The Quick and the Dead

They walked through the barren trees at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, the mingled steam of their breaths rising in the air. The only sound was the crunching of three pairs of feet on the snow, and Ron was glad. He couldn't have tried to keep up a conversation of any sort just then. He saw the complex of stone buildings that made up Hogwarts rising in the distance before them, dark against the pale wintry sky, and he could have put no words to how he felt upon seeing them again. He had avoided the place for almost a year.

"This way," he said quietly when they climbed the hill to the rear of the main keep of the castle. He led them to a small stone door tucked behind a weeping willow tree.

"A back door, Ron?" Hermione asked. "How did you know about that?"

"Oh--" Harry grinned. "I did as well. We learned about it from Fred and George, of course; who else?"

"Hmmph," said Hermione. "I never knew about it."

Harry gave Ron just the slightest hint of a conspiratorial grin, and Ron remembered the times they had skived off classes and escaped out that door, knowing Hermione wouldn't approve. It was much less risky than any of the hidden passageways. Perhaps if I only remember things like that, thought Ron, the fun things, the sunny days we'd sit on those rocks and eat Chocolate Frogs... perhaps I can get through this all right. I reckon I can do it. If I don't think about anything that happened after I graduated Hogwarts, I think it'll work.

The door opened into the rear of the corridor, just beneath the large oil painting of a bowl filled with fruit. Ron had never noticed before how very dark the painting was. Only a few spears of painted light dappled the oranges and apples and bananas. They all seemed almost rotten, too; on the very edge of turning. Why didn't I ever see that before? He thought in a confused way. Not that it matters now, I suppose...

Harry turned to Ron. "D'you want to..." Ron shook his head. Harry looked back at him for a moment. The light in the passageway was too dim to tell what the expression on his face might be, but he finally shrugged and reached out to tickle the pear.

The other house-elves did not behave as Ron remembered them to do whenever students made it into the kitchens. Certainly, they didn't offer food. They stole quick glances at the three new visitors, then returned to their work at stoves and sinks and preparation tables.

"Where's Dobby?" muttered Harry out of one corner of his mouth.

"I don't know, but I hope we find him soon," said Hermione. "I wonder if they're acting this way because I'm here, or if--" She broke off and pointed towards the huge brick fireplace at the far end of the room. Dobby stood in front of it, earnestly talking to another house-elf . At least--Ron squinted at it--he thought it was a house-elf. Dobby looked more or less the same way he'd looked every time Ron had ever seen him, from the hideous sock collection to an orange-and-purple striped hat jammed haphazardly over his huge ears. But the house-elf he was talking to looked--odd, somehow; just a little off. She was taller than most house-elves, her ears smaller and her hair longer, and she wore a neat little robe with flowers printed on it. .

"Stay back for a moment," said Harry, frowning slightly. "I think I may have an idea of what the problem is. Let me talk to Dobby first."

Hermione rolled her eyes, but she and Ron stayed near an unused butcher block table tucked into a small alcove. "I wonder who that could be," said Hermione, pointing towards the female house-elf next to Dobby. "She must be fairly new."

"She certainly wasn't here my seventh year," said Ron.

"Odd, isn't it? You usually can't tell the gender of a house-elf very well, but the second I laid eyes on her, I knew she was female. I wonder what--"

Dobby turned round at Harry's approaching footsteps. "Harry Potter, sir!" the house-elf said delightedly. "Dobby has not seen Harry Potter in so long, so very, very long!"

"I'm awfully sorry," said Harry. "But I've been in Auror training, at the re-opened school. We hardly get any time off at all, and-"

"Dobby made a calendar, to count off the days until Harry Potter came back," the house-elf said happily. He began digging in the pockets of his red and purple plaid jumper. "It was here yesterday... Dobby would love to show..."

"Never mind about that now, Dobby," Harry said hurriedly. "Listen, I've simply got to ask you some questions, and I haven't got a lot of time. Is there somewhere we could go to, er, talk privately?"

An enormous, blissful grin spread over Dobby's face from ear to ear. Ron wondered if the entire top half of his head was actually about to come loose and topple to the ground. "Dobby would be happy to help!" With amazing speed, the house-elf took Harry's wrist and propelled him to the little alcove where Ron and Hermione were hiding. They had time to do no more than scramble out of the way so that Harry didn't actually smack into them. Dobby looked up at them, his enormous smile fading a little.

"But you have brought your friends, Harry Potter--Miss Granger and Sir Wheezy--yes, yes..." His voice trailed off, and he looked at them strangely. Harry's brow furrowed.

"Is there any reason I shouldn't have brought them?" he asked.

"No... no..." Dobby glanced around a little furtively, and squeezed even further into the alcove. "What does Harry Potter want to know?"

