Earthbound Spook

Including Malfoy in the Horcrux research was easier than Harry had expected it to be. Maybe because he was in their house, so he was around as much as Ron and Hermione were. Maybe just because Malfoy was used to talking about Horcruxes, so he fell into the debates in the Music and Movement section of the library as though he belonged there.

He seemed relieved to be part of the debates again. Harry supposed that it must have been difficult to have had something active to do against Voldemort, and then suddenly to be locked out of it. Although Harry still didn't know how that had come about -- the working against Voldemort bit. He wished he knew Malfoy well enough to ask something like, So, why did you decide to betray your father and shame your family?

He shrugged, uncomfortable. It didn't matter. Malfoy must have seen that it was the right thing to do.

"And I'm telling you we need to plan it properly, Ron." Hermione stared Ron down.

It was a Saturday morning, and the library was nearly empty. Pale daylight filtered through the high windows, draining the higher bookshelves of colour. Down at their table, gold-tinged torchlight still gave the wooden tabletop and the bookshelves surrounding them a deeper, richer hue. There were distant rustles every now and then as books abandoned on desks quietly Apparated back to their shelves. Madam Pince moved about down on the main library floor, casting dusting charms on the reference shelves.

Ron sighed and turned back to the stack of notes in Hermione's handwriting. He swirled them with his finger over the table top.

"We know where we're going, though," Harry said, coming to Ron's defence. "Finally. Why can't we just go?"

Hermione turned her glare on him. "Because Malfoy nearly died last time."

"Oh, right. Yeah." Harry gave Malfoy an apologetic look, across the table.

"I think it was just bad luck that there were Death Eaters there," Malfoy said. "Really. I think they were just randomly checking up on things. Although it confirms that there's something there to check up on."

"Yes, of course," Hermione said. "We still need to try to get an idea of what we're going to be facing and how to deal with it, though, before we go in. What was your plan?"

Malfoy hesitated. "We didn't have a plan as such."

Hermione rolled her eyes, pulling her notes towards her again. "Of course you didn't," she said. "How silly of me."

"Hey!" Harry was offended. "It's not as though we can't plan without you. I've planned things in the past."

She just looked at him. Harry racked his brains. "I, um ... planned how to get the Horcrux memory out of Slughorn."

"Harry. Your plan was 'Take some luck potion and see what happens'," Ron said.

Harry gave in. "All right, fine, let's make a plan. How can we possibly know what we're going to be facing, though? Other than possible Death Eaters?"

Hermione smiled, cat-like and satisfied, and pulled out a new sheaf of tightly-written notes. "Well," she said, "I've been thinking about that."

*

"No, look, the Inferi and the poison in the cave weren't just two different defences, they were two different kinds of defences." Ron shook his head, intent on his point. "If the cave is really going to be the pattern for all the hiding places, we need to keep that in mind. The Inferi were attacking Harry and Dumbledore, but the poison forced Dumbledore to attack himself, right?"

Hermione looked interested. "You're right, actually. So ... two defences, one active and one passive. If Dumbledore had to put his hand into a fire to get the ring, just as he had to swallow poison to get the locket; well, that would explain why his hand was burned the way it was when he got back."

They were up on the battlements of the castle today, on the stone bridge connecting the Astronomy Tower with its smaller sister tower where students kept their telescopes. The bridge was only a few paces long, but you could sit and swing your legs over the edge and see between crumbling turrets to the east end of the lake. There was an intermittant chill breeze up here, but it was fine if you wore a light cloak.

Malfoy was stretched on his stomach on the landing just above the bridge. He scratched: 'Two defences: 1 active, 1 passive,' on the parchment on the stone in front of him, underneath their other ideas. Harry was sitting cross-legged next to him, so he could read it clearly.

"What we need is a way to know what kind of defences they're going to be, though," Harry said, stretching back on his hands. "Do you think he'll use Inferi again?"

Malfoy shook his head immediately, twisting to address his words to Harry. "No, that'd be stupid. If somebody could get past Inferi once, he'd know they could do it again. He can afford to lose any one Horcrux, but not all of them. He'd have to use different defences."

"He likes patterns," Hermione said. She pulled her knees up onto the bench she was sitting on, hugging her arms around them. She looked down at Harry and Draco, and at Ron who was walking along the bridge, his arms out for balance. Ron reached the end of the bridge and dropped down to sit against the base of the stone bench. Hermione's brow creased as she thought. "The Horcruxes had to be important things," she said, "and he wanted them to be of a kind, even though he couldn't do that entirely -- but he would have made them all Founder's items if he could, I bet. The hiding places, too, are significant places -- a pattern again."

