Somnio Salvus

Harry stood frozen behind the open wardrobe door. He would have known that voice anywhere, after three face-to-face confrontations and countless nightmares. But it didn't make any sense...how could he be here?

Harry's hand went instinctively to his scar. There had been no pain, no visions...nothing. The idea of being in the same building as Voldemort and feeling nothing was...well, a mystery.

The horribly familiar voice spoke again. 'Surely, young Malfoy, you do not intend to deny me the pleasure of your company this morning? I have been looking forward to our little discussion.'

From his hiding place, Harry saw Draco glance down the home made rope, then back towards the door. He seemed determined to avoid looking at Harry.

'You can be certain,' continued Voldemort, 'that if you attempt to escape, I will make sure that you are apprehended. It would be no effort at all to instruct one of my devoted servants to meet you at the bottom of that rope, and ensure that you are unable to abscond again. In fact, I believe I have just the man for the job. Lucius could be excused from his current duty of watching over the delinquent Bellatrix. He has become most efficient in his use of the Crepitus curse...'

Draco blanched. Harry saw him mentally work through the scenario of being tortured by his own father. Eventually he sighed and climbed down off the window ledge, glaring wearily at Voldemort.

'Good...' wheedled Voldemort. 'Now, I think I need to impress upon you that it is not acceptable to excuse oneself from the presence of Lord Voldemort, without being dismissed. I think perhaps...yes...a small taste of the Cruciatus curse would suffice.'

'NO!'

Harry slammed the wardrobe door shut and plunged between Draco and Voldemort, raising his wand. As he stood there, trembling with rage and fear, he realised too late that his wand was quite useless.

Voldemort gazed at him in amazement, then his face spread into a slow, ghastly smile. Behind him, Peter Pettigrew hovered excitedly, glancing from Harry to Voldemort and back again in expectation.

Harry took in the scene in morbid detail; the vial of Veritaserum clutched in Wormatil's remaining human hand, Voldemort's skeletal fingers clutching his wand of pale gold yew...the fact that Wormtail had closed the door behind him in his excitement...

'Well, well...' whispered Voldemort delightedly. 'It seems the Malfoy boy was of some use to me after all.' He turned his head to look at Draco. 'Perhaps in light of the fact that you have succeeded where so many have failed, in delivering Harry Potter to me, I might just spare you from the Cruciatus curse. However I am intrigued to know how you managed to accomplish this.'

Draco remained defiantly silent.

Voldemort laughed. 'I will find out, young Malfoy. I still intend to interrogate you under Veritaserum. But first there is another small matter to take care of...'

He whirled to face Harry, raising his wand. 'Avada Kedavra!' he shrieked.

Nothing happened.

Harry lowered his own wand. It seemed Lucius had done an extraordinarily good job of magic-proofing the bedroom. Harry and Draco looked at each other, the same thought obviously occurring to each of them.

Voldemort stared at his wand, horrified, then spun round to face the door. Finding it closed, and apparently impossible to open, he rounded on the two boys with a furious glare. He started towards the window, but they were ready for him.

With a primal roar, they leapt on him together and knocked him to the ground. Draco got an arm around his neck and tried to choke him, while Harry sat on his chest and punched him repeatedly in the face. Amazingly, without magic, the most powerful dark wizard in the world was just a bony old man with no physical strength. His feeble struggles were no match for the two teenage boys, and they continued to pummel him with furious gusto.

That was until Harry heard a loud, sickening crack and looked up to see Draco fall, lifeless, to the floor. Pettigrew stood over him, holding a large Willow-Pattern vase, which he had used to hit Draco over the head.

Panic and rage boiled inside Harry as he took in Draco's inert, staring eyes. No! Don't be dead...please don't be dead! He turned a scorching glare on Pettigrew, only one thought in his head: I'll kill him. He forgot all about Voldemort and threw himself at Pettigrew. He succeeded in knocking his opponent to the floor, but this time he didn't have Draco's assistance. Also, while Pettigrew was no expert at magic, he was fairly strong, and Harry had not accounted for the formidable enchanted hand.

Since the spell that created it had been performed long ago, in a graveyard far from the room in which they now fought, the hand was perfectly operational - a fact which Pettigrew demonstrated by punching Harry in the face.

It was like being hit with an iron club. Harry's vision blurred, and he nearly fainted with the pain. He felt warm blood trickle from his nose, and tasted it in his mouth, but he stubbornly remained conscious.

Pettigrew grabbed Harry's left wrist with the magical hand, and twisted it painfully, so that Harry was forced to bend his arm behind his own back or risk breaking it. He cried out as Pettigrew seized his hair with the other hand and yanked his head back. His broken glasses fell from his face.

