Surfeit Of Curses

In every way I find myself the hollowest of men,
And every day I lose myself and then I wonder when
Some narrator is gonna be my savior,
Write new rules for my behaviour.
I live my life as text these days
Clear signs of life are all that I crave.
Living my life like a sentence these days...
(hue&cry)
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"It sort of started when I found Alexander's diary and tapes..."

"Who's Alexander? A friend of yours?" Charles asked.

Draco shifted his satchel and waited a patient moment for the look of recognition that usually flooded people's faces about ten seconds after he mentioned Alexander's name.

It never came.

He repeated himself, using the full name. "Well, when I found Alexander Malfoy's diary and tapes..." Then he paused again, searching Charles' face for some response or reaction.

There was none. Charles acted as if he hadn't even heard Draco speak, and said "Since you were last here, we've changed the gardens a bit, and you won't have seen the new pool below the cliffs. The girls are down there all the time, playing at being mermaids. I keep telling them that the mermaids up north aren't like the ones they know but... Do you still have mermaids in the Hogwarts lake?"

"Uncle Charles?" Draco said tentatively. His voice cracked between the words. "You don't remember anyone named Alexander? From school?"

"There was a girl named Alexis in my year, but she wasn't in my house. She was in Ravenclaw, and I didn't really..."

"No, not from Hogwarts. When you were at Durmstrang, and before, didn't you know someone named..."

"I didn't go to Durmstrang with any other boys from England - everyone else there was from the east. And I was only there through May in 1977, and then I repeated my fifth year at Hogwarts and graduated from there in 1981. But the name doesn't sound familiar from either of the schools."

"It has to!" Draco exclaimed. "I've... I mean, someone... But...Profess..." He started to say Professor Snape's name, then stopped. The professor had asked him not to mention him in connection with Alexander. "Kar..." No, he couldn't tell him about what Karkaroff had said. It would mean explaining the memory charm and Lucius' reaction and too many things he couldn't put into words.

"Draco, you must be mixing things up," Charles said quietly. "If you want, I can look through my Friends and Former Pupils of Hogwarts Floorectory and see who's listed in there."

"But he won't be in there," Draco protested and tried one last time to get the reaction he desperately wanted. Everything he'd been told about Alexander in the past few weeks threatened to spill out amid the tangled tree roots. "He died before I was born and I read about him and you... you were in what I read." He jumbled together a dozen of the disparate bits of information he'd collected and said, "It was about the first time the Dark Lord became powerful and the ways that people became his followers and how people did things under Imperio and someone told me that it was true and... and are you sure you didn't go to school with someone named..."

Charles regarded him incredulously, "No, I didn't and this conversation is getting repetitious and very confusing. You sound like you're mixing stories with history and coming up with a muddled mess. I always tell Narcissa not to fly in those blasted vegetables. The fumes could make anyone addled; they always have for your mother, I don't know why she..."

"But..."

"Enough, Draco,” Charles said, losing patience. Then, more kindly, he went on. “ You've obviously been working too hard and traveling too much and reading way too much and not eating enough, so why don't we go back to the house before dinner so you can clear your head a little."

"What was Lucius like when he was younger?" Draco changed the subject to see if he could punch through Charles' reticence, speaking with more than a little desperation. "When he and Narcissa were getting to know each other? Do you remember the first time you met him?"

"It was so long ago ... can we talk about this later? You should rest, go do something else, or I should." All the former warmth was gone from Charles' voice. "I know you've been through a draining morning, and I appreciate how stressed you are - I used to be the same way myself when I was traveling - but whatever you're going on about, we don't need to discuss it now."

"I do," Draco said belligerently. He would never ask Lucius with this tone of voice, or speak to Narcissa in such a demanding way. This was the voice he used in the common room at school or in class, when he needed people to listen to him. "I have to ask you..."

"No need to sound like that," Charles said in a falsely bright voice. He sounded like Narcissa did when they were in public and she was conscious of who was listening in. "I don't want to speak anymore about these stories until you've taken a break. It must be the sea air. When you're acclimated to it, you'll feel a lot better."

The tone in his voice left no room for further conversation. Even if that hadn't been the case, there was nothing else Draco could ask him, if he couldn't or wouldn't remember. If mentioning the name didn't capture those memories, Draco knew, what he truly wanted to say would sound a little crazy and overwrought - it was little wonder that Charles had refused to listen to them. Plus, he was a guest, and he had only just arrived, and he was behaving very ungraciously.

"You're right," he said simply. "It must've been something I heard in a dream." He paused for a moment, then changed the subject with practiced ease. "I don't remember these trees from the last time we were here. How did they get so tall so quickly?"

They walked the rest of the way towards the house, Draco in silence and Charles conducting a running monologue about the newly rebuilt alchemy garden. The long pathway stretched ahead as they walked, like the dim aisles in the massive History of Magic classroom back at school, spotted by dots of light like those that slipped through the school's golden-paned windows. As he walked along beneath the canopy of leaves, Draco felt dwarfed by the ancient plane trees surrounding the walkway. He took deep breaths of air that tasted of salt and smelled of rosemary and lavender. It was almost soothing to catch glimpses of the sea and keep reality at bay.

In the over two thousand years that his aunt's family had lived amid the cliffs and sea spray, the land had been transformed from barren rocks and salty soil into one of the best-organized herbing fields in Europe. Back when Provence was Gallia Transalpina, the Clary family had begun planting gardens, and the seeds that were planted every spring were the direct descendents of those placed in the soil in the days when no Muggle could eke out a livelihood without magical assistance.

The Visigoths, Burgundians, and Ostrogoths never broke the wizarding enclaves along the Mediterranean, and Draco's history books all talked about how the presence of so much magic along the sea coast prevented the area from becoming fully joined with France, even when Carolos Magnus and the Franks ruled everything around.

His aunt Shera Clary Hart was descended from the Phoenician wizards and alchemists who ruled the seas - both the underwater and the air-breathing sections, and her family's company, Pupliogargal, had maintained control of the Gillyweed trade with Atlantis Farms for the better part of five centuries, blending the family interest in horticulture and their proximity to the Mediterranean. She spoke a smattering of French, and had learned English as a child, but day to day conversations at Aeonium were in Occitan, the language common to the magical communities along the Mediterranean.

A writer by profession, she was an herbologist by heritage and thus, the gardens were her purview. Draco hoped that this summer, as she had in the past, Narcissa would join in at magicking the garden. In England, she always professed to hate working under the weak-minded sun and preferred her moongarden at the manor, but here she could spend entire days amid the plants. And even better, she never insisted he help.

Not that he minded plants, in general, especially not here, where the library was stocked with gardening and herbology books, including a number of histories of the Clary estates. Some of the family's fields had changed their character over the past two centuries, when Muggles introduced new weapons of destruction even before wizards could develop charms to prevent the damage they could do. Eight separate gardens spread across the property - a water garden, a green rose garden, a winter garden with blooms that only glowed when the temperature was close to freezing, an herb terrace that the Elves used for daily potions and meals, an olive grove, a field of grapes that made only mediocre wines, a potager and the recently finished alchemy garden path.

The pathway was unending and circular and twisted back around in labyrinthine style, then met a large green wall of shrubbery that was taller than Draco's head. Charles reached his hand up and pulled a leaf from the top of the wall. With a crinkle and rustle, the leaves and branches pulled back to form an arched doorway.

As he stepped through it, Draco had to shield his eyes. The house in front of him was the brightest thing he had ever seen. He recalled that since his last visit to Eze, Charles' house had collapsed when a giant who had been on a stroll through the alps decided to sit out a mistral by sitting on the house itself. That they had rebuilt the house was no surprise.

What they had built it of, was.

It was a single story, made almost entirely of glass - mostly coloured, and with varying degrees of opacity. The structure meandered over almost half an acre, and every twenty feet, the outside walls changed colors - red, yellow, green, brown, scarlet, black, ochre, peach, ruby, olive, violet, fawn, lilac, gold, chocolate, mauve, cream, crimson, silver, rose, azure, lemon russet, grey, purple, white, pink, orange and blue. Some of the panes of glass had patterns of clear bubbles in them, other panes were swirls of different colors. A tremendous prism rose from the clear, curving glass roof, throwing rainbows across the lawn and down the rockpath to the sea.

Charles walked on ahead, but Draco stood stock still and stared. "But where did it come from?" he wondered aloud.

"From all my hard work, where do you think?" Charles said lightly, as he turned and walked back to Draco. "Actually, you know that glass is an organic material, the same as wood -- but it only grows in brackenwater. Last summer, we commissioned Barpurdom, who's one of the top magimerbonanarchitects in Murano, to do a harvesting about thirty miles away from here. The seeds and the field where the old house used to stand were both prepared by the equinox, and Shera and I spent that night dropping the seeds all over the field."

"How did the seeds swim on land?" Draco asked, entranced by the description. He stared up the avenue of plane trees that twisted and surrounded the house, canopying it in greenery that only made the bright colors of the crystaline walls even brighter in comparison. How could this tremendous thing have grown out of the earth?

"We carried them around in a bag - each seed was the size of a grain of rice, and as luminous as a fallen star," Charles said. "They made the bag just rustle, as if they were slowly swimming about. When we dropped them onto the ground where we wanted walls to grow, in a matter of seconds, they wriggled and twisted and squirmed and buried themselves in the rocks and dirt. By the time we were finished, the whole plot was glowing and bubbling," he added excitedly. "We stayed in the mas farmhouse for a few more days, since we'd been living there for about a year by then anyway, then spent the next month in the Kayble at Shera's parents' summer house. By the time we came back, the brackenwater had done its trick and walls were perfectly cultivated -- about fifteen feet high -- and the prism (which is the only chimney in the house) was almost done. I don't think they finished putting in the suncharms and doortags almost until we moved in on Halloween.

"All the internal walls slide and we can use switching spells on the ones on the outside if we need to change the color. You'll be staying in one of the guestrooms - when nobody is visiting it becomes a playroom for the girls" --Charles and Shera had two daughters, four and seven years old - "so the walls are usually barely tinted, but now I think they're translucent olive. Not as easy to see in either. We like to be able to look into the girls' rooms, but you're old enough to deserve some privacy, especially while you're on vacation."

Despite the heat, Draco had to shudder at the idea of having transparent walls for a bedroom. It was a good thing Lucius wasn't here; Draco had barely any secret places at the Manor, but to be in a room that Lucius could look into at any time? He'd never have a moment of his own.

"The winds must be picking up, if you're getting cold," Charles said as they started walking again, "Let's go inside, so I can give you the quick tour, and then you can rest before dinner."

That had to be at least three hours away -- and where was Narcissa? Lucius had instructed him to keep an eye on her. It wouldn't be good to fail that task within minutes of their arrival, even as distracted as he'd been. As he still was.

Charles answered his unasked questions. "There's a pyramids de fruits basket in your room, picked just this morning, and Narcissa is probably off with the girls anyway, taking a tour of the topiary garden. Shera's been charming the shrubs into a life-sized Disappearing Staircases game, and they haven't talked about playing anything else in days."

As they drew closer to the house, Draco's fascination with the unusual architecture and layout grew. The front door and foyer were crystal clear and filled with plants that he couldn't even name. He'd have to look them up, in case Lucius asked what they were. Beyond the entrance was a great room, at least forty feet square, dotted with simple, curved furniture in pale colors that picked up the jewel tones thrown by the outside walls and the rainbows that came in from the prisms cut into the clear glass roof overhead.

No enchanted ceiling was needed here, not when you could see the sky from every angle of the room, even through the Murano-made chandeliers that hung from the ceiling. The floors were the only part of the structure that weren't entirely of glass. Stone and tile patterns divided the room into niches and areas and drew a visitor's attention to sculptures of onyx and ivory nestled in the corners, curves and alcoves cut into the walls. At each end, archways led to the rest of the house.

Charles gestured to the one on the right. "That side leads to the veranda and the other public rooms, and the arch on the left goes to all the sleeping quarters. Both of the hallways curve towards each other, so the public rooms, including your precious library, go around the outside of the house and the private areas are to the inside, and all back onto courtyards, so every room gets sun from overhead and through one of the walls. The kitchen's in the center of the house, and there's an entrance to it through this wall," Charles gestured towards the deep crimson pane in the center of the great room's wall. Draco could see vague shapes behind it, but couldn't make anything out with clarity, and once they were through the arch, he couldn't even tell where the kitchen could fit beyond the bedrooms to his right, along the inside curve. "There's a lever on each bedstead; if you pull it down, all the walls become opaque for about fifteen minutes, then they clarify again. It'll give you enough time to change or shower, et cetera, then the character of the house will reassert itself."

