Heavenly Creatures

Wiltshire, August 5^th, 1995.

5:00 p.m.

They ride across the open fields surrounding the estate, Pansy Parkinson and Draco Malfoy, a few days before her summer visit to the Manor is to end. It is a brilliantly warm late afternoon when they return, the sunlight slanting molten gold across the long grasses. Draco has some color in his cheeks from the ride; he is laughing and she is too, the wind whipping her hair into a torrent. He's grown a great deal that summer. He is taller now, and while he is still very thin, his shoulders are broader, and his hair a little long. His resemblance to his father is more pronounced than ever.

"You don't look so miserable and pale as usual," she says, drawing her mount up beside his. "Suppose the air's doing you some good."

Draco rakes her with his eyes, and a smirk twists up one side of his mouth. "Pansy, you give such lovely compliments," he says. "There are people who would say you're looking well today, at that."

"Don't you think I'm pretty?" she asks.

"I don't like brunettes very much," he shrugs.

"What would you prefer?" she asks coldly.

He laughs again, without humor. "You seriously imagine I'm going to tell you?" She kicks her horse into a gallop, and he rides behind her, watching her movements. She doesn't rouse his interest or passion or desire any more than she ever has. But something raw and undifferentiated is eating away at him, and has been biting with particularly sharp teeth during the last couple of days. Since I went to London with Mother, Draco thinks. Since I saw Granger, and that Weasley girl with the big black dog... Whenever he tries to analyze the memory further, there seems to be some sort of mental block that springs up, as if protecting his mind from something too dangerous to grasp clearly.

The stables are deserted. Pansy is standing on the mounting block and rubbing down her horse, Ban. No-one expects them to return for dinner. Lucius is in the library all afternoon, and Narcissa, the gardens. Snape has been about for the past several days, but he has spent most of his time closeted with Lucius Malfoy, and anyway Draco knows that the stables were the last place his Potions Master would ever be found. He moves almost silently towards her, but she has apparently heard something, because she turns to see him looking at her, giving Ban a pat or two on the flank, never taking his eyes off her. She is nearly as tall as he, standing there, raised several inches off the ground. She stands very still as he comes up behind her and starts kissing her on the neck.

The sensation is like trying to drink sea water in an attempt to quench thirst. But he cannot stop himself, and she has not yet tried to stop him. He's been avoiding her for so long, since the night of the Yule Ball when he left her in his bed to sleep on a couch in the Slytherin common room, really; still, Draco knows now that this afternoon was inevitable. He is drawn to her again, even though the very taste of her skin is bitter on his lips. He presses his body against hers, slowly; and touches her in a way that he knows is inexpert and fumbling. Her pert little nose wrinkles. His hands steal up to touch the undersides of her small breasts, stroking them firmly. "Don't," she says.

Draco lets his hands fall, trying desperately to control his labored breathing. A few minutes later, he realizes that his fingers are reappearing at the waist of her jodhpurs, seemingly without his volition. Pansy slaps them down. "Well, I'm definitely not going to let you do that," she says.

"You don't want me touching you at all, do you?" Draco asks, hating her, hating himself for wanting this from her.

"Not particularly, no."

"Fine," he says as scathingly as he can. "Fine. If there were any other halfway decent girl around the estate this summer, I'd be with her instead of you, anyway."

Pansy turns halfway towards him. Since she is standing on the mounting block, her black-cherry eyes are level with his. "Oh?" she asks. "Such as who?"

He cannot look away from Pansy's narrowing eyes, those dark, opaque eyes that reveal nothing. He is suddenly afraid that they see far too much.

"Don't," he says. "Don't turn around."

"Why n--"

"And don't speak. Not a word."

Pansy stands very still. Draco can feel that his lips and teeth and tongue are becoming desperate, as if searching for something on her skin that he cannot find. He needs something from her, but he already knows that she will allow him as little of herself as possible. He decides that Pansy's soul is mean and stingy, like twice-skimmed milk poured over watery oatmeal. Few images could possibly be less sensuous than that one, but by this point Draco is too desperate for some sort of release to care very much. He presses up against her rhythmically. She may be willing to give him no more than this, but he will, by Merlin, at least have this.

"All right, I don't mind," she says. "But that's too hard, what you're doing to my neck. You'll leave bruises. All my summer robes are too low-cut to cover them."

"Be quiet," he says. "I don't want to hear your voice." Draco tries for his father's tone of command, but his words come out rather frantic, a little high-pitched. The sucking and biting on her skin become gentler. He doesn't want to hurt her. No, even though it's Pansy; he doesn't want to hurt her. He wonders if she despises him for that consideration, in some obscure way. He dislikes her as much as she probably does him, but there is something in him that can never entirely lay her feelings aside. It must be as his father has so often said. Draco has not yet learned how to use people properly and perhaps never will; he is weak, too soft, like his mother. Yet he knows that Pansy has never quite been able to grasp the weakness in him, even though she has constantly searched for some fingerhold in his impervious surface. I wonder if she thinks this could be it...I won't allow it to be. I should leave her this second. I shouldn't do this. What am I going to do, anyway? I don't know, exactly... but I think I'm going to regret it... If he can only narrow his perceptions down to this moment, this event. The feelings coursing through his body when he presses against her are so specific, so focused and utterly physical, that he thinks he can manage the trick.

At that very moment, she glances round to look at him.

"Don't look at me, Pansy; I don't want to see your face!" he blurts.

"You're-- you're pretending I'm someone else," she says slowly. "That's it, isn't it."

"Shut up," he says through clenched teeth. "Shut up, shut up, shut up..." She knows, he thinks, without knowing what he means. But still he cannot stop himself. The world has shrunk to these sensations that seize him with their painfully delicious fire.

He squeezes his eyes tightly shut. The moment of crisis approaches and approaches, and then, suddenly, it is on him. He grasps Pansy's body so tightly that she gasps, and he shudders against her, feeling every one of his muscles shiver briefly in its own separate instant of pleasure.

He hears a voice murmuring something, so softly that he can barely hear it. The word might have been a sigh, or the end of a long breath.

"...Ginny..."

And Draco realizes that the voice is his own.

No. It can't have been. Or if it was, it must have been audible only in his mind.

Pansy runs her fingers through her hair and straightens her robes. They are slightly crumpled. Draco watches her, suppressing a horrible urge to weep. What has just happened between them means nothing. It satisfies nothing. The awful frustration smoldering in him is worse than ever. The memory of those few seconds of amazing pleasure has only sharpened it. The sensation of something unfinished and unfinishable is almost more than Draco can stand. He clears his throat.

"You're leaving tomorrow?"

"Yes," she says. She shoots him a sharp glance of dislike from beneath her lowered lashes.

