Jewel of the Harem: The Grindelwald Continuum Book One

Chapter One: Draco's Choice.

How shall the soul of a man be larger than the life he has lived?

-- Edgar Lee Masters

9:00 a.m.

Ginny gathered her red-gold hair together in one hand and ruthlessly skinned it back from her face. Her fingers pulled it swiftly into a plain braid, the most severe hairstyle she could think of. Her temples ached from the yanked hair, joining the deeper painful throbbing in her skull. She picked at a neatly patched fold of her oldest robes. She looked at her white, strained face in the mirror of the Gryffindor dormitory girl's bathroom with something close to fear. "What's happening to me?" she whispered, pressing her golden eyes with the big bags under them nearly to the glass.

"You're asking me?" the mirror--who sometimes had an attitude problem--replied.

Ginny turned her head so that she could only see herself in profile. "Last night. I never acted that way before. Never."

The mirror sighed, an operation easier seen than described. "Oh, why do people insist on asking for advice when they never tell me the entire story?"

"Well..." Ginny thought for a moment, realizing that there really wasn't anybody she could tell. She wished that wizards and witches had psychiatrists, as Muggles did. If only she could lie down on a couch and pour out the pent-up worry and fear and frantic doubt to a listener who would only nod and say "Mm-hm" and "I see," with, perhaps, an occasional "Did you love your mother?"

"Are you going to tell anyone else what I tell you?" she asked the mirror suspiciously.

"I can't guarantee anything." Bodiless, the mirror presented a remarkable imitation of a shrug. "But I'll tell you something, dear. I used to hang in a psychiatrist's office."

"You never!"

"I did. Filch picked me up at a job lot sale last year."

"What was it like?" Ginny asked, fascinated. "What did you hear?"

"Problems. Agonies. Unburdenings of the soul. I thought all those hours and hours of confessions were bloody boring at the time, but now... I do miss them," the mirror said wistfully.

Ginny leaned against the wall in front of the mirror. "Well, the thing is, I'm-- everybody thinks I'm terribly shy."

"Are you?"

"What a stupid, stupid word. I'm scared. Just scared all the time. I didn't used to be, but then-- things happened." Ginny closed her eyes, images of all of the things that had happened nearly five years ago running across her mind in a horrible stream. "I hurt people without meaning to, with the things I did... I suppose I became afraid to talk, afraid of what might come out of my mouth. I hardly said a word for two whole years. What I couldn't believe, though, was how nobody seemed to notice. Even my brothers didn't notice. They just thought it meant I'd suddenly turned shy, so they could call me that and leave off thinking about me."

The mirror shimmered in what might have been a nod. "People never really see, do they?"

"No." When the diary had been torturing her past reason and past sense, when Tom Riddle had been luring her to a betrayal of her friends, her school, and her very self, nobody had seen. When it was over and there was only a shell-shocked remnant of Ginny Weasley remaining, nobody had known. And when she had rebuilt what she was, painfully, with agonizing slowness, nobody had cared. She pressed her fingers against her closed eyelids. "What I meant, though, was that I suppose I ended up being shy, or whatever you could call it. No-one really knows me. And I don't let them, either. I sort of-- keep it all inside. But last night, everything changed."

"How so?"

"Well, first I yelled at all my friends, which is not something I would normally ever do. Then I ran off even though I knew they'd worry about me. That isn't like me either, not at all. Then..." Ginny flushed at the memory.

"O-ho!" the mirror said roguishly. "A boy was involved I bet you!"

"Yes," Ginny mumbled, a doubtful tone in her voice. She found it very difficult to think of Draco Malfoy as simply a boy, like any other boy in her class. She remembered a picture she'd seen in her Muggle Artists Who Passed As Wizards book this term. Her eye had been caught by a drawing of John Milton's Satan, falling eternally through fire. According to the text, it was one of the drawings that da Vinci had done for the wizarding market illustrated edition. Secretly, of course, since Paradise Lost had been published rather after da Vinci had faked his own death and left Muggle society permanently. His Lucifer was preternaturally beautiful , tormented and defiant, lovely and corrupt beyond the reach of humankind. Looks a lot like Draco Malfoy, she couldn't help thinking at the time. "I think maybe I was actually possessed by a demon," she said. "Have you ever heard of that happening?"

"Psychiatrists would call that witchcraft, and witches would call it Muggle superstition," the mirror said dryly.

"Maybe I was under Imperius. No... perhaps he just hypnotised me." Although once she said it, Ginny realized how unlikely it was that Draco Malfoy would deign to use any such Muggle trick.

"Did he kiss you, or did you kiss him?"

"Both." Ginny lowered her head.

"Ah, to be young... to be human... to have a body..." sighed the mirror.

"You're supposed to be giving me advice!" snapped Ginny.

"I'm not supposed to do anything but reflect your image, dear."

"Why did I think talking to a mirror was a good idea?"

"You'd be surprised how frequently this happens. But I don't think... I don't think we've ever had this conversation before, actually," the mirror said thoughtfully.

"I didn't even know you could say anything besides 'your hair wants cutting,' so why would we have done?"

"Oops. Said too much! I'll be quiet now!" The mirror shimmered and fell silent. Ginny was left staring at her own haunted face.

"Talking to yourself again?" asked Lavender Brown from the other side of the bathroom. Ginny jumped.

"Oh! I didn't see you," she said nervously, scuttling out into the hall.

9:30 a.m.

At the breakfast table, Ginny lifted a cup of pumpkin juice to her lips and drank very, very carefully. She set it down as softly as possible. She winced at the noise.

"Ginny! Are you alright? Ginny!" Colin Creevey was peering anxiously into her face.

"She'd be fine," Neville said from the other side, looking daggers at Colin, "if you'd stop yelling at her like that."

"Oops! Did I hear anybody asking you?" queried Colin, the picture of innocence.