Only fifteen minutes? That wasn't much time, barely enough to read a few pages from his Alexander notebooks. He'd have to find some other way to ensure private time.

Charles led him past more panes of glass, then finally stopped. "You'll be in here," noted Charles, in front of the fifth pane. He touched the wall with his wand, then took Draco's hand and pressed it against the pane. If he'd touched a window at the Manor like that, Lucius would've been angry at the messy handprint, but here, it didn't leave even the smallest visible impression. Instead, a tiny arch opened at the floor then quickly grew almost six feet, giving Draco more than enough headroom to enter.

It was filled with furniture, compared to his room at the manor. The walls were angled so two backed into the hallway, one onto a bathroom with had three opaque cobalt walls, and a rose-coloured pane one looked onto a courtyard that featured a scale model of the house itself - probably the property of Charles' two daughters - and a burbling fountain. The cheerfully decorated room was cooled by a Murano glass ceiling fan; it held a linen-draped bed, a wardrobe, as there were no closets, a large table, two chairs and ... an upright piano!

He turned back to the door; Charles hadn't entered, but was standing in the arch, smiling almost indulgently. "There were a lot of things that we salvaged from the old house which didn't really work in any of the public rooms anymore. This was one of them. I hope you don't mind, I didn't know if you still played."

Draco's eyes were wide. He'd never anticipated this ... this treat. Oh, he would have to really focus to get any work done with that in the room. And he would have to leave the room sometimes, but for now.... he just wanted to play. His fingers were almost itching to touch the berainbowed keys. His face relaxed into a real smile for the first time in days and he dropped his satchel to the floor and walked to the bench, nearly oblivious to Charles' presence. He didn't even notice when the archway disappeared, and over the music, he didn't hear Charles' footsteps move back down the hall.

The light had changed before he stood up again, half-disoriented from the pure enjoyment of playing again. Did he have enough time to rest before dinner, he wondered, as he poured a glass of water from the pitcher by his bedside. He pulled a parchment from his satchel -- one of the parchments that didn't have notes about Alexander on it -- and charmed it to wake him in ninety minutes. Then, he paced the room, checking the wardrobe and drawers to make sure everything had been unpacked and organized, and trying to find a place to hide the satchel's contents.

If Charles didn't have any memories of Alexander, then how could it be risky for him to see any of the things? Did they have to be hidden after all?

Probably, Draco reasoned as he poked around the wardrobe with his wand, searching for hidden panels or cubbyholes. He might be lying, he might remember something later. And there was always Narcissa. What if she took it upon herself to look through his things? And worse, what if Charles mentioned his conversation with Draco to her? Charles might be under a memory charm, but was she?

He returned to the bed with all his things in hand, and moved down to sit upon the floor. It was getting late in the day, and he had realized that the easiest thing now would be to simply shove the satchel underneath the bed and catch it on the slats underneath, as if it had become accidentally trapped under there, unreachable to any adult.

Afterwards, as he sat on the bed, slipped off his shoes, and sipped at the water, Draco cursed himself for not thinking things through when he asked Charles that stupid question in the grove. He'd assumed that the all of the spells would break, but they hadn't, had they? This time, he really didn't know. And the longer he sat there and thought about it, the more pathetic he felt about his desperate, pathetic grab at Charles.

The sun was so warm in the room -- not terribly hot, and an enchanted breeze was bouncing from one wall to another -- but the warmth made him so drowsy he couldn't even turn the conversation over in his head another time. He had to send a longer letter to Hermione, but he didn't know where the falconry was anymore, and his uncle might get upset if he went wandering around the property instead of staying where he'd been told. And he was drowsy and if he wrote when the alarm went off and he woke up, his head would be a lot clearer, and he'd be coherent and organized, just like she'd expect.

He put his head on the pillow and sleep drifted in like the clouds overhead.

**********

How many people don't think about running away from home until just before their fifteenth birthday? Hermione'd read enough children's books to know that running away was something kids were supposed to want to do at ten or eleven, old enough to brave the big world, but young enough not to know what the world was really like. But at her age? That was something for juvenile delinquents to do.

Not top-of-the-class witches.

Unless, of course, those witches were also possibly alleged kidnappers. Or best friends with an alleged murderer who (she knew) didn't really do what he could be accused of, even though his godfather was also a fugitive unregistered Animagus. Or (and this was the hardest to swallow) actually friendly with the boy whose father might be one of the reasons why she and Harry were being persecuted in the first place.

Hermione sat in the bay window in the living room and stared at the words Draco had scribbled on the parchment. Hogwarts. Sanctuary. Of course it was. But did she need to take advantage of it? She was never one to run from consequences - lie sometimes, of course, but usually only to keep other people from getting into trouble.

She knew how to get to Hogwarts during the summer, of course. The July before she'd started, about a week after the lady in the pointed hat came to speak with her parents, the Grangers drove up to Falsphrech Farm just outside Hogsmeade for Muggle Family Orientation Day, where the parents of the Muggleborn students met some of the professors, asked questions of the Head Boy and Girl, saw photographs of the schoolgrounds, and had an introduction to magic. She remembered loving pumpkin juice from her first sip, although it made her parents' faces twist and her mother commented on the likely high sugar content.

Her father hadn't thrown out a piece of paper since they'd returned to England; the directions to Hogsmeade were likely still in his home office, in a neat folder labeled Granger, Hermione (School, Boarding). Her mother wasn't in the office that afternoon but in the garden. Victoria Granger loved long drives; she said it was so pleasant to take the car on roads for hours without worrying whether an elephant would stop in the middle of a road and hold up traffic for hours, the way it had been in Sierra Leone, or whether the cramped and shivery Yugo would make it beyond the city limits.

All she had to do was update her on the situation.

Her mum already knew almost everything about Hogwarts, and had seen Rita in her jar before Hermione released her. And she hadn't reacted with horror, or demanded that Hermione return to a Muggle life, or end her friendship with someone whose scar actually was more of a bull's eye target. How could she, when she'd already taken Hermione halfway around the world on what she called Missions of Good?

The Grangers had become involved with Médecins Sans Frontières when Hermione was almost five, in the aftermath of the publicity about the famine in Ethiopia. They'd been involved in various protest movements through the years, much to their families' chagrin, and although dental care certainly wasn't a primary concern for those who were starving to death, they wanted to be where people were suffering in hopes of helping the most. The Doctors Granger instead spent almost a year providing dental services in French-speaking Africa, then briefly returned to England before heading to the USSR in early 1988 where they spent a year teaching at the Moscow Medical Institute. They'd had no qualms about keeping Hermione out of school; she'd been reading since she was three, so what could kindergarten teach her? She didn't attend a traditional school until she started at the Anglo-American School in Moscow; the transition to regular classes was horrifying, but most of the other students there had extraordinary lifestyles She didn't fit in perfectly, but she wasn't ignored either.

But by the end of 1989, with the changes in the political climate in the USSR, her parents decided that the time was right to practice in England again. Victoria's parents wanted to relocate to Barbados, so the Grangers moved into her childhood home and opened a clinic less than a mile from St. Bartholomew's.

Just in time, too. A year later, an unstamped envelope tucked into the mailbox invited Hermione to Hogwarts.

Her parents had adjusted quite well. Much better than Lavender's parents, who were completely baffled by magic. Their first trip to Diagon Alley before she started her second year was difficult and confusing even before they bumped into the Malfoys at Flourish & Blotts, but by the next summer, they'd been joking about picking up robes so they'd be properly dressed for the expedition.

If she was the only one involved, Hermione would have no problem walking into the Ministry and telling them exactly what she had done regarding Rita -- but she wasn't. On the train back from school, Harry had explained about Veritaserum, which was so secret that Hermione had only been able to find mention of it in one book. What if they gave her some of that, not to ask about Rita, but had questions about Sirius... or Harry... or even Draco? She didn't care about Lucius -- she'd love to see him in Azkaban -- but what if Draco was implicated in something that she didn't even realize?

Her parents would remind her to be vigorous in her defense of those who need defending -- Sirius, Harry and even Draco all were part of that group. Of course, adding Draco to that number would force her to reevaluate the idea that good people were fair people and bad people weren't, but that could wait for the long car trip. There wasn't even time to owl Harry, or even the Weasleys to ask their advice, or send a note to Dumbledore to get his permission; for a brief moment, she regretted getting Crookshanks instead of an owl.

Given the circumstances, Hermione decided, she should simply explain to her parents about the letter from the Ministry, show them the chapter from Hogwarts: A History about Sanctuary, then pack her trunk. They'd be on the road within an hour.

********

A sharp rapping noise startled Draco awake. The bright sunlight was gone, replaced by a rich yellow glow that transformed the room into a copy of the setting sun itself. He focused his eyes and lifted his head from the pillow so he could reach the parchment alarm; then he saw it crumpled and torn in the middle of the floor.

He didn't remember doing that.

And the tapping noise didn't stop. Its imperfect tempo seemed to come not from the wall he'd entered through, but from the courtyard. He dragged himself out of bed and over to the wall, to try and figure out how to open it. His mind was just fuzzy enough that it took an enormous effort to see the soft curve in the wall just below his shoulder, the perfect size for a child's hand. He touched it and the pane split into two perfect halves, then rolled onto itself as if the glass was as malleable as parchment.

"Come on, cousin! It's time for dinner!" a childish voice shouted as he ducked through the frozen archway. "My maman said you are to come and sit, but your maman did not want us to get you but papa said you need sunshine and he sent me through the courtyard and said to bring you to eat."

It was Charles' older daughter, Nore. Even in this warmth her hair was heavy and quite black and unlike her father's light coloring. It curled at the tips and made loops near her large hazel eyes, which were the most prominent feature in her thin face. Her younger sister Vale was also in the courtyard, all dimples and rose-colored cheeks, and blonde hair - not like Draco's silver color, in the setting sun it was a reddened gold.

Vale hadn't said a word. She was barely five, and clearly unsure of herself around strangers. But at Nore's suggestion, she took his other hand, and the two of them dragged the half-awake Draco away from his room. As they passed through the courtyard and around the fountain that played tuneful watermusic, Nore regarded him with eyes that were much too old for her face. "I don't remember you at all. Vale says she does, don't you?" she asked of her sister. Without waiting for Vale to reply, she went on, "But she wasn't more than a baby when she saw you, so she can't be right. But I should, and I don't."

"The sensation seems to be epidemic," he said sarcastically. She had only been six the last time Draco had seen her; was two years long enough for little kids to forget details about a cousin, especially one they never spoke to? The last time he'd seen her, anyway, he'd been with Lucius most of the time. It had been the summer after second year, and Lucius had insisted that he spend time on Quidditch and on daily tests that rehashed everything he'd learned in classes that year; Lucius had been very angry about the unexpected cancellation of end of term exams that June, Draco thought. He didn't spend any time with his cousins during the day that month, and they had eaten with their nanny at night, not with the family at the usually late dinners.

In a moment they were in one of the twisted corridors and en route back to the public areas, specifically, the library; Charles and Shera were there, but Narcissa was nowhere to be seen.

And he certainly could see everything in the room. The most prominent piece of furniture in the room was the bouncing billiard table, which sat in the center of the room. Draco had only ever played on tables made of the traditional rubber tree plant; it was, supposedly, the only material which would send the alabaster balls bouncing into the tricornered pockets. This tabletop was almost clear, with the lightest green tint to the top and seafoam-coloured pockets, and the base was filled with fish who swam, oblivious to the solid noises directly above. Even the cues that Charles and Shera were using to play as Draco came in were almost invisible.

Shera was winning easily, despite being at least a foot smaller than Charles, with the smaller reach that required. Her precision was uncanny, though. She was slightly built, and her daughters were like her in that respect. She also had heavy dark hair like Nore's, but hers was glossy, swept high and held in place with fluttering combs. Charles clearly wanted to turn the tide of their competition, and so focused on creating the exact angle he needed, but Shera left the table and came to greet him.

"Girls, why don't you go see if Deana needs help arranging the platters?" she said in her accented English.

"But maman, it is boring to watch," Nore said.

"I can help!" Vale interjected in her high voice.

Shera pulled a dark wand from her skirt pocket and handed it to Nore. "You can only use it while..."

