Jewel of the Harem: The Grindelwald Continuum Book One

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Dawn streaked the sky with layers of pink and gold. The tide had turned, and a stiff wind blew to the east.

"Anchor up!"

Several burly men strained at the great chain on the starboard side, and a vast, scraping, lifting sound filled the crisp early morning air. The boatswain's whistle shrieked a command. "Pull," said Robin out of one corner of his mouth. Ginny pulled with all her might at her corner of the huge lateen sail, wishing Pansy's arms were stronger. She was one of eight raising the sail on its own separate line at the mizzen mast, and she didn't think she was holding up her end very well. In her own body, she would have made a much better show, and there was something almost grimly humorous about the thought. Ginny still wore the shadow-cloak, as she had no idea where any of them were supposed to stow their personal belongings, but it was tucked up out of the way and tied at her waist. The large wooden blocks rattled, and then the sail flapped out and bellied with the wind.

"One point east!" The captain was a large man with bristling mustaches, a plum velvet surcoat, and a look of permanent ill temper on his florid face.

"One point east," repeated the first mate, shifting the wheel counterclockwise with both hands.

"Dead reckoning east," replied the capstan from the further deck, throwing out the lead line.

The ship gave one shuddering jerk, then began to move, smoothly, ponderously, majestically. The nine sails rose against the eastward wind and caught the rays of the rising sun.

"Turn the half-hour glass." A pause. A glare. "Well, where is it?"

A brief conference among the officers standing on the stern deck.

"Last seen somewhere in the stern cabins," the boatswain finally said.

"Inefficiency," fumed the captain. "Surrounded by lackwits. Send a boy to find it."

"Go, hurry--this is a good opportunity," whispered Robin, giving Ginny a push. "You might be ship's grommet, and never do aught but turn the half-hour glass. Better than picking oakum and pitching the deck for months on end!"

Ginny scampered towards the stern cabins, her heart beating fast. This was a good opportunity, all right, but not for the reason Robin thought. She knew that passengers stayed in those cabins during the voyage. She'd be able to find Professor Moody.

She slipped down the dark little passageway, deciding she'd start on the bottom level first. The first door she tried led to a little cabin with a bed tucked into one corner. Ginny hesitated. She didn't recognize the elegant trunk on the floor, or the expensive wool cloak lined in lavender silk that was hanging on the door, but one of her friends must be staying in this cabin--Hermione, perhaps. Maybe her friend's parents had given Hermione the costly new things for Christmas. Should she herself wait there until someone returned? As Ginny stood, considering, she heard the faint murmur of voices a little further down the corridor. Ginny gulped. No. Everything would go so much better if she could only find Professor Moody first. She tiptoed out into the corridor and opened the next door. Then she stood frozen to the spot, staring down at the girl in the bed.

She was looking at herself. Or at her body, anyway, with Pansy Parkinson in it. The eyes fringed in cinnamon lashes were closed, and the white face was utterly still and silent, the tall, slender body laid prone on the tiny bed. But what was she doing here? The Death Eaters had her body on the other ship!

The voices and footsteps outside were coming closer. The doorknob rattled. Ginny glanced wildly from side to side, and dove under the bed in desperation. She succeeded only in hitting her head on one of the trunks stored beneath it. Frantically, she pushed aside several cloaks hung on nails driven into the wall next to the bed, pulling her own shadow-cloak over her head. The door swung fully open. Ginny peeped out, not daring to raise the fold of cloth in front of her eyes. There was very little room; a corner of the bed dug into her thigh, and she was afraid that the slightest movement might be heard. All she could see were two pairs of boots. They walked towards her, pausing when they reached the bed. Ginny felt the first twinge of unease when she realized that two of the boots looked... familiar. Exquisite hand-tooled black leather with a nick on one heel; where had she seen them before?

There was a long, long pause, during which she could only hear the faint sound of breathing.

"Do you see anything?" asked a voice.

Ginny's breath stopped in her throat. Professor Snape!

Another pause. Ginny suddenly knew whose voice she would next hear. She was sure of it even before she heard the soft, deep drawl that had grown so familiar to her in the past week that she knew she would never be able to forget it again.

"Almost. Almost. Not quite. Give me another moment."

Draco Malfoy.

Ginny blew aside a little of the smothering cloth, hoping that the tiny sound would go unnoticed. An aching pang went all through her when she saw Draco's pale, set face. His eyes seemed to see something a million miles away from her, or Snape, or the little cabin. Yet he looked straight at the cloaks then, and for a panicked second she was sure he had spotted her. I was mad to think I could ever really escape him!

He was still looking directly at her. Surely he must see her. Yet he couldn't have done, Ginny realized, or he would have said something. It was almost as if--she shivered--Draco did not know, himself, what he saw. She didn't understand in the least what was going on, but her heart beat fast with fear.

"I can feel something--a great power gathered," he murmured. "The tide's just turned, hasn't it?"

"Yes," the other man replied. "You are exactly right, Draco. The ship set sail a few moments ago."

And I'm on the wrong one--the one with Malfoy and the Death Eaters. Oh, how did this happen? I have to get off; I can't stay here! Ginny thought with a stab of panic. Then she realized that it was already too late, and the knowledge was like a burning stone in her belly. She clenched her hands into useless fists. Her palms burned where her fingernails dug into the skin, but she scarcely felt the pain.

Draco lowered his left hand towards the sleeping girl in the little bed, even as his right hand passed over the book laid on the table. Its jewelled cover opened, and the ivory pages riffled as if a wind had caught them.

"Take my hand," said Snape. His voice was urgent. "We need to establish a link."

"Will you come with me if I do?" asked Draco, his voice growing curiously dreamy. His face was lit from below by the red pulses of the book.

"I can't do that. But I'll see what you see, and I'll pull you out of the vision if you go too deep."

"All right." A faint rustling. Ginny couldn't see it from where she lay, but she felt that Snape had taken Draco's left hand. The entwined hands were moving towards the girl on the bed--herself--and pausing a few inches above the sleeping white face, the red-gold ringlets of hair. Ginny couldn't see that either. Yet she knew it was happening. She realized with a thrill of something like fear that they were all tied. There was a bond of power thrumming between herself, and Draco, and her body laid out on the bed, inert and silent, but still bound to them both. And somehow Snape was anchoring them all.

"Now," Draco murmured, and the surge of power went all through the room.

He fell back into his other-self as if he could have gone nowhere else. The journey was as easy as slipping into a pair of old shoes, well-worn and comfortable. Except that this time he held the power as he had not done before; he felt his dominance in every nerve and sinew. He clearly felt the clammy dirt floor beneath his bare feet, heard the sound of his own breathing, a little fast, a little frightened, saw the eerie flickering greenish light in the corridor, even smelled the dank water that trickled down the stone walls. Now nothing would be hidden from him. Impatiently, he delved into the mind that was his, yet not quite his. What was going on?

For a startled instant, the other-self seemed to feel the presence of someone else probing his mind. Draco didn't know how on earth this could be so, if what he experienced now was only some sort of strange memory. Yet it undoubtedly was what he felt, and he tried to soothe the suspicions that had suddenly arisen.

-what?-- the other mind responded, weakly. What's happening?

--shhh. it's nothing. Draco tested the barriers of this consciousness. They could be breached, he was sure of it.

--but what is this, who are you?

-you wouldn't believe me if I told you. Let me in, just let me in.

A struggle. Then an acceptance. This is some sort of test, isn't it?

Yes. Only a test. The other-self seemed less mentally strong, somehow, as if it were far more trained to obedience than Draco himself had been.

The entire experience reminded him eerily of his journey through Ginny's memories of one year before, but what made it so disturbing was the fact that now he was traveling through what was actually his own mind, although a subtly different one. But he knew the way into this mind for that very reason. Its defenses were considerable, but he himself had erected them. And so he was able to slide behind them a little way.

The memories he grasped were vague, rather broad. There seemed to be no emotions attached to any of them. That quality, at least, was no different in this mental version of himself. Whatever his feelings might be about the things that had happened to him, they were too deeply buried for easy access. A series of images from the six months preceding this moment in his life whirred past his inner eyes like a sped-up slide show.

It had been a summer quite unlike the one he really remembered. There had been no oppressive gloom, no aura of suspicion deepening to dread when his father and the circle that surrounded him realized that Lord Voldemort had truly been destroyed. Instead, there was a purposeful secrecy. A hum of activity around the estate, frequent visitors, mysterious meetings behind locked doors. Draco had rarely seen his father, and he had burned with impatience to know what was going on. There was an undercurrent of frustration, he did feel that, but the fascinating secrecy was its source. He had spent a great deal of time listening at doors and attempting to overhear gossip, but had learned next to nothing. Lucius Malfoy had attended to the duties of the estate, visited the Ministry in London, and disappeared for extended periods of time with a very faint smile upon his handsome, impassive face. Narcissa Malfoy had strolled among her gardens and deadheaded her roses, presided over and attended afternoon teas, and headed the boards of various charities, all with no expression whatsoever on her beautiful, impassive face. There was very little specific difference that Draco could grasp.

Pansy Parkinson had visited in late July, and stayed until nearly the end of the summer. That was the same as well. The memories of her visit were no different, and Draco squirmed inwardly at that. She was still teasing and taunting him, still allowing him a few physical intimacies but not many, still driving him mad with thwarted lust even though he thoroughly disliked the girl herself. They had galloped together across the fields of Wiltshire one golden afternoon before returning to the stables, where he had pressed her against the mounting block and--

Wait. Wiltshire? Not Kent?

He pushed back into the other-Draco's mind until he gained a vague mental picture of Malfoy Manor, looking very much as it actually did, a vast timber-framed Elizabethan house. In Wiltshire. How can this... be? The answer came to him without his even having to search for it.

His mother was not a von Drachen, not from Bavaria. Instead, she was English from top to toe, and she belonged to one of the oldest British wizarding families--the Blacks. He was still trying to process this dizzying information when he realized that this provided the answer to why Malfoy Manor was located on the Stonehenge site. The land had been his mother's dowry when she married Lucius Malfoy; it had come to his father through her. The Blacks were the family that had owned it since the days of King Arthur. But why, why was he walking the ceremonial path beneath the megaliths on the holiest day of the year? He sensed that what he was about to do was of staggering importance, but what was it?

He reached forward a little, into his memories of what had happened during the autumn leading up to this winter, and shuffled through them like playing cards. Standing on Platform 9 and ¾ with his father as always, watching a large black dog bounding alongside Potter and Granger and the gaggle of Weasleys. There was something important about the dog; Draco understood that fact from his father's reaction to it. And ater, on the train, he had implied that he knew more about the matter than he actually did. He had learned long ago what a useful technique that was in finding out more than your enemies had intended to reveal. I seem to have touched a nerve, he had said, smirking. Well, just watch yourself, Potter, because I'll be dogging your footsteps in case you step out of line. He had been made a prefect that year, and he remembered how much it had shocked him. That was an office that had never been doled out because of parental influence, so he had never expected to get it. Dumbledore and Dumbledore alone had always appointed the prefects. Draco had not understood, and it had given him a queer feeling to think that the Headmaster had chosen him. He had swiftly realized how useful that authority could be, though... but why?

Now he was at Hogwarts, beginning fifth year. There was a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, but she was more than that as well, she was beginning to angle for control of the school, although most people didn't know that yet, as he did. A distinctly unpleasant woman who looked like a squat toad and had a personality like poisoned honey, and a false, girlish voice that dripped sweet venom. She was vile. Gods, he hated her, would have gladly thrown her off the Astronomy Tower some dark night, but he had to conceal his real feelings and cozy up to her. What else? This other-self despised Pansy every bit as much as Draco actually had during that autumn. She was still teasing and enticing him without ever following through, and he frequently had serious thoughts of strangling her and leaving her body in a shallow grave somewhere in the Forbidden Forest. But... the memory came to him, clearly... he was meeting her secretly all through September, October, November, using their prefects' positions as an excuse. And these meetings weren't snogging sessions, either. But why, then? Where was the explanation for all these strange things? Something was different. Yes. Very different indeed. Draco forced himself to relax, and dug a little deeper into the memories.

His father was beginning to trust him, just a little, then more and more. There had been several secret owls from Malfoy Manor during the autumn term that were different in tone from any Draco had ever received before. Phrases from them came back to him now.

I am pleased to hear that Harry Potter is becoming more unstable, but please tell me this sort of thing only if it is the truth, and not because you wish to please me, however commendable that desire may be. I have the Weasley boy for that sort of thing. He was Head Boy last year; you may remember him. Percival is his name. That family has turned out to have its uses, after all. I will explain this point further in the future. You must learn to curb your impatience, Draco...

Umbridge may be trusted to an extent, although she is not, strictly speaking, one of us. Do not confide in her, but keep your head down, and allow her to do her work of undermining l' ancien regime at Hogwarts. I will tell you more when I judge it safe to do so...

Curiousity is a commendable thing, Draco. But obedience is better. Do not pester me further about this matter of the dog you saw at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. You'll know when it is advisable for you to know... Memory stirred in him, vague and second-hand. He'd first seen the black dog before that day; that was it! Yes. In this other-world, Draco had gone with his mother to London one afternoon in late July. He'd been waiting outside some wizarding stationery store or other in the Tottenham Court Road when he'd first run across the dog, and scratched behind its ears, and smoothed its rich black fur. A lovely animal, he remembered. And then he'd seen Ginny Weasley standing on the sidewalk, at the point of tears as she argued with her youngest brother Ron and the insufferable know-it-all mudblood Granger. All three of them had recoiled when they'd seen him, but beneath the expected animosity had been something like... fear? And that was what Draco had told his father when they'd both seen the large black dog at King's Cross on that September day. Lucius Malfoy had only nodded, but his son was trained in the subtle interpretation of the slightest gesture or the briefest glance, and he knew that he had done well. Draco had longed to learn more than that, to know if his tidbit of information had been at all important. But he remembered reading his father's words in that parchment, and deciding that he wanted only to obey. One must obey before one could serve; Lucius Malfoy had always said that.

There were letters from his mother, as well. She worried about his health. She sent him balaclavas and mufflers and mittens knitted from fairy cobwebs, very warm and light, and boxes of his favorite chocolates. She asked if he was well. She wrote that she could not wait to see him again. Curiously, she never mentioned the Christmas hols that were coming. It was almost as if she were afraid to do so. Once, she asked if he remembered the rose gardens at the manor, and his walks through them with her in summer, when all the roses were in bloom. Draco did not know quite what to make of that letter.

And, at last, in mid-December, there had been a final letter from his father.

I am pleased to inform you that Snepit Gogsblatter has managed to obtain the vital item in question. The rogue goblin faction has proved most trustworthy in this exceedingly delicate matter. It is now in the hands of he who is prepared to receive it. All will be explained at Yule. Be sure to destroy this parchment immediately after you have read it, Draco.