"Well, there wasn't any pattern in the two defences at the cave," Harry said. He was distracted, watching Malfoy play with the feathered end of his quill. He had wet it into a slick point and was stroking it absently over his lips. "The Inferi and the poison were completely different. Well, except that the Inferi came out of the water, and the potion was kind of water."

"That's it!" Hermione dropped her legs, knocking Ron's shoulder. "Harry, you're brilliant."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Oh, yes?"

"No, really." The light of discovery was in her eyes. "The cave was protected with water magic. Dumbledore was burned getting the ring: fire magic. I'll bet whatever active defence he faced was fire-based too. The Diary was mind magic. Voldemort's own thoughts, written down as a teenager, were protecting it."

"The five elements," Malfoy said, slowly, as though trying the idea out. He smiled, stretching to look up at Hermione. "Actually, that's kind of clever."

She nodded vigorously. "It means that the defences are connected; stronger than they would be otherwise because the pattern lets them draw on the others for stability."

Ron gave Harry a pained look. "Tell me she's not excited because You-Know-Who's put up better defences than we expected," he said.

Hermione frowned. "Well, yes, obviously it would be better for us if the defences weren't drawing strength from one another." She lifted her head to look at the lake in the distance, thinking. "Still, three of them have been taken down -- that makes the pattern less stable, which is probably good. And it lets us plan much better, if we're right. There are only two elements left."

"And there are three Horcruxes left," Harry said, since it didn't seem as though she was going to get to that. "There aren't enough elements, Hermione."

"Wouldn't think he'd need to put any defences on that snake of his," Ron pointed out, sitting up straight again. "For one, it's vicious as all hell, and for two, he keeps it by him all the time."

That was a point, actually. Harry began to be more interested.

*

"Air and earth," Harry said again. He was tired enough to simply drop his head onto the table in the library and close his eyes. He was determined they were going to get somewhere with this tonight, though. "We have to prepare for both, because we don't know which it will be."

Hermione yawned, one hand waving in the direction of her mouth but not really covering it. "Mm," she said sleepily. "Although ... still think earth is more likely."

Ron nodded. "S'a graveyard," he said. "Lots of earth."

Draco was stretched back in his chair, his eyes closed. Ron nudged him, gingerly, and he opened his eyes, shooting the other boy an evil look. Then he shook himself and propped his chin in his hands, paying attention to the conversation again.

"Would have been a much better place for Inferi than that lake," he said, proving he'd been listening after all. "Graveyard full of dead people."

Hermione looked a bit horrified. "He wouldn't want to raise his mother, though."

Draco nodded, adjusting his arms under his chin. "This is a point."

"All right." Harry blinked at the parchment in front of him, willing it to come into focus. "Earth first. Active earth defences. Trolls, golems, projectile rocks ... um, those weird grubby things with teeth Draco talked about -- they weren't Nifflers, were they? Because I'm fairly sure they're not vicious."

"No, they weren't," Malfoy said, leaning over him and correcting the list. Harry nodded and read the rest of the way down. He was yawning so widely for the last few that none of the others would have known what he was saying if they hadn't gone over them so many times already.

By the time they gave up for the night, Harry found he actually staggered with tiredness when he tried to get up.

"Ugh. Quidditch practice tomorrow," he remembered. Ron blanched. Draco looked suddenly pleased. It was the first time Harry had seen him happy over not being on the team.

He remembered the Pensieve memory again -- the one Malfoy had showed him. He was tired enough to decide that it was all right to reach out and ruffle the back of Malfoy's hair as they headed out of the library. Malfoy gave him a startled look, but he didn't say anything.

*

Harry and Ron dropped down next to Hermione on the steps of the main courtyard, which was catching the last of the day's sunshine. It was the hour between the last class of the day and dinner, and most of the student body was either in the courtyard or out on the grounds. Harry could see the little yellow figures of the Hufflepuff team practising on the Quidditch pitch in the distance.

Hermione had her nose buried in a book. She was chewing the corner of her lip, a frown of concentration pressed into her forehead. She budged up to let Harry sit down on the step, but didn't otherwise acknowledge their arrival.

Harry caught sight of Malfoy, over the other side of the courtyard. He was leaning against the wall, talking to Pansy. His hair was pale and bright in the sunshine; Harry thought he could see strands snagging against the stones of the wall when he turned his head. Harry lifted his hand in a wave, catching his attention. Draco saw him and gave a nod and a not-quite smile. Harry thought he might come over, but he turned back to Pansy.

