Jewel of the Harem: The Grindelwald Continuum Book One

Chapter Seven

The Past is Prologue.

Time is a mere delusion... all things are, and must be, present. All things that have been, or shall be, are.

G.C. Eggleston, "The True Story of Bernard Poland's Prophecy."

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:

There is now a short JOTH film (yes, a film. Well, okay, a video.) As far as I know, it's the FIRST!! HP motion graphics fanfilm anywhere . It's based on StarEyes' art and my virtual cameras, motion control, motion graphics, script, and general mayhem. It couldn't exist without Kevin Wing, systems and network engineer extraordinaire, who collaborated in the creation of my Frankensteinish workstation (some credit also has to go to Watkins Film School, I guess.) . Because you, the discriminating public, deserve only the best, it's an enormous NTSC file and currently resisting all attempts to get it to an acceptable bandwidth and quality ratio. The problem will be solved somehow. In the meantime, if you would like to see it, please email me at [email protected] and I will mail you a free VHS copy!

When Draco remembers sitting in the clock tower and thinking, that's the exact scene illustrated by StarEyes. She drew it first in fact... Click on the underlined link once you get there in the fic and you'll find it. Yup, black leather boots, y'all. You've GOT to see this. She has SUCH amazing drawings done, and she's doing a web page soon...

Thanks to: VerbalAbuse, MrsBean, Josephine69, Peeler (who leaves the greatest and MOST inspiring reviews, and always makes me think,)Padsfoot Nightingale, Mika Weasley, HarryMalfoyssweeti1, SiriusWhite (it's Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, btw, kinda outdated in parts tho,) thistlemeg, Mara Jade (yes! Ginny WILL be a harem slave, don't worry, we're getting there; the ritual information is from my checkered past, net research, libraries, and weird friends!,) 714,Kureneko Kashikoi, princeofdeath, Gin the Gemini, Jeaniy the Science Guy, Melissa (check out her fics! Stat! They're under "Cinnamon" on Schnoogle,) Arra, 1adam, (we'll get to Harry and Hermione's secret, don't worry!,) Jessie Luna, szaranea (yes, I'll be taking stuff from a Pulp Fiction scene in Chapter 10, Lucius Malfoy, of course, gets the quotes,) , magickfan47, Katja, (there's a reason why Draco has always been obsessed with Ginny, he doesn't know it right now and neither does she, but it won't be revealed for a while... mwah ha, evil, I know,) Adhara, and Chrismery.

Ahem. An announcement about things to come. Draco and Ginny DO get back together in this chapter, and things get rather dark for awhile (just keep reading... ) After this chapter... a word to the wise: this fic is going to start living up to its R rating, which it really hasn't come anywhere near doing yet. If you've read Bertrice Small, Susan Johnson, Robin Schone, or Thea Devine, you have some idea of the territory to which that end of things is headed. Thought I'd let you know now. *Nothing* is gratuitous; it's all there for a reason that will eventually become clear. But JOTH will be rather adult in nature. Characters die, sins are committed, the Devil shows up and tries to make a deal, and sexual tension (and sex) happens. Never, never a PWP, and if you've read this far, you know it, but this isn't for little kids. If y'all like it like that, you'll like this. Even if you normally don't, you may be pleasantly surprised. .. ;) Now hang on tight, it's going to be a bumpy ride...

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Ginny winced as she heard Neville and Colin crashing after her like wounded boomslangs. But the three she was tracking didn't seem to notice. All her thought was focussed on them, now. Whatever had happened a few moments ago was forgotten, and even Draco was no longer sure of exactly what it had been. He had touched her, and she had touched him, in some way deeper than flesh... but it was fading, disappearing like the shadow of a dream within a dream. He shook himself impatiently.

She could see, now, that Harry, Ron, and Hermione were all headed for the same place. The secluded stand of long grasses on the far side of Hagrid's hut where nobody ever went, the one with the bare and broken trees hanging over it... and the clock tower. It loomed up before them, sinister and black, forbidding and forbidden. Its uneven wooden sides were smoky and dark against the snow-covered field. The cracked stone windows, she could have sworn, were watching them. Why... there? Just looking at it made a shiver go up her spine, and a queasy feeling start in the pit of her stomach.

At Hogwarts, much magic that was bound up with the castle and the land and the forest was not well understood; it simply provided the basis for the magic that could be quantified and taught, which was understood. That was why the staircases were forever moving and shifting, why the paintings were mysteriously alive, why rooms came and went, and why the portrait gallery on the third floor appeared and disappeared, no human being in five hundred years having seen all the paintings and sculptures at once. Except you! thought Draco in surprise at her memory. Why you, Ginny Weasley? But her thoughts on the subject of the clock tower only continued.

First year students told each other stories about mass murderers who had somehow escaped all the Aurors put together and were now hiding out in the top floor inside the clockworks, playing pinochle with the bones of their victims, ready to pounce on anybody who wandered too close. Second years were fond of repeating tales about how their half-brother's cousin's seventh-year-prefect's hairdresser in Hogsmeade had definitely heard Snape loudly consorting with Azrael, Asmodeus, and Beelzebub in the tower room at three in the morning under the full moon. Older students scoffed at the whispered silliness, but gave the place a wide berth just the same, as did all the teachers. A spot this isolated should have attracted a lot of couples eager to find privacy for snogging, but they crowded into closets and under stairwells, or fought for space in the Astronomy Tower, rather than come anywhere near here. It was never a spoken thing, either. Ginny, like everyone else, was capable of forgetting for long periods of time that there even was a clock tower. But sometimes, when the air was very still, perhaps in the darkest part of the night, or the stillest stretch of afternoon, the striking of the hour would ring out loud and clear. The entire class would seem to lose their train of thought while the long low peals went on, staring into space. Then they'd collect themselves briskly, leaving the moment unacknowledged. But the sound hung in the air and left an empty space there, something that had to be swiftly filled with nervous laughter and chatter. No, no-one ever went there that she knew of...