Nore pulled the wand from her mother's hand and ran to the door, Vale in tow, shouting, "While Deana holds my hand, I know, maman!"

Shera smiled after them, then turned to Draco and said in her lilting voice, "Welcome to the Crystal Palace, Draco. I can't tell you how happy we are to see you again. It's been too long!"

"Thank you," he said a bit uncertainly. "It's nice to be here. Everything is no new and bright. I've never seen anything like it. Even the table - it's so..."

"It's Muggle-made." Charles looked up from his cue to watch his ball bounce off the ceiling and onto Shera's side of the table. "Damn! I should just call the whole thing off. I can't see the balls properly with all those fish swimming around!"

"And whose idea was it to have the table also serve as an aquarium, dear?" Shera asked, and blew her husband a kiss.

"That does it. I'm going to change the top to something more useful." Charles took his wand and pushed it into the spongey tabletop, but nothing happened.

"You can't do that with Muggle things, don't you remember what the billiardeer said when he came to set it up?"

"That Muggle things aren't made right, and magic doesn't always work on them, I know. I'll have to have him Apparate out to fix it this week," Charles noted with a sigh.

Draco was shocked that Charles would have a Muggle-made thing in the house, especially a new Muggle-made thing. There were some Muggle artifacts and handicrafts at the Manor, but they were all ancient, hundreds of years old, when the wizarding and Muggle economies were more conjoined. And of course, his own - or rather, Alexander's own - music player had been in the Manor for a while, but that was different. Lucius certainly wouldn't've allowed it in, even without knowing who had owned it. While Charles and Shera chatted about the game and the table, Draco wandered across the room to look at the books, so they wouldn't suspect him of listening to their private words.

The bookcases in this house were not set into walls. Each was made of curved glass, tinted to the palest level of seablue and they stood in the library and each of the bedrooms like columns from the floors, twelve feet up to the to the ceilings. Similar to the bookcases in their old house, a handle on the side of each case pulled a reader to the upper shelves, although his little cousins were not supposed to use the handles without adult supervision. Draco wondered if this year, he would count.

None of the bookcases were as full as the ones at the Manor. Shera had noticed his curiosity about the shortage, and said, "A lot were destroyed during the move, and even though your father sent us boxes full, we still need about a thousand more for the public rooms."

"Would you like to go to Menton on a shopping spree?" Charles asked brightly. "Shera needs some things from the apothecary anyway, so we can go tomorrow, or later in the week we can fly to one of the other markets if you want to take some time to finish acclimating."

Narcissa wouldn't like that, Draco thought. Lucius had made it clear that he wasn't to leave the grounds for frivolities, at least not until he'd finished his work. It would be enough of a firestorm when Lucius learned that he had a piano in his own room. But he couldn't tell Charles and Shera that - that would break Lucius' instructions about not speaking about family rules. Instead, he reminded them of something he thought Charles already knew. "Last time we were here, my father wouldn't let me buy any books there. He said they were all Muggle shops, even though they were carved into mountains."

Charles replied, "That was years ago! You're old enough now, I think, or we could go to one of the wizarding markets to the west. And we do have Muggle books here, mostly on the lower shelves, because they don't seem to like the heights. A lot of them are funny to read, especially the ones that think they're about magic. Besides, you must experience the local ambience." Draco listened closely as Charles described the market in Chanteduc. "The name means Song of the Owl, and most of the witches here think that it was originally one of a few magical markets - there's no other way the same tradespeople could sell their wares in four towns across a two hundred mile radius each week, but they did."

It sounded fascinating, and he tried to justify a shopping expedition to himself. It wouldn't be a lark, because things were needed, and Charles might need his help in picking things out. Or something like that.

The bell star chimed to call them to dinner. Draco moved towards the dining room, but Charles' voice halted him before he reached the door. "We dine on the cliffside veranda when the weather is fine. The mistrals drive us indoors often enough."

"Why don't you block the wind with a Tarpon Spring or a Fumos spell?" Draco asked as they walked through the doorway that Charles had opened in the eastern wall.

"Because that hurts the olive groves," Charles pointed out. "Magic is all well and good in planting and weeding and especially harvesting - I cannot imagine doing it the way the Muggles do, getting all sweaty and feverish and prokled. But olive trees and Sylvestris shrubs existed long before witches and wizards - and even before magical creatures - and if you interfere with nature and play with the sunshine and the wind and the seaspray, they don't flourish and the aceituna tastes terrible."

"And it's useless in my comedogenic potions," Shera interjected as she pushed the door open and stepped onto the veranda.

Draco had seen innumerable vistas in his life. The view from a broomstick over southern England was terrific, a sandstorm in northern Africa looked powerfully destructive from a carpet flying safely above, and everything looked different from the back of an Indian Woozle in Bombay. But the sheer impact of the view from this veranda, perched on Mont Bastide, was shocking.

Even though the floors throughout the house were traditional Provincial tile, on the veranda, guests walked on glass. With every step, Draco felt like he was going to tumble from this eagle's nest of a porch onto the rocky cliffs hundred of feet below. He barely registered that Narcissa was lounging in a chair by the wall, laughing as he touched the door handle to steady himself.

Walking was a necessary thing, something to do inside where a broomstick was off limits, or when a Projection was unsuitable. Walking was something that had to be done. It was mundane, it was ordinary, it was dull.

Walking on the veranda was like flying or projecting. When Draco became aware of the slightly roughened feel of the glass under his bare feet and turned his focus from the rocks below to the sea in the distance, it actually became easy, like walking aboard a ship. He realized that the floor was not perfectly clear, but had a slight amber tint to it, in contrast to the four foot high walls that bordered the dining area; they looked like they were supposed to be clear, but were marked with salt and sea spray from the water below.

By the time Draco finished examining the view, everyone, other than Narcissa, who hadn't moved from her chaise, was clearly ready to eat. If she stayed there, she mightn't join in the conversation, and Charles would be less likely to mention Draco's earlier questions. Instead of joining her, Draco moved to the table.

At least, he assumed it was a table. It was hard to see whether there was really a surface under all the food and plates and goblets and utensils. "We don't normally have such an elaborate meals during the week, but since it's your first evening, we wanted to give you a proper overview," Shera said, gesturing to the plateau de fruits de mer.

The platters were towering, resplendent and unrestrained, climbing three feet above the table. He knew some of the shellfish by name, and Nore stood on her chair and pointed with a skewer that was as long as her arm, identifying the rest. There were oysters rimmed with their liquor, their shells nestled in the ice. Clams, scallops the size of dice still attached to their ridged shells, sea urchin custard, Belon oysters, a type of Australian crawfish called yabbies, periwinkles, whelks, shrimp, crab, lobster and razor clams, crabs poised as if on sand, Belondine oysters, large Spanish mussels, ordinary French clams, four small almond-shaped clams called amandes de mer, whelks, large prawns and plump lobsters split in half, lavished with sea urchins and tiny poppy red crayfish. Bowls of gazpacho and ceviche marked the head and foot of the table, and three ramekins of sauce - cocktail, mignonette and tarragon mayonnaise - floated around the sea-creatures, so they could access them easily. Everything was arranged on deep, icebubble-filled pewter trays. The ice, of course, wasn't necessary to keep everything cool, but it did make it look good.

The bottom layer was largest, dotted with the oysters, clams and scallops, with a few lemon wedges plunged into the ice. Everything was fresh and plump and immersed in their liquor. The second and third layers were each smaller and supported on gleaming pedestals that refracted the sunlight, showering everything with prisms. They were decorated with richer shellfish, the shrimp, mussels, razor clams and periwinkles, and garnished with seaweed, as if they had washed up on the ice.

The briny smell of the sea mingled with the plateaus, and Draco realized that he was starving, but didn't know what to choose first. Charles smiled indulgently and Accioed together a bit of everything, then Banished it so it rested in front of Draco. As he wrestled with the lobster's leg, an elf appeared by his side and handed him a pewter cup that contained a cracker, prong, spoon and tiny fork for digging, cracking and plucking. "Here your machines are, young sir," it said with a squeak.

The meal was delicious. The oysters were clean-tasting and briny, the crab legs were sweet and the body was spicy and flavored with rosemaerk. Nore collected everyone's lobster shells and scooped out the leftover mustardy roe for the Kneazle that was wandering among all the legs, then Narcissa joined them as the sun started to set.

Even after she took her place at the table, Draco enjoyed everything he tried, although that niggling feeling in his stomach returned, the residue of his earlier conversation with Charles. If Charles asked Narcissa about it, Lucius would know within an hour -- Apparating back to England would drain her for a week, but she'd do it, he knew. The only positive side to worrying about Charles was that it pushed his concern about Hermione's situation to a lower place on the parchart.

As Draco knew, when anyone in the publishing industry -- from writers on up -- was enthused about a new work, they tended to monopolize the conversation. Shera usually wrote one epic lyric poem each year, usually about courtly love between a teenage witch and a passel of wizards. The girls were listening in fascination as their mother rambled about the details in the verses she had written that morning, before her guests had arrived. Dinner was over and the table (for there really was one) had walked over to the compost bin before she managed to talk herself out. While the adults had after-dinner drinks and watched the stars come out, Draco walked the girls inside to get ices from a waiting house elf.

"She won't go onto the veranda," Nore pointed to the house elf to explain, then handed Draco a tray. "You'll have to carry them. Maman does not think we are old enough to carry more than one glass at a time, since we don't have our own wands yet," she said, piling glass after glass of flavored ice onto the tray. By the time she gathered a pile of spoons and they returned outside, the adults' conversation had become focused on other matters.

"— packed with Muggles, of course —" Shera was saying as Nore and Draco stepped outside. Draco nestled the tray into an alcove and took a dish for himself, then sat as far from Narcissa as he could. He hadn't brought a book outside with him, since he'd left the room so quickly; besides, it would be impolite to read in front of company on the first night of his visit. He wasn't nine anymore.

"I wouldn't want to go to the Muggle casinos anyway. Ever since they started installing those seeing-eyes in their chandeliers, we haven't been able to use our wands at roulette or craps," Narcissa replied. "Our own sort of games are more sporting by half."

Of course. That was another reason Narcissa enjoyed these visits. The sun and the gardens were all well and good, but card and gaming parties were another vacation treat. Plus, the Abraxan Stakes ran in two weeks, and there were wizarding casinos that abutted the Mirabeau and Grand Hotel a few miles east, in Monaco.

Narcissa was the top organizer for Monte Carlo-style charity balls for St. Mungo's and the Museum of Tolerance, but games and raffles at those parties were always played for pretend Galleons and prizes. At the most recent one, back in February, Lucius had donated a teamsworth of Nimbus 2001s as prizes for the BOING match, the remainder of a promotion that the NRBC had conducted with the Prophet's Sunday supplement the summer before his second year, and Narcissa had almost closed the Monaco casinos for the night, importing table captains from the real casinos to run the Circle Game, Tango, Ridotto, High Spade, and Exploding Trente-et-Quarante. As wizards had to be seventeen before they could enter Monaco's gaming houses, Draco had never been inside. And he wasn't terribly interested in going -- he'd played enough low-stakes games in the dorms and he'd seen the aftermath of Narcissa's jarvey-headed bet of a ruby bracelet.

An elf arrived to take the girls to bed, and the adults' conversation switched from gaming to Shera's recent book. This one was about to be translated into English -- there hadn't been much of a market for novel length epic romantic poetry, but Lucius was willing to give her tale a zap. She'd been going through the proofs for the past two days, but was uncomfortable with some of the translations.

"Draco, when you go to Menton, will you do me a favor? Your uncle has some errands to run, so could you stop by one of the shops -- I'll give you the address -- and pick up some reference books for me?"

"Sure," Draco said, snapping to attention. "What books do you want?"

"I'm not perfectly sure," Shera said. "I need background material with technical geology terms in French and English, so I can make sure they're using my words correctly. Have you been to a Muggle shop before?"

Draco shook his head while Narcissa spoke for him. "Of course he hasn't. You can pick up all sorts of ailments from Muggles, and he's delicate, too delicate for such things." Draco started to interrupt, but she breezed over him. "And honey-" she never called him that unless she was trying to make a point in public; he knew she didn't mean it -- "you have so many things to do in the next three days before Dylan gets here. Didn't I hear you promise your father..."

"Yes, of course. Thank you for reminding me," he said in the abashed tone she needed to hear. "I should probably call it a night, then." They were in public. Did that mean she expected him to kiss her goodnight? He stood and hesitated for a moment too long.