Harry was aware that Ron was watching him. He didn't say anything, though, and Harry was content to stretch his ankles out in the sunshine and watch Malfoy and Pansy catch up on six years' worth of friendship.

He wondered why he hadn't done that. Malfoy had six years' worth of memories; Harry had only seen one. Knowing that the Harry in that world had called him Draco and sometimes ruffled his hair wasn't enough, he knew. Harry could do those, but that wasn't enough to make up for what Malfoy had lost. He needed to know more.

Ron played with a frayed thread on his sleeve, his eyes slitted almost completely closed in the sunshine, his long legs sprawled over the steps. Hermione focused completely on her book. Her nose moved closer to the page when the sunlight began to fade, but she didn't otherwise seem aware of the outside world at all.

Malfoy said something that made Pansy shriek and bury her face in his arm, her shoulders shaking with laughter.

Eventually Hermione shivered and looked up, her gaze focusing on the world around her.

"The sun's gone," she said, fuzzy and disoriented. Ron cricked open an eye.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "S'it dinnertime?" He checked the watch hanging on a chain from his pocket -- a present from Charlie last birthday which had a distracting habit of roaring the hour at 3am -- and shrugged. "Not for a bit. Want to go up to the common room?"

The courtyard was a lot emptier when they left than it had been while the sun shone. Draco and Pansy were still over by the far wall, though. Pansy was leaning her cheek on Malfoy's shoulder, rolling her head against him whenever she tilted her face up to speak, with a casual intimacy that was rather awe-inspiring. If completely inappropriate.

Harry gave her a frown as they left, but he didn't think either of them noticed it.

"I'm glad Malfoy's started talking to Pansy Parkinson," Hermione announced as they climbed the East Staircase.

Harry blinked. He hadn't thought Hermione had even noticed.

Ron gave her a curious look. "Didn't think you liked Pansy."

Hermione pursed her lips. "I don't. She abuses her prefect powers, and she bats her eyelashes and gets other people to do her homework for her." Ron jumped and gave her a somewhat hunted look. "And she wears too much make-up," she added primly, at which Ron relaxed. "But that doesn't mean I couldn't see that she and Malfoy were friends, here."

"She's not his real friend, though," Harry said. "Not for him. His real friends are Ron and me." Hermione shot him a look and he added, "I. Ron and I."

"Oh, honestly. There was nothing wrong with your grammar. I just meant ..."

Harry looked at her, but apparently she couldn't work out what she'd just meant. She made an impatient, casting-off gesture and dropped her hands.

"He's right, though," Ron said. He jumped over a trick step, long habit making it automatic. "I mean -- sort of right. We can't be his real friends if we don't remember it. But Parkinson can't be his real friend either, when he doesn't remember it."

"Exactly." Harry jumped onto the sunken landing in front of the entrance to Ravenclaw Tower, and up onto the next stair, which was still in the process of swinging towards them. "He needs us, not just Pansy Parkinson."

Ron didn't seem to hear. He was worrying at his lip as he walked up the stairs. "The thing is, though: how did he get to be friends with us? How could he have ended up in Gryffindor at all? I mean --" he stopped, waiting for the other two to catch up. "I sort of almost like him these days. This new him, you know, who doesn't sneer at my mum or call you names." He nodded to Hermione. "But he's still Malfoy. He's kind of funny, and he's pretty dedicated to the Horcrux research, but he hasn't got --" He reddened. "You know, 'daring, nerve and chivalry,' or whatever."

They found quite a lot of Gryffindor House in the common room, playing Exploding Snap or talking in small knots. Dean and Seamus were having some sort of argument near the back fireplace, which involved Seamus throwing his arms about and making horrible grimaces, and Dean standing with his arms crossed over his chest. Neville was almost certainly out in the greenhouses at this time of day, so after a second spent looking around, Harry and the others switched directions and headed up the stairs to the seventh year boys' dormitory.

"I think I can see how he could have been a Gryffindor, actually." Hermione sat down on Harry's bed. (She never sat on Ron's, and Ron always looked the tiniest bit disappointed about it. Harry privately thought that the omission meant a lot more than the fact that she was comfortable with Harry's bed did.) She tapped her lip, thoughtful, and tucked one leg up underneath her. "He's not -- I mean he doesn't, you know, seem to believe in bravery just for bravery's sake -- he's too Slytherin for that. But he has got nerve, you know. Sometimes he's really stupid with it."