...except for me, thought Draco. Except for me. Sometimes he sat on the wooden floor of the tower room, his cloak tucked under him, the low thrumming clicks of the clockworks filling the air as he smoked cigarette after cigarette, pulling on them deeply and lighting the next before the first had gone out, as if he wanted more from them than they could give him. Sometimes he had a little silver box of Madame Celestina's Self-lighting Cloves, but he actually preferred Muggle cigarettes. They were so much stronger that they made him feel faintly sick. The long dirty cinnamon rush of nicotine would pulse through his veins, and he would prop his shoulders against the wall, a halo of smoke surrounding his ash-blond head and walling him off from the world. There was a tiny seat on the clockface itself, no doubt built for the use of the house-elves who repaired or reset it, and he went there too, sometimes. He didn't know if he could begin to count the hours he had spent there this autumn. Feeling the cold wind on his exposed face, his cloak wrapped around him, one black leather boot propped above the other, his face and his thoughts turned inward, always inward. There was nowhere else at Hogwarts where he could be sure he would not be disturbed. But even he never went there at night, and the shadows were lengthening past late afternoon now.

Ginny paused behind a bush and motioned for Colin and Neville to stay behind her. Ahead of them, Harry reached the door first and slipped inside, holding it open just a crack. Ron and Hermione followed him. Ginny waited a few moments and then crossed the expanse of snow swiftly, trying the door. It was locked. She drew her wand from its holster at her belt and began muttering different Opening spells under her breath, but Draco could have told her that none of them would work. All autumn long, that massive oak door had almost never been locked to his comings and goings. But in the now of 1995 it was, just as it had been three-- or was it four?-- nights ago, and that seemed, somehow, significant.

Neville was mumbling dire predictions that they'd all freeze to death in the snow. Colin was shooting him irritated looks, his eyes gleaming with excitement at the thought of following Potter, and edging closer to Ginny. He did have courage, and does still, Draco reluctantly admitted. Every inch a Gryffindor, even after he came over to our side... And that brought up another thought. How, and more importantly, why, had Creevey done it? He'd been wrapped up in that ridiculous fawning hero worship over Potter for nearly four years by then. What must it have taken to turn him from that? Of course, thought Draco, if he himself hadn't been such a fool over the past year since all this had happened, he'd know, and it was his own damned fault that he didn't.

Ginny sighed and wrapped her cloak closer about her, shivering as the sky turned ever darker. The temperature was falling fast. "I don't know what else to do," she said.

"There's got to be a way," insisted Colin. "Maybe we could climb up and go in through one of the windows."

"Maybe we should go back," said Neville, stuffing his hands further into his pockets. "Come back later, you know..." His face darkened as Colin began singing under his breath.

"It wiggles, it jiggles, it rolls...

It jounces and bounces around

It's a truly tremendous treat

In city or country or town!

Ask for it by name...

There's no need to get flustered...

It's Mrs. Craven's Magical Chocolate Custard!

It's--"

Whatever the end of the commercial jingle may have been, it was rather cut off by the way in which Neville tackled Colin to the snow with a growl of rage.

"Oh, please, please don't! They'll hear us!" hissed Ginny.

Neither of them paid her the slightest bit of attention as they rolled over and over; now Neville on the bottom, getting snow stuffed into his mouth; now he'd used his greater height to rub Colin's face in the frozen dirt, and they were both making enough noise, it seemed to her, to raise the dead. Ginny struggled not to cry. The small courage she'd felt was evaporating; whenever they fought over her, it was supposed to be flattering, she supposed. But she only felt torn apart between them, these two boys she cared nothing about in the way they both wanted so much.

"Stop," she whimpered. "Oh, won't you please both just stop!" She leaned against the oaken door, blinking furiously to keep from crying. It swung open. The steps above her led into darkness and silence, she was thinking now. Not a peaceful silence, but a stillness of locked doors and rooms behind them containing something capable of being let out, something that shouldn't be let out--

She took a deep breath and started up the stairs, Colin and Neville behind her.

It was amazingly easy to hide so that all three of them could see into the circular little tower room without themselves being seen. She clambered up a tiny set of stairs winding up from the tower room and into a belfry. There was just enough room for her, Colin, and Neville to wedge themselves into the little space surrounding the dusty bronze bell. Neville opened his mouth to say something, and Ginny laid a finger across his lips, her brows knitting together. He fell silent. The space in the floor all around the housing of the bell was open, and Ginny stared through it unmoving. Draco had a good view of the clockworks from above, where Harry, Ron, and Hermione were gathering, but he concentrated more on the strange thoughts coming from Ginny's mind. Her reaction was very much as if she were running up against a stone wall, over and over again.

I don't understand, she thought. I don't remember any of this. But he understood. Her conscious memory stopped right after she'd climbed up into the belfry and peered down into the clock tower. Whatever came next would be every bit as new to her as to him.

The three sat for what seemed like a very long time, all staring down into the tower room, watching their quarry whisper to each other in the corner as the shadows lengthened. At last, when the sliver of new moon had appeared in the sky, Ginny heard a thump-clomp, thump-clomp on the staircase. The door creaked open, and two people stepped into the room, both wearing hooded cloaks.

