Jewel of the Harem: The Grindelwald Continuum Book One

Draco stood at the window in the dressing room, looking out into the mouth of the harbor he could not see. It was the darkest part of the night, perhaps two hours before dawn. He had not slept a wink. Crabbe and Goyle's snoring would likely have kept him awake even if he had been able to sleep, but every time he tried to close his eyes, they simply snapped open. At last, he could bear lying in that bed no longer, and had gotten up and moved to the window, noiseless as a cat. He'd thought at first that perhaps the problem really was the bed. After all, that was where he had lain down with Ginny, where he had touched and caressed and kissed her. She had stolen his knife from him in that bed and pressed it to her throat, and tried to flee him, and promised herself to him. He wondered if those fleeting moments were all the intimacy he was ever to know, with her. No. Surely that couldn't be. She had sworn her body to his, and they were tied, now, with a web of bonds that could not be broken.

Where had they put her, where were they keeping her? Draco reached out with his mind to try to feel Ginny's presence, but met only with a blank wall. He could no longer feel his bond to her, and it sent a pang of fear through him. She was the only thing of value that had come from this failed rebellion of his; even his father had admitted that. If she lived-- which of course she would, because she had to, because he needed her-- she might prove to be his talisman, a human shield between himself and the possible consequences of what he'd done. Belatedly, Draco was aware that even for a Slytherin, the thought represented a prime bit of cowardice. That little voice in his head seemed to note the fact with positive glee. It's only prudent self-preservation, he told it in an injured way, feeling too utterly exhausted to tell it to sod off as usual. How he wished he knew more about the state Ginny was really in. It wasn't anything so innocuous as sleep; he was sure of that, he'd felt that when he'd held her in his arms as he heard his father's footsteps coming through the door. Damn you, Weasley, don't die on me now. You can't. I won't allow it. So hour after hour, these thoughts spiraling through his head, Draco remained awake.

There was the sound of movement behind him, finally; Crabbe and Goyle were getting up from the chairs where they'd slept, scratching themselves, complaining. Or Goyle was, anyway, in a growly voice low enough so that Draco could affect not to have heard him. Footsteps came, footsteps went. He heard his father's low murmur behind him, moving into the room, then out again. Still he stood and looked out the window. He was already dressed after all, and all that was required of him now was to leave when he was told. He fingered something caught at one side of the window. It was a hank of raggedly uneven hair, a dark chestnut with caramel highlights.

A touch came at his arm. Without turning round, Draco saw that it was Snape. They nodded to each other.

"Are you ready?" Snape asked.

"Yes," Draco replied. "Where's Ginny Weasley?"

"She comes with us, of course."

"So... has she awoken?"

"No. She will be transported."

"Oh." Draco stood silent for a moment longer. Then: "Do you know what happened to Pansy Parkinson? I haven't seen her. Is she with you?"

"She is not," said Snape, curtly. "I will explain everything later. Not now."

Before he turned to leave, following the others, Draco took one last look around the room. He wanted to imprint it on his memory forever. He wanted to burn every trace of it from his mind so thoroughly that not even ashes remained. I hope to hell we're sailing soon. I want to forget I ever was in this place.

But such was apparently not to be. As he followed everyone else blindly, lost in his own thoughts, Draco found himself stepping down into the tavern's common room with the rest. "One last drink," said Snape in his ear, "while the luggage is brought on board. Then we'll all leave."

Draco shrugged indifferently, and allowed Snape to guide him to a table with a touch on the elbow. Apparently the responsibility of making sure he actually ended up on the ship had been delegated to his former potions master; well, it was all the same to him. He wondered vaguely where Ginny might be, but he was too tired to care about much of anything. Tired in body, tired in mind, tired in soul, if he even had a soul. He propped his chin in one hand and let the subdued talk wash over him. The tavern was nearly as full of people as it had been the night before, but these were quieter, more sober, more businesslike. Sailors enjoying a last tankard of ale before their ships sailed, he supposed. The hood fell back from his head and he ran a hand through his hair, barely able to summon up the energy to do so. Even the tallow candles smoking in the wheels above the tables seemed too bright.

But when Draco moved his head, the flickering orange lights glanced off his silvery hair, and the white flash was the first thing Ginny saw as she followed her brother and her friends at a safe distance into the front door of the tavern. She didn't realize what it was until she was all the way through the door, her hood pulled down over her face, her hands thrust into her pockets and her shoulders hunched together in an attempt to avoid notice. Since she no longer felt the bond as she had done, it took her several moments to work out what it was that she'd seen. At first, she thought it was a piece of silver. In this place? I doubt it... One of the silver tankards, maybe... And when she saw the brooding figure at the corner of one of the large tables, it was too late.

She saw all of them, seated at that long table. Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville were walking right past them. The Death Eaters. Her breath caught in her throat. Ginny skirted the outer edge of a group of sailors and tracked her friends, watching them as she moved on the other side of the room. Ron stiffened, and Neville actually stopped briefly in his tracks.

"Go on," Hermione hissed, in a voice just barely loud enough for Ginny to hear. "They can't see us, remember?"

Ginny stumbled over a jagged edge in the rough wooden floor, grabbing onto a table to steady herself. But still, nobody seemed to particularly notice her. The sailors at the table didn't look up from their conversation. She prayed that her luck would continue to hold. Or was it only luck? She fingered the material of the cloak she now wore, and saw that wells of smoky orange light burned deep in its folds. It couldn't be an invisibility cloak, because she'd seen Pansy in it when the other girl had first come into her room, when she'd taken her hood off. But Ginny knew that invisibility cloaks were relatively recent, and had come from a much older type of magical garment, one that merely made the wearer less noticeable. That had to be what she now wore. She didn't dare allow herself to feel too relieved, though; even if she really did have one of those types of cloaks, they were far from foolproof. Still, she edged as close to Ron as she dared, trying to hear what he said to the rest. They had all sat down at a small table in a dingy corner.

Ron looked down at his hands, his face blank. Harry and Hermione exchanged glances. Neville was searching for something in the leather bag he carried. "I think I've got enough of all my herbal supplies for the voyage," he said. "What's the name of that ship again... I never can remember... something to do with a great queen, or a good queen, isn't it?" The other two did not answer him. The murmur of voices in the tavern rose and fell around them all, like the waves of the sea that rolled outside.

"I'm sorry," Ron finally said. "I've led you on a wild pixie chase."

Hermione cleared her throat. "You don't-- you don't feel Ginny at all?"

"No," said Ron. "And it's worse than that. You were right-- all of you were right." He drew a long, shaky breath. "I never really did."

For once, thought Ginny, Hermione seemed to realize that the best thing to say was nothing. She reached over and patted Ron's hand, tentatively. Harry glanced at them out of the corner of one eye and drew Neville a little further down the bench, beginning to talk to the other boy in a low voice, turning his back on the pair.

"I've been beastly to you," said Ron. Hermione still did not say a word, but laid her hand over his.

"I understood," she said. "I understand."

"No, you don't," Ron said gloomily.

"Well- there was nothing I could do to help you; that was the worst part. Nothing I did or said seemed to make any difference. You never would listen when I tried to explain to you that Ginny couldn't be here. You kept shutting me out-" She bit her lip.

"Couldn't we just have a great row where you call me the stupid prat I am, and get it over with?" Ron asked hopefully.

"You always think it's so simple," said Hermione, a touch of bitterness entering her voice. "It's not. Can't you see that the true problem is your lack of trust in me? Are you even capable of trusting me, Ron?"

"I try. I am trying. I'll try harder." He looked down at their linked hands. "I just don't want to lose you, Hermione."

"You-- you won't," she said.

"I don't want to lose you," Ron repeated, and then he leaned to her, awkwardly. His hands clutched the back of her head, sliding through her hair. She patted his shoulders, just as awkwardly, making little soothing sounds that Ginny couldn't quite hear. But from her perspective, she saw what her brother did not. Hermione's eyes were blank and troubled, and she was not looking at the boy she held in her arms. Ginny leaned closer. The hood fell back from her head. A hard hand seized the back of her robe.

"Hi! Worthless, lazy limb o' Satan. What do we pay ye for, I'd like to know!"

"Wh--what?" stammered Ginny. She was turned to face the fat innkeeper. He was not an attractive sight at this hour of the morning. His apron was covered with grease streaks and blackened soot and long splashes of ale and God knew what else, his scanty hair stood in filthy wisps, and a few brownish, crooked teeth showed in his mouth above his bristly chin when he scowled at her. He seemed much taller now than he had before. Of course, she was a lot shorter.

"Get this-" he shoved a tray loaded with earthenware mugs of ale "-- over to that table o'sailors in two shakes of a lamb's tail, or I'll serve ye up for their amusement. They've been at sea for long and long, and ye'd be a real treat, I'm thinking!"

Ginny gulped and grabbed the tray. Apparently, passing for a boy wasn't going to be enough to guarantee her safety around here.

She stumbled and scrambled from table to table with trays of beer tankards and mugs, going back to the bar for fresh refills. There seemed no end to the work, and the riff-raff she served frankly frightened her. God, but how dirty everybody was in the sixteenth century! She was grateful for the shadow-cloak, but it didn't exempt her completely from leers, filthy faces missing teeth or the ends of noses being shoved next to hers, lewd comments, and more than one pinch on the bum. She didn't think it was because they saw through her disguise as a boy, either. Maybe I never belonged in Gryffindor after all, she thought sadly. Merlin knows, I don't feel very brave at the moment. A corner table lined on either side with ragged sailors gave a chorus of catcalls and whistles in her direction when she slipped in spilled beer and nearly tumbled to the floor. She flushed red and made her way back behind the bar. Weren't there anyone else waiting tables in the taproom? This seemed much too much work for only one person.

"I'd get more ale to that table in the corner right quick if I were you, dearie," clucked Meg, the serving wench behind the bar. "Most of 'em just returned from a long voyage a fortnight since, and they're off on another at the turning of the tide."

"Where?" Ginny asked dully, trying to balance the tray.

"Oooh, all the way to Istanbul, can y'imagine? There's a place no God-fearin' Christian soul should go. What with the lustful heathen Turks, and all." Meg shuddered elaborately.

Istanbul! Ginny turned to stare at the table in question, thinking hard. Could it be the ship that her friends had booked passage on? "Tell me," she said carefully. "How many ships set sail to that port from Leith?"

Meg shrugged. "Not a terrible lot. 'Tis too great a journey for that. But I've been tending bar for me father five years now, since I was only a little 'un, and there's more ships that go every year. Powerful lot of money to be made tradin' in spices and such with the Turks, I hear."

"Thanks, Meg," Ginny murmured absently, her mind still full of what she had heard. Someone called for ale from the other side of the bar, and Meg turned towards them, leaving the tray on the polished wood surface. Ginny went around to take the tray from the back of the bar, not watching where her feet were going. She stumbled over something on the floor and failed to catch herself in time. Since she was forced to let go of the tray in order to avoid dropping all the ale, she fell headlong on the floor.

"Oof!" All the breath was knocked out of her at once. Ginny lay gasping on the splashed and dirty stone flags. A head raised itself from what looked like a random collection of rags tucked underneath the bar. A skinny brown hand rubbed the thatch of dark hair, and the entire bundle resolved itself into a small, gawky boy.

"'Tis there truly no rest for the wicked in this den of rum-pots and maltworms?" he asked peevishly.

