How We Shine

How We Shine

~*~*~

Part One: Nigredo

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.
~Arthur Schopenhauer

~*~*~

There are whispers rising up from the battlefields that the world is spinning towards its end. The soldiers who were children just one summer ago, crouch together in curse-holes, mumbling that the hero is dead and the villain is dead and all of Wizarding England is about to follow them if the war isn't soon over. Sometimes, someone will look over to the one they were talking to-- the one who was nodding in agreement just moments ago and find that they wear the mark of the opposition on their arm. And sometimes, they will kill them and become a hero. And sometimes, they will be killed and be forgotten. And sometimes, something else will happen. There will be some slight spark of recognition and both will realize that they're looking at an old friend or dorm-mate or Quidditch rival or someone they may never have cared for but who once shared a table in the library and for many years shared a home-- Hogwarts.

Everyone is connected, though most will deny these connections in the end. Members of the Order lie side by side with Death Eaters on stretchers in mediwizard tents, and they flock to the food carts, fighting like brothers and sisters over the rations before wands are drawn. There is only one uniform these days-- black robes covered in mud. There is only one side, and it's losing.

But it hasn't lost yet.

The castle still stands.

Far from the front, where the fighting is most bloody and far from the back and the shadows, where secrets are traded for lives, far the main towns and the cities that are still safe enough to inhabit, over rolling hills and past a dark forest, Hogwarts sits atop the rocks. It leans slightly more now than it once did like an old tree whose roots are dying, concerned not for what battles are won or lost, but only for the slight changes in the thickness of the air, which humans can barely decipher and for strong winds and cracks in its stones brought by winter cold and for the weight of a thousand years.

It still remembers something of magic, if buildings can be said to have memories. It remembers something of quick footsteps along its hallways and hushed whispers through its secret corridors, but those memories are fading, lost to the long silence and drowned in sick, black waters of the lake.

There are only three people in the castle now. Two are wandering through the highest towers searching for gold, and though they are not yet aware of him, there is another alone in the dungeons trying to make it.

~*~*~

You've always found something equal parts thrilling and terrifying about the first of the alchemical stages-- the dark one. When you were younger, you would steal Flamel's journal from your father's study and read the words of those few beginning pages over and over again until your breath quickened and your blood ran cold, until you fell asleep with them dancing through your dreams, and you knew them by heart. And only then did you start to understand what they spoke of-- something that was real, but not in the normal way of things-- a deep down truth that would still hold when all the laws of nature and reason fell uselessly away. So even now, there is something left in the world for you to believe in, something pure and perfect and unchanging. Because the truth is you can live forever.

The mixture is dark, and the mixture becomes the man. They cannot be separated until something is found in nothing-- the prima materia-- the love that can pull life from death.

But you've never seen death. You've heard it before from outside closed doors. You've smelt it in the air, and tasted it like dust and dried blood mingling on the tip of your tongue. You've felt it. You feel it now, and you've seen it in your head a thousand times in the eyes of a thousand faces and then in just one pair of eyes, trapped behind thick, round glasses.

Death won't have any hold over you soon enough. That's what you tell yourself. Perhaps, you should have paid more attention in potions and not allowed Snape's favoritism and your father's name to carry you through so easily. But this isn't a potion, not only a potion, anyway.

You tried to gather what you would need quickly before running off to hide in the dungeons of Hogwarts. The war took its toll here more than anywhere else. They say that by Potter's final days, magic was all that held the castle together, and they also say that now it has no magic of its own left, that it was drained away by the effort of the fight. It will fall soon, no matter what half-hearted, last ditch effort the ministry puts in to save it. It will fall and so will everything else. It's only a matter of time, and if you manage what you hope to, you'll have all the time you need. They say only fools and desperate men would dare set foot through these doors. You tell yourself that you're the latter. It's a gamble, you know, and a chance, but it's the only one you have left.

White is the second stage-- a time when offerings are made in the form of ballads and tales heroic deeds, and unprepared as usual, all you have is a copy of Golden Boy: The Unauthorized Biography of Harry Potter by Colin Creevey that you nicked from Flourish and Blotts three days ago. It's almost funny, really, that even now in the grips of war-- of death, someone still manages to rise to the top, and they still make a hefty profit. Potter wasn't even cold in the ground before story of his life became a bestseller.