Harry exchanged looks with Ron and Hermione. Both of them shrugged very slightly. He turned back to Dobby.

"I want to know about the Malfoys," he said firmly.

Good luck finding out anything, mate, thought Ron. There'd never been a single house-elf that had set foot across the threshold of the Burrow in the existence of all the Weasleys, but even he knew how hard it was to get them to reveal anything about former masters.

But Dobby seemed almost relieved. "Dobby will tell you whatever he can be saying, sir."

"Whatever you can say?" asked Harry. "So there are things you couldn't tell me if you wanted to?"

Dobby nodded earnestly. "There are things no house-elf could say about those to whom we once were bound. It is a law of our kind. Some secrets, we cannot reveal. But there is much that Dobby can tell."

"All right." Harry tapped his chin with his forefinger. "You told me once that the Malfoys were very bad wizards, Dobby. That was true?"

The house-elf nodded.

"What sort of things did they do?"

"Bad things, very bad things." Dobby sighed.

"Yes, but what sort?"

Dobby began to wring his hands and to look from side to side in a panicky way.

"Maybe if you could just tell us general things, Dobby," suggested Hermione. "Nothing specific, if you can't say it."

"Many... Dark Arts things in that house." Dobby bit his lip. "Much Dark knowledge. Evil things, evil ways, evil thoughts built up over hundreds and thousands of years."

"Did it have anything to do with Stonehenge?" asked Hermione quietly.

"Not exactly... that was something else... something in the land. Not evil maybe, but not having to do with mortal things... with humans, or with house-elfs. Something that gave them power. Power for what they wanted..." He shivered.

"Yes," said Harry patiently, "but what did the Malfoys actually do with the power they had?"

"They..."

"Don't be afraid," said Harry. "There's nothing to be afraid of, I swear. Just tell us."

"They..." Dobby seemed unable to get past that word.

"What?" hissed Ron, his patience fraying. "Tell us! Do you know how important this is! Do you know how--"

Dobby stood motionless for another moment. Then he ran over to the large wooden table and started to bang his head against it. "Bad Dobby! Bad Dobby! Bad-"

"Oh God, not this again," groaned Harry. "Get his arms, Ron, would you?"

House-elves, thought Ron, were amazingly strong. Still, they eventually got Dobby subdued and sitting in a corner, where he could not seem to stop weeping.

"Can you tell us anything more?" Harry finally asked, after the house-elf had gone through all the handkerchiefs the three of them had. Dobby made an odd, helpless gesture with his shoulders and sniffled loudly. Hermione handed him a shredded Kleenex from her pocket. A desperate idea struck Ron.

"Dobby," he said quietly.

"Master Wheezy, sir?" said Dobby, between sniffs.

Ron crouched on the floor so that he was looking into Dobby's lamplike eyes. "I'm the one who wants to know about the Malfoys," he said. "It isn't Harry." He prayed that that wasn't the worst possible thing to say.

"Why-" sniffle "- why does sir want to know?"

"Because--well, you know that my sister disappeared two and a half years ago, don't you? Remember Ginny?"

"Yes," said Dobby sadly. "That is why none of the other house-elfs will talk to Harry Potter, and Sir Wheezy, and Miss Granger."

"What?" asked Harry. But Ron wasn't nearly as surprised as he thought Harry sounded to be.

"House-elfs are very superstitious," Dobby continued. "They think there was something odd about Miss Wheezy's disappearance. Something strange."

"What, though?" asked Ron as calmly as he could.

"Dobby does not know," the house-elf said sadly. "Dobby does not talk to any of them very much anymore. Except for Polly."

"Polly..." said Hermione. "Was she the house-elf we saw you talking to by the fireplace, Dobby?"

"Oh, yes. Polly has been working at Hogwarts for a year now, and Dobby loves to talk to her."

"Who is she, though?" asked Harry.

"Polly is Dobby's half- sister," the house-elf said.

"Oh--she doesn't look a bit like you," said Hermione.

"Polly does not look much like any of Dobby's family. She is not all house-elf, you see. The rumor is that long, long ago, Polly's ancestor was a wood-elf," said Dobby. "And so she is too independent to be a good house-elf. But she likes Hogwarts."

Ron felt a strange jolt of excitement. A plan was starting to form in his head as Dobby spoke, and he prayed that it would be possible. "Has she ever worked for the Malfoys, Dobby?"

"Oh, no." Dobby shook his head. "No, Polly was not willing to work for them, not at all. Dobby asked her long ago, but she always said no."

Ron took a deep breath. "Think she'd be willing to do it now?"

