laughed, rubbing his hand behind his cute head in shy, abashed pleasure. "I bet what you really missed is this." He reached his other hand into his pocket and withdrew the talon wand.

"It didn't hurt you!" Draco marveled, and took it from Harry with great enthusiasm. "Nice Dantanian," he said lightly, and kissed the end of the wand.

"You love that thing more than me," Harry joked, but Draco chose to take him seriously.

"No," Draco said, meeting his eyes. "No, I really don't."

It was some time after that when Harry finally dropped his gaze.

Sirius and Remus made no great production of their goodbyes, merely emphasizing that they expected him back tonight, not tomorrow. He was not to spend the night in Ravenclaw, however happy he may find himself to be reunited with Luna. Or how adamant she was of her right to spend time with Cousin.

So the Portkey Harry had brought was whirling Draco back to Hogwarts before he knew it, just barely in time for Draco to properly dress himself in the Hogwarts uniform he no longer had the right to wear. The Portkey took them to McGonagall's office, who greeted them with precisely the right amount of warmth before shooing them off. In turn, Draco made the walk to Ravenclaw escorted like a prisoner, albeit with the most pleasant possible guard. All he could think about, though, was the look in Harry's eyes when Draco had said he didn't love the talon wand more than Harry.

"I've been waiting," he said conversationally as they walked, sure Harry would know what he was talking about. "And I'm not saying I won't wait. I'd wait a damned long time, if that's what it takes. I'm just saying, I'm not waiting patiently."

Harry sounded both reluctant and relieved as he told him, "I really have been thinking. And we'll talk, but Dumbledore really did want me back quickly, like it's urgent." His ears were very red.

He ended up promising he would talk to Draco as much as he wanted, once he came back home for summer. Draco told himself it would be a yes. As it should be, given that Draco wasn't sure if he could live with himself if it was still a no, and it turned out he'd somehow managed to throw away any remaining time they would have had left.

Harry lingered at the door to Ravenclaw, waiting for Draco to answer the riddle. "What, did Dumbledore tell you to make sure I went straight here?" he joked, but Harry just solemnly nodded.

"Oh!" Harry said suddenly. "I forgot! The headmaster wanted me to thank you for passing on Grindelwald's gift. Do you know what that means?"

"Yes," Draco said, heart briefly warmed by the apparent success of his lie. "Yes, I know what it means."

"A person awakens with two husbands. How do they decide a rightful husband?" asked the Ravenclaw eagle.

"Kill them both and marry a third," Draco said promptly, and the knocker, with an air of righteous affront, let him inside.

Draco wanted to part from Harry with a kiss, but didn't even manage a kiss to the cheek once he'd taken a step inside the ordained threshold to Ravenclaw. There must have been something uniquely urgent to Dumbledore's orders, because he only got a tight grin from Harry before he nodded to him and sprinted away.

He found the spacious, airy common room full of Ravenclaws, none of whom seemed over-pleased to see the student who had lost them 300 points personally. Another lesser pariah would presumably have been Luna, for the 50 points as well as by association, but she was nowhere in sight, nor did anyone have news to impart of her whereabouts. They all looked as though they'd sooner spit on him than help him, granted, but he did manage to ascertain she wasn't in her dorm, and likely not in the tower. Probably with Longbottom, said one of her yearmates, and for the sake of expediency in obeying Harry's orders, Draco pretended not to notice the face the girl made at the comment.

After he'd made a nuisance of himself asking after his cousin, Draco passed the remaining students quickly, trying not to look them in the eye, Cho Chang most of all. At least when he arrived in his dorm, none of his dormmates were inside.

He wasn't sure whether that was by chance, or whether they'd gotten the message Draco was back and cleared out. Maybe to avoid him, maybe to give him space, but either way, Draco was guiltily grateful for the chance to pack up alone. Ravenclaw had been good to him, but other than with Luna, he hadn't really laid down roots here, had he?

As if he'd laid down anything this year but plots to end up in him committing more murders...

Pop.

It was Dobby, and Draco was naive enough to smile at the sudden appearance, grateful for a friendly face. But Dobby's face was frantic and strained. "Dobby," Draco said, smiling slowly, "I'm glad you're not in trouble, I hope you're not angry I got you involved in all that-"

"Luna Lovegood has sent Dobby," Dobby blurted out. "Draco Black must come now. Draco Black must be coming with Dobby now!"

"Are you alright?" Draco said in alarm. "What's going on?"

"Draco Black must be going now!" Dobby exclaimed, and began to pull Draco by the hand out of his dorm.

"But why?"

"Because," Dobby said, marble eyes huge with fear, "The Chamber of Secrets has been opened."

: Cadaunuptium

Notes:

Chapter Text

It was the Wheel of Hecate, drawn across the floor of Myrtle's bathroom in human blood, and the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets was open. The stars were done in elegant seven-pointed form. A meticulous hand had distributed the blood.

"You were right," Draco said. "She was right. The Death Eaters are going to try and use this to get into Hogwarts?" Dobby nodded anxiously. "And she went on ahead? What was she thinking?"

"Luna Lovegood," Dobby said wobblingly, "Is seeming very upset about the Chamber of Secrets, and when she was being there before. Dobby is not knowing if..."

Draco wanted to scream at Dobby for not stopping her somehow, but he had done the right thing, going to Draco first once Luna headed into the Chamber. The wheel below Draco's feet was something he avoided stepping on, avoided wondering whose blood made up its great circle and snake whirls and stars.

"It's okay, Dobby," Draco said, forcing a smile. "Just go and get the others, okay? Harry and everyone, have them come now-" He remembered Harry's field trip or whatever with Dumbledore and cursed nastily at himself. "Or- if you can't find Harry, all the rest of the Gryffindors, alright? Go!"

Dobby raced out, and Draco turned to face the prospect of the Chamber of Secrets alone. Dobby had also had the presence of mind to summon a broom for Draco to travel down faster- a school one, since his own Firebolt had been burned- so this should go better than the stumbling way in he had made with Ron and Harry, in second year. Besides, the Basilisk was dead, slain so beautifully by Harry's hand and sword. The monsters Draco had to fear down inside the shadowy pipes should be entirely human.

Draco took a deep breath, dragging the broom with him, and made the descent.

His feet knew the way to the center of the Chamber of Secrets, so easily that he wondered at their speed through the shadowy flicker and muck, until he recognized the dazed feeling threatening him as onirical. He had been dreaming of the Chamber of Secrets this year, hadn't he, or at least at the start of it...

He had dreamed of the Chamber filled with the mutilated bodies of all nine names.

He hadn't thought he'd find this place menacing again, after so much he'd been through in the intervening years. But then, last time, he hadn't been alone. And he and Ron had Harry to hide behind... well, if not Harry, Ron and Hermione, Neville and Ginny, they'd all be here soon, right behind him...

He told himself that.

He ran so quickly down the hall towards the statue, his feet threatened to skid, but he barely registered the wrenches of near-slips, mind dumbly repeating Dobby's words, The Chamber of Secrets has been opened for the Death Eaters to come in, and Luna Lovegood is going into the Chamber of Secrets alone. They overlay in his mind with the Wheel of Hecate and each treacherous seven-pointed star, once virtually his symbol now turned against him, as he should have known Hecate well might in the end...

Past the shed snakeskin, no different, there was the corpse of the Basilisk laid out across the floor of the Chamber, great and scaled and gleaming, its gaping maw with its venomous fangs left dead and open. There was the statue of Salazar Slytherin, a worse likeness every time Draco saw it. There was no small light-haired body at the foot of the statue. But it still did not fail to strike Draco, how much it felt he had seen all of this exactly before. Maybe Draco should have gone with Dobby to get the others, but if Luna had gone alone ahead before all of them, he wasn't about to leave her alone against the Death Eaters for a second longer than necessary. So now Draco stood alone in the Chamber of Secrets, looking for Luna, and did not find her. But there was someone waiting for him, and that was where the déjà vu came in.

It was a strikingly handsome young man in a Slytherin Hogwarts uniform, wand in hand, wearing an air of arrogance like armor and threat, beside the statue of Slytherin wearing its shadow over his angular face with those striking eyes. It was Tom Riddle for the briefest moment, as Draco rounded the corner and raced inside.

Then Draco's eyes focused and it was who it obviously was, who he should have known from every dream would be waiting here, only here, to bring matters to their natural close:

Just as at the gates of Nurmengard, Theodore Nott was there waiting for him.

"Where is Luna?" Draco barked, a tremble in his voice already.

Theo's intelligent deep blue eyes focused on him thoughtfully, none of the furor in Draco's voice reflected in his calm supercilious demeanor. "Calm down, Draco," Theo said, and leaned back against the side of the statue as if to display his lack of urgency. His body was a graceful arch there, more imposing than Tom Riddle in truth had ever been with his aggressive blustering. "Your cousin will be fine."

"WHERE IS LUNA?" Draco screamed, brandishing his wand scarcely a meter from Theo. Theo didn't move a muscle save his lips, which twitched up threatening a smile. He seemed to draw reassurance from Draco's panic, steadied further in his position against ill-carved stone.

"Calm down," Theo said again, "And I'll tell you, Grindelwald, and-"

"Don't call me that!" Draco shrieked, feeling his wand hand spasm, dark sparks escaping into the air. Unlike their confrontation in the graveyard, Theo looked serenely, surreally unafraid of them. "You don't have the right! Not after you-" After you made me kill Grindelwald.

"You're right. I suppose we're not close enough for nicknames anymore," Theo said reasonably, and Draco felt like he was going mad. "Now please try and listen. You want to understand what's going on here, don't you? What's happened to your cousin? I'm sure that concerns you. Keep your wand up if you like, although our wrists might eventually get sore. I'm not here to hurt or to fight you-"

"What, you're here to, like, defect to our side?" Draco snapped sarcastically. "No! You're a Death Eater, and you got back into Hogwarts after you got expelled, and now you've opened the Chamber because you've found some other entrance outside Hogwarts and you're going to use it to let Death Eaters in to kill Dumbledore-"

Theo laughed aloud, his pretty melodic laugh that had used to be such a reward to win from him. "Is that why I opened the Chamber?" Either he had the patience of a saint, or he enjoyed watching Draco be the one to squirm in the dark.

"Stop fucking around and tell me where my cousin is!"

"I have something to show you," Theo said soothingly, raising his free hand in placation. "I think once you see it, you'll understand." He went around the side of the statue, and Draco expected him to return with his dagger, Luna, some part of her, he didn't know, but he didn't even guess- he'd had no concept how far he had plunged into the realm of nightmare-

Theo returned wearing a mask. A stag mask. The same that Harry had worn at Halloween, that had once belonged to James Potter.

Draco screamed, hands both flying to his mouth. The tip of the talon wand sizzled at his teeth.

"Do you understand yet?" Theo said intently. "It's very important that you understand, Draco, try and focus, the most important thing for me is that you understand what is happening to you and why. And because of whom. That's what I need to see you realize, Draco Black, how completely you failed everyone you ever cared for, before the end."

"Oh my God," Draco said, taking several stumbling steps back, nearly dropping his wand as his heart exploded in his chest. "That was you. It wasn't just a dream. It really was you behind Harry's mask-"

"He received it at his house table and showed it all around," Theo observed dispassionately. "Not a difficult mask to transfigure a credible replica of, given my skills." He took the mask off and tossed it aside like trash.

"You kissed me," Draco breathed, stomach turning. Theo's eyes rolled elegantly, more like Severus than Tom Riddle in his economic Slytherin show of poise.

"You kissed me," Theo corrected mildly. "Although it hardly matters. Your housemates were so easy to Obliviate when they were that drunk. Even COUSIN!" He imitated Draco's fawning tone of voice perfectly, and some part of the past died, then and there. "You should have trained her up better, for her sake."

Draco wanted to ask about Luna again, but it wouldn't yield anything. Surely the others would be coming soon, if they hadn't gone to alert teachers first- Dumbledore and Harry might be missing, but Severus, McGonagall, the other professors could do something- and one of them would have gone directly to help him, surely just one- and Draco couldn't work out who was stalling, himself or Theo, himself for his friends and Theo for the Death Eaters to arrive.

"You bastard," Draco growled, wanting to throw aside any notion of stalling and rip Theo apart just as brutally as he'd had to rip apart Grindelwald. As I ripped apart your worthless Death Eater father you love so much- "You bastard- fucking monster-"

"I," Theo said softly, "Never meant to be a monster. You know what you did, Draco, you know what it meant. Before, I wanted to spend sixth-year doing some writing, and doing extra work to prepare for my NEWTs. I just wanted the Kingsnakes to win another championship. But what you did- it's the reason I'm-"

He held up his left wrist, sleeve slipping to expose the Dark Mark, and looked at it displayed on his own skin with dispassionate contempt.

"I would never have been on their side if I could help it. I still don't care a thing about blood supremacy. But I didn't have a choice. I couldn't let what you did go. I'll never-" Theo's voice threatened to break before he recaptured it, impassivity more of a facade when he spoke of his father. "I'll never betray my father again. I swear it. By Hecate, by my magic, by any god that's real, I swear it."

