Earthbound Spook

The last time it had happened, Harry had been able to dismiss it. All right, most guys didn't kiss their friends on the cheek, even if they were really happy that they were alive, but still -- it had been nothing, really.

He struggled with the knot on his tie, his head down to avoid looking at Draco over the other side of the dorm.

This time -- he didn't even want to pretend that it hadn't happened. He'd felt alive, he'd felt on top of the world, as if his blood were singing in his veins. He wanted more than anything to touch Draco again.

"Nev, your climbing vine thing's trying to eat my curtains," Ron called, his shirt rucked up and his jumper trapping his arms as he pulled it off above his head.

"What?" Neville came out of the bathroom with his toothbrush in his hand. He hurried over. "It's not supposed to do that," he said. He started coaxing it back towards the window box. "I think somebody must have been feeding it meat."

Harry, who wasn't looking at Draco at all, noticed that he was suddenly terribly engrossed in adjusting the pleats of his robes on their hanger.

His back was to Harry, the white shirt pulled partly free of his belt. Harry imagined the six steps it would take to walk over there and curve his hands around the sharp edges of Draco's shoulder blades. To slide them up onto his shoulders and feel the whisper of hair on his knuckles, the warmth of the skin through the shirt under his hands.

It didn't matter that it didn't make sense. Harry wanted him.

Draco didn't want Harry, though. He'd said as much. Harry wanted to kiss him until he changed his mind, until he was gasping like before, wanted to tell him he was wrong; but that was stupid. 'You can't not want me, because I want you' - that was what it boiled down to, basically. He was being stupid.

It didn't matter anyway, not to what was important. Harry was going to save him, no matter what he said or what it took, and the fact that he also wanted to kiss him and kiss him until he couldn't breathe was completely irrelevant.

"I think it's been at mine, too, mate," Seamus said. He was examining his curtains. "Looks like its been licking them -- all the velvet's worn away. Ugh."

"It's affectionate," Neville said, patting the pot. The plant purred a little bit.

Ron gave it a wary look. "If it tries to lick me while I'm sleeping, Neville, I swear it's compost."

*

Ginny marched up to Draco as they were getting ready to leave the Great Hall after breakfast. It was Saturday, and they'd saved a big task for the free morning.

She put her hands on her hips and glared.

"Um. Hello, Ginny," Draco said after a moment. He shot her brother a look, but Ron just looked pained.

"When I was eleven," Ginny said, her voice low, "your father arranged for me to be possessed by a dark wizard. I nearly died. He got inside my head, he knew my thoughts; he laughed at them. And I don't mean to ever, ever be that helpless again."

Draco had leaned back as she talked. Now he bit his lip and nodded. He dipped his head. "I know," he said. "I know he did."

Ginny's face became, if anything, fiercer.

"Every time I look at you I remember that, do you understand? Every time."

"Ginny ..." Ron said. She ignored him.

"When I was just seeing you around school, it was okay. It didn't help that you were a nasty git, but it was okay. But now you're in my house. You're in my common room and at my table and I see you all the time, Malfoy."

He just looked at her, and suddenly she looked uncertain. "But," she said. "I've decided -- I need to help you."

Draco gaped at her. "What?" he said eventually.

She twisted the strap of her bag in her hand. "Well, it wasn't you, was it? I always knew it wasn't you, but ... So, yes. And you're a Gryffindor -- one of us. So I've changed my mind. Whatever you were going to ask me - I want to help with it."

Watching the determined light in her eyes, the nervous way her fingers moved on the strap, Harry remembered why he'd liked her so much. He thought about that old daydream for a second -- the one of swinging her up into his arms after Voldemort was dead, and kissing her in the sunlight while her bright hair fell about him. It was even more distant than before, though, like a tinny little recording of a movie.

His eyes slid back to Draco, to his partly open mouth and carefully blank face as he tried to change gears. The momentary lurch in Harry's stomach was enough to remind him of why the old daydream felt so distant.

"We were ... actually going to do that this morning," Draco said finally. He sounded cautious, but Ginny just raised her chin, so he continued. "We were going to do it without you, but you were there in my memory, so -- it would work much better if you were there this time, too."

She jerked her head in a nod. "Good. Are we going now?"

Hermione had skipped breakfast to go to the library. She caught up with them just as they were leaving, puffing and weighed down with books. When Harry told her that Ginny was going to help them, she stopped.

"I'm not really needed in that case, am I?" she said. Then she looked guilty. "I mean, I know we need to find a way to help Draco, and I'd be here if you needed me, but I'm just so worried that we're going to lose that item or have it stolen. I really think that I'm close to a breakthrough in figuring out how to destroy it."

Ginny looked curious, but mostly long-suffering.

"No, that's okay," Harry said. Hermione looked briefly at the others, nodded, and hurried back the way she'd come.

Draco had shown Harry and Ron and Hermione this memory in a Pensieve, to make sure they knew what they were doing. Draco explained to Ginny as they walked, and Harry remembered snatches of the Pensieve memory.

"It said it was hungry! How could you not hear it?"

His own twelve-year-old figure stood stock still in the corridor, staring around.