"I still expect you to come on this expedition with me at some point," Charles said.

"What exped- Charles, I don't think he should be-"

"Later, Narci. I wanted to ask you, do you remember someone at school-"

Draco froze. He couldn't mean...

"Name of Sclar-Vaughn? She's the one who did the translation and we're not sure the best approach to take if anything need radical changes."

He couldn't move. It was all he could do to breathe calmly, though the adults were oblivious to his reaction. He couldn't leave them alone, out here, to chat about old schoolfriends and anything else that came to mind. Not now that Narcissa had already finished almost a bottle of wine. At least he had to be aware of what they said.

But if he stayed, and didn't send a letter to Lucius as expected, the furies would descend anyway. No choice was reasonable, no choice was "safe." The best he could do was eavesdrop, something he never did at the well-warded Malfoy Manor. Hopefully, his uncle wasn't as concerned about spies.

After a quick goodnight, he ran through the courtyard back to his bedroom and threw himself on the bed. He was almost rocking back and forth; he couldn't project until he regained some self control. It took almost more force of will than he had to manage a Projection, and he felt terribly shaky as the glass walls dissolved around him and he found himself by the ocean pool.

The glass floor was barely twenty feet overhead, but he couldn't hear Narcissa or Charles over the wind and surf. He wafted closer, straining to catch their words. From his angle, he certainly couldn't lip read either.

He didn't want to waste the energy it would've taken to become small; instead Draco tried to crouch on the rocks close enough to hear but far enough to be invisible in the darkness. He could see them, asking questions of each other, answering, laughing, but they were still completely inaudible. It would be a terrible risk to try to be on the level of the patio, where they could see him if they looked beyond the glass walls, but if he didn't take the chance, the whole point of the Projection would be moot.

He moved toward them, feeling the nothingness wrap around his body and push him up, as if he was moving to the surface of a pool with the anticipation of breaking the surface. To his surprise, the moment did not come. Instead, there was a resistance, as though glass was a barrier to him -- it never had been before.

The glass didn't trap him, though. It merely made it impossible for him to move through it; he could still travel backwards, away from the house. Did they have wards that prevented wizards from Projecting? How had he been able to get out, if that was the case?

Far away from where the adults were sitting, he tried to push up again; assuming he'd need to put a lot of effort into breaking through a barrier, he focused his energy on the wall.

It wasn't necessary. There was no push; he moved instinctively to where he wanted to be, moving through the glass as if he and it were made of air. But once he was through, he couldn't move forward at all. Or sideways either. Back, up, down -- all were perfectly simple. No matter how much he tried, he couldn't cross onto the veranda. And there was a risk that even though there were no torches where he stood, and he was completely silent, his struggles might catch someone's attention.

The door to his room wasn't locked either. He hadn't even bothered to put an Epox charm on it, so he-

I need to get back! Before Draco had a moment to process the twinge of nerves at perhaps not being able to get back to himself, he was there, as safe as if he were inside an upside down drinking glass. The return was perfectly ordinary, all the wonderful speed and light from the blink of an eye, as his Projection returned to his body with the snap of a licorice wand.

Completely hopeless, Draco thought. Why hadn't he been able to get close to their conversation, but he'd still been able to get back into the house, to his room? Should he ask Lucius? Or should he just ask Lucius whether he should speak with Charles, maybe see if there was a ward on the house that could affect his Projections? Lucius did still want him to practice getting back to the Manor; what was the risk in trying?

He ran through six drafts of that night's letter to Lucius, running through arguments for mentioning it, for hinting at it, and for outright asking what to do.

In the end, he settled for a vague explanation about the difficulties in getting around, and his concerns about the glass. Perhaps Lucius would send him some books about the nature of organic glass, so he could study a way out of the problem himself.

Over dinner, Charles had said that in the small hours, the house raven would pick up any mail he left in a certain slab of quartz in the courtyard; before he left the scroll for Lucius, he also dashed off a quick note for Hermione, asking her to let him know where she was, and if she was safe.

And as he fell to sleep watching the stars wink overhead, Draco certainly hoped so.

*************

Safe, safe, safe. All Hermione thought as they drove further and further into moon-washed Scotland was that she would soon be safe. She wasn't quite sure how she'd get from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts, or whether her parents could get onto the campus at all, especially in the middle of the night, but they had to try. She had almost twenty galleons in her purse, from the money she'd changed the last time she met Draco at the library; it was supposed to cover her fifth year school supplies, but it would be enough to cover a room at the Newport Inn if they had to stay overnight in Hogsmeade.

At least she'd be able to get in touch with Dumbledore, or even Professor Snape, quickly once they got there, either through the Floo network or by renting an owl. And nobody from the Ministry would think to look for her there.

She sat in the back, head against the window and Crookshanks by her side. He was snoozing, as was her father, but despite the late hour, she couldn't rest. Her mum needed her to navigate anyway. By the lumos of her wand, she watched the map scroll across the parchment. Instructional notes popped up to advise them to "Go left", or "Turn at the silver tree."

They were the only car on the road as they passed the winding lane that led them out of the wild countryside around Hogsmeade, into town. This was the road they had walked to Sirius' cave earlier in the year.

It felt like a lifetime ago. For Cedric, it was.

They hadn't seen another car's light in almost ten minutes when they pulled through the outskirts of Hogsmeade. Once they had, they didn't make it more than fifty yards before the car began to slow to a stop. Hermione looked out the window and saw a wizard with a shiny silver badge on his hat point his wand at them as he approached the car.

"Muggles, out!" he shouted. William Granger woke with a start at the sudden voice and Victoria moved the car into park. Hermione tried to open her window, but it seemed that all the electrical systems in the car had failed. She knew, of course, that a car wouldn't work at Hogwarts, but she had hoped that the concentration of magic in Hogsmeade wouldn't make everything stop.

Instead, she told her parents to stay in the car and opened her door just a crack. Beside her, Crookshanks was awake, bottlebrush tail bristling; he wasn't hissing, though, just watching. "I'm not a Muggle, sir, I'm a witch, on my way to Hogwarts," she explained.

"A witch? In a Mugglemobile? Why in Merlin's name are you..." asked the wizard, who she assumed was part of the Hogsmeade constabulary.

"I'm Muggle-born, sir," she answered politely. It wouldn't do to anger him, when he was probably just doing his job. "I'm a new Prefect and I have to be at school by sunrise tomorrow," she lied glibly. Her parents swung around in their seats to watch her in surprise. She didn't think she'd ever lied in front of them before, at least not when they knew she was lying. Prefect notices were sent out only a week or so before school began, but hopefully the constable wouldn't know that.

"Where are you going with your Muggles, then?"

"We planned to spend the night at the Newport Inn."

"Did you never learn that no cars are allowed in Hogsmeade? Don't need those stinkin' machines coming through and messing the roads. They're not quite large enough anyway."

Hermione spent a breathless few minutes trying to convince the constable that she could move the car to the hotel without turning it on and polluting the town, if he gave her permission to use magic outside the school term, of course. It was one thing to do spells and charms at home; it was quite another to do them in front of an officer of the law.

She'd never Banished something so heavy before, but by working as Professor Flitwick recommended, without thinking of the size or the weight of the thing, it was just as easy to move it as a cushion. Harder was keeping the speed of the car below five miles an hour. With the constable at her side, watching every swish and flick of her wand, though, she maneuvered the car behind the Inn and halted it beside something that had to be a child's winter sled, which some wizard had clearly charmed so it worked on dirt and grass as well as ice and snow.

Snow seemed like an impossibly charming thing on such a warm night; between the long walk and the exertion of the spell, she was sweaty, dirty, and fully miserable from the mess, but at the same time, thrilled to be back among magic again. She walked to the boot and dragged her trunk and Crookshanks' basket onto the pavement.

"Well," said Hermione to the constable. "'Bye then!"

But the constable wasn't paying attention. Still standing by the car, he was goggling at the shadowy entrance to the Newport Inn. "There you are, Hermione," said a voice.

Before Hermione could turn, she felt a hand on his shoulder. At the same time, the constable murmured, "Blimey!"

Hermione looked up at the owner of the hand on his shoulder and felt like she'd been thrown into a swimming pool — she had walked right into Professor Dumbledore himself.

The constable leapt onto the pavement beside the headmaster and shook his hand excitedly. "Sir, we haven't seen you in town in months! Keeping busy out at the school, I presume, even without troubles like that wild Sirius Black on the loose here in town? Winter before last, we couldn't even do our jobs in the evenings, those Dementors on the streets."

Hermione smiled, and noticed that Professor Dumbledore did too. Sirius hadn't actually been in Hogsmeade during her third year, but he certainly had been during her fourth, living in a cave Dumbledore found on Hogmount, just outside the town. But what the good citizens of Hogsmeade didn't need to know shouldn't bother them.

"Dementors?" Dumbledore repeated, frowning. "They'll never be back at the school or in Hogsmeade if I have any control over the matter."

"You do, sir!" The constable said with a tinge of joy in his voice. "And sir, can I ask you about my nephew..."

"Yes," said Dumbledore quickly, "tomorrow, just send an owl and we'll make an appointment, but Clive, I need to bring my student and her parents into the hotel now..."

Dumbledore increased the pressure on Hermione's shoulder, and Hermione found herself being steered inside the hotel, her parents trailing behind. Hermione must've blinked, because she missed seeing Dumbledore magic her trunk so it floated just ahead of him into the hotel. A stooping figure bearing a lantern appeared through the door behind the registration desk and placed her hat onto her head, ready for business.

"You've got her, Professor!" she said. "Will you be wanting anything? Butterbeer? Brandy?"

"Perhaps a pot of tea, Eunice, and a plate of Cauldron Cakes" said Dumbledore, who still hadn't let go of Hermione. "And I believe the Grangers' room should be ready," said Dumbledore pointedly.

"Everything's just as you asked, Professor," Eunice said, pulling a quill from a desk drawer. "If you'll just sign here," she gave the quill to William Granger, who handled it as if it were a drill that would not turn off.

As he signed, Dumbledore steered Hermione and her mother to the set of chairs by a set of potted plants in the far corner of the lobby, her father not far behind. "Sit down, Hermione," said Dumbledore, indicating a chair by the fire.

Hermione sat down, feeling goose bumps rising up his arms despite the glow of the fire. Dumbledore took off his cloak and tossed it aside, then sat down opposite Hermione.

"I suppose you're wondering how I knew you would be coming here," he observed astutely. Hermione nodded. "I did expect that your trunk would only leave your house when you were set to come here. When you took it into the car, I realized that there could be only three reasons for it. Molly Weasley said she didn't expect you, and I knew you were not going with your trunk to young Mr Potter's house. What I do not understand is why you felt it necessary to come to Hogsmeade in the middle of the summer, when the start of school is over six weeks away. If it's because of the article in the newspaper about Sirius, we do have that under control."

Hermione was so used to Dumbledore knowing everything, as if he saw with magic eyes, that it was a surprise to learn that he didn't know all her thoughts. For the third time that day, she pulled out the letter from the Ministry, and handed it to him. "And I am seeking Sanctuary at Hogwarts, so I don't have to answer their questions." Her parents listened as she again explained about Rita and her concerns about Sirius and about Harry.

When Hermione looked up from the Ministry parchment, Dumbledore looked as old and weary as Hermione had ever seen him. She didn't want to add to her litany, but she had to.

"There's one more person they could ask me about. Draco Malfoy."

******

A sunrise flight over the jagged gorges and lush vineyards the next morning brought Charles and Draco across Provence to the salt marshes of Camargue. Incongruously enough, flamingos and wild abraxan alike looked up as they passed. Draco was riding Shera's Saint-Exupery since his own Nimbus 2001 and all his Quidditch training supplies would be arriving with Dylan two days hence.

It had still been dark when Draco woke that morning to noises of the ocean that sounded as if waves were rolling into his room. The dawn light helped him get his bearings, but it took almost a minute for him to realize that the sound was coming from the pearly seashell on the night-table. He picked it up to investigate and the noise simply grew louder.

Finally, the ocean-noises clarified into a voice -- Charles' voice -- calling out from the shell. "I never told him how they work, and they're so new, I can't expect him to have seen them before!"

"Uncle Charles?" Draco shouted, puzzled. "What is this thing?"

