Jewel of the Harem: The Grindelwald Continuum Book One

Chapter Two: The Book Of Dreams

Friend, many and many a dream is mere confusion, a cobweb of no consequence at all. Two gates for ghostly dreams there are: One gateway of honest horn, and one of ivory. Issuing by the ivory gate are dreams of glimmering illusion, fantasies, but those that come through solid polished horn may be borne out, if mortals only know them.
---Homer, The Odyssey

A/N: BTW. I may do fan art for this story someday, but until that happy time comes (not until Christmas vacation at the earliest, probably) my mental image of Jewel's Draco is pretty close to a very young Edward Norton (American X, Fight Club, Red Dragon, etc.), with very blond hair. ;) Contains NotAsCluelessAsHeUsedToBe!Harry. More dark things happen and are remembered.

8:00 p.m.: Hogwarts

Ginny heard a jumble of indistinct murmurs in the darkness beyond her closed eyes. She kept them shut, slowly returning to consciousness, not wanting to be yanked back into the world just yet. She felt weak and dizzy, and her head was pounding. Then, like the Muggle shortwave radio that had so fascinated Arthur Weasley that summer, the voices tuned in. They were very soft. Or at least they should have been. Each syllable seemed to have a buzzing, harsh sound that grated weirdly on her ear.

"Wish Neville would get back." That was Ron's voice. It was followed by a loud swishing noise.

"So do I. I hate not knowing what's happening." And surely that was Hermione. Another swish, loud and irritating. Ginny raised her eyelids a crack. It felt as if five-kilo weights were attached to each one. Her brother and her friend were bent over a wizard's chess board, Hermione's hair brushing the pieces. A white knight spluttered and waved his tiny arms.

"Are you going to play another game, or not?" the black queen asked waspishly.

Hermione shook her head, and several pieces went flying. She picked them up absently.

"Don't wrinkle the material, if you don't mind," said the white king, straightening his minute robes.

"Shut it," muttered Ron.

There was a beat of silence.

Then Ron spoke again, and before he'd even gotten to the end of the sentence Ginny recognized that particular tone in his voice. It was the same one he'd had the summer he was ten. When he'd spent three months doing nothing but plotting morning, noon, and night how to get back at the neighborhood bully, who'd stolen Ginny's new bicycle.

"I'll bet it was Malfoy," he said.

"Ron, you might try being reasonable. That's all you've been saying all afternoon long." That was Hermione, sounding quite aggravated. Footsteps moved around the side of the bed. Now it sounded as if they were both sitting down next to her.

"Why won't you listen to me? You know I'm right," said Ron. His voice was closer to Ginny now, very nearly in her ear.

"I don't know any such thing. You're not thinking logically." Hermione sighed.

"I'm thinking perfectly log--"

"Let's go over this again. One. Madam Pomfrey said that it had to have been given to her at some point during the Yule Ball, last night. Probably more than once. Maybe even later, but she wasn't sure about that."

"That's what I've been trying to say. Why can't you--"

"Two," continued Hermione. "Ginny was with Neville all night long. And I certainly hope you don't start in next with expecting me to believe that Neville did it."

"Of course I don't. But what you said's wrong, and you know it, Hermione," continued Ron, sounding as if he were speaking through clenched teeth. "We don't know where she ran off to after she got so upset."

"As I've told you repeatedly, Ron, you're reasoning from faulty premises," said Hermione in her most irritating tone. Ron growled something incomprehensible in reply. "We may not know where she went or who she was with, but it's just plain ridiculous for you to assume it was Malfoy."

"What!" yelped Ron. "I'm not assuming my sister was with Malfoy, as you put it! If I really thought that, I'd be pounding his rat face into the ground right now."

"You'd be doing well to find him," said Hermione. "Nobody knows where he is."

"I know. I wonder what that means. D'you suppose Moody knows? Hey-- wait a sec-- you're trying to distract me. It isn't going to work."

"I wasn't trying to distract you, Ron. I was trying to do some actual thinking, which seems to be in short supply in this room at the moment."

""I may be harboring plans for hideous revenge, but I am thinking," said Ron in his most hurt tones.

"I suppose it's possible," Hermione said dryly." But you've left one rather important thing out, Ron."

"What?"

"Motive. Why on earth would Malfoy do such a thing?"

Ron snorted. "Oh, you really think he'd be too noble for that?"

"Of course I don't. But it's a serious offense and he would have got into a lot of trouble if he was caught. Why should he take the risk? What's in it for him?"

"How do I know! Because he's an evil git."

"That's not a good enough reason, Ron. People have been sent to Azkaban for it."

"All right, how's this. Because he thought she knew something about what we're doing. And would tell him."

"I can't believe that," Hermione said flatly. "This doesn't work like a Veritaserum. The victim doesn't simply pour out every secret she knows. She has to want to tell--" She stopped, cutting off her own words.

There was a tentative knock at the door, and a creak as it was pushed open. "Sorry," said a muffled voice that Ginny couldn't quite place. "I'm sorry-- I see she's not up yet--"

"Oh! No, I'm so sorry," Hermione was saying. "So terribly sorry. Are you going to be all right?"

"Yes," said the muffled voice. "Madam Pomfrey fixed my nose already."

"Look, I'm sure that Ginny will be sorry as well," Hermione continued. "Once she's-- er-- herself again."

"It's all right," said the muffled voice. "Please don't think I hold anything against her. I understand." There was something familiar about that voice. Horribly familiar. Ginny opened one eye just the tiniest crack.

Colin Creevey was standing in the doorway, holding his heavily bandaged nose. "I heard about what--" He stopped. "She'll need all your love and support," he said in his most oily, unctuous voice, spoiled somewhat by the fact that he sounded as if he had a dreadful head cold. Ginny had a sudden impulse to leap out of bed and punch him again. "She'll be vulnerable... hurt... angry..." Well, he was right about that last one.

"She is going to be all right, isn't she?" Colin asked. Ginny squeezed her eyes shut so tightly that she thought, for a panicked instant, that someone would surely notice.

"Yes, Madam Pomfrey says she will," said Ron's voice from very close to Ginny's ear. She felt his weight shift and guessed he must be sitting on her bed. Madam Pomfrey. So she was in the hospital wing.

Colin's footsteps came closer. "Do they have any idea who did it?"

"Not really," said Harry. Ginny nearly jumped at that; it was the first time he'd spoken, and she hadn't realized he was even in the room.

"Listen," said Colin, "I-- I came because I felt bad about something."

"You don't need to feel bad about anything," Hermione said in warm, sympathetic tones.

"Oh, but I do. It's-- it's something I saw."

Ron stood up very quickly; Ginny could feel the sudden loss of his weight on the bed next to her.

"On the night of the Yule Ball. And I didn't tell anybody. And now I'm thinking that I should've," said Colin.

"If you have something to say, please say it, Colin," said Harry in a strangely distant voice.

"Well, I saw Ginny run off and I went after her. I thought maybe I could help to calm her down a bit-- she seemed so emotional that night, didn't she? She went all the way up to the north tower and I followed her, but she was so upset; I didn't know if I should let her know I was there just yet."

Ginny felt drops of ice water begin to cascade down her spine.

"I'm awfully ashamed I didn't say anything then," said Colin in a whine. "But he's broken three of my cameras already and this Hasselblad is brand new, and--"

"Who?" asked Ron in a very level voice.

"Malfoy."

Quick, heavy footsteps crossed the room. "Tell me absolutely everything you saw right this instant," growled her brother.

There was a pause, just a millisecond longer than it should have been. Then Colin spoke again. "I really didn't see anything. Ginny was standing next to the balcony and looking out over the grounds. Draco Malfoy came up next to her and said something, I don't know what it was. They both stood there for a moment, and then he left." Ginny dared to crack an eyelid slightly. She saw that Colin was looking at Harry, Ron, and Hermione hopefully, like a dog who has successfully performed a trick and now expects a biscuit. A dog with a servile grin on its face and rabies frothing behind its razor-sharp teeth.

"There's got to be more. Think!" Ron barked so sharply that Ginny's hands clutched at a fold of her robes, involuntarily.

"There was one other thing!" said Colin in a stricken sort of voice.

Ron drew his breath in with a hiss. "I knew it. I knew it. What else?"

"I don't really think I should--"

"Tell me."

"But you don't want to know," said Colin.

"The hell I don't!" There were two or three heavy strides across the floor and then the unmistakable sound of someone being grabbed by the collar and shaken ferociously; Hermione was screaming and beating at Ron with her fists.

"Stop it! You can't do this, Ron, you know you can't; he's only trying to help!"