But even as he struggled to breathe, choking on his own blood, Harry realised that for Pettigrew to have both hands free, he must have dropped the vial of fresh, potent Veritaserum somewhere nearby. He groped frantically with his free hand until it closed over the small bottle, and flipped the stopper out with his thumb.

He squinted down at Pettigrew. The older man was grunting with effort and panting for breath. He may be strong but he isn't fit...thought Harry gratefully as he raised his hand. Swiftly, he tipped up the bottle and poured the entire contents into Pettigrew's open mouth, then dropped the bottle and pinched his captor's nose.

Pettigrew coughed and spat, but swallowed a large dose of the serum before he really knew what had hit him. Immediately his eyes glazed over, and his grip on Harry relaxed.

Harry pulled himself free, coughing and rubbing at his aching arm. He presented the catatonic Wormtail with a swift kick to the stomach, then turned to assess the damage to the other two combatants. Without his glasses the room was a blur, but even Harry's impaired vision was enough to reveal that there was now only one figure lying unconscious beneath the open window.

Harry looked around frantically, but Voldemort was nowhere to be seen.

After ascertaining that the Dark Lord was not hiding under the bed, in the wardrobe or behind the curtains, Harry picked up a small, silver hand mirror from the dressing table and used it to look over the window ledge. If Voldemort was dangling from the linen rope, there would be nothing to stop him from cursing Harry if he stuck his head out to look down.

He wasn't there. Harry looked suspiciously at the closed bathroom door. That was the only other place he could be hiding, but Harry was more worried about Draco.

He dropped to his knees beside the unconscious form, resting a hand on his chest. The slight, but rhythmic rise and fall filled him with relief. He squinted closely but couldn't see any blood. That had to be a good sign, but as he gently stroked Draco's hair he felt a lump the size of a dragon egg beginning to swell above Draco's right ear.

Harry winced in sympathy. 'Merlin! You're going to have a headache when you wake up,' he murmured. He gently closed Draco's eyelids - he didn't like the vacant stare, it made Draco look dead. Then he stood and turned towards the window. If he climbed down to the next level, then made his way back up to the main suite by the stairs, he could retrieve his broomstick and escape with Draco. But he couldn't leave him here at the mercy of Voldemort even for a few minutes. Even without magic, the malignant monster could do him some serious damage in his current state.

Besides, how many more opportunities would he have to face a virtually powerless Voldemort?

He sighed, tucking his broken glasses into his pocket. Then he gingerly flexed his abused arm and picked up the heavy vase that had knocked Draco out. He stepped to the side of the bathroom door, battling against a torrent of adrenaline. He pushed the door open, raising the vase as high as he could as his heart thumped rapidly in his throat.

He peered into the room. There was nobody there.

Harry lowered the vase in surprise. He stepped cautiously into the bathroom and looked around the door, behind the shower curtain and in the sunken bathtub. No doubt about it, Voldemort was not there. Harry dropped the vase and frowned in confusion. This was impossible. He couldn't have disapparated or performed any kind of transformation on himself. So how could he not be here?

He looked around in puzzlement, but failed to spot any kind of clue. He was about to give up and go back to Draco when he caught sight of his bruised and blood-smeared face in the mirror. He ran some water in the sink and made a cursory job of cleaning himself up as he continued to think.

Harry rinsed his mouth out and spat a mouthful of blood into the sink. Fortunately no teeth came out with it. He probed gingerly at his nose. It was bleeding and sore but didn't appear to be broken. He went through his pockets for a tissue to blow his nose, and pulled out a scrap of parchment instead. He couldn't read it without his glasses but from the size and shape he recognised it. It was the incantation for performing the Psychic Shield.

Harry's jaw dropped as the answer hit him harder than Pettigrew's fist. The Psychic Shield is protecting my mind from Voldemort! Harry gave a short, incredulous laugh. All those Occlumency lessons, which turned out to be a waste of time. All those visions and dreams last year...

And Sirius...Oh, God! Sirius wouldn't have...Harry stared at his reflection in horror. If he had used the Psychic Shield in his fifth year he never would have had the vision about Sirius in the Department of Mysteries. He never would have gone there to try and save him, and ultimately...Sirius would not have died.

Harry felt a fresh wave of grief and remorse, and helpless tears trickled down his face, mingling with the last smears of blood. He allowed himself a few moments of misery before coughing away the lump in his throat and washing his face again. There was nothing to be gained from 'What if?' He had already driven himself nearly insane with 'What if?' What if I'd remembered about the two-way mirror earlier? What if I hadn't pried into Snape's Pensieve? What if I'd worked harder at Occlumency?