"Are you all right, Professor?" asked Hermione, rushing forward to take the first person's cloak and giving him a look of concern. Ginny craned her neck and saw that the older man was Professor Moody, almost ashen grey, clearly exhausted. He nodded.

"It's a long walk, I suppose we're none of us used to it anymore," she continued. Moody gave her a look, and she fell silent. "Sorry," she whispered. He drew a large silver basin from a bag he was carrying and laid it on the table.

Not used to it anymore.... Ginny's brow furrowed. Draco grasped her train of thought and ran with it. That's it! Of course. That's why Potter and Granger and her brother kept disappearing all autumn, why she was always a second away from catching them and then would lose them again. And that day in the library, when Granger vanished through the wall! They've been coming out here by some sort of internal Portkey so they wouldn't be seen. Didn't know that was even possible at Hogwarts... suppose it must be, though, since that's how Potter and Cedric Diggory were taken to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in the spring... She had heard his thoughts, too, and he felt her internal grimace. Draco felt a cold, disgusted dislike aimed at him, and for a panicked moment, he was sure that she had figured out what was really going on. What the hell do I do now?

But the moment passed, and he breathed easier-- or would have, he supposed, if he'd been breathing at all. I wonder where I actually am-- where my body is, I mean-- through all this? And Ginny, what about hers? He had a vague impression of a great tree at the bank of a stream, the two of them sitting under its branches... No, he didn't dare to allow that vision to crystallize any further; he had to keep this memory moving, and under his control. What had Ginny been thinking of a moment ago? Him, but not him. She was remembering what she thought of Draco Malfoy without the slightest idea that he was in her head.

Oh... she was remembering what her brother told her about what happened on the Hogwarts train at end of term that summer, and what I said-- something about Cedric Diggory, I think... But there was a certain core of honesty in Draco when it came to himself, and he flinched from the lie. Sod it, why am I pretending I don't remember? They'll be the first to go, now the Dark Lord's back. Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers first. Well, second, Diggory was the first. That's what I said. Then they all drew their wands at once and cursed me, I think; I don't remember that part terribly well. A week later I left for Linz with Mother, thank all the Gods. Draco saw what he had done through the filter of Ginny Weasley's thoughts, now. That didn't make him sorry he had said those things, he told himself over and over again, fiercely. But it did make him understand what he had done that day in a way he never had before. His words hadn't been only words; they were the pledged shadow of future deeds, and he'd known it. He had crafted them with the painstaking care of a sculptor eyeing a block of marble and weighing his chisel. They were a deliberate step into the darkness he'd always known was awaiting him....

Perhaps he hadn't known if he would really say them as he'd paced the train corridor that day, the minutes ticking by, Crabbe and Goyle silent at his side, exchanging looks.

Perhaps he had had a sort of vision of a brilliantly red-gold head bent next to her brother's in that train car.

Perhaps he had made a bargain with himself.

If she's there, I won't say a word. I'll turn around and go away again, go back to my own car, and spend the rest of the journey to Kent looking out the window, staring at the fields passing by me. Or I could say--

-- no, her brother would kill me.

Or I could do--

--no, my father would kill me.

But Ginny hadn't been there, which made the decision easier. His vicious words were also an act of despair, like plunging a knife into his own heart, or jumping off a cliff. An amputation of some part of himself that might prove inconvenient, and perhaps already had done. Well, she'd heard about it, all right.

Ginny was staring blankly down at the oaken table next to the clockworks, and Draco wished desperately that he had some sort of control over this body. There was nothing going through her head now, and he was alone with his thoughts. And who was that other person? He could only catch a glimpse of a fairly tall man through her peripheral vision. But then the man threw off his hood and raised something in his hands, and Ginny glanced automatically towards the movement. She almost choked in surprise, clapping a hand over her mouth to prevent any sound from coming out. It was, unmistakably, Remus Lupin.

Draco was badly startled. What the hell is he doing here? Father got him sacked two and a half years ago and I thought that was the end of it. That was one action, at least, in which Draco himself had played no part. He neither liked nor disliked his former professor. For the most part. Lupin had taught Defense Against the Dark Arts, after all, and once or twice Draco had slipped just a bit, revealing that he knew a great deal more about them than he should have at the age of barely fourteen. The first time, Lupin had looked at him keenly and warily for a split second, which pleased him very much. But the second time, there had been something like a faint trace of pity in the older man's eyes, and it was that second time that haunted Draco's dreams.

Not that his feelings on the matter would have made any difference anyway. Werewolves occupied a place in the natural strata just below house-elves, in Lucius Malfoy's opinion, except that they were far less useful. Few wizards thought any differently about them, so persuading a number of influential families to demand Lupin's removal had been about as difficult as leading a pack of dogs to a rib roast.

Dogs... that brought up another thought. For some odd reason, Lupin had a large black dog with him. A... pet? But why bring it here? It seemed well-trained, standing quietly at his side. But as the wizard placed the package on the table, the dog growled, its fur rippling in a way he could see even from where they were crouching. Draco couldn't say he blamed the animal.

He couldn't see anything of what the burlap wrapping might contain, but Ginny's eyes, and thus his, were drawn to it as if nothing else existed in the world. Creevey and Longbottom too, he saw. Lupin touched the edges of the thing, murmuring inaudible words, and Draco thought that he looked tired and worn. The strands of gray threading his brown hair were more prominent now, and-- incredibly-- his robes were even shabbier than before. It looks as if he's been struggling with something, just fighting to hold on, and it's taken a lot out of him... and it's got something to do with that package, whatever it is.