"He'd better tell me what he knows then," said Ron, but he let Hermione drag him off Colin.

"He was--" said Colin, panting for breath, "Malfoy, he-- he grabbed your sister. Ginny tried to fight him off, but he was too strong for her."

"What. Happened. Then," asked Ron, each word as flat as if it had been stamped out by machine.

"I started running up the stairs as fast as I could once I saw that. But before I got there, well, he had her backed up against the balcony and he was, er, lifting her robes up--" Colin moved out of Ron's reach slightly, but the other boy was simply staring at him, face utterly expressionless. "He leaned forward too far and she kneed him in the groin. Malfoy sort of collapsed on the floor. Then he staggered up and ran down the stairs. Look, I'm not proud of how I behaved, not at all, but--"

"Don't worry about it," Ron said distantly. "Sorry about a minute ago."

"But there's something else. There was a glass of punch sitting on the balustrade, and she picked it up and drank from it."

"How did it get there?" Ron asked, as if enquiring after the point spread on the Chudley Cannons for next Sunday's Quidditch game.

"Malfoy, uh, set it down before he started to..."

"I see," said Ron. "I see."

"Right. I'll, er, just be going then, I suppose." Colin paused another moment; Ron, Harry, and Hermione stared back at him with expressionless faces. "I'm awfully sorry I was the one to tell you," he said, and at last he left. Just before the door closed, he turned back towards Ginny. One of this eyelids closed in a wink. The sound of the door falling shut died away.

"Wonder how I'll kill him," said Ron in the same toneless voice.

"There's a Muggle saying, you know," said Hermione. "'Don't shoot the messenger.'"

"You know perfectly well I'm not talking about Colin," Ron said in a calm, thoughtful way.

Hermione looked at him narrowly, but obviously came to the decision that he sounded far too unemotional to present any danger. Ginny almost sat up to tell her friend that alternating between passionate snogging sessions and furious fighting didn't give her the sort of understanding of Ron that she needed just then. Ginny knew her brother had a fiery, hair-trigger temper; all the Weasleys did. But nearly sixteen years as his sister had taught her something else, too. Ron wasn't really dangerous when he ranted and raved and kicked at walls, but rather when his voice took on that utterly flat sound, and his eyes became blank and his face smooth. These thing meant that he was completely consumed by homicidal rage.

"I don't think a wand is going to give me what I need," continued Ron, as if pondering a choice between chocolate and vanilla pudding at dinner. "I really think I'll have to see his blood all over the floor. That pure blood the Malfoys are so proud of."

"Ron, you're scaring me," said Hermione in a very small voice. "Please stop. There's law. There's justice in the courts."

"With Lucius Malfoy having the Ministry of Magic in his pocket?" asked Ron. "I don't think so." Ginny opened one eye almost all the way and saw Ron pick up his backpack from the floor. "Right then, when's the last train?"

"To where?" asked Hermione in the cautious tones normally reserved for speaking to criminally deranged lunatics.

"Kent," Ron said.

"To do what?"

"If I wear Muggle clothing, I think I could get into Malfoy Manor all right... pose as a servant or something... Fred's got some blue jeans I could borrow," said Ron. "Then I'm going to find Draco Malfoy and beat the shit out of him and leave him lying on the floor in a bloody pulp."

"Er, Ron," said Harry, turning from the window.

"Wish you could come with me, Harry. I'll bet they've got detection spells covering a ten-metre radius of the place against you, though. But I'm a lowly Weasley, dirt under their feet, not even worth hating; who would suspect me?"

Harry came forward. His green eyes were very brilliant, and his face was very grave. "Ron. I really think you should stop it."

"Oh, so you're singing that song, too?" Ron whirled on his friend, and for the first time Ginny saw the hurt and misery beneath his deadly calm facade. "You don't know what this is like! You've never had a sister, never will have one."

"That's true," Harry agreed. "I'll never know what it's like, what you're feeling now, but--"

"So you'll never know why I have to do this."

"Do what?" Harry stepped deliberately closer to his best friend. "Throw it all away in a stupid gesture so that you're not there for Ginny when she needs you?"

Hermione was standing in the corner, twisting her hands. "Oh, please don't," she whimpered, but there was no way to tell who she was speaking to.

"Ginny needs you now," said Harry. "She's going to need you more than ever, after what happened to her." He was only speaking about her, not to her; still, Ginny drank in the sound of Harry's words. He never, never spoke this way when she was around, with such adult seriousness in his voice. No, he always treated her with-- well, to be honest, with a sort of kindly condescension. Ginny's mind shied away from that thought. But she knew that something complex and adult was there, or potentially there, always lurking beneath the surface of Harry Potter. In the two years since the horrible events of the Triwizard Tournament, he'd lost a lot of his awkward adolescent cluelessness. That had been cute crush fodder. What he was now-- As always when she thought about what he was now, Ginny shivered with hapless desire and hopeless love.

Ron sank back onto the bed. "D'you know what my first real memory is, Harry?"

The other boy shook his head.

"I was about five years old, I suppose. Ginny and I were playing in that little park near our house." Ron's voice took on a dreamy, vague quality. "There was a slide, and a swingset... but the neighborhood bully didn't like to let the other children use them. Ginny was just four. She tried to get on the little merry-go-round they had, she liked the way it went round and round, and she'd get dizzy... And I was showing off for some of the Muggle kids, hanging by my knees upside down on the monkey bars. I heard her scream. The bully had pushed her down. Blood was pouring out of her nose, and her little face... I never forgot the way it looked, so full of pain and fear, and something more, like the world had turned and slapped her and she'd never trust it again... Mum was sitting on a park bench with her knitting, and she rushed over and gathered Ginny up. I've never forgotten the look on her face when she turned to me. Like nothing else in the world could ever disappoint her that much. 'I told you to take care of your sister,' was all she said. I never forgot it. And I always have, you know, Harry. I've always, always taken care of Ginny." Ron's eyes were wet with tears, and Harry looked away for a moment, letting his friend collect himself. Ginny had closed her eyes again, and felt tears prickle behind them, too.

"Ron," Harry said so quietly that Ginny could barely hear his words, "you can't go hunting down Draco Malfoy."

"And why not?" Ron tried to hide his sniffs behind his cupped hand.

"It's suicidally stupid, for one thing. They're Death Eaters; think of the sort of protection they must have around their lands. But it's more than that."

"Yeah? What?"

"I don't know," said Harry. "I wish I did. But there's something about what Colin said that's-- well, just not right. That doesn't fit together."

Ron looked at Harry with a little more interest. "You think so?"

"I do." Harry said firmly.

The door creaked open. Neville stepped in, his face red and flustered. This was, of course, his usual state, but there seemed to be a greater-than-usual undercurrent of desperation to it today. Harry and Ron both turned towards him.

"What is it?" Harry asked quickly.

"The book's gone," Neville burst out.

"Gone?"

"Disappeared! Vanished! He can't find it, and we figured out that there was a Breaking spell used on the lock of the office door!"

"The-- oh God, the book, Moody's book! The kitty-- no, what's it called, I can never remember the name," said Ron.

"The Kitap- an Düs," said Harry. "When?"

"When what?" asked Neville, who looked as if he was having considerable trouble remembering his own name.

"When was the breaking spell used?"

"I don't know, maybe ten minutes ago. It just happened. I've got to get back, I just had to come and tell you; we're getting things ready--" Neville looked at the bed, his eyes lingering on Ginny. She closed her eyes until there was just the faintest image of Neville's wistful face, fringed by her lashes. "I won't be able to say goodbye to her," he said. "I wanted to say good-bye." He walked slowly to the bed, leaned down, and glanced back pleadingly at Ron, who nodded. Ginny shut her lashes all the way and felt a quick, fleeting kiss on her cheek. Peeping again, she saw Neville turn back to Ron and Harry. "Moody wants you to come down as quick as you can," he said. They both nodded. Hermione was looking out the window and only the back of her head was visible, but she nodded too.

The door closed. "Do you see what I mean?" Harry asked Ron in a low voice.

"The thief could have been Malfoy, too," Ron said stubbornly. "Maybe he's been hiding out in the kitchens or something all this time. Maybe he's there right now."

In answer, Harry reached for something in his satchel and pulled it out, unfolding it with a snap. It was revealed as a large piece of blank parchment. "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," he said. Ginny was hard put to it not to give a cry of surprise as the castle and grounds of Hogwarts blossomed on the yellowing page.