"I--I was only--" stammered Ginny.

"Come to think of it, Auty should have woken me an hour since. With a well-placed kick to the ballocks, no doubt. What are you doing here?"

"Waiting tables--"

"You! I've never seen you before. Where did you come from?"

"I--the innkeeper just sort of grabbed me, and I--"

Realization dawned on the boy's face. "Oh! I suppose 'twas my place that you filled. Truly, I owe you thanks." He grinned and stuck out a hand. "Robin, at your service. And you...?"

"Uh--" For a moment, Ginny's mind simply drew a blank. "Er--" Luckily, she had six brothers, and thus a large supply of male names ready to hand. "George. Yes, that's it. I'm George."

"Well, George, I see they have managed to press you into slave labor at this Godforsaken hellhole of a tavern, as well," said Robin idly.

Ginny nodded, unsure of how to reply. She sat up a little, looked at the boy more closely, and gasped. "I saw you before! You're Rob. The servant who--uh--" Oh dear. I've got to do better than this or I'll give myself away before I ever even have a chance to make it out of this room. "Well, I saw you going upstairs to serve M--I mean, one of those, sitting over there at that table." Discreetly, she pointed towards the table where Lucius and Draco Malfoy and the rest of the Death Eaters sat, swathed in black cloaks. Robin's eyes followed where she had pointed, and he shuddered.

"Fair set my skin a-creep, he did. Aye, that was me. D'you think anyone else noticed? Auty the fat innkeeper, for instance? I had hoped to avoid him, you see, and-"

"How would I know?" She examined Robin more closely. There was an unmistakable likeness in both face and body, but the servant she'd seen go into the room with Draco last night had been a good thirty years older at least, a wizened little man. This boy couldn't possibly be a day over sixteen. Yet the two were the same person. Robin had just admitted it. Her brow creased. "You look all different," she said. "I don't understand; what--"

"Eh... the taproom's better lit, so it is," Robin said evasively, and not very convincingly, seeing as how it was still an hour or two before dawn and the flickering tallow candles in the wooden wheels left most of the room in shadow. Then Ginny flinched as she heard the bellowing voice of the innkeeper just over the two of them, evidently on the other side of the bar.

"I'll skewer ye on a pudding-prick when I find ye, worthless, lazy, lie-about--"

"We should maybe, er--get back to work?" Ginny whispered tentatively.

"Ha! I won't stir a stump because pox-ridden old Auty tells me to. Watch this," whispered Robin. He pulled what looked like a crude sulfur match from a pocket of his breeches, and the strip of wood burst into flame. Then he stuck it carefully into the seam of the shapeless leather shoe on the innkeeper's right foot.

"How did you do that? I didn't see you strike it on the floor." Ginny's eyes narrowed.

"The hand is quicker than the eye." Robin's own dark eye closed in a wink as the flame licked at the innkeeper's shoe.

"Augghh!" Much loud bellowing and stamping about ensued. Robin snickered, his dark eyes dancing with mischief, clearly inviting Ginny to share in the fun.

In spite of the situation, Ginny couldn't help stifling a giggle. Robin reminded her so of Fred, in temperament if not appearance. Maybe that was why George's name had sprung to her lips to claim as her own; one twin was rarely seen without the other, and yet their personalities were quite distinct, although nobody outside the family really took the trouble to know that. The thought of her lost brothers brought a sudden, almost unbearable pain to her heart, and she remembered her vision that they were on their way to her, in the twentieth century, and the doom she'd almost been able to see hanging over all their movements as they set off for Hogwarts with Charlie. Stop that, she told herself sternly. If she gave into her sentimental pangs right now, she'd lose her one chance to salvage something from this entire horrible mess of a situation. And she couldn't do that. She had to find out if the men at the table in the corner really were sailing on the ship her friends were going to take to Istanbul. But how?

"Come on." Robin's voice broke into her thoughts. He stood up and offered her a hand. "I'll show you the ropes of table waiting, George me lad."

"I'd be very grateful," Ginny admitted. "I think I've been making rather a mess of it so far."

"There's naught to the business." Robin slung several drinking containers onto a tray with polished ease. "Here be a silver tankard, an earthenware mug, a pottle--fill them with the swill Auty likes to call small ale and beer-- someone calls for French sack or Alicante wine every now and then but not often- and serve them up with a bit of sauce. That's all."

"Sauce?" Ginny struggled to keep up. "What sort of sauce?"

Robin winked at her--exactly, Ginny thought, as Fred used to do. Or will do, rather, in four hundred years. "Follow me."

A deep-throated chant rose from the corner table as Robin made his way toward it, closely followed by an anxious Ginny.

"Lustily, lustily let us sail forth,

The wind trim doth serve us, it blows from the north."

It seemed to be the same song they'd been singing for the past hour, although most of the stanzas were far more uncouth than that one. A number of weather-beaten sailors looked up as Robin approached with the tray.

"Still here, Robin, I see!" said one, with a marvelously unkempt beard.

"Aye, Robin, whose face haunted my shipboard dreams," added another, as he grabbed a mug and bared his wolfish teeth in a smile. Two more were pointing at a large colored map with greasy fingers, but they, too, looked up.

"Well met again, Wat. Tell me, 'twas it near as often as that of Devon Rose?" asked Rob with a grin, setting down the tray.

"No, not as often, perhaps, but then it was other than her face that haunted me. How do you, Rob?"

"Near as well as a sailor pulling out his own teeth from the scurvy at the end of a long voyage--which is to say, not well at all." Robin plopped down into the chair that the sailor held out for him.

"I know the cause, and the remedy. 'Tis the same one I offered you before."

"Yet the obstacle remains the same, as well."

"Aye, and well do I know it. Who's yon lang lad?" Wat jerked a thumb in Ginny's direction. Too late, she realized that she had thrown back the hood of the shadow cloak, and was now far more noticeable than she had been.

"My new bosom companion, George," said Robin carelessly. Ginny nodded uncertainly, looking from one to the next.

"Wise, and wondrous silent," added Robin.

"And in silence true wisdom lies," Wat observed.

"Hi! Potboy! We came to drink, not to hold parley!" roared a fierce-looking sailor with dangling earrings and rings on every one of his massive fingers at the end of the table.

"We will speak more on this later," Wat said in an undertone, as Robin jumped to his feet and pulled Ginny with him.

Robin seemed to know exactly what sort of rude banter the sailors liked best, so Ginny held the tray, passed down mugs and silver cups, and remained silent, trying to sort out the meaning of what she had just heard. The two had met before, Robin and Wat--before this voyage from which some of the sailors had just returned, that is. She was fairly sure of that. Wat had offered Robin something which the boy, for some reason, had not felt he could take. But none of the rest of anything they'd said had made much sense to her, and their speech was so strange that at times that she could barely follow it. The conversation currently taking place, on the other hand, was fairly easy to understand. She struggled not to blush scarlet.

"None of that, now!" Robin was saying, slapping away the hand of a burly sailor and laughing wickedly. Ginny blinked. For just an instant, she could have sworn that the scrawny boy had resembled--well, a very buxom girl. It hadn't lasted more than a second and she could have believed that she'd imagined it, except that it seemed the sailor must have seen it, as well.

"It's a cruel lad ye are," the stocky sailor said, a befuddled expression flitting across his face. "What's a poor sailor to do? Meg tends bar, and Bet defends her virtue wi' a sgian-dubh in her stocking, the unfriendly lass."

"What of Devon Rose?"

"Upstairs wi' me mates," the sailor said sadly.

"Ah, Rose," sighed Robin theatrically. "So called because she is overblown, or because she smells?"

A roar of laughter from the table.

"So ye won't be me sweetheart, Rob, lad? Once ye try sailor love-"

"If I wanted to catch the worse case of the pox in all the length and breadth of Britain, aye," Robin retorted.

"Now, lad," said another sailor, "'tis not fair, an accusation such as that. We've sailed the Spanish main for nigh on a year now, with no Spanish lasses to comfort us." The sailor pulled a sad face.

"Mayhap you caught the pox from a mermaid, then," said Robin, laughing.

"And mermaids we saw," broke in the first, speaking excitedly. "Sitting atop treasure houses filled wi' diamonds at the landing of our ship at the Golden Horn. Ah, lad, if ye could but see the sultan's country! The city winds about seven hills, and the homes of even the beggars are gilded and set wi' jewels."

"All their dripping pans and chamber pots are fettered in gold," chimed in the second, "and all the prisoners are fettered in gold as well. As for rubies and diamonds, even the slaves gather them at the seashore and stick them in their caps."

"But Christian men must beware of the evil djinn," the first sailor added soberly. "Or they will spirit ye away on a magical carpet to the heathen tower at the top of the world, and ye'll ne'er come back nae more."

"Is any of that true?" asked Ginny when she and Robin returned to the bar for more ale. She didn't begin to know what to believe, but she certainly knew that magic carpets existed, as did djinn. But Muggles shouldn't know about any of these things, even sixteenth-century Muggles. Maybe in this age, the lines between magic and Muggle were less strictly drawn.

"Sailor's tales." Robin shrugged. "But there are wonders and marvels enough in this world, they say, and sailors do see them. So will I, one day soon, I vow."

"What was that sailor talking about... the one named Wat? I mean, when he said that he knew the cause for your problem, and the remedy?"

Robin took two foaming mugs of ale from Bet and leaned towards Ginny. "Can you keep a secret?" he whispered.

"Of course."

"Today, I leave this miserable rotten devil's arsehole of a tavern to run away to sea," he said in an undertone. "I know somewhat of the sailor's trade, at least, since my mum's brother was a ship's mate. Wat has asked me to sail with the Good Queen Bess afore the last voyage, and I see that he has not changed his mind. They need to pick up more deckhands and ship's boys in Leith. But I must leave quick and quiet before the turning of the tide, for Auty will never let me go if he knows. I came here a year ago, starving and ragged, and I work for naught--he is not anxious to lose a servant like that."

"That ship is called... the Good Queen Bess?" Ginny asked slowly, her mind whirring.

"Aye, so it is, and they set sail to Istanbul at dawn."

They made the rounds of several tables, setting down drinks at each. A possibility was taking shape in Ginny's head. She spoke quickly, before she could lose her nerve. Even for a Gryffindor, sheer stupid bravery did have its limits.

"Take me with you," she said.

"I cannot," said Robin flatly. "I must travel alone. There's risk enough for one escaping from Auty's watchful eye. I would help you if I could, but--"

"I thought I saw something rather odd a few minutes ago," Ginny plowed on determinedly. "I could have sworn that when you were teasing that fat sailor at the corner table, you looked exactly like a girl. For just a second. It was a good joke, wasn't it?"

"I know not what you mean, George." Robin avoided her eye and hurried back to the corner table. The sailors were all singing again.

"Make them good cheer,

And hold all together, as friends linked in love,

The cans shall be filled with wine, ale, and beer!"

Ginny plucked at the rough homespun sleeve of Robin's tunic. She caught his eye. He looked at her warily. "I'd help you if I could possibly do so," he repeated, "as I would willingly leave no-one under Auty's eye, but-"

"If you don't get me on that ship by dawn," she said quietly, "I'll tell everyone your secret."

"Secret?" Robin gulped.

"You're a shapeshifter," said Ginny.