"Oh, please!" Draco exclaimed, seizing on that bit of weakness and stalking himself and his wand a step closer to that lovely monster. "As if you aren't acting on the orders of your beloved Bellatrix-"

"Beloved, you say?" Theo echoed. "Because of that show she wanted us to make, when we came to kill you at Nurmengard?" His sloping shoulders shrugged carelessly. "I've done what I had to do. Do you think I ever wanted to? But she'd been in my head, the summer after you killed my father, teaching me Occlumency. She saw how I- how I used to feel, about you." He rushed through that part as if poisonous. "So I had to prove to her that I wasn't like that anymore, that I would be loyal. How do you think she wanted me to prove that? Astoria sufficed at first, a pretty pureblood girl, young enough to excuse not- but not forever. And then Bella- so- so I've done things I didn't want to, to get here. You can't imagine the things I've done-"

"Right," Draco laughed. "Of course you don't want my Aunt Bella, and not just because you're queer." A rage like he had never known filled his lungs like bile. All for his father, his stupid father who never understood him to begin with! He threw everything away, so much intelligence, talent, goodness, all that future he could have had, he threw it away for that! "Because you're still in love with me, aren't you, you pathetic piece of shit!"

He advanced that final distance between them and seized Theo by the green and silver tie, pushing Theo against the statue to get into his face menacingly. He felt Theo's wand jab against his ribcage, which was just fine. He put his own wand right under Theo's chin, against the sharp bridge of his hewn jawline, where he had used to like to kiss, in a different lifetime. "That's why you have to kill me, isn't it? Because I killed your father and you still can't get me out of your head, you stalker, huh? Go ahead, make that face, you know it's true, I know you, Theo- I know you were following me around, and-"

"I won't try and argue," Theo said softly, "Your previous point, one way or another. Only, to address your final point, Draco..." He licked his lips, tilted his head, breath hot on Draco's cheek, like something burning right beneath his fingers, not pliable like real fire but becoming harder and harder to touch. "I was following you because I was tasked with discovering what you and your cousin had done to the Dark Lord."

Theo's eyebrow arched as Draco let him go. "Didn't you ever wonder how he learned about the Naufragiam? You had the book right out there, on Halloween. I had suspected before, but that made me sure. Interesting book, isn't it?"

"Theo, you-" Draco tried to speak, but he had to try hard, through a throat tying itself in knots. He wanted some draught of peace, but he'd already drank his draught today. If he tried to drink the one vial in his pocket, he'd be imbibing liquid Fiendfyre. Even if that was rather what it felt like to face Theo. "You win, alright? You- you're smarter than me, you've proven it, you've won, can we please just stop this, this Death Eater act, alright, just be Theo again-"

"When my father died," Theo said, enunciating every word loud and clear, so there could be no mistake, "I went to Bellatrix Lestrange. Yes, I did. I contacted her. Because I knew you feared her more than anyone in the world. I asked her to Nott Manor. I asked her to help me send a Black Dagger. I asked her to train me that summer, and not just in Occlumency, to keep my secrets. Do you know who's acting here, Draco? I asked Bellatrix Lestrange to train me to kill you."

"I'm sorry." Draco nearly fell to his knees, so impossible it felt to look Theo in the eye anymore, his show of bravado had gone up in smoke. "I'm so sorry, Theo, I haven't said it enough- if I had just said it more, maybe-"

"Except when I got to Hogwarts," Theo said, calm restored as Draco dissolved into self-recrimination, "And we dueled, I knew I didn't have any chance in the world. I could sooner," he gestured ruefully to the corpse beside them, "Slay a Basilisk. That would be the easier Kingsnake. So I decided to go through with what Bellatrix wanted, and give her the information on the Naufragiam."

It was all whirling through Draco's head, the ways this could have been averted, the times he should have forced his way back into Theo's life, to talk, to scream, to hurt, to beg if necessary, to avert this. Anything and everything he could have done that he hadn't. "It was you- Periander and Maledictum's grave."

"It was kind of you to lead me to the corpse of a Maledictus. I needed one."

"The message you wrote- you said my godfather was a liar-"

"Bellatrix suspected him from the start, that's why she wouldn't ever let him hear about me. It was her idea. To leave the note on Valentine's Day to mess with you. I didn't want to. I didn't want to dig up Maledictum, either. Believe me, I never saw my life ending up in grave-robbing. I'd have preferred academia."

"And you got the mission then," Draco said miserably, "To get Death Eaters into Hogwarts, to kill Dumbledore." He remembered this wasn't the blue loop, remembered the Naufragiam that had proved so vital here. "And to take Hogwarts, for Voldemort, so he would stop dying from his absence. You were in too deep, and they made you-"

"No!" Theo exclaimed, with another soft sweet laugh. He reached between them and gently lifted Draco's wand up in the air higher for him, as if helping him keep up his guard. The talon wand did not seem to burn him, although Draco saw black smoke rise in the air. "No, they wanted me to kill you, of course."

"You said-" Draco tried to make his mind work, past all the pity and fear and the terror for Luna he had almost forgotten in her absence. Where were the others, anyway? When would they come and save him from this phantom? "You said you weren't here to hurt me, to fight me-"

"Theodore Nott," a voice said from very near them, but below, "Is a very kind man. And he is never being a liar."

Dobby walked up to Draco and Theo and the statue, with Nissy the house elf at his side. Draco's mouth opened and no sound came out. Again, he could have fallen to his knees, at the depth of the betrayal. But this time not his own.

"Dobby," Draco breathed. "Why haven't you brought everyone else- why is she-"

"Draco Black," Dobby said firmly, "Is deserving to die."

"Dobby?" Draco whimpered, stepping further back from the other three. The house elves stepped to either side of Theo's, flanking him like perfect servants. "Dobby, no, it's not possible..."

"Amusing as you must find this," Theo said to Dobby, "It must be wearing off in any moment, no?"

"Yes," Dobby sighed, and sat down where he stood.

What felt like an infinity later, in reality less than a minute of waiting and changing altogether, and Dobby changed from himself into Wooky the house elf, Nissy's brother. The two siblings, once Parkinson elves, acknowledged each other with nervous but triumphant smiles. Wooky quickly removed the long Ravenclaw hoodie Dobby had been wearing, down to only a sack beneath, as if it had felt unnatural and offended him thoroughly to wear real clothes. That was not a house elf that wanted to be free.

"Master Theo," Wooky said, "Wooky is doing a good job pretending to be Dobby?"

Polyjuice. Draco could have wept from the simplicity of it, and how easily he'd fallen for it. Dobby had never been Dobby, summoning him to the Chamber of Secrets, which meant...

"Is Luna even here? Did she ever come here?"

They ignored Draco for an almost tender reunion. "Yes, Wooky, Nissy, you have both done excellently," Theo said, and patted both elves' heads kindly. "Clever, and above and beyond the call of duty. You will both be full members of the Nott household, and serve me from this day forward. And I am the one thankful, for your devotion, when so much else had been taken from me."

He turned back to Draco, with a look more bemused than gloating. "Didn't you ever wonder how I knew about your trips to Nurmengard? Dobby's old friends followed him every time. It's actually not hard, for house elves to follow each other's Apparition trails. They got me in to eavesdrop, the day you broke out Grindelwald. I thought you might have assumed already, from how much time I spent with Pansy. She's the one who convinced them to help me, so they could find a new household to serve."

"Wait," Draco said, a new horror filling his mind. "Millie- when I saw Nissy- Nissy, you were spying on her practicing, you said just because you missed the Kingsnakes- but that was for-"

"We is knowing everything," Nissy said contemptuously, "About Millicent Bulstrode."

"I haven't told on Millie," Theo soothed him. "Just made sure not to tell her anything useful. I don't ever want her hurt. I hope she won't be tonight. I hope she'll do the smart thing if she has to, and at least act like she's with the winning side."

"Tonight," Draco echoed numbly. "The winning side."

"Tonight," Nissy cried in utter ecstasy, "Hogwarts is falling!"

Theo turned to her affectionately. "I was getting to that part."

"Nissy is sorry, Master Theo," Nissy said sheepishly, and Theo patted her head again.

"No harm, no harm. I want him to know, I did let Death Eaters in. The Chamber happened to have a secret escape route out of Hogwarts. Your aunt Bellatrix has been through here already. So have all of her compatriots. So has Dark Lord himself. He walks the floors of Hogwarts above you as we speak, the halls where your friends wait for him." Theo's lips finally crooked up into a smile. "See, I told you I would say where your cousin was. She's up there in Hogwarts, for the Dark Lord to kill."

"If," Nissy said with a snarl, "That simple-minded little girl is being lucky."

Draco turned on his heel and took one, two running steps away, towards where he'd left the school broom in the hallway outside, towards his fastest way to avert a scene he had already known in the blue loop, a scene that once again it seemed he had been instrumental in bringing to life. Perhaps Hagrid's hut was already burning. And when Harry and Dumbledore returned-

"I've asked Bellatrix," Theo said, voice cutting into Draco's retreat, "As a personal favor, to be sure to eliminate your treacherous godfather. So you'll know what it's like to lose your real father."

"He is escaping, Master Theo!" Wooky called worriedly, and Theo's pretty laugh carried throughout the Chamber of Secrets.

"He's not going anywhere," Theo said, and withdrew a dagger from his pocket. The moonstones on the hilt glimmered like a thousand imploded moons. The hilt was colored a gathering of garnets. It was Pammaque Periander's dagger, and from the blood red that dripped at its end, Theo had put the ritual dagger to its intended purpose. "He escaped at Nurmengard, but not tonight. I said I wouldn't fight him. I won't. But here is the place he will die." He knelt down, smoothing his robes below himself with his unbloodied hand, and pushed the dagger into the floor. "Cadaunuptio!"

Theo spoke, and the blinded corpse moved.

The Basilisk's corpse was of a great mass like a dragon, coiled around itself motionless, which twitched at the sound. Then, slow as nightmare, the head with the scratched-out Medusa eyes lifted, and turned towards the sound of Theo's voice. Theo approached it fearlessly, pocketing what was now his dagger. "Close your jaws," Theo ordered, no hissing necessary, and the great beast closed them.

"Be still. Stay," Theo said, as if he spoke to a well-trained dog, and the corpse of the Basilisk obeyed as if not just ensorcelled but made a marionette, snout sloping down to let Theo pet up its great mass. "Good. Good. Beloved." Theo turned to look at the frozen, transfixed Draco, and his face broke into a wide grin. "Hey, Ravenclaw? What do you call a snake who eats other snakes?"

"A Kingsnake," Draco said dully, sheer wonder keeping his feet glued to the floor. He saw himself sprinting for the nearest exit and his broom, but only in his mind's eye. And his broom- he hadn't left it right at the entrance to the central chamber, and even if he had, wouldn't it be easier for the Basilisk to get him in the air-

"And who is the King of Serpents? The king of all snakes?"

"The Basilisk," Draco filled in obligingly, understanding Theo's small cruelty. "The Kingsnake."

"Don't look at me like that," Theo laughed, although he flinched aside a little as the Basilisk's rotted tongue flicked out beside his hand. The full coiled fifty feet of the beast shifted behind him, prepared to move at his command. "It was your idea. And I found the way in your book. Thank you, Draco. It's all thanks to you, from start to finish. Now. My Kingsnake." Theo closed his eyes a long moment, as if even now he had to work to get out the words, but come out they did all the same. "Kill him for me."

The blinded corpse turned to Draco, and attacked.

Just because it no longer had a gaze that poisoned didn't mean its fangs weren't still lethally venomous. Those fangs lashed towards Draco as the corpse lunged for him, just as Theo had commanded. It was Draco's legs rather than his mind that gave the signal to move, jerking away just in time.

Even Theo would likely not have wanted it to be over that quickly.

Draco sprinted for a pillar to hold onto, even the most superficial barrier to give him the chance not to have to focus on dodging. He swerved aside again and ran, panic already an acid clogging his lungs, immediately like he had been running for a very long time. He couldn't turn his back for long on the creature, though. He had to try and calculate the speed that monstrous mass of coils could roll the venomous head forward, to lash out towards his fleeing figure. He felt it so close, he could feel its slavering rotting breath on the back of his neck.

Desperate glances back showed that the underside of the dead thing was disintegrated, open and rotting dead flesh, rotten in places down to the bone, so much it hardly should be moving by itself. It was like not just Theo's words but his will propelled the slithering of the snake, the sheer fixation on seeing Draco die.

Draco had never regretted what he'd done more than in that moment. He dove behind a second pillar like a desperate jump for the Snitch. Merlin, he had never been sorrier to have said Sectumsempra instead of Stupefy for Mr. Nott, as he surged around the pillar and cried out Avada Kedavra, a green light flashing out and hitting the beast right in its mouth.

The wound from the Sword of Gryffindor was still there in the bone-dry pink-brown mutilated flesh, of the open desiccated mouth, half-shredded tongue by the strike flicking through the air. It was as undeterred as if the curse had just been a burst of pretty light, a show for its benefit, and one it was hardly well-equipped to appreciate with its eyes half-pecked out. The Killing curse had used to feel such a momentous monstrous thing to issue from his lips was let out once, twice, thrice, without any tangible result save the light, all the more so once the head sprung at Draco again and hit the pillar sideways, spraying shattered stone.

Draco's eyes erupted with stinging pain from just the dust in the air, as the beast demolished the pillar Draco had hidden behind as if personally incensed with it. It lashed out with its tail to batter the thing to bits as it turned to keep after him.

Of course the Killing curse doesn't work, you fool, the thing's already dead.