For the briefest instant, he wonders if he could get away with strangling her and throwing her body into one of the unused haylofts. No. His father knows she's here, and knows that she won't be going home until the end of the week. She gives her hair a final pat.

On the way out of the stables, neither of them speaks. As they begin walking across the stable yard, he tries to take her hand. She shakes it off.

"Do not touch me," Pansy hisses.

"Fine," he says. He would give anything to know if he had actually spoken Ginny Weasley's name, but there is no way in which to ask that question. She seems irritated with him, but that means nothing. Perhaps she's regretting what they've done, as little as that was. Too late now, Draco thinks sulkily.

"I'm not letting you do that to me again," she says.

Draco feels his face settle into a smooth blankness. "No fear of that, Pansy. I'd rather wank off any day. At least then I'm doing it with someone I like."

"How sweet," she says sarcastically. "Do you cry out your own name tenderly?"

Draco's lips compress into a thin line. "As I just finished saying," he says in measured tones, "if you don't want me near you again, that's fine with me. For now."

They keep walking, and his pace quickens until Pansy is hard put to keep up with him.

"What do you mean, for now?" she asked.

He whirled to face her. "One day," he says, "you'll have to let me do whatever I want to do to you, however I want, as much as I want. No matter how much you hate me. No matter how much I despise you. And I'll know how much you'll hate it, and I'll be glad. Glad. At least I'll have some pleasure that way, Pansy. The gods know it's the only way I'll ever get any out of you." The words spill from his mouth, hot and vile. The sensation reminds him of all the times he has ever taunted Potter and Granger and Weasley at Hogwarts, of the vicious satisfaction he takes in his vicious words, and of the bitter, burning bile that always rises in his throat, afterwards.

"The minute fall term starts at Hogwarts," said Pansy, "I'll spread my legs for the first boy who comes through the door to the Slytherin common room. And I'll keep doing it for anything that moves, and I'll laugh the entire time I have to let you shag me, knowing that you're taking their leavings."

His lips curve into a malicious smirk. "Do I think I want you to save yourself for me from now on? If you're a complete slag all autumn long, at least you might know a few good tricks by the time we have to start--"

She lunges at him. He catches her hand in the air without the slightest effort and pulls her to him. He doesn't want her. He's never wanted her. But still, she is his, and must be marked as such. Draco kisses her, so hard that he can feel the soft flesh of her lip giving slightly under his sharp canine teeth, but what should be passionate is utterly without passion. It is a claiming kiss. A sealing kiss. There is anger in it, but no desire. Pansy whimpers, a tiny sound that caught in her throat, and he stands motionless for a moment.

"You're hurting me," she whispers.

He pushes her away, scowling. "I'm not going to let you drive me to that." Draco dabs at her lip with a handkerchief from his pocket, and shame prods at him, very faintly. He realizes that his hands are gentler than they have likely ever been, touching her. She stands very still. "No, Pansy, you'll never be able to say that I've hurt you in that way. Come on-- let's get you to a healer-elf."

They walk to one of the back ways into the manor, through the rose garden. There is no friendly feeling between them, but the anger seems to have had spent itself, leaving only an empty hollowness. "You know, I don't mind if you shag other girls," Pansy finally says.

"Generous of you," Draco replies shortly. He wants this afternoon to be done, and he wants her shrill breathy voice out of his head.

"I mean it. I really don't. Just be discreet about it, that's all I would ask. I don't care to be made a fool of. Other than that, amuse yourself."

The smirk returns to Draco's face, like an old friend. "I can't imagine why anyone would say romance is dead."

"Well, wouldn't you like to?" she asks awkwardly. "I mean--- I'm sure there are girls who would, if you wanted. It's not that you're bad-looking, or anything, Draco. It's just that I-- well, I can't seem to--"

"Mmm. Well, my self-confidence is fully restored by your oh-so-kind words, Pansy."

"Well," she persists, "why don't you then?"

He stares straight ahead, his wintry grey eyes avoiding hers. They are doomed for each other, he and she. Surely, Pansy must know that.

"You don't know why?" He rubs his face. "We each have our own hells. That's one of mine. I'll be damned if-- well, I suppose I am already. But I won't share my private damnation with you." And Draco hurries even faster, knowing she won't be able to catch up with him, leaving her standing outside a banging back door to an unused hall, staring.

The seven Endless are older that the oldest star, older than the gods, and each has a realm of his--or her--own, for these Immortals take on the shapes of both men and women. No living being can guess where the realms are, although some say east of the sun, and west of the moon. But mortals may reach these unmapped places in many strange ways, and also those who were once mortal. In the hall of the Lord of Dreams, in the Heart of the Dreaming, there hang many portraits. Some are images of Dream's siblings--Desire, Despair, Destruction, Destiny, Delirium, and Death. Some are images of gods worshipped so long ago that their churches have fallen into dust, and even the names of the kingdoms where they were worshipped have been long forgotten. And one is of Morgause, once Queen of the Orkneys, mother's sister to Arthur Pendragon.

"I call you, Lord Morpheus, the Shaper of Dreams," she says, appearing in her portrait. And all at once, he is there, seated on a thronelike chair with razor-sharp edges, his black cloak swirling around him a little as it always seems to do, as if in an invisible wind.

"Why have you called me from my work in the dreams of mortals, Lady Morgause?" he asks. He is capable of anger of a sort, as are all the Endless, but his voice is not angry now. It might even be called curious.

"I would beg a boon of you."

Dream bends down his dark head. Although his spiky, swirling hair is as black as the space between galaxies, it also seems to shimmer with a light from within. "Some boons I grant, and some I do not. You know that, Lady."

"I know it."

"Then tell me what you would have of me."

"My far kinswoman, Gwenhyfar, a descendant of my house, is in great danger. She has travelled in spirit form, and lingered too long. She has touched a living being, as I warned her not to do. And she has laid hands on one of the Lockets of Rhiannon, the one that has not passed utterly back into the fairy kingdom. She is one of those that knows something of magic, but she is mortal still. Without help, she will not find her body again."

"I know of this mortal," says Lord Morpheus. "I tasted of her dreams today, and their memory has remained with me as most dreams fail to do... You told her a tale today, Morgause, that you have never told to any living being. Yet you did not tell her all. You did not tell her the nature of the bargain you made with Loki, so long ago in mortal years."

"No-one tells all they know," says Morgause blandly.

"You swore to Loki that one day someone of your blood, and of your house, would free him from his eternal imprisonment. In the time when time turns back upon itself, and when that which is now hidden will be made known, entering the world of men from the world of the gods. You hope that this girl will help to fulfill that vow you made, do you not?" Dream asks.

"I do," Morgause says, defiantly. "But now she cannot escape the void of spirits where no mortal may long linger, save through a dream. You know the laws as well as I. There must be someone with whom she has formed a bond, through her dreams. And he must dream of her. Only then can she be released."