She had still not been entirely sure that she was right, since she had only a vague memory of Binns droning about shapeshifters in a History of Magic lesson last year. They were Metamorphmagi in a raw or natural state, who did not understand their magical powers and generally didn't even know they were wizards. Ginny didn't know how this could be. If Robin really was a wizard, he should have received his Hogwarts letter four or five years back, and ought to be there now. That fact had made her hesitate. Yet he'd kindled fire from a match without striking it, which was one of the earliest magics many wizarding children could do before their powers were trained. So she had made a desperate stab, and when she saw his face, she knew it had hit home.

"How did you know?" he asked in an agitated whisper, pulling her against the wall.

"I'll explain later," said Ginny. "When we're on board the ship."

"God's bones, don't tell anyone, I beg you!" His casual, saucy air had disappeared entirely, and sweat stood out on his forehead in great drops, despite the chill in the room. "Men have been burned for less than this..." His hand trembled as he clutched at her sleeve. Ginny felt a twinge of guilt at the look on his face, and took pity on him.

"If you get me out of Leith," she said in a kindly tone of voice, "there won't be anyone to tell, now will there?"

"There are still the sailors on board ship. And sailors have been known to throw witches overboard..." Robin muttered, looking at Ginny as if she'd grown horns and a tail.

"Well, I can't swim too well, so believe me, I have no interest in the whole truth coming out, either." Ginny wasn't the least bit sure that she should have added that tidbit of information, but she had had a rather sick feeling in the pit of her stomach at his terror over what she'd said. She patted his hand. "Now go find out if they'll take us both on."

Robin looked at her hard, a ghost of his old cocky smile playing on his lips. "Who are you, really?" he asked.

"You'll have plenty of time to find out," Ginny said dryly.

"Very well." Robin gave a long sigh and handed her the tray. "'Tis a delicate matter, and may take some time. Go and serve the table on that side whilst I begin the palaver with Wat." Even before he indicated the table that had run out of ale and wine, Ginny had a chill of premonition. It was the table where the Death Eaters sat.

"All right," she said hesitantly.

"You'll need sack, and Alicante wine mixed with water. They are a very nice and discriminating crew. There's the gentleman I brought up to his room during the night past." Robin pointed discreetly towards Draco Malfoy, which was exactly where Ginny had been trying not to look. "Yet there is something about them, and I understood it not..." Robin looked intently at her. "Can you feel it, George? If you truly are... as I am?"

Ginny was now more sure than ever that Robin really was a wizard in the raw, although she still wondered why he was here, rather than Hogwarts. He was sensitive to the dark emanations coming from the Death Eaters. She swallowed. "Yes," she said. "But let's go. We don't have much time."

Robin headed off to the table and Ginny pulled the hood all the way up over her head, trying not to lose her nerve. She simply had to serve the wine quickly, and then go. Her own brother hadn't even recognized her in this cloak. Of course, the Death Eaters might actually be looking for Pansy... She cast a desperate glance in Robin's direction, but he was already deep in conversation with Wat. There was nothing for it but to bash on regardless. Ginny bent her head so that her face was entirely in shadow, and approached the table, setting down the decanters of wine silently.

Nobody looked up. Even Lucius Malfoy didn't spare her a glance, although her heart beat fast with the familiar mixture of fear and hatred at the sight of his fair head bent over a parchment with Snape's dark one. She breathed a little easier. But the true test was still to come.

Draco was staring at some invisible point in the distance, but he looked up, briefly, when she came up behind him. "More wine," he said, in a low voice. She poured for him. Her hand trembled, and the red liquid slopped over onto the table, spreading in little rivulets toward the edge. Ginny pulled a rag from her breeches and mopped it up as quickly as she could. There's nothing to be nervous about. Nothing at all. If I just get through the next few minutes, I'll be away from him, and I'll be safe. He's already spoken to me and not recognized me, and I don't feel the bond we had before, the one that was through the Hexensymbol. But wait--that means that he has that bond with my body, not with me, and Pansy's in my body now! Well, I'm sure Professor Moody will know what to do about that once I get on board ship. I simply have to go through with my plan.

Draco grabbed her wrist, pushing it aside, still not looking at her. "You don't have to drown me, you idiot," he said.

"Sorry, sir," Ginny mumbled. And then she gasped as his touch splintered through her like lightning, and she realized a possibility she hadn't even considered before.

Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson had a bond, as well. And because she was in Pansy's body, she now felt it. Surely he must do so, as well. What a fool I was not to think of this!

This bond was secretive. An undercurrent thrumming through her veins, as if curling and eddying in an underground river. And dark, so dark. Like the Hexensymbol bond she had with Draco in her own body, it felt extraordinarily powerful. She'd never dreamed that there could be such power in bonds that had been formed through the body. Crude, rough, and elemental, they seemed to override everything else. So surely Draco and Pansy were-- well, that is to say, at some point they must have-- Her mind faltered at actually putting it into words, what must have happened between Draco and Pansy. Over and over and over again, most likely. She remembered all the times she had ever seen them kissing behind one of the greenhouses. Sometimes, too, she'd seen Draco backing Pansy up against the back side of the broom shed on the Quidditch pitch and trying to get his hands under her robes. And then there were the times she'd seen him attempting to lay Pansy down on the beds of dry pine needles under one of the great trees on the path that wound around the very edge of the forbidden forest. There had always been such an animal desperation in Draco's actions, although Pansy never seemed very interested. Apparently, that wasn't necessary. So the two of them must have been bonded in the flesh. And if that was so, it was only logical that the bond still endured. Surely Draco would feel her presence here because she was in Pansy's body. It was all over.

Then he let go her wrist. Ginny had felt as if she'd been standing there forever, but it could have been, she realized, no more than a second or two. She set down the wine on the table and waited for his face to lift to hers, for recognition to dawn in his eyes, for his hands to seize her.

But Draco did not even raise his head. He still stared at the table, and even when she moved his cup so that it sat right next to his right hand, he did not notice her. Her heart was pounding so hard that she could barely hear his voice, but he seemed to mumble something in her general direction, and then turn fully back towards Snape. Trembling, she walked back towards the table of sailors with the tray. She had been saved by sheer chance, and she did not know why.

She wasn't bonded to Draco by the Hexensymbol anymore. But there was something else between this body and his, or rather there was the lack of it. She could never have figured it out in any rational way, but she knew the secret, knew deep in her new flesh and bones, the ones that seemed as if they would never stop feeling alien and unfitted to her. Pansy had tried to bond Draco Malfoy to herself in the same sort of way. And she had failed. Maybe that's why I felt that bond, but he didn't, she realized.

Ginny had thought they were shagging each other rotten for months, years by then-- well, if she'd ever spent any time or energy thinking about the subject of Draco and Pansy's sex life, which, of course, she hadn't. But she'd been wrong. She knew it as surely as she now knew that she was nearly a foot shorter than she'd been before, or that all her movements were light and quick, or that her heart seemed to flutter in her chest like a bird trying to escape its cage as she rushed from the bar to the tables. The two Slytherins had never slept together. They'd shared physical intimacies of some sort; she'd seen Draco kiss Pansy and try to grope at her many times, but apparently the final act had never occurred. It wasn't because Pansy hadn't tried. She had yearned towards Draco, and struggled to complete that bond. It remained half-formed. Shriveled at its core. Yet she hadn't wanted it because she'd wanted him. No, Pansy's reason was a dark and secret one. All these things Ginny felt in the very blood pulsing through her veins. Yet because they were truths written in the body and not the mind, she could tell no more.

But it didn't matter now, Ginny reminded herself. It didn't matter at all. She turned and caught Robin's eye at the table on the opposite side of the room. He gave her a slight, almost imperceptible nod.

In the end, it proved very easy to slip away from the Lion and the Unicorn without being collared by Auty the innkeeper. The table of sailors where Wat had been sitting all rose to leave at the same time, as the turning of the tide neared. Ginny pulled the hood of her shadow cloak over her head, took Robin's hand, and simply melded into the group. She didn't spare a glance back to the taproom as they went out the doors. Soon enough, she'd be seeing Harry and Ron and Hermione again. And although the presence of Draco Malfoy plucked at her mind like a harp string struck in a still, small room, she did not look back at him either.

It was still an hour before dawn, and the sky was a misty grey. Ginny shivered at the sharp sea breezes and tucked her cloak more closely around her. She wished she could pull the hood up over her head, but it would certainly look suspicious if she started appearing and disappearing from view. She was crouched in the bottom of a small boat that Robin had told her was called a shallop, along with the others that Wat had picked up at the last minute to fill out the full complement of the crew. The oars dipped in and out of the water as the little boat glided towards the shadowed mass of the larger ship. Ginny glanced dubiously at the five or six strangers, all dressed in ragged tunics, breeches, and cloaks, their hair scruffy, their eyes gleaming warily in the dim light.

"They don't seem a very promising lot," she whispered to Robin. They had huddled close together.

"They're not," he whispered back. "Masterless yokels, I would wager. Ale-house runagates, and fellows who found a forecastle pleasanter than a jail."

Ginny wondered if there was still time to jump overboard and swim for shore. "Are all the crew... as they?" she asked.

"No, no." Robin preened slightly, obviously glad of the chance to show off his greater maritime knowledge, second-hand as it was. "Most will be seasoned sailors on a voyage as long as this one, and they're already on board. But a ship this size needs a crew of fifty men or thereabouts--so it's catch as catch can."

Ginny glanced at the motley crew again. "I wouldn't trust any of this lot half as far as I could throw them," she said in an undertone.

Robin nodded. "'Tis probably wise. But we'll stick close together, and we'll be all right. Thick as thieves, eh, George?" He grinned at her, and Ginny smiled back. He didn't have to know that she wouldn't be one of the crew for long.

As soon as the ship had set sail, she would make her way to wherever the passengers' cabins were located. Then, she planned to tell Professor Moody the entire truth. He would know that she wasn't really Pansy even though Ginny inhabited the other girl's body; his magical eye would not be fooled by appearances. She wouldn't be putting any of them in danger now by letting them know who she really was; she'd thought about that very carefully. They'd all be very angry with her, of course. Ginny could almost hear Hermione's long, furious lecture detailing her every failure with great precision. Inwardly, she grimaced at the thought. Harry probably wouldn't say much of anything. He would simply look at her with that sober, measuring glance of his, the one that weighed her in the balance and found her wanting no matter what she did or didn't do. But Ron--Ron--

"What causes you to smile so, George?" Robin whispered to her. "Tell it me. A jest would please me much at the moment."

"No. It's nothing." She shook her head. The oars had stopped, and the shallop bumped against the side of the great ship that loomed above them in the half-darkness. It looked as clumsy and ungainly as a hulking dinosaur, its length maybe twice its breadth. Ginny reached back into her memory of her father's long talks about naval history. A hoy. That's what this sort of ship is called. A rope ladder unrolled from the main deck and flopped down into the bottom of the little boat. The other sailors-to-be shrank back from it, glanced up, as one, at the height of the larger ship's side, and began muttering to each other. Robin rolled his eyes. .

"Cowardly pillocks," he said, not bothering to lower his voice overmuch. Then he swung a leg over the side of the shallop, jumped onto the ladder, and began clambering up it with the careless ease of a monkey climbing a tree.

