Deeper Than Blood

Everything seemed a little easier

When we weren´t one hundred miles apart

The person across from me

Sitting in the train seat

Reminded me of you

- Third Engine, Saves The Day

Whimsical Reality

Chapter Five

The blackness rushed in to meet him.

His entire frame wracked from the pain, all-consuming like a hungry fire, that had taken him and stretched him from one point of eternity to another. Time was meaningless.

There was nothing but the pain and the darkness.

"Did you like that,

son?" Lucius Malfoy´s cold voice forced through the pain. Draco had never wished for anything more fervently than he did right now. He wanted away from this lunatic, who rent his son so coldly. "Beg and perhaps I won´t give you any more."

Draco gritted his teeth and tested his position. His arms were flung out rather haphazardly, locked into place with Dark Magic. He could feel his feet, the toes curled up in resistance to the pain, below him. His body was curled up, just like his toes. Arms spread, he crouched there and felt the hot stickiness run along his back, dripping off his bare stomach. The blue jeans he wore, an odd article of clothing even for such gruesome business, were undoubtedly stained with his own blood.

Sandpaper rubbed at his throat and the insides of his ribs. Somebody had taken his esophagus and had replaced it with a vacuum that burned. Every sinew was throbbing, his very body and soul quaking together while the fury intermingled with the fear. His vision faded in and out, turning white as the fury overtook.

With a roar, Draco flung himself to his feet, natural magic breaking the bonds that held him. The room lit up with magical fire as Draco´s fury directed his actions. There was a shrill scream; burning flesh tore through the air. The blood flowed freely now as Draco surged forward, nothing in his mind but to kill...

Kill...

KILL! Every instinct screamed for the end of mortality. His mouth yearned for the taste of somebody else´s blood. His eyes thirsted for the sight of a cold grave lying open. Of sightless eyes like the ones Lucius had seen on his own son. Never had the bloodlust been this strong.

KILL! Intent to obey, Draco cast both arms in front of his body, sending white-hot flames directly at his father´s head.

But something was wrong. The fire reflected off of Lucius without even leaving a scorch mark. His father just stood there while Draco charged. With a lazy flick of his wand, he froze Draco´s feet. Struggle through he might, Draco could not move, and bonds grabbed his wrists. "It´s working, finally. Inform Lord Voldemort that his plan has finally begun to pay off."

"

Obliviate!"

Draco awoke with a wrenching gasp and shot to his feet, falling flat onto his face as his feet tangled up in the blankets. Before he could control himself, he had leaped atop his dresser and was staring in horror at the mirror across the room.

The dream had felt so real.

He could see his reflection even from this distance. He was crouched on his hands and his feet like a scared mouse. In the mirror, he looked like nothing more than a scared sixteen-year-old kid, who had just had a nightmare.

In his mind, however, he felt the bloodlust. He saw the crazed eyes of his own head, felt the insane desire to kill, maim, and destroy.

Something dark was calling him.

Something inside.

Inside of him. Inside of him, that fury existed. That craze to kill.

That danger.

He crouched on the dresser, unmoving until the first rays of dawn began to creep across the marble floor of his bedroom. His eyes did not blink, and he could hear nothing but the pounding of his own heart, amplified in his ears. When the noises of the house elves in the kitchen below, noises he was used to, finally broke through that, he climbed off of the dresser. His muscles creaked, but he didn´t really notice, nor care. In a daze, he dressed himself and headed downstairs for breakfast. He was a Malfoy, after all. He had to look presentable.

Draco Malfoy would always look perfectly polished on the outside, even when the demons lived inside.

*

St. Lawrence´s Academy for the Magically Competent sat, rather buried, in between a bar and a sports arcade of sorts. Like the Leaky Cauldron in London, Muggle eyes just seemed to slide over it, traveling along to the shops along the way. They did not notice the smoke-glass door with brightly painted letters reading "St. Lawrence´s: Enter Here!"

Neither did Ginny, at first. She stood in the crowd of Hogwarts students (a trio of Ravenclaws and herself, really) and looked around for the giant cathedral that had been described to her in the letter. She saw nothing but tourist shops and bars with bright gaudy signs, hoping to lure unsuspecting tourists into their money-traps. This part of New York City also seemed to have a lot of street-vendors. She pulled her summer jacket closer around the T-shirt she was wearing, despite the fact that she was already perspiring lightly. Summers in England were completely different than summers in New York, obviously. She hoped that St. Lawrence´s had cooling spells.

The group from Hogwarts stuck out horribly even in such a strange place. Ginny had never known her voice to draw so much attention before. They had portkeyed over from London, landing in a small wizarding outlet just outside of the Muggle airport. An American wizard from St. Lawrence´s had been there to greet them, and they had been loaded, rather surprisingly, into a red minivan. Now they were crowded onto the street, feeling very strange with their British accents and mannerisms in the middle of the city reputed to be filled with thieves and criminals. Ginny eyed a bunch of passing Hispanic Muggles with some trepidation, for they looked as though they belonged in a Muggle gang. Ginny had definitely read about those in all the books her father had brought home from work.

At least, she thought they were Muggles. They could easily have been wizards. Wizards in America, Ginny knew, dressed like Muggles and existed evenly within the Muggle community. In fact, wizard children attended the first seven years of school with Muggle children. There were no entirely wizarding towns in America, and the school system was entirely different than it was in England. Wizards and witches in the United States went to one of four schools located in the States, but only one was a boarding school. How they got to and from school over such great distances, Ginny was not entirely certain, but she was sure that they did not use trains.

"This door here," the liaison from St. Lawrence´s told the students. "You´re running late, too. Hurry, please." It was strange seeing an adult wizard in Muggle clothing. Their liaison was wearing, above all things, jeans and a T-shirt that said "St. Lawrence´s" in block letters.

Ginny went last, following the garrulous Ravenclaws. It was all right for them to chatter; they knew each other very well because they were in the same house, but she only knew one by name. Ginny was not exactly the most sociable of people.

Instead of leading into a building, however, the door did nothing of the sort. As she crossed the threshold into the darkness within, there was a jerk in her middle and she stepped out into the rain. She looked behind her and saw darkness where New York sunlight had been. The door closed and she read, "St. Lawrence´s: Exit Here!"