"Look," said Harry, his finger on the map. "Here we are in the hospital wing. There's Pansy Parkinson getting on the carriage to the late train--"

"I see you've modified it. Shows more of the grounds now," said Ron, peering at the map.

"Yes, well, I'll tell you all about it later if you really want to know-- Funny, Pansy just disappeared." Harry gave a slight frown. "That's odd-- anyway, there's Madam Pomfrey moving down the hallway, she'll be in the room any minute, Filch in a first floor corridor, the Bloody Baron drifting about in the dungeons, Colin going upstairs, Ivy Parkinson on the third floor, almost everyone else is gone, and no Draco Malfoy anywhere. Mischief managed." With another tap, Harry folded the map up.

"Damn," said Ron glumly. "All right, all right. That wasn't him. But what about what Colin saw?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't know. But we don't know almost anything about what's really going on. And it's going to get worse before it gets better. So you can't go mental on me now, Ron."

"I suppose you're right really," said Ron. "I reckon I went half crazy for a few minutes. It's just-- the thought of that slimy bastard putting his hands on Ginny-- and don't joke about going mental, Harry, not with--"

"I know, Ron, I know."

"I reckon it's the best thing..."

Her brother seemed unable to finish his sentences. Ginny felt something apprehensive begin to stir in the pit of her stomach.

"I just don't know if I can stand it," Ron whispered. "I won't know anything about what's happening to her. She'll be in good hands, I know, but--"

"There's something else to consider as well." Harry looked at his friend. "We've all sworn-- what we've sworn. And we have to follow through."

Ron nodded reluctantly. Then he glanced up at Hermione, who was still standing against the wall. "You too," he said, walking over to take her hand. It looked unusually stiff in his, and there was a frozen expression on her face. Ginny realized that Hermione had been standing there all during the conversation, shunted out of it. The boys formed a tight circle of two. It simply wasn't large enough for anyone else.

In the silence that followed, Ginny's mind was full to bursting with everything she had just heard. She tried and tried to force the scraps of conversations into some sort of sense. They eluded her like the last fading pieces of a dream in daylight. But one thought pounded through her head above all the rest. Colin had not told the whole truth to her brother. In fact, he'd lied. He had painted a picture of events on the north tower that put Ginny in a rosy light, the innocent victim of Draco Malfoy's advances. But he had photographs to prove otherwise. Moving ones, no less. Why? Why?

In the middle of the confused turmoil, Ginny felt her eyes snap open. She sighed inwardly. Ready or not, she had to rejoin the outside world.

"Ginny-- you're awake-- we've been so worried--" said Hermione, twisting her hands. "Did you just wake up?"

"Yes, just now," said Ginny. The expression of relief on her brother's face was almost comical. Ron never had been any good at hiding his thoughts. Harry looked at her soberly, tentatively, as if not yet sure if she was friend or foe. Ginny shivered. His full attention, she realized, had never been turned on her before. How ironic, when she'd prayed so desperately for just such an event. Suddenly, fiercely, she wished him as oblivious to her as he'd always been. Those green eyes saw too much. How could she have never seen that before?

Madam Pomfrey came bustling up. "You shouldn't be awake just yet," she said briskly. She handed Ginny a glass of some clear bubbling liquid. The girl drank it, grimacing. It tasted a lot like chalk dust. The room dimmed a bit from its unbearable brightness after she'd finished it.

"Miss Granger-- Mr. Weasley-- Mr. Potter." Madam Pomfrey looked pointedly at Ron, Hermione, and Harry.

"Oh! Right," said Ron. "We'll leave you alone then." They all started to leave the room.

"Wait," said Ginny, frowning. "What time's the last train leaving?"

"Ten," said Hermione. "Just go down to the platform."

"Weren't we going to meet and go together?" asked Ginny.

Ron and Harry exchanged a fleeting glance, and there was something kindly in their eyes that made Ginny go cold.

"No, you go on," said Hermione in a strange tone of voice. She walked over to the bed. "Goodbye, Ginny," she whispered, hugging her friend tightly.

Harry bent down to do the same. Ginny went rigid with shock as she felt his arms around her for the first time in her life. "Be good," he said. He kissed her on the forehead.

Ron leaned down and gripped his sister to him. His brown eyes were very serious on hers. "'Bye, Gin," he said in an oddly choked voice. "We'll see you soon. Very soon. Give my love to Mum, when-- when you see her." Then they were gone.

Ginny lay back in bed and shut her mind off from everything she had just heard. Blackness rolled in on her like a tide. When she opened her eyes again, Madam Pomfrey was bending over her.

"Ginny," the mediwitch said gently, "do you feel quite recovered now?"

"Yes, I suppose so. Can I just go back to my dormitory? I really should pack." Ginny glanced at the Muggle clock on the bedside table. "It's already nine-thirty!" she said in shock. "How did this happen?"

"I... considered it advisable to put you under a sleeping potion for a bit longer," said Madam Pomfrey. "A suitcase has been packed for you."

Ginny looked down, picking at the edge of the blanket. "What happened?"

Madam Pomfrey gave a long, long sigh. "I'm bound to be given an earful about this," the mediwitch muttered under her breath.

"Please, Madam Pomfrey, I-the last thing I remember was fainting in Professor Trelawney's office, and then waking up here. I need to know."

"But I believe that the patient's right to understand her medical condition outweighs any such consideration," the older woman continued as if she hadn't heard. "I always have, and I always will. Regardless of any investigation that may occur."

"An-- investigation?" Ginny echoed.

Madam Pomfrey seemed to come to a decision. "Miss Weasley, are you familiar with the Imperius Curse?"

"Yes, we learned about it in our Defense Against the Dark Arts class this term." Ginny didn't add that she'd never done very well in that class, since Professor Moody always seemed to be watching her with his rolling magical eye. His grim face, which always looked as if it had been crudely carved from a block of wood that had been left out in the rain for months on end, seemed to be turned towards her a good deal more than was necessary. By September, she'd been growing nervous, dropping things, and jumping if spoken to in that class.

The mediwitch nodded. "Yes, they're putting it a bit later in the curriculum than they did, I believe. What you may not have yet learned, since it's taught in the spring term of fifth year if I recall correctly, is that it is only one in a series of curses of its type. The curse you were exposed to during your first year at Hogwarts is another, for example."

Ginny looked down at the floor. That was all she needed-- to be reminded of the diary right now. She pressed her eyes tightly closed for a moment, wishing she could lie down for weeks on end in the darkest, quietest room in the world.

"All of these curses have one thing in common. They strike at the free will of their victims, eroding or completely destroying their power of choice. Imperius is the best known, of course. But there's one that is perhaps even more dangerous. It's adminstered in a potion, so it's very easy to use. It has no taste, no odor. Its victims rarely know that they have been dosed. It is called the Disinhibio potion." The mediwitch's face looked very tired, Ginny now saw. "I had hoped that no student at this school was capable of using it against another person. But someone has."

"That's what I drank, isn't it," whispered Ginny.

Madam Pomfrey nodded. "Its effects are more subtle than Imperius or Veritaserum. Which is why it isn't considered an Unforgiveable Curse. But in some ways it may be even worse."

"How does it work?"

"By removing all inhibitions from the victim's mind. He or she acts in a way bounded only by their impulses and hidden desires. In a way, I suppose you might say that it reveals one's true personality. But there are reasons why we don't take every action that crosses our minds, or obey every impulse we feel." Madam Pomfrey leaned closer. "For example, you might have a fleeting thought about someone who happened to annoy you -- 'I wish that person were dead.' In the normal way, that idea might occur to you, but you would never act on it. Under the Disinhibio potion, however, you would. And unlike Imperius, it has lasting effects."

"I don't understand," whispered Ginny.

"No-one does, dear, no-one does..." Madam Pomfrey sighed. "There's never been a properly controlled study, you see. Only anecdotes. Some have claimed that it gives the victim extraordinary powers of perception, or skills at divination; I'd be inclined to doubt that one, myself."

The remembered vision in the tarot cards, in Professor Trelawney's office, flashed through Ginny's mind.

"Others have claimed that physical changes may take place after Disinhibio. Again, I'm rather sceptical, but there was a curious case in Surrey in the fourteenth century in which a girl who'd been dosed was being-- er-- attacked. Severalwitnesses are recorded as having insisted that she turned into a bird and flew away. She was not an Animagus beforehand. The girl was found in a forest quite some distance away, returned to her normal self, and I believe she was perfectly well afterwards. Although the magihistorian writes that she never could abide heights from that day on." Madam Pomfrey caught herself. "But the point, Ginny, is that administration of this potion is a serious matter indeed. Your brother seems to feel that the identity of the perpetrator is quite clear, but without proof--" She hesitated. "I must ask you. Can you think of anyone-- anyone at all-- who might have a reason to administer this potion to you?"