Ginny gulped and fitted her hands and feet into the scratchy rope rungs after him. The wind slapped the makeshift ladder against the side of the ship as she doggedly climbed. Once she chanced a quick peek down into the shallop below, and desperately wished she hadn't. It looked terrifyingly far away, bobbing on the unquiet surface of the steel-grey sea. She closed her eyes and kept climbing. Strong arms hauled her up over the side of the ship, and she crashed onto the deck. Robin helped her up.

"Come on, then," he said, his eyes shining with an excitement she could see even in the near-blackness before dawn. Men were moving around the decks and clustering near the towering masts with their vast shrouded sails still tethered. A huge man in a leather jerkin called orders to scampering boys, all holding little lanterns aloft so that they formed tiny circles of warm light in the darkness. Another group rolled large barrels, or hauled wooden boxes; still others ran up and down a short flight of stairs on the deck that led to the forecastle, moving this way and that in a concentrated hum of activity. The dull thuds of hammering reached her ears, and the shrill blast of a whistle; she smelled hot pitch wafting up from somewhere, and heard brief orders and replies barked in different languages. A warm little thrill of excitement went through Ginny. She could enjoy pretending for a little while that she actually would take part in crewing this mysterious society that was an Elizabethan ship. It's all a great adventure, she thought happily, following Robin's beckoning hand.

But of course, it would come to an end as soon as she found the others and told them who she really was.

Ginny felt great and shameful relief at that knowledge. Perhaps she was not proud of the feeling; perhaps it wasn't worthy of a Gryffindor, or a Weasley, but relief was the only word which could be used. I'm not meant to bear burdens like this one, she whispered to the still, small voice in her mind. And it subsided into silence, although Ginny could feel that beneath the surface calm, her conscience remained as restless as the sea she rode upon.

The sky was barely beginning to lighten, the faintest streaks of pink and gold touching the undersides of the clouds where the sun would soon peep through. Harry, Ron, and Hermione sat looking at the table, avoiding each other's eyes. The fact of failure hung so thick in the air that there was no need to speak the words confirming it. The ship would sail in less than an hour.

"I've ruined everything," said Ron flatly.

No-one contradicted him.

"We need to find the ship and get on it, that's all," Harry said after a long silence.

"Professor Moody was the one who booked passage," Hermione pointed out. "They'll probably just throw us off."

"Well, what else are we going to do? Do you have any suggestions?" Harry's voice had a definite edge to it.

"I do," said Neville suddenly. The other three turned to stare at him in surprise. "I mean, uh," he said, biting his lip unnecessarily, "I think we should all go outside."

"Go outside," repeated Ron. "And do what? Stand around until we're jumped by some of the local thieves? Great idea, Neville."

Neville blushed pink, but pushed back his chair determinedly. "I think it would be, er, a good idea. To go outside. Anyway, I'm going outside."

"Come on," said Hermione. "We'd better follow him. God only knows what sort of trouble he'll get into otherwise."

The pre-dawn mist curling around the courtyard of the inn was damp and chilling, and Ron shivered, pulling his cloak closer about him. He pulled Hermione to him and they huddled together for warmth. Harry stood a little apart from the pair, his face creased into an abstracted frown. But he did not move or speak, and after exchanging a few glances, the two of them took their cue from him. Neville stood directly beneath the sign depicting a lion and a unicorn, scanning the horizon, his leather bag swinging from his shoulder. Early as the hour was, the alley still had its share of denizens of the night. A pair of pickpockets were already creeping towards him with crafty gleams in their eyes.

"Why did we bring Neville?" Ron sighed, starting forward. "Remind me, would you?"

Hermione raised her eyes, and saw what Neville saw. She gave a little gasp. A figure on horseback looming out of the mist, galloping towards them. The horse pulled up to a halt, and the rider dismounted, stumping towards them with a heavy, uneven tread. It was Professor Moody. The pickpockets took one look at his face, and fled.

"I knew that the Dinclik charm would have this effect, you see," explained Neville with an apologetic tone in his voice. "Any one of us would be able to find the location of any of the rest, no matter where we were. But in order for it to work properly, we can't be in a building of any sort. I suppose it's because it originated with the nomadic tribes on the steppes of--"

"This is all my fault," interrupted Ron, who had plainly not paid attention to a single word Neville had said. "Professor, I take every bit of the blame. I was so sure I knew where my sister was, and I set off to find her even though I knew it could ruin the entire mission, and--"

"Don't be an ass, Ron," said Harry. "It's hardly all your fault. I went with you; I didn't even try to talk you out of it. Hermione at least would've been a voice of reason, if we'd let her--"

"Well, yes, that's true," said Hermione, "but I didn't try very hard, if it comes to that--"

Moody held up a gnarled hand. They all fell silent. "This might have gone badly if at least one of you hadn't had the brains to take Longbottom with you," he growled. "He kept his head, and he's the only one who did, I'd wager. Now there's a lad whose mind works the right way." Neville looked simultaneously pleased and terrified at being singled out.

"But it won't make any difference, as it happens. I don't need to know why you did what you did," Moody continued, more quietly. "I don't lay blame on anyone. The bond between a brother and a sister is one of the strongest in this world." Moody looked at Ron, who pressed his lips together into a thin line. "Perhaps you needed to go after her," he added. "In order to learn what you learned."

"She was never really here at all. I made a fool out of myself, didn't I?" Ron whispered.

Moody said nothing.

"Wait a moment," Hermione said suddenly. "You knew this would happen, didn't you, Professor?"

The horse shied at the sharp tone of her voice, whickering nervously. Moody stroked the animal's nose, and it fell silent. "There are lessons that can only be learned through experience," he said. "We'll talk about it on the voyage, if you wish. We'll have leisure to do so then. But now we've got to leave. The tide turns in an hour or less. There's a shallop waiting for us at the dock."

"It'll take us to the ship?" asked Neville. "The Good Queen--no, the Great Queen--oh bother, I never can remember--"

"The Ban-Righ," said Moody, directing Harry and Ron to unload the baggage into a small cart. "Means 'great queen' in Scots Gaelic."

"I suppose that explains the confusion over names," said Hermione as a stable boy led their horses out to them for the brief journey to the docks.

Moody nodded. "That, and the fact that there's another ship leaving for Istanbul at the turn of the tide, as well. Name of the Good Queen Bess."

"I do wish I hadn't kept getting them confused, though," sighed Neville, mounting behind Harry.

"Don't be silly," Hermione said a trifle tartly. Her horse was beginning to move, and she felt about as uneasy on horseback as she ever had on a broomstick. She clung to Ron's waist. "After all," she added over her shoulder to Neville, "what possible difference could it make?"

Draco walked across the main deck to the enormous stern cabins, which rose for several levels above him in the grey half-darkness. Snape was at his side, his father and mother behind them. Two others trailed behind--Nott and Avery, he thought. Draco guessed that the rest of their group had come on board a bit earlier with their trunks and other luggage. And Ginny. It was that darkest hour just before dawn, and Draco could barely see the bright gleaming colors of the fresh paint on the cabin decks. He shook his head, trying to clear it of drowsiness. He had been used to getting by on little sleep, or at least he had thought so. But a few nights of unbroken rest with Ginny Weasley in his arms had shown him how wrong he really was. Now she was gone from him, and that gift of perfect sleep would no longer be his... never again, perhaps.

The ship was small, or at least it looked so to Draco in the faint pre-dawn light. Maybe thirty or forty metres long, he thought. They don't use that sort of measurement now, if I remember correctly. A hundred... feet, maybe? The sails hung limp at the several towering masts, and sailors swarmed across the deck, all intent on... well, whatever it was they were doing. Draco hadn't been on any sort of boat very often and was too tired to be curious about this one at the moment. A little flight of stairs adjoined the stern cabins. Snape started up those, and Draco followed him through a little, low-ceilinged corridor.

"We were lucky to book passage on this ship," Snape said as they passed several small doors. "It's large enough to have accomodation for several passengers-- although we may have to use Expanding charms on the cabins, discreetly-- ah, here we are." The door creaked open.

The room was so tiny that the bed took up nearly all available space. It was tucked into the corner of two curved walls, and above it was a closed porthole. It was covered with a woven green brocade cloth, and upon it lay a girl. It took Draco a few moments to realize that it was, indeed, Ginny Weasley. She looked so very, very different from her waking and sleeping self alike, so utterly still and silent. He walked around her and stood at the foot of the bed, still staring as if the power of his gaze might cause her to wake.

"What... happened?" he murmured, unsure how much it was safe to ask. "Was it a spell?"

"Yes," said Snape. "We were able to tell that much."

"But which one? A Petrification charm, maybe?'

"No. Nothing we know."

"Isn't there some way of finding out? What about Priori Incantatem, can't you use that?"

Snape shook his head. "Priori Incantatem can only be used to reveal spells cast by wands, as their magic is so extremely focussed. That's why they were developed in the first place. Wandless magic is incredibly unpredictable."

"Then how can we get her out of it? To learn the information she knows, I mean," he added hurriedly. "There's so much she could tell us. But if we don't even know anything about how she got this way--"

"I did not say that we knew nothing."

Draco held his breath, counted silently to ten, and dug his fingernails into his palms. "What, ah--what do we know?" he asked cautiously.

Snape paced to the other side of the little room. "Are you familiar with the Muggle fairy tales of Rapunzel, and Melisande?"

"Yes, I've read them." Draco tried to think. This was one of the times when he heartily wished that Snape didn't expect him to use his mental faculties to such a degree.

"And do you recall the sort of magic they described?"

"They both focussed on the magic of bodily essences," Draco said slowly. "Hair magic, I believe. And they both came from the sixteenth century."

"Exactly so." Snape did not smile; the expression on his face did not change at all, but Draco sensed that he was pleased. Yet another little test that he had passed, another of the tests that were never going to end. He felt more tired than ever. Yet he tried to pay attention to what Snape was saying.

"The magic of a woman's hair is a very ancient one, little used in our time. But it was remarkably powerful in this age. Certain aspects of it do carry over even into our own."

"Veela hair is sometimes used as a wand core, isn't it?" Draco asked. As if from another lifetime, he remembered Fleur Delacour's wand at the Triwizard Tournament.

"It is. Not often, because it is very unpredictable, as all older magic tends to be. But in this case, it is important for a specific reason. In certain circumstances, hair contains the vital essence of a personality, and if it is cut directly before or after certain ancient spells are cast, it can cause strange effects."

"What do you mean, exactly?" asked Draco.

Snape looked down at Ginny. Irresistibly, Draco's eyes were drawn to her once again. She lay like a carved marble statue on the bed, her green gown draped about her, and her chest did not rise or fall. "When this powerful spell was made... whatever it was... I have no proof as such, but I feel that it went wrong in some way. In such cases, the body will frequently go into a trance state, in order to preserve itself. And since Ginny Weasley cut her own hair only hours before it happened, she cannot wake until it has grown out."

"What?" exclaimed Draco. "That can't be!"

"I'm very much afraid it is. There are certain growth acceleration charms... but even so, it will be a matter of nearly two months before she wakes."

"She's like an enchanted princess in some fairy story, sealed within a glass coffin... Snow White, that's it." Draco's whisper was almost inaudible.

Snape nodded. "As I said, there's a good deal of wisdom in those Muggle tales at times. The character of Snow White perfectly represents the stasis state."

"Why does she look so strange?" murmured Draco. "Not just asleep, but not quite... here. Is it just the trance state?"

Snape hesitated before answering, and in the moment, the door opened.