Draco tried coming at the problem a different way. He couldn't seem to find the answer through an examination of facts, so perhaps he should try emotions. Perhaps he could feel what this other-self had been feeling then. Did that match the sensations he actually remembered from one year before?

In reality, the summer and autumn of his fifth year had been a time of frustration, and of a slowly growing fear always in the back of his mind. He had already begun to have trouble sleeping by then, to lie awake staring at the canopy of his bed in the Slytherin dormitory night after night. By the winter solstice, he was angry and miserable and snarly and surly. But in this other-self, Draco felt none of those things. Instead, he sensed a bubbling excitement. This autumn had been a waiting time, but not in the way that the real autumn had been. There was excitement and anticipation behind this waiting, not anger and dread. There was a sense of something dark and wonderful ripening just past his reach. But soon... soon he would be brought to it, and allowed to grasp it fully. His father had promised him so. He knew where he was going in this reality, although he had not been told the details. That knowledge excited him. He had been trusted with it, and he knew that the trust was the beginning of being brought into his father's inner circle.

The path he walked through the catacombs of Stonehenge was a spiral. He suddenly realized that. Its circle tightened down into a smaller and smaller space. Then, without warning, it dead-ended into a tiny room. Draco felt a ridge of stone against his shin, and he stepped up smoothly, without stumbling. His father had told him it would be there when he'd received preparation for this ritual.

He stood in the close darkness, the sound of his own breathing very loud in the little stone room. There was someone else here. Draco could see nothing at all, but he felt the brooding presence. The pitch blackness was not solely due to the lack of light in this subterranean space. Whatever this person, thing, or being was, it gave off waves of its own darkness. His other-self had been told about this, prepared for this. Yet it still came as a shock, and he jumped when he heard the high, thin, cold voice.

"Why have you come?"

Draco replied with the words he had been taught. "I have come to serve my lord."

"And how would you serve me, Draco Lukas Malfoy?"

He swallowed. "I would serve you as I have been told to do."

Silence. The rumination of a vast and sinister intelligence.

"And what service have you been told to offer?"

"To-- to be your eyes, your ears, and your mouth."

A dry chuckle. "Just so. For I cannot see what I need to see, nor hear what I must hear, nor say what I would say. Nor can any of my other servants. Only you can do that, young Malfoy. Incendio."

The tip of a wand blossomed into light, flickering and wavering against the stone walls of the little room. And Draco saw what had been speaking to him.

He didn't know if his other-self had already seen what stood before him, but he didn't think so. The shock splintering through his brain felt the same in both his selves, although Draco rather thought that in this reality, he had at least had some idea of what to expect. He had been told that in the room of ritual at the heart of Stonehenge, Lord Voldemort waited for him.

Draco wondered if he ought to move, to kneel, to offer fealty, to do something. Yet he kept standing and staring, motionless. All he could seem to think of at that moment was the first and only time he had seen the Dark Lord. It was the night he had been given detention with Potter and Weasley when he was eleven years old. He'd been sent out alone into the Forbidden Forest by that insane oaf Hagrid with a stupid, cowardly dog for so-called protection; any sane person would have been petrified. Then he'd seen the dead unicorn in the path and something in his chest had caught painfully; he'd been drawn towards its luminous body, achingly beautiful even in death. And Draco had seen the thing that was Lord Voldemort, crouching in the path, feeding on the unicorn's blood.

It was ridiculous to remember that long-ago night. The being standing before him now was utterly different from that creature. He was very thin, and as pale as if he had never seen sunlight (and maybe he hasn't, Draco thought with a shudder.) He moved across the little room as if he did not quite remember how the human body worked anymore, as if it had been too long since he had inhabited one. And it probably has been, Draco's mind insisted on informing him. His strange reddish eyes studied Draco, their pupils slitted like a cat's. His face was oddly flat and snakelike, and the fingers of his hands were as long as the twigs of a skeletal tree. Yet Lord Voldemort was unquestionably human.

Draco waited for a word from the Dark Lord, a sign, anything; his tongue seemed to have stuck to the roof of his mouth and he didn't think he'd be able to get any words through it. Wasn't the ritual supposed to continue?

"So you are Draco Lukas Malfoy," Lord Voldemort said, still studying the blond boy. Draco nodded. He certainly did not trust himself to speak. "We have met before," he continued. His thin, high, cold voice was oddly compelling. "Yet we were not... properly introduced, were we?"

"No, my Lord," said Draco.

"Sit," said the Dark Lord impatiently, waving a hand towards a stone bench in the very centre of the room. "I would speak with you for a moment. There are things I would tell you before the ceremony properly begins, young Malfoy... things you probably do not yet know."

Draco sat, or rather collapsed. His legs felt boneless and rubbery.

Lord Voldemort moved a little, his robes making a slight rustling noise. The very ordinariness of the sound threatened to break Draco's tenuous hold on... something. He held onto the edge of the stone seat to keep from bolting up and out of the little room. He would allow no outward sign of what he felt. Not for the world would he have betrayed this sudden, shameful weakness of his.

"Do you know why you are here?" the dry voice asked.

"Not really, my Lord," Draco admitted. "It's a ritual of great significance, one that can only be performed at the winter solstice. And I--I am a crucial part of it." He heard the pride in his own voice, as well as the sulky disappointment that he had not been better informed. "That's all I was told."

A high, thin, dry chuckle. "Lucius Malfoy has never been one to allow the left hand to know what the right hand is doing. And for his purposes, I suppose that suits him very well. But for mine..." He moved closer to the bench. Draco heard a slight creaking sound as Lord Voldemort sat next to him, as if the very stones cried out against such an unnatural presence.

"Do you know of the Order of the Phoenix?"

"I think I've heard the name." And this other-self had, Draco realized, although he still didn't know what it was. "Some sort of group, or organization."

Lord Voldemort nodded. "It is the name our opposition has given themselves."

"Dumbledore, and that crew of idiots?" Draco asked contemptuously.

"It is never wise to underestimate Albus Dumbledore--but it is certainly true that while they do not know our plans, we are fully aware of theirs." The words were full of promise.

Excitement splintered through Draco. At last he was really about to learn something. Should he ask questions, or wait to be told whatever the Dark Lord was going to tell him? He felt that the former would be better, although he could not have said why. "And what are their plans?" Draco waited for, and saw, Lord Voldemort's pale, thin-lipped smile of approval before he let out his breath again.

"They are trying to guard a prophecy that was made about Harry Potter at his birth. Like most prophecies, it is kept at the Department of Mysteries, and they believe that all our will and strength and cunning is given over to finding it." He paused.

"But they're wrong," guessed Draco. "Aren't they?"

"They are indeed," Lord Voldemort said softly. "And they will never know it until it is far too late. Understand that I do want what they are trying to keep from me. They believe I am trying to get into young Potter's mind, so that I may lure him to the place where the prophecy is hidden. And so I am, for the only person who can retrieve a prophecy is the one about whom it was made. So they are right--as far as they know. Yet I already have a fair idea of what that particular prophecy says, and grasping hold of it is not nearly as important to me as they believe. No. Do you know what a red herring is?

Draco thought hard, but the phrase meant nothing to him. He shook his head.

"I suppose, as a pureblood, that you would not. It is a peculiarly Muggle turn of phrase. It refers to a clue that is used to distract the pursuers of a mystery from the truth. And the first prophecy is the red herring. All their energy and time and thought are put into hiding it from me. But while they guard the front door, we will come in through the back. That is the purpose of tonight's ritual."

Draco held his breath, waiting for the Dark Lord to continue. Nothing had really been revealed yet. But he sensed that it soon would be, and he was determined not to miss a word of it.

"There is a second prophecy that was made a few months earlier, just before you were born," said Lord Voldemort, "a more secret one, and far better hidden. It never was kept in the Department of Mysteries. Most wizards would consider it lost. Yet there is a place where all prophecies are recorded, and that is where it is. I know only the first part of it." He closed his eyes, as if remembering. Although he never would have admitted it, Draco was a bit relieved at that. The pale red eyes looked so inhuman.

"Behold the lilies of the field, and the bargains they have struck," Lord Voldemort said in a sing-song voice, "After the flowers have fallen to earth in the ancient way, then Draco and Leo must meet in the tower of wisdom. And Draco may overcome." There was a long pause.

"What--what does it mean?" Draco asked hesitantly.

He looked at the blond boy, very directly, and answered a question with a question. "Tell me first, young Malfoy-- what do these words mean to you?"

"I--I don't think I would know how to begin to--"

"Begin at the beginning. What are Draco and Leo?"

Draco rubbed his chin, thinking as hard as he could. The occasions on which he actually had to use all of his considerable mental powers were rare. This was an unaccustomed feeling, but a good one, like hard exercise after a long period of restless sitting. "Well, they're a dragon and a lion, obviously, but it has to be more than that. Leo is an astrological sign... but I don't think Draco is... wait, they're both constellations. That's the link. But how could that be important?"

"Where are we?" Lord Voldemort asked softly.

"Stonehenge. The heart of Stonehenge."

"And what is the nature of this place?"

"A megalithic construct." Draco's mind worked furiously. "Wait... wait... I think I'm starting to get it! All megalith structures are astronomical clocks," he said, working out the pieces of the puzzle that was so tantalizingly close to being solved. "And they're aligned to constellations! The Sphinx points to Orion, the Great Pyramid of Cheops mimics Sirius, and there's one that's built like Draco... Anghkor Wat, I think, in Cambodia. But Stonehenge is the most important one, the keystone of the rest. So it would mirror both Leo and Draco, as well as the solstices." He looked up. "That's it, isn't it?"

The smile still lingered on those snakelike lips, but when Lord Voldemort began speaking, Draco was disappointed. He seemed to have changed the subject entirely.

"How much do you know about the incidents that took place three years ago in the Chamber of Secrets?"

Draco hesitated. "Well--more than anyone thinks I do. I've picked up a lot about what happened. I know that my father gave Ginny Weasley the diary that was once yours, my Lord, when you were the schoolboy Tom Riddle. And that you used it to call up a giant basilisk, which was going to kill all the muggleborns at Hogwarts so that the school would have to close, and--"

But Lord Voldemort was shaking his head.

"What?" Draco asked with some dismay. "What did I get wrong?"

"Nothing. You know no more than everyone else knew; that is all. But the basilisk and the muggleborns were irrevelant."

"More red herrings," Draco guessed, and was rewarded by an inclination of the Dark Lord's head.

"Just so. The true purpose was quite other. I wanted to mark out Ginny Weasley from all the other students at Hogwarts, to gain her confidence, to separate her from her friends and family until she was utterly isolated. I could not draw her to confide in me with the form I then had, which was little more than a spirit. So I used the diary. It created a shade of myself as a sixteen-year-old schoolboy. Ginny Weasley could not resist me--so handsome, so charming, so willing to listen to her little fears and troubles. She was lonely and vulnerable, hovering right at the boundary of womanhood... such a lovely girl," he said softly. "A pity that my diary-self had no physical substance, really. I should have loved to initiate her, if I could..."

Draco didn't know what his other-self had felt when he heard these words. He couldn't seem to get at the other Draco's feelings very well. But he felt a surge of unease, almost of anger. He didn't want to hear anyone talking that way about Ginny. No, not even this Dark Lord who had spoken to him so enticingly. She was his. She had sworn herself to him, and belonged to him. He would initiate her in the way he so longed to do, when the time was ripe. Ginny was for no-one else to touch. And she had been so frightened when she'd lain in the hayloft near Melrose Abbey a few nights before, and told him about the shade of Tom Riddle touching her in the Chamber of Secrets... and he had taken her hand, and held it until morning...

But he mustn't take the time to think about these things now; he had to pay attention to what was going on. He sensed that a revelation of great importance was coming.

"At any rate, that did not matter," said Lord Voldemort. "So let us move on to what did. After nearly a year of careful preparation, I was able to lure her there as bait for Harry Potter. He was the one I wanted. I knew he would come to her rescue." He paused. "Do you know of the Hogwarts clock tower? Yes? No-one knows what I will tell you next, Draco, except for Dumbledore, myself... and now you. But the Chamber of Secrets is itself contained in that tower, even as this chamber is contained in the catacombs below the heelstone of Stonehenge." Then he was silent. Draco realized that Lord Voldemort was waiting for him to figure out some sort of answer that tied all these facts together.

"When did you bring her there, my Lord?" he asked abruptly.

"At the feast of Walpurgisnacht, that is just before Beltane. I do not think that it is celebrated at Hogwarts any longer."

"And did you know the first part of the second prophecy then?"

"I did."

"Potter's the Leo," Draco murmured. "The Leo of the prophecy. His birthday's even at the end of July, I think. It all fits."

"So he is," said Lord Voldemort. "Even as I am the Heir of Slytherin, but it was not the Heir that was needed. I believed that I was the other subject of the second prophecy. But I am not. Do you know the answer to this riddle?"

And the answer was suddenly crystal clear. It had been in front of him all along. How had he not seen it before? "I'm Draco," he murmured. "I mean, it's not only my name. I am the Draco of the prophecy, the Dragon of Slytherin. And I must overcome Harry Potter, who is the Lion of Gryffindor. Am I right?"

And at last a full smile spread over Lord Voldemort's face, and Draco felt tears spring to his eyes, which he furiously blinked back. The warmth, the approval, and the praise of this powerful being were all turned upon him. He had never experienced anything like this before. "You are," the Dark Lord said, but Draco did not need to hear the words. He felt as if he had struggled up a mountain and reached the summit at last. But he did not allow himself to bask in that sensation for long. There was still so much more to learn.

"What does the rest of the prophecy mean, though?" he asked. "About the flowers falling to earth, for instance?"

"That, we do not know. The flowers' fall could mean many things, but most likely it refers to the time of year. The ancient year-feast after the harvest is the winter solstice, so that would likely be the proper time-- and that, too, is why we are attempting to retrieve the prophecy now."

"And the tower? Why does it have to happen in a tower?"

"Ah, that is a very ancient magic." Lord Voldemort's eyes grew veiled. "It is the nexus, the place where the world of men reaches toward the realm of the gods. From Childe Harold to Roland Deschain walking the Beam with his ka-tet of gunslingers, mortals have always sought the Tower..."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, my lord," Draco admitted.

"Don't you? Well, it doesn't matter now. Sometimes the places of power are actual towers. There is one at a wizarding house in Kent, one at Hogwarts, one in a lighthouse along the coast of France, one in Bavaria, and even one in the forbidden haram of Old Istanbul, in the ancient Ottoman Empire. Yet the Tower is an idea, not a building, and many other things have represented it. The very heelstone of Stonehenge is a primitive tower. So is the standing stone at Clach an Truchal, and the marble temple of Aphrodite in the Cyclades. They say that the very trees of the Forbidden Forest are towers, and the desert cliffs of Death Valley in America as well. The power in all of them is strengthened at the great feasts, but especially at the midwinter solstices." His eyes gleamed with challenge. "Do you know why?"