Ginny blinked.

A woman wearing a St. Lawrence´s T-shirt bustled up to the group. Ginny got the distinct impression of dyed blonde hair and a big, toothy smile before she drawled in a southern accent, "Are you all the Hogwarts group? Or are you the Beaubaxtons students?" She looked completely unaffected by the rain.

"We´re Hogwarts, ma´am," one of the Ravenclaws--was his name Terry?--answered politely. He was the only one of the group that looked truly comfortable in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. He had pushed up the sleeves to his elbows, Ginny noticed. "If I may be so bold to ask, where are we?"

"St. Louis, Missouri. Home of the Arch!" When the students looked at her in utter confusion, the woman sighed and said, "Just look up."

Ginny had never seen such a magnificent or monstrously huge sight. They were standing at the base of perhaps the most unique piece of architecture she had ever laid eyes on. It was the size of a very large house at the base and gradually thinned out, arcing up and over to slowly drop to another house-sized base. In between the bases stretched a green field, full of Muggles in very revealing clothing. Ginny eyed them nervously, wondering where the other half of their clothing was.

"Hey! Where´d the door go?" one of the Ravenclaws cried out. Turning, Ginny saw that the door reading "St. Lawrence´s: Exit Here!" had indeed vanished. She blinked at she looked at the gray area where it had been; they must have come directly out of the arch...

"Yes. That´s the great thing about portals--they disappear when you don´t need them," their guide said with a smile. "Come, we have a bit of walking to do before we can reach the next portal." She led them across the field, where they received quite a few more looks about their odd clothing (one of the Ravenclaws had worn robes over her skirt and tank top). "I´m Lorraine Michaels, and I´ll be one of instructors at St. Lawrence´s. You all are free to call me Lori."

It truly was an odd society when students were able to refer to their instructors by the first name, Ginny reflected. She didn´t even know half of her professors´ first names!

"I´m Terry Boot," the Ravenclaw that she vaguely knew said. Quickly, Ginny looked at him and set the name to dark hair and sharp features. He kind of resembled a hawk, she saw. "This here´s Mandy Brocklehurst, and Daniel Moon. We just call him Danny." Noticing Ginny, he said, "Er, and this is...er..."

"Ginny Weasley, ma´am. I´m in a different house at Hogwarts, so the introductions are as new to me as they are to you. It truly is a big school, and we are honored to be here." Ginny gave Lori her brightest smile and looked over at the Ravenclaws. Danny Moon was brown-skinned and had dark eyes that resembled pieces of Honeyduke´s chocolate. Mandy Brocklehurst had bright blonde hair that put Lavender´s new hair color to shame, and blue-green eyes. She smiled silently at Ginny, who grinned back. They would be the only British girls in the new school, so some female bonding might be required.

Even though Ginny had been through London a few times, walking through St. Louis was quite possibly one of the strangest things she had ever done. For one thing, the people drove the wrong way! The driver was sitting in the passenger´s seat, just like in New York! When they climbed into another red minivan, Ginny felt a bit strange climbing into the place that her father would have normally taken.

Lori eased the minivan into traffic as she told the group about how things worked at St. Lawrence´s. "I´m afraid we don´t have a house system set up," she told the group, "like at Hogwarts. Boys sleep in Trenton Hall and the girls sleep in Raleigh Hall. The halls are located on opposite sides of the campus, so there´s no confusion about who´s sleeping where. Boys are allowed in girls´ dormitories, as long as they´re not asleep, and vise versa. Doors must be open, however."

As Lori went on to explain about how the class schedule was set up, about how they did not really attend classes at St. Lawrence´s, but lectures. It wasn´t a school, really, but a three-week long seminar for magical students all over the world. It was held in St. Louis because the arch acted as an excellent portal for the North and South American communities. The European, Asian, African, and Australian students had to portkey to the nearest place on either of the two continents--they then took the portal to St. Louis.

Students would pick which seminars they would attend for the first two weeks that evening at the open house. For the third week, the students would all attend more practical sessions, picked during a meeting with a personal counselor. Meals in the mess hall were free of charge for those who had student passes, and there was a lot to do in the evenings. Ginny listened with some interest, for what Lori was telling them would dictate the first part of her summer.

Danny asked what sort of lectures there were, and Lori obediently listed a few, including the ones she spoke at. The honored guest speaker was going to be an American who had studied the American dark wizards and compared them to the European and South American dark wizards. Ginny was quite interested in attending this lecture, just to see if this speaker´s information about Voldemort matched hers. When Lori mentioned a lecture on preparing a magical diary, or giving a diary a personality, Ginny let out an audible gasp. She flushed when everybody in the car turned to look at her and muttered, "Sorry. Was interested, that´s all."

"Some of the American wizard counselors have taken to giving out charmed diaries to help cases in broken homes or Muggle-borns who have difficulty surviving in both worlds," Lori told the group. "Now, that´s always an interesting one to attend. The speaker is a little fellow who goes by Thomas Wydell. It´s a bit of a complicated matter in the American Wizard Government, but if you´re even remotely interested, you should attend."

The Ravenclaws were obviously fascinated and spent the rest of the car ride picking Lori´s brain about what she knew concerning the matter. Nobody noticed Ginny´s silence.

*

Raymond woke Draco early ten days after the adolescent had returned from Hogwarts by giving him a gentle shake. "Draco, son, time to wake up. Your father´s on the warpath about something, and you´d better get down there before something blows up."

"Yeah, like me," Draco muttered, but kicked his legs out of bed and padded over to his closet. The eternally cold floor nearly burned his bare feet, and he fought back a hiss of surprise. "What´s his diatribe about this morning, and why does he pick such early hours to have these episodes?" As he spoke, he pulled a pair of loose slacks over his boxers and rummaged around for a belt with his free hand. Once that was found, he held it in his teeth while he fastened his pants.

"Cruel and unusual punishment?" the butler asked with the smallest of smiles. "He´s going off at the house elves again, and your mother´s already off to do her shopping in town."

"Figures." Draco´s voice was muffled by the belt. Ignoring the piece of leather in his mouth, he reached into his closet and withdrew a button-up white shirt. "Be a sport, Raymond, and fetch me my robe from behind the door there?" He spit the accessory out and focused on threading it through the belt loops. "It seems that whenever Mother´s in town, he rounds on the house elves or worse, me."

