Mea Culpa, Confiteor

Slowly, he turned and raised his hands above his head. "At least you finally got the name right," he drawled. "Very powerful magic, to be called out of one's name. Are you trying to hex me?"

"I'll do worse than hex you!" Ginny raised the wand threateningly.

"Really astounding brave, Weasley," he smirked. "You're armed, and I'm not."

"You--ooh! Don't you lecture me. After what you just did."

"Ah, but it wasn't only a matter of what I did, now was it?" Hands still up, he moved closer. He moved one finger down to chuck her under the chin. "And I didn't hear you complaining a moment ago." She watched him mutely, not trusting herself to speak. Then he laughed softly. "Come inside my compartment, Weasley. You'll freeze to death if you don't."

She did feel the cold, now. The heat that had sustained her seemed to have all drained out through the bottoms of her feet. She nodded without saying a word and followed him through the door.

Ginny sat huddled by the fire, watching its crackling flames. She could hear Draco moving around behind her, pouring something into a glass, but didn't turn her head to see what it was.

"Cheers." He handed her a crystal champagne flute, filled to the brim with sparkling golden liquid. He clinked his glass with hers, sitting down in the chair across from her. The rest of the champagne lay in an ice-filled bucket, and the bedspread on the couch was turned down, an opened box of chocolates lying next to it on a small table. The scent of full-blown tea roses filled the air. She sipped the champagne. It loosened her tongue again.

"Nice setup," she said. "I had no idea these sorts of compartments even were on the train."

"They're not available to everyone, of course," he shrugged.

"But the Malfoys are a cut above?" she asked.

"Yes, that's about it. Do you like it?"

"It's very nice. But why are you asking me? It obviously wasn't meant for me."

Draco turned his champagne flute round and round in his hands in a gesture that looked strangely uncertain. "Of course it wasn't," he said at last.

Ginny lay back in her chair, propping her toes up on the edge of the fireplace. "It was meant for Harry."

Draco's eyebrow arched. "So our innocent little Ginny isn't so innocent after all."

"I'm not a complete moron, if that's what you mean. I know very well what's been going on."

"Has been. The past tense is very important here." Draco got up abruptly and moved behind her. You really should turn your head and see what he's doing back there, an instinctive, animal part of her brain told her. But she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing that he made her faintly afraid, as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice and trailing one toe over the edge.

There was a mirror above the mantelpiece of the fireplace. Ginny looked up to see Draco standing directly in back of her, only a few inches away. His hands moved caressingly around her throat. How strange their faces looked reflected in the dark mirror, both so pale; they were almost like their own ghosts. Except that no ghost ever felt what she was feeling now.

"So here we sit," Draco said, "the two rejected lovers of Harry Potter."

"I'm sitting. You're standing."

"Semantics." He shrugged.

"And I know what you two got up to, but he was never my lover."

"Wasn't he? I suppose I knew that, really. It wasn't for lack of effort on your part, though, was it?" His fingers moved down to her collarbone, still lightly clasped around her neck. One good squeeze, thought Ginny. That's all it would take. She sat motionless, like a sacrifice.

"No. I suppose it wasn't," she said.

"Tell me something. Did you really think that was Potter a moment ago?"

"Yes."

"I think you're lying," Draco said. His hands tightened slightly.

"If I am I don't know it myself." She shuddered, but not with fear.

"Poor Harry," he said thoughtfully. "He only knows one way to get what he needs."

"Oh? And how many do you know?"

"Lots." And then his mouth was going down to the side of her neck; she dumbly watched it descend in the mirror and writhed wordlessly when it touched her.

"Stay with me," he murmured into her skin.

"I'm warmed up now. Thanks for the champagne, but I really should be getting back."

"That's not what I meant and you know it. Get into bed with me. Let me undress you. Let me touch you. Let me do what I want with you. What you want, as well."

"What?" Ginny managed to gasp. "Are you mad? You must be."

"Why not?"

"I don't know where to start! You're the most rotten human being I know of. You've always treated me like dirt under your feet. You've never said a halfway civil word to me before today. My family hates you; my brothers would just as soon kill you as look at you. D'you know what having to be polite to you all term did to Ron? But it's worse than that. You used to be a spoiled, snarky brat, but you're not that anymore, you're evil. You practice the dark arts, you consort with unclean things like Voldemort and maybe even worse. God only knows what stains you have on your soul, if you even possess such a thing." She stopped.