Draco remembered the Arithmancy lesson that fall. His mind worked among possibilities, made intuitive leaps, and fit pieces of the puzzle together. "A professor at our school once said that the exact date of the winter solstice was determined by a geometric series," he said slowly. "If you plot its equations out on a graph--draw them out, mathematically--they're actually vector-based geometric forms. They become spirals and chamfer boxes as the geometric series reaches its apex. Towers always have spiral staircases, and I walked a spiral path to get to this room. Rings of stones are built in spirals, and if you cut down a tree you'll find a sort of spiral in the rings of its trunk. And a tower itself, or a tree, or a standing stone--well, if you look at the basic form of any of them, it really is a chamfer box. So the closer the equations get to the form of a tower as time moves towards the solstice, the more power is available through the tower."

Voldemort inclined his head. He seemed to choose his next words with great care. "You know, do you not, that I was once Tom Riddle?" Draco nodded. "I am Tom Riddle still," he continued. "But I am more, so very much more. For I have partaken of the nature of the Dark Lord, which is eternal. I was Lord Grindelwald, and I was the Necromancer. I was Sauron, and Saruman." The last names meant nothing to Draco, but he nodded again, keeping his eyes fixed on Lord Voldemort's face. "I was Gilgamesh, and Grendel... I have seen many ages of the world, and many victories, and many defeats... but rarely, Draco, very rarely have I been privileged to know a mind that compares to yours."

Draco sat stunned, letting the words wash over him. He was no longer sure of the distinction between this self and the one who stood in a little cabin room on the Good Queen Bess, and it no longer seemed to matter. Both selves knew that he had never received a compliment like this one, and that no-one had ever shown him such respect, or such understanding of his capacities.

"I can't believe it," murmured Draco, inadequately. But he did not know what else to say. "To think--that it was me, all along." Wait, wait, thought the listening, watching Draco. He had become so caught up in what he had learned that he'd almost forgotten he was not this Draco, not this other self. But now one thing was a bit jarring. What about the really odd bit that didn't seem to make any sense, about the lilies of the field, and the bargains they made? Who are the lilies, and what were the bargains? Why didn't I ask about that? I think that Lord Voldemort was deliberately trying to lead me away from wondering about that point. But the Dark Lord was speaking again, and Draco forgot his niggling doubts.

"So it was. The answer had hidden itself from me by its very simplicity; it had seemed far too obvious to be the truth. And I will admit that pride also had its part to play... it is as well to know one's own weaknesses, yes? But you are he of whom the prophecy spoke."

"And the only people who can retrieve a prophecy are the ones about whom it was made," repeated Draco. He looked up. "You want me to get the prophecy for you, so we can find out what the rest of it is. That's it, isn't it?"

The serpentine head nodded.

"But then, if we're not in London, how can we--" Draco remembered, too late, that Lord Voldemort had already told him the prophecy wasn't kept with the others, in the Department of Mysteries. "Sorry," he mumbled. "It's all just a bit--"

"There is no need to apologize."

"So where is it?"

"Ah, yes. Here we come to the crux of the matter." Lord Voldemort rose, and gazed at the stone wall before him as if held a window. "It is not in this world."

Draco felt a tingle of excitement in his spine. "And that's why we're at Stonehenge at the winter solstice, isn't it? It's someplace we couldn't get to by normal means--or someone has it who won't easily give it up."

"Precisely so." A slight smile touched the thin lips once more. "You are as subtle as a serpent indeed, Draco Malfoy."

"So where do I go to get it?"

"Have you ever heard, or read, of the Library of Lord Morpheus?"

Draco thought hard, and remembered having seen a reference to it once in an arcane book bound in unicorn hide and visible for only ten minutes a year on the topmost shelf of the Malfoy library. Lord Morpheus was one of the seven Endless; he remembered Binns mentioning that as part of a droning lecture, as well. "Yes, a bit. That library has a copy of every book in all the world, I think. Not only the ones that have actually been written, but the ones people imagined, or started but never finished, or only wrote in their heads."

"Just so. But that library contains many things besides ordinary books, and one of them is the Kitap-an Dus, the Book of Dreams that belongs to Lord Morpheus. Written in that Book is every dream ever dreamed by mortal being, and those of immortals as well."

"And a prophecy is a sort of dream really, isn't it? So that's where all the prophecies would be--even if for some reason they didn't exist anywhere else!" Draco felt a growing excitement. Lord Voldemort was deliberately stopping his revelations at a certain threshold, he realized. He told Draco just enough so that he could figure out the rest for himself. He knows what my mind is capable of-- knows better than I do myself.

"But in order to read this prophecy, you must travel to the kingdom of Lord Morpheus, which is not of this world. It is in the place that mortals have called the Dreamtime, the realm of the gods. That is why we hold a ritual at this holiest of places at the greatest feast of the year. That is why I must give you a talisman at the proper time in order to take you there, one that we have obtained with great effort and difficulty. It is not without danger, not even for you. I will not pretend so. Will you go, Draco Lucas Malfoy?"

"I will go," whispered Draco.

"Then there is only one other thing--and you may not be pleased at this, but trust me, it is necessary. You must take the Parkinson girl with you into the Dreamtime."

"Pansy?" Draco said, appalled. "Ugh, why her?"

"She is tied up with the prophecy, too--but in a way we do not yet understand. Perhaps her part is yet to be revealed. Draco, there is still much that I cannot tell you. But do you trust me?"

Draco struggled with his emotions on hearing this question, remembering how Snape had asked it of him. He had been sure of his answer then. He believed that he knew what his other-self was going to say now, and it gave him an odd feeling of dread. The other-Draco was too trusting, too easily swayed. There was too much he did not know, and that fact did not seem to give him pause. But, still--

"Yes," he said.

Lord Voldemort turned, stretched out his hand, and raised it slowly. The stone wall moved upwards, grating and scraping in its grooves. They stood at the far side of a great circular chamber, and in its centre was a tremendous stone altar. Surrounding it was a circle of robed and hooded figures. No-one spoke a word, or made a sound. This was common in ceremonies of such power, Draco remembered now--the ritual silence must not be broken by any human being. But he knew what to do, had been told what to do.

The circle parted for him as he stepped forward, moving with slow, measured tread. He ascended the steps to the top of the altar. A small figure dressed in the same black robes as all the rest moved to stand beside him. He caught a glint of her black-cherry eyes in the sourceless faint light of the chamber. Pansy. She glanced at him, biting her lip in barely suppressed excitement, then looked quickly away.

Lord Voldemort threw back the hood of his cloak, and his pale skin seemed to shimmer with an eerie glow. Slowly, he reached down into the folds of the robe he wore and drew out something silvery on a chain. He held it up, and it flickered with its own interior light. It was a silver locket. The dead-white hands with their preternaturally long fingers snapped it open, and something within shone red. Draco saw it clearly. It looked like a scrap of parchment set with tiny rubies. Lord Voldemort held the necklace high, and Draco bent his head, feeling the cold hands brush his cheek as the locket went around his neck. Pansy's hand curved around his waist, and he jumped. A distinctly unpleasant feeling. He wasn't quite sure which felt worse--Lord Voldemort's touch, or Pansy's. Still, both must be endured.

Skeletal fingers cradled his head, pressing at the temples. Draco felt himself grow cold, utterly cold, as if energy and will and thought were being drained out of him. It is exactly as it was when Lord Grindelwald touched me, in this world. All of the Dark Lords really are one. Lord Voldemort told me that, before, but I don't think I understood it... what can this mean? Then the fingers of the other hand were closing around his own, and they were the coldest thing he had ever felt or imagined. He fully understood in that moment that the Dark Lord had not regained his full powers; he could not possibly have done, and Draco knew why they were all so desperate to get the power of the prophecy. Lord Voldemort had been revived in this world, as he had not in Draco's own. But his own diminished power was not enough to defeat his enemies. Then the icy fingers were drawing Draco's hand down to the open locket at his throat, and pulling his own fingers to touch the rough surface of the parchment. And suddenly, without warning, he was... elsewhere.

Draco opened his eyes. He was sprawled on the floor of a cavernous room. Shakily, he got to his feet, and looked up in amazement. The walls seemed to be of infinite height; they soared until they disappeared into a sort of mist. And they were lined with books, millions, billions, trillions of books, an uncountable number. A library. The Library of Lord Morpheus! Somehow, he was perceiving its infinite quality. It was as if his own capacity for perception had changed to match the otherworldly nature of the space he now inhabited. He walked up the first shelf and began running his hands along it, filled with wonder and amazement as he read titles at random.

The Big Bang Was A Blast, by the Universe. Recombining for Fun and Profit, by Dioxyribonucleic Acid. On Being a Really Bad-Ass Predator, by Tyrannosaurus Rex. Quest for Fire, by Homo Neanderthalis.

"Ooh," complained a sulky voice. Pansy sat up, rubbing her head. Draco glared down at her.

"Shut up, would you? I don't want to hear the sound of your voice at the best of times and I really don't care for it now."

"I'm sure it doesn't make any difference if we talk here," she said, looking around the library. "Where are we supposed to go to get this thing, this Book of Dreams?"

"Do you see a map in my hands?" retorted Draco. "We just walk until we find it, I suppose." He began striding ahead, quickly.

"Wait--wait!" she cried, and he was pleased to hear that a note of panic had entered her voice. "Don't leave me behind-- I don't know where anything is!"

"Oh, and you think I do?" he called back over one shoulder.

"Well, we have to stick together at least! I don't want to get lost here--I might never find my way out."

"One can always hope," muttered Draco.

She scampered up to his side and matched the pace he set; he could not have shook her if he had tried. Draco walked faster and faster until it really seemed that no mortal could have moved at that speed; he had the unsettling feeling that the world was falling away beneath him, and he was travelling near-infinite distances. The neverending bookshelves blurred past him, as in a dream. From time to time, he paused and read the titles on their spines in an attempt to keep track of where they were. They seemed to be moving from the past towards the present day.

The Gospel of Judas, by Judas Iscariot. The Disharmony of Hell, by Johannes Kepler. Leda and the Swan, by William Shakespeare.

"I do wish you wouldn't go so fast," said Pansy. "We've just skipped over about two thousand years. What if the Book of Dreams was somewhere in that section?"

"Shut up, you stupid bint. I didn't want to bring you along at all."

Alice's Adventures With the Cheshire Cat, by Lewis Carroll. Gone With the Wind, Part Two, by Margaret Mitchell. Winston Smith Takes a Holiday, by George Orwell. Non-Being and Somethingness, by Jean-Paul Sartre.

"This is hopeless," said Pansy. "Didn't he tell you anything before you left about how to find the book--Lord Voldemort, I mean?"

"He told me that if you annoyed me, I had his permission to strangle you and stuff your body behind one of these bookshelves. Now shut up."

I Enjoy Being a Girl, by J. Edgar Hoover. Maybe I Shouldn't Have Sent Everybody to Siberia After All, by Joseph Stalin. If They'd Just Accepted Me Into Muggle Art School, I Wouldn't Have Started That War, by Adolf Hitler.

"Won't you--please--slow down!" puffed Pansy, running behind him.

"Are you ever going to shut that ugly mouth of yours?" asked Draco automatically, but his heart wasn't it. It wasn't any fun to bait Pansy, really; she never responded properly. He stood still for a moment. The bookshelves continued to rush past him at the same rate. "I'm not the one who's moving," he said, realizing the truth. "Neither are you. We're standing still, and the library is moving under us. We don't have any control over where we're going; it's just taking us where it will."

Without warning, Draco felt his pace slow down until he was walking at normal speed. He paused next to a stepladder that wound up into the mists above him and examined the books neatly stacked on the shelves. Pansy picked up one of them and gave a little shrill squeak of surprise.

"Don't make noises like that or I'll tape your mouth shut!" Draco said impatiently. "Well, what is it?"

"Look," whispered Pansy, holding out the book for him to see. He read its spine.

The 1,000,000 Reasons Why I'd Like To Stick Pansy Parkinson's Head Down a Toilet. By Millicent Bulstrode, Age 7.

Draco snickered. "She did do it eventually, right? Please tell me she did."

Pansy scowled at him, then forced her face into a neutral expression. "Don't you see? There's one by Veda Pierce, and Marcus Flint, and Gregory Goyle--well, that's more of a pamphlet, but still. We've reached a section filled with books imagined by people we know. Draco, what does that mean?"

He ignored her question. This other-self was far more irritated with Pansy than he had actually been at the time, which was saying a great deal, and Draco wondered why this was so. But then he glanced up at the books on the shelves in front of him, and his mouth dropped open.

Draco, My Draco, by Narcissa Malfoy.

He hesitated at that volume, bound in lavender-coloured leather, and almost pulled it from the shelf. No. An instinctive shudder went through him at the thought. It was dangerous to open certain magical books, and he sensed that these were definitely of that sort.

You've Hurt My Sister, So Now You'll Have to Die, by Ronald Weasley, Age 6. Why Doesn't Anyone Notice That I've Got a Personality Of My Own? By George Weasley, Age 8. A Simple Scheme for Getting a Chinese Fireball and Keeping It Under My Bed, by Charlie Weasley, Age 10. He riffled past a tattered-looking little book with white flowers embossed all over its cover. Starweed, the Unicorn Pony of My Dreams. By Ginny Weasley, Age 9. A strange, painful little pang went through him at that one.

"We're never getting out of this section, are we?" Pansy grimaced. "Makes sense that the Weasleys would have their own shelf, though. How many children did they have, anyway? Nine? Ten? What a rabbit warren!"

Draco turned on her, his temper boiling over. "If you don't keep your mouth shut," he snarled, "I'll shut it for you, and you won't like how I'll do it. I'm not telling you again."

Pansy blanched back, and for an instant Draco was almost ashamed of himself. But not really. There was a specific reason why he had been brought to this point of anger and frustration with her. He could almost remember what it was.

"You don't have to talk to me like that," Pansy said. There was something sad and almost vulnerable in her voice. He took a deep breath.

"Sorry," he mumbled ungraciously.

They had reached the present day. The Perilous and Daring Adventures of Me and My Mimbulus Mimbletonia, by Neville Longbottom. Chocolate or Vanilla Pudding; Which Is Better? A Philosophical Treatise by Ernie MacMillan. One Thousand and One Nights in the Hogwarts Library, by Hermione Granger.

"I know why you're acting this way," Pansy said. "Don't think I don't. But I couldn't do what you wanted on the night of your birthday--I really couldn't, Draco. I can't until after this ceremony; I told you. I will then. I swear I will."

"So you say. You've been leading me on for--how long is it now? Two and a half years?"

A Boys' Guide to Wanking Off, by Seamus Finnegan. A Bed-Elf of One's Own, by Blaise Zabini. The Thrilling Tale of How I Boldly Came Out to Everyone I Know--Only Not Quite Yet, by Justin Finch-Fletchley.