"I don't know," said Ginny. She did. But her mind was racing, racing through all her options, all avenues of possibility, desperately trying to figure out how much was safe for her to say.

"Please think about this. Think hard." Madam Pomfrey's tone was almost pleading. "This is a very serious offense, and if we fail to catch the guilty party, he-- or she-- may strike again."

The glass of punch at the table, right after Colin sat down with her and Neville. The glass later on in the high North tower, the one Draco had given her, exactly where she now knew Colin had been watching them. The glass of pumpkin juice Colin had poured for her after knocking over her old one at the breakfast table this morning.

Oh God. It had been Colin Creevey.

But why?

Ginny blushed slightly, remembering the Astronomy Tower earlier that day. He'd clearly thought that if she could only set aside her shyness and act on her true emotions, she'd jump on him in a mad excess of passion. Little had he known that she'd only punch him in the mouth. But why go to such lengths and take such a risk just to get her? Ginny knew she wasn't small and delicate and doll-pretty, like Pansy Parkinson or Xanthia Morgan; she was too tall, her hair was too red and too wild, her features too strong, her breasts embarrassingly large compared to the rest of her; Mum was forever having to haul out the sewing machine and alter her school robes to fit. Her lithe child's body had turned on her in the past two years, gleefully dragging her through a funhouse mirror, making her unrecognizable to herself.

She looked across the room, dully, and saw her reflection in the mirror on the far wall; the frizzled hair and the frazzled face, the big bags under her golden eyes, the cheekbones too high, the chin too pointed. (This one should have been a boy, her father had said. All her brothers got seasick in the punt on the lake outside Ottery St.-Catchpole. But Arthur Weasley told her stories of his days in the Muggle's Royal Navy and slapped her on the back, half-roughly, because she would grow up wasted, a girl.) There was nothing about her to drive any boy to such lengths. Neville liked her because she didn't laugh at him. She'd thrown herself at Draco; his response was no credit to her. He probably hadn't even meant anything he said afterwards, had only asked her to do those things because they were nasty and vicious and would make her writhe in embarrassment. (A tiny part of me wanted to come back to his room with him when he asked but I was drugged, that wasn't me, couldn't have been me--) And Colin wanted her because... well, who knew why Colin wanted her. What he had done just seemed sad, sordid, and creepy.

But what if he had done what he'd done for another reason entirely?

What did Colin really want from her? What was it that he thought she knew?

And why, oh God, why had he winked at her?

"The effects of repeated doses are unknown," Madam Pomfrey was saying. "I saw your lab work, and I knew that you had received at least two. Ginny, if you know, you must tell me."

Ginny opened her mouth. The truth was on the tip of her tongue. But then a sudden, horrible thought went all through her, and she clamped her lips shut. The mediwitch was looking at her with narrowed eyes, a probing expression on her normally pleasant face, but Ginny didn't care. Her mind was racing, racing.

If she told Madam Pomfrey that she knew it had been Colin, he'd be charged with the crime. Would it be handled by the student disciplinary board? Ginny thought that it would not be; it was too serious for that. It would go up before the Ministry of Magic, then. Colin would try to defend himself in any way he could, and he would undoubtedly take a leaf from Ron's book and blame Malfoy. After all, Colin had told the truth about one thing. Draco had actually given her that glass of punch when she was lying on the stone bench on the balcony of the tower, lying with her head in his lap, feeling the warmth of him under his wool robes, his hands moving over her so gently before they became less gentle, and then-- She forced her mind away from the treacherous thoughts. But there was no relief from them.

In order for Colin to blame Malfoy, he'd obviously have to tell everyone what Ginny had really been doing, not the silly cock and bull story he'd fed Ron. Have to? He'd relish it. Everyone would know that she'd been panting and pawing at Draco Malfoy like a bitch in heat. And worst of all, Colin had photographs to prove that every word he said was true. Ginny pictured the reactions of her family. Her housemates. Her friends. Ron. Oh God, Ron.

Ginny had thought she'd seen him truly angry earlier, after what Colin had told him. But she knew with a sudden sharp clarity that she'd seen nothing yet. Knowing that she'd done what she'd done with Draco of her own free will would tap into some bottomless pit of rage in her brother that she had never before seen, was afraid to even guess at. If Ron knew everything, it wouldn't matter what Harry or anybody else said or did. No power on earth could keep him from trying to kill Draco Malfoy with his bare hands.

And this could not be allowed to happen.

She didn't allow herself to think about the reasons why.

Madam Pomfrey was looking at her with outright suspicion. Ginny realized that her silence had gone on too long.

"I don't have the faintest idea who it could be," she said. "None at all." She couldn't tell. Ginny knew why Colin had winked at her, now. He had her in a box. She wanted to fall back against the bed, but forced herself to sit up straight. "May I go back to the Gryffindor dormitory now, to pack? I'm really feeling much better."

Madam Pomfrey cleared her throat. "There is another issue."

"What?" asked Ginny stupidly. With a sudden, horrible, sinking feeling, she was very much afraid that she knew what.

"Colin Creevey has declined to press charges, but there is the matter of an unprovoked attack on another student."

Ginny opened her mouth and then shut it again.

"This sort of behavior is typical of the Disinhibio potion, of course. The aftereffects are very unpredictable." Madam Pomfrey bustled about near the window, plucking a long dressing-gown from a hook. She turned back towards the bed. "You need supervision. Care. Rest. So in a brief conference this morning, the teachers decided on a solution." The mediwitch's eyes were very kindly. Too kind, too pitying. Ginny had seen eyes like those before. Rings of them, surrounding her on all sides; the eyes of the teachers, the mediwizards, the aides, even the representative from the Ministry of Magic who had visited her and questioned her as she sat dully on a hospital cot in her bathrobe. Four years before. Madam Pomfrey was holding out a robe and a pair of slippers now. Ginny recoiled from them.

"No," she said, shaking her head. Even before knowing, she knew.

"It will be the best thing for you, my dear. Please, try to understand."

"I don't want to understand. I don't need to understand! I need to go home, oh please, please just let me go home!" Ginny was dimly aware that she was babbling; that she'd leaped out of bed and was swaying unsteadily on the floor.

"A private room's been arranged for you," Madam Pomfrey said coaxingly, as if the prospect might tempt Ginny to go meekly.

"No!" Hearing confirmation, Ginny went white, swaying where she stood, clinging to the bedpost.

"A few weeks' rest at St. Mungo's will do you a world of good. Think of it as a sort of rest cure--"

"You're sending me to the nuthouse!" shrieked Ginny. "Do you think I don't remember what happened after they found me in the Chamber of Secrets?"

The long, white corridors of St. Mungo's. The tests she'd had to take, the dowsing wands strapped to different parts of her body, the herb essences applied to her pulse points and their reactions carefully recorded. The questions she'd been forced to answer. She'd stared at the stone floor and mumbled at the mediwizards with the parchment and quills, and they'd looked at her, their faces creased with puzzlement and pity. The magical electrodes wired to her head, probing her brain, seeking out some hidden core of wrongness unknown even to herself. She'd cried through everything, cried for hours and days and weeks on end, knowing that she must be fundamentally flawed in some horrible way, or else Tom Riddle couldn't have found her, used her, twisted her.

Once the orderlies had caught her in the middle of the night taking her tenth shower of the day, her fingers and toes shriveled to prunes. Ginny had been scrubbing at her arms with a rough washcloth until the skin was red and raw. "I'll never get him off me," she'd sobbed, and they'd looked at each other over her head, and sighed. Once they'd found her scraping at her left thigh with a piece of jagged aluminium she'd found on the pavement during recreation hour. "Now what did ye do that for?" the nurse had scolded, passing her wand over the wound with a Coalescus charm. "There'll be a scar, mark my words." "It's where he touched me," she'd said in a whisper, and she'd seen the all-too-familiar look of pity spread across the nurse's face. "Hush, lambie, hush," she'd said, patting Ginny awkwardly. "It'll be all right." But even then, Ginny had known that it wouldn't. Couldn't be.

They'd let her go at last, and she'd run to her mother in the hospital room and seized her with all her twelve-year-old might. They hadn't allowed her family to even visit her for the first two weeks; they never did allow that, with patients. "No exceptions," the head nurse had said through pinched lips.

"It's all right, Ginny, shh, shh. It'll all, all be all right," Molly Weasley had soothed her daughter, as Ginny cried uncontrollably on the sidewalk and in the taxi and all the way up the cracked cobblestone walk to her house.