"You've been listening to stories," said Draco, his face expressionless.

"I think they're true."

He bent over her throat. His breath was hot on her neck, hot as a desert wind in the cold of the room, a cold she felt even through the warmth of the champagne and the fire. "Perhaps you're right. Perhaps I'm evil, and you're the unmarred soul of purity." She shook her head vehemently. "No, let me finish--maybe you're right, maybe it's even worse than you know. But if that's so, it's Draco Malfoy who's evil, and Ginny Weasley who's his enemy. Now, in this room, in this car, in this snowstorm, we're not Draco and Ginny anymore. We're just... two strangers on a Hogwarts train."

His lips dipped to the curve of her shoulder. "I feel your craving." She caught her breath. One of his hands moved up to her waist.

"I feel your desire."

The other hand crept up her side, slowly, slowly, and held her firmly, each finger pressing into her ribs.

"I know your hunger. Because it's my hunger too."

"But--it's not for me--not really for me. You want Harry. You don't want me." The words caught bitterly in her throat.

"What do you know about what I want?" He brought his face down to the level of hers. It was the first time she had ever been nearly this close to him. She saw the silver lines radiating out from the black pupils of his eyes, the fine-grained texture of his skin, the thick, scattered silver hairs of his eyebrows. "I see you. Really see you. Potter never saw you. But I do."

Her lips were so close to hers, so close. She moaned in a sound that was almost a sob.

"There's something here bigger than you or me. But it's also my need, and yours. Because we've tapped into it somehow. It's in this room. It's on this land. Can you feel it?"

She nodded, locked into those strange silver eyes, their pattern like one of the snowflakes massing outside.

"Do you want me?"

She nodded again.

"Will you stay with me?"

"Yes," said Ginny. Something in her shifted with a minute click. The reverberations echoed all the way through her, like the faint movement of a glacier that starts a calving. "Yes. I will." He shuddered against her, a sensation she felt all along her own body, and then held out his hand to her. She took it, and he led her to the couch.

Ginny sat very still. The cushions sagged under Draco's weight when he sat next to her. She looked straight ahead. Now that she had crossed the irrevocable barrier, she felt oddly shy, shame hovering at the edges of her mind, threatening to crush her in a different way.

"What is it?" he asked. "You still want this, don't you?"

"Yes," Ginny said, feeling the first wave of a blush creep up her neck, "but I don't exactly know--- well-- what to do. Don't laugh at me! I don't see anything funny about that."

Draco lifted her long red hair, pressing little kisses around her hairline, each a burning brand. "So you are an innocent after all."

"In that way. Yes."

"Don't worry. I'm not."

"Then show me," she murmured.

"Oh, I will." His mouth came down on hers, slowly, slowly. Unlike any kiss she'd ever had. The others had been sloppy, or too hard, or had missed her mouth entirely and nearly taken off her nose. The truly shocking thing about this kiss was its studied gentleness. His gentleness. With her. The last thing she ever would have expected from Draco Malfoy.

She shivered and moaned softly, leaning into him. As if her acquiescence had been a signal, he deepened the kiss, forcing her lips apart, slipping his tongue into the silky cave of her mouth. He tasted of champagne and chocolate and she ran her tongue along his, shuddering when he sucked on it.

"You have done this, haven't you?" he whispered.

"Kissing? Yes. With N--"

"Shhh. No names, remember?"

"All right.

Draco shifted position, and she let him turn her to face him, moving like a clay model, utterly fluid. His fingers slipped the buttons of her blouse out of their buttonholes. One, two, three, four, five. The two halves of the silk hung free. His hands moved down the white skin of her throat, lingering over the pulse throbbing there, exploring the contours of her breasts in the white lace brassiere.

"Very nice," said Draco. "When you put this on, you hoped someone besides your dressing table mirror would see it, didn't you?"

"No," said Ginny, too quickly. But then, perhaps she had.

He smoothed the tips of his fingers along the boundary between lace and skin. The uneven pattern of the fabric lightly abraded the milky flesh beneath. Ginny moved her weight from one leg to the other, suddenly aware of the throbbing in her chest.

"How about this?" asked Draco.

"Yes. Once. But that's all." Ginny remembered Neville's fumbling hands and blushing, stammering face, and the memory flickered through her mind, leaving no trace behind it.