Potter, you think, is fine for books, books written by people like Creevey, full of cloying sentimentality and fractured truths. It just makes you realize all the more how a person like him had no right to exist in the real world, where he fumbled gracefully through everything, always managing to land on his feet or crush someone beneath them-- where his shadow loomed too large and blocked out any fair shots for the people who weren't like him. As you see it, fate and destiny finally realized their error and interceded to correct it.

And now, you will do what Potter never could. You'll beat death. You'll live forever. You think of only that, and you try to keep out the whispers creeping in around the edges of your mind, telling you that you've just locked yourself in a dungeon to let mudbloods and muggle-lovers write the history of your world. All the same, you had at least expected Creevey would give you some vague, uncomplimentary reference. After all, you were the reason Potter first got on a broom to fly. You were there when he first laid eyes on the Dark Lord. And you were there when he died, even if you weren't watching. But you're not the only one left out of the retelling, and there is some slight vindication in that.

The weasel's name isn't mentioned in Creevey's book, not even once.

~*~*~

He was born on the last day of the seventh month, and on the last day of the tenth month, his parents died. A year passed between his birth and their deaths, one spent hiding, shielded by spells spun of friendship and hope and a fragile trust that was broken, in the end, as most trusts eventually are. Swaddled in blankets woven by silkworms and spiders, he spent his childhood locked away from the sunlight in a cupboard with no hope of escape. But even the petty evils of his captors could not crush him, and as his magic grew stronger, he feigned obedience, and he silently waited for the day of his rescue-- the day he could leave the little room of the little house and the little minded people who didn't care enough for him to keep a single picture.

~*~*~

Ron is used to unpleasant chores. No matter how much he's complained or whined or tried to get out of them, there has always been a rough voice in the back of his head saying, 'This is your lot, boy, and you better get used to it, because there'll come a time when you'll have to prove yourself, and no pouting or messing about will get you out of the job that needs doing.' He supposes this could be that time, and maybe that's why he's here, but he quickly quashes all hopes of stepping up to join his brothers. This isn't as simple as de-gnoming the garden or cleaning the kitchen floor when the charms on his mother's self-scrubbing magical mop wear down and they can't afford to buy a new one. And the way his life has been going lately, he doubts he could manage to do even those things right.

"Rond . . ."

Harry was probably good at mopping and sweeping, just like he was good at everything else. He probably moved a broom across the floor as swiftly and easily as he did through the sky. They told Ron, when he was younger, how horrible Harry's life was before he came to Hogwarts, and a part of him knows it must have been true, because that's the first test of every hero-- to survive their childhood unloved and unbroken. They never told him that love too can break. Like all of the hardest lessons, he had to learn that on his own.

"Rond . . ."

Professors lie when it suits them, and there's no real truth to be found in books. He'd never tell Hermione that, but deep down, he suspects she already knows. As he leafs through Dumbledore's old copy of Hogwarts a History, all he can see is Godric Gryffindor standing guard over the newly built castle to slay any muggles who stumble upon it. He saw the tapestries hidden by black curtains in the disused towers-- the slaughter and the spoils. He knows now how his house got its colors. Blood and money, that's what really maters. No hero can change that, no matter how tragic their childhood.

"Rondald!"

Poor Harry, always so put upon by fate, all the same Ron never saw Harry cleaning out bedpans. He doesn't see Harry doing much of anything these days, because Harry's dead, and inactivity is just one of those disagreeable side effects that comes along with it.

"Ih'd nod reald."

Ron shakes his head, trying to still his mind and looks over to the office's only other occupant, Luna Lovegood, who appears to be trying to eat a polished astrolabe from atop the headmaster's desk. "What?" he asks.

"Fade!" She catches his eye and puts it back on the desktop with a loud thump. "Fake," she repeats, voice finally decipherable now that the hunk of metal's been removed from her mouth. "It's all fake." She pulls her wand out of the knot of hair it's been holding in place on the top of her head and charms the astrolabe clean. "I'd break my teeth trying to bite any harder."

"Bloody hell!" he says, shoving his hands into his robe pockets, as if he'll find something there. "All of it?"

"Some of it might have a little gilding." She gives a strange smile and something like a sigh. "It's mostly just fool's gold."

"Perfect," Ron mutters under his breath. The irony of the situation is not lost on him. "Just perfect."