Moody and Lupin stood at the table at the very center of the room. The image of the blackened rafters of the tower shimmered unsteadily in the basin; it had been filled with water. Moody was tapping the package with his wand and mumbling spells in some odd, harsh language, not Latin. The room had been quiet before, but now a hush fell over it that was utterly unnatural. Hermione came forward slowly and laid a piece of bread on the table. She pulled two small containers from her robes, a cruse of oil and a flat dish of salt, sprinkling the contents of each over the bread. When she had returned to her place, Ron stepped forward and placed a white daisy next to the bread with mathematical precision, followed by Harry, who had the cut pieces of an apple. Draco caught his breath. He was beginning to understand.

Açik, açiga vurmak, Moody murmured. The rough brown sackcloth fell away in tendrils, its edges scorching. Ginny could smell the burnt cloth. She began to tremble. There's something in there that shouldn't be let out, she thought again. Oh God, why are they letting it out? Harry, Ron, and Hermione were gathered closely around the remnants of the cloth on the table, and Ginny could see now that there was something in it. Something square-shaped, and-- she looked harder-- pulsing. It was giving off regular red throbs of light, seeping through some translucent material that still covered it. . The sight was oddly hypnotic, each pulse marked by a regular division of time with the steady rhythm of a clock. Ginny pulled her cloak closer about her and watched, unable to move a muscle. The five people below her had gathered into a circle. The dog moved quietly forward and took its place as well.

Ginny glanced back at Neville and Colin, both staring with wide eyes. Neville moved forward a little to take one of her hands in his, and for once she did not resent it. Nor did Draco, although for a different reason. He was consumed with excitement, and one thought kept pounding through his head, over and over again. I know what that is! Perhaps they don't know, but I do. That's where Parkinson got it from; Moody had it, and no wonder he and Lupin both look like they've been through a war. They've been guarding the Book of Dreams. And it solved the mystery that had been plaguing him; namely, where, in all this, was Grindelwald? Now he had his answer. Draco didn't know if the past could actually be changed, or if everything he saw and heard was only illusion, re-enactment cloaking a present reality. But he felt sure that the Dark Lord would come through the thing they had so foolishly brought to the clock tower. In some way that had yet to be revealed, Grindelwald would come through the Kitap-an Düs.

The seconds dragged on, each marked by the resounding clicks and booms of the clockworks. Here, in the very heart of time--and that was a strange thought, but Draco felt instinctively that it was true-- they waited.

The mainspring began to whir. Moody spoke in a voice that was harsh but low and oddly melodious.

"By fruit and flowers--"

"By bread, salt, and oil--" added Lupin.

"By common things and uncommon together--"

"By earth, fire, air, and water--"

"We, who stand at the house on the borderlands--"

"Seek the Sight of the Book of Dreams."

The carillon chimed at Moody's last words. The great bell began to ring the hour. Ginny, Neville, and Colin all winced, stuffing their cloaks into their ears; at such close range the tolling was almost unendurable. Lupin was standing with his hands hovering over the book, not quite touching it, and the cover flipped open. The steady ruby light shone out.

There was magic in the air, all at once; whether light or dark, Draco could not have said. But it poured from the book in waves that were almost visible, incredibly powerful. Every one of his senses was preternaturally sharpened, and now he thought that he really could see the waves, and could catch every nuance of the expression on every face. Beneath the tolling of the bell, he heard rustles and whispers; Granger's lips were barely moving as she said to Ginny's brother, "I'm so afraid. So afraid." It seemed to Draco that he could almost smell her fear and the effort it had cost her to admit it, smell it as the dog must have been able to do, and he could tell that everyone else was afraid too. As the first toll died away and the second began he smelled a faint trace of some perfume Ginny wore, maddeningly sweet, complex and haunting, like a rose drowned in vanilla and entombed in myrrh--

Hermione squared her shoulders and stepped forward. Her dark brows knitted together and her face was very intent. Her hands stretched out towards what lay on the table.

Oh, not a good idea, Granger, thought Draco. Something tells me that this was never meant for you to touch.

Her fingers just brushed the glowing red surface of the book when Hermione cried out in pain and fear, leaping back. She clutched at her hand as if it had been burned indeed. Ron was at her side instantly, his face filled with concern, but she only shook her head. "I'm all right. It just-- didn't work--I didn't think it would--" But she was trembling badly, and he had to help her back to her place in the circle. His hands lingered on her wrists. Was this before or after Granger and your brother... started things between them? Draco wondered. There was a long pause, and then Ginny replied, Before. He filed the information away for future reference. One never knew when such things might be useful.

Moody nodded at him next, and although it seemed to Draco that Weasley was grimacing slightly, he did go forward. He was able to get much closer than Hermione had, but even though the palm of his right hand was stretched out over the surface of the Kitap-an Düs, his face hesitated. He stood motionless for a long time and then shook his head. "It's no good," he said, softly but distinctly. "It won't let me get any further in."

Moody leaned over the book and his right hand hovered above the glowing pages, his lips moving in his craggy face, which seemed more inhuman than ever. He stayed in that position for what seemed like an extremely long time. The clock was still striking and Draco realized that they were up to about twenty-two bells by now. Maybe time itself had gone mad, waiting for some conclusion to be reached. The dog whined a little, raising its head from its paws.