"So. On to uncharted territory." He moved closer to her and she felt his hands on her back, undoing the lingerie hooks. She looked down at the top of his head, at his smooth blank face, and saw the expression that swept over it when the pile of white lace fell to the bed. So this was lust; the sudden darkening of the silvery eyes, the tightening of the lips, the awakening of the sleepy-looking face, the quickened breathing. Now she knew what she had not seen, would never see, in Harry.

"Don't be afraid," murmured Draco. "I'm not going to eat you... well, perhaps I will at that." He reached for something on the bedside table and turned back to her with a piece of chocolate in his mouth. He pushed his mouth to hers and she bit off half of it; a dark bittersweet taste of orange flooded her mouth.

"Is that magical chocolate?" Ginny licked her lips for the last traces.

"No, Godiva's. What a nice little tongue you have... Lean back a little." He took another chocolate out of the box, a plump dome of a cherry, and bit it in half. Taking the two halves in his fingertips, Draco held them over Ginny's bare chest and squeezed one lightly. The syrupy liquid drizzled over her skin in sticky trails. She shifted skittishly.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm going to lick every bit of that off you," Draco said in a murmur.

His tongue was at her throat. Now it moved downwards, his lips sucking at her skin. Downwards. She whimpered deep in her throat. Her fingers clutched convulsively at the slick satin material of the sheets. Over the soft swell of her breast. Her breath came in short pants. Then, at long long last, his mouth closed over one nipple and sucked strongly.

The sensation exploded through her as if he had touched every nerve ending in her with fire. The throbbing thundered in her, deeper, longer, thrumming to every part of her, and still he kept drawing on that nipple that was wired to all of her. Ginny's head fell back. She gasped. And, at last, she broke through the last vestiges of shyness and shame in her.

She fell backwards onto the couch, pulling Draco with her, her hands ripping at his shirt. Buttons flew. His own hands battled alongside hers to get it off him, and together they threw the tattered shreds to the floor. Her hands went over his bare chest and back desperately, as if trying to memorize the contours of his flesh. He pressed himself into her with all his weight, then pulled back slightly. She felt her robes slipping off in a tangle of black wool, falling to the floor, and she saw his join them. The jeans she wore beneath slid down over her feet, his thumbs hooking into her satin underwear and taking them off as well, but more slowly, more caressingly. She shivered. Partly from the chill air in the room, she was sure. Draco propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her.

"You're beautiful," he said. He ran one hand over her body from shoulders to waist to legs, his fingers stroking her thighs. The firelight played over his face, now casting one side of it into shadow, now another, now illuminating his hair with a golden glow.

"Those," Ginny said, pointing. "Off. Now."

Draco yanked the buttons free and pulled his jeans down his legs, throwing them to join the remnants of the shirt on the floor. He looked at her questioningly.

"You're beautiful too," said Ginny, looking at his lithe, spare body.

"I'm not," he said.

"Handsome, then."

"Not really." Draco smiled crookedly at her, one corner of his mouth going up. "But that sort of thing doesn't really matter anyway, does it? Not now."

"No," said Ginny. "All that matters is this." She put her hands on his bare shoulders and pulled him on top of her. There were sinewy muscles under the thin lines of him, and she felt every one of them.

She could not seem to get close enough to him. She wriggled under him, seeking some purchase point that would meld them further, and his lower body butted against hers. At a nudge from Draco's knee she spread her legs apart and felt the hardness pressing against her through one remaining layer of cloth.

"Your boxers are still on."

"So they are."

"Why?"

"I didn't want to frighten you."

"Don't worry about frightening me. I have brothers. I've seen it before."

"But not like this."

"No, not like this."

Draco's hands moved downwards. He pulled off the boxer shorts.

No. She'd never seen it in this way before. "Look, a little eye. It weeps. Tears of desire, or sadness?"

"Both," said Draco through gritted teeth. He groaned intensely.

"Did I hurt you?" asked Ginny.

"No. How did you learn to touch like that?"

"I don't know."

"You're one of those who knows without being told." The largest of the candles banked around the couch guttered and then went out. Two others followed the first. Draco's face was thrown into such shadow that Ginny couldn't tell if he was feeling pleasure or pain. As she watched, trying to read him, another candle extinguished itself. The windows were blank shafts of darkness and whirling snow. Only a few feeble flames broke the blackness of the room.

Draco held up the second half of the chocolate cherry, which he was still holding in his fingers. His eyes met hers. Then he raised one hand and drizzled the remaining fondant over her belly, on her thighs, and-- Then he lowered his head again.

