Of Binding Spells and Chartreuse

***

Mr. Sandman, I'm so alone
Don't have nobody to call my own...

Why am I still hearing that song? wondered Ginny.

"What are you waiting for?" Draco asked. "Hurry, hurry." His voice was very eager. I'm eager as well, she thought. And yet... and yet the sound of music grew louder and louder.

"Can you hear that?" asked Ginny.

"Yes. But what on earth does it matter? Open the door," he said.

"But..." She hesitated. "That doesn't make any sense. It's the same song that was playing in Dumbledore's office."

Please turn on your magic beam
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream...

He pressed himself against her from behind, his mouth to her ear. "Open the door, Ginny," he said. "It's time."

Ginny turned back to him briefly, and pressed her fingers against his lips. "Why do you say that?" she asked, her brow creasing into a frown.

"No reason," Draco said, and he kissed her fingertips, one by one, slowly.

Ginny shivered. "All right, Draco. I'll open the door now," she said softly. And she did. Or, at least, she tried to.

What in the world--

She blinked. Something very strange seemed to be happening. Her hand reached for the doorknob, but it never got there. She kept reaching and reaching; the door kept fleeing from her as if down an endless corridor. She started to run, her hand firmly clasped in Draco's. "Hurry!" she gasped. "Hurry, or we'll never get in, never get to your rooms--"

But Draco's hand was changing in hers, becoming slimmer and longer, burning with heat until she had to drop it with a cry of pain. She looked down at it. His fingers were now all of equal length. That meant something, she knew, even though she couldn't quite yet remember what. It unsettled her, although she could not quite think why.

She stopped. She wasn't out of breath or tired in the least, even though it felt as if they had been running for hours. Wisps of mist were beginning to curl through the air. She could no longer see the door, the hall, the room, or anything else. Something's wrong. Terribly wrong...

Slowly, she looked up at Draco. He was now resting comfortably in the air as though it were a feather bed, head propped on his hands, legs crossed, all at about the level of her nose. And he wasn't Draco Malfoy anymore. In fact, he wasn't human anymore, although her mind seemed to twist into strange shapes when she tried to figure out why she was so sure of that fact. His hair was as bright as burnished silver and his eyes glimmered like mirrors, the pupils oval slits, like those of a cat. She couldn't look into them too long.

"Ciao, Ginny," he said.

"Who are you?" she whispered.

He studied his glasslike nails. "Taking mortal form always was such fun. Pity I can't do it anywhere except dreams and unreal spaces anymore. And of course it has to be on one of the high holidays; such a bore."

"But who are you?"

He pulled a nail file out of his pocket. "The play is played out," he said with a yawn. "Almost time to return, Ginny."

All magical beings had to tell their true names when asked three times, Ginny remembered. She'd learned that in History of Magic class. "Who are you?" she asked again.

He looked at her, and she grew dizzy at the faceted diamonds of his eyes. If I look into them too long, I might never find my way out again... "I am not to be named," he said, all trace of levity gone from his voice. "I have many names. But you can call me Loki, if you like."

Ginny glanced wildly around the alleyway, or what should have been an alleyway, at least. Diagon Alley had disappeared. There were no cobblestones under her feet, no starry sky above her head, and no small green door in front of her. The two of them seemed to float in a void. "I don't understand," she said, although she was all too afraid that understanding hovered just outside her consciousness. She didn't want to let it in, not yet. Dumbledore asked me if I really wanted to know everything. Was this what he meant? Is this the secret that he wouldn't tell me? "What are you doing here?" she asked. "What's happened? Where am I? Where's Draco?"

"Don't you know, Ginny?" he asked, still holding her gaze steadily. She could not blink. Things seemed to be sharpening at the edge of her vision then. The layers of mists surrounding them both were like translucent wet gauze. Through them, she dimly saw the shapes of the other beds in her room of the Gryffindor dormitory at Hogwarts. Very faintly, she heard Millicent Bulstrode's snoring, and Luna's snuffling and restless turning in her sleep. Millicent had smuggled in Chartreuse liqueur for them all to drink earlier that night; she remembered it now. "It'll give you happy dreams," she had said, giggling. Ginny had thought it all nonsense, but she had sipped the yellow-green liquid that tasted of anise and mint and lavender and rue.

A tall dark man stood at the side of her own bed now, wrapped in a long black cloak that moved ceaselessly, though there was no wind. He had dark spiky hair and fathomless eyes filled with stars, and his face was sad, but not as human faces are sad. I've seen him before, she realized. I know who he is, the dark man in my room. I learned about him in History of Magic class. And then there are the Seven Endless, those who are before the gods ever were... He is Lord Morpheus. The Sandman. The King of Dreams. He said that he would give me one wish. I said that I didn't want to wake up, not just yet. And he... he granted my wish. I didn't know it then, but that's what he did.

She remembered the words engraved on the brass plaque fixed to the side door of Gris-Gris. J'arrive, et je rêve.

Fleur had come to visit Bill over the Christmas hols the year before, and she and Ginny had hit it off despite the difference in their ages. The older girl had taught her a few words of French, and then a little more when they exchanged owls later on. Ginny knew enough to know what those words meant. And she could not understand why she had not seen their meaning before.

I arrive, and I dream.

And then, in a rush, she knew everything. Her mouth went down at the corners, and she wanted to cry. "This is all a dream," she said sadly.

"Very good," smirked Loki. "Ten points to Gryffindor! Although I don't think that immortal beings can give points."

"Didn't any of it happen?"