I've seen that dog before, Draco thought irrelevantly. I'm sure I have. A bit before this memory happened, and after it too. I didn't think about it but I suppose you never do really notice a dog... The way it cocks its head, and that little white spot on one ear... Hogsmeade, I think. Yes, more than once, and where else? Then he did remember . It had been one late afternoon that autumn, nearly a year after this Yule, when he'd stayed longer than usual at the clock tower. November, he thought, not long ago. He'd been reaching bottom; he could see that now that his long freefall was over and he had found purpose once again. Draco had finally left when the gibbous moon hung low in the night sky, heading back for the castle, knowing he was probably too late for dinner but not feeling any hungrier than he ever did lately. He'd seen a large black dog, a Labrador or mastiff mix. Bounding after him, he'd thought at first, but then it had turned and headed through the field and back towards the clock tower. It had meant nothing to him at the time. But now he wondered if it meant that Lupin had been here, or near here, all along.

Moody stepped back at last; it was almost a stagger. His face was beaded with sweat, even in the chill room. "No more," he said in a harsh rasp of a whisper. "I don't dare to try."

Harry Potter walked towards the book with an air of resignation. I suppose he thinks he'll deign to give it a go, thought Draco. In his resentment, he almost forgot what he was supposed to be watching for, and was surprised when he realized that Potter had placed his palm flat on the page with no trouble. A long sigh went through the room when everyone else saw it as well.

"What do you see?" Lupin asked urgently.

He looked into the silver basin, frowning. "Nothing. Just mists. Wait, a tall tower. No, the masts of a ship... it's sailing into a harbor at sunset, and the water looks like gold...molten gold..." He leaned further and further over the water until his nose nearly touched the surface. The very air held its breath, waiting.

Then everything seemed to happen at once.

Harry clapped one hand to his forehead, crying out in pain, and ruby light was seeping from around his fingers as if his very skin radiated the light of the book. One hand was still welded to its pages; Draco could see that he was desperately trying to pull it away but couldn't; Moody was holding everyone in the circle back, barking something. Draco wondered in a confused way why the dog wasn't barking; Harry was clenching his teeth so tightly that Draco could see blood welling up from where the other boy had bitten his lip almost through, and the shrill sound of Hermione Granger's screams pierced his eardrums. Ron was struggling to get to his best friend but Lupin was closer; he was moving to grab Harry's right hand. Draco blinked mentally and tried to collect himself; it looked as if-- but it couldn't be, could it?-- Potter was being pulled into the book.

That was when time slowed to a crawl. He was seeing this, Draco realized, not as it had actually happened, but as Ginny remembered it. Lupin was moving towards Harry's hand with incredible slowness. The expressions of shock over every face in the tower room spread like frozen treacle dripping at an infinitesimal rate.. They were all moving towards Harry and the book but Draco could tell that Lupin was going to get there first, and he had plenty of time to wonder why they all seemed so horrified at that. "Nooooo..." he heard repeated again and again, in overlapping waves of slowed sound. "Dooooon't..." What would happen if he touched Harry's hand, welded to the Book of Dreams? Would they both be pulled in, or were they afraid of something else?

No human possessed the reflexes to reach Harry first, but apparently animals did. Or at least the animal that had been lying on the stone floor. The black dog leapt up and launched itself through the air, knocking Lupin aside and sending him stumbling against the circular wall next to the clockworks. The momentum of the leap hit Harry full in the chest and he skidded across the floor. But not before something else happened, something that began the instant the dog brushed against the pages of the Kitap-an Düs. The beam of red light coming from the book was interrupted; however, it had touched off a reaction exactly like that caused by a match held to a dry branch. Flamelike, something spread through the dog. At first, Draco couldn't understand what was happening. Then he realized that he had seen this before, but never at this bizarrely slowed speed, and that in real time, even his trained wizard's eye could not have done so. If he had ever seen computer morphing of one image into another, that was the analogy that would have sprung instantly to mind. But, being who and what he was, he of course had not.

The fur changed to flesh. The claws rippled into fingernails. The body lengthened, thinned out, and the face shifted into the planes and angles of a human. In a single, impossibly elongated instant, the dog became a man.

I know who that is. Draco wasn't sure, at first, if the thought came from Ginny's head or his own. The hair isn't as tangled and he isn't nearly so thin, but those burning eyes... I never forgot those eyes. I've seen him-- no, I've seen pictures of him, in the Daily Prophet, and that London Observer that Dad was bringing home for a while too-- it was a couple of years ago, maybe three, but I never forgot--

Sirius Black, the murderer who escaped from Azkaban and came after Harry third year! It's him-- I know it is!

Everyone was screaming; beneath it all Draco thought he heard the broken sound of sobbing, Hermione perhaps, bent over Harry where he lay sprawled on the floor. But what happened next blotted out everything else. In one swift motion, Ginny slithered down one of the great beams from the belfry to the tower room. The floor rushed up to meet them with terrifying speed; Draco braced himself for the collision, wondering if she'd spent the month of January in the hospital wing after this. But she landed as nimbly as any cat. Magic, he thought confusedly. Some sort of spontaneous magic, it must have been... She advanced on the table. Every head in the room jerked up and Draco got a vague, dizzying impression of a sea of shocked white faces.

He had heard that in the moments before dying one's entire life was supposed to pass before one's eyes, but all he could seem to hold onto was one incredulous thought. Gryffindors really are barking mad. It's not bravery at all. It's a complete and utter lack of the sort of common sense normally required to continue breathing in and out. She's running towards a werewolf and a convicted mass murderer.

"Ginny!" Ron finally yelled, his sister's name oddly sluggish on his lips. He was running at her now, each step slow as if his feet were moving through sludgy treacle, arms outstretched, ready to tackle his sister to the floor. Colin and Neville were both yelling something too, clattering down the stairs behind her, but Moody was standing between them and Ginny, barring the way. Why? And Ginny herself was moving with amazing speed, while the rest of them were in slow motion.