Lucius Malfoy stepped in, his black cloak swirling around him in the opposite direction as if having only just arrived, he was already leaving. For his time was precious, and he would only spend so much of it in this room. He gave Ginny a short, sharp glance.

"You've got her settled?" he asked Snape. The other man inclined his head.

"Good," Lucius continued. "The next item we must consider, then, is how to best continue our plans regarding her."

"They've hit a bit of a snag," said Snape.

"I'm perfectly aware of that," Lucius said impatiently. "But the solution is simple. I can't believe you haven't thought of it already, Severus..." He began pacing to the window, then back again. "For the necessary bond to be formed, her knowledge is not necessary. Neither is her consent. Or even her consciousness." He looked at Draco. It was the same sort of look he had given to Ginny.

Draco suddenly understood exactly where his father's train of thought was headed. He moved one of his hands below the edges of the fringed coverlet, so that it could not be seen, and dug his fingernails into his palm until a bolt of pain shot through his hand.

Snape cleared his throat. "I do see what you mean, Lucius. The original version of the Muggle fairy tale Sleeping Beauty described just such a situation. However--"

"Perhaps it's even preferable this way," Lucius continued as if he hadn't heard. "After all, I highly doubt that the Weasley girl would be willing to participate in what was required of her, if she knew what was going on. She could cause trouble. Not that it would matter, in the end... but why put ourselves through such unpleasantness? There'd be sure to be scenes. I'd sooner spare you all that crying and carrying on, Draco."

Draco looked down at Ginny. He did not trust himself to speak, and so he did not speak. She was so lovely as she lay in the narrow little bed, her shorn hair unevenly framing her face, her eyes closed so that her long cinnamon lashes cast shadows on her velvety skin. She was as immobile as a carved marble statue, but he could feel the faint warmth coming from her body as he leaned over her. She looked like a sleeping fairy princess, awaiting the touch of her prince. So tender. So innocent. And the implications of what his father had meant were clear enough without their being spelled out. Draco would be required to violate that innocence. To take her without her knowledge, or her consent. He could still get his pleasure out of her. But Ginny would not respond to his touch. Her lips would not part for his, and he would not hear those little sounds she made in the back of her throat when he kissed her. He would not feel her body moving under him, opening to him, shuddering with him.

It would be like shagging a corpse.

At that sudden, unwelcome image, Draco felt a wave of sickness overcome him. For an instant he was sure he was going to be sick-- and right in front of Snape and Father, too, Gods, I've got to get control of myself-- no, no, it was receding. Was this another test, another hurdle he must jump in his struggle to return to the place that awaited him? He remembered his fears that if this sort of test were ever presented to him, he would fail, or perhaps be unable to even try. And this was even worse than what he'd feared; worse than rape could ever be, because she could not say no to him no matter how desperately she might want to do so. She might fight him with every ounce of strength she had if only she were awake, but he would never know.

But she had come alive under his kisses that night, and writhed at the touch of his hands.

But she had stolen the knife from his belt and pressed it against her own throat so hard he had seen the skin grow white and red, and she had said, Don't. Don't take another step, Malfoy.

Don't let this be asked of me, a very small, plaintive voice was saying in his head. Don't make me do this. Don't make me decide this. Don't, don't, don't...

Lucius was bending over Ginny as well, and his hand went out to touch her hair. "How long before this grows back, anyway?" he asked.

"It's not quite that simp-" began Snape.

"I suppose we'll want her awake at some point," Lucius said, musingly.

Draco watched that long white hand, so like his own, reach for Ginny. In that dim light, the little lines at the edges of his father's eyes were smoothed away, and the faint furrows on his brow were invisible. It was like looking into a slightly blurred mirror. He was nearly touching her now. She slept on unknowing, her eyes closed, her body motionless.

But then, at the last instant, a shimmering veil snapped into place around her body. Lucius yanked his hand back with a little cry of pain.

"What the hell was that?" he snapped.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you," said Snape. "You can't touch her."

"I can't-- what do you mean, I can't?" Lucius demanded, his eyes darkening with anger. On the far side of the bed, forgotten for the moment, Draco struggled to suppress a highly inappropriate snort of laughter. He could not recall his father ever being told that he could not do something, or have something.

"No-one can," Snape said. "Not until her hair grows back."

The other man turned, his face forming itself into a scowl. "Then take care of that little difficulty, Severus. Do something about it."

Snape templed his fingers together. "And what, precisely, do you propose that I do?"

"I don't know! You figure it out. That's your purpose here, isn't it, the reason why we brought you here? A spell. A charm. A potion. Take it off her."

"I'm very much afraid that I can't," said Snape, examining his fingernails idly. "That is, I can't take off what I myself have put on."

Draco thought that his father looked remarkably as if he were about to explode with rage any minute. Since he had never before seen this mood directed at anyone besides himself, he was finding it almost amusing. Or might have done, if the situation had been other than it was.

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand," Lucius said through gritted teeth.

Snape passed a hand over Ginny, and the air around her seemed to waver briefly. "I've put her in stasis. I prepared the charm as soon as I learned that she would be in trance for two months. Nothing can touch her from the outside world, and that's by far the safest thing for her while she can't wake."

"Do you mean to tell me that my son can't get near her, either?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Draco!" said Lucius in an icy voice, snapping his fingers and pointing. Draco didn't need to be told what his father wanted him to do. He thought for a mad second about refusing. But the thought flitted through his mind almost too quickly to make an impression. He laid his hand on Ginny's head. Or at least, he tried to. A sparkling web flared up around her skin as his fingers approached. A splintering pain shot through his arm, and he pulled it back.

Lucius looked to be poised at the edge of some unimaginable explosion. At the last possible moment, he pulled himself back, keeping his temper under control with a difficulty that was very obvious. When he spoke again, however, his voice had taken on the silky tone that always made Draco feel terribly young and frightened, and determined not to show his fear at any cost. "Don't you agree, Severus," he asked, "that it would be easier if Draco were to form a physical bond with Ginny Weasley in the trance state?"

"Oh, undoubtedly it would. But what a shame," said Snape. "I'm afraid that's not an option."

"Not an option," repeated Lucius. "I see." The silence in the room grew as taut as a bowstring, although Snape seemed oddly unconcerned by it, Draco thought.

"Have you gotten the information you require from my son?" Lucius asked abruptly.

Draco winced. It was never a good sign when his father referred to him in the third person whilst he was standing in the room.

"Not yet," said Snape.

Lucius raised his eyebrows. "I suppose you're going to tell me next that it's another task you can't accomplish?"

"On the contrary," said Snape, in a very clipped voice. "That happy event will occur shortly."

"See that it does."

Lucius left the room, and his boot heels clattered along the little passageway, up the deck, and then faded into the distance. Draco let out a breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding. Snape moved a little closer to him, and they both stared down at the sleeping form of Ginny Weasley.

"Are you familiar with the Muggle fairy tale to which your father referred?" Snape finally asked.

"Sleeping Beauty? Yes. But there were two versions of it, weren't there?"

Snape nodded. "The image of the princess imprisoned within a castle of thorns that could only be breached by a prince was always a metaphor of sexual initiation. But one of the fairy tales was a sanitized rendition, meant for children. And then there was the real story."

Draco ran his hand along the edge of the magical barrier that separated Ginny's body from him, and felt the faint sparking along his skin. "The prince shagged Beauty while she was asleep."

"Inelegantly phrased, but exactly so," agreed Snape.

"I always thought that was a bit creepy."

"You're glad that the same thing won't be required of you." It was a statement.

Draco hesitated, weighing his words before he spoke them. But he did trust Snape, at least as much as he could trust any living being on this earth. And the older man had to already know what the answer was anyway. "Yes," he said. "I am."

"I see."

"It..." Draco turned away slightly. "The idea just doesn't appeal to me, that's all. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"

"No. Nothing at all." Snape touched Draco's shoulder, lightly. "Come. The hour grows very late, and there is still much to do." They left the little room, Draco looking back for a last glimpse of Ginny Weasley.

As they walked down the dark little hall, Snape spoke suddenly and abruptly, his voice sounding disembodied. "Have you ever heard of an organization called the Order of the Phoenix?"

"No," said Draco, startled.

"So those words mean nothing at all to you then?"

"I'm pretty sure I've never heard of any such thing before. Why do you ask? Is this group important, whatever it is?"

"Not in the least," said Snape.

Even in his extreme state of fatigue, Draco looked at the older man sharply. He knew the slippery way that the Potion Master's mind worked. I suppose he's a former Potions Master now, Draco thought tiredly. But Snape always was a close one, and I highly doubt he's changed just because we've traveled four hundred years into the past. Order of the Phoenix... I'd best remember that.

There were little cups of hot tea on the cubbyhole desk in the cabin below the deck, and Draco curled his hands around one of them, feeling the steam rise through his suddenly cold hands. He shivered against the pervading damp chill in the air, and pulled his cloak more closely about him. His extra cloak hung on a nail driven into the wall, and his trunks were stowed beneath the little bed. These were to be his quarters during the voyage, he supposed.

"How long before this ship sails?" he asked, abruptly.

"A bit after full dawn. When the tides turn. An hour, perhaps."

"How long's the voyage?"

"Two months."

"Two months!" exclaimed Draco. "Can't we just... I don't know... Apparate, or something?"

"You have mastered the art of Apparition?" Snape asked, his voice lifting only a little. He did not seem terribly surprised. "My, my, but that was quick, considering that your seventeenth birthday was yesterday."

Draco flushed slightly. "Well, yes. I can. That is, I've been able to Apparate for nearly two years now."

"There is no Apparation without wands, and we cannot use wands now," said Snape, with the air of someone who has decided, for his own good, not to ask any more questions. "The journey to Istanbul ought to take longer, really. But we are in a hurry, and there are weatherworking spells that can be used..." Snape sighed. "You don't understand any of this, do you?"

Draco shook his head.

"This is what comes of not keeping you informed. I've tried to tell Lucius that, repeatedly."

Draco rubbed his forehead, feeling very much at a loss. "Well, what am I supposed to do for the next two months?"

Snape looked at him very directly, and the keen dark eyes were penetrating. "We will remedy your deficiencies of knowledge, Draco, and we will begin at once. You have much to learn. There's no time to waste. Sixteenth century magic... wandless spells... the history of the Ottoman Empire... you've always done so well at memorizing potions that I expect you'll be able to have a fair command of the Turkish language by the time we reach the Golden Horn. We'll practice that for two hours a day. I'd like you to learn to use their weapons, as well, such as the yatagan. It's necessary in this age, even for wizards--"

After a year and a half of being kept entirely in the dark, all this new information was frankly overwhelming. And dear Merlin, but he was exhausted, and the rocking motion of the ship seemed to be stupefying his brain. It hit him all at once, and Draco struggled to catch Snape's last words.

"-- but first, there is this other matter."

"What?" Draco tried to look alert.

"This may not be easy, or pleasant..." Snape hesitated. "But it must be done."

Merlin and Ninaine, what now? Draco attempted to paste a proper expression on his face. Eagerness. Contrition. Resolution to perform as required. He was sure that he ended up looking half-witted. His body and mind were screaming for sleep. He had never wanted anything so much as to curl up and sleep, sleep for hours and hours and hours with Ginny Weasley wrapped around him, his arms around her waist, her head on his shoulder, her even breathing in his ear...

"--Ginny Weasley."