And now they wanted to send her back.

Madam Pomfrey was standing in the middle of the floor, "The St. Mungo's aides will be here shortly," she said. "Please understand, Ginny. It's our duty to do what's best for you. We're all agreed on this."

A soft knock came at the door. The mediwitch opened it a crack and whispered something to whoever was on the other side. There were low whispers in return. For a very long time, Madam Pomfrey simply stood there, unmoving. A sharp pungent smell, like burning green pine branches, drifted through the room. Although her movements were quick, there was something oddly slack about her face. "They've arrived," she said dreamily.

Ginny clung to the bedpost. "No," she repeated.

"There's no reason to make such a fuss," Madam Pomfrey said in a strange monotone. She did not appear to be looking at Ginny, even though her face was turned towards the bed.

Something's wrong, darted through Ginny's mind. It's not just that I'm terrified of going, even though I am, God knows. But there's more. Something's horribly, horribly wrong. But that was all that Ginny had time to think. Then the door opened fully, and she saw who was standing on the other side.

8:30 p.m.: Malfoy Manor

Draco sat up with a gasp. The sound of a door creaking shut died away, somewhere ahead of him. For a moment, he had no idea where he was. He stared wildly around the thick, heavy tapestry hangings of the dark oak four-poster bed, at the Turkish carpets,the massive, ponderous furniture, the rows of bookshelves. There was a framed pastel sketch on the wall of the grounds about Malfoy Manor, the long gray grasses waving gently in the wind. A pen and ink of Apple, his old Shetland pony, asleep in a stall. A pencil portrait of his mother, her grave Madonna-face in profile. Wait... those drawings were his, he knew the hours and hours he'd spent on them... and this was his room, at Malfoy Manor. Draco lay back down, staring up at the familiar pattern of the ceiling above him. How many, many nights he'd spent this way. And this looked to be another one of them. The Ginny-dream wouldn't stop wafting through his head, and Draco knew he'd get no more sleep this... night? day? The landscape outside the swagged velvet curtains at the bay window was dark, but it didn't feel late to him.

He got up and padded over to the bedside table, pouring himself a glass of water from the crystal pitcher. He could tell now that it was mid-evening, perhaps a bit after eight; he could just see Venus rising over the crescent moon. He put the empty glass back down, and his eye was caught by a large book lying on the tabletop.

Draco's fingers traced the embossed cover as he picked it up. The leather was delicately tooled into an elaborate colored pattern, inset with a mosaic of tiny jewels. It was obviously art, but unlike anything he'd seen before, shaped into a a geometric pattern rather than being a recognizable picture of anything. It felt brittle and unimaginably old. The blank pages fell open to one spot, which had been marked by a quill pen, a tassel of gold and little rubies at its end. He'd seen this before, or a picture of it anyway. But where? Draco closed his eyes for a moment, remembering.

"And now we must turn our attention to the curious question of enchanted diaries," Professor Binns was droning in History of Magical Artifacts class. It was an unseasonably warm day in the late autumn of his fifth year, the faint scent of apples from the enchanted orchard drifting in on a soft breeze. Perhaps ninety percent of the class was fast asleep. Draco was awake, although looking back on it now, he wasn't sure why. He'd already started to have trouble sleeping through the night by then. Perhaps it was simply that what Binns said next had captured all his attention.

"The dangers of common artifacts of this sort are well known," said the professor. "Several incidents have occurred in recent years. There is the case of the Bavarian diary, which caused Maria von Hesseldorf to become possessed by an evil spirit at Durmstrang. There is the Napoleonic diary, which captured Amalie de Marchais at Beauxbatons last spring. And even here at Hogwarts, there has been... " His words trailed off. The entire class snapped awake.

"Yet there is another sort of diary as well," Professor Binns said almost hurriedly. The roomful of students let out its breath in a collective sigh. Everyone knew what had not been said. Nobody ever mentioned the subject above a whisper. But the Hogwarts gossip network knew, or thought they knew, all about Tom Riddle's enchanted diary, and Ginny Weasley. Draco, however, was the only one who really did know.

Even he hadn't found out the truth easily. Lucius Malfoy had never told him, and his father's face would grow livid with rage every time the subject was brought up by anyone. Draco had picked up what he knew by listening to snippets of gossip from house-elves talking when they didn't know he was around, and piecing together hints and clues. It had been an embarrassingly failed attempt to gain power, and, as such, none of the Death Eaters was very eager to discuss it. And, of course, it was another attempt that Potter had thwarted, another chance for him to play the hero-- and to rescue Ginny Weasley. Sometimes, in those nights of increasingly broken sleep in the Slytherin dormitory that autumn, Draco had dreamed that he'd found his way into the Chamber of Secrets, and he'd been the one to rescue her. Except that it wasn't when she was twelve and he barely thirteen, but now. She wasn't a child, but a beautiful girl, and there was something other than scorn and dislike in her golden eyes when she looked at him. Draco always found it extremely difficult to get back to sleep after one of these dreams.

"These are known as Morpheus Librum, or the Books of Dreams," Professor Binns was saying in his flat, grey voice. "The most obvious difference between these and the other sorts of diaries is that in these cases, the originating writer must be a living person, not a spirit or a memory. This person speaks to the reader in a dream state, communicating directly and without conscious thought. For this reason, a Book of Dreams actually poses a greater danger to the writer than it does to the reader, as the writer may reveal things he or she would not do if completely conscious and aware. Nor will the writer remember what has been written, upon awakening. The most famous of these books is the so-called Kitap -in Düs of Istanbul. Turn to page three hundred and ninety-four in your textbooks to view an illustration." Draco had flipped the pages, and there it was. A picture of the book he now held in his hands.

"Accendius," said Draco, and the candles around his bedroom lit themselves. He walked to the bay windowseat and sat down in it, curling his feet under him as he had used to do when he was a small child. His old wizard's chess set of green marble was still laid out on the deep windowsill. He played with the pieces a little, thinking.

"It's all very well for you," grumbled the black queen. "Come and go as you please, that's about the size of it."

"I've been at school," he told her absently.

"We were your companions, your brothers-in-arms," the white knight said sadly. "Have you forgotten us already?"

"Time moves on," Draco said, weighing the book in his hands. "Things change."

"Yet we gave you comfort when all comfort seemed lost," said the knight, resettling himself on his dispirited dirty-gray horse. "You whispered to us your childhood secrets, and we alone felt the falling of your tears. Remember?"

Yes, Draco remembered. But he shook his head. He would never give in to memories like these again. They'd only weaken him, and he was, he sensed, moving past all human weakness now. He pushed the board aside.

"He's a spoiled brat, like all the Malfoys," sniffed the queen. "Always was, always will be."

"What do you expect? We're only pawns," sighed a pawn. And then the chess board was silent and motionless once again.

The pages of the book were blank, and they smelled of old parchment and long-abandoned dungeons. He dripped a little ink from the end of the quill, and the black spot vanished instantly. He waited. Slowly, he began to realize that he was waiting for something to happen; no, for instructions of some kind. Far, far away, he felt another mind touching his own, a consciousness far older, far more subtle. Lord Grindelwald.

"So what do I do now?" he whispered.

The mind of Lord Grindelwald seemed to be feeling out his own, attempting to penetrate it, to move through it. Draco tried to tell himself that he was willing. He couldn't balk at whatever was asked of him in the Dark Lord's service. Yet his own mind would not stop rebelling. It threw up a barrier so strong that the Grindelwald-consciousness retreated in shock. Very well, it seemed to say at last. For now, my young apprentice.

Left to his own devices, Draco sighed, staring at the pages. At last, he picked up the quill and did what Ginny Weasley had done with her own, very different diary. I am Draco Malfoy, he wrote. Who are you?

Black, angular words formed on the page. I greet you, Draco Malfoy. I am he who is called Al-laddin al-Rashid.

The flickering candlelight cast shadows on the words. Now what? Draco thought for a moment, and then wrote, Where are you?

I dwell in the city of Istanbul, under the reign of the Sultan Süleyman, Defender of the Faith, the Great Khan, He Who Wields the Sword of Ayub, may he live a thousand thousand years.

But if this Al-laddin al-Rashid lives in Istanbul, thought Draco, shouldn't he be writing in Turkish or something? Why can I read what he's writing? And how can he understand what I'm writing?

The writing, still black and strong, took on a vague quality. What would you with me, Lord of Dreams?