She stopped him with a hand on the bare upper part of his chest, where his shirt had been opened when the locket went around his neck. Draco fidgeted at the feel of those hot, bony fingers on his bare skin. Distaste and desire rushed over him by turns.

"How can I prove to you that I mean what I say?" she asked quietly. "How can I get you to trust me?"

He laughed mirthlessly. "You can't." Then he pulled her to him, feeling the familiar dislike of her too-thin, too-small body. But his hands sought her little breasts, hungrily, and contrary to her usual habit she let him rub his thumbs across her nipples. He yanked her up and against a shelf of books, grinding his hips into hers. Draco groaned as the blind animal needs of his body battled with his hatred for Pansy herself, as they always had done. As usual, the astonishing physical sensations won out--and if he closed his eyes, Draco could almost pretend that she was someone else, someone entirely different... But after a few more moments, she pushed him back from her.

"That's enough just now," she said coolly.

Draco swore at her under his breath, not troubling to keep his voice down too much. He would have liked to pull her head back by her long dark shiny hair and snap her neck. But she was right; they couldn't do this now. They had to go on searching.

My Intricate Plan to Murder the Dursleys and Stuff Their Bodies Into a Cesspool Where They'll Never Be Found, by Harry Potter. Author of Dear God, But I'm Lonely In This Cupboard Under the Stairs, and Other Works. He had been running his fingers along the spines of the books, absently, but now he stopped. The Me Nobody Knows. By Draco Malfoy. His hands brushed the silver cover, moved to open it. But Pansy's cry of astonishment snapped him back to himself, just in time.

"Look," Pansy repeated. Her hand was reaching out towards a book lying flat on its own little shelf. It was covered with geometric designs of tiny gemstones, and as they both watched, the pages fell open of their own accord. Letters swam up from its frontispiece. The Book of Dreams.

"We've found it," Draco said, unnecessarily. Then he reached for it. A loud and ostentatious throat-clearing came from behind him. He whirled on Pansy. "How many times do I have to tell you to..." But the words died on his lips, because the sound had not come from her. Slowly, he turned.

A man in an old-fashioned frock coat stood behind him, smiling apologetically, but firmly. His brown goatee and mustache were neatly trimmed, his spectacles were round and gold-rimmed, and a gold chain ran from his waistcoat to a ticking watch in the pocket of his trousers. He looked as if he had stepped out of an illustration from a Victorian novel. "I beg your pardon," he said pleasantly, "but I do feel obliged to inform you that, were I you, I should refrain from laying hands on that book."

"I've found it," snarled Draco. "And I have the right to touch it. Just try and stop me!"

"Well, strictly speaking, I can't forbid you. But it really would be so much easier... and save such a great amount of trouble..." The other man looked around, vaguely. "If you let it alone."

Pansy started to speak. Draco silenced her with a look. "Who the hell are you, anyway?"

The man bowed slightly. "I am Lucien, the Librarian of Lord Morpheus. At your service, sir."

Draco blinked. He was not entirely sure how it happened, but the Librarian had stepped between him and the book. "If you were really at my service, you'd get the bloody fuck out of the way!"

"Tut, tut, Mr. Malfoy. Such language."

"How do you know my name, anyway?"

The little man drew himself up to his full height.

"My dear sir. I am the Librarian of the Lord of Dreams, keeper of every story ever told by any sentient being in the universe, whether written on parchment with a quill pen, entered on a keyboard into an Oracle database on a Sun server, or whispered to the wind on a moonlit night in Antarctica. I know the location of the Holy Grail, the eating habits of the Loch Ness Monster, and the exact content of the chapter Margaret Mitchell burned rather than putting into Gone With the Wind. I know why you drive on a parkway and park on a driveway. I know the secret behind the inexplicable success of the comedian Gallagher. I know-"

"All right, all right," sighed Draco. It was impossible to remain belligerent with the little man, who reminded him altogether too much of the librarian at Malfoy Manor. "If you want to be helpful, just step aside and let me at the Book of Dreams. I've come a long way and I'm very tired." And he was, he realized. There was something about just standing in this place that drained energy from him; with every beat of his heart he could feel it. Pansy, at his side, looked worn and drawn already.

"No-one ever wants to listen to my advice," said the Librarian sadly. The very corners of his mustache seemed to droop. "You're sure you won't simply go back home? I've got Dorothy Gale's original ruby slippers for your use." He held up a pair of glittering red shoes enticingly. "Tap them together three times and say-"

"I'm quite sure," interrupted Draco. He lowered his hand towards the glowing surface of the page. Pansy grabbed him around the waist, and he winced at the feel of her hands. Still, he supposed he really couldn't blame her; left to himself, he would certainly not have taken her along with him into the book. He pressed his palm to the parchment.

The world vanished. He floated in a darkness that was like a cold and inhospitable womb. A steady thumping sound filled the air, irregularly doubled. It was his and Pansy's heartbeats, he realized. The air thickened, not in such a way that he could have seen or felt or smelt it, but he did not know what else to call the change he had perceived. Then a low, harsh voice rang out.

"Behold the lilies of the field, and the bargains they have struck. After the flowers have fallen to earth in the ancient way, then Draco and Leo must meet in the tower of wisdom. And Draco may overcome... in willing sacrifice." There was a brief pause. "He must sail to the land of the crescent after the close of the magnificent age, and find that jewel which time has long hidden in the place that is forbidden. For the power of the Dark Lord must be doubled, and all things must come together in the crucible of time, when the heir claims his own. That which is whole, cannot be divided..." The voice trailed off into silence.

Then a tremendous force grabbed Draco by the back of his neck and hauled him backwards out of the darkness. His arms and legs flailed wildly, struggling to find something, anything, he could grasp hold of. But there was nothing solid; he was pulled through a vacuum of space until finally crashing to the stone floor of the library. He coughed and choked and spluttered for air, then looked up. "What the fuck do you think you're-"

Draco's furious words died on his lips.

The man who loomed over him was tall and cadaverously thin. His black cloak and spiky black hair swirled in a sourceless wind, and the knuckles in his clenched hands stood out in harsh lumps. He opened one hand and held it out, towards Draco. His skin was the glowing white of a full moon, and his palm utterly without lines.

"Give to me the Book of Dreams," he said, in a jagged voice that was the stuff of nightmares. He looked down at Draco. Or at least that seemed to be what he was doing, since the man did not have eyes, not exactly. Only bottomless pits of darkness that contained the wheeling of the stars.

Draco was sure that he thought later of all the things he could have said, or should have done, at that moment. But at the time, there was no thought of refusal in his mind. As he himself had done when faced with Desire in the chapel of Melrose Abbey, his mortal other-self bowed his head to immortality. And he handed the Book of Dreams back to Lord Morpheus of the Endless.

They stayed in frozen tableau for what seemed like a very long time, Dream staring down at Draco with utter loathing on his face. But would one of the Endless even feel loathing? Draco wondered in a confused way. I mean, aren't they supposed to be above human emotions? And what did I ever do to him, anyway? Well, besides sneak into his secret library and try to steal his book.

He caught a glimpse of gleaming dark hair behind a bookshelf, and the flash of a frightened eye peeping out. Pansy. Her first and only thought had been for her own skin, he realized. Now that hurts my feelings, it really does. If the situations had been reversed, I would've... well... run like hell. I suppose the only reason she didn't is that there isn't anywhere to go. But the Lord of Dreams raised his head, and Draco sat back as he felt his knees give way under him.

"I will not ask what you are doing here," the Immortal said scornfully. "I know the arrogance of the being you call Voldemort. Did he believe you could come into my realm to steal my secrets, and leave unscathed?"

Draco opened his mouth to deliver a devastatingly well-thought out argument to that effect.

"Eep," he croaked.

"I need no answer from you. I know it already. The overweening pride of the mortal Malfoys, was that not the true reason?"

It was no such thing, Draco thought indignantly. They understood their proper place as the pre-eminent pureblood wizarding family of Britain, that was all. Why, I'll explain that vital point right now. I'll be respectful about it of course--he is one of the Continuum of the Seven Endless, after all--but nobody talks about my family that way!

"Ack," he said.

Lord Morpheus studied him. "You do not even know why you were sent, do you?" he asked.

If he said yes, thought Draco, then he might be required to explain. And he wasn't at all sure that he could remember enough of the English language to do a proper job of it. Nor was he positive that he knew the whole reason, he realized. There might still be so much that he had not been told. If he said no, however, the Immortal might think he was a thoroughly expendable foot soldier, not even of enough worth to have anything explained to him. This might well lead to his being crushed like an insect. But was that really how they thought of me? he thought, with a sudden chill. Could it have been? He remembered Lord Voldemort's caressing voice. No. Surely not. Of course, the entire question of how to respond was rather rendered moot by the fact that his vocal cords seemed to have disappeared, as well as his entire body having become paralyzed. He did manage to shrug one shoulder slightly.

"You are not quite so bold, young Malfoy," Lord Morpheus said softly, "now that you have been caught."

Draco decided that now would be an extremely good time for Pansy to come out from behind the bookshelf and explain things. He glared daggers back at the bit of her he could see sticking out. She tried to scoot further back, obviously found it impossible, and looked at him appealingly. He raised a hand and pointed at her. Well, what do you know. I wasn't completely paralyzed after all.

"Yes, I know," Lord Morpheus said impatiently. "Pansy Parkinson is trying to hide herself behind one of my bookshelves. Nothing in my realm can be hidden from me. There is no honor among thieves here, I see."

Perhaps it was that utterly insulting word that snapped Draco from his trance of terror, or perhaps his mind calculated that since he hadn't been blasted into smithereens yet, there might still be a chance of putting it off as long as he kept talking. Whatever the case, he found his voice.

"Ah, my--my Lord," he stammered, "Dream-- Lord Morpheus--how may I serve you, my Lord?"

The Immortal glared down at him. "No act on your part could serve me, young Malfoy, with the possible exception of eradicating yourself from the universe."

Well, it was worth a try.

"Whatever it is that I've done--and of course I don't know what I could have done to offend you, my Lord--I'm really, really sorry. I'm sure that Miss Parkinson is as well. We'll make it up to you any way we can, and--"

The skeletal white hand stretched towards his neck. Draco watched it come closer and closer, as if hypnotized. Soon it would touch his bare skin. The touch of the Endless brings insanity and death, each after his own fashion, each according to her particular power. Delirium brings slow dissolution of the mind. Desire calls forth a lust of the flesh that can never be eased. Destiny causes a cursed knowledge of the future to come, which drives men to madness. The least is known about Destruction, but a man once touched by that Immortal carved off his own skin, inch by inch, with a hunting knife... But what did the touch of Dream bring, Draco wondered in a way so terrifed that it seemed utterly calm. He couldn't remember. He would find out soon. The tips of the fingers had no whorls, and the fingernails were like glass, or rock crystal--

"You know, I really think that this has gone quite far enough," said a languid drawl of a voice. The hand paused in its movement. The Immortal turned his head towards it, slowly. His face underwent some sort of change that Draco could not have defined. Except that seeing it made him decide the Dementor's Kiss might not be such a bad thing, after all, if it meant that the memory of the face of Lord Morpheus might be erased.

"You," Dream said in a hiss.

"Nice to see you, too, cousin," the voice said chattily. Draco still couldn't see where it was coming from.

"Why do you believe you have a right to disturb me in my realm, which is sacrosanct?"

"Did you hold a Yule party this year? Any Christmas cookies left?" The footsteps walked towards Draco where he was kneeling on the floor.

"Get out. Now."

"You know the kind I really like? Those Archway ones, the ones shaped like red and green Christmas trees. I think it's just the funniest thing that Muggles buy those and eat them, and they never have a clue that they're pagan symbols of the Feast of Saturnalia. One of my feasts, you know. But of course you do." The voice came even closer. Draco caught a glimpse of a tall male figure, but he could tell no more. He didn't dare to turn his head. "It's been too long since we've seen each other, hasn't it, Dream?" the voice went on. "When was the last time we had a family reunion?"

The face of Lord Morpheus whitened even further with anger. He'd really done a decent job of mimicking human reactions, Draco thought detachedly. "Do not come between me and my prey, this trespasser, this Draco Lukas Malfoy. Or I will send you back to the rock of torture whence you came, where the worm dies not, and the torment of the serpent's venom is eternal."

"Promises, promises. You know you can't. It's the Feast of Yule. Why, it's the very day of the winter solstice. I'm on shore leave." A figure pirouetted into view. "All dressed up and ready to fall in love!" It was a tall, extraordinarily handsome man dressed in artfully ripped jeans and tank top, his blond hair falling over an impishly grinning face. He slouched against the nearest bookshelf, sending several volumes cascading to the floor. "Whoops! Sorry, Lucien," he said in an aside to the Librarian, who had been wringing his hands on the sidelines and now scurried forward and began scooping up the books.

His other-self stared at the man, uncomprehending. But Draco gasped. He knew who this was; he had seen him only the night before.

Loki.

The god made as if to clap him on the shoulder affectionately, but stopped just short of touching Draco's skin.

"What do you think you are doing?" Lord Morpheus asked, tightening his lips.

"Why, isn't it obvious?" Loki moved to stand just behind Draco. "I'm taking this mortal under my protection."

Lord Morpheus turned to face the other for the first time. "How do you dare--" he began.

"Oh, pish. Save it. You can look but you can't touch. And that wouldn't have been a very nice thing to do to him anyway," Loki added idly. "Taking his dreams away."

Oh, thought Draco. So that's what the touch of Lord Morpheus does. Well, it doesn't sound pleasant, but I'm sure I could have learned to adjust.

"I remember the last time you did that," Loki continued. "After about twenty years of it, the mortal was on the back ward of an insane asylum, as I recall, and resembled a walking corpse. Well, it's been real, Dream, but time's a-wastin, so we'll make like a hockey team and get the puck out of here." He gestured to Draco, who made a small cheeping noise but did not move a muscle. Loki smiled pleasantly. "Come on now, Draco. Chop chop." The smile seemed several thousand times less trustworthy than that of a man-eating tiger who scents fresh blood, but Draco looked up at Dream's narrowed eyes and decided that the time had come to choose the lesser of two evils. He mustered all his strength and staggered to his feet.

Loki beckoned to the sliver of Pansy Parkinson visible behind the bookshelf. Hesitantly, she stepped out. Draco gave her a murderous look, but decided that the scalding verbal diatribe she deserved would definitely need to wait until later. Preferably after the rest of his brain had returned to rejoin the reptilian brain stem needed to perform vital functions, which seemed to be all that was left in his skull. The three of them began to walk down the aisle between the bookshelves. Draco wished he could move faster. He couldn't quite remember how to pick up his feet, and they kept shuffling in the most annoying way.

"Now, don't forget," said Loki. "When you get back, be sure to repeat the prophecy exactly as you heard it. Do you remember it?"