"Fraid not." Loki shrugged. "Honestly, Ginny, would Dumbledore and the Order ever be thick enough to have the survival of the entire wizarding world depend on whether you and Harry had sex? Would anyone let you go to Diagon Alley when the Death Eaters had a contract out on you? Would the real Draco Malfoy ever have said anything so tacky and clichéd as 'You look beautiful in green, but you're even more beautiful in nothing'? And what about all those songs you kept hearing? Didn't you think it was odd that every single one of them should have been about dreams?"

She sat heavily on a cloud of mist, staring blankly into the bank of fog that stretched away from her in every direction. "All a dream," she repeated dully.

Loki was watching her still, she realized. "Do you still want to know where Draco Malfoy really is?" he asked softly.

"I know where he is," she said. And she knew that he could not have been anywhere other than where he was. His life had led him back to his father's side, mocking her dream that his choices and his character could have ever set his feet on any other path.

And even though all of this had been only a dream, she felt as thoroughly duped as if she had been deceived in real life--or worse, had deceived herself.

What a fool I was. Wearily, she wondered how she ever could have mistaken her dream-Draco for the real one. There were so many moments when she ought to have known. When Draco knew that Harry tried to seduce me on the couch, and I never told him so... when he said that he knew how much I'd liked the chartreuse robes, and I never told him that... and oh, dear God, when he was kind, and gentle, and tender; how could I not have known then that something was wrong? She had lent him so many qualities that he didn't really possess. In her dream; she had given Draco a kindness that he had never shown to anyone so far as she knew, and a softness that could never have been a part of him. He had loved her. His heart had opened to her, and he had betrayed his father for her, loving her.

But in the waking world, the real Draco had left her for his father, and for the only way of life that he had ever known. And now he was with Lucius Malfoy and the rest of the Death Eaters, the ones who had taken him from the wreckage of the Hogwarts Express six months before. She had shared a few short, terrible, desperate kisses with him two weeks before that, when they were both wedged into a luggage rack on the train, five minutes after she had heard her brother swear to kill him. But she had never lain down with him, never let him do what they had both so desired, never cried out in his arms as he labored over her, their bodies touching at every point and melding in pleasure until she was no longer sure where she left off and he began. And in life, she never could.

There was more, much more. In waking life, Colin Creevey was beginning to frighten Ginny a little, Hermione was strange and distant, Harry never spoke to her, and Ron acted as if he owned her. In sleep, her mind had reshaped them into bosom companions and understanding friends. All the Slytherins who were still at Hogwarts made her more nervous than she would ever admit, and Ginny often wondered if Millicent Bulstrode, for instance, really was as trustworthy as she seemed. But in the dream, she was. Even Pansy Parkinson had been made over into a sympathetic Slytherin. In real life, not one student could remember the last time anybody had even seen Dumbledore, and there were horrible rumours that he had lost all of his powers, or had died, and the rest of the teachers were trying to keep it covered up. But in her dream, he was still wise and all-knowing. And in the dream, although Molly Weasley had not trusted her daughter, it seemed pretty clear that she eventually would. Ginny doubted that she would ever do it in life. The only thing that kept her mother from marching up the front drive and dragging Ginny out by the ear to keep her imprisoned at home was the fact that getting out of Hogwarts was even more dangerous than staying there.

I wonder why I didn't dream about Dad? thought Ginny. I don't remember him showing up even once. Strange... but who knows, really. In the dream, too, Ginny now realized that she had subtly reshaped the interaction between the twins. Fred flew off on as many tangents as ever, but George seemed able to keep him in orbit, which she was afraid was not happening in life. Her mother didn't even know where they were most of the time, and they were definitely doing dangerous work for the Order. And Ron... Her mouth twisted into a rueful half-smile. True, she had given Harry some very uncharacteristic moments of empathy with Draco. But Ron would always be Ron, and she couldn't seem to create a version of him that would ever have any liking for a Malfoy. Still, he had sworn not to kill Draco the next time he saw the Slytherin boy, which was considerably further than he was ever likely to go in real life. She had changed everyone, reshaping them into the people she wanted them to be.

Ginny understood all too well why she had conjured up the differences she had, and even in a dream, as she now still was, she shivered at that knowledge. Things have gone so wrong. I didn't really understand how wrong, before this.

"But it all seemed so real!" she muttered aloud.

"Didn't it, though," said Loki with a sort of professional pride. "I do very good work, don't I?"

"You mean that you knew about the dream?"

"I brought you the dream. I wrote the script, you might say. Picked your head for unconscious desires, put the whole thing together, added plenty of sex... Glad to know it pleased. Of course, dreary old Dream forced a collaborator on me, which I could've lived without, but I didn't have any choice about that. All for the best, I suppose."

Ginny sunk her head in her hands. There was no question of being angry, of course. Although she dimly wondered why not, she knew that she still walked in a dream, where all things are possible, and whatever happens, simply happens. I wonder what he meant about a collaborator, though? Did he mean Lord Morpheus? No, he couldn't have done, because he said that Dream forced him to accept whoever the collaborator was...

"There were times when I think I was a bit over the top," Loki continued. "Remember when you were standing with Harry Potter under the mistletoe, and you told him the story about me and Baldur and that dreary little plot all the Norse gods had to frame me?" Loki shuddered. "It was all an excuse to get me tied to that rock for the rest of eternity, you know. Well, until Ragnarok, anyway. What do you want to bet Thor secretly gets off on watching me writhe around? I hope you never have to meet him. All he does is talk about the size of his hammer, and--"

"Yes, I remember," Ginny interrupted, shuddering a little at the less-than-pleasant imagery, and forgetting what she had wanted to ask about the collaborator. "But, uh, could we get back to talking about the dream? What I don't understand is why you were allowed to do it. Even with the Chartreuse. I thought that only Lord Morpheus could bring dreams."