"Sectumsempra!" Draco caught the snake in its side, with a force that should have ripped through scales and instead rebounded off them, driving deep gauges in the stone where the Basilisk had been without doing a thing to penetrate the carapace-like surface. Draco shot another Sectumsempra, but it died completely on the scales as it hit more squarely this time, and then he really began to believe he was about to die.

One part of his mind searched Severus's lessons this year, desperately trying to remember how you killed Inferi, the closest thing he could think of- but of course, this year when it came to academics, he had never paid attention. How did you kill what was already dead? The more realistic part of Draco was already telling himself that come the worst, he'd never heard anything about a Basilisk eating their prey alive- that was, unless it was ordered to-

Nine names, he had his nine names, nine or more, he couldn't die here when he still had those names-

Theo, Theo was just watching this, watching a monster circle and try again and again to sink its fangs in Draco. It came all the closer each time as Draco was worn down, legs tiring and turning to lead with their lack of constant Quidditch practice to keep them as fit. This time, to keep the fangs back, Draco was brought in his animal terror to that most primal of recourses, fire. Fire burst from Draco's wand to just keep the mouth back from him.

That was all it seemed to do, keep the snake back like great invisible hands, sliding over the scales like water in broken reflections. It turned the open underside blackened with embers, but the damage seemed unfelt. Nothing could shake this unnatural thing hellbent on Draco's destruction, and that was what Theo had wanted. Theo wanted this of all the ways to be the way he died, not quick like his father had died but running for his life, helpless and terrified, fleeing a dead body he couldn't kill, couldn't even dent. This was what it meant to have Theodore Nott as an enemy. This was all by Theo's design.

In sheer desperation, Draco tried a spell he had invented, gasping Verniculpa, the bloody-handed spell, to make the thing at least bleed. Then he remembered snakes didn't have hands. But it produced blood nonetheless, a massive bursting river out from the places fire had touched underneath. It was likely not the creature's blood- Draco had never understood whose blood the curse brought, even after he'd taught it to Luna, had never figured the invention out- because it had never been his, the memory had shown it had just been Dantanian's- Dantanian who had abandoned him now-

The beast slid, the front of its coils slipping in the sticky red pool over shattered stone. But Draco was slipping too, shoes skidding. He could never have imagined so much blood.

The Basilisk thrashed, end flashing out, and its tail caught Draco and made him fly. He was smashed through the air, into a wall dozens of meters away.

He immediately tried to stand once his reddened vision of the world was upright again. The snake had driven him further away, but it was coming. He couldn't stand- he was watching himself try and fail, the wind knocked completely out of him. The feeling was driven out of his legs, all of his nerves centered in the bloody murder of pain his back screamed since it struck stone. And even that was nothing to the pain in his right hip, which hurt like nothing he'd ever felt save the Cruciatus curse. It had to be broken.

His only comfort was the talon wand still in his hand, the thought it could protect him somehow, here where he knelt drenched in no one's blood. Dantanian would save him, pray to a ghost to keep him from the fangs of the snake-

His hip wasn't broken. He had just landed against metal in his pocket, metal he always kept on him. It was the Mirror of Espilce, unsurprisingly still unbroken. It was Draco's reflection that seemed the cracked part, as he withdrew it with trembling hands. Just like the first time he'd ever seen this little mirror, it was barely recognizable covered in blood- blood, he thought, blood-

Blood.

Fire.

He raised his wand to the beast and screamed, "Dracosanguis!" He couldn't tell if it did a thing, but then, he couldn't waste a second wiping blood from his eyes, or pushing back the slick sweat-blood-soaked hair fallen in them as he knelt with the talon wand in one hand, leveled at the beast, the Mirror of Espilce in the other hand, calling out, "Dracosanguis!"

No, he couldn't see fire, but he could feel it, feel the thrum he had before, playing with this mirror as it was leveled at flames, already set, burning them hotter. He could hear a sudden hissing from the snake. He couldn't know if the blood in what had been veins in the corpse was still pumping and liquid, or dried to powder, like gunpowder in his imagination. But whatever it was, the Mirror of Espilce focused on it, his pyromancy and all his power through it as he chanted that word Dracosanguis, that prayer to Dantanian- to the memory of Dantanian- to himself-

"Dracosanguis!" Draco screamed, and the snake stopped its forward motion and writhed crazed, a fearsome sight. Finally, he understood it wasn't just inside the Basilisk but all the blood spurted out from Verniculpa burning too. It was all the blood in the world near Draco that wasn't on him or his own. Merlin, it felt like a fire in his blood, the thought, I'm hurting it, I'm actually hurting it. I could kill it this way. I could see Harry again. "DRACOSANGUIS!"

He could pause for a moment to clear his vision. When he did, the Basilisk was no longer recognizable as such. It was come to a halt, with blue-white fire seething not just all over its scales but inside it. If you can't kill what's already dead, you destroy the body. Draco began anew, chanting Dracosanguis as his mantra, as quickly as he could, to build every fire fuller and hotter inside and out. He had gotten underneath the carapace at last, feeling the sparks within and pulling with his mind and the heavy weighted tug of the talon wand in the air. He pulled back, towards himself, like he was trying to lure all the fire he made right to his hands, ripping through every bit of matter in its way in the process.

Flame appeared between them, a sharp forked blue shine of the burning tongue hissing and hissing like its dead lungs could choke on their own smoke. Smoke was rising everywhere, up from the corpse, from the end of his wand towards it where they were bound by it, the black inky thick evil smoke of the talon wand. But it was cut through everywhere by the moonstone-bright scintillation of the Mirror of Espilce, finally tearing open the scales from beneath and letting up great smoking flickering bursts and pillars of fatal light.

It was a kind of trance, the killing of the dead, because Draco was casting Dracosanguis for some time long after the mountain of charred remains had stopped moving.

Somehow it was Wooky and Nissy who reacted more quickly, to the sight of their prey become predator. Theo just stared in motionless horror at what limped around the wall the corpse had made from his vision, coming towards him. Maybe that was for the covering blood and ash, and maybe it was just for the survival of the boy he had sent the undead beast of the Chamber of Secrets to kill, only to find it overcome and replaced by a new beast. Wooky and Nissy, though- say this much for the little traitors to Dobby- brought their hands up to cast elf magic to protect their new master.

But Draco had been ready for that. With all those laughing summer afternoons practicing dueling with Sirius, those evenings with the Rat Thieves, he had the reflexes to be faster than them. He cast Serpensmorta on one and then the other- give them their own snakes to play with, it was only fair- which pulled them away from Theo, to the sides, where Draco could forget their existence. That left Theo stumbling back from Draco, drawing his wand from his pocket with a hopeless look already in his unfathomably beautiful blue eyes...

The red light of Draco's Expelliarmus sent Theo's wand right into Draco's grasp. He'd already pocketed the Mirror of Espilce, so he caught the wand neatly and pocketed that beside it. The word that came from Draco's mouth then, though, was not one of the ones Theo must have feared, like an Unforgivable or Sectumsempra, but simply, "Legilimens!"

For all the training he had supposedly sold his soul to get from Bellatrix Lestrange, Theo's mind was easy to break into, still easier than it would have been then to cut him open.

Death Eaters walking past the blinded corpse towards the corpse-to-be of Hogwarts that awaited them, as yet unmoving, a long dark line of them murmuring to one another, eyeing Theo with fearful respect as they went. Only Bellatrix approaching him- one would almost wonder why Theo's father did not break ranks as well to congratulate his son, before remembering the man was dead- only Bellatrix, who came up and kissed him on the cheek with a murmur of affection that Theo took with a convincing smile and an inward shudder-

"You did, you really did it," Draco said, pulling from Theo's mind sharply before he could be sucked into anything he didn't want to see. "You really let Death Eaters into Hogwarts this way." It hadn't just been an idle boast to torment Draco before his end. There really were enemies inside, gone after everyone Draco needed to survive- with a special dispensation for his godfather- every second here was a second one of them could be tortured or dying-

A wandless Theo tried to run, understandably enough. "Locomotor mortis," Draco cast, then stalked the few meters Theo had managed to put between them and stood over him again. Theo managed to roll onto his back after falling on his face, those ever-kissable lips now split open from the fall on stone. He tried to drag himself backwards with just his hands, blue eyes wide as his horrified open mouth stayed silent, as if he was already sure what Draco was going to do to him now-

What was to be done with Theo? The Death Eaters were in Hogwarts, there was no taking prisoners now, not without giving him right back to the other side-

"You'll never give up, will you," Draco said, barely a question. "Not until me and everyone I love is dead, at your hand. You'll never stop."

If I let you live.

Theo stared at him for a long moment, visibly suppressing a whimper of pain, and tried to brace himself on the stone. Draco cast a wordless Manibipiscatus that had his wrists pinned above his head too, as immobilized as if Draco had cast Incarcerous on him. An effective captive.

"Will you stop?" Draco said, and his voice came out pleading.

"No," Theo said softly where he lay helpless, eyes closing for a moment before he made the effort to force himself to meet Draco's gaze, looking him right in the eye. "No, I won't. I could try and lie, but you could just break into my mind and see it's not true. I can't. I can't betray my father again. I'm sorry."

"And do you love me?" Draco asked in barely stifled horror, and Theo's gaze was unwavering, like it was being burned onto the back of Draco's eyelids, forever inscribed there, indelible.

"Yes," Theo said, with a visible shudder. "Yes, Draco, I love you."

Draco couldn't look into those eyes.

"Sectumsempra," Draco said, and Theo's helpless body was torn in half, from face to the heart in his chest.

After, Draco could only make himself look long enough to take the wand and the stolen dagger from the body. He saw a patch of bloodied Slytherin robes, no more. It was all he had to see.

It was only after Draco had gone to the hall and retrieved his broom that he saw there was not one but three dead bodies waiting for him. Wooky and Nissy lay dead and cold in the grasp of still-writhing snakes, all the air long since throttled out of them.

Draco mounted his broom before he reached into his pocket and withdrew the Fiendfyre. He was a pyromancer. He no longer feared Fiendfyre. Not at all. He did not feel as though he would ever fear anything ever again.

As Draco flew out of the Chamber of Secrets, he threw the liquid Fiendfyre behind him. It shattered over the bodies and consumed them, but he didn't turn back.

: The Fall of Hogwarts

Notes:

Chapter Text

Draco had very little idea how he ended up in Ravenclaw Tower, nor how he ended up in the shower there, trying to wash off some of the guilt. Nor did he think very much about it, save for the thought that kept resonating through his head, echoing and inexorable: at least I know now, who out of Orpheus and Eurydice should be the one to climb back out of hell.

It was not the best place to be during an invasion of Hogwarts, huddled up frantically trying to scrape off every remnant of blood and ash. But better he fall into the hands of the enemy- Mirror of Espilce included- what sympathy he felt now for Grindelwald, hiding it in his chest cavity- better he be taken than having to see the look in Harry's green eyes, if he ever understood what Draco had just done. Better anything, come hellfire and hellwater, than that Harry ever know. Yes, Draco had sworn to be open with Harry, to show him his true self. But hadn't Draco always been a liar?

No, Harry would never know, nor Severus, nor- Merlin, nor would Hermione. Or at least Draco wouldn't be there to see them learn it.

"It wasn't your fault," a voice said in his ear from behind him, a voice too silky and precisely weighted to ever mistake for Harry's, even though the feeling of a male body sliding into place behind him should only have belonged to Harry. But there it was, the voice whose identity he knew all too well, along with the slender body and delicate touch snaking around him. He knew who it was come to comfort him, and tell him, "It was my fault, little dragon. It was all my fault."

"Dantanian?" Draco breathed, and felt the lips against his ear break into a soft smile.

"You didn't kill Theodore Nott. Or Wooky, or Nissy," Dantanian whispered, arms encircling Draco tighter. Even through the pounding of the water, Draco could smell him, redolent of dying flowers. "I did. I killed Theo for you, Opaleye. It was me."

"Draco? Draco, is that you?" Luna's voice was calling out fearfully, from somewhere outside the bathroom. "I hear water..."

Draco exited the shower barefoot in his robe, only to be faced with a wand to his chest. Luna had leapt at him the moment he emerged, and had him pinned back.

She pulled back abashed as soon as she saw it was him, but something in her paranoia was contagious. He caught her with his wet hands by her trembling shoulders, watching the real terror fade from her face too slowly. "Luna?" he said carefully. "Luna, are you alright?"

"Cousin!" she exclaimed. "I'm so glad it's you, and not... Draco, where have you been? I've been looking for you! The Dark Mark's been set over Hogwarts!"

The sinking feeling her face had put in Draco's guts redoubled. His damned treacherous gaze traveled downwards, as if to help her unmask him. He took stock of the bloodied robe he'd left on the bathroom floor as if in the slow motion of a nightmare, and Luna's light-eyed gaze naturally followed. Then her eyes shot elsewhere, and Draco thought she might somehow not have understood, even when she breathed, "You were washing off blood, that's yours." Then he tracked her gaze.

In his haste to throw everything aside and get clean of it, he'd emptied the pockets of his robe entirely. That left the empty draught of peace on the floor, along with his wand and the Mirror of Espilce. And his dagger. It sat there silent and still, yet it was like another living thing in the room with them, with the sinister glint of its moonstone hilt, an object that she knew lost and now somehow recovered. It had been the most beautiful thing he owned, and perhaps it still was, but it was also the ugliest now.