Things happened in the dark. Forbidden things. Secret things. Things that could never be permitted to happen in the light. His lips were moving on the tops of her legs. Delicately licking off every last trace of the thick sugary liquid. His fingers crept up her inner thighs. "May I?" she heard him ask.

"Please. Please. Ohhhh." Ginny shuddered violently. "Ohhh, yes." She moaned lustfully, low in her throat, and some vestige of sanity in her mind said, If everyone could see you now... could see innocent Ginny, sweet little Ginny... writhing naked under Draco Malfoy like a bitch in heat... but no... no... it's as he said... we're only strangers on a train.... Then the pleasure spasmed through her, and she could think no more.

"More?" he whispered. She nodded again.

His head went down once more; she could feel the long strong muscles in her thighs tightening, releasing, tightening, releasing. Draco looked down at her, his eyes a dark pewter-gray in the deeper darkness of the room.

"Please," she said.

His face came down to hers. It was the first time she had ever seen it so utterly serious, without the faintest trace of a smirk or a sneer. His eyes studied her flushed face as if awaiting an answer or a sign.

"Please. Now. I want it. I need it. I must have it."

"Then I'll give it to you," Draco said. He lowered himself onto her with the deliberate grace of Lucifer falling from heaven. "Spread your legs for me."

Ah, the rush of need that went through her when she heard those words, need so long denied, need soon to be fulfilled. Ginny parted her thighs. For the first time in her life, she felt another pair of legs settle between them, felt at long last the full weight of another body on hers, another body throbbing with its own need. His hand slid under her lower back, lifted her slightly. But it wasn't enough, wasn't close enough, not as close as she wanted to be. "Deeper," she whispered, her face a flushed mask of want.

"It will hurt you."

"Why do you care? Why are you being so gentle with me?"

"Because you're letting me."

"Hurt me, if you have to," she said. "Don't make me wait anymore."

Draco kissed her, parting her lips, her mouth, her throat, soothing her, caressing her. He propped himself up on his elbows for a moment, grasping her hands and placing them on his lower back. "Dig your nails into me," he said.

"What?"

"Just do it."

The sensation flamed through her body, sweeping up almost into her chest. Ginny sank her fingernails into Draco's skin until she could see him grimacing in pain, too, feeling it along with her.

The pain dulled into a dull throb that carried a silvered edge of sweetness. His face tightened above her, his arms tightened around her and he tensed, tensed and hovered for a moment. Then he was crying out and so was she; what words they said, neither of them ever knew, and she was flooded with the tide of his passion, carried out to sea, a random piece of flotsam on the wreck of the shore.

Time melted. Became fluid. They drifted through an ocean of sensation, movements, soft cries, incoherent words. Once, when she was up against the wood of the far wall, feeling the texture beneath her palms, she saw the whirling snow, and a thought darted through her mind. What happened to Harry? I haven't heard anything in hours. Where did he go? Is he all right? He must be, I'd know if he wasn't, I think... But it was only a will o' the wisp thought. Quickly gone, once Draco shivered against her and she shuddered with satisfaction against him, along with him.

The crackling electric current connecting them ebbed and waned, then gathered strength again. In one of the ebb times, they lay together on the couch, sweat drying on their bodies, evaporating into the air in misty tendrils. "My demon lover," she said.

"You've read Coleridge?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know."

"You don't know anything about me. I'm a stranger, remember?"

"Yes." He reached for her again and she arched towards him, feeling the current reconnect.

"Let's play a new game," he said later, hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling.

"One we haven't played already? All right."

"Let's pretend. You like pretending, don't you?"

"Yes. Sometimes."

"Let's make believe that we're here because we want to be. Because we chose each other."

"Isn't that... dangerous?"

"Maybe. But you like danger, don't you?"

"Yes. Sometimes," she said again.

They whispered words of love to each other the next time, when she knelt in front of him on the couch and shuddered convulsively with the sensations that shot through her like streams of dark magic.

"Did you ever say these things before?" she asked him afterwards.

"Yes. To H---to someone. Once."

"Did you love him?"

"Isn't it pretty to think so?"

"Did he love you?"

"No." Draco's voice was harsh. "He didn't." Then he shoved Ginny against the wooden wall and took her roughly, forcing her legs apart, biting at her shoulder with his sharp canine teeth, as if punishing her and himself with the same pain.

"Funny. I feel like I've woken up after being asleep for a long long time," said Ginny, tracing her fingernails round one of Draco's nipples on his thin chest. They lay next to each other, their arms intertwined. "That's how I felt before, you know. All fall term long."