Whatis he on about? wondered Draco. I just told him who I was... it's almost like he was enchanted, or talking in his sleep... Of course. That was the answer. Al-laddin al-Rashid was asleep, and walking through the world of dreams. That also explained why they could understand each other; they were communicating directly rather than using language. Now all Draco had to do was to figure out what the point of this entire exercise was. The book had obviously been left on the bedside table for a reason. The point of these particular types of diaries, the Books of Dreams, seemed to be that the writer had no real idea who they were talking to or even what they were saying, and could be made to reveal anything. It was only logical, then, that there was some secret to reveal. Draco picked up the quill and began writing again, choosing his words carefully.

I sense that there is something you wish to tell me.

Yes, my Lord.

Draco paused to savor those words. My Lord. Oh, he could get used to hearing that.

What do you wish to say?

I would tell to you a story.

Then tell it, Al-laddin al-Rashid, Draco wrote.

The words began appearing more quickly than before, as if the writer had been waiting long and long for the secrets of his tale to be told.

In the name of Allah, the all-compassionate, the all-merciful, and the all-wise, the time has come at last for the secrets of Al-Juhara Har-am to be revealed. It is I, Al-laddin al-Rashid, who tells this tale, member of the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Tower and the Pheonix. Our order was founded by a descendant of Mohammed and a descendant of Abraham in the year that is, by the Western reckoning, 1154. And it is also in that year that my tale of the Jewel of the Harem took place. All praises be upon Allah, and Mohammed, His Prophet.

At the bottom of the page an emblem appeared, like a seal used to mark letters with red wax. It was in the shape of a great bird with arrows clenched in one claw and a spray of laurel leaves in the other. Draco couldn't shake the feeling that it should mean something to him, that he'd seen it somewhere, but he couldn't call up the memory. And that year... 1154-- wait-- Draco's brow wrinkled. That was the year that Hogwarts had been founded by Rowena Ravenclaw, Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, and Salazar Slytherin. Could there be a connection?

In the vast round city of Mansur, the Caliph of Baghdad did dwell, he who was known as al-Hambra the Great. And on one night he did dream a dream of portent. He looked over the high tower of his palace and said, "Behold, and compare. Is there any city on earth like unto my city? Is there any power, any beauty, any majesty that can compare with what I have created?"

And the Lord of Dreams, one of the seven Endless Immortals, he whom the Greeks called Morpheus, did appear to him on the balcony of the high tower, and did say to him, 'No, al-Hambra the Great. There is not."

"In all this city there are riches beyond the dreams of avarice. There is a street whose cobblestones are pure gold, and those who walk upon it shake gold dust from their shoes."

"It is so," said the Lord of Dreams.

"There is a garden where the green jade vines grow from the earth, and their grapes are emeralds," said the Caliph. "The almond trees are wrought of silver, and the rain falls as a shower of diamonds. The apricots, I believe, are topaz."

"This, also, is so."

"In my harem are women of such beauty that a mere glimpse of them has driven mortals mad, and tempted gods to descend to earth for a night of bliss. I, of course, am immune. Unless I choose not to be."

Dream did bow his dark head, and his eyes were like unto pools of black water that have no shore. "All that you have said, o mighty Caliph, is truth."

"Wilt thou, o Lord of Dreams, then tell to me one more truth?"

"That I will."

"In this city of perfection, can there be any who suffers?"

"There cannot."

"However," said the Caliph, "I speak not only of what is, but of what shall be. "

The Lord of Dreams turned aside. "Would you see the far future, that which no mortal man was meant to see?"

"I would."

In answer, the Immortal spread out his arm, and the spell of darkness cast by him did cover all the enchanted night of Baghdad. The silence was broken by destruction greater than in all the wars yet waged by the children of men. In the wake of this darkness Caliph al-Hambra did see things that no man now living may understand. What these things may be, I do not know, and may Allah preserve us from the knowledge of them. And the eyes of the Caliph were as those of a man who has drunk from the waters of living death.

"I would give all that is, and all that may be, to take back my request," he said.

"What the Immortals give, they do not take back," said the Lord of Dreams.

"Yet this future may be changed."

"That power lies always in the hands of man."

"The evil I have seen is undoubtedly caused by demons," said the Caliph.

"Not by demons, but by men," replied the Lord of Dreams, but the Caliph did not hear him.

"The War Chief south of the Rhine, Wulfric Aethelhard, from the barbaric lands far to the west, has this day sent me a tribute." And the Caliph held up his hands, and in them was a great ruby that contained fire and ice within its depths. "I will order my sorcerors to capture the King of the Demons in their webs of spells, and imprison him within this ruby. Throughout the ages, he whom the Egpytians have called Set, whom the Greeks have called Prometheus, whom the men of the far north have called Loki, whom those of the far east have called Susano-o-san, and whom the Jews have called Satan, will be captured within its depths, unable to do harm."

"Do not do this thing."

"I may save mankind," said the Caliph.

"By trapping Lucifer, the Light Bearer, he who fell from heaven, he who was once the King of the Angels and the Son of the Morning? O, do not do so, Caliph al-Hambra." And then a marvel happened that all the worlds of men have never seen before, nor since. One of the Immortals bowed his head, and knelt to man. "I beg you to hold your hand from this terrible thing," said the Lord of Dreams.

But the Caliph commanded that his sorcerors should gather all their powers together. And they stood about the ruby and chanted the forbidden words of the Dark Arts to bring the King of the Demons. A great spirit of light, as of a man falling eternally through fire, howled his anguish throughout the worlds as they imprisoned him within the faceted depths. And they believed that they had conquered evil for all eternity. But even as they rejoiced, a terrible sound of laughter filled the throne room of the Caliph. And a spirit of darkness spread its hand over all the great city of Baghdad. In that darkness, it became as any other city, good and evil alike weighed in its scales. And the spirit flew out into the world, seeking a man to inhabit. Since that day, it has always done so. In trying to destroy evil, the Caliph set loose a greater evil.

And the Lord of Dreams did leave the city of Baghdad with sadness on his face, if sadness there be without human longing or human regret. And the tears that fell from his eyes to the sand became jewels beyond price.

May Allah witness that this tale I have told is truth, for Allah is the best of all witnesses.

Draco took a deep breath. He couldn't really say that he'd fully understood anything he'd just read. But the story seemed to give off a kind of dark light, as if it contained a mystery that drew him in, daring him to learn enough to solve it. On the next page, a full illustration appeared. He studied it closely. A group of men in long, richly colored robes were standing over an immense glowing ruby; they were the sorcerors of Baghdad, he supposed. And seated on a golden throne was a man with a vast jeweled turban. The Caliph. But rising out of the jewel even as the King of the Demons descended into it was-- was--

"Voldemort," he said in a whisper.

Draco had, of course, never truly seen the Dark Lord. But Lucius Malfoy had whispered descriptions to his son a thousand thousand times in the depths of the night, when they were both roaming the halls of Malfoy Manor, sleep denied them; both slumped at the long polished oaken table in the great dining hall, waiting for daylight to release them. The skeletal body; the thin spidery arms and legs; the face, whiter than a skull, with huge scarlet eyes, a flat, slitted nose, and snakelike lips. He was floating up from the jewel.

He blinked. No. It was Grindelwald, exactly as Draco had seen him only hours before. The craggy face, the piercing blue eyes, the colorless hair under its black velvet cap.

And then there were the faces and bodies of others, ones Draco recognized only dimly from their portraits in the books in his father's library, the ones on the history of dark magicians. Their forms flitted through the spirit rising from the jewel. At last, they had all gone out into the world.

And at last, Draco understood.

But the black, thick writing was still appearing on the page, and he continued reading.

And so our order was formed in that year in an alliance between the children of Hagar and the children of Abraham, and we did vow to guard the Jewel so that its power could do no further evil in this world. It was hidden in the high tower of the Great Mosque, which Christians then called the Hagia Sophia, for many hundreds and hundreds of years. When Mohammed the Conqueror, blessed be his memory, did take the great city of Constantinople to rename it as Istanbul, the Jewel was lost for many years, and all our thought and will went to the hunting of it.

Why so? Draco wrote.

This world of man is both good, and evil. But if the man housing the spirit of evil in any day and age did grasp the jewel in his hands, then would the power of evil become absolute. And this man's reign would last until time and times were done. In that day, the Jewel was found, and secreted in the Grand Seraglio of Istanbul. So it is that now it is called the Jewel of the Harem.

Another thought came to Draco. What year is it? he wrote.

It is nearly the spring of that year which is, by Western reckoning, 1566.

Draco dropped the quill to the page. "That can't be," he whispered hoarsely. "Professor Binns said that the writer of the diary had to be a living man. It's almost 1997. That was over four hundred years ago!"He stared over the pages almost unseeingly.