Loki shrugged. "Well, he's a tad bit miffed at me. He seems to think that I meddle in the lives of mortals too much. But he can't do anything about it."

"Whyever not?" asked Ginny. "Doesn't he, er, outrank you?"

"Regretfully, yes," sighed Loki. "But all of us Immortals must follow the rules of the universe. And it is written in the stars that you are among those whose destiny interweaves with ours, strangely enough."

"I don't understand at all," admitted Ginny.

"One day, you will," said Loki, and then he grasped her chin in his hand. His touch sent thrills of some unnamable sensation through her veins. The sweetness of her dream was tied up in it somehow, the memory of the dream-Draco's touch, his body upon hers, his low drawling voice whispering words of love in her ear. But it was bitter too, because she knew that she had conjured up in dream the golden boy who was now gone forever, the one she had seen hovering above her on a Quidditch pitch last May and laughing with the rays of the sun shining behind him. He had fallen utterly into darkness, and only the thin, sad ghost of his memory mocked her now.

When she awoke, she would awake to a Hogwarts frozen in fear, and to students scurrying about in tightly knit groups during the day, and whispering horrible stories to each other in the Gryffindor common room every night, all caught in a brooding, waiting terror of whatever would come next. And she would never, never see her Draco again. Even if she did meet him somehow in days to come, even if she did look on his face again, he would not be her golden boy.

"Don't cry," said Loki. "Little mortal, little dreamer! Don't cry." His voice was gentle, and oddly wistful. "Still, I envy you, Gwenhyfar..."

"Why?" she choked out. "Would you want to feel this sort of pain?"

"Immortals can't feel pain," he said. "We know neither joy nor sorrow, loss nor gain, tears nor laughter. We can want things, and strive to get them. But that's not the same. Yes, I envy you."

She looked down upon the scene in her bedroom at Hogwarts. It seemed to be rushing up at her, closer and closer every moment. Now she could see her sleeping face quite clearly, and the tears glistening on her cheeks. The dark man who was the Lord of Dreams brushed his dead-white hand across her face, almost, but not quite, touching it.

"She's beautiful," Loki said musingly. "Isn't she?"

Ginny realized that the god was talking to Lord Morpheus.

"So she is," said Dream, in a voice that was like the dark matter at the heart of galaxies. "As only mortal things can be. For only those things that can die are truly beautiful."

Ginny felt herself fading. Her room in Gryffindor Tower pressed close to her, separated by only the thinnest of veils now.

"Wait, please," she begged.

"The sands of dreaming have run out," said Lord Morpheus.

"There's no more time," agreed Loki. "Pity, really."

"But I still don't understand. Why did I have this dream? Why did you send it to me?"

"You always did want to know why," said Loki. "Well... someday you will, Ginny."

Then they touched her cheeks, one unearthly hand on each side, and she felt the touches of both Immortals as one.

"Awake," they said.

Her eyes snapped open.

August 29^th, 1997

3:00 a.m.

Hogwarts

Ginny sat bolt upright in bed, her heart pounding. She looked around her wildly. Yes, this was her bed, her room; the maroon hangings, the comfortable feel of the cotton sheets, the stuffed bunny she still slept with, secretly... all, all hers. She reached for the crystal pitcher on the bedside table with trembling hands and poured herself a glass of water. It slopped over the edge, and felt very cold on her skin. But the feeling was a good one. It had been scaldingly hot that day, and was supposed to be even worse tomorrow. She sipped it slowly, struggling to come back to full consciousness. She had dreamed something. That, she knew.

She pulled her nightgown away from her body where it had stuck to her skin with sweat. She tried throwing the bedcurtains open, but Millicent was snoring like a buzz saw. And anyway it doesn't help. The room's so hot! Ginny yanked the nightgown over her head after she'd closed the bedcurtains again, ran it along her sweaty arms and over her damp breasts, and cast a Cooling charm. It didn't seem to be working.

She turned over and searched for a cool spot on the pillow. There weren't any. Her eyes snapped open every time she tried to close them. Bits and pieces of the dream were plucking at her mind, but they were too unformed for her to pull them together into any sort of sense. Fred and George had been in it, and so had Harry and Hermione. And Ron close to the end, I think. He was awfully angry. I do sort of remember that. What about, though? He didn't want me to see someone. I can almost remember... someone with silvery blond hair, and very pale skin, and eyes the colour of moonlight. Someone with a low, drawling voice and fingers that knew where to touch me, someone who made me feel pleasure like I've never felt or even imagined....

Ginny gasped. She knew who had made Ron so angry in her dream. And she knew why.

It can't be. No. No. No.

But even as her mind denied the dream, her hand picked up her wand. Quickly, furtively, she cast a Silencing charm around her bed. Then she stripped off her plain white cotton knickers and spread her legs, slipping her hand between them. Again and again, she writhed under her memories of Draco Malfoy, both in the dream, and in waking life. At that moment, she could not have said which was which.

Afterwards, she put her nightgown back on, picked up a dressing-gown, and tiptoed to the bathroom. She took a long shower. The water was so cold that her teeth chattered by the end of it. She wrapped the gown around herself, avoiding her own eyes in the mirror. Never again, she repeated to herself. Never! I mean it this time. But she no longer seemed to remember the dream at all clearly. That was something.