Getting dressed quickly and nicely was one of Draco´s skills. In the time it took Raymond to retrieve the robe, he reached into the closet and withdrew a simple white tie. It was tied by the time that Raymond handed the robe over. Quickly, Draco slid the dark green fabric over his outfit and tied it properly at the waist. "Any idea what set him off, Raymond?" Draco asked as he followed his butler out of the room.

"I think it was the Dark Lord´s commands that arrived this morning," Raymond said in the quietest of voices, for even the walls could hear at Malfoy Manor. "By owl post, too. Such an odd occurrence."

"Thank you for the warning, then," Draco said, and the two parted ways. Raymond had to hurry down the servant´s stairway located behind the servants´ quarters, and Draco was forced to descend down the main stairway in his position as the heir to the Malfoy Galleons. Quickly, he ran his fingers through his hair to give it a brushed appearance and hurried to face his father´s wrath. While many people would still look asleep two minutes after being drawn from their dreams, Draco had the ability to look as though he had already been awake for hours. It was a defense technique, really, in order to stay a step ahead of Lucius.

Lucius Malfoy was located in the parlor, where he went to brood over a shot or two of Ogden´s Old Firewhiskey, no matter what hour of the day it was. Draco had entered scenes similar to the very one he entered upon now for his entire life. The parlor was perhaps his favorite place in the manor, for it was decorated in shades of green and brown, and always had a fire going. It was possibly the warmest room the manor had to offer. The only thing that made it cold now was the presence of the man he loathed most. Predictable to his last drop, Lucius was sitting in his normal chair and facing the fire, his frame hunched forward in a brooding manner. "Good morning, Father," Draco greeted formally, standing on the threshold.

"Draco." Lucius offered no greetings, but Draco had expected none. The most his father had said to him had been on the first night back, and that had been nothing but scorn. Conversations between the family were quiet and very reserved, usually kept on topics like the weather and petty problems in the ministry. "My lord has been in contact."

Draco did not allow Lucius to glimpse any of the fear he felt. "Has he now?" he asked, keeping his voice perfectly blithe. He crossed the room and seated himself quite rigidly on the sofa located across from his father. "Still pattering about doing his bidding, I see. Got any medals to show for it yet? An `I Support Lord Voldemort´ badge to wear around the ministry, perhaps?" He was pleased to see that his slogan had rhymed, although he would pay dearly for his little joke.

Indeed Lucius fixed his only child with a beady glare. Fortunately, he did not comment on Draco´s insolence. "Lord Voldemort will remain successful and the Malfoy family will reap the benefits, need I remind you," Lucius said in a clipped tone as he gave his son a scathing glare. They still looked like a before-and-after picture, but with Lucius´s hair long and pulled back, and Draco´s only reaching to his collar, they looked far different. "His orders actually had to do with you." Gray eyes, so like Draco´s own, narrowed and fixed him with a piercing arrow of suspicion. "He wants you to attend this little summer academy, for appearance purposes. And he wants you to keep an eye out for any signs of dark activity rising against him in that area."

Although ice lined the insides of Draco´s lungs, his heart gave an almighty leap. He did not dare to let the hope show on his face. "I´m to attend St. Lawrence´s Academy, then?" he asked without any inflection of hope or excitement in his voice. "Hasn´t it been going on for a week?"

The scowl Lucius gave him told him more clearly than any words that Draco was not supposed to ask questions. "Yes. You will only be staying for a week, for that matter. Our lord expects that you will pay careful attention to what lectures have been assigned you--you will be expected to make a report at our next meeting."

Draco had been attending Death Eater meetings, with and without his father, for the better part of two years, but that did nothing to quell the sudden rise of nauseating fear that flamed inside of him. A serpent of doubt had coiled about his heart and Draco had a hard time breathing as it tightened. Outwardly, he gave no sign of an inward battle and instead nodded curtly. "Very well, I shall go pack, then."

"Have Daleford--" Lucius insisted on calling Raymond by his last name. "--help you with your things. He will be able to transfigure some more appropriate summer clothing for you to wear in America." This last bit came out as a sneer; Draco had been raised to have no respect for the American Wizard Government and the practices of the American magical community.

Still effectively hiding his excitement, he crossed the room to do as his father had ordered, but paused once again on the threshold. He felt as though he were going to be sick right there on the parlor floor from staying in there for so long. Still, however, his voice remained absolutely steady. "What else has the master to say, Father?"

"Nothing that concerns you." Lucius´s voice was steely. "Don´t ask questions." Even Potter would have been able to tell this for an exit line, and Draco left the parlor. His foot--clad only in a sock--nearly touched the cold tile of the hallway before he remembered his manners.

"Yes, Father."

In his room, Draco opened the door to his closet and frowned at the contents as he removed his robe and hung that up properly. He was wearing his only white shirt, and from what he knew of summers in America, they were hot. Black would not be a practical color to wear there, despite the fact that he had grown up in black, it seemed. "Need help?" a kindly voice asked behind him.

Jessie had obviously made time to escape from the kitchens with breakfast for him. She set a tray down on his dresser and moved to the closet behind him. "I forget that you insist on dressing so morbidly!" she exclaimed, examining the contents. She shushed Draco when he started to protest and held up a green shirt against him. "Now a good blue would do wonders for your eyes, you know."

"That´s not entirely the problem," Draco said, and explained his dilemma. While Jessie looked a bit nervous at the mention of Voldemort´s summons, she was genuinely happy that he would be able to attend the convention. "The school is located in a place called St. Louis, and from what I gather, summers are hot there. I´ve all black clothing, and it´s all long and heavy. Father ordered me to ask Raymond to transfigure something for me, since Mother won´t have time to shop for me. Or, at least, that´s what I imagine that case to be."

Jessie eyed his collection and nodded to herself. She seemed to be holding a conversation inside her head at the same time. "Very well. I´ll see what the house elves and I can do. Give me some of your older shirts, and some pants as well. Raymond will be in here in a few minutes to eat breakfast with you and to help you pack. Be back in a few!" She disappeared with an armload of Draco´s clothing, and Draco turned to the tray she had left. It contained a sizable breakfast for two (Jessie was always convinced that he starved himself at Hogwarts), so Draco picked it up and carried it to the small poker table in the corner of his room.