~*~*~

At only eleven years old, it was clear that Harry Potter would become the greatest student that Hogwarts School had ever seen. But after his first year, he was forced to return to the home of his wicked aunt and cruel uncle and beastly cousin. And there he was kept in a tiny upstairs room with bars over the window and strong locks on the door to prevent him from escaping. He would have been trapped there all summer if not for the poorest of people, who, recognizing that he was their savior and only hope, endeavored to rescue him from the prison of that muggle house, using nothing more than a car charmed to fly. And in gratitude, he stayed with them at their humble dwelling, asking no more than to live among them as an equal and gladly ridding their garden of unwanted gnomes until it was time for him to return to Hogwarts, where he was happily reunited with Hermione and Dean and Colin and all of his Gryffindor friends.


~*~*~

Ron stumbles down a dark stairway a bit behind Luna, who floats along dreamily, stopping every few seconds to mutter a soft hello to the portrait canvases that now show only still, desolate landscapes.

"They're empty," Ron says, blinking and using a fingernail to chip some gold-colored paint from a splintering wooden frame. "Whoever was in them has been gone for a long time."

She hops down a few steps more and peers into a frame holding a picture of an ocean that seems unnaturally calm and looks over to a small plaque on the wall beside it. "Dedicated to Hogwarts School for the enjoyment of future generations from the collection of Bilius Weasley," she reads aloud before turning back to Ron. "Was he a relative of yours?"

"Yes," Ron says stiffly. "He was my uncle."

Luna taps the picture with her wand a few times, as if that will get the waves moving again. "You have quite a big family, you know."

Ron winces. "I know," he says, "quite big." He doesn't want to think about his family right now. He doesn't want to think about his uncle, who died shortly after seeing the grim. He doesn't want to be told how lucky he is that his sister and all of his brothers are still alive and how proud he must be of all of them. But what Ron wants doesn't matter as much as it should. He's surprised when Luna doesn't say any of the normal things he's expecting to hear, which he should expect, really, because she's not normal.

"They must miss you," she says, "now that you're so far away."

Ron hops down the next few steps so he can walk ahead of her. "They don't," he says, looking back over his shoulder. "Trust me. They don't." He only left for Hogwarts two days ago, and he did it without telling any of them he was going. He doubts they'll notice he's not there anymore. They'll be too busy with their own plans and with the war and with the business of being spectacular.

Bill became famous early on for developing a method of neutralizing Dementors, a derivative of Occlumency, where holding onto a single constant thought could leave them completely immobilized. When strained happiness fails against enforced misery, the only defense is truth and occasionally indifference. Ron could never get it to work, though. He had many happy memories, but no certainties, and a part of him always suspected betrayal. Eventually, he stopped trying.

Charlie accidentally stumbled on a thirteenth use of dragon blood by getting it too close to a fire one night when he was supposed to be doing a routine health check for a few hatchlings. A single drop of the blood put out the flames, leaving the ground cold and the deeper soil sewn through with frost. He used this knowledge to extinguish the cursed fire at the ministry building and the accidental fire St. Mungo's, not only saving the lives of all the patients and healers but also protecting the fragile ingredients and the rare potions that would be needed as the war drew on. Ron heard about it on the wireless in the kitchen at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. He was eating a sandwich at the time.

Percy was, perhaps, the most celebrated. In the weeks after Lucius Malfoy escaped from Azkaban and took the ministry for himself, Percy never came home. Everyone thought he'd been taken hostage, or killed-- actually, everyone thought something else entirely, but they liked to pretend otherwise. No one expected the building to fall-- to be burnt down from the inside. No one expected the lone figure of Percy Weasley to be standing amidst the soot and rising ashes with a half cracked, still sparking wand clutched in his hand. Lucius Malfoy's body was never found, and Percy became a hero. No one ever mentioned the fact that he had been opposed to the Order, just as no one ever mentioned the black skull and serpent branded onto his left forearm. Ron almost said something once, when Percy called him lazy for staying in when some of the main rescue missions were going on, but then their mother walked in, and he started to choke on his own tongue.

Fred and George increased the potency of Skiving Snackboxes so that they worked on scent alone and caused anyone within a fifty foot radius to become violently ill. Soon they became strong enough to kill. Luckily, Fred and George also invented masks to protect themselves from these effects. Ron wouldn't let them use him as a test subject.

And Ginny-- they say Ginny was with Harry at the end of it. She was found on the last day lying unconscious beside a huge black crater, but if she remembers what happened, she won't tell anyone who's been asking about it, and even if she'd tell Ron, he's not sure he wants to hear it.