"Did anybody ask you to sit here?"

"Did anybody ask you to breathe air that other people could be using?"

Ginny put both her hands over her ears. "Ooh, please, be quiet," she begged.

Hermione glanced to their side of the dining table. "Stop it."

"He started it!" chorused Colin and Neville, pointing fingers at each other simultaneously.

"Colin..." Harry said tiredly.

Colin immediately shut his mouth, making a locking-and-throwing-away-the-key motion with his left hand.

The sky of the Great Hall was a blindingly bright winter blue with a few fluffy white clouds and a beaming yellow sun. It made Ginny want to crawl into a dark hole somewhere and stay there until May Day. She lowered her head and picked at a poached egg on toast.

Hermione leaned over to her. "How much punch did you drink last night, Ginny?" she whispered.

"Hardly any," Ginny said in a very small voice. It was true.

"Well, you ought to see Madam Pomfrey for some headache powders."

"Maybe later. Can't now. I have my Divination end-of-term exam still, I'm done with all the rest." Ginny rubbed her forehead, which did not help. She loosened her tight braid of hair a little at the front.

In the present, something bumped her. She realized that it was Neville's thigh. Colin was poking him under the table, and Neville was poking right back, his normally pleasant face grim. They glared at each other like dogs snarling over the last bone. Since Ginny was seated between them, however, she was being pushed back and forth by the increasing force of each poke. Cold pumpkin juice soaked the sleeve of her robe.

"Now look what you did!" said Colin.

"Me? I didn't do anything," said Neville.

"I'll get you some more pumpkin juice, Ginny," said Colin, turning a broad smile on her and reaching for the pitcher. "Since Neville doesn't seem to want you to have any."

The other boy spluttered wordlessly. Ginny drank the entire cup in one long gulp so that she'd have an excuse to avoid both pairs of eyes fixed on her. Colin moved his chair a little closer to her. "I'll walk you up to class, Ginny," he said, his face millimetres from hers.

"I'm not through with my breakfast yet," she said faintly, although she knew she could no more eat another bite than she could fly a Nimbus 2004 to the moon.

"Leave her alone," said Neville with an obvious wild burst of courage. "Can't you see she doesn't feel well? Ginny, do you want to go and lie down? I'll help you back up to Gryffindor Tower."

"No, I have this stupid Divination exam! I just said; doesn't anybody ever listen?"

"Oh." Neville wilted back in his chair.

"What's going on down there?" demanded Ron, lifting his head from an intense discussion with Harry. "I want both of you sitting at least a metre away from her at all times."

"I'm sure she's alright. Aren't you, Ginny?" Harry smiled vaguely at her from the other end of the table, then bent over the parchment spread out in front of them again. Ginny's stomach twitched. How little he truly knew her, and how easily he could wound her. Her heart struggled in her chest, beating faster, faster, joining the painful pounding in her head. The room was suddenly unbearably hot. The sound of the chair's legs on the flagstones when she pushed it back from the table was horribly loud. The sound of whispering thrummed at her eardrums; turning her head, following the sound, her eyes ended up on the Slytherin table. It looked oddly incomplete and for a second she couldn't figure out why. There was one empty chair at its very center. Crabbe and Goyle were sitting on either side of it, whispering back and forth. The entire table seemed arranged around that empty chair. Draco Malfoy's chair. Ginny fled.

Harry stared after her. "Wonder what on earth that was about," he said.

Ginny took deep gulps of air, pausing at the top of the great staircase. The staircase leading up to the Astronomy Tower swung into position and back again. I'll spend the entire Christmas holiday in bed in my room in my house. I won't even go out into the yard! Her bed; her crisp white linen sheets; her window open and the breeze bringing in the cool snow-scented air of Ottery St. Catchpole. It all seemed infinitely desirable. "One more exam," she mumbled to herself. "Just one more, then I'll be done." She groaned when she saw Colin hurrying up the stairs towards her.

He examined her face and started steering her towards the stairs. "Shouldn't you sit down? You look like you're about to faint."

A wave of queasiness swept over Ginny. She let him lead her.

"I know what to do if somebody faints, you know. I had Muggle CPR last summer, I was a lifeguard at a pool right by my house, wow, that was fun, I had ten different pairs of bathing trunks..."

Ginny looked around her. They were in the Astronomy Tower. " Colin, I have to get to class, and so do you."

"Just sit down for a minute, Ginny." He was backing her against a chair now, rubbing her shoulders. "I know you must be tired. Not that you'd tell anybody." His fingers started moving down her neck. "You never share your real feelings, Ginny; you should, you know. Why don't you tell me how you really feel?" Colin's lips were on her ear. Ginny sat bolt upright, bumping his nose.

"What are you doing?"

"Yes, that's it!" he said excitedly. His dark brown eyes were gleaming oddly, his face filled with anticipation.

"That's what?" Ginny tried to get up. Colin put a hand on her shoulder.

"Express your true emotions! Don't hold them back a second longer!" He pressed his face closer to hers. "I know those feelings are struggling to get out! Let them! Let them!" He tried to pull her into a clumsy kiss. At the touch of his hand on the back of her neck, Ginny jumped to her feet.

"Yes, right here, right now, on the floor of the Astronomy Tower, you, me, oh Ginny, Ginny, Gin--"

She backed away violently to the wall, and, overbalanced, Colin fell flat on his face.

Ginny felt the cool stone on her arms through the threadbare robes. She pressed the uneven roughness into her hands, struggling for calm. Colin lifted his head.

"Maybe you need some more pumpkin juice," he said in a hopeful tone of voice.

She stared at him, terrified. Then she turned and ran towards the north tower, running up the silver ladder to the trapdoor as if pursued by the demons she'd thought were possessing her earlier.

9:45 a.m.