"So you ask my help to extricate your kinswoman from a situation you yourself created," Lord Morpheus says. Yet the words do not sound as if he is angry, even now. He simply says them. "You wanted Gwenhyfar to touch the Locket of Rhiannon, did you not, Morgause? You knew that her brother carried it, and that it was a weight beyond his powers to bear. And you knew that she would take it from him."

"Perhaps I did so. I only did what I must," says Morgause. "She is strong, this girl, and she carries a power within her that even she does not know yet. I could feel it within her. Yet you should not think--" She breaks off.

"I do not," says Dream.

Morgause is silent for a moment. "Tell me, my Lord, do you visit the fairy kingdom?"

"You know that I do."

"Do you ever see Morgaine?"

"That I cannot tell you, and you know it well."

"I know it." Morgause stands up very straight. "I could love this girl, this Gwenhyfar. As I loved Morgaine, I think. As I should have loved a daughter, had the Goddess seen fit to send me one. But even so, I could not spare her. I must use her as I myself was used, as Morgaine was used. Although I do not need to explain what I do."

The faintest smile touches the corners of Dream's lips. "You do not. I do not judge. I am not one of the gods."

"Help her," says Morgause. "I have never asked you for anything, not since... but I will do it now. Help this girl."

Lord Morpheus rises, and prepares to leave. "I will do what has been given me to do, as will you. I know of whom she has dreamed, today. And I do not think any act of mine could keep him from dreaming of her."

"You know of Draco Malfoy, then?"

"I do." And with those words, the Lord of Dreams vanishes, leaving only a space of shimmering darkness where he had been.

Draco had no clear idea what he planned to do after leaving Pansy, but he certainly did not mean to go to the hypocaust. He hasn't been there in years. He thought that he had forgotten his childhood refuge entirely. Yet after going to his room and changing his clothes, he somehow found himself wandering aimlessly downstairs, and then entering through the back of the little closet in the first-floor hall, and lowering himself through the trapdoor in the floor. The witchlights thrust into holders on the stone walls flicker sluggishly, spreading patches of orange light that dance across the flagstones in the floor, and touch the mosaic tiles set into the walls. Everything looks exactly the same as it had when he was... what? Eleven, maybe? But aren't the places that overawed you in childhood supposed to look sort of mean and shabby when you come back to them, grown up? But it has not changed, this magical underground passage that twists and turns and leads between the floors, and above the attic, and slopes sharply down, down, down. It had seemed enormous and echoing to him when he was a small child, and it still does--which means, of course, that it is not actually a hypocaust at all. Draco did not realize that a real Roman hypocaust was much smaller than these passages until a third year History of Magic class, and by then it was far too late; the incorrect name had stuck in his mind for good. He does not know, has never known, what this place truly is.

He turns left, then right, then follows the downward slope. Draco walks on and on, until the muscles in his legs are burning. He knows he has not walked far enough.

In the newer part of the hypocaust, where he is now, the walls have been smoothed with plaster and painted with frescoes of Greek gods and goddesses. Draco paces past Zeus descending into Danae's room in a shower of gold, his mind taken up with furious churning thought, sensation, emotion.

At the moment, he is thoroughly occupied by the idea of a punishment severe enough to suit Pansy's crime. It isn't easy to come up with one, although tying her to a stake and shooting her through with magical thousand-barbed arrows does have its appeal. Why, though? He turns another corner, sternly admonishing his mind that this is no time to be logical. He decides that he hates everything about her, from the glossy dark hair on her head to the sharp little pink nails at the end of her twiglike fingers. Surely that's reason enough. The corridor curves in a spiral, and Draco continues to follow it. Zeus appears to Europa as a white bull along the seashore, and the god coaxes her to ride on him because he seems so harmless. Since these are magic frescoes, the waves move with a faint crashing sound, and muscles undulate under the glossy coat of the bull. Europa's long dark hair waves in the wind.

No, there's more reason than that, and a better one as well. She led me on, the slut. She made me believe that she would let me have her in the way I want, and then she allowed me so little that it was worse than nothing. I wish I'd never had what I had from her today. It was like the Platter of What's-His-Name... some Greek chap or other... the more you ate of it, the hungrier you were. She'd starve me if she could, Pansy would...

The path begins to lead slightly upward again. Along one wall, Zeus seduces Leto, who gives birth to Artemis and Apollo on a floating island. But do I even want that from her, wonders Draco, that bait of herself that Pansy keeps holding out in front of me, just beyond my reach? Merlin knows I do want it, the thing she offers, or rather never quite offers. But I don't want her at all. What if I had it from... someone else? Father would hate that, if he knew about it. He wants Pansy for me... but what if he never found out? What if there was some way...

The passage comes to an abrupt end in front of a large fresco of Zeus appearing to Leda in the form of a swan for yet another seduction scene. Two branches lead off in opposite directions. Draco stands before the semicircular stone wall, trying to think. It wouldn't do to get lost down here. But his mind stubbornly refuses to focus. Those gods were rather obsessed with sex, weren't they? Zeus especially. Seems that he shagged everything that walked in ancient Greece, and a few things that didn't. Not that I don't sympathize completely... The right-hand passage winks out into a tiny coloured bead, then disappears. Deep in thought, Draco fails to take notice. He begins walking to his left, turning various ideas over and over in his mind.

I can't do anything until the summer hols are over. And once I'm back at school, it won't do any good to try to nail Hogwarts girls. Pansy would find about it, as she always does about everything, and then she'd tell my father. It's got to be in Hogsmeade, I think; that's my only other chance. But I don't get much time there, only a few hours during the day on a few weekends every year. That's hardly enough time to successfully pull off a seduction act. Zeus had it easy; he could always pull rank as the head of the pantheon of Greek gods if nothing else worked... Really, I should think it's easier to pay than to persuade. That's it. What I need is a professional.

The sound of running water from some subterranean passage gurgles past Draco, low and ominous. The frescoes on the wall begin to change to ocean scenes, whales and octopi, swordfish and sharks, water nymphs with long red hair flowing around the god Poisedon and his golden trident. But Draco pays no attention; a new thought has struck him.

There's a whorehouse in Hogsmeade called the Crystal Palace! I remember the stories about it now. Blaise Zabini was brought there, on his fifteenth birthday. Theodore Nott too. He keeps things to himself, Nott does, but Blaise made damn sure we all heard every gory detail. But I should have been taken there six months ago, and I wasn't. I didn't understand it. Still don't. Father made it clear to me--in that way he does have of making sure you understand something, without ever actually telling you--that he didn't want me going there, or anyplace else of that sort. Draco kicks at a rock, almost savagely. But then-- I wonder if I could get in now, if I tried? He's probably told them to turn me away at the door. But why, though? Doesn't matter--nothing matters now, nothing but this pain, this hunger, this frustration gnawing at my body like a living thing...