Charles sounded pleased and surprised to hear him, even though he didn't answer the question. "Meet me in the entrance in about ten minutes - in Muggle clothing. We need to get going!"

"I can't!" Draco countered, but Charles had insisted. So Draco'd had to get dressed in the short pants he found in the wardrobe, which he topped with a sweater. He felt gawky and uncomfortable and exposed with his legs uncovered, but there had been nothing else in the wardrobe for him to wear in the daytime. Narcissa hadn't packed the things he normally wore to King's Cross at the beginning and end of term, saying he'd be too warm in them so far south.

Charles was already waiting outside with the broomsticks and cups of espresso, and did not listen to Draco's protests about projects and schoolwork and Narcissa's rejection of the plan. Charles assured him it would be fine.

It wasn't even seven o'clock before he was in the air, nibbling a roll as he weaved in and out of Charles' slipstream. He didn't even know where they were going. "Why didn't you just Apparate? Why bother to bring me?"

Charles said simply, "I don't Apparate, and you look like you need a day off." He kept the conversation away from any of the topics touched on the previous day, and instead went off on a description of the new Beach Noise system that he'd had installed in the house. "No fireplaces, so we can't use an internal Floo network, and the walls are so solid you can't yell from one room to another, much less through the whole house." Charles was certainly into new devices and things, in sharp contrast to Lucius who would be very happy if everything at the Manor stayed exactly as it had been when he inherited it, so many years before.

He did his best not to worry about Hermione over the next few hours. True, he could not stop himself from seeing horri-ble visions of Hermione being questioned by the Ministry and could not stop himself from feeling anxious about arriving back in Eze to a letter from the Ministry, demanding an opportunity to question him, but betweentimes he tried to keep his mind away from Hogwarts.

The first stop was at the Pofregargelle distribution center. The center had been converted from a centuries-old manor, but in some clearly recent decision to modernize its style, it was fronted by a giant glass pyramid that contained a family of octopus, swimming happily around a strange undersea garden.

Inside, though, it looked like any other office building, with stone walls that held tiny windows, just the size for postbirds, and furniture that looked like it'd been nicked from the Hogwarts library. Draco was glad he'd snapped a book off the shelves before they'd left; while Charles met with his colleagues in a building that jutted out over the sea, Draco managed to get through thirty pages of The Vratsa Quidditch Confederacy. If this was where Charles worked, Draco could easily understand why he wanted a home that was as light as possible.

Of course, this building had a practical aspect as well. Charles' meeting was with a few of his managers -wizards and merfolk, who needed to stay in the water for the meeting. The conference table was almost Japanese-style, so the wizards sat on the ground and the mermen stayed submersed. From what Draco could understand from the translator, there was a break in the distribution chain for the premium line of Gillyweed - the kind that was purchased by the Ministry's Department of Mysteries - and some of the plant was going missing during the processing stages.

Draco sat off to the side on an uncushioned slippery sofa that he kept sliding off of onto the floor. After three slips, he settled onto the ground with the help of a cushioning charm used by the Quidditch players in the novel he'd brought.

It was a dull discussion but the piercingly shrill Mermen were distracting him from his book. He didn't want to interrupt Charles, but he also didn't want to leave the room to see if there was somewhere quieter to read without Charles' permission. He was sure that his uncle would not look kindly on him if he went wandering out of the room, although Charles hadn't asked him to stop when Draco had wandered among the Under The Sea exhibit that lined the wall closest to the entrance. One of the Merdrakes waved at him as he climbed into another's pot.

He could at least go outside and look at the sea instead of these dark walls. What was the point of being in Provence if you had to stay inside? And Lucius wanted him to stretch his projections, so he could make a try at reaching England in the next few days. Charles would never know.

He closed his book, moved out of view, and shifted his focus to the Projection process. Instead of charming a ball to spark, which might catch someone's attention, he stared at one of the torches -- it was just the right color and size. He blinked and felt himself pull away from his body. He didn't go very far, though, as he wanted to find a good vantage point.

There was a twisted staircase of iron just outside the sightline of the men at the meeting, which looked like it went to a loft and door that led outside. He was so small as he went drifting up the steps with no small amount of concentration. So focused was he on the iron steps and the seemingly massive gaps between them that he almost forgot that in his state, it was impossible to fall.

When he reached the top, he leaned towards one of the tiny windows, expecting to see sunshine, birds, waves, cliffs -- perhaps sunbathers - and all the other accoutrements of the Mediterranean, but instead...

He fell.

He fell through empty space and salty air and coarse salt -- so thick and deep.

He wasn't sure how far or how long it took to fall, and he never quite had the sensation of landing, simply of stopping. And when he stopped, he was in a room. It was almost familiar, this place, with the oppressive air of an underground chamber. It had to be connected to or part of the building he'd been in before he went through the door -- the colors of the stone and the flames in the wall torches were exactly the same.

There was no door and no windows. There were lights, a mattress and chairs, a cracked jug, some scattered bits of parchment and that hard Muggle material that didn't look real. A dozen crates were stacked against a wall; the wood looked rotten. If he'd been able to touch it, it surely would have crumbled. There was so much dust it made the air heavy. If Draco had been forced to breathe it, he knew he'd choke.

The room wasn't especially small, but the absence of an exit made him want to get out. But how? He needed a goal-place in mind before he could Project to it, but with the way he'd moved into the room, not really knowing where he was, it would be quite a challenge. Physically, he could just walk through one of the walls to see what was on the other side, but he hated the idea, without knowing what was there. He'd never stepped into fire as a Projection or tried to move through the earth itself, and he hated being underwater in that state. What was the point of being immersed in water if you couldn't feel it wrap around you and lift you and swirl you around? Ever since that Gryffindor ghost had turned black second year, he'd known that even while Projecting, he was magical enough to be damaged or hurt. Given how he'd plummeted into this room, he had to be careful about how he got out; he didn't want to hit another block like last night.

But if he did, it would be such an accomplishment.

Lucius would be proud.

Lucius would feel quite impressed if he got out of here on his own.

Lucius would feel that all his work with Draco on different types of Projections had...

Lucius' name was written on some of the crates.

His name and the Prophet's Diagon Alley address.

Draco held his hand over one of the tops and tried to Accio it off. It vibrated a bit and slowly slid to the side, just enough for Draco to peek in. On first glance it looked like it was full of dried Gillyweed, the kind wizards used to bring on long boat journeys in case of capsizing, but amid the tentacles, he saw stacks of newsprint -- old, rotting issues of the paper. The pages were folded and the words damp and smudged and he could barely even tell whether the photos were of people or things. If they were people, they certainly were bored -- none of them were moving at all.

He tried to Mobililibros one of the issues and Revalo it enough to read the pages, but the newsprint pulled apart despite his effort to be gentle. Only the date, which was in the same place on each page, and therefore bled through the parchments, was legible.

February, 1979.

He had to read that issue. With a sense of desperation mixed with a terrible foreboding, he tried to work drying spells, clarity charms and a desiccator on the Prophet. It was draining to do that much magic -- but he desperately wanted to distinguish the words.

Of course, the Prophet's offices had back issues, but the complete issues were in storage, and the clippings drawers were not categorized by date at all. Draco had pondered wheedling Lucius' permission to visit the archives, but determined it was a bad idea, as Lucius might find out what he wanted to look for.

Finally, he was able to read the headlines and pull some of the pages apart. He scanned articles about the Moutohora Macaws' matches against each of England's teams, editorials about new regulations on phial glass quality and a review of Kneazles!, which was then a new musical playing in West Diagon's theater district (and which was *still* playing, much to Draco's chagrin, as Narcissa had taken him annually since he was four). He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but...

A rash of unexplained cases of amnesia among witches and wizards not of pure blood has been attributed to a type of cold, Viola Jade reports, and is not evidence of any new sort of charm or spell.

A study published on Tuesday in the new England Journal of Mediwizardry states that a defect among those of Muggle parentage makes them forget all the spells, charms and potions that they have learned, if they are subjected to the Influential Moth cold, which is named after the type of creature that carries the cold from wizard to witch. However, the authors of the study were not able to determine why the sufferers did not have their knowledge of divination likewise affected.

In the past month, since this paper published an editorial calling for those who are known carriers of the illness to placed in quarantine until the risk of infection to the general public has passed, over three dozen witches and wizards have had their wands confiscated by the Ministry of Magic. The publishers of this paper still believe that the actions of the Ministry are insufficient and place the general public at risk. (See Editorial by Lucius Malfoy, Acting Publisher, page A8)

Lily Evans, assistant to the Underminister for Magical/Muggle Relations, issued a statement from Underminister Moon, stating, “We ask all Muggle-born witches and wizards will register with this office, so we can track the spread of contagion and set up support groups for those afflicted. We also recommend serious consideration of the purchase of Pensieves, which may assist in the recovery of memories.”

Other committees have been weighing in on issues of cures and preventative spells and the ongoing search for a manner of incense, be it juniper, laurel, pine, or sulpher, that will protect those at risk from catching the relevant cold. The Leaky Cauldron reports an upsurge in the sale of elderberry wine, as some believe, without evidence to support it, that the berry, when fermented, will protect them.

As he neared the end of the article, for the first time since he tumbled into the room he heard something. Footsteps. Overhead, he thought, people were running. Unconsciously, he glanced at his watch, recalling as he did that it didn't work when he Projected. The hands stayed where they were when he started, so they still said 8:55. Of course it was later than that; he'd heard the chimes at nine, just before he came into this room.

It happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly. From a long distance away, it sounded like someone was shrieking, yelling his name, but he was still looking at the paper strewn before him, and he didn't pay any attention.

"Draco!" a voice called. It was a cry of desperation. Not Lucius, not that familiar, but a voice he knew, a voice that drew his attention away- who- why-?

The sensation of remembering where he had been wrapped around him like a whipcord and before he could take one final glance at the newspaper, floor became sky and he slipped and fell through the walls and the earth and the sky with less than substance than a glimmer until he became...

"Draco! Don't you dare die on me! Your father would kill me if..."

He turned his head to find Charles sitting on the floor next to him, back propped against the sofa, hand gripped so tightly around Draco's arm that he could not move. "Don't," Draco mumbled. "Charles, I'm fine but if you keep squeezing I won't be." That wasn't a complaint, Draco thought clearly. I am back, and I will not complain about anything, especially not being able to finish the issue.

Charles let go of his arm and held his shoulders in just as tight a grip before dismissing his managers, who returned to their meeting with the mermen. "How the bloody hell did you sleep like that? I saw you walking around before -- did you touch anything?" Charles demanded. "Did you take any of the plants out of the exhibit? What did you take?"

"Nothing, I just..." Draco thought fast; Charles didn't know he could Project. If he had, he wouldn't've been so concerned. "I was kind of tired and bored so I put a comfort charm on myself, then dimmed the noise so I could take a nap. I guess I didn't hear you, before," Draco lied.

"You didn't taste the aenemonaries? The ones with the eyes on spikes?" Charles asked again. "They're pretty heavy narcotics and I'm not sure..."

Draco pulled himself to a sitting position and shook his head. "No, one of my dorm-mates snores a lot, so I've learned to block out noise unless it's right next to me."

"And you didn't go wandering around before you took this nap?" Charles looked Draco in the eyes with this question.

This he could be truthful about. "I've been sitting in this area the whole time."

"Maybe I should send you home. You have black circles under your eyes and you look exhausted -- more than you did when we left the house," Charles noticed. "You shouldn't go wandering around here; I should've made it clearer when we arrived. This is a shipping center, and most of the doors off this room are portals to warehouses, some we use and some that are just for storage." He pulled Draco to his feet and led him over to the conference table. "We hired a team from Gringotts to do the doorways, and for some of the more expensive products and the controlled substances, if you try and get in without an authorizing amulet, you get sucked through the door and trapped in there."

Draco thought that must've been what had happened to him. If he hadn't been a Projection, he would've been trapped ... somewhere. He'd been so foolish to disobey, and even moreso to be so caught up in his discovery that he hadn't even been able to ascertain his location, or even, really, how to get back without risking a walk through the portal again. The newspapers were as good to him as they'd be at the bottom of the sea.

He barely heard Charles say their goodbyes. "Team, I'm going to take a shell with me and head out. I don't think the boy needs to sit through any more of this and you know my feelings on the matter at hand. Squirt me if you need me," he finished.

The walk back to the broomstick shed felt eternal. Charles kept his hand on Draco's shoulder, steering him through the door; neither of them spoke until they had their brooms in hand.