Draco wasn't entirely sure if was capable of talking even now, but he opened his mouth anyway. When a mysterious immortal being shows up in the realm of Lord Morpheus and asks you a question, it's probably a good idea to answer him. Even if he is wearing a tank top.

"Behold the lilies of the field, and the bargains they have struck. After the flowers have fallen to earth in the ancient way, then Draco and Leo must meet in the tower of wisdom. And Draco may overcome. In, um... in willing sacrifice. He must sail to the land of the crescent after the close of the magnificent age, and find that jewel which time has long hidden in the place that is forbidden," Draco said in a monotone. "For the power of the Dark Lord must be doubled, and all things must come together in the crucible of time, when the heir claims his own. That which is whole, cannot be divided."

Loki smiled delightedly. "An 'A' in recitation for Mr. Malfoy!" He fluttered his fingers over Draco's chest, and a shower of little gold stars fell and stuck to his shirt front briefly before dissolving. "Repeat the whole shebang to your father when you get back, and everything will turn out fine."

"Really?" Draco said. He wished his voice wouldn't squeak so.

"Oh, yes. Absolutely hunky-dory. Just remember who came to your aid in your hour of need. And if I ask a favor of you in the future... just a teeny-weeny, eentsy-weentsy, little-bitty favor..." Loki's grin widened and lengthened until it looked like nothing ever seen on a human face. Draco thought dazedly that Immortals always seemed to get human resemblance down perfectly until a certain point. But then something always happens that sends it all to hell. Wonder why...

A door suddenly appeared in a blank space of wall between two bookshelves. Draco was quite sure it hadn't been there when he'd come this way before. It was plain and rather weather-beaten in appearance, with a green china knob. "Ah, the Door of Requirement," Loki said carelessly. "Much obliged, Lucien."

"Think nothing of it," said the Librarian. He was still wringing his hands. "I really would advise you to take your leave quickly. I do think that in this case, the customary formalities might be--" He stopped.

Lord Morpheus had not moved. Draco had cast quick little glances over his shoulder the entire time they'd been walking towards the door, and his dark brooding figure had been in the same place all along. Yet he now stood between them and the door.

Pansy was whimpering incoherently, a sound like a cloud of irritating mosquitoes, and her eyes were round with dread. Her terrified face bobbed at the edge of Draco's field of vision like a white balloon. Yet Loki did not look in the least concerned, and was even smiling slightly. "Are you going to be tiresome now, Dream? We do have the right to leave, you know. Even as young Malfoy had the right to be here in the first place, and the Parkinson girl, as well."

"So you do," said Lord Morpheus. "So you do, and so do they. But it is my realm in which you stand, and I also have rights, and powers." He reached into a little bag tied about his waist, and drew out his hand. His palm was filled with some shimmering substance. He lifted it to his lips and blew it into the air. The spangled dust swirled around them; Draco coughed, trying to expel it from his lungs, and dimly heard Pansy doing the same. For the first time, the Lord of Dreams smiled. It was a strangely sweet smile.

"Fare you well, Loki," he said. "Until we meet again."

Loki's face darkened. "Ooh!" he said. "You would have to use the Sands of Forgetfulness, wouldn't you?"

At that precise moment, the door swung open. Pansy stumbled through. Wait--wait--Draco tried to say. But her hot skinny hand had grabbed his, and she pulled him with her. He was still trying to spit all of the sand out of his mouth and nose, but as he did, he felt something else draining out of his mind. Memory. Frantically, he clutched at it, trying to draw it back. Now he wasn't sure where they'd been. A library? Or maybe a museum of some sort? And who had been glaring down at him with such malevolence? Lord-- Thingy? I've got to remember; that's why I was sent, he thought frantically. Surely I can keep hold of something I learned. The prophecy. A willing sacrifice. Yes, I remember that, and I won't forget it! The phrase repeated itself, idiotically, in his head.

Willing sacrifice. Willing sacrifice. Draco may overcome... in willing... in willing...

He landed on his knees in the centre of the ritual circle at the heart of Stonehenge, gasping for air. A ring of hooded faces pressed around him, their excitement sharp. Lord Voldemort held them back with an imperious gesture of his hand. No-one's supposed to speak yet, Draco thought stupidly. They can't, until I do. That's how it works...

They waited, and waited, the blank black faces turned up to his. He stood. He swayed. Lucius Malfoy stepped forward and up onto the dais, steadying him. Lord Voldemort could not do so, he remembered being told earlier. The Dark Lord's touch would take too much energy from him after a ritual of such power.

Don't touch me, for the love of all the gods. If Draco could have spoken, he would have screamed the words. Don't put your hands on me, not now, I can't bear it...they're so cold, like the hands of death, Father. The Dark Lord's hands could be no colder. Oh, Mother, Mother, if only you were here! But Narcissa Malfoy was, of course, not there.

Lucius did not speak, but he threw his hood back, and the demand was written as clearly on his face as if he had said the words. Tell me what you saw, where you were, and what happened to you. Tell me all that you remember! And tell me now.

"Behold the lilies of the field, and the bargains they have struck. After the flowers have fallen to earth in the ancient way, then Draco and Leo must meet in the tower of wisdom. And Draco may overcome." He was surprised to find himself able to speak, after all.

His father's eyes glittered with temper. Once again, Draco could nearly hear what he was thinking. We knew that part already, you fool! What is the rest of the prophecy?

"Draco may overcome," he repeated, stalling for time. "In... in... willing sacrifice." Silence. Eager, impatient waiting. Draco cudgeled his brain desperately. It felt as empty as an overturned cup. "I don't remember anything more," he finally said.

The ritual silence was broken. A horrified murmur rippled through the circle of Death Eaters. Then he felt himself falling forward, into his father's arms, falling into darkness, and into the stiffening disapproval he could already feel in his father's entire body. I did the best I could, he tried to say. But he already knew that to Lucius Malfoy, it would make no difference.

He was being lifted and carried away, up a long spiral path, back up to the house. Very dimly, he felt himself laid on a soft bed in a room with a flickering fireplace. Most of the fuzzy black-clad figures filed out, but his father remained. As his consciousness faded, Draco heard the high, cold voice of Lord Voldemort. "No, you will not see me again until Yule has fully ended, after the sixth of January. My powers have been taxed by this ritual, and I must restore them, as best I can. No, do not blame the boy, Lucius. He has tried to serve me faithfully. I believe that he did indeed read the remainder of the prophecy. But his memory has been erased, and the girl's, as well; I see the signs of it."

"But my Lord!" Lucius exclaimed. "After all the preparation for this night, the time, the trouble-- we have learned nothing! Memory charms can be broken; it has been done before. Couldn't we--"

"No. What they learned in the Library cannot be retrieved. This is a spell woven by immortals, and mortals have no defense against it. And Lord Morpheus did not succeed in blocking Draco's memory entirely," said Lord Voldemort. "'In willing sacrifice.' That, we did not know before."

Draco's vision was darkening rapidly, but he could see how livid his father's face was becoming. "Oh, very useful. One phrase. It could mean anything. And we might have learned so much, so much... Why did this happen? Why did the Lord of Dreams take the knowledge away?"

Lord Voldemort hesitated before answering. As he slipped into a comatose state, Draco had the strangest feeling that the Dark Lord was not telling the truth to his father, or at least not all of it. "Well, the Endless are subtle, and quick to anger... as I should have remembered," the Dark Lord said. "We will need to fall back on other options now, as we feared we might have to do all along. We must use the Weasley girl again. She is also a part of this..."

Draco heard the sound of the door creaking open, very far away it seemed. Footsteps approached. Another presence came close to him and bent over him, one that brought a scent of roses. Cool, smooth hands touched his forehead. He knew them. He had felt them on him during every illness of his childhood. At last, he relaxed and let go his last faint hold on the world around him. Mother. You came. I knew you would.

And his other-self simply winked out, like an untended witchlight allowed to burn down.

I wonder if I died then, in this other reality, or alternate world, or whatever it is, thought Draco. I might have done. It feels like I went too far to come back, past the point of recovery. And so I have. Whatever happened to this other-self, I can't come back to the ship. I've gone too far. He was very dimly aware of his own body slumped against the little bed where Ginny lay in the cabin of the Good Queen Bess. But the silver thread that tied him to it was fraying badly. Vaguely, Draco could feel something pulling at him. Must be Snape. But it's not enough. I'm never going to make it to Istanbul; they'll bury me at sea, I suppose. This seems a rather pointless exercise; I can't tell anyone what happened in this vision, more's the pity. But wait- if Snape really saw what I saw and heard what I heard, then he knows almost all of it. Maybe that's all they really wanted anyway. If this entire thing was planned, and my father knew I couldn't come back from this journey... but I still can't believe that Snape would do me that way. Ah well. Such a shame that I never got to shag Ginny Weasley even once...

Lord Voldemort had said something about her. That sentence was the last thing he'd heard. We must use the Weasley girl again. She is also a part of this. What had that meant? If I don't live through this, I'll never know. The thought pierced his torpor, a little. It was just the faintest bit of curiousity, but he latched onto it, and passively he let it pull him along. Sluggishly, more scraps of memory washed past him.

The other-Draco hadn't died on the day of the winter solstice one year before. But he had spent days in bed afterwards, ministered to by healer-elves, slipping in and out of consciousness. He certainly didn't leave Malfoy Manor for the rest of the holidays. There was no trip to the Pyrenees--Draco gained the vague impression that they did sometimes go to see their French cousins, the Rosiers or the Tessiers, but this year an excuse was sent. He was tired and felt ill and weak even after he was allowed out of bed, and spent a great deal of time lying down in his room for the last few days of the Christmas hols, sipping constantly at Appearance tonics so that nobody would able to tell how ill he'd been once he returned to Hogwarts. His father told him that it was natural enough, that a ritual of such power had tested him almost beyond his capacity. "Especially," Lucius Malfoy had said, with the faintest of curls to his lip, "as it cannot be said to have succeeded." No word of blame had been spoken. Not precisely, anyway. But Draco had felt the hot blood of shame rush to his cheeks at that pronouncement. While sitting in the window seat of his room and staring out at the withered rose gardens, he had vowed that he would grow stronger, and that in the future, he would cease to fail. But wait--wait.

If he had never gone to France, Draco realized, then he had never met Marie-France Tessier. He had never returned to meet her at her villa in St. Tropez after Yule. He had never felt that desperate hunger for her, the one that consumed him even as he struggled to satisfy it. He had never known her at all. An ache of loss stung all through him, through this shade of Draco Malfoy that fell through the vision of his other self. And as if that painful emotion gave the incorporeal self weight, he felt his mind snag, briefly, on just one more memory.

He was walking through the portrait gallery and talking to Lucius Malfoy on a bright afternoon, the rays of the sinking sun spilling through the leaded windows. Draco got the impression that it was the day before he returned to Hogwarts for the start of the spring term, which would have made it the fifth of January, although he couldn't be sure. It was the first time since the ritual that he'd been out of bed for the entire day. His head ached and he longed to go back to his room and play chess peacefully until dinner, but he knew that he needed to pay attention to what his father was saying. It had something to do with a task he'd been set, one that only he could perform. A duty he must fulfill at Hogwarts. The two of them seemed to be in the middle of a conversation that had already begun.

"We must learn more than we now know," Lucius Malfoy said.

"But it's Potter who's the Leo," Draco said pointedly. "At least we know that much." That fact was one of the few pieces of ammunition he had, since he had been the one who figured it out, and Lord Voldemort had told him so. Yet he regretted his words as soon as his father turned those cold grey eyes on him.

"I don't doubt that I would feel more sanguine about our current state of knowledge," said Lucius silkily, "if you had succeeded in retrieving the full prophecy."

"Well, I couldn't." Draco rubbed his head, which ached very badly.

"Imagine," Lucius said. "We might know when we need Potter, and how. Perhaps the prophecy contained information about his weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Or maybe it revealed a plan to bring him to the catacombs without tipping our hand too early. It could have told us something about the precise location of Sirius Black, which certainly is a piece of information I'd very much like to know. The house-elf, Kreacher, revealed to me that the Animagus Black has been hiding at Twelve Grimmauld Place--did you know he was here? Yes, he came to see your mother, the one surviving member of that family who hasn't turned traitor, and luckily I happened to be in the room, and heard the information he had to impart. Narcissa can be so careless about passing on that sort of thing." His voice slid knifelike across Draco's ears.

Draco thought how very unlikely it was that the prophecy had covered any such information, but something else struck him. "Wait, wait. You said Sirius Black was an Animagus?"

"Yes--one of four who was at Hogwarts at the time."

"He was the black dog, the one I saw at the train station in September!" exclaimed Draco. "And the same one I saw back in July, in London.Wasn't he?"

"Very good," said Lucius, and at that slight sign of approval Draco felt almost pathetically happy. The emotion turned to self- disgust rather swiftly.

I've been ill, that's all--I'm getting soppy over everything.

"At any rate, we are continuing our efforts to lure Potter out of Hogwarts and to the Department of Mysteries in order to obtain the first prophecy. Our aim is twofold--first, to learn its exact wording--"

"And then to get at Potter, so that we can bring him here. Isn't that the other part?"

Lucius blinked, and Draco was meanly glad to have caught his father off guard a little. Ha! Bet you weren't expecting that. "Yes, it is," he said. "But it will take several months to arrange, and a great deal of subtlety. We must not let anyone in the Order of the Phoenix suspect our true plans; if it comes down to it, we must keep up the pretense that Lord Voldemort's goal is simply to kill Potter. That's the gist of the first prophecy anyway, that neither of them can live while the other survives. But nothing could be further from the truth of what we want to accomplish just now. We need Potter alive. Do you appreciate the problem?"

"Of course I do." Draco massaged his throbbing temples, hoping to clear his mind a bit. He must keep his wits razor-sharp, must remain constantly on the alert. He could not afford failure. The prophecy rested in him, was inextricably tied up with him, although his father seemed none too pleased to admit that fact. He was its keystone, and it could enable him to come into power such as he had never imagined. There could be no weakness in him anymore. "Father, I'm afraid I don't quite understand," he said stiffly.

Lucius Malfoy sighed. "Well, it would all be so much clearer--as well as far easier to accomplish-- if you could have accessed that prophecy."

"But I could," said Draco, an edge entering his voice no matter how hard he tried to keep it even and steady. "I read it, or heard it, whichever it really was. I just can't remember anything beyond the first part."

"Which we already knew anyway," Lucius said dryly. "Very helpful, Draco."

They walked in silence for a few moments. Draco fought down the familiar tightening feeling in his stomach, as if he were standing on the edge of a precipice and looking down. How does he do it? It never takes him more than a few minutes to tear me into shreds, and I feel as if I can never gather myself together again.

"If we'd known beforehand that so little information could be learned," Lucius continued. "then we might have spent the summer and autumn in more useful pursuits than obtaining the locket, and preparing for the ceremony. I'm sure someone in the Order must be wondering why we haven't made any overt moves yet."