The Psychic shield might have saved Sirius, had he known about it. But if he had managed to protect his mind, Arthur Weasley would be dead. It didn't make the loss of his godfather any easier to bear, but at least it was a sane thought to cling to for comfort.

Regret would get him nowhere. Nobody could ever have suspected that an obscure spell, created by a notoriously inept wizard, could be the means to protect him from Voldemort's powerful Legilimency. It was nobody's fault - it was just another cruel twist of fate.

As if to prove that he believed it, he blew his nose on the scrap of parchment, then threw it down the toilet. He pulled a fluffy towel from the rail to dry his face.

He never got that far. Instead he stood there dripping, and stared in disbelief at the wall behind the towel rail. One of the walnut panels had been slid aside to reveal an opening. Harry dropped to his hands and knees and inspected it. The gap was wide enough for a fairly thin person to squeeze through, but that was not its purpose. Harry could see a shiny metal slide sloping steeply down into the dark cavity behind the wall. There was a dank, musty smell wafting on a warm draught, and Harry realised with an incoherent noise of disbelief that he had just found the house-elves' laundry chute.

He sat heavily on the marble floor and rubbed his forehead, for lack of anything more constructive to do. A laundry chute? I had the chance to defeat the most evil wizard in the world with nothing more than some heavy chinaware, and he escaped...down a laundry chute?

For the second time that morning, Harry gave a slightly mad laugh. The day surely couldn't get any more surreal. He ran a hand through his hair, trying to stimulate his brain into devising his next move. His first impulse was to climb into the chute and go after Voldemort before he could get away, but something told him that would be unimaginably stupid. Throwing himself down a dark hole, in which, he knew perfectly well, his arch-nemesis was hiding, was not a sensible option.

Clambering unsteadily to his feet, he made a decision. The time had come to get himself and Draco out of this madhouse, before Voldemort could make a reappearance. He staggered into the bedroom and headed for the window. There was no time to waste. Voldemort could be on his way even now...

But something made him stop before climbing onto the window ledge. Leaving Draco lying there unconscious and helpless was not something his conscience would take lightly. He crouched next to the insensible Slytherin and lightly touched his cheek.

'I'll be right back, I promise...' he murmered. Then he picked up Draco's designer cloak and spread it over him like a blanket. Somehow, knowing that he had done something - even just making sure that Draco would be warm - made him feel better.

He stood up, placed his wand between his teeth, and clambered out of the window, keeping his eyes on Draco as he lowered himself down the linen rope, until he was out of sight.

It was slow going - Harry hadn't attempted to climb up or down a rope since P.E. classes at his Muggle junior school, and he hadn't been very good at it even then. Fortunately, his Quidditch experience meant that he had no qualms about looking down from a height, and he managed to manoeuvre himself down to the window of the room below without incident.

He clung to the rope with one hand while he retrieved his wand and tapped the window frame with it.

'Alohomora,' he said, and watched with relief as the handle turned on the inside. He pried the window open and climbed into the deserted room. He performed a Reparo spell on his glasses and made his way out of the bedroom, to the main suite. It looked the same as the room above, only slightly less lavish. The furniture was comfortable-looking but more modern, and the chandeliers were smaller.

Harry gripped his wand tighter and jogged to the double doors at the end of the room. A quick Alohomora spell unlocked them, and he cautiously poked his head out into the corridor. Nobody was there. Turning left, he made his way to a large landing, decorated with a number of magical portraits. The occupants seemed pleasantly surprised to see him - they didn't usually get visitors at this time of year, after all. A pretty witch holding a bunch of daffodils giggled and greeted him as he sprinted up the stairs, but he didn't pause. He knew better than to talk to strange portraits.

Reaching the next landing, Harry turned right and counted the doors of the rooms as he passed. If the layout of the top floor was the same as the one below, Draco would be in the third suite on his right.

He stopped, panting, outside the double doors. He couldn't have taken more than a few minutes. Surely Voldemort couldn't have got here before him? He pressed an ear to the door and held his breath. There was no sound from within. If Voldemort had arrived and begun expressing his feelings about Harry's escape, he was being very quiet about it.

His heart beating so hard he thought it would break a rib, Harry gingerly tried the door handle. Either it wasn't locked, or it was enchanted to only open from the outside, like the bedroom door. The handle turned with a faint click.

He pushed the door and stepped into the suite, peering around in the dim light of early dawn. He could just make out the familiar shape of his broomstick on the floor beneath the chesterfield. Just a few more minutes and he'd be away, and Draco with him...

He took a few steps, then halted abruptly as his heart leapt into his mouth. A figure stepped out of the shadows behind him and seized him by his arm. He spun round in panic...and found himself face to face with Lucius Malfoy.