Students stood in little groups outside Professor Trelawney's room, whispering, comparing notes, waiting for their turn to go in for the term final. Ginny knew what to expect. Harry and Ron had told her already about what theirs had been last year, and it was common knowledge that Trelawney never changed anything. She kept her head bent, wishing she could throw a huge paper bag over herself until this entire thing was over and she could flee for the Hogwarts Express. Maybe she should hide in the baggage car the entire way back to Ottery St. Catchpole in order to avoid Colin. Two girls were hissing at each other behind her.

"I don't know, I certainly haven't seen him," said the tiny girl with a braid of sleek black hair. Ginny recognized Ivy Parkinson, Pansy's sister.

"Nobody tells me anything," the girl with a cap of dull brown curls complained. That was Bridget Jones. Susan's sister.

"Well, I'm telling you now," said Ivy in a self-important way. "Pansy said he wasn't there for the Potions final. You should've seen Snape's face by the time we had ours. It was like a thundercloud."

"Ooo, he's always so mean," said Bridget. "All I did today was spill a teeny tiny little bit of sulfuric acid, and--"

" Snape has the Hufflepuffs brewing sulfuric acid?" Ivy arched an eyebrow. She didn't yet look as nasty and superior as when her sister did the same thing, thought Ginny, but it was just a matter of time.

"It didn't start out that way," Bridget whined. "It was an accident. That always happens to me. Anyway, Snape took twenty points from my house just for that eentsy weentsy hole in the table, it was only about a metre across--"

Ivy rolled her eyes. "I see."

"That's easy for you to say. If all the Slytherins came up with sulfuric acid Snape'd probably find a way to give you house points, for creative thinking or something. Especially Malfoy. So why wasn't he there?"

"Why are you so interested?"

"What about you?" Bridget asked. "You're interested as well."

"I couldn't care less." Ivy became very interested in the fascinating landscape painting next to her on the wall

"Oh, yes you could. I can tell," said Bridget doggedly.

"He's my sister's boyfriend."

"Right, and not yours."

"Well, he certainly wouldn't look twice at a stupid round-faced little baby like you!" snapped Ivy.

Apparently, the brief detente between Slytherin and Hufflepuff had broken down. The two girls kept arguing in furious whispers, but Ginny stopped listening. Her mind was too full of what she had already heard.

Draco Malfoy hadn't simply skipped breakfast; he really was gone. Ginny couldn't remember ever having heard of a student leaving halfway through end-of-term exams. What on earth could it mean? Where had Malfoy gone after she'd run down the tower stairs last night? She'd thought that she had maybe seen him as a flash of gilt hair out of the corner of her eye when Ron and Hermione found her. He'd been moving away, perhaps towards the Forbidden Forest, but she hadn't turned her head to see. She'd been screaming at her brother and her friend so shrilly. Ginny winced at the memory. It was as if something had possessed her, used her throat to yell horrible things. Stop following me. Leave me alone. Get away from me. Those words hadn't really come from her. They couldn't have.

Ahead of her, the line moved. Ginny picked up her book bag and shuffled forward. Almost there. She shifted uncomfortably. Her oldest, plainest robes were made of wool and were too warm, and she pulled at the collar of her plain white blouse underneath. She'd take them off the instant she got on the train. Maybe she'd just slip out of the noisy little room where Ron and Harry would be playing Exploding Snap and Hermione would be looking at her with concern, sneak into a quiet compartment by herself--

A tap on her shoulder. She turned. Colin Creevey was standing behind her, grinning toothily.

Her heart gave a sickening leap upwards. "Go away," she said in a low voice, hating herself for its tentative, trembling sound.

"Still not happy to see me?"

Ginny didn't answer.

Colin shook his head sadly. "Why didn't this work?"

"Why-- why didn't what work?"

"But it didn't," continued Colin as if he hadn't heard, "so it's on to Plan B."

"Please, just go away."

"Not a chance. I'm taking this final as well. But then I can get back to--" he sighed "-- meaningful activities. It's important to identify one's interests in life, don't you think?"

Ginny nodded stupidly.

"Do you have hobbies?"

You never asked me when we were dating, thought Ginny, but she only opened her mouth and squeaked, "Music, I suppose." Oh, how she hated the sound of her own voice, and the meek way she was just standing there! But it was like a dreadful dream of trying to run through treacle, unable to move a muscle.

"Isn't that nice! Mine is photography, you know. Yes, it's just fascinating, the things I take pictures of. And they always seem to turn out so well. I have about a million of Harry, of course; he's the absolute best subject, but I also have quite a few of you. I've framed the best ones and put them up in my room."

Ginny had a sudden awful image of Colin lying in bed, staring at ceiling, walls, and perhaps even floor completely covered with overlapping images of her and Harry, and drooling slightly. Probably busy doing something else as well, but there her mind simply refused to go.

"I'm sure the ones from last night will be smashing, too!" he said enthusiastically. "At least, most of them. There's only one problem I can think of."

"Um, I'm sure they will, Colin, but I really have to -- uh-- study--" Ginny grabbed a book at random from her bag. Flobberworms-- Their Care of Feeding, or Easier Yet, Simply Let Them Die. It crossed her mind that it wasn't very convincing as study material for a Divination final, but Colin didn't even glance at it.

"What I'm wondering is--" he moved a bit closer to her "-- do you think there was enough ambient light at the top of the high north tower?"

"What?"

"Oh, you and Malfoy'll turn out all right because of the flash. But I don't know if the camera picked up any of the background at all. Of course, that wasn't the important part, was it?"

"You took-- a picture of us?"

"Maybe I'll print up a series and call it 'A Study In Snogging,'" said Colin thoughtfully. "The best ones were the zoom closeups. Once he started taking your robes off, the lense got a bit fogged, I'm afraid."

A bolt of lightning failed to swoop down onto Colin Creevey from the tower window. Ginny was faintly surprised. The wild terror in her chest had certainly felt like it had leaped out into the room with enough force to strike down everyone in line.