When he was younger and stupid, he had played poker and exploding snap at this very table. Always for money, it seemed, for Draco´s father always had several of his rich friends over. It was always Draco´s job to entertain the children of any guests his father had. Many times, the night had ended at the table he sat at now, with one child gloating and the rest sulking. As Draco aged, he slowly became the child that gloated more and more often. He had a poker face that not even a Bludger could knock away. This face was predominant now, hiding any excitement in the back corner of his personality.

When Raymond entered several minutes later, he was bearing an armload of clothing and positively smirking. "I see Jessie´s had her way with you," he said, and deposited the clothing in an empty seat. Draco looked over and found, to his utter horror, that most of the shirts he had given Jessie were now polo shirts, charmed to be several shades of blue. In fact, most of them were baby blue, to his dismay. "Luckily, she left a few green ones in there. Look, here´s even a dress shirt that you can wear to a dance, or a cotillion, or whatever it is they have out there." He held up a button-up blue shirt and a blue tie that matched, and Draco fought a grimace. The last ball he had been to had been the Yule Ball, back in fourth year.

Raymond pulled a bit of parchment out of his pocket and cleared his throat. "I´ve just received my official orders from your father--all very nicely written in pretty handwriting, see? It actually reminds me of my older sister´s handwriting whenever she was flirting with her latest caller." He showed Draco the parchment, finally drawing a smirk from the boy. "So, you leave in four and a half hours. I´ve just been down to talk to Winston, and you should be in America by seven in the morning, their time. The quickest way is a rendezvous in New York City and then a portal to St. Louis, through what they call the arch. Somebody should be waiting there to escort you to St. Lawrence´s." Raymond spread a liberal amount of marmalade over his toast. "From there," he continued through a mouthful of toast, "you´ll be given a room in Trenton Hall, on the St. Lawrence´s campus. Your schedule has already been owled to St. Lawrence´s, so you really shouldn´t have any problems at all."

Draco nodded through a mouthful of his own toast; he had read about portals when he had attempted to make a portkey earlier on in the year. British wizards did not use them because portals were generally used to travel over great expanses of land. Portkeys were generally used for traveling over the Atlantic Ocean, because portals were useless over water. Apparating was just a foolish idea.

"What´s the time distance, then?"

"Well, it´s five hours in New York City, and six hours in St. Louis. You´ll actually arrive in St. Louis about six thirty in the morning, and I imagine that you´ll be quite exhausted by then. So you can acquaint yourself with the American schedule of sleeping by catching a bit of a catnap." Raymond smiled as he folded the parchment back up and placed it carefully in the pocket of his uniform. "For once, I agree with the Dark Lord´s orders--this will be such a grand opportunity for you!"

Draco could not stop the grin now. "Now you´re just starting to sound like Jessie. Don´t go all motherly on me, Raymond!"

"Yes, well, the best of us can´t help ourselves." Raymond stood up and picked up the load of laundry, Banishing it into a suitcase with his wand. "Jessie said something about taking you shopping, so you might want to head down to the kitchens now. I dare say she´ll pester you more about this Ginny character."

The last thing Raymond heard as he left Draco´s room was the typical groan of a sixteen-year-old boy.

*

Ginny had adapted remarkably well to St. Lawrence´s carefree atmosphere, despite the unholy heat within the cathedral. All of the lecture rooms were kept cool by a series of charms unique to the area, but the dormitories and the mess hall had no such charms. Ginny was grateful that her mother had managed to purchase some lighter clothing for her, even if Molly had moped and grumbled about sending her baby to America the whole time. When the day got too unbearably hot, Ginny could always head down to the convenience store down the street with Mandy or some of her American friends to pick up a cold drink. Witches and wizards in America, she had discovered, were fond of a drink called "soda" or "coke." It tasted funny and it tickled Ginny´s nose when she first drank it, but she had discovered that she actually liked it--but not as much as pumpkin juice. Nothing could beat pumpkin juice.

That was the conservative "Brit" in her talking, her new American friends always said.

She sat in between two of her new American friends now, listening to one of the lectures she had signed up for. Mandy was in the row in front of them, seated between Danny Moon and Terry Boot, and looking equally as fascinated as Ginny felt. It was an Arithmancy lecture, and Ginny had always loved Arithmancy. Hermione had advised her to take it during her third year, and she had approached the subject with understandable trepidation. Ginny may have been the top of her year, but she would never compare to Hermione and her brilliance. Hermione was like a walking dictionary; Ginny was extremely good at practical magic and passable at her essays. The problem with Ginny was that she was bored with most of the topics they taught at Hogwarts, because they were things that she knew already. She wasn´t about to let anybody know that, though.

Was it really that possible that the curriculum had not changed very much in fifty years?

Elizabeth "Liz" Abends and Meghan "Meg" Detooki were two of the closest friends she had picked up in America. Liz lived across the hall from Ginny and Mandy in Raleigh Hall. Ginny had befriended Liz over dinner in the mess hall. Meg, Liz joked often, came with the package.

If Ginny ever had a twin, it would be Meg. The two were exactly the same height, and of medium weight, with brown eyes and hair exactly the same shade of titian red. Even Liz had slipped up and called Ginny "Meg" one time; of course, she had jumped and corrected herself when Ginny opened her mouth. Sometimes, Ginny felt that their voices and aspects of their personalities were the only things that set her apart from Meg. The other girl spoke with what Ginny had heard referred to as a "southern twang."

The lecturer today was youngish--he couldn´t have been much older than Charlie or Bill--and had black hair that was purposely spiked up. He introduced himself out of the class of ´83 at Hogwarts and grinned at the three obvious Ravenclaws in the front row. "Yes, Hogwarts ´83, you heard right. One of the best years of my life. I used to be a Gryffindor, you know. Brave of heart and chivalrous to the very end."

Ginny glanced over and was amused to see Meg practically swooning in her spot. "Just because he´s got an accent doesn´t mean he´s all that great," she warned in a soft voice. "We Gryffindors tend to be a bit stuck up."