***

"Polly, this is Master Ron Wheezy, sir," Dobby said nervously, stepping slightly behind Ron. The female house-elf gave Ron a long, appraising look. How absolutely weird, he thought. I don't think I've ever had a house-elf look straight at me like that. She didn't speak.

"Sir has a very special favor to ask Polly," said Dobby, shifting nervously from foot to foot. "A very important favor, yes, yes..."

Still she stared at him unblinkingly with huge hazel eyes. Her hair was very thick and brown, he saw now, and she wore it gathered into a ponytail.

"Er--I'm very pleased to meet you, Polly," Ron said.

She nodded.

"The thing is," he continued, "that there's something I need to know desperately. And I don't see who could possibly find it out besides you." He rather hoped that bit of flattery would unbend Polly a little, but it did not. Inwardly, he groaned.

"There's a house to the South of here, in the Midlands," he said, "er, a manor really. Belongs to a great wizarding family, one of those that has loads of house-elves. And I have to find out if someone's in it."

At last, she spoke. "And why do you need me to help you, sir?" Her voice was low and raspy. Behind Ron, Hermione poked him in the ribs and hissed something in Harry's ear. Ron realized that it was the first time he'd ever heard a house-elf use any personal pronouns.

"Because it's a magically shielded house," Ron said honestly. "It's Unplottable; no witch or wizard can even find out where it is. But a house-elf could get in--or, well, that's what my friend Hermione tells me at least."

"I have heard of Miss Granger," said Polly, giving Hermione an appraising look. "Which family owns this house?"

"The Malfoys." Immediately, Ron was afraid he'd made a fatal mistake. Polly stiffened visibly.

"I know who they are. What they are. My brother barely escaped them," she said. "And you wish me to go there?"

"It is very important, Polly," Dobby said angrily. "Dobby would go back to that house if he could!"

"Er, there's only one of them left now," Ron said rather lamely. "Draco Malfoy. His mother and father both died. So I don't think it'd be too dangerous really."

"Then you think wrong, sir," said Polly.

Behind him, Ron could hear Hermione's small gasp. This was definitely not normal behavior for house-elves. He clenched his teeth, struggling with the rage that wanted to rise in him.

"Why do you wish me to go, sir?" Polly asked.

Ron closed his eyes for a moment, taking deep breaths. Then he crouched so that he was at eye level with the female house-elf, and looked directly into her eyes. There were flecks of green and grey in them, he saw now. "I think Draco Malfoy's got my sister," he said, and despite his best efforts, his voice cracked with the tears he would not, could not shed. Then he felt a light touch on his shoulder. He looked up to see that Polly had placed her little hand on his robes.

"I will go," she said.

***

"Do you really think we'll learn anything from her?" asked Harry as they all trudged back to the Apparition point.

"I don't know," said Hermione. "House-elves certainly do get to observe almost everything that goes on in a household. But..."

"What?" asked Harry.

Hermione jerked her head at Ron, almost imperceptibly. But not quite. Ron sighed.

"Hermione, whatever it is you want to say, you can just say it," he said.

Hermione adjusted her balaclava around her mouth, so that her next words were muffled. "If Ginny's in that house, I think that Polly will see her sooner or later. Unless... er..."

"Unless she's dead," said Ron. "That's what you meant, isn't it? A new house-elf probably wouldn't ever find out about somebody who'd died there."

Hermione didn't answer. The three of them walked on silently, and the snow crunched crisply beneath their feet. Although the sun was high in the sky, it was very cold.

Ron turned an idea over and over in his mind. It had been brewing for a long time. He wondered if he really should give it voice, but he also felt that he could no longer avoid doing so. If it makes them think I've gone round the bend at last, then I reckon that we need to get that out into the open, once and for all.

"I don't think she's dead," he said. "What about her hand on the clock? It's never quite got to the hour."

"I know, I know. But--" Hermione began, and then stopped.

"Go ahead. Say it. Whatever it is you're thinking, I can handle it."

"But then why haven't we ever been able to find any trace of her?"

"I don't know," admitted Ron. "But it's what I feel... Harry, what d'you think?"

Harry had been ambling along with his hands in his pockets and his face turned downwards, but he glanced up at Ron's voice. "Well," he said slowly, "if she's been in a magically shielded house all this time, that would explain it."

"And if she's been held prisoner," added Ron.

"Like that girl who was snatched from the Kensington station last year by the Death Eaters, the teenaged girl. A Squib, I think. You know the one, Harry. Moody headed up the squad that just found her at the Flint house," hissed Hermione in Harry's ear, pulling at his arm. Ron rolled his eyes. Did she honestly think that he couldn't hear them?

"You mean-" began Harry. "Oh."