Ron opened and shut his mouth. He was obviously torn between denying that Malfoy had any Gryffindor qualities, and denying that 'stupid' was one of those qualities. "When?" he managed finally. "When has he had nerve?"

Hermione clasped her hands around the knee of the leg still touching the floor. "Every time he picks a fight, for one," she said. "He walks around with Crabbe and Goyle like bodyguards, but he always ends up fighting too, and he always loses; but it's like when he gets worked up he can't even think about that. He's completely reckless when he's worked up, and that's very Gryffindor."

Ron looked pained. "But it's not the same. It's not like -- being brave about things because they're the right thing to do."

"There's more than one kind of courage, Ron," Hermione said quietly. Her mouth made a funny, reluctant shape. "Also, the Sorting Hat song has never actually said anything about principles."

Harry hadn't even considered it, but he supposed that Malfoy did have a reckless courage, sometimes, even though other times he weighed up his options and ran away with his tail between his legs. But whenever it was something he cared about, Hermione was right: he was stupid brave. Mouthing off about Cedric Diggory in front of a carriage full of Hufflepuffs, right after he died -- that had been horrible, but also ridiculously fearless. Insulting an enormous Hippogriff, too, just because Harry was showing him up -- then facing Dumbledore, agreeing to kill possibly the most powerful wizard in the world ...

"That's only one bit, anyway," Ron said. "'Their daring, nerve and chivalry', the hat said. You didn't mention chivalry."

Hermione wrinkled her nose. "Name for me one time you've been chivalrous, Ronald Weasley."

"Hey! I -- knocked out a troll for you, you know."

"After you'd locked it in a bathroom with me," Hermione said. "And made me cry," she added.

Ron looked stricken. "I'm sorry about that, you know," he mumbled. "I wouldn't have ... I mean, I didn't want you to cry."

Hermione's cheeks were pink. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. But while we're on the subject, Malfoy taking Pansy Parkinson to the Yule Ball even though she was dressed like an enormous Pygmy Puff was fairly chivalrous."

"Everybody's got some qualities of the other houses, though," Harry said. He was thinking of the Sorting Hat telling him he'd do well in Slytherin, and that he had a good mind. "I mean -- well, everybody knows you're smarter than any Ravenclaw. The Hat must have considered putting you there."

"That's it exactly, though." Hermione uncurled her leg and sat up straighter, the better to make her point. "I was probably more suited to Ravenclaw than Gryffindor, when I was eleven. And Neville --" she looked uncomfortable, but ploughed ahead, "well, he's great, and I know he can be terribly brave, but it doesn't come naturally; he has to really try. But the Hat put us both in Gryffindor because -- well, because we both thought courage was more important than being smart, or being hard-working and loyal, like Neville is. Like he is instinctively, I mean.

"I think the way you're Sorted is only half to do with what your potential is. The other half is what you think is important. What you want to be, what drives you -- because that's what's going to determine what you grow up to be."

Harry leaned forward on his elbows. "Dumbledore said something like that once," he admitted. "That it was choices that mattered, not what's in you."

Ron made a face. "I just don't -- I mean, you're saying Malfoy must have wanted to be a Gryffindor, when he was Sorted. But he's Lucius Malfoy's son. Malfoys are always in Slytherin. Why would he want to be Sorted somewhere else?"

*

Harry was still thinking about Ron's question after dinner, when Malfoy joined them again in the library.

They weren't doing much. Hermione was double checking some facts, and Ron was quietly practising the wand movements to repel golems. They'd prepared as much as they could, realistically. Harry knew that as soon as he said, 'We're ready,' the others would agree.

"Out with it, Potter," Malfoy said. He'd been cleaning his fingernails with his quill for the last ten minutes. Now he straightened and looked at Harry. "You're staring at me. Do I have ink on my chin, or do you want to ask something?"

"You, ah -- actually you do. Not on your chin, but, um ..." Harry gestured to his own cheek.

"Oh." Malfoy scrubbed it away with his thumb, flushing.

"But, um. I did want to ask you something, actually."

When he didn't continue, Draco made a head-cocking motion. Yes, and?

"You ..." Harry shook his head, frustrated. "You know you were Slytherin here, right?"

Draco looked amused. "Er, yes. I think somebody mentioned it once."

"Right. I just -- we wondered --"

Ron and Hermione were looking up, watching them, by this point. At that last part, Ron made a disclaiming motion, alarmed.

"Well -- did you ask to be in Gryffindor?"

Malfoy looked taken aback.

Harry flushed. "I just wondered if you knew why the Hat chose one way one time and another way the other."