Ginny collapsed on the edge of the bed, staring dully into its closed curtains, doubting she would be able to get back to sleep. After a while, she got up and stood at one of the windows, resting her elbows on the stone sill. She looked out and over the moonlit fields that stretched beyond Gryffindor Tower. She knew that was looking in the direction of the Hogwarts graveyard, although she couldn't see it from here.

The moon is waxing... a week from the full, no more. Lughnasa is coming soon. She tried to reckon the date out on her fingers, but nobody at Hogwarts had been paying attention to the coming holiday, and its exact timing was very complicated to figure out. It depended on so many things--the phases of the moon, the ripeness of the crops, the precise hour of sunrise and sunset. At last, she gave it up and just stared, wondering if she should try lying back down again. The memory of her dream had let go of her mind almost entirely, except for a few leftover scraps. Something about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks and Luna Lovegood, Millicent Bulstrode and pumpkin juice, embracing Harry tightly as they both stood in the clock tower, knowing she didn't love him the way she had once thought she would always love him... Then Tonks came to get him, and he left with her. They threw snowballs at each other, and I... I stood and thought about Sirius Black. Yes, and the summer before my fourth year, when I saw him last.

These were thoughts that Ginny had avoided for a long time. Yet they seemed much safer than thinking about anything else from her dream. So she let her mind range over strange things that she didn't usually think about, and hadn't remembered clearly in years. She had been remembering them in her dream, the events of that last summer at Twelve Grimmauld Place, the last summer before the world began to fall apart. She had been remembering Sirius Black.

And finally, her eyelids did begin to droop. Ginny yawned hugely and decided that it was time to go back to bed. An idea struck her as she closed her bed-curtains again.

I'll go to his grave tomorrow. That's what I'll do. I have the whole day free. Not that there's really a grave, not exactly... because there never was a body... oh, Sirius... But that memorial they put up for him is at Hogwarts, I know; Harry's there all the time. I haven't been able to go yet... not just yet. But tomorrow... tomorrow, I think I will.

August 29^th, 1997

3:00 a.m.

Malfoy Manor

Draco's eyes snapped open to absolute darkness, pressing in upon him like a solid thing. He gave a loud gasp, sat up, and clawed wildly at the bed hangings. The curtains ripped from their metal rings with a little clanging sound, and he saw the dim shapes of his four-poster bed, his bedside table, the crystal water pitcher he always kept there, and the shape of the bay window outlined by the moon that glowed behind clouds in the sky.

"Open the door," he muttered. As soon as the words left his lips, he no longer knew what they meant.

He sank back against the headboard. I'm here, he told himself, idiotically. It's all right. I'm in my bedroom, in my bed. It was only a dream. A nightmare, I think. Or... or was it? Whatever his dream had been, it was so vivid that its shape still clung to him, although nearly all the details seemed to have faded instantly from his mind. Something about Diagon Alley, and that shop the Weasley twins have there. Pansy Parkinson too. It really must have been a nightmare. Yet there had been some piercing sweetness in it that slipped through his fingers even as he tried to grasp at the memory. Something to do with Christmas, and a crackling fire. A yellow-green silk gown, and the taste of Chartreuse on my tongue... Draco sighed. He could remember no more of the dream, but he thought he knew now why he'd had it in the first place.

He'd been out with Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott very late last night in Hogsmeade, and they'd gotten very drunk. For some strange reason, Zabini had thought it was amusing to get everybody to drink Chartreuse. "It brings vivid dreams," he'd said.

"Do you really think we need that?" Draco had asked dryly. The three boys had looked at each other then, their faces a little dim through the thick clouds of smoke that always seemed to hover in the air at the Hog's Head, and for an instant each one of them had seen the deadly fear in the eyes of the others, the fear they dared not admit. They all knew what lay ahead of them the next day.

"Yes, I think that's exactly what we need," Zabini had finally said, and Nott, who never said anything, had just nodded. All three of them had drained their small dirty glasses filled with the yellow-green liquid that looked so much like dragon's blood. The taste was complex and bitter, not exactly pleasant. But Draco had kept ordering more, and the silent bartender with the long beard and the piercing eyes had kept bringing the glasses to the table, long after Nott and Zabini had gone upstairs with a couple of giggling girls they'd met out in the alley. At least, Draco had thought they were girls. In the Hog's Head, you could never be too sure of anything.

They'd invited him to come with them. "Not tonight," he had said, and the other two had shrugged and gone upstairs, eager for the girls. He couldn't blame them. They wanted to forget what was ahead of them for a little while. But Draco didn't want to forget in that way, that night. He drank Chartreuse until the room blurred into obscurity, and then he sat with his head on his folded arms for a long time, hovering between sleep and waking. A silent woman with strands of red hair peeping out from under a headscarf wiped his table and refilled his glass at intervals. Another woman at the bar sang a song which seemed to go on for hours.

Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you

Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you

But in your dreams, whatever they be...

Dream a little dream of me.

At last, when Nott and Zabini still hadn't come back, he got up rather unsteadily to leave.

"Tell my friends I've gone home," he told the bartender, who nodded. "I'll see them... I'll see them tomorrow. Just tell them that. They'll know what I mean." And he had Apparated back to Malfoy Manor, knowing full well how dangerous it was to do that in his drunken state.

He had fallen into bed, too tired to even take his shoes off, and he had fallen into dream.

But what did I dream?