She was going towards (Harry, oh Harry!) thinking confusedly of (Harry, you can't be dead, you can't, I'll save you I'll get him away from you I'll-) but she couldn't. She mustn't. In a flash, Draco understood why he was here and what he had to do. With every ounce of strength he had, he gathered his powers and gave her a vast push.

She paused in the middle of the floor. Her eyes grew blank. She turned. Without the slightest hesitation, Ginny placed her palm flat on the page of the Book of Dreams. She did not bother glancing down into the water in the silver basin, but stared directly into the book itself. The outer world vanished, both sight and sound. Within the page was a swirling red maelstrom, a dying sun, a spiral dance. A tremendous rush of flickering images came and went; Draco could make no sense of them, but Ginny did, and that was all that mattered now.

"What do you see?" came a harsh voice from the formless void outside the book.

"Ah, see..." she said in a wandering voice. "She sleeps in the arms of the king who is no king. But she is stirring, soon she will wake. Will he leave her now?"

"Who holds the power?" That was Moody's voice, thought Draco, surely it was.

"He, and she... they are two halves of a whole. That which is whole, cannot be divided. That which has been sundered, must once again be brought together."

"How may we bring it together?"

"You must seek that which holds the key, the Jewel of the Harem. You must sail the seas to that city which is the Queen of the East, and fall through the music of the spheres..." Ginny's voice wandered even further. "There is an angel of darkness, and a devil of light. There is a great imbalance in the world of gods, and in the world of men. There is death, and rebirth. There is dream, and there is waking. But you must beware... for the Immortals have taken notice of you now..."

Something else was sharpening on the pages of the Kitap-an Düs. At first it was sound rather than sight, notes of such unbearable sweetness that Ginny stood transfixed over the book, her face turned to its light. Then a vision of the other world floated up to the surface of the page, the real world, the ones where their bodies were. Draco and Ginny lay beneath a great tree on the banks of a sixteenth-century Scottish river at the borderlands between the Dreamtime and the world of men, their faces slack with dreams. As they stared, the wisps of sound in the air became sharper and clearer, as if tuning into a wizard wireless. Their hands were loosely joined, his fingers curled in hers. He started when he saw that and so did she, and in their mutual shock, they both realized at once that they had been looking too long, and that the image was shifting into something else.

The nimbus around Ginny quivered, its mouth opening wider. They were being pulled in. Draco felt a moment of real panic. This was what had begun to happen to Potter, who was still lying on the floor of the tower as far as he knew. But she must've been all right, he argued with himself. This is only a memory. Even as the thought crossed his mind, however, he knew that it might not be true. They were no longer walking through memory alone, but something else as well; he felt the limitations of his mortal mind in trying to understand it as never before. Everything that had been, or was to be, was somehow contained in this moment. The choices made here were eternal. The events that happened here would ripple through the past and future like a stone dropped into the surface of a pond. And this was why he had been brought here, had journeyed through her memory; this was the task he had been fated to perform.

"Gwenhyfar Weasley!" Moody's harsh voice was growing very faint. "Stay, I command you!"

But it was too late. The force that pulled her was not impersonal. She saw its face, and she knew its shape as intimately as she did her own flesh. Grindelwald, thought Draco. It's Grindelwald. But to Ginny, it was someone else, and whether that spirit was memory, reality, or time turned back upon itself, no man can say.

Ginny opened her eyes. She was lying on something hard and irregular, and her right hip ached dreadfully. The room was long and low, filled with pools of shadows broken by the flickering torches thrust into holders in the walls. There were rows of columns marching back into darkness beyond her, each entwined with carvings of serpents, and their ruby eyes caught the torchlight and glittered back at her. The air was very silent and dank. She was breathing shallowly, and her entire body seemed sunk in trance, in bondage. Her arms and legs felt immobile. But her eyes could still dart around the room, and she saw the vast statue looming behind her, the carved likeness of a wizard against the back wall... And Ginny knew where she was, and when, and why.

I'm here again, she thought. No. I never really left. The past three and a half years were the dream. This is the reality. All the time when I thought I was struggling to stay awake in History of Magic Class, or mooning over Harry at the breakfast table, or crouching behind the sofa in the Gryffindor common room and spying on Lavender and Parvati... all the time, I was really here. I am, I always have been, here.

Ginny looked up at the figure of the being standing over her, the one who'd brought her here, lured her here, shaped her into one whose final resting place could be nowhere on earth but here. Then, as now.

"Tom?" she asked. "It is you, isn't it?"

He inclined his head slightly, in a gesture that might have meant yes or no. And now that she really looked at him, she couldn't have said if he was Tom Riddle at all. She remembered him as having black hair and green eyes, very tall, very thin, much like Harry, but now there was no telling what he looked like.

"Names do not matter here," he said. Yes, the voice was the same.

"Or is it?" she persisted. The question seemed absurdly important. "Is it you, Tom?"

He continued to look at her, something like a smile on his lips. "To name something correctly confers a certain amount of power over it, does it not?" the being-who-might-have-been-Tom-Riddle asked softly.

But these were questions that had haunted her every day and every night since she had been twelve years old, and she could not let them go so easily. "Who are you?" she asked, staring at him as fixedly as she could. His appearance still kept slipping past her. "I know I wrote to you in the diary, whatever you really are, and I thought you were Tom Riddle then. Dumbledore said later that you were the memory of the young Tom Riddle, and Voldemort put you into the diary in hopes that someone would find it." Strangely, it did not frighten her to use the name anymore. "But who are you, really?"