At the same moment that Draco said, "I'm feeling fine enough..." Charles asked, "Are you sure you feel up to..."

"I'm fine," Draco insisted. Whenever they got back to the house, Charles would certainly tell Narcissa about his "nap", and she would know exactly what Draco had done. Better to delay that moment as long as he could, since he'd likely not get away without Narcissa by his side for the rest of the trip after she heard Charles' tale.

Charles clearly didn't believe him, Draco knew, but clearly didn't want to change the day's plans, and didn't ask any more questions about Draco's purported nap. Instead Charles told him about what he needed to get at the Valbonne market, and pointed out that if they had to fly back to Eze, Charles would never be able to get back to market before it closed.

And what a strange and wonderful market it was. English and French were thrown around like so many trifles, and everyone seemed to understand everyone else. The Muggle section of the market was in the main square, where farmers' wooden stands topped with linen canopies rimmed the area. Each stand hawked different things -- cheeses at one, produce at another, bottles of fragrance at a third. Tables laden with varieties of olive oil abutted bundles of dried lavender and rosemary, garlic, honey, breads, soaps and fabrics. Flowersellers took their places at almost every corner.

It was surprising to watch Charles stop and greet many of the merchants, even placing orders with some of them. He even had Muggle papers which he gave to some of the farmers; some of them gave him coins back. Draco had never purchased anything directly from a Muggle - he'd never even thought to ask Lucius for permission to do such a thing - but he accepted a buttery croissant from one of them at Charles' prodding. It tasted perfectly ordinary, which was surprising in itself.

None of the Muggles commented on the large pack Charles carried on his back. Inside, it was large enough for their broomsticks, but the Muggles didn't see it as being any larger than the packs some of the Muggles - the ones wearing knee socks under their sandals despite the warm weather - were carrying. It wasn't until they had passed through the square through an archway that led towards the mountainside that Draco felt more comfortable with his surroundings, even though he knew he must look very out of place, dressed like a Muggle. He moved his sweater slightly, so his wand was obvious hanging from his belt-loops.

Charles led the way along the twisting, narrow street as it dipped down the hillside. They followed a path marked Sentier de la Brague - the False Trail - which doubled back onto itself where it met the hillside. "Can you guess where the entrance is?" Charles asked.

Draco glanced around and didn't see anything obvious. No pile of bricks, no tiny café, no littering portkey, no jeweled dial to turn. It was more subtle than that. Draco took his wand in hand and stared, first at the buildings, then at the hill itself, puzzling. With a little concentration, he was able to see the magical residue left in this area by witches and wizards who had been there earlier in the day; it was especially strong on a boulder right at their feet. He bent down and tapped it with his wand, but nothing happened.

From this angle, though, he could see how the entrance worked. "Found it!" he exclaimed to Charles, standing up. He put one foot onto the wide, flat-topped stone and before them, an archway grew out of the hillside, beckoning them into the earth.

Inside, by the light from the sun shining from the center of the roof, where an enchantment like the one at Hogwarts' Great Hall mimicked the sky outside, they could see the massive market spread before them. The hill was hollow inside, stone carved away by rushing waters that had molded and structured walls and columns. Draco had never been here before, but he had read about wizards who had made homes and shops like this all along the sea. By moving rivers and seas, bucket by spoon, they eroded the earth, then shored up the hillsides and mountaintops with magic, so the Muggles could walk right over them and not even notice they were there.

Along the walls were permanent shops that looked remarkably like those in Diagon Alley, branches of Gringott's and Simon Branford's spa (for those witches too busy to travel to his waterfall spa in Clue de Taulanna), and of course, a Pofregargelle shop, where they went first. The front was blue and green glass, made by the same architect who had built Charles' home; from the inside, it looked like all the shoppers in the market were under the sea. Barrels of leafy sea dragons and seasage lined the floor and the botechnician was counting guppyflowers into a bag for two witches.

As Charles spoke briefly with the clerk, Draco took a moment to scribble as much as he remembered from the newspapers onto one of the mailing list cards he nicked from the salesdesk; now that he had a record of what he had read, he could put his pondering aside for a while to examine the marketplace and scan for a newsagent that carried the Prophet.

Charles wasn't long in the shop, so they were soon off again to tour a dozen stands and place orders for fish, herbs for Narcissa and Shera, paints for Nore, homegrown mesclun and purple-tinged baby artichokes, square watermelons, fava beans and socca, garlicky olives, pink lemons and self-pitting cherries. This festival of hawking — almost entirely conducted in the musical sounds of Occitan — was punctuated by stops for almond butter cookies called estouffados at Le Canelou market stand, which were washed down with cups of orangeflower water. They didn't have pumpkin juice in the south of France.

Here, as in the Muggle market before, Charles seemed to know everyone, and even invited one of the winemakers to dinner the following week. At Charles' suggestion, Draco spent almost an hour browsing the bookshelves of one market stall; the vendor agreed that within the next three days, he would deliver the seventy books he'd picked out - six for Shera's research, the rest for the family's library.

By the time Draco finished with the bookseller, Charles had already gone back to the shop; they were to meet at the fountain by the entrance at two. Draco had some time to waste before their designated meeting-time, so with directions from the bookseller, he managed to find the sole newsagent in the market - and he had a copy of that morning's International Prophet.

The first headlines Draco saw as he unfolded the paper were all dull. "Ministry of Magic messing things up again," he muttered to the newsagent, who was now ignoring him. The other stories on the front page were all equally mundane - a planned rate cut at Gringotts, an end to the investigation into last spring's vandalism of the Hogsmeade Maypole with the capture of a flock of doxies.

The back page held news from around Britain and the rest of Europe in one and two paragraph blurbs. He focused on the news from Hogsmeade. A night watchman in Hogsmeade reported a Muggle car attempting to enter the village early this morning. The occupants of the car were identified as a Hogwarts prefect and her Muggle parents. The car was transported to a secure location and the occupants were questioned by the constabulary, then released at the request of a school administrator. The Muggles will be removed from Hogsmeade today and the witch has returned to school for a summer programme.

An unexpected wave of relief flooded through him as he leaned against one of the marble-topped tables at the café next to the newsagent. The Ministry couldn't reach her now.

*******

The agents from the Ministry stood at the bottom of the stone steps that led to Hogwarts' large oak doors. Weeks before, the doors had been taught to recognize Ministry uniforms, and they were not opening for the four witches who waited on the path down below.

Hermione stood in the foyer and fretted. She hadn't slept all night, even after Professor Dumbledore had arranged for her to be shown to a private room in Gryffindor tower. Instead, she wrote long letters to her parents, Harry, Ron and Draco, reiterating what Dumbledore had told her in each note.

I can leave the building but not the grounds. The protection is strongest in the castle itself, and quite weak in the Forbidden Forrest. Sanctuary is only given to those who have a reason to be here, other than the desire for Sanctuary itself, so Dumbledore is going to put me to work tomorrow. I'd be happy enough banging erasers, but I'm not sure what he plans for me to do. Madame Pince is away for another two weeks, on vacation with her family in the Antilles, the house elves tell me, but I should be able to borrow a few books.

In Ron's letter, she asked if Mrs Weasley could pick up a few things for her in Diagon Alley when they did their back to school shopping.

To her parents, she told them that they should still go on their planned trip back to Moscow; they hadn't been back for a visit since they returned to England, and their presence in England wouldn't make her any safer or well protected.

With Harry's note, she slipped in a Collapsible Tart wrapped safely in waxed parchment, just in case the Muggles were on diets again.

And in her letter to Draco, she noted that Professor Snape was not at the school when she arrived, but in two days, he was expected back from a presentation on new potions developments before American students who spent the summer at Merlin College.

Writing the letters had put her mind more at ease; at least she was doing something for everyone who needed it.

But she didn't know what to do for herself.

However, Professor Dumbledore, who stood in the doorway, clearly did.

"You are harboring a fugitive," one of the witches began.

Dumbledore interrupted the witch as calmly as a breeze, which masked the fierceness behind his voice. "Leave this place!"

The underminister tried again. "There has been a crime committed by-"

"There has been no crime committed here." Dumbledore spoke again.

"We are from the Ministry-"

"Not even the Ministry can send wizards or witches into Hogwarts, armed, without permission from the Headmaster. Accio!" he said. Hermione could hear their wands sail into his hands. "Now, if you are ready to respect this school and the protections it holds, you may ascend to the entrance hall and Miss Granger will make her statement to you.

The great doors flew open so Hermione could see one of the witches step forward looking unmistakably nervous, as if she expected the spells on Hogwarts to throw them back onto the grass, or worse.

Professor Dumbledore stood inside, watching them. He simply looked at the witch, garbed in the cloak of an underminister, then smiled and said pleasantly, "Amelia Stet, I haven't seen you in almost ten years.” All trace of his previous ire was absent. “How is your mother?” He continued conversationally. “Is she still tending that fragrant Abelmoschus? I remember her sending you blooms every fall, and the time your..."

"Sir, we have no time for chatter," she replied coldly. "You are harboring a criminal in the school. Release her to me."

Dumbledore's tone grew more icy as well. He said, "As I said, there has been no crime committed here of a nature to concern the ministry."

She sounded like she was reading from a form. "Rising fifth year student Hermione Granger kidnapped Rita Skeeter from the school grounds and held her prisoner for no less than five days, transporting the aforementioned Skeeter from Scotland to London via the Hogwarts Express." Her tone changed to one of pretend shock as she added, "She held her captive in the form of a bug!"

"That is incorrect," Dumbledore said. "As Rita Skeeter was in her animagus form when this alleged crime took place, then it was no crime, but a permissive action by a witch to apprehend an unregistered animagus under Ministry Code."

Hermione shuddered. "He's telling the truth - she's a beetle animagus!"

"Animagus? We have no information about Ms Skeeter being an animagus in our report. Ms Skeeter's report states that she was the victim of Assault and Transfiguration by Ms Granger, who is not a licensed witch, but a student! She will have to come to Azkaban with us, as a protective measure, while we conduct our investigation."

A chill of fear gripped Hermione's throat. She'd grown up in a household paid close attention to how governments treated their citizens, and by now, she'd concluded that wizarding justice was a sketchy thing. She thought of Hagrid's and Sirius' tales of Azkaban - they couldn't really intend to bring her there and keep her there, while they did nothing more than investigate, could they? And if Rita and her boss, Lucius Malfoy, were driving the Ministry, there was no hope for a fair and speedy investigation.

Dumbledore was looking at a scroll the Ministry official had given him, then gave them back. "This does not give you the right to attack Hogwarts."

"It gives me the right to arrest Ms Granger."

"She has asked for Sanctuary."

Underminister Stet gasped and stuttered, "She is- She can't- You couldn't've-"

"She is and I have. She is under the protection of Hogwarts."

When the underminister spoke again, her voice was raised, as if she was not speaking to Dumbledore or Hermione, but for the benefit of someone else altogether. "Let this advise her that she will be taken into custody for the investigation if she leaves the school grounds. My wand, sir?"

Dumbledore sent the wands sailing down the steps, and just before the door closed with a dull thud, Hermione saw the witches pluck their wands out of the air. She wasn't sure how they were going to get off the school grounds, and as long as they didn't take her, she didn't much care.

"I hope they have a pleasant journey back to the Ministry. Now that this is fixed for now, Miss Granger, it's high time we decide exactly what we are going to do with you.”

Dumbledore made it clear over the following two hours that for the rest of the summer, she would so busy that thoughts of leaving Hogwarts wouldn't even cross her mind.

In order to secure Sanctuary at Hogwarts, as she well knew from Hogwarts - A History, the seeker had to be doing something for the school. During term, all the students were naturally considered as part of the group, and of course the teachers and house elves and even people like Filch had the protections, even if they didn't need it. But in the summertime, if she wanted Sanctuary, she would have to earn it, and Dumbledore had determined a way for her to do so.

After the disaster following the Triwizard Cup, the rooms that had been occupied by Barty Crouch during his impersonation of Mad Eye Moody had been sealed, not by Fudge, who clearly felt he already knew everything they needed to about the situation, but by Dumbledore himself, in hopes that the Ministry would come to their senses and demand an investigation.

They hadn't. Almost a month had passed, and nothing in the room had been touched. Not even Mad Eye Moody himself had been able to recover his personal items, and he was becoming impatient. Dumbledore had set her the task of cataloging everything in the room, including buttons under the bed and every charm that had been placed on the Foe-Glass.