Ron isn't like them. He wonders, sometimes, how all the anger and excitement drained out of him. He changed. He became cautious, even though he knows there's no time left for caution, and too much of it can be far worse than recklessness. And now, he's afraid. But that doesn't surprise him very much. He could be brave when he was with Harry, but Harry's gone, and even before that he was never very sure of himself. He panicked the first time he played in a real Quidditch game. He froze on his potion NEWTS and spilled a whole jar of ladybug wings into his half-brewed shrinking solution. He can't stay sure of himself under Imperius enough to know which commands are coming from in his own mind and which he should be fighting. He gets confused and frustrated and ends up doing things he never meant to.

He blinks and realizes that Luna's looking up at him from the bottom of the stairway, and he's been standing completely still on one of the middle steps for minutes without realizing it. He swallows hard and mutters a quick apology. They don't have much time left to find what they need, and he's already staring to fail. This is to be expected, really-- Ron Weasley is given a tiny bit of responsibility, and he cracks under the pressure, just as well that the whole thing is impossible, and his partner is insane. It wouldn't do to have anyone valuable wasting their time on something like this-- hopeless and dangerous. And he isn't even important enough to be mentioned in the recounting of his best friend's life.

~*~*~

There is a chunk of lead in the cauldron and the severed head of a raven on the table behind you. The candles you've lit to see by are made of fat from the kitchens, and the air is beginning to smell of sulfur. You shiver, and it could be from the cold or from fear or from the fact that it's been days since you last had food or clean water, but you wonder if it might be something else.

Putrefaction-- Flamel referred to it as 'the separating,' and that's how you pictured it when you were younger, like a potion made in reverse by a skilled master, able to extract every ingredient and bring them back to their original forms, but that's not what it is at all. It's a breakdown-- a decay-- an ugly, fetid descent from form to matter to nothingness. If it could be put into the words of a curse, it would be unforgivable.

Despite what Creevey wrote, the war didn't end with Potter's death. The Dark Lord died too that day, and both sides chalked it up to equal losses and kept going, each mad with grief, each strengthened by their need for vengeance. But you didn't keep going after that. You never made a good soldier, anyway, and with what you were fighting for gone and what you were fighting against gone, you didn't see the purpose of it anymore-- or maybe you just saw a different purpose.

The lead seems to be melting, boiling with huge, black bubbles sliding along its surface, and dense smoke rising from the depths of the cauldron. It won't be long now. You add a handful of dirt dug from a fresh grave, three nuts from a hazel tree, and a drop of your own blood. You read an incantation in an old language filled with thick, unpleasant vowel sounds, all the while fighting your tongue to keep from stuttering. Then you sprinkle in a few necessary herbs-- all stolen from the disused storeroom, because you haven't any money left, except for the ten galleons in your pocket, and those wouldn't have been enough to by a single vial. You tell yourself money won't be a problem if what you're attempting works, and you tell yourself it will work. When you have the stone, you'll be able to pluck gold from the air, but there are steps to go through before that, and the first will be the hardest.

For a few uncomfortable seconds, you begin to wonder what your year-mates would think seeing you here, a deserter and a failure, cowering away in your filthy robes. You imagine Parkinson's disgust, Goyle's confusion, Crabbe's clumsy empathy. You think of Weasley's idiotic smugness and Granger's self-satisfied pity, and you think of Potter, because, no matter how you try, you can't not think of Potter and what he would do and what he would say and how he probably wouldn't be at all surprised to find you like this.

You hate him. You hate him so much that it burns and freezes and ties your insides in knots. You hate him in a vicious, violent way that makes you wish he were still alive so you could gut him using nothing more than your hands. You hate him in a nervous, jumpy way that has you glancing in shadows and dark corners with curses caught in your throat to use incase he happens to be there despite the fact that he's dead. And once, you hated him in a calm, easy way as careless as your own breathing and so much a part of you that you were always able go on normally, as if it wasn't there at all. And then you couldn't, because he wasn't there anymore, and you don't think anything can be the same after that.

You hate him more than you have ever hated or loved or wanted or didn't want anything in your life, and he died before you could face him on your terms, before you could be granted a single victory against him, and for that, you hate him even more, so much that you would willingly destroy yourself for just a chance to beat him.

And before the world goes dark, a tiny voice in your head whispers, 'What have I done?'