"D'you know what I think?" asked Colin.

Ginny shook her head.

" I think that several people would be interested in seeing these pictures. Starting with your brother Ron. Don't you agree?"

"You can't," she whispered.

"Oh, I've got litres and litres of developer and fixer in my room," said Colin idly. "I think I can."

"Please, please don't."

"So it's please now, is it?" He smirked. "My, how the worm has turned. Of course--" his arm snaked around her shoulders "-- we could discuss the issue later, in private. Maybe we could come to an agreement. "

Ginny stared at him dumbly. Ivy Parkinson had turned around and was looking at them both with narrowed eyes.

"I'm sure we could work something out," said Colin in her left ear. "Say, a private compartment on the train?"

She shuddered, involuntarily.

"Come on, Ginny." His hot breath tickled her earlobe. "You'd shag Malfoy, but not me? Where are your standards? Where's your house pride? Where's--"

Iin one motion almost too swift to be seen, she turned and decked him. Her aim was much better than Draco's had been the night before. There was a collective gasp from everyone in line. Colin stared up at her from the floor, his mouth gaping in shock.

The door to Professor Trelawney's room opened. Ginny darted in and slammed it behind her.

9:55 a.m.

It was nothing like a Portkey.

Draco had traveled by Portkey before; he was familiar with the sudden, wrenching pull, as if a hook on a string had been attached just below one's navel and suddenly yanked forward. No, this was like-- like nothing that any human being had ever been meant to experience, he would decide much later. While it was happening, there was no time to think about anything. Yet there was all the time in the world for him to writhe in formless space like a worm jabbed through a hook, or a soul tortured endlessly by the Cruciatus curse. Draco knew well enough what that was like, and would think later, with a kind of wonder, I really thought that nothing could be worse. How wrong, how very wrong I was. Bodiless, he hung between one breath and the next, flooded with pain greater than any embodied thing could have endured. It was an eternal moment of suffering that took no time at all. If he had ever felt anything but this agony, he couldn't clearly remember it. Always, always, there had been only this, and a thought flashed through his mind above the red tide of pain. I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't have done this. I shouldn't--

Then it was over.

There was rough stone under one cheek, and something was trickling down his lip. He raised one hand to his face, looking at his slender, graceful fingers curiously, with no feeling that they belonged to him. They came back smeared with blood. The metallic taste was in his mouth as well. One of his razor-sharp canine teeth had nearly bitten through his upper lip. He sat up, conscious of every muscle, nerve, sinew, and cell required to do so. Nothing hurt-- he didn't think that any pain could ever feel like pain again, not after what he'd just experienced-- but each movement felt extraordinarily complex and difficult.

He looked up. He was sitting at the bottom of a broad flight of steps leading up to an old-fashioned timber-framed manor house. Mid-morning sun shone on the weathered grey oak, the tiled roof, and the pointed gables, glittered on the many-paned leaded windows, and gleamed off of the ornate carving over the massive front door. Green shrubs trimmed into neat oval shapes edged the walk below him. In the back, he knew, there were formal rose gardens with a labyrinth in the center. He'd loved to wander through the maze as a child; he'd become lost, deliberately, and feel the delicious terror of not knowing quite where he was. "Nanny!!" he'd call, and Tibby the house-elf would run up to him, scolding. "Young Master Draco, you is very bad to scare poor Tibby this way!" And sometimes his mother would be there, too, her grave beautiful face watching him run and play for a few moments, wonder written all over it. Do I have a child? How can such a thing be? Narcissa Malfoy's young, young face always seemed to be asking.

--wait--

He knew this place. It was Malfoy Manor. And he was--

--Draco Lukas Malfoy.

"Of course," he whispered, and was astonished at the sound of his own voice. Memory flooded back to him, complete.

He got up. The motion was completely lacking in his usual sinister grace, but it would have to do. Draco felt exactly as if he had been completely disassembled and then roughly shoved back together by not-particularly-skilled hands. "What the bloody hell happened?" he muttered. Why was he here, and how had he gotten all the way from the south of Scotland to the coast of Kent without remembering a thing about the journey?

--pain, pain, all the pain the world has ever held, concentrated on only one body, one mind, and it's mine, oh Gods it's mine--

Draco grimaced. Oh, he remembered, all right. But it was still an utter mystery. Because it made no sense.

Perhaps he was simply going mad. Or perhaps...

Perhaps when he'd followed Aquila in his flight through the clockface at Hogwarts, something had happened. Something inexplicable. Something of great power.

Draco paused halfway up the stairs. Maybe he wasn't going to make it after all. The idea of collapsing onto the stone staircase and sleeping for days on end sounded very appealing just now. Then he saw something that changed his mind. Or, to be more accurate, someone.

In the dark doorway of the manor house stood Lucius Malfoy.

"So you're here at last," he said dispassionately. "Hello, Draco."

"Hello, Father." He forced himself up the last few stairs.

Lucius beckoned impatiently. "There's no time to waste. When did you leave the clock tower at Hogwarts?"

"Midnight, I think-- no, it was one in the morning--" Draco shook his head, hoping the jangled nerves would settle into a shape that made more sense.

Lucius nodded, pulling a gold pocket watch from his robes and glanced at it. They were formal black robes, Draco saw now, emblazoned with a strange device resembling an open pyramid with an eye on top. "Ten o'clock."

"How can that be?" asked Draco in surprise. "How did I get here?" He could have bitten his tongue off as soon as the words left his mouth. A rule of his personal code, broken; the one he'd forged through years of solitary suffering. Never ask Lucius Malfoy a direct question about anything.

Lucius looked coldly at his son. "The Grindelwald Continuum has been set in motion," he said. And although Draco understood nothing of what his father had said, he knew better than to ask again.

But one word tolled in his mind like a great bell. Grindelwald. Grindelwald...