"What?" Draco shook himself. Snape couldn't know what he'd been thinking about Ginny... could he?

"We've attempted to learn as much as possible about the Weasley girl. Her connection with you, her connection to the purpose of this mission... but there's only so much we can get from her while she's in this state. And we must know." Snape looked at Draco very directly. "You hold the key to that knowledge."

"What?" Well, that was it, Draco thought too late. The third "what." He half expected to see his father charging through the door, some unimaginable punishment in store. But Snape only bent over the little table to pour more tea into both cups, then returned to his former position, his hooded dark eyes never leaving Draco's during the entire operation.

"You must inform us of the events of the past week, during your journey to Leith with her. That time, we know nothing about."

"Of course." Thank the gods I don't blush, thought Draco. "I'll do what's required of me." He did not even realize that he was no longer wondering what the mysterious Order of the Phoenix might be.

"That's not all. You must..." Snape hesitated. "You must tell us everything that passed between the two of you."

"Oh. Yes, I will, certainly I will." Draco kept his voice even, but inwardly he was groaning. The very idea of telling the full story of last night was filling him with something like despair. And doubtless Snape would know if he held anything back. Well, perhaps this was his penance. He couldn't expect his return to the fold to be easy.

"It all began when I followed her through that odd sort of barrier, an Ogham wall, was it?-- into the Forbidden Forest," Draco said. That wasn't true, of course it wasn't true. He didn't know when it had all begun. It felt as if it had started before either of them were born. "I believed that I'd be able to get through, and, of course, I did. You saw me go through. I was able to track her by using the Kitap-an Dus, and it wasn't long before I caught up with her-" Draco went on and on, aware that with each word he was straying further from the real truth of what had happened, and sounding more like an idiotic prat. Snape simply looked at him. Finally, about the time when he was trying to explain the journey through her memories of the year before, Draco could no longer bear the yammering sound of his own voice. The words faltered on his lips. He fell silent.

"That won't do, Draco," said Snape. His voice was almost gentle. Definitely implacable. "You understand that, don't you?"

"Yes," whispered Draco.

"Those aren't the things I need to know."

"I don't know what you mean."

"On the contrary. I believe you know exactly what I mean."

Draco stared into his teacup. "I don't want to hold anything back," he finally said. He honestly didn't know if that statement was a true one, or not.

"If you want to help us--" Snape stirred his own tea. "Then you can't hold anything back."

"I'll tell you everything I can--er--" Again, Draco was caught on the inflexible question of not knowing exactly how to address Snape. By his surname? That didn't seem very respectful, not to his face. Professor? But the other man was no longer his professor, not exactly. Sir? That didn't sound right, either. Not when they were sitting centimetres apart from each other.

Snape smiled faintly. "And that's where the iron bites, isn't it? You will tell what you can tell?"

"How could I do otherwise?"

"There are ways. If you are willing." Stir, stir went the tin spoon in the cup of tea.

"What's in this tea?" Draco asked abruptly.

Snape shook his head. "Chamomile."

"Oh." Draco looked down. "I thought it might be-"

"Veritaserum? No. Veritaserum exists quite firmly in the context of the twentieth century. It was invented in the nineteen-forties, you know. But more to the point, it is a potion ungentle to the mind. And your mind is too valuable to risk in that way. There are other methods."

Draco pulled his cloak up to his shoulders, staring out of the porthole window, into the blackness. "Legilimency?"

Snape nodded, seemingly unsurprised. "You learned that art in your own studies, I presume?"

"Well, I'm no Legilimens, if that's what you mean. But I do understand the theory. How did you guess that I learned about it on my own?"

"Because I know that Lucius Malfoy would not have shared it with you, and Legilimency has never been taught at Hogwarts, not to children. It is too easily turned dark."

Draco turned even further towards the window, delaying the moment when he knew he must look back at Snape. "I'm not a child."

"No..." Snape hesitated. "No, you're not. But do you know that certain types of Legilimency can break the mind more thoroughly than any potion could ever do? They are too effective to allow the mind wholeness."

"Yes." Draco clenched his teeth, and hoped his shudder was not visible. That couldn't be what they had planned for him. It couldn't. But, and the treacherous thought whispered in his ear, but this was just the sort of thing Lucius Malfoy would do. To seem to welcome him back, to forgive his rebellion, and then, when he had walked willingly into the trap... the jaws would close. And there would never be any need to doubt his obedience again, after his mind had been taken away from him.

But Snape wouldn't do that. No, he couldn't believe it of Snape. And yet...

"Is that what you're going to do to me?" Draco blurted.

"Of course not," said Snape impatiently. "If you could recall the events of perhaps two and a half minutes ago-- yes? Didn't I just tell you that your mind was too valuable to risk to Veritaserum, let alone deep Legilimency? "

"Oh." Draco felt a perfect idiot. Snape had never turned the cutting edge of his sarcasm on his favorite student to the degree he had done towards all the rest, but a little of it went a long way. Anything was better than that fear, though. "But how, then?" Draco continued. "I'll tell you anything I can, I really will, but there are things that maybe--" he twisted the spoon between his strong fingers until it began to bend "-- that maybe I can't explain. No matter how hard I try." He cleared his throat. "I'm not used to... telling people things. There are many secrets that it's better to keep secret. That's what Father always said."

"And you are accustomed to keeping secrets."

Draco nodded.

"If you are willing to tell me these things about Ginny Weasley and yourself-- truly willing, even if you don't believe you can do so..." Snape let his words trail off.

"I'd tell you if-- if I could."

Snape leaned back against the wall of the little cabin. His long dark hair was clubbed back with a leather thong. Draco thought that he'd never seen it that way before, and that it suited him. He looked worn and austere, a tall pale figure in his black robes with their white collar... now, what did that make him think of? A figure in some piece of art or other in his Muggles: Medieval to Modern textbook...

Still Snape looked at him, and Draco could remember the picture more clearly now. Someone was kneeling in a tiny, dark space, and the figure who looked like Snape was on the other side. Listening. Not passing judgment, and telling no-one else. That shadowy figure kept the secrets he was told. He could almost remember the caption...

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," Draco murmured.

"What?" asked Snape, raising one perfectly arched eyebrow in surprise.

"It's nothing, really. I know what you remind me of now, that's all. What all of this reminds me of. You're like a Muggle priest, hearing confession... we learned about those in class... do you know about them?"

"Yes. An odd role to cast me in, really." Snape seemed to be thinking. "And yet perhaps not entirely inappropriate." His eyes fixed on Draco's face, and the boy felt them weighing and measuring him. "I will tell Lucius Malfoy only those specific things he needs to know," Snape said, softly. "Beyond that, what is said here, stays within these four walls."

Draco wondered if the room had been swept for Eavesdropping charms. But of course you'd need wands to cast those. I suppose it really is safe.

"I understand," he said.

"Then I may begin?"

"Yes." Magic gained half its power from consent. Draco knew that. "What are you going to do to me, uh, Prof-- I mean, sir-- I mean-"

"Our relative positions have changed a bit, haven't they?" A strange, almost-smile touched the other man's lips. "It does make it difficult to know how to address one another."

"So what am I to call you?"

"When we're among the others, sir will do, and you'll be Mr. Malfoy. In this room..." He seemed to think. "Draco and Snape. Is that acceptable?"

Draco nodded.

"I told you that if you were willing, there were other ways. This is one of them. If there's knowledge in the mind that cannot be consciously shared for any number of reasons, a skilled Legilimens can coax it out by putting the subject in a kind of trance state- but only if said subject is willing. It's very similar to what Muggles call--"

"Hypnotism?" asked Draco.

Snape looked downright startled. "How on earth do you know about that?"

"The von Drachen librarian at the Bavarian estate told me all about it," said Draco. "How it was invented in the eighteenth century by Anton Mesmer, and how it's the closest most Muggles ever come to magic." Certainly, it was safe to talk about that side of his heritage in front of Snape, who had to know already.

"And that librarian is--?"

"Oh. The ghost of Sigmund Freud. Some Muggle doctor or other, although of course he was only passing as a Muggle and was actually a wizard-"

He was interrupted by Snape's short bark of a laugh. "Whatever's so funny-- ah-- Snape?" he asked curiously.

"Draco, you never cease to surprise me."

Snape looked very different with a real smile of amusement on his face, Draco thought. More human. More approachable, somehow. "So are you going to wave a Galleon on a string in front of my face and make me bark like a dog?" he asked.

"That sort of thing won't be necessary." Snape blew out two of the candles on the little table, so that the room was illuminated only by one flickering light. "Now lean back. Try to relax."

Draco did so, sinking into the feather-filled mattress of the bed. He was desperately tired and this only made it worse. A tremendous yawn threatened to split his face it half.

"You're tired, aren't you? That's all right. Don't fight your exhaustion; it will only make this process easier. I won't let you fall asleep."

Snape's voice was so dark, so deep, thought Draco almost dreamily. Listening to it was like diving into a pool of warm sweet darkness that had no bottom, and it caressed the listener into a delicious, langorous stupor...

"You're very comfortable, aren't you? All the tension is leaving your body. Bit by bit. First your toes... then your feet... then your legs..."

Muscle by muscle, Draco felt himself relax. He gave a long, unconscious sigh. The voice went on.

"Your arms... your shoulders... your neck... no tension anywhere. You're perfectly relaxed, aren't you? Yet you're awake. Fully awake. You can hear every word I say."

"Yes."

"There is only the candle flame, and the sound of my voice."

"Yes." The little flame danced before Draco's eyes, containing all of reality in it. There was nothing outside it. And the dark honeyed voice was contained within it, too, leading him further in, further and further.

"Now I want you to think about Ginny Weasley. To firmly fix an image of her in your mind. Can you do that?"

Draco nodded. Now Ginny seemed to be lurking within the candle flame, the halo of her fiery hair melting into the dancing scarlet.

"Can you see her?"

"Yes."

"Tell me who she is."

"Gwenhyfar Alvean Weasley."

"Tell me what she is."

"The youngest of the tribe of Weasleys, the blood traitors, the purebloods who have turned their backs on their own kind. The worst of the worst."

"Do you hate her?"

Draco's answer was a long time coming. "No... I hate all the other Weasleys. I know I should hate her as well, but I don't."

"What are your feelings towards her?"

"I..." He thought, and thought, and thought. "I cannot define them."

"You have formed a magical bond with her. Why did you do that?"

"I was afraid she would get away from me."

"Were there other reasons for your action?"

"Yes."

"What were they?"

"I don't know. But I felt-- I felt that we already had a bond, and what I did with the Hexensymbol only sealed it. I had just travelled with her through her memories, in a way that I didn't know one person could be with another-- could be part of another--" Draco blanched back from the almost-memory of that voyage through the Forbidden Forest, and the clock tower, in Ginny's head.

"That's all right. We won't talk about that just yet," said the voice. "You said that you already had a connection with her. How did that begin?"

"I can't say."

"Can't, or won't?"

"There were so many beginnings."

"Tell me about them."

Draco tried to marshal his thoughts. They crowded his brain like a troupe of screeching children demanding to be heard. He could not contain them, so he started speaking, very rapidly.