Draco knew from experience that it was no good trying to force memories of a dream; that only caused them to fade faster. He rolled over and stared at the carved wooden ceiling of the bedstead, and his mind meandered over the events of the previous night a bit more. He'd almost gone upstairs with the others. Nott had found a girl for him, one with long red hair and a pretty face, her cheekbones high, her chin pointed. That made Draco look at him narrowly. Not for the first time, he wondered exactly how much Theodore Nott saw, and how much he knew. He was a clever loner who'd started hanging about with Draco's gang only this year, and Draco had never known how far to trust him. But, keep your friends close, and your enemies closer... But perhaps he would have been more likely to go with the girl if she hadn't appealed to him so much. Draco hadn't wanted to enjoy himself. He'd wanted to roll in beastliness. And he would have found some pleasure with that girl, because she was...

Just like the one that I told someone I'd once known, in my dream. The memory floated to him, whole and complete. He'd been lying in a bed and telling someone about his first lover, an older girl with long red hair and bright brown eyes who worked at the Crystal Palace. And in the dream, the story had been true. Draco couldn't remember any more though.

The story wasn't really true, of course. More's the pity. He grimaced horribly at the memory of what had finally happened with Pansy Parkinson during the Christmas hols a year and a half before, when he'd been halfway through his fifth year. It had been just after his father had told him to begin talking to Ginny Weasley, and only a few days after he'd found her on the Quidditch pitch, practicing for the Gryffindor tryouts.

The day before had been his sixteenth birthday, and Draco had been brought into a ritual of power held in the great room under Stonehenge for the very first time. It had been a fairly minor one; its purpose was to set up automatic Apparition links between Azkaban and Stonehenge.

"They may be needed in the future," Lucius Malfoy had said cryptically.

"Will there be other rituals?"

"Oh, yes. There is another that I hope to hold this week. A much more important one, as well."

"And will I be a part of that one too?" Draco had asked, half-suspicious, half-resentful, trying to conceal both emotions and aware that he was not succeeding very well.

"Yes," was all that his father had said in reply. But Draco had smiled.

Draco had been fascinated and awestruck by the aura of power that permeated the silent room beneath the standing stone, and he had taken part eagerly. Deep down, there was a hidden bit of relief in him that the ritual had only involved chanting and black robes and potions poured out upon the great stone altar. There were no... sacrifices, as he'd heard there sometimes were. But afterwards, he had been seized by a strange, shivering feeling of sickness that ran through his entire body, and a desperate urge to forget what he had just done. He couldn't understand why. He'd been waiting so long for his father to trust him enough to include him in things like this.

The days of the winter holidays passed, and the rituals continued. One of them had taken almost everything he had. He had been ill in bed for days afterwards, knowing that it had not succeeded in the way his father had hoped, and feeling the weight of that disapproval. Just before the end of the holidays, when he was feeling a bit better, he'd found a bottle of Firewhisky and was drinking straight from it while he trudged upstairs to his room after midnight. It was the first time that he'd been out of bed all day since the failed ritual. He was so exhausted that at first the sight of Pansy Parkinson in his bed didn't really register. And then it did. She was there for the Yuletide ball, but had stayed for a few days afterwards. She'd had all too much to do with the rituals herself, although Draco tried not to think about that. And she'd changed from the pink robes she'd been wearing earlier into chartreuse-coloured lingerie.

"Hello, Draco," she said.

"You look simply dreadful in that colour," he said.

She crooked her finger to him in a beckoning gesture. "Come here." Her dark eyes glittered like onyx.

He wondered what she wanted, but he believed that he already knew. Why else would she be lying in his bed, wearing only a skimpy scrap of silk? She had to be offering what he had wanted for so long, and had come to believe that she would never give to him. And yet... why now?

This can't be happening, he thought, without the slightest trace of excitement. What's she really playing at, I wonder? "I'm very tired," he said flatly.

"Then come to bed."

Not if you're in it, he thought. Yet the silk robe she wore had slipped down her shoulder, and at the sight of her left breast peeping out, Draco could not look away.

"Is that Firewhisky?" she asked. "Give me some."

Without a word, she walked forward and handed it to her. She drank, putting a hand on his wrist to lift the bottle to her lips. The robe slipped even further. Both of her small, hard breasts were entirely visible now. He could not take his eyes off them.

When she had nearly drained the bottle, she handed it back to him, and he finished it. His head was beginning to spin, and he knew that he would either lie down or fall down. He'd meant to end up on the floor, but her little hands were on him and somehow he ended up clumsily landing on top of her. Pansy stiffened momentarily, and Draco thought she was going to push him off her, as she so often had.

"Want me to leave?" he asked mockingly. "I don't think I will, though, as it's my room, and my bed."

"No," she whispered. "I--I don't, Draco." Her voice was oddly soft, and her face was very pretty a few centimeters from his, with its large dark eyes and small pink lips. Draco hesitated. I really should get up. There are about a million spare bedrooms I could sleep in. I don't think I'll get her out of here, and I don't want to sleep in this bed with her in it, Merlin knows. If I had any sense I'd leave right now...

But her little arms twined themselves around him like writhing snakes, and pulled his head down to hers, and then she was kissing him. Her mouth was too small, and her body under his was too thin and bony, but it burned with a heat he could not escape. A dark rushing seemed to fill Draco's head. Her hand went down to the waistband of his trousers and began to unbutton his fly. His head jerked up.

"What--"

"Shh," she said.