He takes deep breaths, trying to tamp down the growing emotion, to keep calm. The exercise he'd thought would calm him isn't working at all. And the longer he wanders through the hypocaust, the more uncontrollable these feelings seem to grow.

He does not dwell on that idea.

I'll try this autumn. Yes, I'll try, on the very first Hogsmeade trip... or would it be better to wait until the second? Perhaps if I went with someone who'd been there before? I don't like Nott much, but I could trust him to keep his mouth shut; can't say the same of Zabini... I remember what he told us, though, and maybe I owe him something for that. When I first heard it, I dug my nails into my palms so hard that I found they were bleeding, later on. I remember that now, too... There's a main salon, Zabini said, plush red carpet, red velvet sofas, ruby hangings. Low lighting, but not too low. You need to be able to see the wares for sale, after all. And all the girls are there, in that room. Not lined up in a row with numbered placards the way they are in the cheap whorehouses, Zabini said, but clustered by the bar, or lounging on the red velvet sofas, or laughing with each other in little groups... And the customer takes his pick. How very convenient.

For a moment, Draco sees himself there, in this imagined room he has never seen. He sees the girls, tall and short, slender and statuesque, creamy breasts spilling over the bodices of their low-cut robes, their eyes glittering in the soft light, their laughter high as the tinkling of bells, or low and intimate. Their hair fair as spun gold, or dark and glimmering as ebony, or... red. Cascades of coppery curls shimmer on one head, and Draco's eyes are drawn to it. The girl moves, and her white shoulders glisten through her hair like marble through a river of blood. In his mind's eye, he sees her more clearly, this girl who has been singled out for him.

She's not very tall, but she looks like a girl who someday will be; her legs are extremely long for her height. She seems a little awkward, as if all the different parts of her body have not quite caught up with each other. Her arms are slim, but her shoulders are very square. Her hips are childishly slender and her knees childishly knobby, but her feet are big and a little gawky. Her breasts almost look too large for her narrow chest to carry, cuddled together like two white doves in her skimpy silk robes. Yet the lights are low, and he can see nothing clearly; he snaps his fingers to get her attention, and then makes a beckoning motion. She moves towards him, her head bent. Draco steps closer to her and runs his hands over the smooth pale flesh framed so temptingly, his fingers trailing down nearly to the raspberry-pink nipples he can just see below her bodice. Sampling the merchandise. And it's nice... oh yes, very nice indeed. He feels her trembling, but she still does not lift her head. He lets his hand drop.

"You," he says. "I choose you."

Still she stands motionless, facing away from him a little.

"Come on," he says impatiently. "Come upstairs with me."

She shakes her head. Yes, this impudent girl is definitely shaking her head at him. Doesn't she know what she is, a high-priced whore, and who he is, a Malfoy? How can she defy him in this way?

"Listen to me. I have money, as much as you want. I'll pay whatever you ask," he says, and he can hear that his voice is growing increasingly desperate. The fantasy seems to be slipping through his fingers.

She turns from him. He grasps at her sleeve.

"Didn't you hear me, girl? You're what I want. None of the others will do."

She begins to move away.

"You can't leave me like this. You can't. I won't allow it. If--if I can't have you, I don't want anyone else-- Look at me, can't you? Turn around and look at me!"

And slowly, she looks up at him.

Her golden eyes are too big for her face, and her flexible pomegranate mouth is a bit too wide. Freckles spatter the bridge of her slim, straight nose and the ridge of her high cheekbones. She looks at him steadily, sphinxlike. Impossible to tell what she is thinking. She is, without the slightest room for doubt, Ginny Weasley. Draco has conjured up the girl whose name he surely had not whispered when he shuddered against Pansy Parkinson in the stables a few hours earlier.

And the fantasy that was supposed to be his amusement, he now realizes, has spiraled completely out of his control.

Draco comes to himself, the sound of his own breathing loud and harsh in his ears. He is dizzy, and each breath feels as if he has gone without oxygen for a long time, as if he has not been simply walking through the hypocaust, perhaps, but... elsewhere. What happened; what the hell just happened to me? I don't know--but... He looks around the circular little room, its walls tiled with a scene of mermaids. I do know where I am.

The realization is not reassuring. He's reached the room just below the library all the way at the very end of the west wing, and his father's private study, and he had no idea that he had walked anywhere near that far. That fact makes him feel just a little frightened, although he would rather have died than admit to it. I ought to get out, this second. I've heard about what can happen if people spend too long down here... I bet I could find the way out from here, if I leave right now, if I don't wait any longer...

And then Draco hears the soft murmur of voices coming from above him. He cocks his head. One is higher-pitched than the other, almost shrill. Pansy. And one is low and husky. He knows its tonal qualities in his very bones, and he shivers. The hypocaust has a dank, unpleasant chill, but he scarcely notices that. Lucius Malfoy.

But his father and Pansy must be in the annex off the study, and Draco can't see them at all. His excellent hearing barely catches a few words, here and there.

"I don't need to tell you," says Lucius, raising his voice slightly before it becomes indistinct once more. "that..."

Pansy says something in reply. Draco strains to listen. "You mean that you want me to--" Her voice drifts off again. Mumble, mumble. Minutes tick by. At last, a heavy set of footsteps moves across the floor, followed by a lighter one. Draco scrambles up a tiny flight of stone stairs winding up to the ceiling, and puts his eye to the loose tile in the floor above. Pansy is leaving the library, looking very pale. His father must already have gone. After waiting several more minutes, Draco wonders if he ought to leave as well. But then the heavier footsteps double back, and Lucius Malfoy crosses the narrow peep once more, standing at the heavy dark desk in the study. All of the decor is excessively masculine, the walls panelled in dark oak, the ebony and teak furniture upholstered in black and brown leather. A tap comes at the door.

"Come," says Lucius, holding something between his two hands. The door creaks open, and a man enters. "Ah. Nott. Brandy?"

Thomas Nott nods and shakes his head simultaneously-- if such a thing is even possible--in confirmation of his identity, and refusal of the offer. He is taciturn and lantern-jawed, with a heavy, somber, silent face. His son, Theodore, is a carbon copy of himself. Draco feels a vague tremor of unease. He doesn't yet know why the man has come at this hour of the night to such a remote part of the manor in order to speak to his father--although he clearly is expected--but the younger Nott has always made him a bit nervous. The Slytherin boy has always been a clever loner who keeps very much to himself, even as a child, when he'd often come to play at Malfoy Manor. Draco clearly remembers one such visit during their second year, when they'd discussed the growing unease most of the Slytherin children felt about Harry Potter, and all the vague rumours they'd heard. Theodore had listened and nodded at all the right places, and it wasn't until long after the other boy had left that Draco realized what had really happened. He'd been drawn out to talk about all his own feelings and fears and resentments, and Nott had scarcely said so much as a single word. Draco never trusted him after that incident. Besides, Draco doesn't trust anyone who can't be drawn into his circle, who isn't overawed by him, who doesn't react to him.