There was an awkward silence after he spoke. Ron couldn't think why for a second. Then, remembering the story, he did know why. An icy chill ran up his spine. The girl had been alive when they had found her; that was true. But she was no longer quite sane. The stories about what the Death Eaters had done to the girl in the past year had been told in the Daily Prophet only in part. The details were considered too horrible for the general public to read. Ron walked faster.

"I'll find her," he muttered. "I'll find her. And she'll be all right. And I'll find whoever took her, whoever's kept her secretly all this time--and I'll make him suffer. Whoever he is." Maybe I shouldn'tve said that in front of them, he thought, too late. I suppose that they'll want to cart me off to St. Mungo's now. I'm not even sure I can blame them. Not with the way I feel when I think about what might've happened to Ginny, and who might've done it.

Hermione and Ron were whispering behind him. He could hear their hissing voices, but could not catch a word of what was said.

"See you later, Ron," said Harry's voice. "I'm going on ahead to find Moody--I want him brought in on this."

"Later," Ron mumbled, not raising his head. He kept walking. Then he tensed at the feel of Hermione's small, soft hand on his shoulder.

"Ron," she whispered. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"You heard me after all, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry. So sorry. I shouldn't have brought up the story of that girl."

"'Salright." He walked faster.

"I didn't mean that I thought that was what happened to Ginny. Really, I didn't. All I meant was that--"

He raised a hand. "Drop it, Hermione."

They reached the large, dark boulder that served as a Portkey, set in the middle of a field, and put their hands on it, close together.

"You know, Ron," said Hermione, "you really ought to talk to your father's cousin. The one who's an accountant, or whatever he is."

"Bert?" Ron stared at her. "What good would that do?"

Hermione shrugged. "None at all, maybe. But his name came up once on a list of Squibs who'd been suspected of having some sort of ties with Death Eaters last year."

He drew in his breath. "Who?" he asked. "The Malfoys?"

"I don't know. Their name didn't come into it. But then, the dark wizarding families always keep their financial affairs very quiet, so we don't even know who he might have worked for. We know he handled a transaction or two for the Crabbes, and that's all."

Ron's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "For the Crabbes, eh? Well, it might be worth checking out. The family hasn't spoken to him in years, though. He had some sort of awful fight with Dad when I was about five years old. I should think Polly would be more help... Merlin knows if Bert would even be willing to see me."

"You'd find a way," said Hermione.

"You're bloody right about that," said Ron.

"The Crabbes..." said Hermione musingly. "I don't know what happened to Vincent, the one who always hung about Draco. Goyle was killed though, I do know that."

"I still think it was the Malfoys," muttered Ron. "If we can find out... oh, if I can get my hands on Draco Malfoy..." Hermione looked uncomfortable, but he did not see her face. The wind blew harshly, and she pulled her hat firmly down over her ears, but he did not feel its cold. His mind whirled with purpose, as if the past two and a half years of suffering had finally climaxed in this one great hope. And he felt that he had always been justified in clinging to hope when everyone else had lost it. They all said I should put it behind me, to forget about Ginny, to move on. Over and over again, that's what everyone told me to do. But they were wrong, weren't they? Because now...

The rest of the Weasleys grieved, but they had gone on. He had not. Now, he saw the reason with blinding clarity. This is what I waited for. And I've found it again, he thought. Something, anyway. Some meaning. Something to live for. It's been so long since I felt that.

"Ron," said Hermione, her soft voice breaking in on his thoughts. "Are you all right?"

He turned to smile at her, and wondered briefly why she shivered when she saw his face. "I'm better than all right," he said. "Everything's going to be all right. I can feel it, Hermione. And you'll help me, won't you?"

She nodded. "You know that I will, Ron. Harry too."

But there was sorrow in her dark eyes when she looked at him, and fear, although Ron did not see it.

The rock began to vibrate under their hands.

"My Portkey'll be along in a moment," said Ron. "When will I see you again?"

"As soon as Polly finds out anything and reports to Dobby," said Hermione. "In a week, perhaps. Harry and I will come and see you right away when that happens. Maybe I'll tell Moody about it today, so he knows."

"You two make a right pair," said Ron. "Attached at the hip, are you?"

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Me and Moody? There's a lovely thought."

"Don't be thick. I meant, you and Harry." A strange feeling bubbled up in Ron's chest. Jealousy? But how can I be jealous? It's Harry. And they're only friends; that's all they've ever been, he was never interested in her that way. Maybe it's only because I'm not with them. I ought to be... I could be in Auror training right now, if not for...

"Well, of course we are. I don't know anyone else in our class very well, and neither does he. Harry spends almost as much time with Tonks, though." Hermione wrinkled her nose. "Luckily for them, the Auror school doesn't have a specific policy on that. Although most of the other teachers don't think much of it."

"You mean they're--oh." Ron felt unaccountably relieved.