Malfoy, you fool! Get up! But he could not. He stared at her left shoulder as she pushed the trousers past his knees, and then his boxers. The silk chartreuse robe had fallen below her waist, and it shimmered against her sallow skin. He closed his eyes. For an instant, he imagined it shining against skin that was fair and creamy, with a lock of red-gold hair falling over the fabric. When he opened his eyes again, the contrast was shocking. Draco gritted his teeth. If I do this, it will be the worst mistake I've ever made in my life, he realized, in a moment of sudden clarity. He didn't even know why he was so sure, but nearly five years of training in all the magical arts had taught him when to trust his instincts. He knew only that he was at a turning point, however dimly he understood its nature. He tried to push himself back from her.

"Pansy, I really don't think we should--"

"Shut up, Draco," Pansy said, and then she pressed her little hand between his legs and wrapped her burning hot fingers around his erection. Where the hell did that come from? I don't want this--I don't want her-- Oh, Gods! What's she doing? I can't--I can't-- His hands had been propped against the bed, trying to push himself up, but they fell back. It was as if he had been touched by fire. Whatever had been happening in his mind simply vanished, as if a giant eraser had been rubbed over it. Draco wanted her no more than ever, but apparently his body had other plans. He pushed her down onto the bed. She wore no knickers, which, he thought, certainly simplified matters. There was nothing between him and her. Nothing between him and the worst mistake of his life.

Her legs parted for him and he fell between them. Even then, Draco thought that he might have somehow got away from her, but gravity itself seemed to be working against him. He slipped inside her before he even realized what had happened, and the flaming wet heat of her sex choked his breath in his throat. His body took over from his mind, and he thrust into her again and again, picking up speed, fucking her hard and fast, closing off the awareness of everything but the sheer physical sensations bursting through him. And then the swift violent pleasure seized him, and Draco felt himself letting go, spilling into her, biting her neck, sobbing something incoherent. Whatever his words were, she stiffened when she heard them. And then it was over, almost before it had begun.

Afterwards, she pulled the robe back up and lay by his side, not speaking. He did not dare open his mouth.

"What was that for?" he finally asked.

"Well, happy birthday, Draco," she said.

"Oh."

"Is there any Firewhisky left? Give it to me." Her face was cold and set.

He wanted to hurt her. He wanted to shake all of her secrets out of her, because he was sure that she had them. He wanted to ask her what he said in the throes of his orgasm, and he was afraid that he already knew exactly what he had said.

"Get out," he said.

She rose, wrapping a blanket around herself. She seemed glad to go, he thought. "Never let anyone say romance is dead," she said. He remembered when he had said almost exactly the same thing to her after their last abortive encounter in the stables, nearly six months before.

"I shouldn't talk about romance if I were you."

""Oh? And why is that?" Her voice was almost amused.

He did not exactly answer her question. "You weren't a virgin, were you, Pansy?" he asked instead.

"How would you know?" She drained the bottle of its last drops. "You certainly didn't have any experience; it wasn't hard to tell that."

Draco looked away. She was right, of course. "I'm not as thick as you seem to think I am, Pansy."

"You're right," she said, indifferently. "You weren't the first. Don't tell me you care."

"No, I'm relieved rather than otherwise," he said coldly. "I didn't much want to be your first."

"But I was yours," she said. Her voice was weary, rather than triumphant. Draco looked away. He wanted to weep. He would sooner have died than do it in front of Pansy.

"Are you ever going to get out of here?" he asked.

After she had gone, Draco curled up into a small ball on his bed. Despising himself, despising her, he still would have liked to weep. But he knew that he could not. He had wanted this thing to happen for so long, and now that it had, it was dust and ashes in his mouth. It wasn't what I wanted, was all he could think, again and again. I wanted it, yes, but... not from her. Not from Pansy. Not like this.

But that didn't keep it from happening with Pansy again, and again, although Draco made a point of rather methodically sleeping with all the other willing girls he could find, as well. Some of them he detested, like Sadina von Tussel. But those made him feel that he was punishing himself in the way he needed to do. Some he thought were rather good sorts, like Millicent Bulstrode. And those pleased him a little, because then he felt that he was doing these things with someone he didn't actually dislike. But none of them had ever satisfied him for long, and he'd kept snatching meetings with Ginny Weasley whenever he could, no longer able to sort out all of his own motivations for doing so, half-afraid, sometimes, to look into the bright innocence of her golden eyes.

As I looked into them when I told her about my first lover, the one my mind conjured up for that dream, the one that looked like her. But she wasn't innocent any longer, Ginny Weasley, not by then. Because I had just--we had just--

Draco swore a violent oath and punched his fist into the mahogany bedstead. He cradled his throbbing knuckles, wishing that the pain would wipe out the memory of the dream. He knew, now, what he had done.

In his dream, he had made love to Ginny Weasley, and she had been the virgin that Pansy was not, that none of his other lovers had been. None of them had ever responded to him in quite the way that she had. She had sighed and moaned and shuddered in his arms, and he had cried out his passion as he was seized by the greatest pleasure he had ever known, his body racked with sensations the like of which he had only imagined--

"No!" he said aloud.

Then, as if his body and mind were utterly divorced from each other, he rolled over onto his back and yanked down the bottom half of his pyjamas. His hand closed around himself, and he relived every detail of his lovemaking with Ginny Weasley until he exploded in tremendous, almost painful shudders.

Slowly, he subsided, biting his lip, staring into the darkness. It's never been like that before, he thought. Wanking off had been a welcome convenience since he was twelve years old, and it certainly was necessary on the nights when he hadn't managed to maneuver some girl or other into bed. That was all. But this...