"Dunno, mate. There was a bit of a hissing noise, but that was probably just the pipes."

Harry looked at Ron, his face blank. "Hissing. You mean like ... a snake? In the walls, or the pipes or something, like you said?"

The twelve-year-old Draco rolled his eyes. "You heard words, not hisses, Harry. And you can't understand snakes."

Harry blinked. "Yes, I can. I mean, it only happened once, but ... what?"

Ron was gaping at him. "You're a Parselmouth? That's not ... dark wizards are Parselmouths, Harry."

Harry hesitated. "Um. Maybe I'm not, then."

Draco raised his chin. "Even if you are, do you really think there's a great big snake wandering around because of Slytherin's heir?" He leaned on the wall behind him, crossing his arms. "Because that's stupid. There isn't any kind of enormous snake that petrifies ... its ..."

He trailed off, his eyes widening.

"Oh hell," Ron said. "Those are all extinct, aren't they? Didn't Rupert the Righteous kill the last one a hundred years ago? Tell me it's not a ..."

"Basilisk," Draco finished.

"We should have figured it out sooner, once we knew that," Draco was telling Ginny, his voice neutral. "We didn't remember Moaning Myrtle until the next night, and you'd already painted your suicide note on the wall by then."

She scowled, hugging her arms around her. "Just get to the bit where I get to blow things up."

"But what if we're wrong!" Ron yelled as they pounded up another hallway. "Mum told me to look after Ginny. If we're going in the wrong direction, she's going to die!"

"We're right!" Harry yelled over his shoulder. "I know we are! It has to be Myrtle's bathroom!"

The door slamming back against the wall framed the tableau beyond. Eleven-year-old Ginny, stick-thin and tiny, dropped the diary onto the tiles, her blank, tear-streaked face turning to them. The blankness faded as they stared, the three boys suspended in the doorway of the bathroom. Ginny gave a breathless cry, dropping to her knees on the wet floor.

"The door's open," she said. "It's too late. It's going to come up."

"Did I ... I didn't go down that time, did I?"

Draco shook his head, speeding up a bit to match Ginny's increasingly fast stride. They reached the bathroom and stepped inside. Moaning Myrtle was absent for once. Possibly she was haunting the Prefects' Bathroom again. Harry thought that she did that far too often, given that she was officially thirteen.

The bathroom looked bare -- empty and clean and harmless.

Ginny viewed it through slitted eyes.

Harry walked carefully over to the sink and found the little coloured snake on the tap. "Open," he whispered, hearing the sound come out with extra harmonics. The entrance opened with a grinding sound. The space beyond was completely dark.

"Don't use complicated spells," Draco warned. "Remember we were eleven and twelve at the time."

Ginny nodded, not taking her eyes from the dark opening.

Harry, Ron and Draco turned horrified eyes to the blackness of the tunnel entrance. "You were going to go down there?" Ron breathed.

Ginny didn't look at them as she repeated, in a voice that was barely audible, "It's going to come up."

There was a slithering sound now, like dry paper on stone, and Harry, watching the Pensieve scene, could hear a whispery voice speaking a litany that grew louder. Hungry, so hungry. Must kill. Kill the little one, she let us out. Kill all of them.

"We have to close the entrance!"

Draco spun to face him. "How the hell do we do that? There's no door! There's nothing!"

Ginny struggled to her feet again, fumbling with her wand as she faced the entrance once more. She still had tears streaming down her face, and her hand trembled.

"Incendio!" she yelled, her voice breaking. Fire rolled over the entrance, cracking the bricks.

"Actually that ... might do it," Draco said. He pulled out his own wand.

Ginny held her wand in a firm grip, her fingers white. "Incendio," she said quietly, and the taps and sinks creaked under the wash of fire. "Incendio!" she said again, watching the fire wash over the sinks. "Reducto! Aguamenti!"

The row of sinks and the tiled wall were all beginning to shake, dust raining down and broken tiles falling into the entrance, smashing against the taps. Ron and Draco raised their wands too and began casting. Fire and water and destruction rolled over the far end of the bathroom, Ginny standing in the middle of it like the still centre of a hurricane. Her eyes, fierce and slitted, were fixed on the dark entrance as it began to fill up with debris and buckle out of shape, until even a Basilisk would have found its way blocked. Harry stepped forward and joined in.

When they finally stepped away, coughing in the dust, the whole far end of the bathroom was rubble.

"Wow," Ginny said after a moment. She was shaking, now. "Wow. Do you think there's a career where you blow things up?" She smiled. "Because I could do that."

Ron laughed, helpless giggles that didn't stop even after Ginny hit him on the arm.

Harry patted him on the back. He turned around to see where Draco was, but he was nowhere.

He had time to feel utter desolation before the other boy faded back into reality, shaking and coughing as he fell to his knees.

Harry dropped down beside him, holding his shoulders.

Draco looked up, his hair falling into his eyes.

"Shit," he said. "It's not working, is it?"

*

They were covered in dust, and splashed where pipe water had gushed out, before the pipes themselves buckled and were buried under the rubble.