"I suppose the ten-year age difference doesn't seem nearly so important now as it did when Harry was at Hogwarts." Hermione shrugged. "And it makes him happy. So... that's all that matters, really..."

She placed his hand over his and squeezed it, sighing so softly that he could barely hear the sound. Then she let go, just as Ron felt the sudden tug below his navel.

"Goodbye..." The forest disappeared in a whirling haze, and her voice drifted back to him all the way to the Burrow.

January 23^rd, 2000

Malfoy Manor

The days dragged by with agonizing slowness. Draco went to Diagon Alley every morning in order to deal with the goblins, and returned to Malfoy Manor every afternoon. After a quick dinner served in his sitting-room by silent house-elves, he retreated to his study with mountains of ledgers. The work involved with tidying up the estate was staggering; Lucius Malfoy had let almost everything go towards the end, and had not allowed Draco access to the most important aspects of it. A thin line of light burned under Draco's door every night until almost dawn. After a few hours' sleep, he would drag himself out of bed, his eyes gummed and his back aching from bending over parchments and account books, and dress to go to Gringott's again. The burden of work was crushing, even with all the magical aids he could muster. It was a full week before he could even begin to see his way out from under it.

Yet in a way, Draco wasn't sorry that he had to do it. Thoughts were beginning to coalesce in his mind, and he had not put words to any of them yet, nor even solidified their amorphous shapes into definite ideas. Each day, as he ran a hand over his haggard face in the dressing room mirror, he looked deeply into his own eyes and knew that he was not ready to do so yet.

And after he collapsed into bed at five or six each morning, the secret lying motionless next to him, he would dream.

They were very vague dreams. He was running through a field of summer flowers, white daisies and purple loosestrife and indigo bluebells, and the sun was shining. For many nights, that was all he could tell. Towards the middle of the week, he slowly became aware that someone else was in the meadow with him. He could not quite see her for many nights; she always hovered just outside the corner of his eye. But at last, he could tell that she was a little girl with long red-gold hair and bright brown eyes. He called for her to come to him, but she never could. Once, he saw that she was separated from him by a river; another time, by a great door that stood by itself in the field between him and her. On Sunday morning, he finally reached across the river with his hand, and she stretched out her own. Just before their fingers touched, he awoke.

He stared at Ginny for a long time. The curtains were drawn, but a ray of noontime sun filtered through a gap in the window blinds. It touched her hair with fiery gold. He reached out and rubbed a lock of it through his fingers. Then he swung his legs over the edge and rose with a sudden motion.

***

The floor of the little alcove room was covered with rolled-up parchments, old quills, faded robes, and schoolbooks. They all lay in heaps where they had been haphazardly thrown. Unfogging the Future flew out of the closet at the far end of the room and skidded to a halt up against the door. After another moment, Draco straightened up from the large brass-bound trunk, brushing aside the wisps of pale hair that had stuck to his forehead with sweat. He had been searching through his old school trunks all morning long, and still hadn't found... But the sentence trailed off in his mind, because he had not yet admitted to himself what he was looking for.

Something winked brightly at him from the bottom of the trunk. He bent over and drew it out between his hands. It was a camel-colored scarf trimmed with gold thread. He closed his eyes and brought it up to his nose, drinking in the flower scent. It had belonged to Ginny. She'd left it on the Quidditch pitch during the winter of her sixth year, and he had found it, and kept it. Slowly, Draco walked over to where Ginny lay motionless on the cot, her eyes closed as always. He laid the scarf across her hair, and remembered how she had looked in it when she was laughing and alive, during that last winter. The very last winter she ever knew... Abruptly, he turned back to the trunk and scrabbled in the bottom of it for several minutes. But there was nothing more, and he had come to the end of his old school trunks. He had not found what he searched for.

The door swung open suddenly, and Draco almost jumped out of his skin. But it was only a house-elf carrying a silver tray of sandwiches. "What are you doing here, elf?" he asked sharply.

The house-elf cast her eyes down to the floor. She was taller than most, with long brown hair gathered into a neat ponytail. "Your dinner, sir."

Draco had been away from the Manor during the earlier part of the daytime for so long that he'd forgotten his standing order to the house-elves to bring him dinner wherever he was. Of course, he'd never been in the alcove room at that time, either. He looked narrowly at the elf.

"I don't remember you, elf. Who are you?"

"Polly, sir." She dropped a curtsey.

"I haven't seen you before."

"No, sir has not. Polly is newly come to replace Tibby, who died last week."

"Oh." He did remember vaguely that an old house-elf had died recently, when he put his mind to it. He didn't waste much time thinking about such matters. "Very well."

The house-elf looked up. Her eyes were a very bright shade of hazel. "Will sir be needing anything else?"