Brandy having been offered, Lucius Malfoy wastes no time in getting to the point. But then, he never does. Draco is glad, too, since he is hunched into a tiny space at the very top of the stone steps with his neck craned up and backwards in the most uncomfortable position he can imagine.

"Have they procured the... items?" asks Lucius.

Nott shakes his head.

"Do they think they'll have them soon?"

Another shake.

"Well, if they can't get one, what about the other? What did Sneppit Gogsblatter say?" Lucius seems to be controlling the exasperation in his voice with an effort.

At last, Thomas Nott speaks. He sounds very much as if each word costs him a golden Galleon, and he is in a particularly miserly mood at the moment. "One has returned to the Lady Rhiannon, and is beyond our grasp. It has been foretold that no mortal man will ever touch it again. The Weasley boy has the other."

"Can't the orderlies we placed at St. Mungo's find it?" snaps Lucius. "What else am I paying them for?"

"They believe that it, too, has passed into the fairy kingdom in some fashion. It is not a thing on which ordinary mortals can now lay hands, Malfoy."

Silence. Lucius Malfoy paces back and forth, moving in and out of his son's limited field of vision. He pauses just over the loosened tile, so that Draco can see nothing but his father's cloak. "You've already told me about the only way you believe we can work with this thing, Nott."

"Many times," the other man agrees in a dour voice, as if he is coming to the very end of his limited store of words.

"Do you still insist that we need her?"

No reply. A faint rustling sound, probably a nod, Draco thinks.

"She is his sister, after all," says Lucius, musingly, as if to himself. "I wonder. I wonder. I have never cared for that theory, as you know. But..."

"She is the seventh child of a third son, a magical birth position of great power. And the first daughter of that family in three hundred years."

"So she is," says Lucius, leaning against the desk slightly, so that Draco can see the upper part of the two mens' bodies through the peep.

"But remember what I have told you before. Your son, too, is a part of this. She and he are tied, Malfoy, and no act of yours can sever them." Nott speaks as if delivering the very last words that could possibly be said on the subject, and closes his mouth with an audible snap.

Lucius makes a noise that is suspiciously close to a snort. "I'm not dragging Draco into this thing," he says, just as flatly. "It's completely unnecessary." He seems to expect some sort of reply, but Nott is silent.

"It's grown very late," Lucius says, after a long pause. Nott gives a curt nod, and turns to leave. As Lucius steps behind him, pulling the door closed, he says one last thing, like the tail of a long argument that has played out in his head many times before. "No. Perhaps... perhaps I have been wrong. Perhaps we do need to use the Weasley girl, although the gods alone know how we'd get her here. But my son will play no part. I won't allow it."

Their footsteps fade away. Slowly, Draco climbs down the little flight of stairs. His neck and shoulders are horribly stiff, but he doesn't feel the cramping pain. He looks around the dim little room. The space has the absolutely silent quality of a tomb. His skin crawls. He does not know why--at the quality of that thought, perhaps, or because of this dank cold air blowing from the many doorways set around the circular walls, or the darkness of the passageways broken only by an occasional flicker of light, as wavery and weak as if it were struggling to shine through fathoms of water. Or, perhaps, it is all because of what he has just heard.

My father doesn't trust me. He doesn't want to have to rely on me. He won't put himself into a position where the success of this plan, this all-important plan, depends on something I do... or fail to do. He's never told me, but he told Thomas Nott. And he won't tell me anything about the plan, either. I've never been told a thing, and everything I've learned is from listening at doors and sneaking through corridors and getting lost in hypocausts...

The thought makes him very tired. Draco wonders what time it is. It feels very late, as if hours and hours have passed while he wanders through the stone corridors of the hypocaust. He can nearly feel the sensation of sliding between muslin sheets into his soft feather mattress and lazily pulling the bedcurtains closed, and then the long, long fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. But Draco realizes with a sinking feeling that he can't return to his room just yet.

Many times before this, he has seen his father wanders the house for hours after a night meeting with one of the Death Eaters, drifting restlessly from room to room. And he knows he cannot risk being caught. Not tonight. There is an exit that comes out in a hall closet very close to Draco's bedroom, and it would be far safer to use that one. He drums his fingers on his jaw, trying to remember exactly where it is. It seems extraordinarily easy to become lost in the hypocaust tonight.

"Lumos," he whispers finally, and follows the faint glow of his wand-tip through one of the doorways and into a long, dark passage. He's sure it's the right one. Almost, anyway.

"I won't get lost," Draco mutters to himself. "I won't. In my own house. Bloody embarrassing, that would be."

His wandering attention must be disciplined and he knows it, but no matter how many times he repeats those words to himself, his thoughts continue to go their own way. Everything seems coloured by one overwhelming emotion, or rather a set of emotions that all blur into each other-- his baffled anger, his horrible frustration, the painful sensation of his own blood whipping round and round in his veins, his desire turned back on itself with nowhere to go. And it is a frustration with so many sources. On the one hand, it could all have come from what he heard his father say... but then there is the anger at Pansy, and the nagging fear that he does not know where he is going, on this roundabout journey that is supposed to lead back to his bed, and then, too, the fact that he will enter that bed alone, as he has always done, and as he never thought much about one way or the other, before. And Ginny Weasley, his wayward mind whispers. And Ginny.

Ginny Weasley.

Artemis swings one slender leg over the edge of the crescent moon, pulling her bow taut, ready to let her arrow fly. Draco passes the fresco, all unseeing. She and he are tied, Malfoy, and no act of yours can sever them. Gods, but what could Nott have meant? The wonder and the creeping dread consume all of him, and he walks, and walks, and walks.

The hypocaust grows colder still, but Draco does not feel the chill. He cocks his head to one side, pausing briefly. A faint sound is coming from far ahead of him. It sounds as if someone else is walking towards him, but from such a great distance that he can tell nothing more, just yet. He flattens himself against one wall, his right hand pulling his wand halfway from its holster at his waist. Silence, except perhaps a far-away echoing drip of water on stone. I must have imagined it. But then Draco scrapes his fingers on the rough stone wall as he replaces his wand. He mutters an oath, sucks on his bleeding fingers, and glances down at his injured hand.

The walls are covered with repeating spiral designs now, and etched with half-shells pressed into the crumbling stone, painted with red ochre. This part of the hypocaust is old, unimaginably old; far older than the Romans who built most of the structure. He read about it once in a crumbling book in the Malfoy library, but he's never seen it, never gone anywhere near this far into its passageways. He is not only hopelessly lost, but he has left the manor itself and is now on the grounds somewhere, where he is not supposed to be, is never supposed to go. If Lucius Malfoy ever finds out that his son has been here, Draco will be in a great deal of trouble. Well, nothing to do but walk.