He kept staring, letting his mind drift back to its moorings. At some point, he realized that he could no longer clearly remember anything specific about the dream. It was as if the violent pleasure of the act had struck the memories into flame, and then burned them out of his head. Good. And yet...

Only a dream, Draco silently repeated over and over. Only a dream. I can't be blamed for what goes on in my dreams, can I? I don't have any control over them. He wondered what Ziggy, the ghost librarian of the Malfoy library, would say to that. I managed to wrap up sex and betrayal and death, all in one dream. But it was only a dream!

"Only a dream." Saying the words aloud seemed to help a bit.

Draco turned over, staring sleeplessly into the bedcurtains, already knowing that he would get no more sleep that night. But it doesn't matter. I will still do what I must do tomorrow, at Hogwarts.

Finally, in the darkest part of the night, he did fall asleep again. Draco did not dream any more, but the face of Ginny Weasley hovered in his mind's eye, indelible. By morning, however, he would forget her. He was sure of it.

And I have, he told himself firmly as he dressed in black robes for the day that lay ahead. Completely. By the time the Death Eaters had gathered to leave for Hogwarts, he had almost convinced himself of the idea.

They stood talking in little groups in a lower drawing-room, and he watched the black-clad figures in a mirror over an unused fireplace with an odd sense of unreality. His own face looked back at him, very white and set. He raised his hand to his lips. Something of the feel of the dream was still clinging to him, in these last moments before he left. She touched my lips, I think, Ginny did, in the dream... I remember the feel of her fingers... And then I told her to open the door. She reached out for the doorknob. That's when I woke up. But first... first she looked back at me. She smiled at me. There was something on her face that I have never seen on the face of another living being, never, never. And it was all for me...

"Ginny," he whispered to his own reflection. "Ginny Weasley."

And he knew it was the name that he had seemed to know all his life, long before he had ever even met the girl. It was the name he had cried out as he lost his virginity in Pansy Parkinson's arms. It was the name he had conjured up in his dreams of possession, and his fantasies of revenge. It was the name that had always haunted him, and always would. And it was the name that he must never speak or remember or think about again.

Oh, really? a still, small voice in his head asked, mockingly. But what will you do if you see her today, Draco? Hmmm? You might, you know. Do you want to look on her face again, or do you fear it? And do you know the difference anymore between what you want, and what you fear? Have you ever known it?

If it weren't for that bloody dream, he thought, I wouldn't even be thinking these mad things. And he knew that it was true. He had burnt all the memories of Ginny Weasley out of his head... or so he had thought.

Stop haunting me. Get out of my mind. Go away. I gave you up; I had to give you up. Let go of me, as I let go of you...

A figure stepped up behind him. He did not turn his head, but he watched the man in the mirror, and it was like simply seeing himself mirrored again.

"Draco," said Lucius Malfoy. "Did you say something?"

"No. Father. Nothing at all."

"Are you ready?"

"I am," said Draco. And he turned away, wondering if what he had said was the truth. But even if it isn't, it can't make any difference--it mustn't. This is my fate. There's no escaping it. I've always known that.

He opened the French double doors that led to the secret garden where the heavenly creatures were kept. He stepped through the shimmering web of spells. The very air was heavy with the magical forces that thrummed through this place. None of the others could follow him; not his father, not any of the Death Eaters. He, and he alone, held the power that controlled these unearthly creatures, although he frequently wondered if they ever really could be under anyone's control. Sometimes he thought that they were using him for purposes of their own.

He stood in the centre of the garden, breathing deeply, reaching out with his mind to feel the majestic, unnatural energy radiating from the creatures. They felt restless today, fragmented and eager. Perhaps they knew that their power was about to be unleashed. Draco walked among them, not quite touching any of them, since they were never meant to be touched by any mortal being, soothing them, gentling them. They subsided into a strong hum of magical energy, like a tremendous hive of bees. Ready to sting, Draco thought. I will need all the strength that is in me today, to control them... no, they can't really be controlled. To direct them, then, into the paths we want. I don't even know if all my strength is enough. He reached up to his neck and touched the silver locket that lay around it, the one that could now be seen and felt in normal time and space, after the last ritual of power. The Dark Lord himself had placed it around Draco's neck at last in the last great ceremony below Stonehenge the week before. They had never been able to find the second one, but Lord Voldemort had decided that it most likely wasn't necessary for their purposes.

If he was to have any hope of channeling the vast destructive energy of the heavenly creatures, he needed to wear it all the time. This thing's a constant drain on me, though. I'll be glad to take it off when we've done. It just seems to take so much from me, to lower my defenses so much...it leaves me open to things...that's probably why I had that dream...

And the locket was in the dream, as well...

Draco stared out over the raked marble paths of the garden without really seeing them. The sky was fiercely blue, like some molten substance, and the sun beat down in waves upon his head as he remembered.

He had stood next to Ginny at a large, circular table, and looked into Dumbledore's eyes. They had been as blue as the summer sky in the old wizard's face, and they had locked steadily onto his. Then Dumbledore had put the locket around his neck. But, no--that's impossible. The locket came from Lord Voldemort. Only his power could have brought it to me, and made it safe for me... Dumbledore could never have had anything to do with it. Draco reached up and touched the locket, badly unsettled.

But in the dream, he did. And before he gave it to me, he made me swear things... and as I swore, I held Ginny's hand in mine. He didn't know it, but it was really to her that I swore...

His father's impatient voice called across the garden, inside the double French doors. .