It should not have been there, and yet it was, small and still blood-stained as if it had been plunged repeatedly into someone's torn chest, the telltale weapon. Draco tried not to look at it, wishing he had never taken it with him, except it had felt almost as natural to have by his side as his wand by now. And here it told Luna the question she needed to ask. Was it, Who did you kill for that dagger?

"Whose blood is that, Draco?" she asked quietly, which was almost the same question. But Draco could answer her honestly, though it would sound like a lie.

"No one's."

Their staring was punctured by the moment and its terrible context, the reality of the situation of Hogwarts, which Luna began to quickly unfold to him. That was, once the spectacle at their feet was attended to. He got the wand and mirror and dagger out of the way, putting them in his robe pockets first, as if hiding some severed body part from view. Then- "Incendio!" he snapped, and set the bloodied robes alight, turning them and the empty vial quickly to even more of a muddied puddle of black ash. He could feel rather than see Luna flinch at his side, but she didn't say a word as he destroyed the evidence.

Nor did she do anything but help, as he left the bathroom for his old room. She told him through the door as he dressed that Death Eaters had gotten inside Hogwarts somehow, and she'd gotten word of it by the coins that Hermione used to communicate with other DA members. Cho Chang and her friends had run off to help, but Luna had gone to find Draco, and found him absent from his dorm where he was meant to be.

"I don't think it was noticed by anyone else, though," Luna said in an agonizingly careful sort of voice. "Then the word came through from the prefects that we're evacuating Hogwarts. Everyone began running out of the tower, with the prefects all shouting and trying to get them to go in some order..."

Draco nearly tore his vest as he pulled it on. "Evacuating?" he called, realizing how implicitly he'd been relying on his memory of the blue loop to inform him, with the sheer vertigo that met him at this unexpected difference. "Evacuating? We're abandoning the castle to them?"

"I don't know," Luna called. "I know the students at least are all supposed to get out... Draco, there's so many of them, I went looking for you and I nearly ran into some..."

Draco tore out of his room fully dressed with a bag over his shoulder, instantly incandescent. "You did what? Luna, you shouldn't be roaming the halls alone if there's loads of Death Eaters about! What were you thinking?"

"I just thought you would have gone to look for your godfather," Luna said petulantly, "So I sneaked over to look in his office, but he wasn't there... no one saw me! And if you had just been where you were supposed to and hadn't- why do you have a bag?"

Grimly, Draco pulled up the heavy tome inside to show her its spine: Moste Dark Blood Rituals of the Demon Goddess Hecate. It couldn't have been more familiar to her.

Or as it happens, Theo, but I won't think about him now. I can't. Luna is here because of me, when she says Hogwarts is supposed to be evacuating, and I have to get her out of here unhurt, just think that, Draco, nothing but that- think of needing Luna safe- think it was Dantanian's fault-

Draco was arrested in his brief rush of panicked guilt by a scream. It came from close enough that for a bizarre moment he thought it was Luna, though she was right before him and hadn't opened her mouth. Luna was grabbing him and pulling him out of his room and down the stairs, though, towards the real source of distress: the Ravenclaw common room.

They were inside the great spacious room before Draco knew that either, as if reality had begun to narrow itself to only certain moments of decipherability, where the rest were simply taken up by the fact that he had murdered Theodore Nott. The ever-serene, ever-beautiful visage of Rowena Ravenclaw stared out at a scene before her that should not have been. Here was reality at this moment, expanding out upon him with the urgency of a screaming child: three young Ravenclaws backing away from the leering sneer of an advancing Death Eater. And Draco would have known who it was even if the face wasn't perfectly visible. He could have known him in pitch-blackness just by the sound of the snarl.

"Why aren't you evacuated yet?" Draco bellowed rather insensitively at the first-years, who whirled to stare at him with expressions of mixed guilt and gratefulness.

"We went back to get Sasha's book!" one of the boys exclaimed, and Draco felt the bag on his own hip as a hypocritical weight, given how that was forming in his head as one of scarce few possible cover stories. "When we went to go, it was- waiting at the entrance, he- he-"

"Fenrir Greyback," said Draco, and the words sounded in the air like a bullet.

The werewolf laughed and stalked forward, making the first-years shriek in terror and break into a sprint towards the upperclassmen they clearly saw as their saviors. Draco almost thought they had managed it before he realized that of the first-years arriving to virtually fall at their feet in relief, one of the boys seizing at Luna's sleeve like she was an angel of salvation, there were only two.

The first-year girl was held back, screeching, a bag with the shape of a large book in it hanging down from her side, where she was pulled into the air by Fenrir Greyback, teeth poised at her young vulnerable neck.

"Ha ha!" went Greyback. "I don't think so, Malfoy! Whatever you're doing in Ravenclaw, you won't take my little prizes from me!"

"Whatever I'm doing in Ravenclaw?" Draco echoed, stalling frantically while Luna pushed the two terrified boys behind them. He tried to put his old gut-wrenching fear of the man behind himself, even with Luna at his side who he had watched him threaten so many times, in the blue loop, tried to forget the man's threats then when they resounded in his ears right now as well. "I am a Ravenclaw, you cerebrum-deficient-"

Meanwhile, the girl Sasha began to plead senselessly for Greyback to let her go, or just please not to bite her. Draco didn't know whether the children had yet gathered what the man was. Either way, she showed a Ravenclaw's good sense.

"No, you're not," Greyback sneered, shaking the girl Sasha in the air. "You're no Ravenclaw, Malfoy. Whatever colors you wear, you're a Slytherin."

"Let the girl go and face me like a man," Draco barked. "Luna, take the first-years and go."

"No!" Luna cried, foiling him, not that Greyback would have gone with it for a second. "No, I won't leave you!"

"Then it seems we're at an impasse," Draco gritted out, advancing footsteps closer to Greyback. The thought suddenly came into his head: I'm going to kill this man too. Why wouldn't he? He deserved to die a thousand times more than Theo had, there was nothing good in him to plead for him to live like there had been for Theo that Draco had just ignored. Why shouldn't Draco just kill every enemy now, except then where would the killing stop- was that just what he was now, a reliable generator of dead bodies, with children looking on still begging and crying out their little friend's name-

Their little friend, whose neck was newly imperiled by a showy flourish of Greyback's. "No," Greyback said gloatingly, "We aren't. You don't want to see this child's blood cover the stones of Hogwarts. So I'll be taking your wands now."

"Go ahead!" Luna cried out senselessly. "Take them!" She took her own wand and threw it forward. It hit the side of Sasha, who whimpered, eyes nearly rolling back in her head from the prolonged ordeal, being held in the clutches of the slavering beast. "Draco, give it to him!"

Draco couldn't understand her, except if she had surreptitiously reached behind them to get the cringing first-years' wands to use instead. "Give it to him! Or- he'll kill her," Luna said wide-eyed, and when Draco hesitated, she gave him a hard look that said to trust her. He remembered it from when they had faced the Boggart of Bellatrix Lestrange. So he took his wand from his pocket and threw it at Greyback and the girl. It landed just short of them, and Greyback let the girl to the ground to lean down and take the wands. He reached to pick them up together, with no more care towards the talon wand than Luna's.

But he couldn't meant to- he wouldn't be that ignorant- no one by now could possibly be that stupid-

He was that stupid.

"ARGH!" Greyback reeled back, screaming at the top of his lungs as a searing sound filled the air and the scent of burnt flesh erupted in Ravenclaw Tower. The talon wand burned at Greyback's hand, as well it might have, handed 'willingly' or not. As it always burned at those who would hurt Draco. Always.

Thank you, Dantanian. Thank you.

Draco had not thought so far ahead as to what would follow, but Luna had. "Verniculpa! Verniculpa!" she cried out, and even after the time spent teaching her, Draco honestly didn't expect it to work, not during the pressure of the moment. But apparently even he hadn't learned what even the Death Lord had failed to reckon at his own peril- never underestimate Draco's cousin.

Both of Greyback's hands filled with blood, the branded one and the one holding Sasha. She slipped from his grip, and Luna darted forward and seized the girl from his slippery red grasp. "Oh my God," the little girl gasped, her long blonde hair spattering with sourceless blood, and Draco reflexively darted back to grab hold of the boys. "Oh my God," said little first-year Sasha, as Greyback screamed and made sounds like retching as his palms bled and ached-

"Draco! Bring them! Help me!" Luna screamed, and Draco gestured the boys forward to run. They ran over to Luna and Draco, where Luna had just seized her wand from the ground, and offered it to Draco. Draco nearly slipped and had a faceful of stone, food skidding hard on dripping blood with the same shoes already half-ruined from the blood of another Verniculpa. But one of the boys caught him, so his leg only slid forward a great bit unnaturally. He stayed upright, whereas Greyback had fallen to the ground howling like the wolf he was, a ghastly sound.

"Do something, he'll follow us!" Luna gasped, gathering the children and beginning to run, and when Draco turned back towards the momentarily helpless figure of Greyback, he could only see the blood on the man's hands...

"DRACOSANGUIS!" Draco screamed, once and for good, every atom of blood on Greyback's palms catching on shimmering blue fire.

The sound of the screams that followed them then from inside Ravenclaw Tower was truly inhuman.

Sasha and one of the boys were both crying as they ran, but their words to Draco as well as Luna were grateful, rather than fear for one of the two monstrous killers that had faced them in their common room that night. They introduced themselves as Sasha, Connor, and Dieter, seeming a set of close friends, to whom each other's survival had meant almost as much to them as their own. "Thank you, Mr. Black, thank you," bawled Sasha, while the boys said the same to their Miss Lovegood. "You saved us all, thank you, thank you..."

Draco let Luna lead them as they ran, though he and the others became progressively tenser at the distant sounds of battle in the castle. "The Order of the Phoenix is here," Luna reassured them. "They and the professors, they'll hold back the Death Eaters, that's what the second message on the coin said- those are the orders while the students get out of Hogwarts, the DA is to protect the evacuation-"

"We can't give up Hogwarts!" exclaimed Connor, while the other two children hushed him with their wide terrified saucer eyes.

"If it's giving up Hogwarts, or giving up lives," Draco said bluntly, "Dumbledore will give up Hogwarts. It's only a place. It can be retaken. You- you three, if you fell, you couldn't be taken back, or brought back to live. When someone's killed, they stay dead..."

They were heading towards the Room of Requirement, Draco soon ascertained, which made sense. They were evacuating the students through the Hogs Head, then, as planned, and upon their arrival by staircase onto the seventh floor, they could hear the sound of many voices close by. Students, no doubt, and no few not yet inside the safety of the room or the staircase out to Hogsmeade. Ariana Dumbledore would be guiding all the little ones of Hogwarts to safety tonight, and she was not yet done her mission.

When a group sprang out at them from behind the corner and yanked Draco towards them, he was naive enough to hope it was Dumbledore's Army, helping guard the students' retreat. He almost expected the strong, frantic grip on his wrist to be Harry's. But it was Pansy Parkinson's, her dark eyes cutting at once into him like more of a brand than his wand had put in Fenrir Greyback, that much already of accusation.

"Where is he?" she gasped out, with Blaise, Vince, Millie, and Greg all in a knot behind her, their eyes to the one asking the same question. She planted her feet and made the effort to look Draco right in the eye, getting in the way to forestall any progress he would have made. In that stance, there was an awful certainty. They all to a one knew who Pansy meant.

"What?" Draco made himself say. He could muster surprise, at least, at seeing all his Kingsnakes arrayed before him, ready to hinder him from making it out of Hogwarts.

"You're sure Theo was going for Draco tonight?" Millie asked, and the Slytherin boys exchanged glances, as if better-informed than she was.

"I know he did!" Pansy shrieked, and there it was, the last piece of the puzzle, if Luna had needed it.

But Draco met Luna's gaze, in a quick interchange he had to hope did not look like knowing guilt, and there was only anxiety there. He could not tell if she had understood, or if her only thought now was the threat of death once again come over them and the children.

"Whose side are you on?" Luna called out wildly, once again trying to draw the children behind her. The Slytherins, though, had no eyes for the first-years, nor did they almost seem to have noticed their presence. Draco's was enough for them. "Are you with the Death Eaters? Did one of you cast that mark?"

"Don't be mad," Pansy barked with a mirthless laugh. "We haven't killed anyone. We're just looking for Theo. We've been trying to find him, we know he's come. Draco, where is Theo?"

"How should I know?" Draco was seeing this going very ugly in his mind's eye. He stepped towards the Slytherins, not away, and shoved Luna backwards. "Cousin, get these kids out of here! Go to the evacuation point! Go! GO!" Luna hesitated, and Draco screamed wordlessly. She fled then, the three lives in her responsibility seeming to propel her at last. Draco pleaded with whatever gods he didn't believe in that he hadn't just sent his cousin into even worse danger alone.

Then it was Draco and the five Slytherins- all six Slytherins together, if Fenrir was true, a Kingsnakes reunion if Astoria had been there. Draco wondered if she was one of the younger students evacuated through the Room of Requirement already, or if she was off somewhere, waiting for the invasion to finish so she could join whatever fellow Slytherins were there in welcoming the new owner of Hogwarts. So many people in Hogwarts, so many he cared for- even Astoria, he found, poor Astoria, with the boy she loved dead and her never knowing the moment Draco killed him...

"Where is Theo?" Pansy demanded, as if she had been deaf to his earlier denials.