"Yes, well, that's why you've also been trying to find the first prophecy, isn't it?" retorted Draco. "They're bound to think that all of our energy is being taken up with that. Or at least that's what Lord Voldemort told me." He had played his trump card. The Dark Lord had spoken to him, confided in him. Valued him.

"Why don't we return to the point, Draco," Lucius said through his teeth, "since you were so anxious to know it? The real problem is that if we obtain Potter by kidnapping him after we've lured him out to the Deparment of Mysteries, he'll be very unwilling."

"To say the least," agreed Draco. "And one thing we do know now--thanks to me- is that he has to be a willing sacrifice. Good luck with that one, Father."

Lucius Malfoy tightened his jaw minutely. Draco could see the muscles hardening in his father's face. "Just so. We need some sort of hold over him, some way of compelling him not only to behave but even to feel as we wish."

Draco pursed his lips. "The solution seems pretty obvious. To me, anyway. Kidnap one of his friends first. In true idiotic Gryffindor fashion, Potter will then sacrifice himself for whoever the hell it is."

"You do catch on quickly," Lucius admitted. "But it leaves us with the same problem. Kidnapping a student from Hogwarts is by no means a simple task, and I don't want to let any time slip by before we begin working on it."

"So what do you want me to do about it?"

"You can't guess? There are still a few things in this world that you do not know, Draco." A faint, sardonic smile had touched the older man's lips then. "I want you to begin to ingratiate yourself with one of the Griffyndors. Exercise your charm--I know it can be considerable. Lay the groundwork. Start to build some sort of relationship."

"What?" exclaimed Draco. "How on earth am I supposed to do that? Do you have any idea how much that entire house hates me?"

Lucius sighed. "You were sorted into Slytherin as all the Blacks have been for the past nine hundred and sixty-seven years, were you not?"

Draco set his teeth and nodded silently. He felt himself losing ground.

"Then use your skills. Be cunning and wise, as a serpent is. You understand the art of subtlety."

"But with a Gryffindor?" Draco grimaced. "And if it's someone in Potter's inner circle--as it would have to be-- that makes it even worse. They'd all hex me into a ferret before they'd speak civilly to me."

"Have you really managed to antagonize everyone Potter knows?"

Draco remembered stealing Neville Longbottom's Remembrall during their first flying lesson, and laughing at the woebegone, round-faced boy. He thought of the first words he had ever actually spoken to Hermione Granger. Filthy little mudblood. He recalled meeting Ronald Weasley on the Hogwarts train just before first year. No need to ask who you are. My father told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford. "More or less," he said.

Lucius cleared his throat. "What about the Weasley girl?" he asked, just a shade too casually. "The youngest child... Jenny? Janet?"

"Ginny." Draco was aware that his father knew perfectly well what Ginny Weasley's name was. But he didn't know that Draco himself knew why she was important, and how she had been used before. At least, he didn't think his father knew those things. With Lucius Malfoy, one could never be sure.

"Yes, Ginny," Lucius repeated. "Ginny Weasley would be ideal."

"Wait a moment." They had reached the end of the gallery, and Draco whirled on his father. "I distinctly remember Lord Voldemort saying something about Ginny Weasley after I was taken up to my bedroom. Let me think a second. I can almost think of what it was. Yes! He said ... he said that we would need to use the Weasley girl again. That she is also a part of this." He stopped against a high, leaded window that let in pale winter sunlight. "You knew all along that Ginny Weasley was the one we'd want to use, the one I'll need to cozy up to this spring. But you didn't want to let me know that you knew. Well, it's too late for that!" Draco burst out. "How long have you known? When were you going to tell me, if ever? Why can't you ever just tell me what you're planning? Lord Voldemort trusts me! Why can't you?"

"Sit down, Draco," said Lucius. "You'll fall if you don't. You'll still not well."

And he wasn't, Draco realized. He was shaking like a leaf and swaying against the wall. He let his father guide him to the window seat, and allowed Lucius Malfoy's lean strong hands to support him.

"I didn't want you used for this ceremony," his father said softly.

"Because you didn't trust me?" Draco whispered. "Or you didn't think I was worthy?"

"No, that's not it at all." Lucius looked at his son intently. "I didn't want you to go into the Dreamtime because it was hideously dangerous."

They sat in silence for quite a long time, as Draco turned his father's words over and over.

"It was dangerous. More so than anybody knew, and not only in a general, impersonal sort of way. No, this felt very personal indeed.... He hated me," Draco said thoughtfully at last. "Lord Morpheus, I mean. And I don't think it was just because I came to read the prophecy. I think he had a grudge against me before I ever got there. Why was that, Father?"

"I don't know. There are too many things that no mortal can ever hope to know about the motivations of the Endless." Lucius drummed his fingers on the windowseat. "Draco, do you think you can accomplish this thing? Can you start to win Ginny Weasley's trust?"

"It won't be easy," Draco admitted. "Our paths hardly ever cross, to begin with."

"Well...what about at Quidditch practices? You said you'd been going to the Gryffindor ones anyway. Couldn't you single her out after the practice is over?"

"The Weasley girl's not on the Gryffindor team. But she flies on her own sometimes, early in the mornings. Not as regularly as she would if she were a player, but I've seen her at it."

"Is she any good?"

"Very. "

"If a change in the lineup of the team became necessary," said Lucius, smiling slightly, "do you think she'd have a chance?"

"Of course she would. I think she'd be Seeker already, if it weren't for everybody always licking Potter's--" Draco stopped himself. "Boots," he finished, a bit lamely.

"Then perhaps something could be arranged," said Lucius softly. "After the holidays. I'll speak to Umbridge about it, and since you'll undoubtedly have your part to play, Draco, I'll pass the information on to you. Then, seize your opportunity. Offer her strategy tips, be friendly, at first--I don't have to tell you how to do this sort of thing, I'm sure. Get her alone a few times. Get her to trust you. The rest of us will work out a plan to take her off the school grounds."

"There's an old escape tunnel beneath the floor of the broom shed on the Quidditch pitch--it was built back in the sixteenth century when the locals were storming Hogwarts every now and then, I think," said Draco, remembering. "It goes directly to Hogsmeade."

"Good! Very good. That's exactly the sort of thing that would work. Perhaps you could lure her there and then arrange to be found by Pansy Parkinson; between the two of you, I'm sure you could get her to the village quietly."

Draco grimaced.

"What is it?"

"I wish it were anybody but Pansy Parkinson," he admitted.

"I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about that," said Lucius. "Draco, there are certain things we have been able to learn about the nature of the second prophecy, even without knowing its exact wording. One of them is that Pansy has an important part in it, although we do not yet know what it is." He hesitated. "As does Ginny Weasley."

Draco nodded in confirmation. Ever since he had heard Lord Voldemort say that she, too, was a part of this, he had known that Ginny Weasley must be tied up with the prophecy in some mysterious way. Still, it meant more than he would have liked to admit that his father was actually willing to tell him.

"We should go down now," said Lucius. He looked at his son long and measuringly, and a trace of worry showed in his face. "I know it's cold and drafty here--I don't want you to be ill. But I also didn't want us to be overheard."

Draco nodded. The expression on his father's face caught at his heart and snagged on something there. He's done it again--the least word, the slightest look, and I--I want only to please him.

Lucius stood and extended his hand to his son. Draco took it, rising to his feet. But his hands are still cold. My father's touch is every bit as cold as I thought it would be, down in the chamber of Stonehenge.

Cold... so cold... He shivered uncontrollably. But the hand on his shoulder now was warm, a solid living presence. It was pulling him back to the cold. That was it. Back to the icy, dimly lit little cabin of the Good Queen Bess, where he stood over the narrow bed where Ginny Weasley lay. He had returned to his own body. The connection with his other-self was ended.

"What... happened, what just happened?" moaned Draco, shaking violently from head to foot. "Something..." wonderful? "No, that wasn't it, something..." terrible? "I don't know, I don't know. Oh gods..." He could feel himself losing equilibrium, pitching forward, unable to stop himself from falling. The strong warm hands caught him, going around his arms, sliding up his back until he was half-lying across a chair.

"Can you sit up? Are you all right?" Snape asked urgently, supporting Draco at his waist. "I didn't think you were coming back. I didn't realize you'd go in so deeply that I wouldn't be able to draw you out again, but I almost couldn't--"

"I almost didn't come back." Draco let out a long, shuddering sigh. He felt weak--no, more than weak, he felt transparent, as if every bit of strength and will and thought had been drained out of him.

"I should not have allowed you to do this, Draco. You've been taxed beyond your powers. I should never have asked this of you."

His entire body felt as if it had been filled with ice, but warmth pierced the centre of him at the other man's words. Of course Snape wasn't going to betray me. I was a fool to think he would. I can trust him... yes... I really think I can do... Draco forced his eyes open. This was no time to lie around and snivel. He had to be strong. But his flesh was stronger than his spirit, which had been tested almost beyond its capacities, and he sagged against Snape, unable to sit upright, or to make a sound above a whimper.

And then the moment came, and even as it came, Draco already knew that neither he nor Snape would ever refer to it again.

His own father had never held him in this way, not once. Lucius Malfoy would have considered it an encouragement of weakness. Draco had quickly learned not to go to his father with the scrapes and bruises and piercing inward hurts of early childhood. His father would never have enclosed him in the circle of his arms, promising, if only for a moment, the illusory power of adults to children. Shh. Let me hold you. I'll make it all better. But for the briefest moment, Snape did. He let Draco's head fall onto his chest, and he gathered Draco's weakness to himself. He ran a hand through the boy's silvery hair, and his deep, rich voice said something that Draco could not quite catch. And, for a moment that seemed to evaporate even as the two of them experienced it, he embraced Draco like a son.

Ginny glanced through a gap in the black material surrounding her at the blond boy, locked in the circle of the older man's arms. Draco's eyes were tightly closed, his dark lashes brushing the fragile skin. A single tear trickled down his cheek. She knew that she had but one chance.

She held her breath and slipped out from between the robes, knowing that if the door of the room had closed, she was lost. But it was ajar. She wriggled out into the corridor, noiselessly. Once she had passed two more doors on her hands and knees, she scrambled to her feet and began running, heart pounding. Her mind was full of what she had just seen through Draco Malfoy's memories. But already, her thoughts were despairing ones. It might make all the difference in the world if I could only tell them what I learned, Professor Moody, and Hermione, and Ron, and Neville... and Harry. But I can't. They're on the other ship, and there might as well be a whole world between them and me.

Draco wrapped the woven plaid more tightly around himself, like a blanket. Propped up against the wall in his chair,.he sipped at the hot tea that Snape had brought from the other room. It had restoratives in it, the other man had explained. And he did feel strangely restored, in a way; he had been so exhausted, and now he was wide awake, as if he'd never sleep again.

"How are you feeling?" asked Snape.

Draco rolled the thought over and over in his mind. "Stranger than I've ever felt, I think," he finally said. "I don't understand anything that happened."

Snape smiled faintly. "It is a common side effect of this sort of Legillimency."

"But it can't be-- I mean, it's more than that, it's got to be!" he blurted. Draco sat forward, an expression akin to fear on his face. "What happened-- what I saw. What I remembered--"

Snape held out his hand in a calming motion. "I know, Draco. I saw everything that you saw. You brought me with you, as a witness."

"Really? You saw it? All of it?" Draco sank his head into his hands, feeling curiously naked.

"Yes," Snape said softly. "And I, in turn, will tell Lucius Malfoy no more than he needs to know. I promised that I would not. The interchange between yourself and Miss Parkinson, for example... I see no need to pass that on."

Draco rubbed a hand through his hair until it stood up in spikes. "Did--did you learn what you needed to learn from me?"

"I did. More, in fact, that I had believed it would be possible to do. You did well, Draco. I knew you would." Snape poured Draco more tea, and the boy sipped at it, feeling the heat spread through his cold limbs. They felt like stone.

"Snape," he said suddenly.

"Yes?"

"I don't understand what I just saw at all. But you do, don't you?"

Snape hesitated for only an instant before replying. "Well--to a certain extent. I have spent the past year preparing for this vision of yours."

"You have to tell me what you know about it--what you guess, what you suspect. I--I suppose you couldn't tell me before," said Draco. "But if I'm going to be of any use to you--and to the others-- I have to know now."

"Yes, the time's come for you to know. Ask, and I will answer."

Draco thought. There were so many questions chasing each other around in his head that he almost despaired of being able to put them into words, but one in particular did stand out.

"Where was I, Snape? I think I know when it was. Last year's Christmas hols. And I know that we were at Stonehenge. But how is any of that possible when I know very well that Malfoy Manor is in Kent, and that I certainly didn't take part in any ritual at last year's winter solstice?"

Snape leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers together. "Are you familiar with the concept of the alternate universe?"

"A bit. We studied them in Irrational Geometry class. But they're supposed to be very short-lived dimensions that are created through wormholes, and Professor Vector said that they definitely can't be accessed, even by wizards. Are you saying that's what I saw, though?"

"I am. I first became aware of the existence of this universe, Draco, while experimenting with temporal Pensieves last spring. We had hopes that it might be possible to resurrect the Dark Lord in this way. Ultimately, it was not, but I did find the most curious aberrations in the time-space continuum. By the summer, I was able to reconstruct scraps of memory that seemed to come from my own experiences of the past year." Snape leaned forward. "But they were not memories of the events as they had actually occurred. That was when I began to realize that I had discovered the existence of an alternate universe, one very close to our own, but decidedly not our own. And it seemed to be a stable one."

Draco's brow furrowed. "When you asked me if I'd ever heard of the Order of the Phoenix--when we were leaving Ginny Weasley's cabin for the first time, I mean--it had something to do with this, didn't it?"

"You are very suggestible, Draco, as I have already told you. I needed to make sure that you had not picked up information about this alternate universe previously, and that foreknowledge would not taint your responses. Your mind needed to be clear. The existence of this Order seems to be of primary importance in this reality, so--" Snape shrugged. "If you had overheard anything about our plans, that name would most likely have been the one to stick in your memory."

"I didn't, though," muttered Draco. "Snape, you--you knew this would happen, didn't you, this vision? Or hoped it would?"

Snape nodded.

"But why? What did it mean? How can it help us?"

Snape paused, and poured more steaming tea from the little pot. He settled back into his chair, looking at Draco over the thick glazed earthenware lip of the cup. "The two of us now know more about the matter that anyone else on earth, because we have seen what happened in that universe. But you know more than I, since I only saw what you saw, and heard what you heard. I was not privy to your thoughts, or your emotions."

"I couldn't get at the emotions of my other-self very well, either."

"Still, nobody is now more qualified to answer that question than you yourself. So tell me, Draco. What do you think?"

"The gods only know. But --let's start at the beginning." Draco tried to put his thoughts in order as best as he could. There was another self--another me, very close to what I am but not quite the same, taking part in a ritual at the solstice of Midwinter at Malfoy Manor. But the manor wasn't in Kent, but Wiltshire--at Stonehenge. And the events were all different."