Liz just grinned and shook her head on the other side of Ginny. "When Meg´s hooked, she´s hooked. Just pay attention to the lecture, and if she makes any noises, ignore her." She nodded at her own notes, where she had written down the title of the lecture, and the name of the speaker. Ginny hurried to do the same. She had very studiously taken notes at all of the lectures she had already attended, following Liz´s example. This had turned out to be incredibly useful, for all of the lectures were slowly starting to meld into one formidable mass of information.

Ewan Roulter turned out to be a fascinating speaker, thoroughly interested himself in what he was talking about. It was obvious that he had put a great deal of effort into studying the Patronus charm, but told the group in a rather regretful tone that setting a Patronus in a room where there wasn´t a Dementor was a bad idea. The intense atmosphere of happiness around the Patronus that allowed it to drive Dementors away could be rather painful when in such small quarters, like the lecture hall.

Ginny´s notes raced across the page, but she looked up often, catching references of what she had already learned in Arithmancy. She had to grin occasionally, for Ewan Roulter often dropped references about old "Stuffy-Top Vector." She could tell by the set of Terry´s shoulders that he did not like this Ewan fellow very much; Professor Vector was well known for favoring Ravenclaws, anyway.

Her cramped handwriting had filled up two and a half pages on the composition of the Patronus by the time that Ewan Roulter was done talking, but she was still curious about all of the aspects he had not covered. There were so many dimensions to a Patronus that it was impossible to cover in a ninety-minute long lecture, but Ewan Roulter mentioned that he would be doing a follow-up directly after lunch. Unfortunately, Ginny had signed up for another lecture, and attending the other lecture was more important to her general sanity.

"I´m going to be attending the follow-up, so I´ll take notes for you," Liz offered, seeing Ginny´s dismay.

Ginny smiled gratefully at her. "I´ve see a Patronus in action, I just didn´t realize it was this complex," she explained as the three of them gathered up their notepads and pens. In the week that she had accustomed herself to using a pen, she had found that she rather liked using this Muggle utensil. She didn´t have to stop and re-ink the pen at all, which made for an easier time in taking notes.

"You´ve seen a Patronus in action?" Meg demanded, turning on her quite suddenly. Liz´s own blue eyes reflected her surprise. "What do they teach you in that school? I thought full Patroni were really rare. Not a lot of people can produce a real one!"

"They are rare." They filed out of the lecture hall with the rest of the students, and Ginny tossed Ewan Roulter a nod. He, instead of nodding back, beckoned her over, his expression clearly confused. Meg and Liz followed her over, both looking as curious as she felt.

"I thought Charlie only had one set of twins in his family," Ewan said suspiciously, looking from Ginny to Meg. Meg looked utterly bewildered, her confusion only growing as Ginny let out a little giggle. "You are of the Weasley family, aren´t you? Spitting image of a female Bill, I swear."

"Yes, I´m a Weasley. Ginny Weasley. And you were right--there is only one set of twins in my family. Fred and George--they´ve graduated Hogwarts by now, and have started their own joke shop. This is my friend Meghan Detooki. We´re not related." Ginny smiled, and said to Meg, "Bill and Charlie are my eldest brothers. They went to Hogwarts with Ewan, I wouldn´t doubt."

"An enigma unto herself! The only Weasley female!" Ewan had an easy smile that Ginny supposed gained him easy popularity everywhere he went. Meg was certainly weak in the knees from it. "So, how many Weasley children are there now?"

Ginny smiled apologetically. "Still only seven, I´m afraid. I´m the youngest."

Both Liz and Meg, who had not known this about her, looked at her in astonishment. "You mean, you´ve got six older brothers?" Liz asked. She sounded amazed, but Ginny was used to this reaction.

"Are they cute?" Meg immediately asked, tearing her eyes from Ewan.

"Yuck, no! They´re my brothers!"

Laughing at Ginny´s display of disgust, Ewan Roulter shook his head and began to gather up his notes. "Well, pass on my hellos to Bill and Charlie, would you? So sad to see Charlie gave his fate up to the dragons. He could have played for England, he could." He smiled warmly, clapped Ginny on the shoulder, and left the three girls alone in the lecture hall.

Meg immediately demanded that Ginny list all of her brothers for the pair of them, so she laughingly did so, throwing in things like, "Oh, Percy sucked his thumb until he was about ten or so," and "Yeah, I still have pictures from the time that Ron decided to run around with his underwear on his head. I´m saving them for his first serious girlfriend."

Even in America, she couldn´t escape the shadows of her older brothers.

*

As much as Draco wanted to catch a catnap the instant he set foot inside of the great cathedral, his father had other plans. He had been given a tube, sealed with black wax, full of instructions. Draco also imagined that his schedule of lectures would be enclosed, for none of the staff at St. Lawrence´s knew that he was there yet. He had Apparated directly from the portal to the Apparition point outside of St. Lawrence´s, using a bathroom stall located in the underground lobby beneath the arch.

His luggage had been shrunk into one knapsack, making him look more like a preppy college student than before. He set this down on the floor of the telephone booth, the Apparition point, and opened the message tube. Words written in a spidery, insidious hand stared back at him.

"Young Malfoy,

I can only assume that you reached your destination safely, or my words would have been written needlessly. I sincerely hope that my time has not been wasted."

Present or not, Voldemort still manage to sound sinister. Draco fought back a shiver.

"As my newest Death Eater-to be, I expect a lot from you, Mr. Malfoy. One of the things I expect from your time in America is that you get in contact with the people listed below. Do say hello to Lana Grey and her husband for me--she was a classmate of mine at Hogwarts."

Even an inhumane beast had people he could glibly say hello to. The irony struck him as entirely unfair; Draco had no such acquaintances, and he was actually a rather decent sort of fellow now that he metamorphosed. His lips thinned as he continued reading.

"Enjoy your lectures--I picked several of the most interesting that I believe will help you in your flight as my servant. Be good and be sure to make friends, Mr. Malfoy. We wouldn´t want anybody suspecting anything now, would we?

"Your master,

"Lord Voldemort."

The instant Draco read Voldemort´s name, the first parchment dissolved as though eaten away by acid. Draco blew the ashes off of his fingertips and turned to the other parchments left behind. His schedule was written in standard print, probably sent directly to his father from St. Lawrence´s. Underneath that was a blackened piece of parchment containing four family names in blood-red ink. It was this parchment that Draco stared hard at, memorizing the names presented him.