"Draco," Millie said, gaze more troubled. "You really haven't seen him? Anywhere? Or heard anything? Draco, we really don't want to hurt anyone, we just want to see him, to make sure he's alright-"

"I don't know," Draco bit out, an icy rage surging in him suddenly as he stared square at Pansy, finally able to meet her scrutiny with Luna and the first-years gone. "Why would I know where Theo is, Pansy? You tell me!"

Ask me where your old house elves are, if you like. Ask me that.

He wondered how much she knew of what Theo had done with their help- presumably with her collaboration, as some kind of intermediary, or at least the agent to engage them on Theo's behalf initially. Had she known about the tracking of Dobby? About Nurmengard? About the Cadaunuptium? The Chamber of Secrets? Was she so frantic because she, and perhaps her boyfriend and his friends- everyone there but Millie perhaps knew that Draco and not Theo had been the one slated to die today, should he step foot back in Hogwarts? Had it been Draco's return to Hogwarts to trigger the invasion, so Theo could-

"No, tell me, Pansy!" Draco yelled, and Blaise had drawn his wand, but Draco didn't hesitate to get right in Pansy's face, as if they were still housemates arguing over Quidditch tactics. She's Quidditch Princess Parkinson, Draco thought hysterically. Our Quidditch Princess Parkinson. She'll always get the Quaffle in.

And what of the Gordian Nott?

"Pansy?" Millie asked, and came to their side, touching Pansy's arm. "Pansy, how are you so sure he'd be with Draco? Do you just think he would go after him, because of his father, or-"

"Theo had a plan," blurted Vince, and there it was.

"A plan, huh?" Draco echoed, and brought himself up to full posture against them. "Did he? Well, does it look as though he's succeeded?"

Pansy let out a small, heartbroken sound of dismay, and it all might have turned even uglier then, but for the arrival of someone crying out Millicent Bulstrode's name. "Millie!" called Ginny Weasley, and came running around the corner, only to stop dismayed at the sight of all five Slytherins, lined up facing Draco like the enemy. "Draco," she gasped. "Draco, what's going on? Millie?"

"We can make you tell us," Blaise said, and raised his wand.

"Do you really want to try?" Draco asked silkily, raising the talon wand menacingly, in a show that really proved his uncertainty. Himself against his Kingsnakes, that had left him without fear, but somehow two against five sounded impossible odds again.

"Draco," Blaise said, and his voice was less angry than pleading, nearly begging. "We just want to find our friend."

And then a sea of orange heads came running around the corner, and Draco remembered how to breathe again. Not just Ron but the Weasley twins too, coming running to their sister's side, and Luna with them. The odds turned at once in their favor, with the prospect of more DA members too coming behind them.

"Go ahead, Blaise!" Draco yelled triumphantly, though it felt in that moment as if he had committed another crime. "Go ahead and try it!"

"Let's go, we're getting nowhere here," Pansy said tightly. She whirled, only to stop when one of her own didn't follow. "Millie? What are you doing, Mills?" Her gaze was not so much surprised as betrayed, as if she had hoped but not truly expected her best friend to also fall in line. If she knows what Wooky and Nissy knew-

I choked them to death and burned their bodies. I'll never know exactly who they told what now. That is the inconvenient thing about cold-blooded murder.

You killed Theodore Nott in cold blood-

Stop thinking!

"I don't- I don't know," Millie said in a strangled voice. "The Dark Lord is going to take the school- they were evacuating the younger Slytherins- Pansy, do you think we should-"

"We've got nothing to fear from Vince and Greg's fathers," Blaise said angrily, grabbing her arm only to be shaken aside, letting the DA watch the Slytherins turn on each other. "We don't, Mills! What are you doing? We're going! You aren't thinking of staying with them, are you?"

"Millie!" Ginny cried out, as if she could hold herself back no longer, and raced forward. Her red hair streamed behind her like a line of fire through the air, as powerful as she was small. "Millie, don't go! Please don't go!"

"What?" Ron hissed, looking between the heated girls with incomprehension. Draco grabbed his arm to hold him back. Ron's gaze went to Draco in bafflement. Draco shrugged helplessly, and whispered,

"They've been playing Quidditch together."

"What?"

Draco smiled at Ron to show he meant it, with a poke in Ron's ribs. Ron enfolded Draco in a half-armed hug, and Draco leaned against him with the guilt of a relief he didn't deserve to feel. "Bloody hell, Frankenstein, I'm so glad you're alive."

"Same here, Cannon," Draco whispered, then stared back at the spectacle of Ginny Weasley begging.

"I don't know," Millie said, a virtual tug-of-war going on for her now. Pansy seized one arm once Ginny had seized the other, eyeing the youngest Gryffindor with loathing.

"Let her go!" Pansy demanded. "She's one of ours! Millie, you won't leave us, will you?"

It was in one moment the twin pull Draco had felt for years on end, before he had made his choice, in the Department of Mysteries with Sectumsempra. Draco could only ache helplessly for Millie, for a decision she had to make now, purely in herself-

"We can't just be standing in the hall like this!" George yelled, drawing his wand, and Draco mentally willed it back into his pocket. "Any of you who want to evacuate the school- fine, you're students here too, come on, but if you're not coming, then leave us alone! If you have a score to settle with Draco-"

"Millie," Ginny pleaded at the same time, "Please don't go," and a shudder went through Millie's solid frame, her gaze darting helplessly between the two claims on her.

Draco went to her side, already expecting curses to begin flying between the two groups, but he risked it. He had been the one to entangle her with Ginny, to keep her tied to his world. He was the only one in that hallway who knew an ounce of the true struggle that Millie must be feeling inside herself- all the worse, because she had no foreknowledge to guide her, nor any guilt of her own. She had been placed here by circumstances, and by her own ability to care for those outside her narrow purview. Her very sweetness was what had her here being torn in half-

"Draco!" Millie exclaimed, and with a great heave extracted herself from both other girls to grab him by the shoulders, as little fearful of him as when they were children. "Draco, listen..." Her voice lowered, thankfully, as she breathed, "Draco, swear to me that you don't know where Theo is, that you didn't do anything to him..."

Draco didn't hesitate to whisper back, "I swear, Millie. I haven't seen Theo since he attacked us at Nurmengard."

"Pans, I-" Millie drew back from Draco, staring at her Slytherin friends in unreadable horror. "Pansy, I think I want to go with them. I'm sorry, but Ginny is my- my friend, she's- she's made me see-"

"Why?" Pansy howled. "Because of this bitch?" She drew her wand, pointed it in Ginny's face. "She doesn't see a thing! They're all blind! Conjuncti-"

Pansy's voice died when Millie stepped between her and Ginny, ready to take the curse if necessary. But Pansy clearly did not have it in her to finish the word against her own once-friend.

"Fine!" Pansy yelled, tears in her voice. "Fine! We'll find Theo without you! Traitor! Blood traitor!"

"Millie," Ginny said, tugging on her hand as the Slytherins ran in a pack away from them. "Millie, are you really going to stay with us- with me-"

"Yes," Millie breathed, voice a great shuddering collapse, and she stared down at Ginny with a universe of uncertainty in her eyes, as if she could not yet reckon the scope of what she had just done. But it didn't seem to matter in the end. A second of their staring, faces near, and then Millie and Ginny were kissing, just a heartbeat after the Slytherins racing down the staircase could have looked back and seen. Half of Ginny's brothers were there to see, stunned gasps coming from them in mass, but not, it turned out, Luna, nor Draco either.

Millie's Keeper's bulk loomed over Ginny protectively, as her big hands went to the younger girl's face and she poured herself into the kiss, dark hair entwining with Ginny's red as they leaned as close together as possible. Ginny went onto her tiptoes, kissing Millie a thousand times more passionately than Draco had ever seen her kiss Dean Thomas- or even, if Draco strained his memory, than he had seen her kiss Harry Potter. Ginny was kissing Millie like she would have died if Millie had chosen to go away, and Millie's choice had been a choice of her and her fully, a choice of everything that came with it, some kind of surprising promise between them. That was there in their rapture. Some momentous and unforeseen promise-

But there was no time. Millie was the one practical enough to pull back and bark at the DA, "Come on, let's go! Are we waiting for a Death Eater escort out of Hogwarts?"

Draco grabbed Luna's hand as they ran back where the Weasleys had come. "Thank you," he whispered, "Thank you for bringing Ginny, I didn't know you knew," and Luna smiled breathlessly.

"I didn't know you knew," she hissed, "And the boys wouldn't let their sister go without them, but..." She glanced over to Millie at Ginny's side, then back to him with giddy anxiety. "I thought it would be the best way to save you from the Slytherins. Here, Draco, you should go into the Room of Requirement, you're shaking..."

It sounded bizarre to Draco's ears, that anyone still thought he needed saving anymore, but he supposed she'd just seen him freeze up facing Greyback. She'd been the one with the plan, who'd guessed a weakness and launched them into action to save the children.

There were more children to keep safe now, streaming into the Room of Requirement across the bemused painting of Barnaby the Barmy- great lines of them being harassed into some semblance of order as they evacuated by the prefects, including-

"STRIKER!" Draco shrieked, and broke off from Luna to run forward and hug Hermione, in complete disregard of any order.

Hermione suffered his embrace for longer than she had to, but not much longer. "I'm fine, I'm fine," she sighed, "And so are you, Draco, and so is Harry, if you're worried," and Draco peeled back with his heart in his mouth. Now that he'd decided to be honest with Harry, he felt like there would be a neon sign on his forehead for only Harry to see, proclaiming what he had done. And that shouldn't have mattered, shouldn't have wanted to make him avoid Harry as top priority up to and including the disaster befallen Hogwarts, but it did. For a moment, it felt like he'd rather run after the group of Slytherins and volunteer to show them the way to whatever remained of Theo's body.

"Here, help keep watch from inside," Hermione ordered, sensing his shakenness. Draco truly was too shook up, to protest that he, with all his power and bluster, should be at the front lines. "Harry is in there, but don't distract him. We're going to get all of these children out of Hogwarts."

Bloody hell, Aberforth must be having his most eventful day for decades. Draco could imagine him, grumbling but protective towards the scared children despite himself. From there to the planned Portkeys to Xaphan, as Sirius and Remus had been pitched it. Just as if Dumbledore had foreseen this.

Draco wondered if Dumbledore had foreseen what Draco had done to Theo, too.

He parted from the DA outside with swift hugs, the twins included, and ran into the Room of Requirement as commanded. It was the Room of Hidden Things, with the line of children leading from the door right to the entrance to the secret passage. There were Ravenclaws near the door, telling the more hysterical-looking youngsters to keep calm and be patient, once they got past the threshold and saw the door to salvation just a few dozen heads before them.

Draco came face-to-face with Cho Chang there, and her little friend. He extracted an indignant squeal from Cho by hugging her too, of all people. He couldn't help it. It had somehow seemed inconceivable to him that half the world had not perished along with Theodore Nott that night.

"I'm glad you're alive," Draco blurted to her, "I'm sorry," and then let her go and ran past, trying to see where Harry was despite himself.

It wasn't hard. Harry stood motionless beside a large workbench, draped over with black fabric to shroud behind it. Draco's feet took him over, drawn as if by magnetism by the sight of that tousled black hair. He had to know if Harry was hurt, if he was alright, and if the meeting of their eyes was a confession- well, so be it. He could never avoid Harry for long, any more than a planet could avoid the sun it revolved around.

Harry looked a mess, dark hair indeed in its most post-Quidditch-like state of disarray, and his beautiful green eyes distant and almost unseeing upon the charges beside him. Some of the children waved and called out to Harry, clearly taking heart in both the protection by and the safety of the Boy Who Lived, and anyone who knew Harry well could see how mechanically he returned the gestures of the Creeveys of the world.

"Harry!" Draco cried out, sprinting to his side, and couldn't help but grab his hands, despite the vague conviction building in him that touching Harry would inarguably sully him now. "Harry, you're here! You-" He lowered his voice. He supposed Harry had ended up safe with the Order of the Phoenix, just like in the blue loop. He would still have liked to get Harry through the passage to Aberforth and then Xaphan as quickly as possible. "Your mission with the headmaster, you made it back, you found our friends, I'm so glad-"

"No," Harry said in a hollow voice, barely seeming to feel Draco's touch on him. "No, don't be- glad. Don't be." Then his eyes cleared and he grabbed Draco's hands back with a shocking vehemence. "Oh my God, Draco," he breathed, and then he had wrapped his arms around Draco and buried his face in his shoulder. Draco could feel the shudder and shiver of unshed tears against him.

Draco could only wrap his arms around Harry in response, ready to give any comfort Harry could want of him, no matter the circumstances. The children going past them stared, but you could hardly make that matter now. "Harry..." Draco kissed his sweaty hair. "Harry, it's okay. Don't worry. Everything's going to be alright-"

"No," Harry blurted, "Nothing is, you don't understand, it's my fault, I might as well have done it to him," and Draco pulled back to try and read his troubled face. There was a seething chaos there, like something had been pushed over the brink, or taken away that could not be taken back, and even the touch of Draco as his anchor was nowhere near enough to put Harry back on his feet again.

"Done what? Harry..." he said, and then, like Luna's eyes towards the ruined uniform on the ground, his gaze followed Harry's, towards what Harry seemed to call his crime.