He set his teeth and hurried into the house, following his father through the entrance hall and towards the alcove that held the great oak door bound in iron. The one that led to the dungeons.

10:05 a.m.

The tiny circular room was completely filled with clouds of incense. Ginny choked on the smell, which seemed to be a combination of musk, rose, jasmine, ambergris, vanilla, cinnamon, and honeysuckle. The final effect was remarkably similar to the WD-40 her father was forever spraying on greasy auto parts in their garage. She picked her way across the cluttered little room to the table where Sybil Trelawney sat, nearly obscured by all the heavy gray smoke. The professor stared dreamily at Ginny, her huge lamplike eyes purple with a silvery sheen.

"Sit down, my dear. Sit." Her voice was like the faraway whispering of spiders scuttling through their webs. Ginny leaned across the table to hear her.

Professor Trelawney placed her long hands with their twiglike fingers on either side of a large crystal ball. The sleeves of the trailing robe she wore, purple with embroidered red roses, fell across Ginny's clenched hands. "You must learn to relax, my dear, or the spirits can show you nothing." She turned Ginny's hands palms up, and the girl jumped at the touch of the cold, almost brittle fingers.

"Ah." She traced the lines in Ginny's palm, still looking at her face. Or perhaps not looking, thought Ginny with a shudder. Those strange plumlike eyes might have been blind, for all they really seemed to see. "Power walks in you, although you do not yet know it."

Ginny blinked. "What?" Wasn't this supposed to be her exam?

"But your aura is so disturbed. Anger. Rage. Even hate. A soul in turmoil."

Ginny fought the urge to jump up and run out of the room. Colin had shaken her so badly that she wasn't sure she'd have the strength anyway. And if she did manage it-- she shuddered-- well, she'd just punched Colin in the mouth in front of her entire Divination class and left him lying on the floor. Maybe she could escape out the window after all this was over. She closed her eyes and let Professor Trelawney's words wash over her.

"Soon you will journey to the land of the crescent, and pass the far boundary none have yet crossed. You go to seek that which was yours from the beginning. Will you perform the task of Sisyphus, again and yet again? Beware the king who is no king, for he will try to break your body and your mind." Her voice was deep and harsh, yet strangely smooth, like black velvet stretched just a little too tightly across a chasm that had no bottom. "Beware the dark queen, Gwenhyfar, Gwenhyfar."

"What?" exclaimed Ginny.

Sybil Trelawney blinked. The silvery sheen faded from her eyes. "Goodness gracious me. I must have dozed off."

"No, you were reading my palm," Ginny said. "And you called me by my real name-- Professor, how did you know it? Nobody ever calls me Gwenhyfar--"

"Oh no, no, no. I'm afraid I was asleep. Communing with the spirits is dreadfully exhausting work. I seem to find myself taking more and more naps these days."

"But-- but--"

"Our time is rather limited, my dear," said Professor Trelawney with just a hint of severity. "Now, how do you choose to peer past the barrier and rend the veil dividing present from future?"

"Oh! Er--" Ginny looked at the row of fortunetelling devices on the table. The crystal ball on its black stand, the cup of murky tea undoubtedly cold by now, the little leather bag of runes, the highly unappetizing plate of lamb entrails--

"Those were a good deal fresher first thing this morning," said Professor Trelawney vaguely, "but the Romans swore by that method."

"The Tarot Cards," Ginny said at last. She took the deck handed to her, shuffled them, and laid them out in the cabalic Tree of Life formation. "Um... " She'd never had to make up a prophecy from the whole cloth before. "Here's the Lovers Card in the Jupiter sephirah... uh... the Page of Swords..." Oh God, what had Ron and Harry said about the nonsense they used to cook up for these tests?

" A dark-haired man?"

"I suppose so..."

"Betraying you in a dreadful fashion?" the professor asked eagerly.

"I don't think so, the Page is connected to the Nine of Cups, which indicates happiness and well-being," Ginny said doubtfully.

" I believe it to be connected to the Ten of Swords--" the older woman tapped the card with a long, sparkly fingernail "--which is the card of failure, loss, and ultimate betrayal."

"No," Ginny said firmly. "I can, uh, see more details now. We're in a church. I'm wearing white, we're getting married."

"Are you quite, quite sure, dear? Sometimes, the vision of the inner eye is not quite-- ahem-- clear." Her teacher's left hand, holding a red pen, hovered over the gradebook at the edge of the table.

Oh, who am I kidding? "Now he's leaving me for his secretary at the Ministry of Magic," Ginny said dully. "There's the Five of Pentacles, which means the dregs of depressing poverty. I'm being thrown out of the house in Kensington, and I'm forced to live in a piano box in the East End. I'm doing magic tricks on the street for pennies."

Sybil Trelawney sniffed in a tragically pleased fashion. "One last look, my dear. Can you see anything else? Anything at all?"

Ginny looked down at the ten cards spread before her on the table. At the center was the Tower card; behind it, in the dark Daath position, was the King of Swords, and in the nether region of Neptune was the High Priestess. A king and a priestess are going to get together and push me off a tower? Trelawney would love that. But is it a bit much?

Something about the Priestess card was drawing her eye. The etching of the woman seated on a throne looked back at her, and, since these were wizarding cards, she moved her head from profile to full face. Her eyes were pools of blackness, and her dark hair streamed down her back beneath a long black veil. Her robes fell in dark folds with shimmers of crimson light. On her forehead was the crescent moon, painted blue. She raised her hands.

Something strange is going on--

There was barely time for the thought to cross Ginny's mind before it happened.

10:06 a.m.

It was the same dungeon. Draco hadn't expected that.