~*~*~

Harry Potter was built to fly and to seek, that much was obvious from the first time he stepped onto a broom. He was able to think fast without doubting himself and take chances that always worked out to his advantage. He was light and agile without being awkward or gangling. His extraordinary talents earned him a spot on the Gryffindor team his first year, and he had none of the nervousness typical of a beginning player, only speed and reach and sight like no one had before him and no one is likely to have since. When he was playing at his best, none could beat him, and there was not a game that ended without the golden snitch lying still in his palm.

~*~*~

Gold is the most powerful conductor of magic in the world, that's why the best cauldrons and scales have always been golden. Once, long ago, gold wands were made for the heads of the wealthiest families, but they were too powerful, too wild to be controlled, and they almost always ended up killing their masters. The Ministry claims that all of them have been disposed of over three-hundred years ago, but Ron knows better than to trust the Ministry. So does Luna.

He hears Parkinson's words from earlier that week echoing in his head. "A Weasley? Looking for gold? Do you think he'll recognize any if he sees it?"

"Ron is all we can spare," Hermione had said in that I-know-everything voice of hers. "And of course he knows what gold looks like." Then she gave him a questioning glance as if to ask him whether he really did know, and Parkinson caught it and laughed. He felt blood rising to his face, and he knew she thought she was getting to him, but he didn't really care what that stupid cow thought. One of his best friends was dead, and the other had just called him expendable. That's what hurt. Besides, he knew recognition would never be the problem. Not even Hermione can recognize something that isn't there.

"If I had gold where would I keep it?" he mutters to himself, and despite the fact that he wasn't talking to her, Luna pokes her head around the adjacent doorway to look at him.

"I'd hang it from the ceiling," she says. "People don't look above them often enough. Everyone thinks gold should be buried, or kept in caves guarded by dragons--"

He closes his eyes and tries to tune her out. "In the bank . . ."

"Blibbering humdingers would never hoard like that. They're very generous--"

"Gringotts," he mutters. But Gringotts is closed and has been for over a year. Whatever gold the Death Eaters didn't smuggle away is buried hundreds of feet below the ground in the collapsed tunnels.

"Well, they can be greedy when it comes to swazzle berries, but that's only in the summer to keep them from getting too hot--"

"Goblins," he says, still thinking out loud.

"Oh no," Luna says with a sad sort of smile. "Fudge the butcher drove the last of the goblins out months before the war started. Why else do you think there haven't been any fighting alongside us?"

Ron stares at the ground, where he catches something shining out the corner of his eye. "Because they're too smart to get involved in this mess," he says, and then realizes that what he's looking at is just a piece of glass from a broken window.

"You don't really believe that, do you?"

"No." he lies.

"You're upset," Luna says quietly, and her voice echoes against the stone walls. "You're upset about Harry's book."

"No, I'm not," Ron lies again. Only she would call it Harry's book. It's not his. He wouldn't have approved of it. Ron's sure of that. And it certainly doesn't belong to him. Nothing does. He's dead. The truth of why he's upset is more complicated than just that, though Ron wouldn't expect many people to give him so much credit or consider him anything other than simple. There are things Harry Potter still owns, many of them he never even knew belonged to him, but it's too late to change that now. Ron is upset about the book-- Creevey's book, and he's more upset that he cares so much about the stupid thing when his best friend just died. He would never have expected to turn out so bloody selfish, but he supposes Hermione was right about that too. Then again, there were whole chapters dedicated to her.

"Well you should be upset, Ronald," Luna says, sounding more definite than someone who wears radishes on their ears has any right to. "You're allowed to be sad that he's dead, but that'll sort itself out soon enough. The book-- that was lies. Creevey tried to erase you from his life, and you should be mad about it. It's hard enough to know what to believe these days. Harry deserves better than something that isn't even true."

"Yeah, okay," Ron says dispassionately.

"Well, he does, and so do you. We should do something about it-- I know. We should write the true story in the Quibbler."

When he rolls his eyes, Ron catches light reflecting where he hadn't expected there to be any and tips his head back fully to see two rows of gold chandeliers that run the length of the hallway hanging at least twenty feet above his head. "Lucky guess," he mumbles, "But I doubt they're real."

"No," she says quietly. "They're not. I've already checked."