Malfoy twirled the quill between his fingers, his eyes fixed on the feather tip.

"Not really," he admitted. "I've thought about it. Obviously." He looked up. "I talked to Pansy, and to Vince and Greg, and there don't seem to have been any big differences here, before my Sorting. Anything that would have made me -- have changed my personality here, I suppose. I think I was still ... me."

"There really wasn't anything different?" Ron had given up practising defensive spells now. His wand lay forgotten on the table.

Draco's lip curled. "I can hardly know for sure, can I? I wasn't here to see what was different."

He looked away, the bite gone from his expression as swiftly as it had come. "The only thing I can think of is that I had a row with Father the night before I came here, and maybe that didn't happen in this world."

"You had a row with your dad?" Ron sounded as though some small foundation of his world was crashing away.

Draco shot him a look. "I know you don't argue with your father, Weasley, but that's because yours doesn't know how to."

Ron made a face and looked away. "He argued well enough with Percy," he said to the table. Then he looked up again, eyes challenging Draco through his fringe. "I just didn't think you ever rowed with yours."

Malfoy leaned back in his chair. Harry had the impression that he was trying to look nonchalant. "Well, that was the first time. Obviously not the last." His eyes flicked to Harry. "It was about you, mostly. Well, it was about you in the beginning. Father wanted me to buddy up to you. I didn't want to. I'd already met you in Madam Malkin's, and you'd basically been an enormous snob and made it clear you didn't like me much, so ..."

"Wait." Harry sat up straight. "You knew who I was in the robe shop?"

Malfoy raised his eyebrows. "You told me. When I introduced myself."

Harry sat back, his mind whirring. "Huh." He looked up to Malfoy's questioning look. "Oh -- that didn't happen here. We didn't get as far as exchanging names."

Draco bit his lip. "All right, then. Uh, well I really didn't want to have to try to make you like me, so I, er, kind of told Father that he was an enormous hypocrite to want me to, and it ... escalated from there. By the end I was just shouting whatever I thought would shock him most. I didn't mean any of it -- I still pretty much thought my father was never wrong. But I was --" He hesitated, then started again. "Well, and I think I was nervous about going to Hogwarts, too, so it was all even worse than it would have otherwise. I think I told him that I was going to marry a Muggle at one point." He shot Hermione an apologetic look. "It was the worst thing I could think of at the time."

He looked down, examining his thumb joint. "He took until Christmas to forgive me. The Sorting made it worse, of course. But Pansy says -- well, she says that she and I weren't really friends till third year, so she's not sure, but she didn't get the impression that I was on bad terms with my father, in first year here. And --" he tilted his head at Harry. "If I didn't know about you -- well, probably that fight didn't happen."

Hermione put her book down and rested her chin on her hand. "Were you still mad at your dad when you were being Sorted?"

Malfoy looked at her. "I guess?"

She smiled, triumphant. "I'll bet that's it. The Hat decided that things like -- like recklessness and defiance were going to be your guiding impulses, rather than your more Slytherin qualities."

"Hang on, though." Something had just occurred to Harry. "If you already knew who I was, and it was only your dad who wanted you to be friends with me -- does that mean you didn't talk to Ron and me on the Hogwarts Express?"

Draco looked instantly curious. "Something happened on the train?"

Harry hesitated. "No. No, not really." He coughed. "So how did we end up ... you know, hanging around together, then? Was it just because we were in the same dorm?"

Draco snickered, obviously remembering something. "Um, no. God. I couldn't stand you -- either of you." He looked at Ron, including him in the statement. "And like I said, I remembered what a snob you'd been in Madam Malkin's."

"I wasn't a snob."

Draco rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Anyway, no."

"Then how?" This burst from Ron.

"Oh, um." Malfoy bit his lip against a smile. "Third week of classes. I was sneaking one of the school brooms out to go flying, and I ran into you two. There was -- a confrontation --"

"A flaming spat, I suppose," Hermione said.

Draco flashed her a smile, his eyes bright under the pale shadow of his fringe. "One of those, yes. None of us was paying much attention to where we were, and Harry stepped right back into the Whomping Willow. Then there were branches crashing all around us. It was completely terrifying, but also exciting, the way things are when you're eleven. We fell into a tunnel under the tree; I don't know how, I've never been able to find the entrance since.

"After that we crawled for -- well, it felt like ages, but I suppose the Shrieking Shack isn't really that far. That's where we ended up. Then we broke out through the boarded windows and traipsed back up to the castle. We were still sort of battered and exhausted, but completely pleased with ourselves." He shrugged, turning the quill over in his hands. "I suppose you can't do that kind of thing together and not end up friends."