It was almost completely dark, lit only by a flickering red flame in a fire ring in the middle of the dirt floor. By its fitful light, Draco saw a low altar of shiny black obsidian. The ring of hooded, masked figures parted to allow them access. He recognized Peter Pettigrew's small frame with the slumped shoulders, the twitchy mannerism of his head jerking from side to side, and the gleam of silver at the wrist of his black gloves. Those two tall, burly figures were surely Crabbe and Goyle... the one of medium height with a bit of black hair sticking out beneath the leather mask was probably McNair... there were Avery and Nott, he'd be willing to bet... and many others he couldn't guess... But all through this moment, which should have carried only pleasure and pride and the anticipation of power to come, a tiny voice of dread kept speaking plaintively in Draco's head. Oh please, don't let it happen again. Not like last time, not like that last thing in the summer. I don't think I could--

A harsher voice spoke up in his head. It is weak and cowardly to say you cannot do what you must.

No, no! I can't! Anything but that! cried the little voice.

The weak will be crushed. Only the strong will survive.

But there's still right and wrong, the little voice said plaintively.

There is no right, no wrong; only the will to power, and the strength to seize it. Or the weakness to fail to do so.

Shut up. I've made my choice, Draco told them both. The little voice was cowed into submission. The harsh voice seemed to nod approvingly. Good. Good, it said. Then it faded into the indistinct murmuring that was going around the circle.

Lucius Malfoy, standing at the center before the fire ring, raised his hands for silence. The red and orange light flickered eerily on his sculpted face; he had thrown his own hood back and wore no mask. Draco wondered for a moment if he was supposed to be wearing one. No, surely not, or one would have been given him. Above the black robes, his father's face seemed to hang bodiless in the air, a thing of fire.

"My brothers in arms," said Lucius, "we have gathered together tonight into a new order. He to whom we swore allegiance is no more." The figures around the circle bent their heads as one. "But the oath we swore still holds true. For we pledged ourselves to spirit, not to flesh. To the spirit that was, that is, and that always shall be."

Draco was badly confused by now, but had no intention of showing it. Weren't they here in order to reanimate the life force of Voldemort? He'd expected to see something similar to the last ritual that had given the Dark Lord a new body, the one Potter had unwillingly witnessed... the one that had gone so horribly, so unexpectedly wrong. Could it be true, what everyone at Hogwarts had been whispering for the past year and a half? Could there be too little left of Voldemort to raise?

No. Doubts were fatal, and he pushed them away.

...but what if all of them in the circle, all the former Death Eaters, were quite simply mad? As mad as Father's been... A deep shiver went up Draco's spine, and he felt desperately sick. He would have given anything on earth to be allowed to lie down in a soft bed. But he must be strong, strong with the powers of darkness he had accepted. The ones they were now calling to their circle.

There was the rustling of leather, and all the men in the circle grasped hands.

"From the depths of the earth we call thee," said Lucius Malfoy.

"From the heights of the sky we summon thee," said the Death Eater to his left.

"From the swells of the ocean we draw thee."

"From the mouth of the wind we pluck thee."

"Come, Lord Grindelwald."

There was a long, long silence, broken only by the spitting of the fire. They were waiting. In the stillness of the room, something was building, was growing.

It was the worst possible moment to be struck by a vivid memory of what had happened in this very room nearly five months before. But Draco felt it happening to him nonetheless.

"Why have you called me here, Father?" Draco lingered on the bottom step leading down to the dungeon.

Lucius Malfoy was beckoning to him, the light of the fire flickering in his eyes. "Come to me, my son," he said hoarsely. "Together we'll achieve the power-- the power-- and then we'll strike, strike against all those fools who laughed at us and mocked our cause. Dumbledore and those damned Weasleys, the mudbloods, Snape, Potter--" He swayed slightly, blinked, and seemed to have forgotten what he was saying. Or perhaps to have lost the power of speech altogether. "Come to me," he repeated.

Draco shook his head. The room stank of spilled liquor and smoke, but more than that, of madness. He could almost see the miasma of insanity rising from the dirt floor in waves. "No. I won't." He turned to leave. He should have known better than to come down there in the first place.

"But I must show you-- show you what I've found," Lucius insisted.

Maybe he should go upstairs, pack his bags, and simply disappear, thought Draco. He could get to Dover somehow; it was only ten kilometres or so... Muggles did something called "hitchhiking," he'd heard, perhaps he could try that.

"The sacrifice. Blood sacrifice. That's what I've found," said Lucius.

"What?" Draco peered over his father's shoulder and saw a hank of red hair on the floor. Some struggling thing was under his father's hands.

"I want to go home," said a plaintive little voice. "I don't like this game anymore."

Crabbe was taking off his glove, exposing a thick, hairy arm. Lucius Malfoy grasped something from the obsidian altar and held it up. Draco could now see that it was an athamè, a ritual knife with a long, razor-sharp blade. Oh God, the same one! Lucius drew the tip across the inner part of Crabbe's wrist. A few drops of blood dripped down the knife and spilled into the flames, which flared up for an instant. A puff of black smoke went up. Something thickened in the room, something just beyond the field of vision. The air itself seemed to flicker. A deep "ahhhh" went up from around the circle.

Draco ran down the last stairs and across the room. A tiny girl of perhaps five was sitting propped up against the altar, her brown eyes wide. She was dressed in a pair of shorts and a white T-shirt with a flower on it,, and ringlets of red hair spilled over her shoulders. "Are you an angel?"she said in a small voice.

"What the hell is this?" asked Draco.

"She's from the village," shrugged Lucius. "Some brat or other. Nobody that will be missed. A few memory charms, a little gold scattered about--"

"You can't be serious."

In answer, Lucius nodded towards the altar. On it lay an athamè with a cruelly sharp blade, one that glinted in the firelight.

"You're out of your mind," Draco said flatly.

Lucius's face twisted into a sneer. "Just what do you think the dark arts are, boy?"

Draco did not answer. He kept staring at the child, who looked at him hopefully, tears threatening to spill over her lashes.