There was a table set up behind the workbench. From this side, the workbench was clearly large enough to accommodate five users, and yet it had been moved to a place of prominence in the Room of Hidden Things for some reason, during an attack of the greatest gravity. Yes, the Order was holding back any Death Eaters from reaching their retreat, but how much longer- the Slytherins had been able to get through to demand Theo- so the effort made to move such a great object beside the path of the children, as if with its great conjured-looking black drape to obscure something-

It was obscuring the table from any possible view, with Harry's body doing the last bit of covering from any angle, looking towards it from the entrance. The table was long and scratched but gleaming hard redwood, probably dragged from somewhere deep in the Room of Hidden Things. It was not empty. There was a black heap on it, like a set of ruined clothes, long but fully shrouded in black drapes that matched the ones on the workbench, conjured-looking too. Conjured in order to hide- the body. That was a body under the drapes.

Draco stepped away from Harry, and towards the body, with a reminder to himself that the body could not be Theo's, because Draco had burned it.

"It was my fault," Draco heard Harry say, and slowly, as respectfully blocking from view as he could, he lifted the top of the drapes from the face of the body.

He didn't know why he was surprised, at the glint of the spectacles on the dead cold face. He should have already expected the long matted grey hair, and long matted grey beard, and the eerie unwounded, unhurt face that the Killing curse left on its victims. There virtually seemed to be green light reflected in the open blue eyes, as brilliant as they had ever been even as they rested as inert globes in their dead sockets. He should have known that Harry was mourning Albus Dumbledore.

Draco should have pulled the sheet back up. He didn't. It was an unforgivable moment, as so many had been, but he didn't restore the dignity of the corpse. He began frantically to search the robe pockets.

"That's exactly what your godfather did," Harry said, coming up behind Draco with no humor in his voice. He took the sheet from Draco's hand and pulled it over the whole body, head included, as if he could not bear having it uncovered any longer. "He sprang on him searching like that. You can save yourself the trouble. He looked everywhere. The Headmaster's wand is nowhere."

"Harry," Draco gasped, turning to Dumbledore's protégé without the sensitivity he should have shown, only a greater horror. "Harry, no... Harry, what happened..." How had this happened without Draco, without the Unbreakable Vow- from the sounds of it, without Severus...

"Professor Dumbledore and I went to-" Harry lowered his voice to speak right into Draco's ear. "We went to search for one of the Horcruxes, I have it, but- when we got back, we saw the Dark Mark- we flew back on brooms, to the Astronomy Tower- he told me he needed Professor Snape. He said to run and get him, without fail, so I did. I ran and I found your godfather, and we ran back, but when we got there, Professor Dumbledore was- like he is now. Because I abandoned him."

"With his wand missing," Draco finished for him, and Harry nodded. A tear slid down from one of his devastated emerald eyes. "On the Tower, not- not fallen from it?"

"On the Tower. I should have stayed with him," Harry said helplessly, not seeming to wonder at Draco's strange question. "I knew it was dangerous- knew the enemy was here- knew he had been weakened, by what we had to do in that cave- I shouldn't have left him- I couldn't leave him there- I levitated him, back here, and Snape went to hold the Death Eaters back, with the rest of the Order. I took him here, and I covered him- I couldn't leave him behind, for them to- do as they liked with his- his body..." Harry's shoulders slumped, more tears streaking his face. "I'll take him through to Xaphan. God, I'll have to tell his brother that he- and it's my fault..."

"Harry, you did as he told you," Draco said intently. "It's not your fault at all. It's the fault of whoever did this to him. Who- who did, Harry? Who killed Headmaster Dumbledore?"

"I don't know," Harry said, and buried his face in his hands. "I have no idea."

: The Seaside Grave

Notes:

Hi, everyone. I'm sorry for such a long hiatus. I'm sorry to anyone I worried. I never mean to, but if I don't have anything to post, I don't really know how to address it. For the final book, I don't anticipate being able to work on that very soon, but I do still intend to finish the series sometime. I'm posting this just to finish up the sixth book properly, which was such a labor of love. I hope everyone enjoys the final chapter of it.

Thanks so much to everyone who's commented and given their thoughts on all of the books. It's really been a special pleasure and honor to hear from so many people. I appreciate it so much. Sorry again for the wait, and here's the final chapter.

Chapter Text

Xaphan was full. That was the word for it, full to brimming with terrified schoolchildren, being received in an incongruously bright, enthusiastic fashion by none other than the keeper of the place: Gilderoy Lockhart, whose presence to those who had been his students earlier was hardly inspiring of confidence. But welcome Gilderoy did, guiding the children confidently to their designated areas per year, with some words picked out for those older ones he did recognize as his former pupils. Millie, for one, was recognizable enough to receive a hearty welcome that embarrassed her to no end. She seemed unsure of herself, and having attention drawn to her presence made her understandably wary. She and Ginny gave Gilderoy weak smiles and moved on.

Gilderoy was there to direct the professors and members of the Order in from the established Portkey destination as well. Those who were merely exhausted and tired, to the right, those who needed medical attention after the battle with the Death Eaters, to the left. Severus was in the former group, but his appearance made Gilderoy predictably falter where otherwise he had been the consummate host. "Severus," he said, as if coming face to face again was a matter of similar nerves to him as battling and fleeing from Death Eaters was for the rest of the island's incoming populace. "Severus, it's, er, good to see you."

"It is good," Severus hissed, "To see no one, on this bleak day. Where is Potter?"

Harry was the one who had entrusted himself with the solemn transport of Dumbledore's covered form. Gilderoy directed Severus to the empty, half-reconstructed ruins where Harry and Aberforth had taken him. Severus stalked off without a word. Only a brief glance backwards, as if to try and tell Gilderoy his temper was not for him, before striding on.

It was harder for Xaphan to welcome the headmaster's body, but they had managed it. It was not yet decided what was to be done with it, let alone what and when the students and adults both would be told about the awful discovery Harry and Severus had made on the Astronomy Tower. Draco was possessed by a gnawing sense of blue-colored blood guilt, as if the world had felt obliged to circle around to its old destination for Dumbledore- not that Draco hadn't killed more than enough to theoretically oblige Death to spare another of his unspoken choice. He trailed after his godfather until they arrived at the shrouded form, only to jump along with the others there when Severus barked, "Well? Is Xaphan in possession of any tombs?"

That was, one had to acknowledge, a question that might have been better addressed to the place's indentured architect just now, but Draco had no heart to admonish anyone else. He might have looked askance at Harry and Aberforth, though, who had been speaking quietly before Severus and Draco's arrival, and only looked up before continuing on. "So you do know the story," Aberforth was saying to him intently, "About my sister. She was your guide, out of Hogwarts."

"I know the story as well," Severus said sourly. "Now. We must prepare the body for burial."

"Did you know my brother wasn't guilty?" Aberforth asked intently, turning from Severus to Draco with an intensity for that truth far more than the simple matter of life or death. "He wasn't, was he," he repeated, and Draco nodded to sustain the lie. "I heard it from Draco," Aberforth said, in a distant, haunted tone, "But I never said so to Albus. I never even spoke to him after that, before..."

"He knew he was innocent," Draco provided, and Severus's sharp glance over at him, not informed until now of this supposed fact, seemed to contain some guarded share of reticence at the convenience of this new knowledge. "I told him."

"Of course he was innocent," Harry said loyally. "He couldn't have done... that. Even as an accident. Headmaster Dumbledore, he- he was good." Harry stared down at the black cloth as if it could answer him somehow, with his own guilt a near-visible weight on his strong shoulders. Draco had to go to him and touch those shoulders then, much to Severus's visible disgust.

"Whatever he did or did not do... whoever did this to him... people must be told," Severus said succinctly, "That he is gone. And the body must be buried."

"Albus," a voice breathed from behind them, and Professor McGonagall arrived at the scene, flanked by Hagrid behind her. "That... that is Albus?"

"No," Hagrid gasped, and where McGonagall managed to contain her initial outburst of grief, Hagrid was unable. Draco let Harry go so he could comfort their friend. Then he felt a rush of compunction, at letting self-loathing hold him back from what should be done, and went and embraced Harry and Hagrid too.

What should be done. Severus was right. However grave what had happened that past day and night, however sorrowful the passing of Albus Dumbledore, the world turned to practicalities now.

"What are we doing here?" Hermione asked, and it was a good question. The moonstones loomed around them from every side, lit by some invisible source. It was almost undue pressure on the eyes, that much surreal, ever-effervescent brilliance. Walking the steps of Dantanian Noir was not the most pleasant of sights, however initially striking the beauty around them.

"You haven't been here, have you?" Draco mused. "But surely you recognize it."

"Harry told me you opened it," Hermione said, and a part of him tensed at just the mention of opening a secret chamber, but the knowledge of Theo and the Chamber of Secrets remained with him- and perhaps Luna- alone. So he was resolved it would stay. "But why have you taken me here?"

"I wanted your eyes, when I did this. I didn't have the chance, before," Draco told her, and felt his shoes plod over the gleaming obsidian floor in yet more echoing remnants of Dantanian's footsteps, as he advanced towards the Mirror of Erised. Harry awaited him there as faithfully as he always did, Harry as he had seen him today. The reflection seemed always to age with the real Harry, as if the most recent face he had seen was always the most desirable. That constant was some comfort, like an eye as a brief respite in the foretold unfurling of a hurricane.

"Draco, are you," Hermione breathed, "Luna told us she thought you'd found," and Draco handed her the Mirror of Espilce, since cleaned of any blood. It gleamed perfect and sterile between her smaller hands, the reversed letters quick for her to grasp. "Even death may die," she read, "In the dawning of the eclipse. Draco, did Grindelwald give this to you?"

"It was in his chest," Draco explained, and strode around the triangle at the center of the room, feet sweeping out the side of a circle, where before his feet and the position of the awaiting holder had drawn a straight line. "I don't know how or why, but he'd somehow gotten it in there and was hiding it. All that about the eclipse to get it out was a lie. I think he was scared when I found out where it really was, that I would cut him open to take it. That's why he made all that up."

"Which you would never have done," Hermione said in horror, and Draco forced a smile.

"Of course not," he said, and it was not hard for her then, to press out the story of the real circumstances of Grindelwald's death. He couldn't bear the horror on her face when she first heard of his Sectumsempra cutting Grindelwald open, but at least she seemed to understand, with Grindelwald's own command, and the circumstances as given.

"You had to do it, Draco," she said, touching his elbow with sorrow in her eyes, but sorrow for him. "Maybe the one who killed him would take possession of the mirror. He couldn't take the risk of that being Theo, could he? He wanted it to be you. Apart from who he wanted to- to choose, as his killer." She shuddered at the macabre thought.

"You said," Draco heard himself say, as if from very far away, "That premeditated murder was beyond the pale. That if we did that, we were no better than the people we were fighting."

"That wasn't murder, Draco, that was euthanasia," Hermione said gently, and enfolded him in her arms. He let himself pretend for that moment it was forgiveness for a different murder, one he already felt pressing on his chest, of which he could never speak. "You put him out of his misery. His death was inevitable, and not acting would just have prolonged his suffering. And that would have been the wrong thing to do, I'm certain of it. It's wrong to stand by and just watch someone suffer."

"I love you, Hermione," Draco breathed, while he told himself that, indeed, Theo had been suffering.

"I love you too," Hermione said with a sigh, "But that's not why we're here, is it?"

"No," Draco said, and took the mirror back from her. He wasn't about to expose her to any possible danger from this act. He held it before him between his hands, and solemnly approached the obsidian holder with a space just the right size for the mirror, another one of the triangle faces to complete. And so he completed it, letting it slide out from between his fingers into a place it almost seemed to clack and click into. It looked even smaller there, dwarfed by all the stone around it, and yet its surroundings now marked it as the equal at least of the Mirror of Erised. As an object of unmistakable mystery and threat.

Nothing else happened, though, either visibly or in feeling. There was no eruption of light, no change in either of the mirrors, nor any new sensation of rightness or power. He'd almost hoped there would be some reaction somewhere, to uniting two of the Daughters' Mirrors. But all it accomplished was retracing something that no doubt Dantanian had once done. And he would have taken it back out, to be sure, just as Draco did now, for the mobile one of the mirrors- Grindelwald had called it a weapon- to be put to use once more.

"Whatever might happen," Hermione said softly, "From the mirrors being brought together, do you think it will only happen if it's all three of them you have here?" Draco nodded, and pocketed the Mirror of Espilce. He felt a jot of panicked exposed guilt at the slightest of sounds, the knocking of metal on metal- the mirror against Periander's dagger- but of course Hermione hadn't heard it, and wouldn't have known the things it meant. And he had a story made up for it even if she had.

"You're right," Draco said, willing to agree with any proposition which took him away from thoughts of Theo. "It probably does take all three. But I'm sure there are things that just this mirror can do." They knew about the Dementors. And Draco knew about the fire.

"Why do you think Grindelwald hid the mirror within himself, for so long?" Hermione asked, coming close behind him. Draco took out the mirror and let her hold it for a while, examining her own reflection as if expecting it to somehow change at any moment to something revelatory.

"I think," Draco said, "Because there was something about it that made it dangerous. Too dangerous even for Grindelwald."

Draco had to ask around a fair bit, that second night of their exile at Xaphan, but eventually he found himself directed to one of the places he should have checked first: the Hogwarts kitchens. He found Luna there sitting on the cold stone floor with Dobby, listening raptly to his story of the escape of the Hogwarts house elves. "You led it, of course," Draco surmised easily, and Dobby went all embarrassed and self-conscious at the reminder of his own Gryffindor heroism.