"You said that self, that reality, were close but not quite the same. What was different?"

"Well, I didn't see any evidence that almost anything had been different in my past," said Draco. "That's the really strange thing. I could access a lot of the other-self's memories, and he was me. It was as if everything in my life... or almost everything... was the same right up until a certain point."

"Where was the point of divergence?" Snape asked.

Draco struggled to remember, but he was grasping at second-hand recollections through the mind of his other self, and his connection with that mind was broken now. It was very difficult. "I can't be sure, exactly. But I think--yes! I think it was after the Triwizard Tournament in my fourth year. That must have been it. Because Lord Voldemort was resurrected in that world, brought back to power. The ride on the Hogwarts train back to King's Cross, at the end of my fourth year--that was the very last thing that was the same."

"That train has curious powers. But we won't worry about it right now; it's not significant. You said that almost everything before the end of term your fourth year was the same; what was not?"

"The only things that were different before that were--" Draco's brow creased in a puzzled frown. "You know, they all centered around my mother."

"How so?"

"Malfoy Manor was in Wiltshire instead of Kent, as I said. But I remember why, now. As I was walking through the interior tunnel to the room of sacrifice, I was thinking that the reason was that the manor was my mother's dowry when she married my father. And she had English lands because she was a Black, not a von Drachen. But absolutely everything else was the same. Why?"

Snape shook his head. "I don't know. It doesn't matter much now; let's move on to what does."

"The ceremony," Draco murmured. "And how it went wrong. I was sent into the Dreamtime to get the prophecy, but when I came back, I didn't remember it... all but one little piece. But I do know it now. And I remember the face of Lord Morpheus when he was reaching out his hand to me..." Draco shivered. "What does it all mean?" he repeated.

The older man leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers together. "What do you think it means?"

"That again?" Draco smiled, very faintly. "Don't think I don't recognize that technique. Ziggy used it on me loads of times in the von Drachen library."

"So you don't care for it, then? Think of it like this," said Snape. "You have an ability to make intuitive leaps, Draco, that surpasses the capacity of any student I have ever known. Use it now."

Draco took a deep breath, leaning his chair back against the wall. He did not close his eyes. He had passed into a state of exhaustion so extreme that he actually didn't feel tired at all, not in any normal sense of the word. But everything seemed sharp and clear, his every perception heightened, his nerves humming so fast and hard that they were almost painful. He began talking as his mind worked.

"I don't know what happened with the first prophecy, the one at the Deparment of Mysteries. But the second prophecy said... after the flowers have fallen to earth in the ancient way, then Draco and Leo must meet in the tower of wisdom. And Draco may overcome. In, um... in willing sacrifice. Let's see... the falling flowers probably meant the time of year. The winter solstice. Draco and Leo meeting in the tower... I would guess that it means there's a final battle, and it isn't between Potter and Lord Voldemort. It's between Potter and me."

"It seems the best explanation," Snape agreed.

"But he has to be willing," Draco continued. "That's why my father thought... oh, wait... In that reality, Pansy Parkinson came along with me into the Library of Lord Morpheus. Merlin knows, I didn't want her there. But she could come, which nobody else was able to do... and she heard the prophecy as well. And in our world, she was the one who retrieved the Book of Dreams, wasn't she? Like me, she could touch it. Snape, what happened to her? I know she was with the Death Eaters, but she isn't here now... where did she go?"

Snape shook his head. "We don't know. She disappeared, and we could not stay to search for her."

"So she's wandering around Scotland?" Draco scowled. "Makes me feel sorry for the entire sixteenth century. But I don't see how it can matter, except that I realized something important because of her--the fact that she played a part in both realities, I mean." His voice lightened. "Snape, I think I'm beginning to understand. Is there some sort of link between that world and ours?"

"That is exactly what I concluded."

Snape almost never expressed his approval warmly or in any overt way, Draco thought. But that fact only made it so much more precious when it came. "All right then," he said. "The next part of the prophecy. He must sail to the land of the crescent after the close of the magnificent age, and find that jewel which time has long hidden in the place that is forbidden. For the power of the Dark Lord must be doubled, and all things must come together in the crucible of time, when the heir claims his own. And that's what we're doing! "

Snape nodded with satisfaction. "The official religion of the Ottoman Empire was Islam, so it was--is-- the land of the crescent. We will arrive at the close of the reign of Sultan Suleiman, whom history has remembered as the Magnificent. And the very name of the Jewel of the Harem proves that it is the one mentioned in the prophecy. Haram, in the Arabic tongue that was frequently used in Istanbul, means both hidden, and forbidden."

"All things coming together in the crucible of time--that has to refer to the way we've gone back to the sixteenth century to cause all of this to happen," Draco said. "And the heir claims his own, well, that's got to mean Lord Voldemort, since he's the Heir of Slytherin. But--" He faltered as a thought hit him. "There's just one thing wrong."

"What is it?"

"In that other reality, they never knew what we know now, my father and the Death Eaters and Lord Voldemort. They didn't have the information to do what they should have done." He looked up at Snape. "So what was the end, in that universe?"

"I do not know." Snape gazed intently at Draco. "But I hope that while we are on this ship, you will be able to find out."

"You want me to go back into the vision?" Draco asked a little weakly. A wave of exhaustion washed over him.

"Not now. It has taken too much strength from you. But later, you must do so-- if you think you can."

"I know I can. I'll find the strength," Draco murmured. "Only I'm afraid that I already know what happened. They knew part of the prophecy, but they didn't know the rest. They didn't know that they couldn't succeed."

"But we must know," said Snape.

"Why?" Draco asked, his eyes narrowing. He thought he knew, although the only logical answer to his question almost seemed too impossible to believe. But in a way, his question was a test. If Snape lied to him, or put him off--well, he didn't know what he would do then. The thought made him a little sick. There is no-one else I can trust. Sweet Merlin, don't let him lie to me.

"The time has come," said Snape, as if agreeing with something that had been said, "for a full explanation."

"I'm listening." Draco's voice was still truculent, but hope was starting to stir in him. He did not quite trust the feeling yet.

Snape pushed back his chair and sat straight up, his eyes boring into Draco's. "We are attempting to bring our world into that one, the alternate reality that you saw, and that I have also seen. In that way, we would be able to draw on the power of the two Dark Lords, Voldemort and Grindelwald--and believe me, Draco, there is no other way to defeat our enemies. For the past year, all of my will and strength and cunning have been poured into this plan."

Draco leaned back in the bed. Relief flooded through him. "You told me the truth," he said in a small voice.

"I said that I would." Snape studied Draco's face. "But you already knew that that was the answer, didn't you? How did you know?"

"Because it was the only way that all of the prophecy could be fulfilled. It was simple logic, really. 'The power of the Dark Lord will be doubled, once we resurrect Grindelwald,' remember? But that couldn't happen unless we could somehow get both Dark Lords in the same place. Well, I've read about the theory of time travel; Vector covered that in Arithmancy class. I was a bit curious, and read Richard Feynman, as well... a Muggle physicist... I know that we can't simply return to the future--our own future, that is. That's the paradox of time travel, and that's why nobody's ever managed to do it successfully before. I can't imagine accomplishing it unless we could somehow break out of the time loop altogether--into an alternate universe entirely." Draco paused to catch his breath, and attempted to collect his racing thoughts. "But--Snape, do you think there's the slightest chance that we could really do it? I've never heard of any other wizard who was even able to see into an alternate universe."

"I really don't know," said Snape. "But I do believe there has to be a reason why the alternate universe seems to be so stable in the first place. Its memories have been there, waiting to be accessed, for nearly a year."

"Why do you think that is?"

The other man paused for a long time before answering. "The Dreamtime is a place where mortals are not permitted to go. Yet you went, Draco--both in the Forbidden Forest, and at Stonehenge. The Endless are beings that mortals may not touch-- not their immortal selves, nor their thoughts, nor their possessions. Yet you now possess the Book of Dreams, that book whose rightful owner is Lord Morpheus of the Endless. And you touched it in that other reality, as well, and opened it, and read from it. Even as the subject of the prophecy in question, you should not have been able to do that."

"I had that locket, though. It must have been what allowed me into the Dreamtime- or at least that's what I thought--" Draco gasped. He rose swiftly from the chair, but a wave of tremendous dizziness forced him to collapse back into it again, and Snape was at his side in an instant.

"You really mustn't try to get up just yet, Draco," he said firmly, and the boy closed his eyes, unable to even summon up the strength to argue.

"Look around Ginny's neck," he said faintly. He heard Snape's footsteps moving towards the bed, and then the intake of breath.

"She is wearing the locket," Snape murmured. "The same locket. Draco, where did she obtain it?"

"No idea. I didn't notice that she had it until we'd almost reached Leith. I was--well, I was trying to get information out of her, and then I saw the locket, and thought it was some method of communication between Ginny Weasley and her brother. I tried to force her to admit it--" Draco squirmed uncomfortably at the memory. "I thought I'd have to hurt her to find out what I needed, that she wouldn't tell me any other way," he continued, speaking in a low, rapid voice. "I knew how. I've learned how. But I--I didn't want to do it. Maybe that's weakness. I don't know. I simply didn't want to do it. And then I found that I couldn't, anyway, because of the Hexensymbol bond. But I never did learn more about that locket. What is it, Snape? Do you know?"

Snape nodded. "I have studied the nature of magical objects for many years, Draco. I believe that it must be one of the Lockets of the Lady of the Wood, the fairy-queen Rhiannon. What I cannot understand is why both Ginny Weasley and you can touch it. It is a thing that is not for human hands to touch. That's why your father obtained it through the goblins; they know certain secrets of temporary protection from its effects."

Draco stared at Snape intently, but his questions died on his lips. It was useless to ask them. The other man had just finished saying that he didn't know why both he and Ginny were able to wear the locket, so he certainly didn't know why it had played a role in both realities. "I still don't understand. But I suppose we neither one of us do." Draco sighed. "I did forget about something else, though. Something from before. What do you think the very first part of the second prophecy meant, the part about the lilies of the field, and the bargain they made?"

Snape spoke again, a little hurriedly, and Draco had the distinct impression that the older man was trying to avoid his questions. "We mortals are imprisoned on a ship that sails the river of time, that river which flows one way only and has no turning. Yet in your earlier vision, Draco--the one in the Forbidden Forest- you saw a version of what happened to Ginny Weasley one year ago that did not exist until you witnessed it. You have just seen a version of the events of one year ago, at Stonehenge, that could scarcely have been more different from what actually happened. What was the common thread between them both?"

Draco's mind was caught on the question, and he forgot, for the moment, about the mystery of the lilies and their bargain. "Well, they both happened around the same time, and they both involved visions. And they both took place in the Dreamtime--the realm of the gods. And--oh, I think I know! Both times, Immortals were involved. I saw Lord Morpheus in the Forbidden Forest as well, and he seemed to hate me just as much. I don't know if the Dark Lords are exactly Immortals--well, I suppose they must be. But Lord Voldemort was in one and Lord Grindelwald in the other, and they really are the same. That's one of the things I learned. And Loki--Loki was in the Library of Lord Morpheus, and do you know--I think I actually saw him when I was falling from the Dreamtime and back into the real world, on the other side of the stream. I certainly saw him only a few days afterwards." He looked up. "But why me? Why am I the one who sees all these things?"

Snape spoke slowly when he spoke again, and seemed to be choosing his words with great care.

"At some point, Draco, I believe that a door was opened between the world of men, and the world of gods. I don't yet know when or how it happened. Perhaps when you called on the power of the oldest magic, and created the Hexensymbol that bonded you to Ginny Weasley. Perhaps at some other time. But no matter how such a thing may have happened, it is the only explanation for all the versions of reality that have sprung into being. Such a thing was never meant to be. Yet it is."

The silver spoon clattered against the rim of the thick china cup, over and over and over, as Draco stirred it. Such a small, mundane, everyday sound. "I don't understand," he said flatly.

"Of course you don't. It is a Mystery, and wizards have studied many lifetimes to understand less than that. Your task is not to understand, Draco, but to learn." Snape laced his hands behind his head and leaned back against the wall of the little cabin. "I told you that the next two months would be a time of learning for you. I also told you that you've been kept in the dark so far."

"I certainly have," Draco muttered.

"Well, the time for that is past. There is one more thing that you must know." Snape stirred his tea, although it had long since grown cold. "You saw that in the other world, Lord Voldemort had been resurrected, and restored to power. Yet it was far from a full power. In this world, we have called up Lord Grindelwald. Yet he is only a spirit, and his power is anything but complete."

"If I hadn't taken Ginny Weasley out of the Dreamtime-" said Draco in a low voice.

"We will never know. It doesn't matter now. The only way in which we can gain enough power is to merge the two realities, as you know. Only the Jewel of the Harem has the power to accomplish that. And somehow--although we do not understand how--you are the key to that task, Draco. The key to that door between the worlds."

The words dropped into his head, straight and true as stones in a well, and echoed there. You are the key. For perhaps the first time in his life, Draco felt enormous calm descend on him like a cloak of inner sureness. "All right, then," he said. "Whatever I need to do--I'll do it. And we'll bring the worlds together. When would the change start, anyway? Would it encompass our entire lives, or would it have been this way since the beginning of the world, or...?"

Snape shook his head. "For some reason we don't yet fully understand, the turning point came a year and a half ago. But I think you already know that, Draco."

"Yes. The differences between the two worlds really started happening after Potter defeated the Dark Lord."

"Except that in that other reality, he did not, of course. And from that point, the two worlds diverged. It is at that point when they would become one again. Everything before then should be the same, as far as I can tell. Although I do not pretend to know everything there is to know about it. I cannot guess why your mother was a Black, in that reality. And I wish..." Snape's words trailed off. "I wish that I better understood the role of Ginny Weasley."

Ginny. It was as if a reel of silk had spun smoothly nearly all the way to the end of a magical spindle, and suddenly snagged on a knot. Draco swallowed. "I was--well, I suppose you heard, and saw. At the end of the vision. My father had told me to start gaining her confidence so that we could kidnap her when we got the chance, and use her as bait to trap Potter. Did that ever..." The words had gotten out of his mouth before he realized how stupid they sounded. Of course Snape didn't know if that was what had happened, because Draco hadn't seen it.

"That is one of the reasons why we must attempt to send you back into the vision, Draco. After you have regained your strength a bit, of course." Snape said. He sounded exhausted, too, Draco thought. "Merging these two realities will be the most difficult piece of magic any of us has ever tried to perform. The more knowledge we have about what occurred in this alternate universe, the better. We need to know how close they came to success there, and when, and why. So we would certainly need to learn what happened between you and Ginny Weasley in the other reality."

Draco cleared his throat, feeling that a great deal had been left unsaid. "If we actually were able to do this, Snape--would we remember anything that happened in this world?" In the past year and a half, I mean?"