The four of them trailed back up to Gryffindor Tower to wash and change.

Draco seemed to be trying to be normal again. He teased Neville's plant with the corner of his towel as he dried his hair. It shivered irritably and made a swipe at him.

Harry sat on top of his trunk. "Will you show me another memory?" he asked. "Not like that one, to help recreate an effect, but just -- I don't know. Something normal."

Draco dropped his towel on his bed and sat down next to it. Ron was still in the shower. "Why?"

Harry shrugged. "I just --" He didn't want to think about Draco disappearing. He wanted to be able to think about something else for a while. "I'd just like to see."

He could tell that Draco was thinking about it. He finished drying his hair and folded the towel over his bedhead. Then he nodded. Harry got out the Pensieve.

Harry changed his mind as soon as got inside the memory and looked around.

He gave Draco a horrified look.

"Bloody hell, I said 'normal' not 'nightmarish'."

Draco smirked. "I could have brought us here at the beginning of the song. I was being kind."

Harry hugged his robes around him protectively, his eyes skating over the Great Hall. It was decorated with sparkling frost and garlands of Christmas greenery, and thronged with students for the Yule Ball.

The only more traumatising memories Harry could think of involved Voldemort or the Dursleys.

Harry spotted his Pensieve self a moment later, out on the dance floor. There were quite a few other people out there too, but Parvati's bright pink robes drew the eye.

"Oh, god."

His fourteen-year-old self was being steered in careful circles, up near the stage. Parvati's smile was bright and her grip on his shoulder looked like iron. Pensieve Harry's face was stiff. He moved like a bad puppet.

"Oh, god."

Draco snickered. "The Daily Prophet covered one of your school games once -- do you remember? 'The gazelle-like grace and sleek precision of the Boy Who Lived', they talked about." He clasped his hands behind his head and grinned.

Luckily Draco had been right: they'd come in near the end of the song. The music finished and Pensieve Harry dragged Parvati off the dance floor and over to where Ron and Padma sat at one of the small tables. Ron was looking nervously between Padma and the dance floor. He greeted Harry's arrival with relief.

"Did you see Hermione?" Ron asked immediately. "I didn't even recognise her. Do you think she used dark magic?"

Padma groaned and dropped her head in her hands.

Parvati gave Ron an odd look. "She just let Lavender use charms on her hair."

"Make him shut up about her," Padma mumbled into her hands. "Please."

Harry dropped into the chair next to Ron's. Parvati, looking bored already, sat down on his other side. She leaned back a little and seemed to start up a conversation in signs with Padma behind his back. Harry hadn't noticed them doing that at the time.

Pensieve Harry didn't seem to notice now, either. He opened a bottle of Butterbeer and leaned close to Ron. "Do you think we have to stay the whole night?" he muttered.

Ron shrugged. "You probably do. You're a champion."

Pensieve Harry scowled at his Butterbeer. Parvati rolled her eyes and made a gesture to Padma that seemed to encompass Harry and Ron and a group of Beauxbatons boys over near one of the refreshment tables. Padma replied with a complicated one-shouldered shrug.

Parvati met the eye of one of the Beauxbatons boys. A moment later he was in front of her, asking her to dance.

"You don't mind, do you?" she asked Harry. Harry had stopped scowling at his Butterbeer and was now watching Cedric and Cho on the dance floor.

"What?" he said. Parvati lifted her chin at Padma and tossed her head, and her sister nodded.

"Where are you?" The real Harry asked Draco, standing beside him. Draco tilted his head towards a nearby doorway, where his fourteen-year-old self, dressed in impeccable black velvet robes, was up on his toes, craning to see around the room. As they watched his shoulders slumped and he came forward, throwing himself into the chair Parvati had just vacated.

"I've lost my date," he said.

Pensieve Harry looked away from Cho and Cedric, his face slipping into a smile. Then he frowned. "Sorry, what? You mean Susan?"

Draco gave him a withering look. "No, my other date," he said. "Obviously, Susan."

Ron kicked his chair back, looking at Draco with a grin. "How can you lose your date?"

Padma muttered something about it only happening to people who ever moved. She stood up. "Are you going to ask me to dance?" she asked. "Ever, I mean?"

Ron shook his head. She narrowed her eyes and went to join Parvati.

Draco had his coat over his arm. He began to go through the pockets.

Pensieve Harry laughed. "I don't think you're going to find her in there."

"She might have left me a note or something," Draco said, intent on the contents of his pockets. "I didn't even notice her going, you know."

Pensieve Draco was piling a small collection of badges onto the table now. Pensieve Harry picked one of them up, then cast a guilty look around. He was trying not to laugh. "You said you wouldn't do any more of these," he hissed. "The Hufflepuffs are going to kill me."

The real Harry drifted closer to the table so that he could see the badges better. One of them was flashing yellow and red alternating parts of the message:

CEDRIC DIGGORY
WANTS HARRY POTTER'S AUTOGRAPH

Draco gave up on his pockets and dropped back in his chair.