If I hadn't been thinking about the Weasley girl, I wouldn't have got lost, he thinks resentfully. Damn her, what right did Ginny Weasley have to get into my head like this? For she has got into his head, and he wants her out. She has no right there, no place there. So yes, this is her fault, Draco decides, and not only the fact that he is lost. It is everything; all the things that haunt him, and that he fails to understand, and that cause him to hate himself a little, for being such a fool.

In some inexplicable way, Lucius's cold dismissal is her fault as well; if she had not been involved, in whatever way she is involved, then Draco would have been included. The very fact that she has somehow wormed her way into the secret plans, whatever they are; that, too, her fault. The cold beneath his feet that he can feel through the soles of his shoes; the gnawing fear that he will never be able to find his way out; the simmering anger that he has been told nothing, that nothing has ever been explained to him, that important things have been going on at the Manor all summer long and he has been excluded from every last one of them. All, all her fault. And if he could, he would make her pay, he decides furiously. Someday I'll have that power. And someday, she will pay for all she's done to me.

He turns another corner. The faint shuffling, walking sound is louder for an instant, and then disappears again. But he definitely heard it; this time he's sure... When the sound stops completely, he shivers at the cold mist curling around his feet. Draco pauses and looks around the corridor. It is filled with drifting wisps of mist. The walls are no longer quite discernable. The bottom of his stomach seems to drop out.

I know where I am, where I must be. I saw an illustration in that book, and this is what it showed... the mist, and the lost travelers, wandering, wandering, as if entranced. I'm under Salisbury Plain now. I don't know how it happened but that's where I am.

The stone walls surrounding him look as if they are beginning to take on form. It is not safe to look too closely at them in this place; Draco knows that. The shapes of faces begin to solidify in the mist. He will not look at them. He paces on, staring furiously at the floor. Their silvery eyes slip past him. He is reaching the section that has been here longer, perhaps, than human history can measure. This isn't good, he thinks, stupidly. But still I can get out, I'm sure I can... Still he will walk, although he no longer knows where he is going. He will count his footsteps, the beats of his heart, each one of his breaths; he will not think about...

Ginny.

Why had he thought of Ginny Weasley, earlier that day? The question seems absurdly important. And if I hadn't... if I hadn't, maybe I would have been satisfied with what Pansy gave to me. For even to himself, he cannot pretend that he had been. He cannot pretend that Pansy was what he wanted, who he wanted. But still he could not have said her name when he pressed up against Pansy, shuddering in his fleeting moment of solitary pleasure. He could not... could not...

Draco turns another corner. The mist has thickened even further. It smells of late summer flowers, rich and golden as fresh honey. That's strange, he thinks dreamily. He is walking in a spiral now. A spiral path. There's something significant about that, he knows, but at the moment he can't remember what, and it doesn't seem very important. He wants to return to what he was thinking about before.

Ginny. Yes. I was thinking about her...

There was some reason why he wasn't supposed to think of Ginny Weasley, Draco vaguely remembers, but he couldn't seem to clearly remember what it was anymore. And it's not as if it matters; what does it matter if I think of her? I can think of whomever I like. I can, I could...

When I whispered her name... I didn't!

...(I did o yes I did...)...

Pressed up against Pansy, wanting more from her than she was willing to give him; wanting nothing from her, glad he was not even touching her skin since he disliked its texture so, wanting the thing she withheld, and whispering...

... Ginny, Ginny. Ginny....

And as if he had spoken a spell without knowing its power, the name conjures up an image, a sense-memory so powerful that it completely overwhelms the mist-filled hypocaust, blotting it out.

His nose twitches from the deep rich scent of hay in the drowsy late-afternoon air, and the golden sunlight slants across the dark head bent in front of him. He is in the stables during that afternoon, his body jammed against Pansy's, her back turned to him so that he cannot see her face.

He hears a voice murmuring something, so softly that he can barely hear it. The word might have been a sigh, or the end of a long breath.

"...Ginny..."

And Draco realizes that the voice is his own.

She turns towards him, very slowly.

I told you not to look at me, Pansy!

But the words die on his lips, because Ginny Weasley stands before him on the mounting block.

You have called me, her eyes say, silently. I have come.

"I'll make you regret it," Draco says aloud, and he seizes her strong little hands in his and pulls her towards him. She does not resist. "I'll make you pay..." he mutters. Still she only looks at him.

"I'll get what I need out of you," he insists, pulling down her robes a little at the top, running his right hand along the creamy skin of her upper chest. "You'll give me... Pansy wouldn't give me what I want, but you, you..."

Except that he would want so much more from Ginny than the little he'd gotten from Pansy; he wouldn't be satisfied with any such empty touching of skins. No, not from Ginny Weasley. He would strip her bare and feel her flesh against him, warm and silky and smelling of vanilla and raspberries. He would push her down into the hay and she would pull him down to her, and she would arch up to him, coming alive under his hands, moaning at his touch as Pansy had never done, feeding his desires as Pansy could never do...

And in the slant of her golden eyes when she looks at him, Draco sees that she knows everything he has thought about her, that he does not have to say any of it. But she stands still as a statue before him, so now he must... ask? Order? Demand? Or perhaps he will simply fall down to his knees like a desperate supplicant and beg, beg, beg her to quench this desire that is like a killing thirst in him. But her face is immobile. Impossible to tell what she is thinking. And she does not look merciful...

The irregular edges of stone scrape against his knees, painfully. Draco blinks, his eyes darting from side to side, the sound of his own harsh jagged breathing in his ears. The pain has brought him back to himself for the moment, and he knows where he is again--except, he realizes, that he is not longer where he was. He has gone further into the maze, always further.

I knew that this wasn't really a hypocaust. But I never knew exactly what it was before. Now I know, he realizes in an instant of frightening clarity. It's a labyrinth! And I'm being led to the center somehow-- I shouldn't take one more step! But the panicked thought comes too late. Draco rises awkwardly to his feet and tries to scramble backwards. It seems impossible to regain his balance, and he begins to fall. He takes an automatic, stumbling step forward.

It is as if a great bell rings through the immense maze, penetrating every layer, every passage. There is no noise at all, but Draco feels the toll of the bell in all his bones, like a sound so deep that it can only be felt, not heard. And he knows that he has stepped through the last barrier, and is now under Stonehenge itself.