Hermione was very quiet. Eventually she cleared her throat. "What about me?" She didn't look up, and her voice was mostly muffled by the pages of her book. "Obviously I wasn't a part of your death-by-tree experience. Did I have -- any friends at all?" By the end she was almost inaudible.

"Well ... yes. Parvati and Lavender." Malfoy sounded nonplussed.

Hermione raised huge eyes. "You are kidding."

Malfoy smirked. "I should have said Macmillan and Finch-Fletchley," he said. "But I wasn't joking. You don't hang around with them at all, here?"

Hermione opened and shut her mouth. "You are kidding. What would -- what would we talk about? How would we become friends?"

"Oh. Well, it was after you took out that troll in first year, I think. You know everybody was hanging around you for a while after that. Those two just ... stayed. They followed you everywhere, for a while. You bossed them terribly."

"After she took out the troll?" Ron asked. Hermione shut her mouth with a snap.

"Well, I could have," she said sharply. Then she smiled, irrepressibly, and gave Malfoy a far friendlier look. "I'm so glad I did."

She and Ron began to badger Malfoy for more details of what had been different in his six and a half years. Apparently Hermione, Parvati and Lavender had formed a Gilderoy Lockhart fan club in second year, which had Ron in pained paroxysms of laughter.

Harry listened, but mostly he watched Draco. He wasn't really that curious about what had happened to himself in that other world of Draco's. As far as he could see, the important things had still been true: he'd still lived with the Dursleys, still not known his parents, still had his life defined by Trelawney's prophesy. It was what it had been like for Draco in that world that he wanted to know more about.

The other boy was practically blossoming under the attention, now. Tension that Harry hadn't even noticed melted out of his shoulders as he kicked back in his chair, his grin lazy and a bit delighted. He'd begun to play up to his audience, Harry realised. The change was quite subtle, but he wasn't just answering the questions anymore: he was performing. Harry was reminded of how he'd climbed onto the back of the sofa in the Pensieve memory, giddily grandstanding to the fifth and sixth year boys while Pensieve Harry laughed at him. Or how this world's Draco had strung out the suspense for the other Slytherins in Harry's own Pensieve memory; how he'd told them just enough to make them desperately curious and envious, but not to give away anything important.

"Oh, no," Hermione was saying. "I did not take NEWT-level Divination."

"I think you thought it was your best chance of keeping Lavender from swallowing everything she read about it," Draco said. He leaned back, pushing the soft fringe out of his eyes. "You and Parvati used to give her hell about the way her brain melted in the presence of a crystal ball."

The huge clock high in the wall of the main library atrium gave a soft chime for ten o' clock. That meant Madam Pince was going to start rustling students out of the stacks and sending them off to their common rooms.

Harry cleared his throat. "There's a Hogsmeade Saturday tomorrow." The others looked at him, understanding. He finished anyway. "Nobody will notice if we're gone. I think we should go to London; to the cemetery"

"Yeah," Ron said after a moment. "Yeah. Okay."

*

The barman at the Hogshead gave them a knowing look when they came in and picked their way through the rickety tables to the fireplace. Their school robes were shrunken and stuffed into the pockets of their Muggle clothes -- Malfoy had had to borrow his from Ron -- but Harry supposed that it didn't take a great genius to recognise students sneaking away on a Hogsmeade Saturday.

He flattened his fringe over his scar, hoping Hermione's sticking spell on it would hold.

The barman was still looking at them, blue eyes uncomfortably sharp under bushy yellowed eyebrows. Then he turned away to clean a glass with a grubby cloth, pretending not to notice as Draco dropped a handful of Floo powder into the flames.

The Leaky Cauldron was almost as dim as the Hogshead, when they came out. It was crowded, though, unlike the room they'd come from, and wreathed in tobacco smoke. It was noisy, too; full of the raucous laughter and clink of glasses made by a room full of witches and wizards with no place better to be on a grey Saturday morning.

The four Hogwarts students were able to weave through the patrons and slip out the door into Muggle London without anybody noticing them. Harry had been worried that they'd be stopped by people wanting to shake his hand, or maybe by people wanting to tell Ron that they'd gone to school with his brother; or asking Malfoy how he'd come back from the dead. Malfoy's death had been fairly well publicised, after all; Harry was amazed that McGonagall had kept Rita Skeeter and her kind from bothering him at school.