"This was supposed to be my good-will gesture to Father, you know. Ask a girl from a powerful pureblood family to the Yule Ball. Now, at the next Ministry Social, Mother and Father are going to run into the Boneses and mention the ball, and Susan's parents will tell them I wasn't paying attention and lost her after dinner."

Harry gave him a comforting pat on the arm, although the corner of his mouth was twitching.

Pensieve Draco shot him a look and slumped lower in his chair, his colour rising a little.

The real Harry gave Draco a sideways look. Draco was watching his Pensieve self, his eyes narrowed.

"I lost mine, too," Pensieve Harry said, apparently in a spirit of commiseration. "So did Ron."

"How do you think Hermione and Krum even met?" Ron asked, his eyes fixed on the couple across the room.

Pensieve Harry rolled his eyes. "I can't imagine why," he added.

The real Draco leaned back against the wall of the Great Hall, watching them and the rest of the hall through half-closed eyes. Harry leaned beside him.

"It turned out Susan wandered off to get some air and curled up in one of the curtains in the Entrance Hall," Draco said. "That's what a thrilling dance partner I was -- I put my date to sleep."

Harry laughed. "You went with Pansy, here," he said. "I remember watching you dancing -- I couldn't believe that you could really be having fun out there, even though you both kept laughing and spinning around."

Harry watched his Pensieve self turn to Draco and mutter something. Whatever it was made Draco smirk.

The real Harry cleared his throat. "Um. Did you and he ever ...?"

Draco looked at him. He coloured. "No," he said firmly, his eyes back on the boys at the table.

"Oh." Harry watched himself swirl his finger through the little pile of badges.

"Did he want to ...?"

"No."

Harry darted a glance at him. "Did you want ...?"

"Shut up, Harry," Draco said.

The fairy lights from the grotto outside cast tiny gleams onto the floor, meeting the warm glow of the light in the Great Hall. The Weird Sisters were playing fast numbers now -- Fred and Angelina spun past, dancing like killer robots. Angelina's braids spun out behind her.

Draco didn't suggest leaving, and neither did Harry. They stayed there, half watching the younger versions of themselves drooping at the small table, but mostly watching the dancers and the lights, and let the night wear on.

*

McGonagall's cool voice interrupted Harry as he tried to read the book propped against the jug of pumpkin juice in front of him.

"I'm told that you destroyed one of my bathrooms."

"Huh?" He looked up, brushing toast crumbs off his mouth. "Oh ... yeah, we did. Sorry."

She raised her eyebrows. "I have an extremely unhappy ghost on my hands, Mr Potter. What exactly do you propose that I tell her?"

"Oh. Myrtle, yeah. Tell her we're sorry, will you?" He snapped his fingers, remembering. "Actually, tell her it was for Draco. She likes him."

Her face softened. "I'm also told that the plan I proposed is not working as well as it could."

Harry shrugged, not wanting to look at her. "Yeah. Not yet. You don't have any new ideas, do you?"

He did look up at her then. She looked briefly pained, whether over the news or because she had to admit it, Harry wasn't sure.

"Not as yet." Her mouth compressed. "As I tell Mrs Malfoy thrice daily."

Harry was at the very end of the Gryffindor table. Hermione was in the library again, and Ron and Draco had drifted up to the other end to see if they could find blueberry muffins, which Ron had spotted the Hufflepuffs eating.

Harry chewed on his lip. "The problem is that he doesn't belong here -- isn't that right, Professor?"

She nodded, supporting herself with a hip against the table. "That's correct. The plan I outlined was only ever supposed to be a temporary measure, to lessen the conflict between what Mr Malfoy knows as real and what our world knows as real."

"But if he belonged here, it wouldn't matter that his memories were weird."

"No; if this reality had a basis on which to claim him, then the tension between his memories and the world would not be enough to disrupt his life. As time passed, in fact, that tension would disappear almost entirely."

"Well, what would be a -- a basis on which to claim him?"

She sighed. "We would need a point of connection with this world. Unfortunately, the only true point of connection that Mr Malfoy could have here is himself -- the self of this world. And that Draco is dead."

Harry stared at his toast for a moment, concentrating on it to keep from hearing that word, dead. He could hear that Professor McGonagall was beginning to move off.

"He didn't used to be, though, did he?" Harry looked up. McGonagall raised her eyebrows in that look she gave you when she was trying not to show that she thought you were an idiot. "And he lived right here, where Draco lives now," Harry continued. "That makes it ... only really a problem of time, Professor."

*

Harry came out of the library at a run, the book crushed to his chest. Mrs Norris yowled and darted out from under his feet, tail bristling. Harry stumbled. He caught himself on a passing student's shoulder and pushed on.

"Watch it, Potter!" Millicent Bulstrode yelled after him.

"Sorry!" he threw over his shoulder, although he was halfway down a passage by then, so he wasn't sure that she heard him.

He was panting hard by the time he reached Gryffindor Tower. The Fat Lady made him repeat the password twice, because she complained that she hadn't quite caught that second word.

"Norwegian Ridgeback!" he gasped, his hands on his knees. She clicked her tongue but swung forward.