"Draco! Are you ready? We can start setting up the Apparition Keys into Hogwarts, but the process won't work if you aren't in the room."

"Yes," he replied automatically. Open the door. The words he had spoken when he awoke that morning ran through his head again. He hadn't known what they meant then. He didn't know now. But a chill ran all through him. He turned abruptly from where he had been standing. That dream opened a door in me that I had closed, Draco thought. I thought it was shut forever. It isn't fair that it shouldn't be shut, that I should still be struggling to close it, on this day of all days. No, it isn't fair at all. But still -- I am sworn, too, to what I must do today.

"And it's too late to do anything else," he whispered. And he went back into the dark coolness of the house.

August 29^th, 1997

Noon

Hogwarts

In a little twelve-sided room at the very top of the clock tower at the edge of the Hogwarts grounds, Albus Dumbledore opened his eyes.

The journey back from the dream had been very long for him, and he had wondered, indeed, if he would be able to find his way into the waking world again. And if I had not, he thought, that would have been the price that I must pay. I have been spared that, at least; we have all been spared that. My strength may still be needed today. But will it be enough, I wonder?

He sighed deeply and rose from the papa-san chair below the window. He poured himself a cup of steaming tea from the teapot on the round table. It gave a disdainful sniff.

"Twelve hours I've been waiting," it said. "Well, I certainly hope you like your tea stewed strong enough to double as magical spot remover, Headmaster, because that's exactly what it'll be--mmmph--"

Dumbledore clapped a large and hideous tea cozy embroidered with cabbage roses over the teapot, which shut it up quite effectively. Then he walked very slowly to the small, high window set into the tower wall and looked out over the grounds, sipping at the tea.

A dot of a figure walked purposefully across the fields on the other side of Hagrid's hut, heading for the Hogwarts cemetery. He recognized it as Ginny Weasley. Dumbledore's face creased into a faint smile. He watched her tenderly, yet there was a strange expression on his face that might almost have been described as ruthless.

Can she bear the burden, I wonder? I cannot say. I cannot predict the strength of her mind; she has always been a mystery to me in that respect, more than any other student I have ever known, I think. But... but Loki promised that he will be kind to her when he tells her the truth about what happened two years ago. Kind as Immortals understand kindness, at least. Why is he telling her today, though; why not two years before, when it might have made all the difference? But then, what mortal can guess at the choices of immortality?

The Headmaster gave another long, unconscious sigh, and felt the lingering weakness in his legs for the first time, and the fierce aching in his bones. Muggles have an expression for this, I believe. They say that the machine is running out. But it's more than that, of course. He thought of the bargain he had made with Lord Morpheus two years before, of the boon he had been granted, and of what he had sacrificed in exchange for the right to enter this Lughnasa dream, and to shape its path as best he could. He still didn't know if the price had been too high.

But it is a price that all men must pay, in any case. I cannot live forever. Nor would I wish to do so. The sky was molten bright blue, and he stared into its vastness, scanning the flat surface for the faintest trace of cloud. There was none. Let me only live long enough to put my power into hands that have been prepared to take it, he thought, not knowing to whom this prayer, or wish, was addressed.

Was it only his imagination, or did he hear the faint, mocking laughter of Loki in some far distance as he turned away from the window?

No matter, thought Dumbledore, sinking back into the chair, letting his mind drift, preparing all his waning strength to meet what he knew lay ahead of him on this day. I have done what I can do. The burden has passed on, or very near. It depends on the rest now, on all of them... all the students, all the teachers, all the Aurors and witches and wizards of our world, the world that may be nearing its end...

Strange, that I should have thought for so long that all hinged only on Harry's decision. Vital as he is, he does not stand alone. I have been deceived in that regard. It is little comfort to know that it was by a master of deception, as Voldemort is. I did not understand the importance of Draco Malfoy and Ginny Weasley until it was nearly too later, and it yet may be. Their decisions may bring us to victory, or to defeat. For we stand at the brink. Either our hope comes soon, or all hope's end. Hmmmm...now, I wonder where I heard that...

And, as Dumbledore tried to remember, his mind drifted into a peaceful sleep.

It seemed that the world slept too at that moment, drowsing uneasily under the bright hot tight blue sky, the soft rustle of the wind in the dead brown grasses too soft to disturb its fragmented dreams. Draco dozed a little on a couch in the unused morning-room as Lucius Malfoy and Thomas Nott set up the complex Apparition Keys to Hogwarts. Luna had fallen asleep in the field just outside the cemetery, her half-finished daisy chain wilting in her lap, the heat withering the white petals of the flowers. Millicent had grown exhausted wandering in the Forbidden Forest and propped herself up against a rock for a short rest. Luckily, she was now snoring so loudly that she scared away all the centaurs for a radius of several miles. Ron and Hermione slumbered uneasily in his bed in Gryffindor Tower, sometimes clasped in each other's arms, and sometimes huddled on opposite sides. The relief of tension had finally come for them, and they were both too exhausted by many sleepless nights to stay awake after that release. Harry sat and stared into the dead fireplace in the Gryffindor common room, oblivious to everything outside his troubled mind. And Ginny lay tranced in the magic circle of roses that Loki had created, her mind wandering through the last days at Twelve Grimmauld Place before Harry had come to stay, two years before. But no-one slept peacefully except for Dumbledore. They all had unconscious frowns on their faces, and ground their teeth together in their sleep, mumbling restlessly, hands reaching out to clutch at nothing. Every living thing waited tautly for wakefulness.

And soon, the time of waking would come.

~end~