The mist vanishes as quickly as if blown away by a high wind, although the air is very still. Draco can see the stone walls clearly now. They are lined with oil paintings. Portraits. So that was why I thought I saw faces in the mist... they've been there all along. Gabriel and Michel Malfoy, his grandfather and great-grandfather. Heartha Black, his aunt, looking disdainful and imperious. The three beautiful Black sisters together; pretty Andromeda in pink frills, scowling Bellatrix in Slytherin green, and his mother, Narcissa, looking unnaturally still and silent in blue and silver. A tall dark man with spiky, swirling hair, his cloak moving as if in an invisible wind. He looks at Draco murderously, and Draco hurries by as quickly as he dares. A very young Sirius Black, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, standing sulkily next to a tiny girl in a pink dress who looks to be less than four years old. His cousin, Nymphadora Tonks. They all look as if they are about to speak, although they do not. But their painted eyes move as they watch him pass.

Draco hears a tap-tap-tapping sound and looks up to see a portrait of a bearded man with dark, penetrating eyes. He is dressed in an old-fashioned three-piece suit of the sort that Muggles used to wear in the early part of the century, a watch chain descending from the vest to the trousers pocket. He holds a cigar in his right hand, and Draco realizes that the faint sound he heard was the tapping of the lit end on an ashtray.

"Ziggy!" he exclaims, a wave of relief going through him as he recognizes the Malfoy librarian.

"Ah, Draco. So--- you have arrived at last." The ghost of Sigmund Freud nods in greeting, and blows several smoke rings.

Draco sits in front of the portrait, wrapping his arms around his knees. "I've been lost for hours and hours, and I never knew where I was going. I thought I'd never get out of here again... but... you can explain all of this to me, can't you?"

The ghost sighs. "Several thousand hours of psychoanalysis would not go amiss at this point. In addition, a couch would do a world of good--"

"There's only a stone floor," Draco interrupts. "And we don't have any time at all, Ziggy! Just tell me this much, please--where am I?"

"Child, that is not a question that can be answered with a compass or a map, nor even a Pointing spell. "

Draco rubs his aching head. "Is this is a real place?"

"I believe that you have already guessed it is not. So shall we speak of what it seems to be, since that, at least, is a question that can be answered?"

"Well... I suppose so..." Draco begins to realize just how fiercely his temples are pounding.

"The underground tunnel," says Freud thoughtfully, "is a journey through your own unconscious. If I were speaking to a Muggle, I would interpret this voyage as representing a return to the womb of Stonehenge, to a re-unification with the cosmic Mother. Hmm." The ghost takes another long drag on the cigar. "Jung affected me more than I have realized."

"But... you said for Muggles. What about for wizards?" Draco ventures.

Freud shrugs. "As far as wizards are concerned, I do not know. All I can tell you is this, child. The unconscious of all mortal men teems with potent sexual and aggressive drives, and defenses against them also. They carry on a never-ending struggle for supremacy."

Draco squirms uncomfortably. His thought processes for the past several hours have just been pretty well summed up. "Well, are these portraits real?" he asks, groping for a more innocuous topic of conversation.

"Ah, the paintings! Ah, yes. They are purely a projection of your unconscious expectations. This section of the hypocaust considerably predates the art of oil painting, you see. But the powers here have got into your mind a little way, and so they populate these walls with portraits of your own family."

"But then what about--well-- you?"

"I am your librarian in the world above. Here, I function as a guide through your unconscious. Not an altogether unlikely role, hein?" Freud smiles in a kindly fashion.

"Does that mean you aren't real?" Draco asks in a very small voice.

"I doubt that is a meaningful question. Better you should ask, child... what is real?"

And with those words, a cloud of smoke from the cigar obscured the surface of the painting entirely. Draco realizes that it is time to move on.

The sound comes to his ears again, the wandering, stumbling noise of unsure feet on a stone floor. It is closer now, but somehow it does not quite sound as if it is caused by anyone in the passageway, although he is not sure why. It simply seems to reach the ear from... elsewhere. If Draco had ever heard an ordinary radio, he would have instantly thought of the unnaturally compressed sounds that come out of a single speaker tuned to an AM station. But, of course, he had not.

He stops beneath the large portrait of a queenly-looking woman with long, rippling, apricot-coloured hair, and slanting green eyes full of secrets. A circlet of silver and citrines glimmers on her lovely head. Who is she? He looks at her hard and long, always with the faint nagging feeling that he should recognize her, that he has seen this very portrait before, somewhere...

Unlike the subjects of any of the other portraits, she looks directly at him. A very faint smile touches the corners of her lips. The sound is definitely coming from inside the frame of her portrait. Draco stands transfixed, staring into the painted surface. Then the green-eyed lady speaks to him, and he jumps.

"Draco Lukas Malfoy," she says.

His tongue seems to be sticking to the roof of his mouth, but he manages to croak out, "Yes."

She appraises him. Her eyes devour him so thoroughly that he feels as if she has taken something from him with only a look, as if some vital essence of him is bleeding from him to her. But he cannot look away, either.

"Do you know who I am?" she asks softly.

Quite truthfully, he shakes his head no.

"Do you know why you are here?"

The utterly confused look in his eyes is answer enough to that question, Draco supposes. If only she would stop looking at him! "Lady," he says, in a burst of courage, "will you tell me?"

She does not speak.

"What do you want of me?"

"I?" The woman shrugs slightly. "I want only to look upon your face, young Malfoy. Having seen it, I know that everything I once loved has not vanished entirely from the earth. For in you, he walks again."

"I--I don't know what you're talking about."

"It matters not. And it is not a matter of what service you may render me, but what you may do for her."

"Her? I don't under--is there someone else in that portrait? Wait--wait--that's where the sound is coming from!" Draco leans forward and, without thinking, thrusts his head through the frame. It is like pushing through soft, wet gauze into almost total darkness. He can see nothing at all, but the sound is much louder now, and it sounds like real footsteps. Whoever walks towards him is coming through the portrait, and excitement hammers in his chest and runs along his veins. Now he can almost see a very faint figure in the distance, approaching him.

"You cannot save her as you now are," says Morgause thoughtfully, as if speaking to herself. "Too much of what you have seen and known and believed all your life long lies between yourself and her. Yet there is a cure for that malady." Morgause reaches towards him and touches his temples with one of her long white hands. Startled, Draco tries to back away, but he cannot get his head and shoulders out of the portrait fast enough. He feels her touch sizzle through his head, and then he falls backwards, onto the stone floor of the hypocaust.

Draco's mind is wiped clean of extraneous things. A Memory charm of some sort, I suppose, he thinks dreamily. The process is not quite instantaneous. He can feel facts and names and spiteful resentments slipping through his mind, like water through a sieve. The sensation is quite pleasant, really...

A girl steps through the portrait in front of him and onto the floor. This seems quite natural, and really nothing to be the slightest bit amazed at. She stumbles on the uneven stone. He reaches out his hand to steady her. The skin of her arm is white and warm and smooth, her blood pulsing steadily beneath it. She looks from side to side with great troubled eyes.

"Hello," he says. "Are you lost?"