Most of the common room was watching something going on at the far end, so nobody turned around when the portrait hole opened. Harry inched forward until he could see. Then he retreated behind Dennis Creavey.

Hermione and Ron were backed up against the last hearth by a hysterical Moaning Myrtle. Harry had never seen her outside a bathroom before. Her floating, blue-white form looked oddly watery, as though all that time in steamy air had left her ectoplasm a bit damp. She was very out of place against the cheery orange fire beyond her.

"I'm sure the other ghosts would be delighted to let you share their ..." Hermione was saying.

Myrtle wailed again. "They wouldn't! They don't! They hate me. And now y-you people have spoiled my only r-refuge and you probably laughed, didn't you?"

"I wasn't even there!" Hermione protested.

Myrtle ignored her. "It's in r-ruins, now. It's the place where I died, but you don't care."

There was no sign of Draco anywhere. Harry backed carefully towards the door again, leaving them to it.

Once outside again, he stopped, propped against the wall. Where would he be?

The Fat Lady sniffed. "I can't imagine why you were so desperate to get inside, if you simply meant to come straight out again. Do you enjoy disturbing me, young man?"

Harry set off again, hugging the book to his chest once more.

"Good manners cost nothing!" echoed after him.

He finally found Draco in the mostly-empty Great Hall. He was sitting on the Slytherin table, swinging his legs and talking to Nott and Zabini.

Harry stopped by the door, watching them from across the hall. He hadn't quite noticed it before, but Draco's outline looked strange these days. It seemed to waver between just a bit fuzzy, and too sharp. It made him look out of place -- as though he were somehow a picture that had been superimposed onto the background of the Great Hall, but wasn't really there.

How much time do we have? Really have? Is he going to just disappear over breakfast tomorrow and not come back?

The thought propelled him forward.

Nott looked around as he approached. Harry gave him a brief nod but turned to Draco.

"I need you."

He didn't realise how that sounded until he heard the little choking noise Zabini made.

Draco hopped off the table, his cheeks flushed.

"You have no subtlety, Potter," he mumbled.

Harry rolled his eyes. "We knew that. Now come on, I've found something."

Draco's eyes flicked to his face, hearing the excitement in his voice, and he picked up his pace.

In the library, Harry found an empty desk alcove and pulled Draco into it. Then he put down the book in his arms and opened it to page 537.

"There," he said, marking the place with his finger.

Draco read it. He looked up, unimpressed.

"The Transeo spell? Some kind of crossing spell?"

"Right." Harry nodded, excitement fizzing in his veins. "It's used for bridging space. It's not for actually crossing the distance, like a travelling spell. It's to link two objects that are separated in space."

"O-kay," Draco said. The clear, steady light from the Flame-Safe Torches lighting their alcove made his hair and skin look golden. He shook his head. "Tell me how this is useful? Because you're practically vibrating, so there has to be something."

Harry grinned. "Okay, so, this is the thing. I asked McGonagall, and she said the only way we could tie you to this world, so that it doesn't keep trying to push you out, would be if we could tie you to the version of you that belongs here. So if he was still alive, we could just link you two and -- okay, actually that would be kind of weird, walking around linked to your other self, but you'd be alive."

Draco raised his eyebrows. Harry hurried on. "Only he's not alive. But he was, and that made me think -- well, it's just time, isn't it? So I started reading about time, and one of the books said that everything has this time-path that connects it to its past and its future, and there are spells and potions and things to let you see it, if you want. So the Draco here -- he has a time-path that goes back seventeen years. And if we could link you to that -- link your future to his past -- then that would be the same as linking you to him."

Draco opened his mouth. Then he closed it again.

Harry grinned, pleased with the reaction.

"And you think we can do that with this bridging spell?" Draco asked eventually. He sounded very, very cautious now; as if he wanted to hope but wasn't sure that he could.

"Well, I had to change it a bit. And then I needed a way to test it. And I couldn't find any of the spells they talked about that let you see time-paths, so I thought -- well, you know how if you leave a book on a desk in the library, and then take your bag and walk away from it like you're leaving the library, it does that sort of Apparition thing back to its shelf?"

Draco's mouth quirked. He smiled and then bit down on it, but his eyes were beginning to shine. "You managed to link a book to another book's past?"

Harry nodded, feeling giddy. He jumped up and grabbed a book off the Harmonic Charms shelf next to him. He lined the two books up. Then he lifted his wand, pointed to the book he'd been carrying around, and said, "Transeo Tempus." Holding the wand steady, he stared at the transfiguration textbook, concentrating on imagining it as it had been an hour ago.

There was a waiting feeling for a moment, as there'd been when he tested it before. Then a twinge in his wand he felt the magic take.

He jumped up, grabbing his bag but leaving the books. "Come on!"

Draco followed him, craning his neck to look at the books behind them. Approximately ten steps away, the books both vanished. Harry and Draco hurried back.

Harry almost exploded with pride as Draco stared at the shelf. The two books were hustling and knocking each other about, pages rustling in distress, as they attempted to both fit into the one slot on the shelf.

"Oh my god," Draco breathed. "Oh my god." He looked at Harry. "Will this really work on ...?"