Now-- the writing seemed to hesitate. Now our fear is far greater than it was in the days of Mohammed. For the coming of a great evil to the city of Istanbul and to the Ottoman Empire has been foretold. And our order is waning, waning; we have not the strength to fight it. We have not the strength to guard the Jewel. Either our hope cometh soon, or else all hope's end.

Draco slammed the book shut.

He was not really surprised to see Lord Grindelwald sitting next to him on the window seat. Or perhaps seeing wasn't the right word for it, but Draco sensed him with every nerve and fiber he possessed. His body shrank away from the undead thing, but his will was stronger. "I greet you, my Lord."

"And who am I?" asked Grindelwald.

"You are He Who Cannot Be Named. You are He Who Has Many Names."

"Ah," said Grindelwald, nodding. "So you do understand, my little Drachen." He put his long, long fingers on either side of the silvery blond head. For a panicked instant, Draco had to fight every natural impulse he had. Every single one of them seemed to be screaming No, no! Get away from that thing as fast as you can! For God's sake, run... before it's too late... But it was already too late. He forced himself to stay still by a tremendous effort of the will, and after a few moments it became much easier. The voices were silenced.

"And now, my young apprentice... tell me vat I must know."

In times to come, Draco could never piece together what had happened to him then. It occupied an eternity, and no time at all. Mostly he just remembered the sound of Lord Grindelwald's voice with its low, almost harsh, drawling Bavarian accent, eerily like his mother's voice. It crooned in his ear and asked him questions, and he told all he knew. Draco told the Dark Lord everything he'd heard at the top of the North Tower between Cornelius Fudge, Moody, and Dumbledore, everything he'd seen on that piece of parchment stamped From the Desk of Hermione Granger, every snippet of conversation and expression on everyone's face. Draco said nothing about what he had done with Ginny Weasley. But he was sure that the Dark Lord knew anyway. Long after his conscious mind had run dry, Grindelwald seemed to be tapping directly into his memories, and not only those. Drop by drop, Draco felt thought, sense, and emotion being leached from him. He thought almost dreamily that he could actually feel the last traces of humanity leaving him, draining away. Almost gone.

But then they caught on a snag.

Draco's mind and soul had no real defenses left; he had been too suffused in darkness by a lifetime with Lucius Malfoy for that. But his body remembered, and cried out.

The honey-tang taste of Ginny Weasley's lips.

The feel of her hair, maddeningly soft; the sensation of touching her skin, smoother than silk.

The ripe curves of her body moving against him, under his hands; the little low sounds she made deep in her throat when he kissed her; the whiteness of her shoulders, rising out of a sea of red and gold.

And, above all...

That inexplicable feeling of absolute rightness when she had been in his arms, of safety, of wholeness. As if he had been drowning in a sea of nightmares, and the touch of her hand had awakened him on dry land at last.

"This girl I see..." said Grindelwald, "this Ginny Veasley, vat is she to you?"

"Nothing," said Draco. "She's nothing to me."

The mind of Grindelwald probed his. "I t'ink you are not telling me the truth."

"I am sorry, my Lord," whispered Draco.

The Dark Lord was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, there was something almost like amusement in his voice. "This is not a matter for sorrow."

And then his spiderlike fingers clutched at Draco's head again, and there was no more room for thought.

A blank shaft of time passed. It could have been seconds or hours or days.

Then there were gentle hands on his forehead, brushing back the damp hair, soothing his aching temples. He knew those cool slim hands with their long fingers. They weren't everyday hands. Those few times he'd felt them wer the only times he used the word that now came to him, their own rare, special word.

"Mutti," he whispered. "Your hands are so cool, Mutti." His beautiful, cold, unattainable mother. She was so like the illustration in his old wizard's fairy tale book of Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen in her winter sleigh that when he was a very small child he hadn't quite been able to tell the two apart. Only when Draco was ill and in bed with a high fever did he ever feel her hands on him, her glacial blue eyes turned towards him. She would always call him by his middle name then. Lukas, Lukas, she would whisper, and that he was her liebling, her patscherl, her handerl, in that smooth drawling voice of hers-- surely he'd heard those endearments from her at least once? Then she was eternally moving away from him, only the tips of her long elegant fingers brushing through the hair that fell over his forehead before she retreated into the mists. But his mother was in Bavaria; she'd escaped this. Was out of all this. Was safe. He felt a dim gladness. He told himself that it was because she didn't understand, couldn't really be a part of it. It was better so. Draco opened his eyes.

Narcissa Malfoy was bending over him.

"Mother?" he asked in shock.

"Shhh," she said. "You need to rest a bit more, you should not try to speak."

Draco sat up, rubbing his eyes, and saw the glowing hands of the Muggle watch she wore in the dimness of the room. "It's only nine o'clock?" he asked stupidly. The events of the past half hour felt as if they had spanned eons. "What are you doing here?"

She shrugged slightly, her shoulders moving under the elegant silk robes. "Where else should I be?"

"Well-- Linz--" The words died on Draco's lips as he sat up and saw who else was in the room. He wondered if for an instant he had almost thought all the events of this day some sort of fever dream, vanishing at his mother's touch. Well, they weren't. He got out of bed, standing up, refusing to give in to the last traces of dizzying weakness. There was no time for them now.

Lord Grindelwald was standing by the window, looking more substantial than he had earlier. The mistiness had faded from his outlines. To a casual observer, he must have appeared human, although Draco certainly knew better. He looks more human because of what he took from me, thought Draco with a shudder, which he repressed. He was proud to serve the Dark Lord in this way; he who would command, must first serve. And next to Grindelwald was Lucius Malfoy. He looked at his wife, who said primly, "My place is with my husband and my son." She folded her long white hands beneath the sleeves of her robe. Her face was as immobile as carved marble.

Lucius gave one cold nod, as if confirming a point already made and set in stone. "We are nearly ready to go down," he said.

"Ve need one other. The last," said Lord Grindelwald.

"Who?" asked Draco.

"Ginny Veasley."

"She's-- is she here?" He tried, and failed, to keep the eagerness out of his voice.

Lucius looked at his son sharply. "The girl is at Hogwarts. She will be retrieved and brought back. The nearest apparation point is at the train station, and we have a carriage waiting, so it shouldn't take long."

"Oh, I'm sure she'll cooperate with you, Father," Draco said acidly. "What are you going to do, ask her if she'd like to spend the Christmas hols at Malfoy Manor?"

"It's all arranged," said Lucius, even more curtly than before. "I've just received information from our Hogwarts spy that the Weasley girl is in the hospital wing. Our operatives will use the Kargasa charm to take her out."

Draco had no idea what this might be. But he looked back silently at his father, refusing to give him the pleasure of asking.

"You don't know all there is to know about magic yet, Draco," Lucius continued with a trace of satisfaction in his voice. "It's a Turkish charm. Works through the burning of incense. Very like Confundus, but much more efficient and thorough. They'll Apparate to Hogwarts, then use the tunnel into the school through the basement of Honeydukes."

"There's a tunnel into Hogwarts?" Draco asked in surprise

"More than one. Barty Crouch passed on quite a bit of useful information before the end. I told you, boy..." Lucius continued softly, "you don't know all there is to know, not yet..."

Two massive figures stepped forward out of the shadows of the room. Draco recognized Crabbe and Goyle-- were they ever going to stop growing taller and bulkier? Goyle, in particular, resembled a surly gorilla more than ever. He nodded to them, and they grunted at him. It was the first time they had all even acknowledged each other's presence in well over a year. The insults the three had hurled at Potter and his friends on the train from Hogwarts at the end of fourth year had actually been their last moment as a united front. Draco often wondered if Potter or Weasley or that mudblood Granger ever knew that his desperate taunts that day had been an attempt to convince himself, not them. The Death Eaters had still been concealing the truth then. But over the summer, it had become increasingly, hideously clear. Nothing would restore Lord Voldemort. This being the case, much of the Malfoy power was vanished. Some of Draco's former Slytherin friends had deserted him with the haste of rats leaving a sinking ship once the news got out. Some, like Milicent, Xanthia, and Sadina, had lingered longer. But Crabbe and Goyle's bodyguard duties had ended rather soon. Now, as Pansy had, they were slinking back. His lip curled.

"Ve must have Ginny Veasley," Lord Grindelwald was saying.