"Why didn't he stop us leaving?" Hermione paused outside the dingy entrance to the pub, fretting with the strap of her bag. "He knew we were students."

"The barkeeper?" Ron shrugged. "Why should he care if students sneak off? He's not a professor. Go on, get the map out and show us where we're going."

Hermione extracted the map of London she'd brought, carefully folded and stowed in an inside pocket of her jacket.

Malfoy leaned against a window display of ladies' boots and watched her.

"You know, you're a lot more like the Hermione I know than I'd expect you to be."

Hermione looked up, her eyes narrowed.

"Shouldn't you be a bit more relaxed about breaking rules, after seven years of it?

"Oh?" Hermione raised her eyebrows. "The me in your world never broke rules?"

He shrugged, the movement awkward against the window pane. "I think you gave Umbridge some lip a couple of times, but other than that? No."

"Huh." She went back to her map.

She laid it flat against the brick divide between the Leaky Cauldron and the shoe store. Slipping the end of her wand out of her bag, she cast a discreet Notice-Me-Not charm, then used a sticking spell to hold the map up.

"The Lady Dalmadge Charitable Institution for Orphaned Boys and Girls is here." She pointed to a section of the map marked with a tiny flag in black school ink. "The nearest cemetery is here -- only three blocks away. That's where they'll have buried children from the orphanage, and also nameless mothers who died on the premises, like Merope. And here --" she moved her hand over quite some distance, "is Diagon Alley and the Leaky Cauldron. You can't see them on the map because it's Muggle. I had to ask my mother to send it to me."

Ron made a distressed sound. "Hermione, that's ruddy miles away. We're not going to walk, are we?" He hesitated. "Or maybe we can Apparate?" he said doubtfully.

"We don't know what the cemetery looks like. We'd probably be Splinched," Hermione said.

"Can't we catch the Knight Bus?" Harry asked.

Draco snorted. "Daytime, Potter."

Harry rolled his eyes. "With a 'k', not an 'n'. Knight Bus. It picks up wizards in need."

"Oh." Draco's cheeks pinked. "I think I remember Mother mentioning some kind of common -- er, some kind of thing like that, once."

Ron had brightened. "Mum always told us to get the Knight Bus if we got lost, or abducted by reprobates or something, but I never got to do it. You just stick out your wand hand, right?"

*

The bus dropped them off in a narrow lane. The passage of time had played havoc with the cobblestones here, cracking and tipping them in crazy directions.

The sleepy-eyed young witch who had taken Stan Shunpike's place saw them off, rubbing her eyes against the daylight.

"Enjoy the fine weather," she told them, pressing the back of her hand to her cheek. The bus door had closed before any of them could respond.

Harry shivered, tugging at the sleeves of his jumper. It was fine weather only in that it wasn't actually raining. There was a dark, heavy hue to the cloud-cover that suggested it might start at any moment, though.

The tiny, cluttered cemetery was at the near end of the lane. It was surrounded by a tall, spiked iron fence, but the gate leaned open, snagged on a tree root. The tree itself grew up hard against the fence, pressing into the iron bars, and reared up to shadow an entire corner of the graveyard.

There was a nippy wind, out here in the comparative open. It played with Harry's fringe in chill little gusts. He looked around at the others, hugging his arms. Malfoy looked nervous, his eyes darting from the cemetery to the lane they'd just come down, but Harry supposed he had reason. Ron and Hermione simply looked set on their purpose.

Hermione adjusted the strap of her bag, then squeezed through the gate, the others following.

Harry looked around, his heart sinking. As cemeteries went, this one was a mess. Most of the headstones had either cracked or slipped onto their sides; or had been uprooted, possibly. Lichen crept up over the damaged and sometimes toppled plinths of angels. The paths weaving between the graves were more guesswork than anything else.

"Don't suppose you guys managed to find the grave before the Death Eaters turned up, did you?" Ron asked Malfoy, who shook his head.

"Let's spread out," Harry said. "Everyone take a corner. We'll work our way inwards till we meet in the middle."

The others nodded and moved away, picking their way through broken headstones and overgrown lavender.

It had obviously been several decades since anybody had been buried here.

There were a few signs that people still came here, though. Harry noticed china vases nestled at the feet of a few graves as he picked his way around them, blackish dry stems poking from their rims, and once he saw a fresh bouquet of lavender laid carefully on one of the newer graves, obviously picked from the cemetery itself. It wasn't flowering, but it was still fragrant and silver-green. He leaned closer and read the small plaque on the stone.