"And how do you think power is obtained after having been lost? When that damned Potter pulled that little trick with his wand, we lost everything. Do you think I'm content to sit about and twiddle my thumbs while Dumbledore and the traitors who sold our Dark Lord take control of everything? Oh no, no." Lucius pressed his face closer to his son's, and Draco saw, really saw, the madness in his eyes, the unshaven bristles on his chin, the dried spittle at the edges of his trembling lips.

And everybody says I look like him, Draco thought. Oh God.

Behind him, the child began to whimper. "I want my mummy," she cried. "Mummy, mummy--"

Without hesitation, Draco strode forward and picked up the little girl, balancing her on his hip. She clung to his neck so tightly that he could barely breathe, but he didn't notice. His father's voice followed him up the dungeon stairs. "You're soft, boy! Just like your mother! You're weak. You'll fail the Dark Lord in the pinch! You'll--"

He'd returned the girl to her family with a simple Finding spell, casting a mild Confundis charm to make them lose their curiosity about where she'd been and who he was. Then he'd wandered the village for hours, watching the local Muggle teenagers play video games and slowly stroll up and down the main street, hanging about in bus stops, laughing and teasing each other like the carefree children they were. His envy of them was a bitterly painful thing. He was not yet seventeen. He felt a million years old. As the night deepened, he started back home. There was nowhere else to go, really.

Lucius was more than halfway around the circle. The rank smell of burnt blood was strong in the air, and the knife dripped red. Hope nobody in this crowd caught AIDS from some Muggle rent boy or other, Draco thought. Great way to spread it. A bubble of near-hysterical laughter threatened to well up in his throat. He firmly tamped it down.

That night, he had lain awake as the tower clock at the edge of Malfoy Manor struck twelve, two, four, six. The power to sleep had simply left him. It never truly returned. Night after night after night, tossing and turning, flipping his pillow over and over, his eyes springing open every time he tried to shut them. One thought running through his head. Father was right. I am weak. I am soft. But what am I then, if I am not what I was born and raised to be? Then sometimes there were other thoughts too, equally disturbing. Those generally came just as he was finally drifting off to exhausted sleep. The worst was the time he was falling into a light doze at four a.m. The face of the little girl was before him, but that was all right; sometimes it was even comforting to remember her. Then the thought pierced him. She looked just as Ginny Weasley must have when she was that age. Ginny Weasley, with her patched robes and red ringlets, that hunched-over way of walking she had, as if she was always trying to hide herself form the world, and those glances she sometimes gave him out of her big golden eyes-- oh God, the way she'd look at him. Scornful. Piercing. Judging. As if she knew what he was, knew all the things he'd tried to hide even from himself, and knew what punishment his sins deserved. "No," he'd muttered. "No, Ginny, no--" He caught himself saying the Christian name of this girl he despised so deeply, and, staring into the darkness, cursed himself for every sort of a fool there was.

And so sleep remained a stranger to him, night after night after night.

Lucius Malfoy spoke scarcely a word to his son until the day came to leave for the fall term at Hogwarts. The house-elves were loading his luggage into the enchanted carriage in the drive. Draco saw his father out of the corner of his eye, standing on the front steps, arms crossed. Elegantly dressed and perfectly put together once again, from his coiffed blond hair to his mirror-shined shoes, he watched his son prepare to leave, one corner of his mouth turned up in a sneer. As Draco was getting into the carriage, he finally spoke.

"The day will come when the circle is re-formed," he said. "We will seize the power that once ours, and more. And on that day, you will know what is to be, and you must choose on what side you will stand. For make no mistake, boy. The day will come." The house-elf closed the carriage door on the sight of Lucius Malfoy's cold face. Draco leaned back against the padded leather seat with a sigh so deep that he was scarcely conscious of it.

And now, in the present, back in the dungeon, wisps of dark power threading the very air, Draco knew that even on that summer's day, he had already chosen.

His father was standing in front of him, barely visible through all the smoke in the room. "The final sacrifice," he intoned. "Blood of the ally, freely given." He grasped Draco's right hand.

Draco pulled back his robes and held his bare arm out, wondering in a detached sort of way if he was about to have the hand cut off, as Pettigrew had done. He studied it as if it belonged to another person, thinking that he wasn't entirely sure he cared what happened to him as long as he was allowed to sleep after it was all over. Goodbye, hand, you've served me well, he thought dreamily. You were my one companion through all those long and lonely nights in the Slytherin dormitory, after Xanthia and Milicent and Sadina wouldn't have anything to do with me anymore... oh, I'm moving at the very edge of madness, one little push and I'll go over...

He felt the tip of the knife penetrate his skin. It was so sharp that it barely even hurt him. He watched his own blood drip into the fire. More than a few drops. More like a stream. His head seemed to be growing lighter and lighter. The clouds of smoke grew even heavier, but he was rising above them. He looked down at his own body curiously. He hadn't thought it was possible for his face to get any paler, but it had. They're going to kill me, Draco mused. That's the punishment for what I did, saving that girl during the summer hols. The thought was not entirely unpleasant. At least I'll be able to rest. Eternal rest, now there's a thought...

Then the smoke thickened into a shape. The black billows began to form themselves into a cylinder, long and thin. A gasp went up from the circle.

"Nearly there," whispered Lucius, holding Draco up to keep him from falling.

10:16:30 a.m.

The eyes of the high priestess on the tarot card locked onto Ginny's and pulled her in, through, and down, down, down. She was soaring through the air but also falling through the clouds; Ginny could feel the wet foggy masses pushing at her. The ground came into view. It was green, gently rolling land, with huge trees surrounding an enormous sprawling house, almost but not quite a castle. A village with an inn, a church, a blacksmithy, and a small cluster of houses, all formed out of great blocks of dark stone. She flew on.