Harry bit his lip. "I don't know," he admitted. "The problem is -- well, I linked that first book to the second one's time-path at a point not very long ago -- an hour. I've tried making the period longer, but the spell fizzles out."

Draco looked less downcast than Harry had expected. "So we need a way to make the spell stronger."

He sat down again, drumming his fingers on the desk.

Harry dropped down opposite him. "I tried concentrating really hard, and, um, using emotion, the way you're supposed to with an Unforgivable." He shrugged. "It makes it go a bit further, but not much."

Draco shook his head. "No, I don't think one person will be able to do it. Time's much harder to cross than space. Let's try casting together."

It didn't work well. They practised saying the words at exactly the same time, but the two spells still seemed to interfere with each other and ended up cancelling out.

Draco chewed on the end of his wand, thinking. After a moment he noticed what he was doing and blanched, putting it down. He picked up Harry's quill and chewed on that instead.

"You know how you mentioned we might need to use a ritual?" he asked. He was looking at the quill rather than at Harry. "The other night?"

Harry shifted. He remembered the alcove and the soft slide of mouths and hands.

"Yeah." His voice came out croaky.

Draco looked up and caught his expression. He stared for a moment, his hand clenching around the quill. Then he cleared his throat, patches of colour appearing on his cheeks. "So, I -- thought that was a good idea, and I started reading about ritualistic forms."

Harry had got about halfway through the first chapters of those books, then given up. The authors had apparently assumed that anybody reading them had spent their life since the age of three making a private study of advanced arithmantical space.

"Oh?" he said.

"I didn't find any ritual that would do, obviously, but -- one of the books was talking about how you could use ritualistic patterns to increase the power of a spell. And because rituals usually involve more than one person -- I'm pretty sure that it said that you could use things like pattern incantations to include several people in a spell."

*

"So then Draco found this incantation that you can use to -- see, it's there -- and you can use it to make some kind of framework that other people cast the spell inside."

Hermione stared at the piece of parchment in her hands. Her eyebrows were climbing to her hair. The parchment was covered in Harry's scrawl, with annotations in Draco's exuberant loops-and-tails hand.

"The incantation's mostly gibberish," Draco said, "but it's been worked out by, uh -- trial and error -- what's the word?"

"Empirically?"

Harry and Draco shared a glance.

"Probably," Draco said. "So, somebody worked out that these syllables and inflections would create a kind of pattern that would -- you know, support the individual spells people are casting around the circle."

"There are gaps in the incantation," Harry pointed out. "And people take turns saying the spell in them. And it creates --"

"The effects of a single powerful iteration," Hermione said. She stared at them. "This is -- do you know what you've done? Creating the new spell and then finding a way to amplify the effects? This is amazing."

Draco beamed. "Well, we are brilliant."

They'd found Hermione down in the Arithmancy Stacks, sitting at a desk between two towering shelves. The books and papers scattered over the desk were lit by a glow of wandlight in the dimness. With her hair mussed and ink stains on her nose, she looked like an ethereal mad professor in the middle of it.

She bent over the parchment. "It will need to be modified a bit. I don't think this part will work unless we also ... huh, no, maybe ... Oh, and we'll need a way to see what we're doing, but Professor Slughorn can probably help us there." She looked up at Draco. "It will have to be your mother speaking the central incantation, you realise? She had most nearly the same relationship with you in both worlds, and that's ... going to matter." The words trailed off as her focus switched back to the parchment. She found a quill and began scribbling in the margins.

Harry and Draco looked at each other. They shifted from foot to foot. Finally, she looked back up. Her eyes shone.

"We need to show this to Professor McGonagall."

*

Things moved very quickly. Professor McGonagall was sceptical at first, but Narcissa Malfoy's infinite belief in the plan more than made up for that.

Actually, Harry suspected that Narcissa would have been ready to believe in them if they'd said that they were going to save Draco with a mouse and a piece of string, but her support was crucial in hurrying the plan along. McGonagall had been willing to concede that it might work, but she'd said that playing with time -- especially time and identity -- was extraordinarily dangerous, and that she would not allow one of her students to be risked until the dangers had been investigated.

Narcissa's steely determination not to waste another moment might not, to be fair, have been enough to persuade her if Draco hadn't collapsed to his knees just then, his face strained and white.

"I saw you decide to do that," Ron said. They were waiting on the moving staircase, coming down from McGonagall's office. "You didn't fade out at all."

Draco raised his chin. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"It could have happened anyway," Pansy said, worming her shoulder under Draco's arm. "It's been happening all the time."

He played with a lock of her hair. "You know, you should wash this more often, Pansy. It'd be quite nice if you -- ow! Damn! What do you do to your fingernails?"

She gave him a dangerous smile. "Girls' secret."

She slipped free of his arm once they came out of the staircase, going up on her toes to kiss his cheek. "I'm going to go tell Blaise and Theo that it's happening tomorrow. They're still all jealous because you don't tell them stuff anymore, Draco." She smiled. "It's terribly cute."

Crabbe and Goyle looked uncertain for a moment, glancing between her and Draco. She looked back over her shoulder.