Draco swept a hand over the mess on the floor. "After I finish dinner, come back and clean this up. I shouldn't have to tell you that. If you're going to work here, you'd best learn that good house-elves don't ask questions."

"Polly is sorry," the house-elf said meekly, bowing her head. But Draco rather thought that she gave a very swift glance around the room before she did so.

He stared into space with a frown as she Disapparated with a slight pop. He didn't know why he was feeling uneasy. It was far from the first time that a house-elf had seen his secret. Most of the house-elves certainly knew that Ginny was there, and it didn't matter in the slightest. I'm jumping at shadows, that's all. I wish I'd found... well, what I was looking for. I'd feel better if I had.

Draco sat on the edge of the cot and ate the sandwiches, and then a red apple that had also been on the tray. It was sweet and crisp, and its scent drifted through the air. He watched Ginny's face as he ate it. Nothing in her expression changed, of course. But as he finished the last bites, he remembered all the times he had seen her eating apples. They had been her favorite fruit.

He was not quite sure how, or why, he found himself wandering out into the gardens. The day was bright, but bitterly cold, and Warming charms didn't work very well on the grounds of the manor. Still, he walked the paths of raked white marble chips through the rose garden, now brown and barren, and watched his breath drift upwards through the frigid air. A memory was forming in his mind of the last time he had been here, and Draco knew that he could not have remembered its subtle details anywhere but here. He sat on one of the stone benches. Yes, he thought. This is where we sat. Six months ago, it must have been...

It had all begun at the breakfast table, late that June morning. Lucius Malfoy had returned from one of his mysterious trips at the beginning of the week, and would be leaving again that very night. He had been reading the Daily Prophet while finishing his eggs, and Draco had been stirring his coffee and toying with the idea of getting another piece of toast from the rack. Sometimes, Draco wished that he hadn't finally reached for that second piece of toast, and thought that perhaps what followed would never have happened at all if he had not. More often, he knew that it was inevitable. When he'd taken the toast, the rack was directly to his father's right, and Lucius chose that moment to turn a page of the newspaper. A picture on the back page had flashed briefly into Draco's field of vision, and he had drawn in his breath, almost inaudibly.

It was a photograph of Ginny in Hogsmeade with her friend from school, that strange Ravenclaw girl. Lucy or Lunette or something, Draco thought. Both girls smiled and waved, their eyes sparkling, their hair blowing in the wind. Even in a black and white photograph, Draco almost believed that he could see the rich tones of Ginny's hair. She wore a light summer robe that he remembered her wearing near the end of her sixth year. When that photograph was taken, she had had less than a month to live. It gave Draco a queer sensation in his chest to realize that. The caption at the top of the page was black and bold.

New Lead in the Ginny Weasley Case.

Will the mysterious disappearance of Ginny Weasley soon be solved? Minister of Magic Amelia Bones believes that today's new clue --

The page turned. Draco gave a very small sigh. Lucius looked up.

"What is it, Draco?"

"Nothing." Draco turned full attention to his toast, and reached for the pot of orange marmalade.

Lucius glanced at the newspaper. "Hmmm... An interesting story, don't you think? The one about the disappearance of the Weasley girl, I mean."

"I don't know," mumbled Draco. "I didn't know her."

"Didn't you?" Lucius peered at his son. "She was the one who cast that Bat-Bogey curse on you at the end of your fifth year, wasn't she?"

"I suppose so. I don't really remember. It's not as if I ever spent much time thinking about the Weasleys while I was at school." Draco began chewing on a corner of the toast. It tasted like cardboard.

"Ah, yes. The blood traitors... " Lucius said the words without rancor, as if they were simply the most convenient and accurate way to refer to that family. "Still, a most intriguing case. The Aurors seem to feel that they have a clue."

"Oh?" Draco forced himself to swallow. The toast was a soggy lump in his throat.

"Apparently, someone claims they saw the girl getting on a train in Hogsmeade one evening that summer, carrying a suitcase."

"Oh." The world began to look a bit brighter. Draco sipped at his coffee again, relief flooding through him.

"But as it was Aubrey Mugglesworth at the Ministry, and as I happen to know that he's always drunk by five o'clock, I wouldn't trust his veracity too far." Lucius finished the last bite of his egg. "What do you think, Draco?"

"About what?"

"About the disappearance of the Weasley girl."

Draco glanced up sharply at that. His father's eyes were on him, and they looked very dark.

"I told you, Father. I don't know anything about it. Why on earth would I?"

"Why, indeed." Lucius put down his teacup on the saucer with a decisive clink, and stood up. "Come with me to the garden, Draco. I'd like to walk for a bit. And I think it's time we had a little talk."