In answer, he stretched out his hand to touch her arm. And when she felt the preternatural fingers on her skin, felt the flow of energy from him to her, Ginny knew the answer to her question. It was as if the first time he had touched her, when she was twelve, had been the question. In all the years since then, she had been framing the answer. And all her sleepless nights and terrified dreams and half-formed nightmares had solidified, layer upon dreadful layer of secrets crystallizing into some unspeakable shape. The shape-shifter who stood over her now.

Almost done, she thought with no emotion at all. The circle is nearly complete. He is my fate, whatever he is, whoever he is. That is his name. I was a fool to think I could ever escape it and him.

The last trace of her defiance snuffed itself out as thoroughly as a candle flame, and with as little hope of resurrection. As her mind released its hold on itself, succumbing to the will of another, it could no longer contain the consciousness of Draco Malfoy. He could feel himself leaving her, feel the shock of separation. Then he was standing over her body at Grindelwald's side. He saw what he had never seen in waking life, the Chamber of Secrets. It was much as he had imagined it. He had imagined it many times; he knew that now, standing there, had, in fact, pictured this exact scene. He saw the two figures, one above the other in a motionless tableau that looked as if it had stood since the beginning of time. If he looked very hard, he even saw the shadowy shimmer of the other world laid over this one, and their bodies propped up against the trunk of the great tree on the riverbank. But he was still holding Ginny's hand there, so he tried not to dwell on that vision.

"My lord?" he asked tentatively.

"My young apprentice," was the reply, in that tender, caressing, hypnotic voice. Yes. It was Grindelwald.

"Is she..." Draco could not bear to look at Ginny, lying on the floor at his feet. Her eyes were closed. Her brows and lashes were shockingly dark against her white, white skin.

"She is nearly ours," said the Dark Lord. "Nearly ours." .

Draco reached out towards her, but Grindelwald-- or at least, to him, this figure looked like Grindelwald, and sounded like Grindelwald-- stopped him with a raised hand. "She is not for you to touch. Not now. I have been weakened by-- give me--"

Knowing what he wanted, Draco leaned his head to one side, and felt the icy touch of those skeletal fingers on his skull once more. Yet he couldn't stop looking at Ginny Weasley where she lay on the floor. As he felt the energy drain from him to the dark lord to whom he had sworn allegiance, as he saw Grindelwald glow with new power, and as he sensed the gathering of a great force, he watched her.

Just beyond the glitter of her lashes, Ginny saw the spiderlike hand reaching out to her leg again. It was the last act, she knew. The one that would finally bring all things to a close. And this time he really did look like Tom Riddle, or at least like her memory of Tom Riddle doing this to her more than three years before. She felt the same sort of shame, the same sort of paralyzed frozen terror that she'd felt then. This moment had never really ended. In some dark recess of her soul, she was forever twelve years old, lying helpless and shivering on the stone floor of the Chamber of Secrets as Tom Riddle, or whatever he was, had been, and might yet be, reached out a hand towards her in completion. Ginny shifted her eyes and stared unseeingly at the irregular stalactites rippling the cave ceiling so she didn't have to see his face. There was no escape. There never had been.

At Grindelwald's side, Draco watched her. She gave no sign, but somehow he knew that for the first time, she knew. He'd brought her here, too. Without him, Draco Malfoy, none of this could have come to pass. Her eyes went over him without a flicker of surprise. I should have known, she thought, and even though he was no longer in Ginny Weasley's head, Draco heard her thought as clearly as if she'd spoken it. I should have known he would betray me. I could blame myself at least as much as I could ever blame him, and I might as well blame cats for eating mice, I suppose... It wasn't even a choice for Malfoy; he couldn't say yes or no to it. It's his nature. Betrayal is in his very bones. She closed her golden lion's eyes then, and waited for the consuming touch of that hand. . .

He didn't know what he had done until after he'd done it, and by then it was too late. He never knew why. Perhaps it was that she lay there so silent, so still, and so damn stupidly brave, her white throat turned upwards in sacrifice. Perhaps it was that her hair streamed down around her like a red-gold cloak, and the lines of her cheekbone and lips and chin were truly beautiful in the eerie sourceless light, but he knew that her beauty could save her no more than her idiotic Gryffindor bravery had done. Perhaps it was that the greatest failing in Draco Malfoy had always been, when all was said and done, the failure of obedience. Or perhaps it was no more than instinct, only instinct, just as it had been on the night of the Yule Ball, when he grabbed her wrists and kept her from going over the edge of the balustrade.

Whatever it was, Draco turned towards the vision of the two bodies, his and hers, lying on the bank of the river beneath the great tree. He could see his pale face, upside down, unnaturally still, his chest rising and falling very shallowly. They seemed to be separated by a pane of glass, his spirit and his body. He gathered all his strength. With one violent shove, he broke the barrier. Every nerve he possessed started screaming at once; the shock was so great that he didn't truly feel it yet, but he knew that when it hit him it would probably be the worst pain he'd ever felt. Swinging the same movement around in the other direction, he seized Ginny, the Chamber of Secrets Ginny, by her wrists and dragged her across the border between the worlds. There was a great formless cry following him, a wail of loss and frustration and rage, and out of the corner of one eye he saw a wraithlike shape narrowing, thinning into smoke, pulling itself after him. But he paid no attention to it.

He was falling, falling, tumbling endlessly through space, but it had a dimension this time, had weight and shape and feel and smell. The eerie keening music slid past them as they fell. He thought confusedly that it sounded a bit like the songs his mother used to sing to him in her low clear voice, in Linz, when they walked through the rose gardens as the day deepened into twilight...

In grün will ich mich kleiden...