He then stuffed both parchments into the pocket of his new khakis, purchased only that morning. With a neutral smirk, he shouldered his knapsack and headed in for his first view of St. Lawrence´s. He had pushed off going long enough, puttering inanely about the museum buried under the St. Louis Arch, that most of the attendees should be eating lunch right now.

Draco allowed the first grin since leaving Raymond to cross his face. Wouldn´t Ginny be surprised to see him?

*

After lunch, Liz headed back to the lecture hall they had just left to sit through the follow-up of Ewan Roulter´s lecture. Meg and Ginny, however, had signed up for a different lecture entirely. If Ginny´s feet felt leaden as she moved down the halls of St. Lawrence´s, Meg did not notice. Instead, Meg was chattering on about her older brother´s fiancée and how evil she was. They had been talking about family members all the way through eating the gruel the mess hall had to offer.

"Enchanted Diaries: Everything You Need To Know" was written on a sign taped to the door. Not noticing Ginny´s hesitation, Meg nearly bounced inside and found them a good spot in the second row, near the end of the aisle. There was only one chair between Ginny and the aisle, actually, and it looked as though it would be filled by the time the lecture rolled around. This was going to be a popular class, she could see already.

Ginny opened her notebook to a fresh page and began to doodle as Meg continued complaining about Brian and Annie The Perfect. Normally, Ginny liked Meg´s babble, but her mind would not focus on anything right now. She kept her eyes on the lined paper so that nobody would fully see the look on her face--that of frightened prey.

Why are you doing this to yourself?

the little voice that always popped up in the worst moments to question her motives demanded. You could be listening to that fascinating lecture by Ewan Roulter, you know. Such a handsome man, and not too many years your senior.

"As if nine or ten years isn´t too many," Ginny muttered under her breath. The voice inside only seemed to sigh and give in.

A nudge at her arm was the only sign she had that somebody had taken the unoccupied spot next to hers. She looked up--and promptly gasped.

Meg´s commentary stopped and she stared, somewhat puzzled at the young man Ginny had transfixed herself with. "Um, hello," she said when she saw that Ginny wasn´t going to speak. "I´m Meghan Detooki. Who might you be?"

The young man looked back at her with lidded gray eyes, darkened by the royal blue shirt he wore. In contrast to all of the lecture-attendees at St. Lawrence´s with their simple blue jeans and T-shirts, he was very well dressed in a pair of pressed khakis and a collared shirt. He could almost pass for a lecturer, not a student. "Nice to meet you." The British accent he spoke with was slightly more formal than Ginny´s. "I´m Draco Malfoy. I´m an acquaintance of Ginny´s--and I wasn´t aware that she had a twin."

Meg´s eyes lit up at the sound of Draco´s accent. Ginny really didn´t notice that her friend had a new obsession; she was instead staring at Draco´s face, wondering how the bags under his eyes had disappeared. He looked healthy and well rested, something she was sure he couldn´t have gotten from Malfoy Manor. Surely all of the things he had told her on the train were not an act. "We´re not related at all, would you believe it? So you´re from Hogwarts, too?" Meg asked, her voice distant in Ginny´s ears.

"Yes, I´m actually from a rival house," Draco said just as Ginny came to her senses and demanded, "What are you doing here? I thought your father said that you weren´t attending St. Lawrence´s."

For a long moment, the two just stared at each other, and Meg found her way out of the conversation with a discreet cough. There was obviously unresolved conflict there, she noticed, and was content to leave the two of them at it. Besides, the lecturer had entered and was standing at his podium, smiling idly as the room filled up to the gills with eager lecture-attendees.

"Orders change," Draco replied in a clipped voice, ignoring Meg. He looked odd in clothing that was not the typical school uniform, but Ginny wasn´t paying attention to that. She had, after all, seen him in a "Puddlemere United" T-shirt and shorts with Snitches all over them. Really, he just looked like any other teenage boy right now--except that his face was too pointed and perhaps his hair was too blond. "I´m only here for a week. There are some lectures that my...father...wants me to sit in on." From the way he had said "father," Ginny knew whose business Draco was actually here on. Her eyes narrowed, but there was no way she could possibly argue with that. "Now, why don´t you tell me why you picked this lecture out of all of the others?"

So Ginny´s blithe mask wasn´t fooling him after all. He could probably sense that she was on the very edge of breaking into a sweat, and that just sitting in this room, knowing what was to come, was going to give her nightmares for the next few nights. His eyes drilled into hers in silent challenge. Neither was going to back down.

"I´m curious to see how magical diaries can benefit a child´s troubled mind," Ginny said at her blandest, but she knew that Draco saw right past that as well.

Draco´s hand gripped her wrist, forcing her attention on him alone. "Leave. You don´t have to deal with this--you shouldn´t have to deal with this. You´re falling apart! Go on. There´s still time." Draco released her wrist and pointed at an extremely fancy, Muggle-style watch. "You´ve got a full minute to get out of here--you don´t really want to sit through this, do you?" His voice was pleading, for her sake.

"How do you know...about that?" Ginny asked in a whisper. None of the Ravenclaws had decided to take this class, so she really didn´t need to worry about whispering. Still, old habits died hard. Nobody ever talked about what had been deemed "The Incident" and if discussing The Incident was vital, it was done in the barest of whispers. Just the fact that she had succumbed to something so unspeakable made Ginny´s cheeks heat with shame.

Draco faced forward, obviously realizing that Ginny was not going to acquiesce to his wishes. His look was disturbed. "My father gave you that diary, Ginny. I know everything that goes on within the Manor´s walls--I have since I was eight. Even the walls have ears at Malfoy Manor."

Below them, the lecturer cleared his throat and introduced himself as Thomas Wydell, a wizard from the Salem Academy of Magic. Just the name made Ginny freeze up, and Meg put a hand on her arm questioningly. "Are you okay, Gin?" she whispered, brown eyes wide. "You´re tensed up."

"Yeah, sorry, I´m fine." Ginny forced herself to relax, or at least to appear relaxed. But she just tensed up again when Wydell held up a small black book, remarkably similar to the one that had taken her captive five years before. With a worried look, however, Meg was forced to leave her identical friend to her own devices. This was the lecture she had chosen to take notes and write a report on for her Magical Objects class that started up in September. Paying attention was crucial to her grade.