"I think so. I don't exactly remember where I was trying to get. But I'm sure I've wandered too far," she says, her eyes vague. She looks at him without quite seeming to see him. "You're real," the girl says, abruptly, her eyes suddenly focussing. "I dreamed about you today. That's how I know." She steps closer to him, and presses his hand with hers, then his arm, his shoulder, his neck. She nods, as if some point has been satisfied. "Yes. You're real. You're..." Her words trail off. Her brows knit together into a frown. "Who are you?"

"I don't know," he says truthfully. He looks into her bright browny-gold eyes. It does not seem to matter.

She shivers. "I'm fading," she says in a very small voice. "I can feel it." She looks down at her hands. They are growing transparent. "It was better when I touched you. Can I - would you mind if--if I did it again?"

"Yes," he says. "I mean, no. I mean..." Her eyes are the only things left in the world, looking up at him so anxiously, waiting for his reply. "Come away with me," he blurts. The words seem to come from some source beyond himself, and he does not know why he has said them.

She lays her hand on his chest. The shock of it goes all through him. He stares at her, bewildered, excited, waiting, wanting.

The girl leans closer. Closer. Her breath smells of violets. She tilts her head to one side, and he moves forward, and their lips meet, at last, in a kiss. And there is nothing left in all this world but her lips, as soft and solid as the packed petals of a full-blown rose, and he could stand forever so in the depths of the hypocaust, kissing her, never knowing who he is, or why he is there, or what his life has been, or is yet to be.

'Gwenhyfar!" calls a voice from behind them both. "Gwenhyfar, return!"

Her face lights up. She breaks the kiss, and turns eagerly back towards the portrait she has just left. And without a backwards glance, she leaves him.

Draco opens his eyes. A chill, damp wind is blowing through his light summer robes, and he shivers. He glances around at the dull, badly lit stone passage. For an instant, he cannot imagine where he is. And then he knows.

"The hypocaust!" he exclaims, leaping to his feet. It as if he has been half-asleep for longer than he can even guess; longer than his whole life to date, it seems, drifting in a strange compendium of dreams and visions, and now he has woken. The hypocaust is dismally real. The bare stone walls drip with damp. He is hopelessly lost. And five minutes before, he had Ginny Weasley in his very hands. The girl that his father was trying to get.

He sinks back to the stone floor, head in hands. I could have taken her to my father. I could have bound her to me with some spell or other, so she couldn't get away... the Hexensymbol works well for that purpose, I know... I could have presented her to him, and my father's eyes would have lit up, and he would have smiled... and he would have said, Well done, Draco. I can hear him now. His father wanted Ginny Weasley for his plans. He had complained that there was no way to get her to Malfoy Manor. And she had been here, and his son had let her slip through his fingers.

"I've failed," he says aloud. He could have captured her. Instead, he had-- oh, gods, no!--he had kissed her.

And after kissing him, Ginny Weasley had left him without a second thought. Draco does not dwell on that. But somewhere, deep within some unacknowledged part of him, he knows that he will revenge himself on her for it. Someday.

There is not a second more to waste. He has wasted far too much time already. It is impossible to navigate using the landmarks of the portraits, of course, because they were never real, and they are gone now. But Draco hears a faint sound far ahead of him, and he begins to creep along with wall towards it, keeping low to the ground. "Weasley," he mutters through clenched teeth. "When I get my hands on you..."

He is too angry to notice the subtle shift in magic when he moves directly beneath the great standing stone.

There is a short passageway leading to the chamber beneath the towering stone, but Draco has gone only a few steps into it before he realizes that he can't possible be hearing Ginny Weasley. What he hears is the very faint shuffling and murmuring of a large group of people trying hard to be quiet. What the hell can this mean? He crouches even lower to the ground, hand on the butt-end of his wand, and creeps to the end of the passage. He feels the draft of some of cooler air on one cheek, like the caress of an icy hand, and looks into a larger, circular room filled with people. Even as he watches, they move towards an archway in the chamber's center and disappear through it in twos and threes, silent as ghosts. It is all happening so quickly that Draco sits for a few moments, stunned. What he sees makes no sense. But wait--wait! His mouth drops open. His cousin, Nymphadora Tonks, glides through the archway with the last little group. He's sure it's her; he hasn't seen her since he was a very small child, but his mother has a tiny portrait of his cousin as a teenager hidden away in a drawer of her room, and Draco has seen it more than once. She stumbles over the lintel as she passes through, vanishing as suddenly as a soap bubble. Yes. It's her.

Without thinking, Draco leaps up and darts into the room. There is only one person left, his back turned towards the mouth of the passageway, and even he is preparing to walk towards the archway. All Draco can think is that this is his last chance; if he can stop this wizard, whoever he is, whatever he has done and is dong; if Draco can bring him to his father, if he can succeed at this, only at this, at this one thing--

A steady wind blows from the archway. As Draco gets closer, he sees that it opens into swirling darkness, like a whirlpool eager to suck swimmers down to some unimaginable depth. He is right behind the mysterious wizard and he can't think why this man hasn't heard him and doesn't seem to realize he is there. But then, he must have been doing powerful magic; Draco can feel the strength of the spells that must have been used in the very air, and doubtless all his attention has been distracted by that. His booted foot takes one step over the threshold of the archway. In another instant, Draco will lose him. He launches himself forward, falls to the stone floor, and makes a desperate grab at the boot. The wizard makes a startled movement, apparently realizing that a boy is clinging to his knees. He turns around halfway, and the wind blows back the wizard's cloak, pushing its hood away from his face, which Draco sees at last. Shock splinters through him, even as he feels the archway's power begin to pull both him and the wizard into the vortex.

"Professor Snape?" he says incredulously.

And then Draco has no breath left to say anything at all. A mighty wind pulls and pushes at him with terrible force, trying to tear his grasp away from Snape. He clings to his teacher as the only solid thing left in this hellish vortex. Save me, save me! he begs, no longer sure if he is actually speaking or not. Snape might have said something then; he cannot tell, there is only the awful sound of the howling wind around him. But he grasps Draco's arms and pulls the boy up, inch by inch. Draco is shaking by now, shivering and crying, praying to live through this ordeal; aware, even in the midst of all this terror, that if this were anybody but Snape he would probably die of shame if they ever did get out of it. But it is Snape, and Draco trusts him more utterly than anyone on earth. He realizes that fact dispassionately. It is the one solid rock he can stand on.

"Hold onto me as tight as you can," Snape murmurs, directly into his ear. "Not like that! Don't grab my throat, if you don't mind--"

"Are--are we going to get out of this?" Draco can hear that his voice has gone dreadfully high and squeaky and hysterical.

"If you manage to strangle me first," says Snape acidly, prying Draco's fingers from his neck, "we'll never find out. You little fool!"

And those are the last words that Draco is to hear for quite some time.