In grüne Tranenweiden...

Mein Schatz hat's grün so gern...

Mein Schatz hat's grün so gern...

And all the while, he held Ginny to him.

They were falling through the roots of the tree, its bark, its leaves, the pulsing live heart of its wood, falling endlessly towards a goal they never seemed to reach. They fell through the madness and illusion of the Dream-Country, and Lord Morpheus watched them soberly as they went, knowing their fates, in some incredible way, to be entwined with his. They fell past the shoreless river Styx and the barge of Lady Death, where she stood fingering the ankh around her neck and watching them. They fell through the technicolor paisley squiggles of Delirium, who had redecorated her realm that week, and she giggled at them, one blue eye and one green twirling in different directions. Through the Pacific Rim of Fire, they tumbled past the cave of Aminaterasu, where Susano-o was ironing on a decal that read "My Sister Founded Shintoism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt." Over the tip of India, Shiva halted his eternal dance to watch them fall, and Kali rattled the necklace of dead men's skulls that hung about her blue-black neck. They passed through the American continent, and White Buffalo Woman paused to watch them on her endless journeys through the sea of grass on the plains of the Dakotas. Kokopelli, dancing over the stark wastelands of Death Valley, saw them too, but shrugged and continued to play his flute. .In the northern rim of Scandinavia, they fell past the halls of Sessrumnir, where Freya welcomed fallen heroes who didn't quite rate Valhalla. Thor rode past them on his horse Slepnir, sneering, and imprisoned within a twelve-faced ruby jewel in a cave below the tangled roots of the tree, Loki saw them, and knew that the hour of Ragnarok had almost come. For Draco and Ginny were falling through the World-Tree, that which his mother's people, the ancient Bavarians, had called Yggdrasil, the nexus between the lands of gods and men. And since no mortal mind can encompass this Tree, neither of them was ever to remember the journey. But since no mortal had touched these realms since the continents had changed shape, the immortals watched, and wondered, and read portents in the spiral dance of the stars.

To the gods, all times are one, and there no difference exists between what is, what was, and what is to be. The only power that gives form and shape to this eternity is that of human choice. So when Loki saw the mortal Draco Malfoy, the immortal knew that he had been called. He drew no distinction between that moment and the one on the parapet of the clock tower a few nights before, when Draco had invoked his name. A thousand years would have been the same. It has been said that God may not come when you want him, but he's right on time, and, in this case, the same was true of demons. Or angels, since Loki has, in one of his many forms, been named as both. He had been summoned. In his own time, he would come.

Grabt mir ein Grab im Wasen...

Deckt mich mit grünem Rasen:
Mein Schatz hat's Grün so gern.
Mein Schatz hat's Grün so gern...

Then they were no longer falling through the World-Tree, or the Dreamtime, but real space. The riverbank was rushing up towards them, and the two figures lying on it drew closer and closer. There was an incredibly violent, sudden jolt, as if punching through some invisible wall.

I can feel my fingers again, and my toes. He tried to move them. And I'm seeing through my own eyes, not hers, I'm back in my body, I must be-- But it felt terrifyingly out of control, clumsy and sprawling; he couldn't seem to control his arms and legs at all. They were still moving, that was it, and the pair of them skidded several metres through the half-frozen dirt before, at last, coming to rest.

Cold... hideously cold... Every nerve was numb with the freezing cold and Draco knew it was a blessing, in a way; there was a vast reserve of pain waiting for him as soon as he'd recovered from the first shock of falling back into his body. His eyelids were sluggish and uncooperative but he made them open. There was a wild hank of red-gold hair under his nose. He could feel the rise and fall of her back as she breathed, shallow and rough; he must have entangled her under him in the final part of the fall. It was her. He had Ginny. At last, at last, he had Ginny.

"Got you," he whispered in her ear, the sound of his own voice gritty and strange to him. She struggled against him, her movements feeble. He only gripped her more tightly. "And I'm not letting you go again, Ginny Weasley."

Her head whipped round at his voice. Her eyes widened in horror when she realized who was holding her prisoner. And then he heard the low, rhythmic sound of her shuddering sobs, each one tearing through his own body as well as hers.

Draco's nerves were coming to life now, each one stabbing at his bones and muscles and skin like the barb of a poisoned spell, bearing the penalty for attempting magic outside his powers. He'd been half-sitting up but he couldn't begin to keep that position. Rolling to one side on the riverbank, he groaned harshly against the agony of being reawakened in his body, all his energies focussed on holding Ginny's wrists together so she couldn't get away. The Kitap-an Düs was still clutched in his hands, but he didn't notice what was happening to it until her cry of surprise pierced his ears. He forced his stonelike eyelids open a crack. The shadowy figure had followed them, tracking them as they fell through the worlds. It was attempting to draw itself together into a coherent form. Draco, watching, saw Grindelwald. Almost Grindelwald. The figure hesitated. Hovered in mid-air. Then it collapsed with a sighing sound and fell into the thing Draco held. The Book of Dreams shuddered, shuddered, and lay still in his hands. He stared down at it stupidly. Lord Grindelwald was gone.

The pain was, incredibly, receding. Weakness was coming in its wake, hitting him in wave after wave after wave. He couldn't hold onto Ginny anymore, but it seemed that she, too, had no strength to escape him. Nothing could have kept him from falling to the riverbank, his cheek landing against the dirt, his body pressed into the cold, hard ground. But he was too exhausted in mind and flesh and spirit to care. Ginny was sliding to the ground beside him, and with his last strength he reached out and clasped her close, feeling her lashes flutter against his cheek as they fell, together, into blessed oblivion.