They walked down the paths that led through the rose garden. The day was very warm, and Draco could hear the constant buzzing of the large, fat bumblebees in the still air.

"Why all the curiousity about Ginny Weasley, Father?" he asked at last.

"Her disappearance is a mystery," Lucius said smoothly. "And I don't care for mysteries that drag on too long... But I believe the answer is pretty close to hand now."

"So, uh-- so what is the answer, Father?" As soon as he spoke, Draco could have kicked himself.

Lucius stopped walking and turned to face his son. The sun shone almost directly overhead, as it was nearly noon by now, and his face was shadowed. "Well, what is it?"

"Why would I be able to tell you?" Draco croaked.

"Because you know, Draco. Although now I know as well, you know a great deal better--and a great deal more-- than I do. Don't you?"

Draco licked his lips and tried to speak. He could not. Lucius sat on the bench, and motioned for his son to sit next to him. Draco dropped to the marble slab just before his trembling legs gave way. He looked into his father's eyes, so much darker and deeper than his own.

"What did you do to her?" Lucius asked in a voice that was no more than a whisper.

So Draco told him.

But he did not tell his father everything. And towards the end, he knew that he had started to babble, and to repeat himself. It seemed inordinately important that his father know he had not done any of it on purpose. Of course he hadn't; he was quite sure of that. So he repeated that point over and over again, until Lucius finally silenced him with an impatient wave of his hand.

"Enough," he said.

Draco had no idea what to say next, or if he should say anything at all. He picked at the skin around one of his fingernails until a drop of blood welled up around the cuticle. Finally, Lucius sighed.

"Do you know the sorts of difficulties this could cause?" he asked. "Do you have any idea?"

"I--uh--yes. I suppose I do. If word ever got out. But it won't. How would it?"

Lucius didn't reply. He looked out over the rose gardens that surrounded them, and his face was impassive.

"It's too late to do anything about it now," Draco continued. "I--it--well, it happened, Father, and it's not as if I can make it unhappen. Anyway, it's been two years. It's not as if I'll ever get into trouble over it. If I was going to, I would've already. Nobody will ever find out now. What more do you want?" He could hear the whining tone of his own voice, and it struck him as madly funny. He had to bite the inside of his cheek, hard, to keep from breaking into laughter. It would have been a highly inappropriate time to do so.

"Yes, I know that." Lucius faced his son again. "But that story you told me isn't the entire truth, now is it?"

"I don't know what you mean," mumbled Draco.

"She's not quite dead," Lucius said softly. "Is she?"

Draco did not reply.

"Walk with me, Draco," said Lucius, and the two of them rose, and began once more to walk the garden paths that were covered in carefully raked chips of marble. "Since I've returned, I've seen a number of interesting things," he continued as they passed a cluster of overblown early rosebushes, the blooms long dead. "I've seen the Weasley girl in that little closet off your bedroom, where you keep her. I've seen her in your bed, where you like to put her. I've even touched her."

Draco kicked at a rock and still did not say a word. He pushed down a sudden, inexplicable flare of some emotion he could not name. I don't want him to touch her, he thought. Nobody's supposed to touch her... except for me.

"I'm not quite sure what this spell is that you've placed on her," said Lucius. "It's a bit more than an enchanted sleep--you really did kill her; I know that."

"I didn't mean to," mumbled Draco. "I told you, if she'd just kept her mouth shut that morning instead of screaming her head off the way she did--"

"Oh, yes, it was entirely accidental, I'm sure," said Lucius, idly examining his fingernails. "That's why you came prepared with the exact spells you needed to put her into suspended animation after you killed her."

"You don't understand. I didn't want it to happen. I didn't want her dead! I didn't--" Draco could hear his own voice going higher and higher, breathless, desperate-sounding.

"I don't care to hear another word about it. You try to explain your motives too much, Draco. I've always noticed that weakness in you," said Lucius impatiently. "Listen to me. I meant what I said. She is no more precisely dead than she is precisely alive. She lingers somewhere in the space between. It reminds me a bit of the effects of a Draught of Living Death, but more so. It's not British magic, is it? Egyptian--Scandinavian? Or perhaps from the West Indies?" He held up a hand as Draco opened his mouth. "No--on second thought, I don't want to know, Draco. I don't need to know. It's not important. Only one thing is. I do not want a living Weasley in my house. I'd be better pleased if you'd permanently get rid of the problem she represents, without informing me."

"I don't want to," said Draco.

"Why not?" asked Lucius, his voice seemingly idle. Draco knew from experience that was about as idle as a Devil's Snare. "If you've used anything like the Living Death Draught on her, then you can never do more than touch her. She certainly can't speak to you, nor provide much in the way of entertainment. She's pretty enough, I suppose, but so are hundreds of living girls who'll do exactly as you please. Quite a few of them already do, from what I hear. So I really don't understand."