"Maybe it began when I saved her life. When she nearly fell from the top of the North Tower at Hogwarts, before I received the letter from my father, and then followed the owl through the clock face. It was the first time I kissed her, that night. So maybe. But no. I think it started this summer perhaps... this summer when I saw her at Hogsmeade, when I was there early, before start of term... did you know I found out something at the von Drachen estate that summer, and had to leave, and then found out even more in the library at Malfoy Manor? There was a girl with red-gold hair, a little Muggle girl from the village, and my father wanted to sacrifice her. But I couldn't let him. She looked like Ginny. D'you suppose that's what Ginny looked like when she was a little girl? She put me in mind of the Muggle girl who was my friend when I was ten years old, before I ever came to Hogwarts. I found out what happened to her that summer, too. What happened to her much later, I mean, long after she was my playmate. Do I have to tell you what I found out? Do I?" Draco heard the sound of his own voice, a little high-pitched, rambling incoherently, and wondered dimly how this incredible nonsense could be the least bit helpful. But Snape only shook his head.

"Not now. It isn't important. Go on."

"Or maybe it started the first time I ever saw Ginny Weasley, when she was eleven and I was twelve. Or maybe it started last year, when I couldn't sleep, couldn't sleep, night after night after night. I would lie awake and watch the whorls in the wood of the bedstead change shape, and use every art I knew to keep from thinking of her. I swore that I would not think of her. After last Christmas hols." Draco shivered deeply. "I think that's when it really started. One year ago. I don't want to think about that. I don't. But I have to. Because it happened again in the Forbidden Forest, when I travelled with her..."

Snape moved a little, so that his face was entirely in a pool of darkness, the flickering candlelight barely touching the blue highlights in his raven-dark hair. "Tell me about that now."

So Draco did. His account of his journey through the Dreamtime one week before was wildly disjointed, its connection to Ginny its only coherency, but he got all the important points out. With a painful shudder of longing running through him, Draco told Snape about meeting Grindelwald and allowing that spirit access to his mind. He told Snape about his strange union with Ginny's mind, but then faltered. He could not go on.

"Not just now," said Snape. "Not just yet. The time is not ripe for you to speak of that. A little while yet. Go on."

Thank all the gods. With relief sweeping over him, Draco told Snape about their journey to Melrose Abbey, and how the Kitap-an Dus had opened for him just once more. He told Snape about his realization that she was trying to get to her brother and friends and his decision to use that desire to trap her, the story of how the Hexensymbol bond had been created, his encounter with Desire of the Endless, and the advice that Grindelwald had given him through the book.

"I decided to seduce Ginny Weasley in order to gain power," Draco said. "I knew I could do it, I knew how, and she didn't know anything at all. She was, is, so innocent. So easy to take advantage of. Or so I thought. But she surprised me... she refused me... but then she promised me that no-one would ever touch her before me... funny, I tricked her into it, but I almost lost control then. Almost. But not quite. But Loki. Yes, it was afterwards that the Devil spoke to me, and wanted to bargain with me... but I wouldn't..."

Snape started in surprise, and Draco felt the bond of mesmerism waver for a moment as the older man's mind was troubled by what he had heard. "You saw... the immortal being that Muggles call Satan, or the Devil?" Snape whispered. "The spirit of darkness and chaos?"

"Yes. He--it--whatever that spirit really is, he came to me, and he called himself Loki."

Snape drummed his fingers on the little wooden sideboard for what seemed like a very long time. "I would hear more," he finally said. "Tell me all of your story, and leave nothing out."

So Draco continued to speak, and his words rambled wildly from the specific events of the past week to incidences in his childhood to the Ley line leading towards Melrose Abbey to the afternoon last summer he had shuddered against Pansy in the stables at Malfoy Manor, whispering Ginny Weasley's name. He interrupted himself, doubled back in memories of time and space, and talked half-incoherently. Yet the soft dark river of a voice guided him through it all, and he knew, dazedly, that he was telling all of the truth that mattered.

At last, he was emptied of story, like a cup drained of its liquid. Draco let himself fall against the back wall of the cabin. His head was buzzing faintly. "That's all," he said. It had been hard, to tell all these things. Still, it had not been as hard as he might have thought. Everything about this situation seemed so very unreal. It was as if he spoke in a dream, to a figure that was itself only part of the same dream. Draco already knew that Snape would never again mention anything to him that he had confessed tonight. So now, my tale is told.

"Not quite," said Snape. "Look at me."

Draco dragged his gaze up, up, and fixed on the other man's bottomless eyes.

"There is more that I must know," Snape said, fixing Draco more intently with his gaze than he had yet done. "Must know," he repeated. "This matter is more complicated than even I had thought, so you must tell me everything, holding nothing back. Do you know what I mean?"

Draco felt a sudden chill. It was as if he had struggled up the side of a mountain to find the summit still far out of his reach. "Yes," he whispered. There was no point in pretending he didn't understand what Snape was talking about. There was only one blank spot in his story. The journey through Ginny Weasley's memories of one year before.

"I don't know if I can remember," he said. "Only bits and pieces. Every time I try--" Draco shuddered.

"What happened..." Snape seemed to be thinking. "What happened directly before this, Draco? What is the last thing you can clearly remember?"

"I was walking through the Forbidden Forest, but it was all changed; it was what you called the Dreamtime. The strangest things were happening-- it was if every dream I'd ever had was coming back to me, chasing me... And then I saw a tall, dark man with very white skin. I didn't know him. But it felt as if I'd always known him. He said- he said he was the Lord of Dreams."

Snape drew in his breath with a sharp hiss. "Lord Morpheus. Oneiros of the Endless. The Kachina. I know who it was you saw. What did he want from you?"

"How did you know he wanted something from me?" asked Draco, startled.

"Because he never appears to mortals for any other reason."

"He wanted the Book of Dreams returned to him, the Kitap-an Dus. He said it belonged to him. But I wouldn't give it to him."

"You wouldn't, would you?"

"No, and it was after that when I made contact with Lord Grindelwald again."

"Tell me something, Draco. What has happened to your dreams, ever since?"

Draco swallowed. "They have haunted me. My memories as well. And it all began with that journey through Ginny Weasley's head, the one I can never quite remember. That was the first."

Snape hesitated. When he spoke again, his voice seemed to come from a great distance. Yet it was as close as the sound of the waves lapping against the belly of the ship, which seemed to come from everywhere at once.

"Do you trust me, Draco?"

Draco thought for a long time, too, before answering. "Yes," he finally said, and no more.

"I can take you into those memories. I will be your guide. Will you allow me?"

"I will."

Draco closed his eyes, and heard Snape leaning closer to him, felt the shift of warmth and air in the tiny room. Long, strong hands were pressing on either side of his head, fitting their fingers into the indentations of his temples. As Grindelwald had done. The memory swept over him, painfully. But whether it was a memory of pleasure or terror, he did not know.

He felt himself drifting. Drifting, like a leaf on a pond. Being drawn into a deeper, darker current. He heard the low, rich voice speaking to him.

"Now go deep. Deeper than you have yet gone."

Draco passed down, down, down, through layers of thought and sensation and memory. He sank to the bottom, to memories he did not permit his conscious mind to dwell on, or to know. That night in his bedchamber at Malfoy Manor when he was ten years old was there, the one when his father had appeared to him after locking him into his room for a month and he had come near madness, child that he was. The night last summer when he had returned from the von Drachen estates and confronted his father. The night of his birthday the year before, when he had sworn never to think of Ginny Weasley again. And the last night he had ever seen Marie-France Tessier, in the South of France. He was circling closer to what he was trying to remember, now. His mind wanted to shy away from it. But he could feel Snape's steadying presence like a hand on his own, leading him where he wanted to go. I trust him, thought Draco. I really do. And then an image presented itself, calmly. Ginny Weasley was walking through the edges of the Forbidden Forest, one year before. Colin Creevey was at her side. They were going to the clock tower. Following Harry Potter. And, as if it were any other memory, it simply unfolded itself, and he told it all. He knew his weakness and his stupidity as he spoke, but he no longer judged these qualities in himself. This was a story that had to be told, and he told it without faltering.

When he had done, Draco gave a long, long sigh. His head felt too heavy to lift. Surely it ought to have been lighter, now that he had told the whole truth of his pitiful rebellion, and his inexcusable failures, and his shameful desires? But it was not. If Snape had not been supporting him, he might have fallen.

"You've done well," said Snape. His hands were very gentle on Draco's head. "But there is more to tell; will you tell me?"

"Yes..."

"I need to know what happened after the events of this vision."

"But I told you that already," said Draco faintly. "I dragged Ginny through the Dreamtime and out the other side, over the bank of the river. It wasn't long after that when I bound her to me with the Hexensymbol."

"I don't mean that. I'm talking about what happened in real time one year ago after the events of this vision. At the winter solstice."

"What do you mean? That's always on the twenty-first of December, it had already happened by then."

"You should have covered this in one of your classes," said Snape. "The true solstice changes each year, tied, as it is, to the moon and the tides."

He had heard that once, Draco remembered. But it hadn't held his interest, so his mind hadn't retained it. "When is it this year?"

Snape's eyes were very dark. "Tonight."

Draco sat motionless. He remembered the lesson on the winter solstice now; it had been part of a particularly dull Arithmancy class, and he had spent the entire hour drawing spirals on a parchment with a quill. Professor Vector's brisk, ascerbic voice had lodged in his memory without his knowledge.

"The exact date of the winter solstice each year is determined by the infinitely receding Sunol geometric series, which is retained even in Muggle myth as the Twelve Days of Christmas," she had said, striding to the blackboard and tapping its surface sharply with an ivory pointer. "For your edification, I have diagrammed some of the spirals and chamfer boxes that are the mathematical expressions of the equations when plotted on a graph. The nature of this series is covered in the Advanced Arithmancy specialization, however, so we need not worry ourselves about it now."

Hermione Granger had started bouncing up and down in her seat then, her bushy hair flapping in time to her movements. Draco had snickered quietly, and began to draw a particularly cruel caricature of her as a long-haired guinea pig. "But, Professsor," she'd said eagerly, "doesn't it have a practical application as well? Doesn't it affect the casting of spells?"

"Very good, Miss Granger. Ten points to Gryffindor." Professor Vector had positively beamed. Stupid old cow, thought Draco, knowing that his assessment was both inaccurate and unfair even as he made it. "Curiously, we do find that the week leading up to the winter solstice is a time of, how shall we say... magical vulnerability. Spells become tricky, unstable; sometimes extraordinarily powerful, but quite frequently their final results are not at all what one would expect. Wise wizards avoid casting charms of any power during that time."

"Do they turn dark more easily?" piped up Colin Creevey, who had been admitted into the intermediate Arithmancy class a year early.

"Well-- no," replied Professor Vector. "Not necessarily, at least. It would be more accurate to say that they are influenced by a magic far older than the one we now study, and its effects are quite unpredictable. We will now turn to Chapter Seventeen, Untying the Gordian Knot--"

In the past week, Draco had followed Ginny through the forbidden realm of the gods, refused to return the Book of Dreams to the immortal Lord Morpheus, and opened himself to the undead dark spirit Grindelwald. He had travelled through Ginny's memories of one year before with her and changed them; he had pulled her through the Dreamtime with him; he had called on the ancient gods to bind her to himself with the Hexensymbol, and he had dealt with Desire of the Endless, whose presence regularly drove mortals mad. He had tried to complete their powerful bond in the flesh last night, and when Ginny had refused him, he had tied her to him with yet another magical bond. Then--just to provide the final touch--he had turned down a bargain with the Devil. Draco had done and seen and dabbled in more forbidden magic in the past few days than most wizards ever dreamed of in all their lives. And he hadn't known, hadn't realized, hadn't even spared a thought to the importance of the time of year. Anger, fear, lust, and frustration had blocked out all rational thought in him. Fool!