"Oh, for god's sake. Come on, would you?"

They shrugged and fell into step on either side of her, hulking shapes framing her slim form.

The others looked after them.

"Did you know she'd stolen your goons?" Ron asked after a moment.

Draco shook himself awake. "I suspected."

"I don't like her," Harry said.

Draco stared at him. Harry bit his lip. Draco's stare intensified.

"Really?" Ron said. "She's growing on me. It's sort of like Luna. You have to get used to the bit where she's crazy, first."

Draco looked away.

Harry tried to remember what he'd been saying.

Hermione was watching him, her eyes wide and startled. When she saw that he'd noticed, she coughed and adjusted the strap of her bag.

"I need to do something," Draco said. "Someone give me something to do. Why is it going to take Slughorn a whole night to brew a potion? I'll bet he could have it ready in a couple of hours if I was still a Slytherin. Why doesn't Professor Sinistra brew potions?"

Ron raised his eyebrows. "To be honest, mate, I can't see Sinistra sitting up all night brewing a potion for one of the students in her house."

Hermione fiddled with the strap of her bag some more. "Do you really want something to do, Draco?"

"Yes!" He grasped her hands. "I have to wait until tomorrow morning and I could die in the night and I'm going crazy and ... er ..." He stopped. "Er, I mean, something to while away the, um, boredom would be good."

She gently tugged her hands out of his grip. "Well, I found a way to destroy the cup. I found it last night, actually, but it seemed sort of callous to bring it up."

He smiled, wide and a bit crazy. "I'm glad you understand that I'm far more important than the Dark Lord trying to kill us all," he said. "How do we destroy it?"

*

"I rejected Fiendfire at first because if it gets out of control it destroys everything. Scholars think that it's actually alive, which ought to be impossible because Fire is one of the nine inanimate forces; but it doesn't obey ordinary rules ..."

Harry and Ron let themselves fall behind. Hermione was explaining to Draco exactly what they were going to do, and why she'd been utterly brilliant.

"Have you heard of Fiendfire?" Harry asked Ron.

He shrugged. "Have I ever heard of anything that Hermione talks about? Half the stuff about magic that I learned as a kid, Fred and George taught me, and I had to unlearn it all once I got to school."

Harry had a brief memory of the ludicrous spell the twins had told Ron would turn Scabbers yellow. That had, it occurred to him, been unadventurous for them. They must have still been getting into their stride. If they did something like that now, they'd make sure the pretend spell actually hexed the caster's nose off, or something.

"Ron!"

Ginny caught them up, huffing, one hand holding a broomstick. She'd obviously spotted them from the air. It was a rough day for flying -- overcast and blustery, and it had been hailing earlier. Harry could still spot the odd hailstone, worn down to nubs and scattered in the leaf mulch. Ginny looked cold. Her hair was windblown and coming free of its plait and her cheeks were flushed. Although that could have been anger.

She planted her hands on her hips. "It is entirely your fault that I have a blubbing ghost coming into my dorm at night and telling me that my freckles are ugly when I'm undressing!"

Ron gaped.

"She says she's going to come every night!"

"Uh ..."

"I destroyed that bathroom for your friends, and you dobbed me in to Moaning Myrtle!"

Ron blanched.

She crossed her arms. "You're going to fix it."

"Ginny, how am I supposed to --"

"I don't care! You will! Mum is going to be completely on my side!"

Harry backed off a few steps. Ron gave him an apologetic look and settled down to bargaining.

"Um, okay," Harry said. "Hi, Ginny. I'll, um, tell them not to start without you, Ron."

Both Weasleys ignored him. Harry escaped.

He hurried to catch up with Draco and Hermione, slowing down as he neared them.

They were none of them wearing school robes for this. It was cold, and the robes were too hard to put jumpers and coats over the top of. Hermione's slight form in jeans and a huge jacket stood out against the formless bulk of the forest behind her, which was beginning to look brown and bare as the season wore on. Draco was almost a ghost at her side, light clothes and pale hair melting into the background. They weren't walking very fast, their heads tilted together in conversation. It didn't sound as though they were talking about Horcrux destruction anymore

He dawdled, trying to overhear.

"... probably is based on his Saving People thing, but that's how he connects to people," Hermione was saying. She sounded frustrated. "It doesn't mean that it's not real."

Harry couldn't make out what Draco said, but he didn't sound impressed.

Hermione started counting off on her fingers. "He saved me from a troll -- we would never have been friends otherwise. He saved Ron from -- well, no offence, but from you, when you insulted him on the train. Yes, you did, didn't you know? No, he ..." Harry couldn't hear the next part. Her voice became clearer as she continued her list. "He saved Sirius when he first met him. He saved Ginny, and I've always thought that that was part of why he fell for her, last year. Plus, when we went to Bill and Fleur's wedding at the beginning of the year, Harry was really nice to Gabrielle Delacour, even though he hardly ever remembers anyone, usually. But he saved her back in fourth year, during the Triwizard Tournament."

Harry tried to walk quietly. He strained to hear what Draco said in response.