"That I do not know." Snape sighed, and Draco wondered if the sigh was really a refusal to answer all of the questions that he had not been able to keep out of his mind. Questions about Ginny Weasley. Questions I will never ask. "But some things I do know," he continued, "and one is that the other reality must be opened, as it were, so that we can learn more. And only you can open it. Will you?"

"But you already know that I will," Draco said, confused. "I'll do whatever you need. Why do you have to ask me? I mean, do I really need to spell it out? My agreement? Can't I just-" His words faltered.

"The laws of such ancient magic demand your formal consent," said Snape. "For it is too heavy a burden to be borne unconsenting, Draco."

"Can I..." Draco thrummed his fingers on the little table, thinking. Feeling. Remembering his other self, the self in the world he had so briefly glimpsed. Without speaking further, he rose abruptly to his feet and walked over to the tiny bed where Ginny lay. Snape nodded, as if unsurprised by Draco's action, and sat with his dark head bent to his lap, waiting.

Draco looked down at her for a long time, and looking, knew that no matter what he thought he had agreed to do, he had not yet decided. If he'd hoped that the sight of her would push him to an irrevocable decision one way or the other, however, he was sadly disappointed. She lay like a carved ivory image, her eyes closed, all of her utterly unmoving. She did resemble a fairy princess, Draco thought. Yet there was also about her the strange unmistakable quality of a dead body, even though Draco certainly believed Snape when he'd said she still lived. Her face was human and yet not so; it simply rebuffed any conceivable emotion one might adopt towards it, or any connection which one might try to make with it. She was no longer there, he realized; he was not looking at Ginny Weasley, for all that this body resembled hers. Her essential self had fled. So. What now?

Draco fingered the edge of the bedspread that covered her, thinking. The past year and a half. Pain. Sleepless nights. His father's madness. The feeling of being lost, of drifting, of losing all his moorings. The powerlessness.

And in that other world? He did not yet know. But there had been power there. Of that, he was sure. Draco knew who he was in that world-- he knew his purpose, and nothing had the power to shake him from that purpose. And he was the key to merging that world with his own. No-one else could do it; no-one else could fill his place. They all needed him. His father needed him. Oh, how he savored that thought.

And weighed against that, well...

For no reason that Draco could define, the words Loki had spoken the night before in the tavern came back to him.

"You teeter at the edge of an abyss, Draco Malfoy. You walk a tightrope that frays beneath your feet. But in this time, and in this place, you have not yet fallen."

"In this-- what do you mean?"

"Here and now, you still possess the priceless power of human choice. Here and now, you have not yet made that choice. Choose wisely when the time comes, and it will come. Choose well."

"Here? Now? You mean somewhere else-- or at some other time-- I chose differently, or would have done, or-- ?" he had asked, hopelessly confused.

But Loki was silent.

Draco had not known what the devil-god of chaos had meant by those cryptic words, not then. But he knew now. He had wondered then if there was an alternate version of himself somewhere that had learned to obey, had stopped asking questions. A shiver went through him when he remembered that thought. Did I know then that I was going to see this reality, I wonder? As a wizard, Draco knew better than to call it coincidence. For now he had seen a universe in which he had plunged, was plunging, into the abyss. He hadn't known that an abyss could feel so safe; he'd imagined it as feeling rather more... unsettled, somehow. Instead, it seemed like the most secure place he'd ever been. He closed his eyes, still seeing the image of the tranced Ginny engraved on the lids within. There was one thing. Only one thing to toss into the scales weighing the balance of his two selves.

Beneath the power, there lay an emptiness of the soul that his other self did not even recognize as such. But he knew. No Marie-France Tessier. No memories of those weeks in the South of France, those memories that burned both bitter and sweet. And no Ginny. She meant nothing to him there. He was certain of that. If she did, surely he would have dredged up memories that included thoughts of her, at the very least. When his father had told him to learn more about the Gryffindors through Ginny Weasley, he'd felt neither pang of conscience nor stinging whip of obsession. There, he struck at the heart of all the differences that mattered. If he became that Draco, in that other world, he would not even know what he missed. He would never have known love, or longing, or loss.

And how violently he longed for that gift of forgetfulness.

Draco stared down at Ginny, willing her to wake, to speak. To say... something. But she slept on and on, and he might as well have wished for a marble statue on a tomb to come to life. Statues at Hogwarts frequently had done so. But he knew that she would not. Not now of all times, not here of all places, not this moment of all moments, when I need you most... Damn you, Ginny Weasley. This is your fault. He did not stop to think why he needed her, or wanted her. Since he could not have her now, at this moment of decision, it didn't matter anyway. He reached down to touch her hair, longing for the feel of a soft red-gold curl around one of his fingers. But he had to draw his hand back from the painful crackling spark of the magical barrier dividing her from the outside world.

I use you in that world as surely as I have in this one, Ginny Weasley. Even without knowing anything more than what I saw, I know that. But the difference is... the difference is... Draco looked at her immobile face, animated by no spark of life. Perhaps he should pretend that she really was dead. It would make this decision easier. In that world, I don't care.

He licked his lips, and fought to keep his voice steady.

"Snape, how soon can we begin?"

They returned to Draco's cabin, after that. He swayed on his feet, knowing dimly that he had never been so weary in all his brief life. Snape was speaking to him, but he barely heard the words.

"I must warn you about something," the older man said.

"Mmm?" Draco stumbled into the little bed and collapsed without taking off his boots.

"I know that there is one thing you did not tell me. For whatever reason, you chose to keep the events of one year ago--the events of this world, I mean--to yourself."

"Hunh." His eyes fell closed as if ten-kilometre weights were attached to each eyelid.

"It isn't important right now. But because they occurred at the same time you saw in the vision, at the winter solstice, you really ought to know that your mind is probably going to force you to relive them at some point, and I doubt it will be when you choose."

Draco forced one eyelid open a crack and glared at Snape. He then formed a complete sentence, which was possibly one of the more amazing feats he had ever performed, considering his unimaginable exhaustion at the moment. "My mind will do exactly as I tell it to, no more and no less."

Snape sighed. "Do not drive yourself so very hard, Draco. Not all the time. Not every second. Sooner or later, it will catch up--"

With the last of his strength, Draco picked up a pillow and threw it at the older man. Then he flopped back onto the bed and fell instantly into a dead sleep. Snape stood looking down at him for a long time. At last, he pulled the plaid up over the boy's shoulders and went out of the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

A hand grabbed Ginny as soon as she emerged from the stern cabins onto the deck, blinking at the misty sunlight of early morning. She turned and saw that it belonged to Robin. "Down here," he said out of the corner of his mouth, pulling her to the deck, and obediently she followed him. They crawled into the upturned little shallop boat, half-covered by a sheet of ragged sailcloth. He beckoned for her to keep following him until the rough material stretched over them both like a lid. There was just enough room to sit upright and cross-legged under it.

"We share this with Jem, during the voyage," said Robin, jerking a thumb at another boy who was already fast asleep at the end of the shallop. He flopped down. "Snatch a few hours' sleep, George, while you can. We have the forenoon watch."

Ginny gulped. She settled into the curve of the little boat's ribs, making herself comfortable as best she could with a torn piece of sailcloth heaped in the stern. "Where's everyone else?" she asked.

"Most of the crew has bunks in the orlop deck when not on watch, but ships' boys do not rate such luxury. But this may be better at any price, because--" Robin looked about furtively. "'Twill be easier to find a little rest when you are not on watch. Easier to hide, when needful."

"Hide?" echoed Ginny, a dreadful sinking feeling starting in her stomach. "Why would I want to hide?"

Robin sighed. "George, I'll not lie to you, you've made a bad start. The hourglass was never found and suspicions are running high. Tuke the boatswain, he's a bad man to get on the wrong side of, or so I hear."

"Oh." Ginny clutched the sailcloth to her and rubbed the scratchy material between her fingers, struggling not to cry. What a lovely beginning that would be.

"But sleep now," said Robin. "Let the next hour's trouble care for itself." He fitted the deed to the word, and was snoring almost before he had finished the sentence.

The little boat grew silent then, except for the combined snores of the two boys. Ginny stared into the dimness beneath the stretched sailcloth over her head, wide-eyed. She would not sleep. She could not sleep. But her exhaustion was greater than she knew, and at last she did sleep, dreaming of her brothers, not knowing that four hundred years in the future, they all dreamed of her.

Dawn was streaking the sky fully now, in banners of pink and gold and orange. Draco Malfoy slept the sleep of exhaustion in his little cabin below, his strong young body and mind repairing themselves, keeping disturbing dreams at bay for once. Lucius Malfoy slept in the cabin next to the one where his son lay, dreaming of dragons shooting through the sky in streams of silver light. Carolo Zabini slept in a narrow cabin lined with little cots, along with John Avery, and Walden Macnair, and the rest of the men who had called themselves the Death Eaters. But whatever their dreams may have been, they were of no significance.

The ship had cleared the harbor. Two people stood on the highest point of its stern decks, seemingly looking out to sea. They stood next to each other on an isolated part of the deck, one that could not easily be seen from most parts of the ship because it was mostly hidden by the snowmast and its sails. Whoever stood near the wheel at the far end of the stern deck might see the pair, but the captain and officers had not the slightest interest in passengers. So in the earliest part of the day, when only sailors on morning watch were astir, first one of them had come up on deck, and then, as if by accident, the other.

They stood very close, but not touching; ready to spring apart at the slightest footfall or breath of air that would warn the pair they were no longer alone. They had been standing for a long time, waiting until both could be sure they were unobserved. At last, one of them spoke.

"Did he come through the vision safely?" asked Narcissa Malfoy.

"I would have told you if he had not," replied Severus Snape.

There was another little time of silence, broken only by the washing of the waves against the ship, and the sounds of the sailors below as they went about their work. Narcissa bent her head down towards the waves that rushed endlessly past the stern of the ship below them, her bright hair covered by a modest blue hood except for a few escaping strands.

"But will he suffer for it, my son?" she asked, her voice low and toneless.

"I believe that he will not," said Snape. "Draco is stronger than you think."

She made a noncomittal motion with her shoulders, her great blue eyes expressionless.

"I warned him that he would likely experience involuntary memories of the one part of his story he did not wish to tell me," he continued. "But... with the arrogance of youth... he did not particularly want to listen to me."

Narcissa's mouth moved in what might almost have been a smile. "I believe I can guess which part it was. The events of one year ago, that took place in the South of France... am I not right?"

Snape inclined his head. "Lady, you are indeed."

Their language was stilted and formal, and their words had a labyrinthine quality to them, as if there were layers upon layers of meaning hidden within, not easily discerned. Yet it was clear that they understood one another fully.

"Were we ever that young, I wonder?" murmured Snape.

Narcissa shrugged. "Permit me to doubt it."

"But now that we are old enough to know what it is that we do..." Snape's words trailed off.

"Will that lead us to choose more wisely?" Narcissa wrapped her cloak more closely about her, and shivered. A brisk wind had sprung up. "That, too, I often doubt."

"We make the best choices we can, with the knowledge we have to hand. Is that not why you made the bargain before his birth?" he asked, almost harshly.

Narcissa glanced from side to side, furtively. But this place and time were likely the last for several months when it would be safe to speak about such things, and she knew it. "I suppose that it was," she finally said. Snape stepped a bit closer, until their cloaks blew against one another and mingled in the wind.

"I have always wondered about one point. Will you clarify it for me?"

"If I can."

"Does Lucius know the full extent of that bargain you once struck with the lady Rhiannon... and with Loki?"

"No," she said, "no, I have never told him everything there is to tell. And do not speak of it again."

He nodded, curtly. "I am no fool, Narcissa." She started in surprise. He rarely addressed her by her first name; ever since her marriage, she had been Lady Malfoy to him; publicly, always, but usually in private as well.

"What is it that troubles you?" he asked, more gently now. She thought of how soft and sweet and low his voice could be, when he chose to make it so, and she sighed.

"Need you ask, considering everything that is to come?"

"I suppose that you do not."

They drew a little closer together, but stiffened and pulled apart at a slight sound from the deck below. Jem the ship's boy snuffled in his sleep and turned over. Snape relaxed, but bent to whisper in Narcissa Malfoy's ear. "It is not safe to stand here longer."

As they turned to go to their separate cabins below, she touched his arm, lightly. He stiffened as though the brush of her fingers had been red-hot. "You-- you will be careful?" she asked. "Through the next months?" He nodded, tersely. She persisted.

"You will watch over him, Severus? You will let no harm come to him? We may have no chance to speak privately on these matters again."

"Lady, you know what I have sworn to do," said Snape. "I have watched over your son for six years. Do not think that I will stop now. But I will do as I must do. As will you."

"As will I." She sighed deeply. With no further word, they parted, their footsteps sounding low and hollow on the stern deck above the ceaseless lapping of the waves, and went to their separate cabins. When Snape slept, he dreamed of Narcissa Malfoy, she who had been Narcissa von Drachen, and who in another world was Narcissa Black, and woke from his dreams without remembering them. But then, he always did so, whenever he dreamed of her.

Narcissa laid herself down next to Lucius, whose breathing did not change, and moved very carefully over to the edge of the bed so that she did not touch him at any point. He had made it clear so many times that he did not care to be crowded when he slept. It was no easy feat, since the bed, though larger and wider than the others, was still quite small. She stared sleeplessly up at the ceiling for a very long time. When she at last fell asleep, she dreamed of a journey into the Forbidden Forest that she had taken at Beltane nearly twenty years before, when she was still an innocent Hogwarts schoolgirl.

Her dearest friend had skipped along the path before her, swinging a May-basket filled with flowers. They had crouched together on the other girl's bed in the Gryffindor dormitory one night that spring, pricking fingers and pressing them together, swearing themselves as blood-sisters, knowing that they would be tied forever by that magical bond. Now she paused on the path and looked back at Narcissa, the corners of her green eyes crinkling in a smile, her dark red hair flying around her face as she turned. "Come on, Cissa," said Lily Evans. "Slowcoach. The prettiest flowers are ahead." Be careful, Lily, Narcissa wanted to cry. She was always the cautious one. It is dangerous to venture into the forest at Beltane, dangerous to stray off the path. Remember what they told us about Lemankynn, and the spirits that walk on this day... But it was too late. Lily had already vanished into the trees before her as if slipping into a bottomless sea, and Narcissa could do nothing but follow her, follow her as she would always do, until, several years later, Lily at last went where no living mortal could go.

But she sank deeper into sleep then, the sad-eyed Lady Malfoy, and whatever the rest of her dream may have been, it was lost.

All over the ship, they slept, these people who were now tied to the realm of the gods as no mortals were ever meant to be, dreaming whatever dreams may come. The last traces of power in the winter solstice subsided into day, and into ordinary time. Yet they, too, only slumbered. And they, too, would soon be awakened.

~end of Part One of Jewel of the Harem. Chapter 20 begins Part Two, Ocean Voyage.~