Ginny. Ginny in the hospital wing at Hogwarts (was she all right? surely, surely she was,) and Draco could feel the blood pounding in his head. He could see her in his mind's eye, lying peacefully in an infirmary bed in a white nightgown, her hands upon the white sheets, white curtains blowing at the windows, and the purity of the scene only inflamed him the more. He was going to get Ginny Weasley.

"Right then," he said. "Let's go."

"No," said Lucius Malfoy, putting out an arm to bar his son's progress to the door. "We need you here now. Pansy will be the third."

Another figure, much slimmer and smaller, stirred slightly. It threw the hood of its black cloak back, revealing Pansy Parkinson's shiny dark head. "Aren't you glad to see me?" she asked Draco.

"No," he said.

She laughed. "Aren't you going to thank me?"

"Whatever for?"

She indicated the bedside table. "I brought you that book, Draco."

The book. What he'd written in it, what he'd read in it, what he'd learned from it... "Stop that damn laughing," he said to her.

"The Kitap-an-Düs," she said.

"I know that it's the Kitap-an-Düs. Professor Binns talked about it in one of his bloody boring lectures last year, remember?"

Pansy only laughed again. Draco had to remind himself that she must be necessary to this mission, which made it inadvisable to strangle her.

Lucius Malfoy pressed a small, oval metal thing with pierced sides into Pansy's palm. "Remember to light this once you've reached the hospital wing. There needs to be plenty of smoke by the time Madam Pomfrey sees you, or you'll never convince her that you're St. Mungo's aides."

"I don't think she's very bright," said Pansy, with a particularly irritating giggle.

"Nevertheless, make sure it is done correctly." Lucius stepped closer to her. "We're all relying on you, my dear Pansy. Do you really believe I'd trust them--" Lucius pointed discreetly towards Crabbe and Goyle "-- with a task this delicate?" His voice lowered considerably on the last words.

Pansy looked up at him through stubby black lashes. "I'd never fail you, Lucius," she softly said.

Draco's eyebrows raised. So Pansy Parkinson and his father were on a first-name basis now? He glanced at his mother, but Narcissa Malfoy was looking out the window and appeared not to have heard the exchange.

"I'm sure you won't," Lucius continued, then raised his voice again. "Stupefy the Weasley girl once you've got her away from the hospital wing and she's recorded in the log as having gone to St. Mungo's. Then get back here as soon as possible. Rendezvous with the other operatives in the dungeons once you've succeeded in your task, if you can. If it's past ten, however, don't bother. Time is of the essence here. "

"Do you actually mean to tell me," demanded Draco, "that Crabbe and Goyle passed an Advanced Apparation test? That they can bring Ginny Weasley back with them while she's unconscious?"

"Of course not," Lucius Malfoy said impatiently. "Pansy will do it. They've all received private tutoring, however; I'm certainly not going to have Apparation abilities on record for any of them."

Wonderful. What else went on that I wasn't told about? Before I was told anything? thought Draco.

"I've practiced it many times," said Pansy, her dark eyes glittering. "I'll get her back, don't worry."

"Yeah," said Crabbe to Goyle. That monosyllable proved amusing to them for some obscure reason, and they started snickering.

Pansy, Crabbe, and Goyle getting their hands on Ginny Weasley. In a near-empty Hogwarts, with almost everyone gone for the holidays. The thought disturbed Draco very deeply. "Are you sure this is wise?" he asked Grindelwald, who had been standing silently.

"Who are you talking to?" asked Pansy. He ignored her

"Vat is it you fear, my young apprentice?" said Grindelwald.

"Well--" fumbled Draco "-- Pansy Parkinson's always hated Gin-- the Weasley girl, and they--" He jerked his head at Crabbe and Goyle, who were poking each other in the ribs and making obscene hand gestures. "I wouldn't trust them around her as far as I could throw them."

"So you're... concerned about her?" his father asked silkily.

"My Lord," Draco said, speaking pointedly to Grindelwald, "if she's important to the mission--"

He was interrupted by a fresh burst of sniggering from Crabbe and Goyle. They were moving their blocky forefingers in circles around their ears.

"Ready for the nuthatch, in't he?" said Crabbe. At this witticism, Goyle started slapping his knees, too convulsed with laughter to speak.

"What's this all about?" Draco asked. Turning towards them, he caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. Following it with his head, he saw Crabbe and Goyle's giggling reflections in the window on the other side of the room. And Draco himself, and Lucius Malfoy, Narcissa... no-one else. He swung his head around the other way and saw Grindelwald standing next to the bedside table.

"You don't see him? Lord Grindelwald?" he said incredulously to Crabbe and Goyle. They collapsed in fresh bursts of laughter. "Mother?" Draco asked tentatively. She shook her head. "...Father?"

"I sense the Dark Lord's presence," said Lucius Malfoy. "And I hear his voice, which is more than anyone else can do."

"But you don't see him?"

"No," his father said reluctantly. "Only you can see him." He set his lips in a thin line, and Draco guessed what it must have cost Lucius Malfoy to admit that his son had a power he himself lacked.

"Do you understand, my young apprentice?" Grindelwald asked softly.

Slowly, Draco nodded.

"This is a privilege you alone possess," the Dark Lord crooned in his harsh yet strangely compelling voice, and Draco felt a warm glow of pride. He felt his old smile stretch across his lips, the smile that went no deeper than his teeth, sardonic, amused. He watched his window-self do the same. There was power in him again, a power he had not felt in nearly two years. Except that when he was fifteen, it had been his father's power. Now, it was his.

Crabbe and Goyle had stopped laughing and were staring at him dumbly, Draco realized. Goyle, in particular, resembled a half-witted bull, with dull eyes and thick lips hanging open in shock.

"What are you lot waiting for?" he asked with a sneer. "Go to Hogwarts and get Weasley. Bring her back, but if any of you lays a finger on her, I'll know and you'll be bloody sorry."

Lucius stepped forward. "I'll decide that. And I'll decide when."

"Will you," said Draco coolly.

"As the head of this mission, I believe I will."

The Malfoys, father and son, flicked their silver-grey eyes to Lord Grindelwald for support.

"Patience, patience, my apprentice, and my friend," the Dark Lord said smoothly. He put a hand on each of their shoulders. It gave Draco some mean satisfaction to know that he felt those bony fingers solidly and his father did not. "Ve must vork together, hein?" Grindelwald continued. "Or our enemies' laughter vill be our only revard."

"But of course, Father," said Draco, settling his face into bland lines. "I only want this mission to be a success. I know how important it is. The book told me so-- the Kitap-an Düs." He emphasized the word "me" very, very slightly.

"So much ambition, Draco. Ambition is a good thing, of course," said Lucius Malfoy, his gaze intent on his son's expressionless face. " But the half-fledged dragon should not try to fly too far, or too fast... or his wings may be clipped. And then he will fall." He turned to Crabbe, Goyle, and Pansy. "Go," he said. "And don't hurt the Weasley girl. That wouldn't suit our purposes at all." The three Disapparated with a pop.

The four left in the room prepared to wait. Grindelwald and Lucius Malfoy began discussing something in low tones, and Draco walked over to the bay window and sat in the soft cushions of the window seat. His mother stood next to him, leaning against the windowframe slightly, as motionless and silent as a waxwork. The moon had risen all the way now and was full. Draco watched its progress across the clouded sky, his mind flooded with Ginny Weasley.

They'd bring her back safely (damn well better be safely. Of all the people to send after her, those Neanderthals Crabbe and Goyle... And especially Pansy Parkinson. She'd just as soon rip Ginny Weasley's face off as look at her. If Pansy touches her I'll--) and she'd be enchanted to stillness, like a fairy princess asleep. Perhaps he'd tell them to lay her on his bed so she wouldn't hurt herself by falling when she came to, her long red-gold locks of hair streaming about her, her snow-white face set and still. He'd murmur "Enervate" and awaken her with a touch of his wand, and her golden eyes would open and look at him; what emotion would be in them?

Fear.

No matter how many times he ran the scene in his head, all Draco could ever see from her was fear. "You're mine, you're for me, not them. There's nothing to be afraid of," he would say to her, and her body would stiffen and her eyes would fill with-- Still fear, still stuck on fear. How did he know there was nothing for her to afraid of, anyway? What was that knowledge, what could it ever be, to him? And as Draco stared out the window and bit his lip, he knew that all of these were thoughts he should not be thinking.

"They draw near," said the voice of Lord Grindelwald. "I can feel it. It is time for us to go down."

Lucius Malfoy nodded, and picked up the Kitan-ap Düs from the table. "The Portkey is ready, my Lord. At the stroke of twelve, the tower awaits."

One by one, they left the room and filed towards the door that led to the dungeons.