"But Dobby was not successful," Dobby said sadly, wringing his hands together there in the dark corner where Draco settled himself with them. "Dobby did not get out all of the elves. Dobby's old friends Wooky and Nissy are missing."

Luna frowned. "Oh, Dobby," she said sadly. "They were so angry with you, for being on our side, with everything. And they were Parkinson elves, before Hogwarts. Do you think- maybe they would have chosen to stay behind?"

"Like Vince and Greg, and Blaise and Pansy?" Draco finished for her, tasting ashes on his tongue.

Dobby accepted the explanation quickly, seeming to sense the deceptive verisimilitude in it, or just grateful for any version of events which didn't involve him having abandoned his once-closest friends. Draco hugged him firmly then- so firmly he had to pull himself back sternly, for fear of betraying his own guilt- and then Luna did, and then even at this hour, Dobby was called back to work by the other elves, trying to clean and organize the Xaphan kitchens into some semblance of working order to again feed an army of students upon the morrow.

Draco walked Luna back to the makeshift Ravenclaw dorms- off the first-floor corridor beside the library tower, as if Gilderoy had claimed all that section for his former house. She was quiet and pensive, as she often was these days, but she seemed to brighten upon hearing he had told Hermione of the Mirror of Espilce, and not of Luna's role in helping him conceal it from the adults. "Do you think it will help?" she asked, simply enough, and yet it was another fraught question.

"It already has," Draco said, and from the face she turned to him then, even she didn't catch the full implication. She started and hugged him painfully, though, upon his whispered revelation about his role in Grindelwald's death, and seemed thankful he intended to let all of their small group know about that and the mirror.

"You should, you know," she said earnestly. "Especially Harry. You've made the promise to be honest with him, you can't let it fall away now."

Then her gaze dropped, as even she seemed to feel the hypocrisy in her own words, knowing some great unspeakable terror he was holding back from the entire world's eyes. He wished he could tell her that the evidence had been burned. Instead, he answered that entreaty with, "Look at this. Fenrir Greyback, I think."

She took the dagger from him in a horrified kind of stupor, turning it over in her hand by the hilt. Her light eyes seemed to be remembering the sight of it discarded bloodied on the bathroom floor outside his shower, beside his bloodied ashen clothes. "What-"

"I got this dagger," Draco said, enunciating clear and heavy on every fatal word of falsehood, "From Fenrir Greyback. That's how I got it back. He had it, when we were saving those first-years from him, and he dropped it when I cursed him, and I grabbed it and took it with me, that's why I have it now, after losing it at Nurmengard. Right? That's how it happened?"

"Yes," Luna said, after a shorter period than he would have expected. It only seemed enough time for her to understand his words, as if no time was needed for internal debate about whether or not to help him. That much seemed a foregone conclusion for her. "Yes, I saw, you got it from Fenrir Greyback. Do you... do you think the first-years saw that?"

"I think," Draco said carefully, "Things were so hectic and terrifying for them then, they won't be sure whether or not they've seen anything. Nor would anyone expect them to."

Luna stared at him, then stepped forward and enveloped him in her arms with a great ponderous hug, seizing him with all the strength in her little body. "Draco," she gasped. "Draco, I wish- I wish I didn't know- Theodore Nott-"

"Do you want to know more?" Draco asked her, and she hastily shook her head.

"No," she said violently, "No, I don't." It sounded like she didn't want it to be true. Maybe this way she could keep up some plausible deniability in her head, or lessen her own guilt.

"Then I won't tell you," Draco said, and hugged her tighter.

There was so much to be done, so much that it was easier than usual not to think. There was a Ravenclaw house and common room to put in order, right around him, and then there was the chaos of the whole new castle, still half-built and in many cases half-supplied. There was more personal matters as well, such as ensuring Millie was comfortable at Xaphan, in the midst of so many she would never feel she belonged with. As much as Ginny could help with that, there was some things Draco had to focus on, like making sure she had full clothes and supplies for herself.

It was a reality striking her and Draco along with everyone else. In fleeing, they had left their possessions at Hogwarts, for the Death Eaters, and any students who stayed on their side, to do with as they pleased. Draco, for one, had a good idea what certain Slytherins might wish to do with his things, once one of them made it past the Ravenclaw entrance. Even without Theo to help, Blaise or Pansy should suffice...

But Draco wasn't thinking about them.

Instead, he threw himself into the management of the place. Remus was the one most focused on supplies, already having spare uniforms for each student in place, but needing more, as well as arranging their transport home. Still, there was one project Draco found himself confounded by, a project that could be laid at the feet of no one but him.

What to do about Grindelwald's body.

The phoenix's lament was haunting, and Draco was hardly worthy to listen to it, given the current state of his temperament. He stared forward at the great white edifice of Dumbledore's new seaside tomb, and felt the song within himself, but as an admonishment for the lack of sorrow. As if Fawkes could somehow sing his way into the soul of each mourner, and read their grief or lack thereof, manifest to the most bereaved of them all. Perhaps it would be different if Draco could summon up tears for the occasion, the way Harry beside him had. But as person after person came forward to speak of history, of Dumbledore's great impact on the world and their own lives- Fawkes's song over Xaphan lending their words the endorsement of pure emotion behind them- the purest emotion Draco could feel was rage, bubbling under as inappropriate as if he had designs to spring forward and smash at the pale stone.

Because once again, Dumbledore had left Draco in the dark. The old trickster. He had departed the world with all his secrets still with him, his killer even the last secret that hung over all of their heads. The Elder Wand was gone, and Dumbledore had somehow contrived to die in a manner that left them without any knowledge as to where that could be found. If Draco were to die soon, he would be sure to leave at least some kind of signpost where the talon wand could be found. Here lies Dantanian Noir. Take at your own peril.

And then there was the locket retrieved with so much strife, on the night the world as it had been had come to an end: a fake that Harry carried with him always, RAB the taunting thief who Dumbledore would never have the courtesy to come down from the sky and unmask for them. The selfish man. But Draco was hardly at pulse with the mood of the times.

Cry, you deceitful bastard, he willed himself. Cry. It's what's in fashion.

Here lay Albus Dumbledore, and Harry was not the only one softly crying at the song of Fawkes and words of Minerva McGonagall. There was the shabby, lonely figure of Aberforth. Draco gave Harry a last reassuring squeeze on the shoulder before leaving him and crossing the mourners towards the deceased's brother. Sirius and Remus enfolded Harry in their paternal embrace, and Draco went and offered a hug to the man without anyone else in the world to give him one. To Draco's surprise, the silent bereaved accepted him.

We don't know where the wand is. We don't know where the rest of the Horcruxes are. We don't know where the wand is... That was the mantra that circulated through Draco's head all the worse as Aberforth clung to him and began to let out great belting sobs, so much they drew attention. Draco wished he could return the stares with his own acid tongue- this was the only actual family present, he was relatively sure- but they just had to proceed with the solemn ritual of it all, them the mourners who had evacuated to Xaphan with the body. No others could have been trusted enough to bring to the island for the funeral. Their new school, their new fortress, Dumbledore's new great monument and tomb- the ocean beside it was gleaming, on a sun-streaked day so beautiful it almost mocked their tears.

Draco left that maddening scene as soon as he could, once it had formally disbanded. He didn't know if there was to be any form of reception or the like, but he had to trust his friends to comfort each other, now that Aberforth had officially departed the scene. He noticed a sideways glance from Harry as Draco made his skulking way off from the part of the wall that held the new tomb, but Harry didn't follow, and Draco was relieved. Selfish as it was, thoroughly as he should have thrown himself into comforting his crying friends with his own lack of grief as an advantage, he had his own work to do tonight, and it was elsewhere. If not very far.

Draco's feet knew the path without him having to think of it much. He had been here already many times, first choosing the site, then overseeing the creation of the grave. In lack of any enthusiasm from other parties, it had been Draco himself to put his crafting abilities at last to practical use, and take the stone and carve it, with minimal direction. The end result? Well, the best that could be said for it was that it looked something like a proper grave. In the same way Draco looked something like a proper hero.

It was a blunt rectangle of stone set magically in the firm dirt that led into sand, right at the oceanside. The stone had no particular decoration, save an indentation painstakingly carved in as a frame and then another smaller frame, curtailing the space to be used for writing. Draco had agonized over this piece of work far more than anyone would guess, wondering just how much ornamentation was proper for the grave of a man like Grindelwald. He had ever been conscious of not wanting to apply himself too much, to not create a spectacle that seemed any variety of praise for the body that dwelt beneath it.

Magic would shield the stone and the body from the threat of the ocean nearby, should it escape the normal bounds of tide or storm, even should the island shrink over centuries and erosion begin its slow uncaring work. That would be too much for many if asked, of course. Many would deprive Grindelwald of any kind of monument, though at least its location in Xaphan would prevent many visitors, or fascist pilgrimages or the like.

Maybe Grindelwald should have been burned and his ashes scattered over the water instead. But here it was, a smoothed but dark surface of flat granite that read, Gellert Grindelwald. 1883-1997. There remained a long section beneath the spare carving waiting for more writing, some verdict to be placed upon the man's name above it. That conspicuous absence remained so, and none but Draco would fill it.

The sand was not far away, but Draco was lazy enough to summon rather than go collect it as he sat cross-legged before his newest and largest art project, rather on a greater scale than the charms on Hermione's bracelet carved of transfigured turquoise. Draco let the sand drop onto the empty part of the slab in the ground, itself perhaps a profanation, and began to test out words writing in the sand. Monster, he tested out in outline form, and the sheer absurdity on a grave made him laugh. But what else could he put that would not be an insult to so many uselessly dead by this man's hand, and this man's influence a lifetime ago? Not that Draco had seen that side of him, or very much of it. To Draco he had been... had his own hand really just written out the word Mentor? Draco smoothed over the sand, and tried writing Listener, and had to keep laughing at himself. The sound came out rather hysterical, like he was some unwanted little one playing with sandcastles, with no greater care in the world to occupy an abandoned child.

Liar, Draco tried, but it was useless, as was Fascist or Repentant, even though only the latter felt a lie. He ended up sweeping the sand away as best he could, putting an end to this macabre free association game, and decided to speak to the grave instead.

"So we meet again," Draco said, and found himself pulling a face before he remembered that there ought to be some respect paid to the dead, even if unworthy of the outpouring of grief and song that met the likes of Albus Dumbledore. "I've gotten sand on your grave, you know."

As one would expect of a grave, the grave was silent, despite the enormity of the offense.

"I should be with my friends, mourning Dumbledore, not you," Draco said conversationally. "Not that I am mourning you, you old bastard. No one's going to mourn you, you know. At least not anyone who really knew you." That was, if anyone left in this world did. Did Draco qualify? Had he known the Prisoner of Nurmengard?

"Maybe I'm here to tell you something," Draco mused aloud. "Homenum revelio... something only for your decomposed ears, mind." The spell showed no one in the immediate vicinity, which was good enough. "It's something only you would understand, so it's a pity you had to die, Grindelwald, before you could hear it. I mean, I don't know what we would have done with you if you had lived- I guess you'd have ended up at L'Infern, bored and railing at me for false advertising- but there, I could have come, and you could have listened to me. Since I met you, it never occurred to me, you know, that you'd stop being there to listen to me." Draco took a deep breath, once again needing to modulate his ire. Let's keep blaming that on Dantanian. "So fucking inconsiderate of you to die. Even if I am the one that killed you. But I killed Theo too, and I didn't make him a gravestone, I just set him on fire, so you ought to feel special-"

Draco's voice was breaking, so he stopped talking until he had it under control. As if anyone was listening but the wind. But still he found himself speaking as if Grindelwald could hear. "Yeah, I killed you, alright? But I would have saved you if I could have. You know that. You have to know that.

"So I'm here to tell you that I've made up my mind," Draco finished, clearing his throat. "It's me. I made a deal, and I'm going to stick to it. Me for Severus. I'm going to be the one who Death takes. I'm going to pay his price. Except- except-" Draco's voice broke fully then, but he kept going. "It turns out I actually don't want to die. I don't want to die at all, Grindelwald. Do you think when I go, I'll go as peacefully as you did? I doubt it."

Draco felt tears threatening at the back of his eyes, hot and tinged with self-pity, and he lacked the will to hold them back. A remaining streak of sand across the granite surface was darkened tan by a teardrop landing on it, striking in one round shape like a bullet hole before rolling through the sand to wet more. Another teardrop, the tears he hadn't been able to summon for Dumbledore arriving for himself.

"It does have to be me, you know," he said all in a burst, justifying himself to Grindelwald. "I'm sure of it. I have to be the one to die. It's just- a bit hard to imagine, all that, dying. You made it look so easy, but... now that I've chosen this, it turns out there's so little time left, and Harry..."

Don't let yourself talk about Harry, it will just make you cry more.

Draco talked about Harry, and cried more.

"I don't want to leave Harry. I wish there was some way to die without leaving him. I need him too much to die and go somewhere he won't be. I need to be near him. I want to be near him as much as I can be. Before it's over. Before I pay- before I pay the bargain of Orpheus-"

Draco found himself doubling over, clutching at his stomach and sides as his words poured out, childish and pleading. "Merlin, I can't. I love him too much to die." And then, spoken from another part of himself, detached and absolute as the swing of a sword down on an unprotected neck: "But it's already decided."