It was night, and the full moon shone eerily on the silent landscape, touching the tops of the massive trees in a patch of forest. Then she saw a tower. It was vast, dark, and forbidding, Gothic in design with a pepperpot top like a witch's hat. As she flew closer to it, she saw the white clockface. A clock tower. The hands stood at midnight. There was a terrible sense of urgency-- hurry, hurry-- and she moved through the air as fast as she could with great sweeps of her wings.

But then she was suddenly yanked down to the top of the tower itself, and she was no longer the flying thing, whatever it was, but herself. "Jump! Jump!" someone was shouting. "I can't," someone else was answering. "You can and you must!" And she jumped. She fell through something red and pulsing, like the living heart of an enormous jewel. There was a great sighing and rushing sound on all sounds of her, and she fell past a thousand thousand faces lining the tunnel surrounding her. At last they all resolved themselves into the two faces on the Tarot cards in front of her. The Priestess, and the King. One dark, one fair. The ground sped up to meet her.

10:16:45 a.m.

"Now," said Lucius Malfoy.

All the smoke in the room sucked itself into one piece of air. The loose clouds compacted themselves, became arms, legs, a head, hands. The body of a man hovered just above the fire ring. He wore sweeping black robes. His face was thin and oval, seamed with lines, with piercing blue eyes and a prominent nose. He wore a close-fitting cap over his colorless hair, and his hands were long and pointed. He reached out a finger to touch Draco's wrist. The boy's head was thrown back and his eyes were closed; all his muscles had gone utterly limp. But when the man touched him, he stiffened and gasped violently .

Draco had been drifting away from his body, and now he was slammed savagely back into it. He struggled to catch his breath, taking deep gulps of air mingled with smoke. He could feel all his limbs trembling with painful pinpricks, as if every inch of him had gone to sleep and was being woken up rather brutally, but he welcomed the sensations. They meant he was alive. He forced his eyelids open and stared at the thing in front of him-- man? ghost? vision? He looked at the craggy face, the deep lines around the nose and mouth, the skeletal body, the strangely graceful hands, and knew him from the books in his father's library. Draco knelt and bowed his head. The floor was rough under his knees, but he was grateful for the pain, as it was keeping him from fainting. "Lord Grindelwald," he said.

The other man inclined his own head. "My young apprentice." His voice was gritty as if long unused, but oddly rich and hypnotic. It was easy to imagine such a voice casting spells, lulling men to sleep or turning them into stone. "It is goot and right that he should be the first to velcome me, hein?"

One by one, the circle knelt to the floor, touching their heads to the altar. Grindelwald floated in the air above their prostrate forms. "Long haf I slumbered," he said at last. "Long haf I been powerless and veak, a spirit only. I can feel my veakness still. Fifty-one years ago it vas, that Dumbledore defeated me as the bombs fell about us in Berlin, and trapped me in this schwachisch form. Vhy haf you avakened me now, Lucius Malfoy?"

Lucius shivered all over but spoke. "We-- we know your weakness, my lord, none better. And we seek to mend it."

"If you know my veakness, you know that there is only one t'ing that can gif me the strength I once had. "

"Al-Juhara Har-am. The Jewel of the Harem, my Lord," said Lucius.

The dark wizard raised his head, and his eyes flashed fire. "Just so. Haf you the Jewel?"

"No, my lord, but--" Lucius hastened to add "--we know where to find it. And now we have the power to do so."

"Haf you indeed." Grindelwald cocked his head to one side as if listening. "The powers of the side that fights us are waxing. Nearly at their zenith."

"Yes, my lord. One of our spies at Hogwarts has been keeping us informed. They will make their move tonight."

Grindelwald nodded. "Then ve vill make ours."

Draco heard the last few words of the conversation as if from a great distance. His eyes closed, and he felt himself swaying, falling to lie on his side on the floor. "Bring the boy upstairs," his father was saying.

"Yes, let him rest." That was Grindelwald's voice, a faint, faraway buzzing like a very distant blackfly. "He vill need all his strength for tonight. As vill ve all."

He was being lifted, carried somewhere, and deposited in a soft, soft bed covered with fluffy blankets. Then he was, thank any gods there were, collapsing into deep, deep, blessed sleep.

But it was not dreamless.

He was sitting on an ornate golden throne and looking down at Ginny Weasley, who was kneeling before him on a tiled floor. He had all the power in the known world; men trembled at his frown and rejoiced at his smile. At the wave of his hand, armies marched. At the snap of his fingers, servants rushed to his command. Ginny, however, seemed singularly unimpressed.

"Ron would say you're still a stupid git," she yawned.

"I have the power of life and death over you," he said. "You might be a bit more respectful."

"All right, so you're a stupid git with godlike powers. Doesn't change a thing. You can dress up a pig, but it's still a pig."

"Do not mock me! I have sold my soul to the powers of darkness for--" he waved a hand"-- all this, uh, stuff."

She glanced around the throne room, and the gold, jewels, carvings, tiles, silks, satins, slaves, powers, and principalities became shabby beneath her gaze. "Doesn't look like much of a deal to me."

"How can you say that?" he snapped.

In answer, Ginny held out her cupped hands. "Look." Between her fingers something glowed, and he leaned closer to see. It was a tiny gem filled with ruby light, bathing her creamy skin in its rays. "This is your soul, Draco Malfoy. Will you sell it so cheaply?"

His brows knitted. He reached out to touch the jewel, but it had no substance, and his fingers grazed the softness of her skin. He ran his hand along her wrist, and, as sometimes happens in dreams, every sensation was intensified. He groaned with the pleasure he felt in touching her arm, a feeling greater than the sum of what every other girl had ever given to him. Draco leaned forward to kiss her lips, so close to his, so tantalizingly close, but she backed away, shaking her head. "No," Ginny said.

"You cannot say no to me," he snarled. "If I want you, I will have you." And he seized her body with cruel fingers, pulling her close to him, but she turned to mist and he was left grasping at empty air.