She'd been in here before, to rescue Draco the day he brought his report to Moody; at least they now knew why he'd been so horrible to Draco. Most of the room hadn't changed - the Sneakoscope still sat on the desk , the Secrecy Sensor sat silently on a small corner table, and the shadowy figures mov-ing around inside the Foe Glass were still completely out of focus. She wondered whether it now showed the foes of the real Moody, or whether it was still configured to find Barty Crouch's. She would find out.

Dumbledore had given her a keychain fobbed by a blood-red orb. It held seven keys for the seven locks on the trunk, and she'd been instructed not to open the seventh lock unless someone else was in the room with her. Hermione sat on the floor, pulled the top open and paged through the spellbooks for long minutes before clapping the lid shut again.

"What this needs is a bit of organization," she muttered to herself. "And a WWN receiver; I'm not used to working in such silence."

"Perhaps your marks would be better if you did," a soft voice said behind her.

"Professor Snape, I didn't think you'd be back today," she replied without turning around. "And if my marks were better, then you couldn't give Draco top marks in potions." She was half-horrified to realize that it was becoming easy to almost tease Snape!

"I have a letter for you," he said, not answering her question. She took the thick parchment from his hand and unfurled the scroll. Draco had written lots of descriptions of his uncle's house, and a few questions about her safety, but said nothing new about his research about Alexander. She had at least hoped for a few comments about the transcripts of the tapes, but perhaps he hadn't had time.

When she finished the letter, Professor Snape was still standing in the doorway. "His uncle didn't remember anything about Alexander, even after Draco mentioned his name. That's really weird."

"Not necessarily. It is possible to regain obliviated memories, as that Lockhart is now learning, but it's usually a long process. In this case, however, some dam was broken when Draco spoke about Alexander, and I can only assume that the same thing happened in his conversation with Karkaroff. It's possible that Charles' memories were obliviated in a different way, but I cannot imagine why." Snape mused, "So he didn't learn anything new?"

"No, he couldn't," she said. "Have you?"

He settled into the chair behind the desk, assuming the role of professor even though the room was officially under Hermione's control. "My Pensieve is full to overflowing. I've taken out as many memories as can fit, and I'm still only up to my fourth year at Hogwarts. In other words, I've watched a number of birthday parties, May Day celebrations and two messy afternoons at Francesca Fortescue's ice cream parlor, but haven't seen anything yet that would help Mr. Malfoy come to any greater understanding. Perhaps while he's in France..."

"He won't have a chance to do anything. But I can - I have time. What I don't have is access to the library, at least not until Madame Pince is back, but if you gave me a pass, even to the Restricted Section, I might be able to-" She spoke so quickly she didn't even take a moment to think who it was from whom she was demanding this enormous favor.

"Irma will have my hide were I to allow that. Furthermore, the shelves are being cleaned, and I don't plan to go upsetting house elves by interrupting their work. It might put them off their cooking. I am sure, though, that Professor Dumbledore would provide you with access to certain of the shelves, given that he is quite concerned about Draco as well. I understand you spoke with him last night?" Snape inquired.

"With Draco? No, just the - Oh! With Professor Dumbledore? Yes, we spoke about the tapes I'd listened to and he asked me about Draco's projections, which I didn't realize he knew about." She paused. Before they'd listened to the tapes at the Boolean, it never would've occurred to her to ask Snape's opinion on something as nebulous as memory. Now, though, she wondered aloud, "Do you really think that everything Draco's been researching is real? Isn't it possible that this is all some scheme to distract him or confuse him, and we're getting caught up in it? Or even that it's something he's brewed up?"

"Lucius Malfoy is just manipulative and well organized enough to pull this off, and I'm not eliminating the idea that everything Draco found in the vault is fake," he said with concern in his voice. "But even though it's possible to block memories or make people do what some wizard wants, it's not possible to put memories into someone's mind. Everything I've put into the Pensieve is what I saw or did or heard on various days, and it's all real. Alexander was real." Hermione had never heard Professor Snape sound puzzled before; it looked like a new and unpleasant experience for him.

She wanted to help him sort it out; hopefully talking it through would help her straighten her bafflement out too. "Then why does nobody remember him? And how did your memories suddenly come back?" Hermione wondered. She'd been reading up on reversals of Obliviate spells, but hadn't found anything that removed Obliviation at the mention of a name or word. It sounded too much like fake Muggle hypnosis.

"This goes against the ways of magic. But perhaps there is a power out there which erased Alexander from the minds of who knows how many witches and wizards, and either it's changed its mind or some magical essence wants that memory to survive. Until I learn the reasons why the memories were suppressed for so long, and why they've surfaced now, I will do everything I can to see that the memory survives." Snape stood up. "Get started with the cataloging, Miss Granger. I am sure you will find everything you need," he gestured to the desk, "in here."

Even without the wind, Snape's robes snapped and billowed as he left Hermione agape at his determined words. Memory survives. Yes, it would. But in the immediate future, the memories she needed to be most concerned about were those in this room, and to that end, she went in search of parchment, a quill and ink.

**************

"Your father has been waiting for you for an hour." Narcissa's voice was as cold as the glass of Chardonnay she was sipping as a very disheveled Draco and Charles landed on the glass veranda. "And you'd think that after all the Galleons we've spent on broomsticks and Quidditch coaches, you could be a bit more graceful in your landings."

"Lucius is here? He wasn't expected, was he?" Charles asked. Draco stayed silent in his embarrassment; he wasn't going to be contrary to Narcissa in front of Charles, especially not after they'd just spent two wonderful hours flying along the Côte d'Azur. In the morning, they'd flown inland, but with the sky and sea so blue this afternoon, it was impossible not to race the entire way back, skimming the sea with their broomsticks and trying to outrun the birds.

"No, he's still in his office," Narcissa replied. She stood and leaned close to Draco, then said so only he could hear, "He wants to talk to you. And what made you think that you could go gallivanting around without my permission? Don't you ever think about consequences?"

She pulled away and said lightly to Charles, "I think your wife has a late luncheon waiting, with a pair of girls who have been riding all morning and want to go swimming very badly. I need to talk with my son, so I'll be just a bit behind you." Her smile must've looked sweet and disarming to Charles. To Draco, she looked predatory.

He tried to follow his uncle through the door, but was still five feet away from the house when he heard Narcissa cry, "Immobilious!" The Take Root spell anchored him to the spot in mid-stride. He wobbled as he tried to balance, but there was nothing to hold to. He bent his ankles and knees to keep his balance; if he fell, he'd likely break his leg again.

Narcissa paced around the veranda, straightening chaise cushions compulsively. She was dressed in short white robes and her hair was pinned up into two bunches. Having spent part of the morning around Muggles, Draco thought, she looked barely older than he did - certainly she didn't look like the Muggle mothers he'd seen in the market. There were two bright red spots on her cheeks, yet the rest of her face was translucently pale.

"I have to go and speak with Father," Draco pleaded. Better an angry Lucius almost a thousand miles away than a fight with Narcissa atop a cliff. At least she couldn't push him off without reversing the spell that held the soles of his feet to the glass.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her take her pass her wand from hand to hand, then step towards him. She slid her wand under his chin and pulled his face so he had to look her in the eye. She exploded in a low-voiced fury, so her words couldn't carry inside. "What am I going to do with you?" she asked, pushing the wand against his jaw. He wouldn't answer in words - it wouldn't do any good - but he shook his head almost imperceptibly and his eyestried to focus on the rocks beneath the deck. It seemed much longer than 15 hours since he'd hidden under there, trying to hear their conversations. Narcissa went on, "I cannot imagine what you were thinking when you left this morning without a word to anyone. Your father made it very clear to me that you are not to leave the house at all, as you have been neglecting your schoolwork. We are not in England now, and you are not familiar with the area, the people, or even the language here. And Shera told me that Charles took you among Muggles! What have we always said?" she demanded.

""Never..." Draco began. He could barely swallow and his throat ached where Narcissa pushed the wand against his voicebox.

"Never!" Narcissa interrupted him with a shout. She took two steps back and pocketed her wand, but her eyes were still sparking fury. "Why do I have to go through this again? Never ever expose yourself to that kind of danger. Do you know what your father would do if you ever ... How dare you think that you can decide for yourself where you go and what you do? You self absorbed, self centered brat!"

"But Charles insisted that..."

"Who is in control of you? My guileless little brother or me?" she sneered. "Charles is fun, I'll give him that, but he has no comprehension of responsibility or obligation, but you! You don't have a choice!"

"I thought..."

"No you did not. You didn't give a thought to how I would suffer when I didn't see you at breakfast." She wasn't yelling anymore, but spoke in a controlled, hard voice. "You didn't give a thought for what I said at dinner last night - that I forbade this expedition. You wanted to shirk your responsibilities, you wanted to play. I hope you enjoyed it, Draco, because it was your last time this summer."

***

Lucius' mood was no better than Narcissa's. As Draco walked into the empty kitchen, which was the only room in the house with a fireplace, he saw the most of Lucius' head in the middle of the flames. He was reading something, which blocked his mouth from view, and his eyes were turned down and unreadable; he didn't seem to notice Draco come in and sit in front of the fire. For over a minute, he hovered there, reading, completely unper-turbed by the flying sparks and the flames licking his ears.

They didn't often talk this way, because when Draco was at school, Lucius refused to have Firetalks with him, saying that other students could steal Lucius' suggestions and instructions and use them, not against the Malfoys per se, but to become better, stronger, smarter, themselves. Draco actually had expected a Firetalk with Lucius that night, not at midafternoon, and since Narcissa had led him to the kitchen immediately after her harangue, he was completely unprepared. Since the kitchen was the bastion of the house elves, he couldn't even find parchment and a quill to take notes.

When Lucius lowered the parchment and looked up, Draco wondered for a moment if Lucius' eyes were reflecting the fire, or if they were really so bright. His mouth was flat, hard and angry, and Draco knew that nothing he said would fully pacify him. Even when Lucius was far away, he was still in complete control of Draco's life.

"What were you thinking this morning?" he demanded, the first of a stream of questions about every step Draco had taken since he'd left the Manor the day before. At Lucius' orders, Draco knelt on the hearth and held his forehead close to Lucius', falling into a Talk's ordinary pattern of reciting, repeating and reviewing. Lucius gave him a solid knock every few sentences; he didn't hide his disappointment about Draco's morning with Charles, his lack of attention to his studies, or regarding Draco's problems Projecting (although Draco'd skipped the details of what he'd seen in both places, and Lucius had accepted Draco's explanation that he was just surveying the scene).

Sometimes, Lucius moved away, and Draco could hear the scratching of a quill as he took notes on Draco's descriptions of the market, the house, and Charles' meeting. "You might have learned something if you'd stayed to listen to the managers, but instead, you chose to play. I am unimpressed by your decision-making ability and am disgusted by your pitiful excuses."

"I'm not making any-" He was trying to behave correctly, listening to this scolding with a grave face and not cringing away from the bumps against his forehead, and he expected to go about whatever extra tasks Lucius assigned him without complaint or outward sign of rebellion. That would only exacerbate Lucius' fury anyway. But he couldn't accept Lucius' claim that he was making excuses. Lucius wanted an explanation, didn't he? Did he?

"No excuse can make up for your stupidity. Only hard work, obedience and appreciation for the lessons I am teaching you."

"I do!" Draco insisted. He did, didn't he?

"Then being restricted to grounds will make it easier for you," Lucius began his recitation of the consequences of Draco's adventure. "No flying, not even around the house, until Dylan arrives on Saturday. Tonight, you will send me twenty inches detailing every shop you visited, both Muggle and wizarding, and everything you observed during your flight. You will also Project tonight; in three days, I expect you to have built up your strength so you can reach home. I will be in my study..."

"After nine, I know your schedule."

Draco could feel Lucius actually smile at that. Draco hoped that his anger had burned itself out, but there was still one more warning to come - the one he'd heard so many times before, he'd tossed it off as Lucius' sole empty threat.

"If you cannot accomplish these simple tasks, you will be nothing but a failure to me, and you should know by now that I don't keep failures around for long."

***

When Hermione had accepted the task of archiving every single article in Moody's rooms, she hadn't realized the sheer number of things tucked around the office alone. Clearly Moody had not allowed any house elves in here during his residence. At breakfast that morning, her second of the summer at Hogwarts, Dumbledore told her that the real Moody was fiercely protective of his privacy, so when Crouch had insisted that no elves clean his rooms, he had thought nothing of it. Hermione thought that Dumbledore was still upset - and reasonably so - that he'd been fooled by Moody for so long.