"Like everything had turned gray and meaningless, and you were moving through layers of sticky fog that clung at you every minute of every day," he said, running a finger over the outlines of her face, her cheekbones, her lips.

"Yes. How did you know?"

"I know. What makes you feel that you're alive?"

"This. Nothing else I can think of."

"But then there's dark things too. They can make you feel alive. Like revenge. Revenge can be so sweet."

Ginny shivered. An icy finger seemed to press in on the center of her chest. She turned and kissed him passionately, and although he responded, they both felt the thin thread of something poisoned seeping between them.

Candles. Dim pools of light seeping over the floor, the irregular stone walls. Harry squinted at the flickering rays of light. A small, pale hand came into his field of vision and gave him his glasses. Fumbling, he put them on. He was lying on a low bed in a huge, shadowy room. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that it was filled with rows of cots, each containing a person, lying motionless as if asleep or dead. Tall, veiled figures moved between the rows, bending down to a cot occasionally. Hermione lay in the narrow bed next to him. Harry tried to leap out of his cot. One of the robed figures swept swiftly over to him.

"Shhh," it said in a low, scratchy voice. "You should not try to move at this time."

"But--my friends--" Harry looked at Hermione. Her eyes were half open, feverish. Ron lay next to her, he now saw, and he was mumbling something and plucking restlessly at the coverlet.

"The grip of the snow is strong," said the figure. "They struggle against it still. As do you." It bent down over him, and Harry saw now that it was a woman with a serene oval face, strangely unmarked as a blank sheet of parchment. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were surrounded on all sides by a tight wrapping of white cloth, supporting a long black veil that fell over her head and back. She wore long white robes and a chain of keys at her waist. A long silver rope of beads with a crucifix at the end swung from her belt, back and forth, back and forth, catching the faint light of the candles.

A... nun? Harry's aunt and uncle were, of course, stalwart non-attenders of the Church of England. "Damned papists," Vernon Dursley was fond of muttering under his breath whenever he passed a Catholic church. But Harry had seen nuns in the streets, in Brighton when he'd been dragged there for vacations by his relatives, in London. Just... never like this. She was a creature from another world. He shivered. She tucked the blankets around his shoulders.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"Places do not matter here."

"But what's it called?"

"I would not know what name to give you."

Harry rubbed his aching head. "Look. I suppose I staggered in here out of the storm or something, maybe that's what we all did, and you're taking care of us and I'm grateful, but I'm really horribly confused. Can't you tell me anything that makes any sense?"

The nun sighed. "I would if I could. But I have not spoken to any man for so long that I have lost count of the seasons, even of the centuries. I know not how truth looks to a man any longer."

"The--centuries?" asked Harry. For all the chill that went up his spine, he suddenly felt on more familiar ground. There must be powerful magic here.

The nun looked down, seemingly deep in thought. "This land has always served as a house for us, in one way and another. But once," she said at last, "long ago--very long ago, you would say-- what stood on this ground was called Coventry Cathedral."

"I know where I am then," said Harry slowly, "but the old cathedral was bombed, I think, and the new one doesn't have a nunnery or anything, I'm sure it doesn't."

"But we are here," said the nun.

"You mean you're somehow here at the same time as what people can see?"

"We--" The nun made a helpless gesture with her hands, her sleeves falling away from her arms. "It is easier for you to find us and to see us now, so close to the Feast of Saturnalia, one of our four great feasts of the year. But we are, and have been, and always will be. Here."

Harry looked around the room at the silent robed figures moving among the cots. "Maybe one of those other--uh, nuns could tell me more."

The nun shook her head. "My sisters no longer know human speech. They have gone too far into the mists, and there are others you cannot see who have travelled further still." She passed a cool, smooth hand over his brow; it was like the touch of rain without its wetness. "Sleep. Sleep, Harry Potter, and forget both love and grief."

A timeless time later, Draco slept, breathing evenly beside Ginny. She looked down at his closed face. One arm was flung over her; one upturned next to her. She saw something twist and move on it, examined it more closely, and saw that nothing had really moved; it was only a trick of the guttering candlelight. A dark brand was burned into the delicate white skin of Draco's arm, beneath his wrist. He moaned in his sleep and his fingers clutched at something beyond his reach. Her own fingers reached towards the mark on his arm. Knowing what she saw, she touched it. The skin was puckered and scarred around it, and he twitched restlessly, silvery lashes fluttering against the delicate white skin below his eyes. The light flickered, shifting, and Ginny peered closer. His eyelids were deeply, darkly circled, as if he hadn't slept properly in weeks.