Maria
Daughter of Graham and Annette Harding
A Little Lady 'Til The End

They searched for what felt like hours. Harry's back began to ache with bending down to peer at the names scored into headstones, most of them badly obscured by lichen, or simply by time. The wind had picked up a little more, and he began to wish he'd brought a thicker jumper, or perhaps a coat.

"Guys!" Harry turned to see that Ron had straightened and was looking around. He was a lot closer to Harry now. "I've found the orphanage plot!"

Harry scrambled over, Draco and Hermione joining them.

What Ron had found was a long row of featureless graves, not distinguished from each other by any divide or even by a rise in the ground. There was a single plaque set roughly in the middle, with the words 'Lady Dalmadge Charitable Institution for Orphaned Boys and Girls' in a curlicued font engraved in the brass; but there were no individual headstones, or even a list of names.

"Oh, how pitiful," Hermione murmured.

"This is it," Harry said. He couldn't have said where the certainty came from, but it was there, lodged deep in his stomach. Voldemort had done something important here.

"It might be." Hermione sounded doubtful. "Merope probably didn't have any money when she arrived at the orphanage, so it would have made sense to have her buried anonymously in the Institution plot."

"No, it is," Harry said. "I have some sort of connection to Voldemort, right?"

Ron looked a little green. "It's not something to boast about, mate."

"Well, I do," Harry said, annoyed. "And I'm telling you, this is where he hid the Horcrux: this is where his mum's buried."

They looked at the grave for a few moments.

"So ..." Malfoy said eventually. "Do you, um ... do you think it's buried in the grave?"

"Oh god, tell me we don't have to dig up dead people," Ron said.

"Don't be silly." Hermione shook her head. "He wouldn't have dug up his own mother's bones."

Harry felt an uncomfortable lurch in his stomach. "He did his father's."

The others blanched, turning to look at the long grave again. Then Draco shook his head. "No, Hermione's right. He might not have respected his mother much for being abandoned by a Muggle, but she was his link to Salazar Slytherin. He wouldn't desecrate her grave."

Hermione took a breath. "Oh, good," she said. "Er, so, it's probably not in the grave, but if it's here it's still likely to be buried. There isn't anywhere else to put it. But I can't see Voldemort using a shovel if he ever wanted to check on it, so there must be a way to make it reveal itself. Some kind of ... password, or trigger, probably."

Draco's face went still with an idea, and he dug in his pocket. He produced a scrap of parchment and a self-inking quill and scribbled something. He passed the parchment to Harry, his face expectant.

Harry looked at the squiggle.

"Parseltongue," Malfoy explained. "He was the only one in the world who could speak it at the time -- what else would he have used as a trigger password?"

Harry raised his eyebrows, looking up from the parchment. "This is a snake?"

Malfoy flushed. "Nobody said I was an artist. Just say something, you pillock."

Harry looked at the squiggle doubtfully. It had a tiny forked tongue, he saw now. He squinted, trying to imagine the messily inked body twining about itself, the tiny tongue flicking within its mouth.

"Open," he hissed.

He looked up. "Did it work?"

Hermione nodded, her eyes wide. "Maybe try facing the grave? Or saying something else?"

Something was happening, though.

Ron stumbled as the ground he stood on shuddered. Harry made a grab to pull him to safety. He missed, but Ron got the idea and tumbled backwards off the narrow path and in amongst the gravestones. Draco took several steps back, his eyes wide. Harry and Hermione crowded backwards against a worn stone plinth supporting the broken feet of an angel, instinctively grabbing each others' hands.

Soil streamed into the opening as it formed in the path, the flow of earth thinning until it was a trickle of pebbles, then nothing. The opening now was the size of a narrow doorway, the space inside it impossibly black.

Draco stepped closer, cautiously, and peered inside.

"There are steps," he reported, his voice admirably calm. "But ... there's some kind of mist in there. I can't see very far."

"Air," Hermione said, breathing out. She dropped Harry's hand. "The element of air. That's probably the passive defense."

"What's the active one, then?" Harry prowled around the shadowy entrance to stand beside Draco.

"Maybe there isn't one, after all," Hermione said. "Or maybe it's inside."

Draco kicked a few loose pebbles into the opening, watching them tumble down and disappear into the gently swirling darkness. He shrugged, pulled out his wand, and said "Accio Horcrux!" Nothing happened, and he put the wand away again. "It was worth a try," he said.

Ron moved to stand beside them, looking down at the eddying mist. "What do you suppose it does?"

"Something to keep you from getting to the Horcrux," Harry said. "Probably something painful." He looked at the opening. "I'll go."