He cried for some time, then, before wiping his eyes enough to regard the tear-stained grave balefully. "Waiting for you to say something to dissuade me here. Kind of thought you'd be more passionately against it. But I'll take your silence as agreement."

He didn't know how long he sat there, words run out, before footsteps neared and Harry appeared. It must have been some time, because the sun had gone from brilliant summer obnoxiousness to a layered pink and golden-orange sunset. "There you are," Harry said, sounding a bit breathless. "I've been looking for you everywhere. There's something I need to tell you. Hermione thought you might be here, but I didn't think-"

"Hey," Draco said weakly, and struggled to come up with any excuse that didn't make him sound like a fascist in training. "I still haven't finished it, you know." He hastily wiped aside the rest of the sand in tear-wet patches on the stone. "It's still... real bare, so..."

"Did you come here to think?" Harry ventured, and Draco nodded, eyes still on the grave. It was close enough.

"I need to tell you something," Harry began, "That I realized at Dumbledore's funeral," and then stopped when he got a better look at Draco's face. "Have you been crying?"

"No!" Draco said quickly, worried that Harry would think he had been crying for Grindelwald. But that was far easier than explaining what really had drawn the tears from his tired eyes. "I was before. For the headmaster. That's all."

"Okay," Harry said, shifting uncomfortably above Draco. "Um, I have something I really need to tell you. Draco, I'm sorry, but I think we need to break up."

The words were incomprehensible at first to Draco. "What? What do you mean, break up?"

"Well, we were already taking a break," Harry said defensively, only to flinch away when Draco rose to his feet. "I just think it, er, isn't working out, Draco, and it would be for the best just to end it."

"What?" Draco said helplessly. I was just crying over you, you bastard, and now it's like you don't care for me at all. Except he knew how many times he must have made Harry feel exactly this way, over the years. Maybe that was why this was coming now. But he couldn't accept it anyway, deserved or not, not with so little time left.

"No!"

"What do you mean, no?" Harry asked, surprised, and when Draco took a step forward, he took a corresponding one backwards. "I'm breaking up with you, Draco. You can't just say no."

"Not unless you give me a reason," Draco insisted. He stared Harry right in the eye, finding Harry rather puffy-eyed and swollen-faced too, after sobbing at Dumbledore's funeral. Harry was really choosing to do this now? Had the spirit of Dumbledore descended to him and demanded he give that glorified Death Eater boyfriend of his the boot already?

Harry hesitated, and Draco stepped up and tried to take his hands. Harry shied away, wincing. "Don't. I can't think if you..." He was avoiding even Draco's gaze now.

That was as good as an admission, and Draco pounced on it. "So the problem isn't that you don't like me like that anymore, is it? You haven't gotten tired of that?" If Harry didn't even want him anymore, he knew everything was lost.

"No!" Harry exclaimed, truly flustered, gaze going to stare at his feet. "It's not that, of course not. It's not you at all, Draco, okay? I just... I told you, I realized something at Dumbledore's funeral. It was that I have to go away."

"Away," Draco echoed skeptically, but hope seizing through him again already.

"After Bill and Fleur's wedding, I have to leave Xaphan," Harry said miserably. "Alone. The Horcruxes, Draco, I have to go after them myself. It's what Dumbledore wanted me to do, that's why he told me all about them. If he was right- and I'm sure he was- there are still three of them out there. I've got to find and destroy them and then I've got to go after the seventh bit of Voldemort's soul, the bit that's still in his body, and I'm the one who's going to kill him-"

"Take me with you," Draco said immediately, and the remaining sunlight came out from behind a cloud, lighting Harry from behind as something heroic and dazzling, something maybe ephemeral that had to be clasped onto hard to retain any memory of that transient golden glow. Draco managed to seize Harry's hand. "I'll leave Xaphan. I don't care. You'll do what you have to, your Chosen One thing, and I'll protect you."

"That's why I'm trying to end this with you," Harry said in frustration. "To protect you. So I don't put anyone I care about in danger again-"

"Harry," Draco said heavily, and took Harry's chin with his other hand. Harry's gaze met his heartrendingly young and innocent, so earnestly trying to do the right thing even if it cost him what it did seem he really wanted. "Have you ever met me? Don't you understand that wherever I go, no matter who we face, I'm the dangerous one?" How many bodies do I have to drop before you understand that charming fact, beloved?

"Did I wound your dragon-sized ego?" Harry said softly, lips curling up, and Draco felt the urge like a lightning bolt to kiss him, but held himself back.

"You did, a little," Draco pouted, and Harry's eyes lit up, hopelessly fond, and Draco thought maybe he had him.

"I don't know where we'd be going, or what we'd have to do," Harry warned him. "I really think Dumbledore meant for me to take this path alone..."

"You can't, though," Draco said firmly. "You can do what you want about us, Harry. If you really want to throw this away, then do it. Make me just your friend. Your acquaintance, even. But it'll be an acquaintance going Horcrux-hunting with you. I'm not leaving your side for a second."

Harry laughed shakily. "You're impossible."

"Wait until you see," Draco said stubbornly, "Just how impossible I am. Try and leave me behind and I'll hunt you to the ends of the earth like you were Voldemort."

"That's what Ron and Hermione said," Harry admitted. "I mean- less, ah, colorfully, but still. They won't have any of me trying to go without them. They know about the Horcruxes too already, so they want to find them with me." Of course they do. They were with you in the blue loop, weren't they? And now I will be too. "They said that they'll go with me, wherever I go. I should have expected the same from you, shouldn't I? Even if we aren't, well-"

"We should be," Draco said at once, insistent with conviction. "We should be. So let's talk about us."

"We were talking about what will decide the fate of the world," Harry said disbelievingly. Draco snorted and tossed his head. They were staring at each other intently now, Draco cupping Harry's face, and Harry's fingers slid wonderingly through Draco's long pale hair. It was a sensation as good as sex, so bad it was that Draco found he wanted.

"We were," Draco agreed steadily, far from tears now, "And now we're on to something more important."

"More important," Harry repeated, and Draco nodded.

"That's right," Draco agreed. "You and me. That's all it comes down to. I'll find you the Horcruxes. I'll do it all, for you. Please. I'm sure we can save the world, if you'll only- please, if you'll just take me back again-"

"Are you begging?" Harry said wonderingly. "You're so proud, dragon. And you're-"

"I'm begging," Draco said unflinchingly, "Because you're worth begging for, Harry Potter," and felt his heart clench miserably, at the thought of Harry still turning him away. He could only hope Harry wouldn't tell their friends of this then, perhaps with concern, at how far Draco Black had disintegrated. But there was nothing to do but beg, thinking, I can't die without being with you again, just one more time. Though he was sure he would have the same exact thought, after "just" one more time.

"Stop that. You're insane," Harry said breathlessly, and Draco leaned in to let Harry kiss him, if he wanted. He felt a rush of blind rejection, so bitter it could have choked him, when Harry made no such move to do so. Instead, Harry rested their foreheads together. "Have you listened to a word I've said?" Draco nodded brightly, making Harry groan. "You really shouldn't come-"

"I don't give up that easily. Don't you know who I am?"

"There's that proud dragon I expected," Harry sighed, breath sliding over Draco's cheek. He showed no sign of pulling away from how close their faces were, as the light behind them began to recede under the gray-blue clouds that blocked the gilded sunset.

"I'm this terrible thing," Draco began, and waved Harry's objections away. "I'm this terrible, awful, violent broken thing, and if you think to protect me by keeping me away from you, all I can tell you is you don't understand what I am at all." No one did. "What I am is a weapon, and when I tell you I'll kill anyone who gets close to you, I-"

"You're not terrible," Harry whispered. "And you're not broken. It's just- Dumbledore gave me this mission alone, and-"

"Fuck Dumbledore," Draco snapped, and maybe there were kinder sentiments to be aired on the day of the man's funeral, but anything that would keep him away from Harry, he wanted nothing to do with it. "He had to have known I would come. Ron and Hermione too. We're coming and there's no getting around it. Case closed. There's only the question of what to do with Luna and Neville, and Ginny. Now-" Draco broke off, strident voice finally conquered by Harry hugging him close, where they remained as the sun set, beside Grindelwald's half-completed grave.

"I love you, you know," Harry whispered in Draco's ear, and Draco shivered at the feeling. "So much I can't stand it sometimes. I know what I should feel- know what I'm meant to do- but I- but you- I love you too much, Draco Black, and I..."

"Then kiss me," Draco breathed, staring into Harry's perfect eyes as the world around them grew darker. And Harry obeyed, finally, pressing his mouth to Draco's and letting that familiar melting feeling consume them at last, that unshakable draw together that had Draco panting soon and lunging in senseless with shut eyes. The sheer giddy sensation of Harry's nearness, his warmth, was enough to chase away the lingering insecurities at the edges, the doubts, even the awareness of death, so close by, waiting.

The children went home from Xaphan without real clarity as to where they would be returning in the fall. Xaphan would be sending its letters as well as Hogwarts, was as far as Draco could determine, not just to new first-years but to all of the once-Hogwarts students, inviting them back to the place that had proved their refuge from the attack. Draco had to wonder if all of the Slytherins would be receiving those invitations. Somehow he thought, say, Vince and Greg's might get lost in the mail.

He knew Theo wouldn't be sent one, an expelled student and known Death Eater after his actions at Nurmengard, but it still flickered uncomfortably through his head, the image of a letter sent out for no one to read. House Nott was fallen, the line come to an end in blood and fire. And Draco held the secret in the dagger in his pocket that marked him as unworthy of his return at last to Harry's affections, but he was done worrying about worthiness. Not with so little time left. Less than a year, it was. Draco could count the days, if he so desired. May 2nd. That would be the day he died. Everything until then was to be dedicated to ensuring his nine names would still be safe once he was gone.

The most cloudy of those names was currently inspecting the dungeons of Xaphan. Slughorn had no desire to stay on, so to speak, not as Xaphan's Potions master, and Severus had somehow miraculously agreed to step down from his long-desired position as Dark Arts teacher. He would be Potions master again, in the too-vast dungeons of Xaphan, a blank emptiness he would have to fill with something before the students returned again. Draco could picture Severus holding forth to a scared, enthralled mass of children with nothing but a cauldron before him in that great bleakness, saying, I show you how to ensnare the mind and bewitch the senses...

Blink, and the picture faded, the two of them alone in vast darkness again. "I have a question for my godfather," Draco said brightly, and Severus turned to regard him balefully.

"What does my burdensome godson require now?" Just the acknowledgment of the relationship showed how things were alright between them, as they should be. I hope someday you understand what your burdensome godson is going to sacrifice for you.

And he knew what was before him was worth the sacrifice.

"Oh, just, you seemed the person to ask," Draco said, and squinted. "If you, say, hypothetically, had taken charge of the final resting place of one of history's darkest wizards, and were looking for a simple yet tasteful message to engrave upon the stone, what would you write? Hypothetically. Asking for a friend."

It didn't get Draco any closer to an answer, but there was still a happiness to hearing that gruff voice bark out a horrified, "Out!"

"Love you!" Draco exclaimed cheerfully, before skittering away in obedience.

Severus wasn't the only one taking up a new position. Remus was taking up his old post as Defense teacher. Sirius was being taken on as Dueling Master. Somehow Draco doubted that Severus would be as willing to serve as his assistant as he had been for Gilderoy. Said golden-haired host, in fact, was employed yet again by what was de-facto Hogwarts in everything but name and place now: he would be teaching techniques to the older students for castle reconstruction, on the many parts of Xaphan that still remained unrestored. McGonagall would be headmistress and head of Gryffindor, Flitwick Charms professor and head of Ravenclaw, on and so forth, all taught beside the great white tomb of the man who had held Hogwarts for them against the dark until he, at last, had succumbed as well.

Draco found himself visiting Grindelwald's grave more often, though no closer to an answer of what to write. Harry followed him to it once, the hustle and bustle of Portkeys away from Xaphan for the students long since concluded, and settled on the ground beside Draco, letting his face slide into place from behind, looking over Draco's shoulder.

"Still don't know what to put on it?" he sighed, and Draco shook his head. Harry caught Draco by the chin and turned his face into a kiss that melted him down to his toes, but left him no closer to an answer, of what words he would have to leave behind him here, when he and Harry and everyone made their departure from Xaphan. He was dreading the letter to Remus and Sirius and Severus explaining it that he planned to leave behind. His much-vaunted articulateness had deserted him here completely, and so it was that he parted his lips from Harry's with that same frustrating vacancy in his mind when it came to the slab of stone below him.

"Did you enjoy that, Grindelwald?" Draco said dryly, licking his lips after the taste of Harry he'd gotten, even in such a place, the sea wind whipping at him from the side like an affirmation. "Yeah, I bet you did."

"Do you talk to him when you come here?" Harry asked, and Draco shrugged awkwardly.

"I just need to think what it should say," Draco sighed, and Harry wrapped his arms around his neck and gave him a few more lingering kisses before leaving him to the wind.

Maybe it was the aftertaste of Harry that made him think more. Maybe it was the knowledge of the plan they had waiting for them, three Horcruxes to destroy, that had him set at last on what to write on Grindelwald's grave. Or maybe it was the weight on his shoulders of the mission he would have to undertake alone.

By the end of that evening, he had departed that graveside, leaving behind the words

Gellert Grindelwald

1883-1997

He died with grace.

Draco could only hope they would be able to say the same of him, by the time his final act was through.