She sat for a long time, looking into the dimness. Then she too slept.

Something scratched at the door. Light and quick, like the tapping of wings. A figure moved noiselessly from the couch and opened the door a crack. Hedwig hovered in the air, eyeing the other side of the door coldly and suspiciously. But she took the rolled parchment that was tucked into one claw, and flew out of the train car through the gap in the ceiling with great beats of her wings.

Forget, thought Harry dazedly. That's what I want. That's what I told Ginny I wanted... but not the way she offered me... oh, no... "Ginny," he said. "Ginny's still in that train car. And--" he choked at the name. "Malfoy is, as well."

Ron stirred, rubbed his eyes, sat up. "What?" he asked groggily. "Where's Ginny?"

"She's not--not here," said Hermione, shaking her head and looking around the room. "She's not here."

"Did you say--" Ron blinked mazedly "--that Malfoy's in that train car too? With Ginny? We've got to get out of here right now, God knows what he's doing to her right this minute!" He reared up, stretched his arms out as unseeingly as a zombie, and fell to the floor. One of the other nuns flew to his bedside with birdlike cries and lifted him back into the cot.

"Do not go," said the first nun simply.

"Well, maybe she got out, too, Ron," muttered Harry.

"Don't listen to her, to any of them!" said Ron furiously. "My sister's trapped in that train car with that evil little bastard Malfoy, and nothing's going to stop me from--from--" But the effort of his words had taken everything out of him; he coughed, doubled over, and fell back against the pillow.

As Harry sat, indecisive, a great gray owl flew in spiraling circles down from the ceiling and flapped to his shoulder.

"'S Hedwig," said Hermione in a weak voice. "She must've gotten out. Must've found us. Clever Hedwig."

Harry stroked the owl's soft feathers, his eyes vague as his mind. Go or stay, go or stay; the options were strangely devoid of emotional content. All he could seem to remember were Ginny's eyes when he told her he would never want her. And Draco's eyes, the last time they were together, when Harry said that he could never want him again. But Hedwig was twittering, and pinching his finger with her beak. He looked down and saw the small roll of parchment. He unrolled it.

Harry,

I am in the train car. If you remember the last promise we shared, come to me.

Draco M.

The last promise we shared. The last--And the old crazed shiver ran over him again, something dark and deep in the flesh, having nothing to do with the spirit. Shameful, shameful to even remember such things in this spiritual place. But the shameful things weren't what whispered in his ear and crept back into his mind.

He was pulled as surely as if Draco had cast a net over him. Harry sat up and slipped on his shoes.

"Do not go," said the nun. "Others will find the train car soon, and will rescue them from the snow." He shook off her hand.

"I have to go."

"For the health of your soul, do not go."

"I don't really give a damn about my soul anymore, if there even is such a thing."

"Stay with your friends. Do not go."

"What, are you planning to keep Ron and Hermione and the rest trapped here forever if I don't hang about and keep an eye on them?" Harry retorted.

The nun bowed her head. "We have taken flesh and form to preserve the lives of everyone you see here. We have ministered to your bodies, and saved you from death in the depths of winter. This we do not do lightly. We would not keep you here with us. Ours is a road you could not travel even if you wished."

Harry knew that she spoke truth. But he also knew that he was like a drunk rolling a snifter of brandy between his palms, pretending that he might still choose not to drink it. He remembered the taste of Draco's mouth. It became suddenly and oddly important to recall the exact bittersweet mixture, like coffee and raspberries mingled. The way Harry would kiss the corners of that little cat mouth, his lips grazing the edges of Draco's sharp canine teeth. Harry closed his eyes, and that last picture from the last time was still burned into his retinas, that pale head thrown back so that the pulse throbbed in Draco's throat, those silvery lashes fluttering over the circles under his eyes, and he himself had fallen into the dark maelstrom one more time, just one more, just one last time.... Harry knew, too, that he teetered on the edge of it now.

"I don't have a choice," he said.

"But you do. It is that which separates what we are from all men and all women. We have abnegated choice. You have not."

"Then I'm choosing to go."

She stood aside, in a gesture of acceptance and resignation. Harry wrapped his winter cloak about him. And then he walked out, the walls dissolving around him and expelling him into the storm.