Draco shrugged. He could feel how sullen his face has become. "I like things the way they are."

"Very well." Lucius began to turn back towards the house. "There's only one other option, then. She must remain exactly as she is now, as she has been since you brought her here after the end of your last term at Hogwarts. You left a back door wide open when you murdered her, Draco--don't wince at that word!" His voice grew impatient. "That's what you did. I don't particularly care to hear the details all over again. But I know damn well that no matter what you're telling yourself now, her death was no accident. Neither is the fact that her perfectly preserved body somehow ended up in a semi- permanent resting position on the other half of your bed, Draco. But a man owns what he does, even if he never speaks of it. No, what I'm talking about is the fact that you gave yourself a possible escape hatch with her, one that you must have known you could someday open, if you wished. And you won't open it while I'm alive."

Draco did not trust himself to speak at all. He nodded, curtly. A gust of wind blew through his light summer robes, and although the day was very warm, he shivered. Lucius looked at him keenly.

"Let's go inside," he said, and they left the gardens.

The next day, Lucius had left for his last trip. They had not spoken about Ginny Weasley again. It was, Draco now realized, the last time he had seen his father alive. He shivered in earnest. It was so cold that his hands were going numb, even inside his fur-lined gloves. Slowly, he got up and started towards the house. There are still some places I could look, he thought. It's got to be here somewhere, this thing I need to find.

And he did look, all through the hours of the night. Around dawn, he finally slumped against the door of a third-floor back bedroom, utterly exhausted. His gaze scanned the dusty little room. He had found some of his mother's old school things, but nothing that had ever been his own. One of her schoolbooks lay facedown on the floor next to his hand. He picked it up and leafed through it dully. It was a first edition of Unfogging the Future, and it was from--he glanced on the flyleaf--her fourth year. Her name was written on the page in elegant copperplate. Narcissa Black. His fingers felt an uneven something tucked between the first few pages, and he pulled out a photograph. An arrogantly handsome boy of about fifteen grinned out at him, preening for the camera in his dress robes, his dark hair blowing in an unseen wind. Draco examined the long nose and narrow face of the boy, feeling an odd sense of almost-familiarity. He looks like me, he suddenly realized. Not the same colouring at all, but his features are the same as mine. Who is he? Draco turned the photograph over and saw several sentences written on the back in dark, slanting, pointed script.

This is so you have something to remember me by, Cissa. As if you needed it! How could you ever forget me? No more than I could you, I'm sure. I know why you wouldn't come with me to Potter's house--why you couldn't leave your home, or felt you couldn't. I'm not angry anymore. So forget all those things I said in anger; remember only that no matter what roads I may travel, I will always carry your memory with me.

Yours, yours, yours,

Siri

P.S.: I'll see you when I can.

Draco remembered a face he had seen staring out at him from the pages of the Daily Prophet in his third year. A haggard face, a lost, haunted, ruined face. But a face that had once been very handsome indeed, and a face whose resemblance to his own he had recognized even then, in some corner of his mind.

Sirius Black!

He dropped the book and the photograph as if they burned him, and abruptly left the room.

The light was just beginning to creep through the cracks between the curtains at his window when he returned to his bed. He pulled back the top sheet and lay down, sighing. Next to him, as always, lay Ginny. He had moved her there before starting to search again, knowing that he would return to her eventually. He propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her.

"I couldn't find it," he said, his voice as soft as he might awaken her by speaking too loudly. "I looked and looked, Ginny. But it wasn't anywhere."

The silence stretched on.

"But I have to have it," he said. "You know why, don't you? Don't you?"

And he stared down at her as if awaiting a reply. There was none. He continued to speak, as if his words were driven by a goad.

"I know what I'll do," Draco said. "I'll get it somewhere else. That's what I'll do. There must be more copies of it." Dimly, he was aware that what he wanted to do was not wise, and that he was becoming reckless. It would have made more sense to wait and talk to Lambert Mustelidae, who would know how to get it for him without involving him in the search. But that would have meant delay, and he didn't want delay. Looking down at Ginny Weasley, Draco knew that he had to find a copy of the schoolbook that he had used for his Endings specialization. And he had to have it as soon as possible.

"There's a bookshop in Diagon Alley. I'll go there tomorrow," he said. "Yes. That's what I'll do..." And with that decision, a lovely sensation of peace filled Draco's mind, the first one he had known in a very long time.

"I'll do it," he repeated, lying back down again. He reached across the bed and laid his hands on Ginny's hair, very lightly. "Soon," he whispered. "Very soon, Ginny." Then he fell into a deep, satisfying sleep, untroubled by dreams.