"Bloody hell," Ron said behind him. He was out of breath. "You are so lucky not to have a sister, Harry, I swear."

Draco and Hermione turned around, letting them catch up.

"I thought we should do it over there, near the lake," Hermione said. "Just in case the fire gets out of control. Not that I think it will."

"So, just in the interests of information," Draco said, "what would we do if the fire were to get out of control?" Harry noticed that his mood seemed to have changed again. He was still on edge, but he'd lost the nervous energy that made him grasp Hermione's hands and talk a mile a minute.

Hermione hesitated. "Actually, maybe we should have brought broomsticks."

Ron gulped. She rallied. "Well, anyway, we can always jump in the lake."

Harry looked at the freezing, ruffled surface of the lake, grey and wintry with the reflection of the sky. "Oh, good."

"I'm sure it won't come to that."

Hermione found a flat area of ground near the lake; far enough from the edge that the grass was low and dying back, rather than long and reedy as it was on the lake shore.

She first cast a spell Harry didn't know. It created a vaguely shimmering wall between them and the castle -- almost completely invisible, but not quite. Ron stepped outside it and grinned. "That's brilliant. I can't see you at all."

Hermione nodded, already concentrating on scratching out a circle on the ground. She left a trail of glowing arithmantical symbols behind her. It almost seemed pretty, like fairy lights. Then she put the cup down in the circle and stood to speak the Fiendfire incantation.

Harry shivered, hearing the words like an unpleasant taste on his tongue. They weren't Latin, and they sounded -- evil. Uncomfortable. A moment later, flames roared into life inside the circle, and Hermione stepped back. The boys all jumped a step back too. They stared.

There were beast shapes in the fire: mouths that gaped wide, eyes that rolled madly in fiery heads, claws of white flame slicing against the arithmantical barrier. The flames were spinning higher inside the circle, forming a pillar of fire, streaked with white heat.

Hermione eyed the the pillar nervously. She looked relieved when it reached some kind of upper limit and hit a boundary. Monstrous shapes immediately whirled down the pillar again, cramped wings slashing the burning air.

Harry fixed his eye on the indistinct shape of the Hufflepuff Cup, lying on the razed ground at the foot of the inferno. He thought he could actually see the moment that it crumbled and released the piece of Voldemort's soul. There was a black streak like ash tingeing the flames for a moment, then it disappeared into the fire.

"Bloody ... hell," Ron said. "How long've you known how to do this, Hermione?"

Her cheeks pinked, and she hugged her jacket around her. There was no heat from the contained fire at all. "It's not actually especially difficult to cast," she said. "It's usually restricted knowledge, though, because it's difficult to control. I, uh, stumbled on it when I was researching a Charms assignment for extra credit once."

"You're amazing," Ron said, shaking his head. Hermione tried to suppress her immediate, huge smile.

The fire was beginning to fade. Harry supposed it was running out of air. The flames weren't licking so high any more, and most of the fantastical shapes had subsided, although there was still the hint of a wing or a claw here and there. Eventually even they died away.

Ron grinned again. "That was completely awesome."

Hermione regarded the coils of fine ash that were beginning to settle in the circle. "Well, I did think it would work."

"What we should do," Ron said, "is find lots more Horcruxes. Then we can set fire to them."

Hermione crossed her arms. "You haven't grown up one bit since the time you decided it would be a good idea to steal a flying car, have you?"

"Ah ah!" Ron slung an arm around Harry's shoulder. "We. We decided to steal a car. Actually, now that I think about it, it was Harry's idea entirely."

Harry laughed and ducked out from under his arm.

"I'm a model of responsibility, you see," Ron said, adjusting the cuffs of his shirt. Then he grinned. "But you must have enjoyed that a little."

Hermione's raised her eyebrows. "Setting Voldemort's soul on fire? No, that wasn't satisfying at all."

Ron interlocked his fingers behind his head. "He is going to be so pissed off."

The smoke was dissipating now, just a lighter grey coiling at the top of the columnal prison. There was nothing but an ember or two of cooling, fused earth and stone scattered at the base -- which was now a hole a good three or four feet deep.

"I hope I set the concealment screen high enough." Hermione frowned, measuring the distance with her eyes. "Smoke appearing from nowhere will be difficult to explain."

Ron craned to look back at the castle. "There's no one coming."

Harry turned to look too. Then he turned further, fear making his throat dry as he scanned the lake shore and its scattered trees.

"Where's Draco?"

Hermione's eyes widened. She turned around. "I thought he was ..."

Ron had gone pale under his freckles. "He must've wandered off, right?"

Harry kept scanning the trees. Why would he wander off? We were destroying a Horcrux, nobody would ...

He spotted a glint of white-blond, coming out from behind a willow a way down along the lake shore. Malfoy was walking quickly along the shore, an almost-invisible figure picking its way around rocks and other obstacles.

For a moment, the relief was so strong that Harry's knees felt weak. Then came anger, drowning out everything else.

"I'm going to kill him," he breathed.

He heard both Hermione and Ron distantly: Hermione's "Oh, thank god." Ron's "He bloody well wandered off?"

Harry was already striding after Draco.