"How many of you in here keep a diary?" Thomas Wydell asked the entire class. Ginny was surprised to see that Draco´s hand went up with her own. He gave her an encouraging smirk as Wydell began to speak. "Diaries are found to soothe the soul and to ease a worried mind. Recently, there´s been an uprising of a belief that enchanted diaries might be able to help those students who have had difficulty breaking into the magical world, or have just been having troubles at home."

Wydell spoke in a slightly enunciated voice, making sure that everybody in the room could hear him before going on. "Most of these diaries attempts have been outlawed, unfortunately, offsetting wizards on this project quite a bit. The fact remains that there have been enchanted books of all types for hundreds of years, and we could finally start using some to our own good."

Ginny took notes rather sparingly, for the first ten minutes of Wydell´s lecture were spent on convincing the audience that despite all of the restrictions and dangers placed on the making and producing of enchanted diaries, they were better overall than any memory charm could be. While Ginny agreed that memory charms were not the best way to go about doing things in some of the cases Wydell mentioned, she would never agree with the intentional use of an enchanted diary.

Due to wizarding law in America, Wydell was not allowed to give them instructions on how to create an enchanted diary, something for which Ginny felt eternally grateful. Nobody needed information like that, ever. He instead explained how the diaries worked, with the personality or essence inside responding to the child´s fears or questions with friendly overtures. Just the thought made Ginny´s stomach lurch unpleasantly.

"So what are the cons of enchanted diaries?" a skeptical voice from the back row called. "And I do mean all enchanted diaries, not just the ones this organization has been trying make to use on the less fortunate."

Ginny perked up at this; this was the part of the lecture she was waiting for. Beside her, she could feel Draco roll his eyes as he doodled on the blank page of her notebook. For a child from a pureblooded family, he seemed to be awfully familiar with a Muggle pen. She could see an amusing, mean caricature of Wydell beginning to take shape under Draco´s dictation.

"Well," Wydell looked at his audience and licked his lips, "there have only been a few recorded cases of actual enchanted diaries. Most of our knowledge on these are theoretical, and pretty imprecise." He winced, and continued, "We do know, however, that some of these had full personalities stored inside, and the rest just had essences of people. The kind of diary my organization is striving to create would only contain the essence of a counselor, who would be able to advise the child. All kept within the diary would be confidential to the child." Wydell paused here; Ginny saw nervousness blossom on his forehead. "With a full personality in a diary, the diary is usually much more effective, but our organization feels that it would be unwise to create such a thing."

Feeling amazingly bold, Ginny raised a hand. "What about possession?" she called out, face flushed from fury about the garbage this wastrel was trying to sell them. "Never trust an object if you can´t see where it keeps its brain. Wouldn´t a full personality inside a diary be able to possess the child so foolishly entrusting his life to it? I´ve...heard...of cases of this happening!"

Wydell started wringing his hands rather nervously at Ginny´s accusation. "Really," he snapped, glaring at her for her impertinence. "This is a lecture, not a question and answer session. If you all would kindly stop interrupting--"

Draco raised himself half out of his seat and clapped loudly, drawing attention to him. Wydell glared warily, unsure as to what exactly Draco was going on about. "Good job. A most wonderful trick of avoiding the question." His eyes narrowed dangerously, and Ginny decided that she never wanted to be on the receiving end of that look. "I feel it essential to remind you that this is everything one needs to know about magical diaries, so why don´t you tell the class what happens when a Dark Wizard gets his hands on the ability to create these accursed books?"

He paused, gray eyes glittering, and stood so that he was facing the entire class. Meg and Ginny swapped looks, each as confused as the other as to what he was actually doing. "I´ve seen it happen all the time in my studies of Dark Wizards. They´ll enchant one of these diaries and plant it in some unsuspecting child´s vicinity. That child unthinkingly begins to write and becomes trapped in that Dark Wizard´s powers. Voila, the Dark Wizard can then use that child to do terrible things--attempt murder, use unnatural powers, you name it."

He had the entire audience´s fascination now, even though Wydell was glaring bolts into the back of his head and shaking his own head furiously. Draco paused, looking over the eyes all focused on him. "Soon, the wizard will drain that child of his or her energy, using it to become a manifestation of reality. The memory that the wizard placed in the diary will become real, possibly bringing on an apocalypse or something of a much smaller scale. The only way to get rid of the wizard at that stage is to destroy the diary, which is incredibly difficult. Unfortunately, this will leave a scarred child with too much power, possible psychosis, and a variety of other symptoms." He paused to let his words sink in. "Sometimes, this can prove fatal."

Now gray eyes whipped around and focused on Wydell in the most accusatory manner. "So why even bother creating these things? Something could slip up--it´d be like releasing a thousand little Dark Lords everywhere. Are these things really worth that price?"

"Well, good way to keep from standing out," Ginny hissed to Draco as the room exploded into pandemonium over his speech. Many people were screeching wildly for Wydell to go back wherever he came from, and several arguments had already broken out among different crowds. Apparently, there were quite a few people that were still for the idea of using enchanted diaries, despite what Draco had just said. "We´d be careful!" Ginny heard above the din.

Meg, meanwhile, was staring mournfully at the half-filled sheet of paper in front of her. "There goes my Magical Objects grade," she said sadly, and closed the notebook. "And to think, I attended this seminar for this one lecture, and it all turned out to be a fraud. He was just promoting some radical group that´ll die in a few months anyway."

Ginny gave her new friend a sympathetic smile. "Cheer up. As Draco here proved, he knows quite a bit about magical diaries. I´m sure he could fill you in enough for you to ace your report." She shot Draco a look that clearly stated that a talk was in order, but when she turned back to Meg, the smile was back on her face. "In fact, I can offer some important details. I´ve had kind of a first-hand experience with them, if you will."

Immediately, Draco´s hand found its way to her shoulder. "Ginny, I don´t think you should tell anybody about that," he warned in a soft voice. "I mean, you don´t know who..."

"I can trust Meg and Liz," Ginny put in so staunchly that Draco couldn´t object. "Now, let´s go wait for Liz. We´ve got a couple of hours to relax before the next set of lectures begin." The three of them made their way out of the chaotic room and past Wydell without much trouble. Ginny snorted once at the sign on the door, in much better spirits than she had been in earlier, and tucked her hands in the pockets of her jeans as she walked. "Meg attends St. Lawrence´s all year around," she told Draco.