There are appalling holes in your education, Draco," said Snape, snapping Draco back to the present. "You've only learned what interested you. Of course," he added tartly, "Hogwarts has never taught the ancient magic of the solstices and year-feasts to nearly the extent that it should do. At any rate, last year's magical solstice did not actually occur until the beginning of January. Where did you go during that part of the Yule holidays, and what did you do?"

"But that's not important, how can it be important?" Draco asked in a quivering voice. He had the distinct feeling of being caught up in forces beyond his control. "Why would anyone else need to know?"

Snape inclined his head. "If you trust me," he said, "then trust me."

Draco was tired, so tired, and beneath the exhaustion was the uneasy fear that he had made a perfect idiot of himself during the past week, in ways he did not yet begin to understand. But a deeper ripple of unease went through him at the thought of telling what had happened to him nearly one year before, at the beginning of January. Marie-France Tessier. St. Tropez. The old lighthouse on the coast... Van Gogh's painted roses on the walls of her tower room... her great pink-shaded bed... her peach silk gown fallen to the floor, forgotten by us both. No. I can't tell. Even to Snape, even in this strange state of Legilimency or hypnotism or whatever it really is, I can't tell...

"I can't remember."

"Yes, you can. Go a little deeper..." The dark rich voice was inexorable.

"Don't make me remember..."

"Deeper..." The fingers moved on his skull.

"Don't want to remember..."

"Deeper..."

And the memories were approaching, the sweet, piercing, hurtful memories. No. No. No. Draco pushed them away with seemingly the last bit of strength in him. They were retreating. He was winning. It took all his defenses, all his will, all his might, but he was winning. He didn't care how important this was. It couldn't be, anyway. These were memories that belonged to him, and even though they ate away at him cruelly, they were his alone. The soil of a man's heart is stonier. He plants what he can... and tends it.

But Draco had never studied Deep Legillimency properly, and he did not understand the sort of state he was in. His mind had never been so vulnerable. The struggle to restrain the memories of the Christmas holidays a year before was more than he'd be able to endure for any length of time; Draco could sense that already. They were the very memories that Snape was so skillfully trying to coax forth, and all of his energy was tied up in maintaining a blank space in his head where they ought to be. He had to hold on, hold on...

Caught up in the struggle to defend the front gates of his mind, Draco never saw the tidal wave smashing into him from the back door. Not until it was too late. Like Sirius Black before him, four hundred years before and a long, weary journey away, Draco was defenseless against what now attacked him.

Something seemed to hit him with immense force, taking his breath away, swirling him down a dark tunnel, resistless as a leaf in the flood. He was not on board the ship anymore, not sitting in the little cabin anymore. He stood in a long, low, black corridor, roofed and floored with stone, the walls of packed earth. Somehow, he knew he was underground. The... hypocaust? he thought dazedly. Was this some sort of distorted memory of what had happened before he'd left for St. Tropez, on the night of his birthday, when he'd roamed through Malfoy Manor spying on everyone? But no. He tried to reach back into his own memories-- gods, but this felt so real, and yet unreal-- and had the strange sensation of a kind of dual consciousness, as if he was both himself, and a blurred copy of himself. Not quite correct. Some details missing, and some added. The self he was in walked slowly, with measured, regular tread.

There was a little still pool by the side of the pathway, and he stopped nearby for a moment, tapping his forefinger against his cheek as if thinking. Draco concentrated. He was... trying to figure out which way to go? No, that wasn't it. He hadn't been allowed down here before, but he knew very well where he was going, and there was a very specific reason why he was here now. The other-self looked into the pool, briefly, and smoothed back his (my?) hair with one hand. He didn't look for long. Draco could not control any of his actions; real as all this felt, it was only a memory. But he saw what he needed to see, and it was jarring. He was looking at himself. And yet...and yet not quite. His black robes seemed heavier and stiffer than the ones he usually wore, and he thought they were embroidered with some sort of design, as briefly as he'd seen himself in the pool. Everything else about him was the same-- the pale ash-blond hair, a little long in front, the grey eyes, the sculpted face with its long nose and narrow chin. But not the same. He wasn't the same, although Draco truly did not understand how this was so. A familiar strangeness. It was as if he had been copied as Draco had often copied works of art, or famous drawings for his own sketchbooks. He'd gotten quite good at it. But even his best copies were never the same as the originals.

The circles under his eyes weren't nearly as dark, and he was less thin and worn-looking, as if he'd been much more well-rested. Was that it? And this version of himself looked younger, somehow, more untroubled, more childlike, as if he had not matured in some essential way that Draco himself knew he had begun to do by then. Even before those weeks with Marie-France Tessier in the south of France... But he pushed the memories away; they were the last thing he needed to think about now. He struggled to understand what was going on, but that felt as impossible as trying to cast a spell whilst knowing only a few of its words.

The other-self continued walking. The corridor sloped downwards sharply, and its dirt walls gave off a feeling of dampness. He felt a draft of cold air from somewhere, and shivered, but not only from the cold. There was power here. He could feel it, and he had felt this same sort of power before, but only once. It was during the week that autumn when the sixth-year History of Magic class had been taken to several of the ancient magical sites of Britain. They had gone to the Giant's Graves of Arran above Whitesand Bay, and the cliff sites of Ballachmyle in Ayrshire, and the stone circle of Calanais in the Western Isles, he remembered... but the most powerful site had been saved until last. Stonehenge. They had all stood near the heelstone, beneath the great arch, and had felt the power of the megaliths at the feast of Samhain. They had been told that there was a labyrinth of catacombs beneath the stones they saw, but that no-one could access them unless he belonged to the family that owned the land, as it had done for over a thousand years. Draco couldn't remember who they were.

But that was exactly where he must be now; after five and a half years of his training in all the wizards' arts, he recognized the distinctive magical signature of this place. It could only be this strong at one of the six great feasts of the year. Suddenly, without knowing quite why, Draco was quite sure which one it was. Yule, the winter solstice.

At exactly this same time--the very same day that past January, the same hour of the night--Marie-France Tessier had found him walking the beaches of St. Tropez outside the lighthouse where she lived, and taken him into her peach-shaded tower room, and offered him a cup of chocolate. But he was not reliving a memory of sitting on her white satin couch, desire and frustration and darkness boiling within him. He was walking a mysterious path at the roots of the most powerful megalithic structure in Britain. What had happened?

Draco groped to see more of where he was, and to remember more of what this mysterious other-self might remember. He was at the edge of some great discovery. He could nearly grasp it, whatever it was; it hovered just beyond his reach...

And then he was yanked out of the vision by an invisible hand, right at the threshold of knowledge.

The dark little cabin pressed in on him. Draco sucked in air as if he'd surfaced from a deep pool of water, clutching at the edge of the little table. The cup of tea spilled over his hand. It had grown icy cold, but he barely felt it. Snape's head snapped up, his eyes bright with alarm.

"Draco, are you all right? What happened? Why did you come out of the vision?"

"I--you--" gasped Draco. "You pulled me out--didn't you? It happened so suddenly--"

"No, no, I didn't pull you out at all. That's terribly dangerous when you're in the midst of a deep trance, as you clearly were." He studied Draco. "But you seem unharmed. What did you see?"

Draco did not speak for a moment. He shivered, pulling his cloak closer. It felt no more useful against the damp chill than a sheet of parchment. Dimly, he felt Snape wrapping a wool blanket around him. "Not much. Just a few images, really. But it was a memory of what happened last year, I think." He had not known that until he said it.

"Tell me more."

"Well, I don't understand any of it. Because I know that what I saw isn't what happened last year." Draco wondered if Snape would ask him again what the actual events had been, but the other man did not. "In the vision," he continued, "I was walking through the catacombs under the megaliths at Stonehenge at the winter solstice. And I saw my reflection in a still pool, but it didn't quite look like me. That's rather mad, isn't it? Was it just some sort of hallucination, not a true vision at all?"

Snape sucked in his breath. An odd expression of triumph came over his face. "I knew it," he said. "I knew it, and I hoped you would be able to see... what more was there?"

"Nothing, really. Only what I told you."

"Where were you going? What were you trying to do, and what had you done? And could you access the past memories of this other self at all?"

"No, I couldn't," said Draco. "I don't know what was going on. I saw a few images and then I was yanked out of the vision; I couldn't stay in it--and I still don't understand anything at all. What's all this about?"

"Draco, you will understand this better just a little later," said Snape. "I cannot take the time to explain now--but this could be the key to everything else." He took a deep breath, and Draco sensed that the atmosphere had somehow changed.

"This is the place we have been trying to reach all along," Snape said slowly.

"What!" exclaimed Draco. "You mean you didn't need to know about Ginny Weasley--or anything else--"

"No, no. We needed to know about the past week you spent with the Weasley girl as well, believe me. But the knowledge we need is all of a piece, and the warp and the woof of it lies in what you have just seen, Draco."

"Why didn't you explain this to me before?" asked Draco, biting his lip. "Did you.... Didn't you trust me to know the truth? Is that it?"

"No." Snape's voice became gentler, almost imperceptibly. "I hope that you do not think that, or believe it. I will always tell you all of the truth that I can. Most of it even I do not know, not now, not yet. But... you are remarkably suggestible, Draco."

"And that's a bad thing?"

"No. I was only afraid that the power of suggestion might cause you to imagine you'd reached the place you needed to go, when you truly hadn't. But I believe, now, that you have. Try again to return to this vision. Try hard." He passed a hand over Draco's face.

Draco stared at Snape, concentrating as hard as he could, and then shook his head. He felt as if a solid wall were blocking him. "It isn't going to work. I don't have enough power on my own. I need--" He closed his eyes.

"What do you need, Draco?"

Draco opened his eyes, and his gaze roamed around the room, stopping at the leather bag he'd been carrying all week. He plucked it from its nail on the wall and took out the Kitap-an Dus. It pulsed a glowing red. "The book," he said simply. "I should have known, should have realized. That's how I got through the Ogham wall into the Dreamtime, and how I saw Desire. I'm sure it can get me back into the vision."

Snape sucked in his breath. "Of course!" he said. "More fool I, for not thinking of it." But when Draco held it out to him, he shook his head.

"I cannot touch the Book of Dreams, Draco," he said.

Draco remembered that his father couldn't do that either. Nor could Lucius Malfoy see Lord Grindelwald. Briefly, he wondered why he could do both of those things. Well, there would be time enough to think about that sort of thing later. He reached out to the jewel-encrusted corner of the binding. The pages were stuck shut. He gave an exasperated groan.

"It's been doing this on and off," he muttered, bitter disappointment running through him. "All the time I've had it. I never know if it's going to open for me or not."

"Did it open the last time you tried?" asked Snape.

"Not at first... but then it did, after a bit."

"What changed?"

Draco tried to think. "Well, at first I was trying it on my own. Then Ginny Weasley came over to the bed where I was lying and I took her hand and sort of pressed it down on the pages--" Realization hit him. "She's been there almost every time it's ever opened for me. And when she hasn't been, I've been thinking of her... do you think that could be what makes the difference? Her presence?"

Snape rose. "There's only one way to find out."