But if Crouch had chosen anyone else to impersonate, would he have managed to do it? He'd taken advantage of certain things about Moody that were well known, and which he had in common with Moody. Moody's hatred of Death Eaters transferred into Crouch's hatred of Death Eaters who walked free, and their children. Moody's reluctance to drink from anything but his own flask became a way for Crouch to sip his Polyjuice every hour; Hermione hoped it made him gag every time. Moody's concern about people - and elves - invading his space became a cover for Crouch's Dark devices, which Hermione had found concealed around the room. Luckily, Crouch hadn't bothered to create any traps for unwary visitors - Dumbledore had checked - just a few alarms that were set to let him know if anyone opened the desk drawers or filing cabinet, which were pretty simple to disarm.

From her first overview of the room after Snape had left the day before, this project would keep her busy through the summer - and probably into the school year as well. After she'd finished writing a passel of letters, and reading notes from Harry and Ron, she worked out a logical progression through the room, starting with the door.

She waved her wand around the doorframe and noted that a locking charm had been placed on it regularly, and a Muggle-style barring lock, like the ones on the trunk but clearly much more unbreakable, was towards the top, just outside her reach. The inside doorknob had had a tiny Dark Detector on it; it had probably been white at one time, but now was a lifeless grey. Moody must've hung his cloak up on the door when he brought Harry here after the Third Task. She had watched him patrol outside of the maze and thought how good it was that he was there to rescue any champions that needed it, but those memories were now coloured as black as a starless night.

She pulled the cloak down and shook it out, then threw it over her arm so she could record it on her catalog. As she did, something dropped from its folds - a piece of parchment. Well, that would have to be recorded too, she thought as she unfolded it. And maybe Crouch had written something on it that would...

He hadn't. He wouldn't've done so. He'd used this parchment to his own ends, Harry had said, and he would never have destroyed it - not the Marauder's Map!

Had he been watching it during the Task? Was this how he'd seen where the Champions and the creatures were inside the maze, by watching them twist and turn on the page? Did he watch Harry and Cedric disappear from the parchment and rejoice, knowing exactly where they were? And did he watch it with glee, desperate and eager for his master's return?

She felt sick. He'd used this map to kill his own father, most likely with an unforgivable curse. He'd used the map to try and kill Harry, and who knows how many other students - that's what would've happened if Voldemort had used the portkeyed Triwizard Cup to return to Hogwarts with all the students massed in the stands. This map that had saved Sirius's life barely more than a year before, that had possibly saved Snape's own life when Sirius had sent Snape to the Whomping Willow - this map had been desecrated.

She was supposed to catalog everything in Crouch's rooms so the Ministry could have information about what he had done, and if they wanted to, they could seize any of the articles as evidence of Crouch's crimes - even though he'd already been sentenced by the Dementors, even without any trial. But if they got their hands on the Marauder's Map, which didn't even belong to Crouch in the first place, the Ministry would be able to keep tabs on where everyone at Hogwarts was, all the time.

If she gave the map to Dumbledore, he'd have to give it to the Ministry if they asked. But if she didn't record it, nobody would know that it was supposed to've been in the office, other than Crouch himself, and he wasn't about to tell.

She didn't really need it. It would be a good thing to have, to be sure, but it wasn't hers, and it wouldn't be right to keep it. Harry, on the other hand, did. It might be good for him to be able to look at it and know that she was there and safe, and he'd certainly need it for things like sneaking around the school in a few weeks.

It'd been over an hour since she started work for the morning, and, Hermione felt, a tea interval was much deserved. She folded the map carefully, then left for the owlry.

*******************

Early that morning, Draco had awakened with a plan fully formed in his mind, as though his sleeping brain had been working on it all night. Lucius didn't think he'd be able to Project all the way to the manor without three days' practice first, but what if he could do it that night? Lucius might rescind the restrictions he'd imposed the night before. He got up, dressed in the pale dawn light, and went into the courtyard, where he settled on the girls' bench with a piece of parchment and wrote the following letter:

Father-

I am still consumed with regret at my actions when I arrived at the Harts'. I know there's no way to compensate for my disobedience, except by catching up to what you hope from me. I spent last night reviewing my recent mistakes in my Projections, and think I can work through the problem. Unless I hear otherwise, I'll plan to Project to the Manor tonight; sunset here is just after 7:30, so Projecting two hours later should be fine.

Draco went through the day silently, paying diligent attention to his work. In Narcissa's eyes, he was in disgrace, and through the mysterious currents that work through families, he was sure even Charles and Narcissa knew not to distract him; she'd probably used his schoolwork as an excuse, knowing that Charles would appreciate Lucius' concerns about Draco's upcoming O.W.L.'s.

Only once did Charles push for Draco to go outside. Over Narcissa's protests, and despite Draco's excuse that he had too much work to do, Charles sent him down to the pool to serve as lifeguard when the girls went to swim. "I have work, Shera needs to write and the house elves won't swim, so unless you go down there, Draco's the best option," Charles had argued.

With a copy of A Guide to Medieval Sorcery that was well protected by Impervius, he sat on a high boulder that gave him a perfect view of the entire pool, which had been cut directly into the rocky coastline so the sea flowed in and out with the tides. The girls chewed at Gillyweed before they jumped in, and watched Draco banish the fish swimming in the pool back to sea, then heat the water with a wave of his wand. The girls swam its length over and over without coming up for air, so Draco's primary responsibility was making sure they came up after an hour.

The rest of the day, he'd been hard at work. He even took lunch over his books in the library, where he worked on a Potions essay analyzing the impact of combining powdered salamander tails and phoenix feather in combustible mixtures. Tomorrow, he decided, he could send a letter to Professor Snape under the pretense of asking for clarification of one of the concepts he'd researched, but with the real goal of finding out how his Pensieve-focused investigation into Alexander was going.

Right after dinner, he made excuses about having more work to do, and returned to his room to get ready. As his watch ticked towards eight o'clock, he watched the sun set beyond the courtyard. He'd kept his eyes open for an owl or falcon, or a message from an elf that Lucius didn't want him to come, but nothing arrived.

Just before nine thirty, Draco shut his eyes in Eze, and in less time than he could even calculate, he found himself in Lucius' study, the familiar chairs and ottomans, bottles and books, rugs and paintings. He turned to wave to a portrait of his great great grandmother that hung on the wall behind the chair Lucius customarily sat in during their Talks, but she was asleep. Through the opened window, he could almost hear the wuthering winds. Or was it actually wind, after all?

Lucius was nowhere to be found. Had he so expected Draco to fail that he hadn't bothered to show up? Had something -- or someone -- detained him? Even though he knew he shouldn't be able to feel it, even though he knew that with Hermione safely at Hogwarts there was no reason to worry, a spasm of panic filled his stomach at the sudden thought that the Ministry might have decided to ask Lucius questions about Hermione. And then he'd know everything.

Through his haze of thought, the swirling sounds from the window coalesced into something more than just wind. Were there voices? Was that Lucius speaking?

Perhaps...

A year before the idea of Projecting from one place to another without going back to base in the middle would've been incomprehensible. Draco took a moment to mentally thank Lucius for making him learn how to do those types of jumps. If Lucius really was outside, he'd be able to show him just how well he was doing at them, and Lucius would have to be pleased. And it would make up for everything.

Draco tried to catch the direction of the voices, but through the wind blew the sounds as quickly as a Snidget. Where would anyone be after sunset, other than in the Night Garden?

Now that he was thinking of it, he saw the evening primrose and nicotina in his mind. He shook his head to rid his thoughts of his memories of Narcissa working in that garden until the sun came over the moors. She wasn't there now, she was a thousand miles away, she wouldn't be working over the Alba Bleeding Hearts, Night-flowering Catchflys, and White Campions, and she wouldn't set him to pull weeds, count moths or move soil from one pot to another for hours and hours, to keep him occupied. He didn't need to review all those long-ago mutinous thoughts about why she couldn't just let him sleep, why did she need him to sit out there with her, when all she wanted him to do while he was there was stay out of her way.

He hadn't realized then, didn't realize until he was perhaps ten, that she gardened at night only when Lucius wasn't there. When he was, she wasn't any happier, of course, but at least she had someone else to try and battle. But she's not here, he reminded himself, easing his memories away. He imagined the garden empty and quiet, the way it looked when he walked through its edges on the way back from the Quidditch pitch.

Then, he was there, and he could no longer hear the voices. It had taken him a few moments of concentration to Project amid the phloxes, and in that time, the speakers must've moved. The might even have Apparated, and then he'd never find them.

Before he even lifted his head, he heard the voices again, moving his way from the Herbrobert field, but he couldn't see the speakers, as they were blocked by the bloodberry bushes. It wasn't Lucius' voice, but they passed close enough that he could hear what they were saying.

"He has less than ten minutes remaining," the first man said.

"And if we don't arrive before his time runs out..." the second began.

"We'll get draughts as therapy for his next two hours," the first muttered as they broke into runs.

Draco followed them with his eyes across the field. There was just enough moonlight to see properly, at least once he realized what direction to look in. In the purpascen, at least twenty figures stood in a semicircle. If Lucius was there, Draco couldn't pick him out, as they were all wearing masks and hoods. To the side, another hooded figure stood with airletters glowing before him, but from his angle, Draco couldn't read them at all.

The man who stood in the largest gap in the circle was speaking to the rest. He had no hood, and his cape and robes did not reflect even the slightest moonglow. Even at this distance, though, Draco could see that his eyes were glowing red, brighter than they would if he'd ingested heuchera root.

Without really considering it, and without having practised at all in the past month, Draco made himself smaller, hoping the crowd wouldn't notice him, and moved towards the circle. He wanted to shrink back from the red-eyed man whom he didn't recognize at all, who somehow felt familiar, but he couldn't. He just moved closer until...

"Furze! Remind our guest of the results of tonight's experiment so far!" The red-eyed man's voice was carried on the wind.

"Impedimenta was a success, as was Take Root," said Mr. Furze, whose voice and name were unfamiliar to Draco. He pointed to the airletters as he spoke; they clearly meant something to the spectators. "Reducio and Jelly Legs both had their intended affect, although due to time constraints, Jelly Legs was removed after less than a minute, so no conclusions as to length of the spell can be made." He gestured to a lump of robes puddled outside the circle and said, "That pitiful attempt to Stupefy the subject created a rebound which..."

He was interrupted by that voice which sounded like so much parchment crumbling. "Incompetent though Avery may be at rollouts, we cannot be sure that this was his failing alone. We will have to repeat that test on another subject at another time. Now, I will conduct the final test myself. So all of you can observe properly, the light-bearer will do his duty now."

"Lumos." In that word, Draco realized that Lucius was one of the circle, his back to Draco and his wand now ablaze over his head, painting the area with the force of a small sun. Draco could clearly see the hooded gathering, and for the first time, saw what, or rather, who they were surrounding.

Harry Potter sat on the grass in a puddle of something that might've been blood. His glasses were askew, his pants were torn, as if he'd tried to rip them off, and he had bloody scratches along his hands. He didn't move as the Dark Lord stepped towards him and pushed his arm into the clover under a booted foot.

He spoke softly, but he must've been using a Sonorus charm, because Draco could hear the quiet voice as if the wind was completely still. "I am not going to waste time with words." He pointed his wand at Potter and used Imperio to force him to his feet. "There are only two of any importance - Avada Kedavra!"

A jet of green light issued from his wand, blasting through the night. Draco heard a rushing noise followed by a crash and somehow he felt the wind wrap around him - but he shouldn't be able to feel anything. And he heard the applause, slightly dulled by the cloaks, thudding into the hole in the middle of his chest which was pushing him forward, but he couldn't move, he couldn't be seen, if Lucius knew, if Lucius had any idea that Draco'd seen him watch while the red eyed man, the Dark Lord, had succeeded at... had... had...

For a second that contained an eternity, Draco stared into Potter's face, at his open green eyes, blank and expressionless as the windows of a deserted house, at his half-open mouth, which looked slightly surprised. And then, before Draco's mind had fully processed what he had seen, before he could feel anything but numb disbelief, before he could fully stop himself from shouting in surprise, he felt a pull across all the miles, each an eternity long, as he was tugged back to himself.