"So it´s an actual school?" Draco asked with open curiosity. It was unbearably hot in the labyrinth of corridors, but he did not seem to mind. "You attend classes here and everything?" He looked around at the carvings on the wall with something akin to awe. It was rather like Draco to like a building like this, with its dark passageways and old-fashioned rooms, Ginny mused to herself while Meg told Draco all about the St. Lawrence´s school system. There were carvings embossed in gold all over the tops of the walls--carvings of dragons, and gargoyles, and everything dark. The desks inside the actual classrooms were terribly uncomfortable desks with feet like the old bathtubs in the halls. Never had she seen such a dark building, and Hogwarts was a castle. Castles, by default, were dark, imposing sorts of buildings.

St. Lawrence´s made Hogwarts look like it had been painted yellow.

They did not have long to wait for Liz outside of Ewan Roulter´s lecture hall. "The follow-up wasn´t too long," she told Meg and Ginny. "Just a few things he missed during the actual lecture earlier, and some more on the makeup of the actual Patronus. I´ve transcribed my notes for the pair of you." She handed over two sheets of notebook paper to each girl and turned on Draco, one eyebrow lifted. "I haven´t seen you around, which is surprising, given your height and your hair. I´m Elizabeth Abends--but just call me Liz."

Draco took Liz´s deductions in stride and smiled. "I´m hard to miss, that´s for sure. Draco Malfoy." He shook the proffered hand and gave her another hesitant smile. "I attend school with Ginny here, and you haven´t seen me at all because I´ve spent the entire week lazing about and being a nuisance to everybody at my manor." His smile was now charming; Ginny rolled her eyes behind his back. This alone caused Liz to grin.

If Ginny had wondered how Draco would take to her new friends, she should not have worried. Draco, when apart from the typecast role Hogwarts had set for him, was a charming person, joking and talking easily with Ginny´s new friends. He and Meg even got into a debate about the differences between American and European magical school systems. The serious air about him had appeared to vanish, but Ginny knew that the second Liz and Meg were gone, Draco would round on her. There were still a lot of things the pair of them needed to discuss.

Because they had a few hours to kill before they had to be at a new set of lectures, they ended up heading down the street from St. Lawrence´s to buy drinks at one of the "convenience stores" St. Louis streets hosted. Draco and Ginny got into a brief argument about who would pay for their drinks, much to Meg´s amusement. She and Liz sniggered safely from the sidelines as Draco won and slapped a five-dollar bill onto the counter. The Indian man behind the desk gave them a very brown grin as he handed Draco the change.

"Her temper´s famous at our school," Draco told Liz and Meg in a conspirator´s whisper, grinning as Ginny rolled her eyes. "The Weasley temper, they call it there. Usually, you can catch the warning signs. First, their ears turn red, and then the back of their necks, and then their cheeks. If you´ve got a fully red Weasley, it´s time to duck and cover." Ginny´s ears turned red, much to the delight of all of her friends.

Luckily, the rest of the group was distracted by a shrill warble.

A phoenix, above all things, dropped onto Draco´s shoulder and pecked against the top of his silvery blond head. "Fawkes?" Ginny demanded, staring hard at the bird. She blinked, but Fawkes neither wavered nor disappeared.

"Well, if this isn´t conspicuous, I don´t know what is," Draco muttered, shaking his shoulder. Fawkes, however, had other plans in mind, and yodeled a string of notes at the group, his grip firmly lodged into Draco´s shirt. "I think he wants us to get him out of broad daylight, Gin." The phoenix bobbed his head in affirmation.

"You think?" Ginny demanded sarcastically. Passersby were turned their heads to stare at the bright wonder that was Fawkes; in headache-inducing sunlight, his plumage was even brighter. He was also a bit more noticeable when not ensconced in Professor Dumbledore´s office.

"It´s a puppet!" Liz called to a crowd of tourists, her eyes darting between the phoenix. "We´re rehearsing for a show--go see us at the Fox sometime!" Ginny did not think about asking her what exactly `the Fox´ was; she was too busy pushing Draco into an alleyway in between buildings. Immediately, Meg sprang up to guard the entrance to the alleyway, glaring at anybody who came too close.

"This is Dumbledore´s phoenix," Draco muttered to Ginny, turning his head away from Fawkes to do so. The phoenix pecked him on the head, and he winced, sending Fawkes a one-eyed glare in return. "What is Dumbledore´s phoenix doing in America, and on my shoulder, of all places?"

Ginny frowned and moved around Draco so that she could get a better view of Fawkes´s talons. "Wait. I think Dumbledore´s sent us something." Cooing at the phoenix, she carefully pried a pair of message tubes from resisting talons. Either Fawkes did not like her, or he was annoyed at Draco´s antics. "Yes, they´re addressed to us." She pushed one into Draco´s hand and unobtrusively slipped the other into her pocket.

"So why would this Dumbledore character send you messages--via phoenix?" Liz asked, staring in wonder at Fawkes. As though the phoenix knew that he was being watched, he preened and chirped charmingly at her. She reached up one hand to stroke the side of his head.

"Professor Dumbledore is the headmaster at Hogwarts," Ginny explained. "I guess that since we´re at the seminar, he´s interested in getting opinions and other things from us." She knew just as well as Draco did that Fawkes carried orders from the elusive Order of Phoenix. "I´m surprised that it took him this long to get in contact with us at all."

Liz shook her head and moved an accusing gaze onto Ginny´s face. "So, let me get this straight. You´ve seen a Patronus, your headmaster sends you messages with his pet phoenix, and you´re not dating this gorgeously hot boy, why?"

As Ginny stumbled about for words, Draco felt the need to step in. Dodging another peck from Fawkes, he explained, "Well, if it helps anything...I´ve been attacked by a Patronus, our headmaster generally sends us messages by owl--he only uses the phoenix for top-secret missions--and we´re not dating because my father wouldn´t hesitate to kill her. In fact, he´s already tried." He looked brightly from one stunned face to another. "So...any questions?"

His only answer was a warble from Fawkes.

~ - ~ - ' - ~ - ~