~*~*~

And from a hat that was nothing more than tatters, the Boy-Who-Lived pulled the sword that only he could pull-- the one weapon in the world strong enough to cut down the evil serpent-- a glimmering, golden blade inlaid with rubies and diamonds. And as if an unseen sun rose from those cold recesses of the dungeon chamber, the dark stone halls filled with an incredible light, and the phantom form of Slytherin's heir cowered from it, for he could not look upon its glory. He could not stand to see the boy whose destiny was to destroy him.

~*~*~

They're working their way down from the top floors. Even if that hadn't been the plan originally, it is the pattern they fell into, and Ron feels better to have some design to it. This way it won't be so much his fault when everything goes pear-shaped. There was a time when he was good with strategies, maybe even brilliant, but things were different then. A good leader takes risks when the odds are in their favor and knows when sacrifices must be made, but Harry was the leader, and he's dead, and Ron never felt he had any place in the big decisions. It doesn't matter now. He's too busy desperately clutching what little he still has to look at the big picture. There's nothing he would take a chance on sacrificing. Poor men should know better than to gamble, and Ron knows a lot about being poor. He knows there's nothing left he can afford to lose.

He follows Luna into the great hall, which is set up as it would be for a welcoming feast, except that the plates and saucers are white. They were only ever spelled to look golden. The ceiling charm has faded too. Instead of a night sky, the only thing above them is cracked stone and crumbling mortar.

He walks past the high table, casually looking it over. He pulls out each of the chairs and, finding nothing, moves on to the stool in the center of the floor with the sorting hat placed on its seat. "Have any advice for us, do you?" he asks, hardly raising his voice above a whisper. "Not so smart now without those spells that made you talk. Even then you weren't much use. You said I was another Weasley, but I'm not like the rest of them. You said I was brave, and I was just a stupid kid who didn't think bad things could ever happen to me, but I was wrong, and so were you. You should have known better. You're a thousand years old, and you bloody well knew what was happening, but the only warnings you gave were stupid songs. You should have screamed! You should have really told us! We would've listened!" Ron stops and hesitates for a second, wondering if what he's said is really true. "I would've listened," he whispers. It is perhaps the biggest lie he's ever told. The truth is he would have laughed. He would have asked why anyone would believe an ancient piece of cloth, and Hermione would have scolded him until he shut up. But he's not about to admit that now. He looks over at the wall, because he can't even manage to look a hat in the face. "What am I supposed to do now, eh?"

"There's plenty we can still do," says a voice, but it's Luna's, and she's on the other side of the room standing on the Gryffindor table inspecting the frayed banner above it and not really paying any attention to him. In her world, getting into arguments with hats is probably perfectly normal.

Grabbing the sorting hat, as if to strangle it, his hand meets something hard and pointed and cool through the fabric. He brings it up to his face and prods a bit further. "Ouch!" he shouts, pulling his hand back and staring in shock at his finger, which drips blood from a wide laceration. And his eyes widen further when a sword falls from the hat to the floor, clanging sharply against the stones. In his head, his mother's voice tells him it's dangerous for a sword to be stored in a hat, especially one that's placed on the heads of children so often. He sighs and wipes his finger against the leg of his trousers, and he can't help but think that after crawling through dusty corridors all day, this could only have made it dirtier.

The sword isn't gold, of course it's not. Gold is a powerful metal magically, but physically it's soft, certainly too soft to behead muggles or cut through basilisk skin. It looks different than it had second year, smaller perhaps, duller and definitely more tarnished. He stares down at his reflection in the blade and tries not to think about how he looks different too.

"We should move on to the kitchens," Luna says from somewhere behind him. "The house elves could be hiding something. They could have secretly been rich all this time and only dressed the way they do to make sure no one finds out . . . sort of like you are now."

He blinks, trying to process what he's just heard and decides Luna must be the only person in the world able to say that without the slightest hint of sarcasm. He shrugs again. It's too soon to think about it, really. Inheriting all of Harry's money will more of a burden than anything else. Ron will never consider it his. He'll never touch any of it for himself or his family. It's more of a guardianship, one that Hermione's too busy for, an obligation to give to the right charities and do all the good things Harry should have done like helping to rebuild the ministry and repair the burn ward at St. Mungo's, while not doing any of the stupid things he was actually planning like replacing the Dursley's geraniums with venomous tentacula or buying Hagrid a new pet dragon.

"You didn't find anything here, did you?" Luna asks.

"Nothing useful."

She tilts her head to the side and points to his hand. "What's that?"

"Oh, this is just the sorting hat," he says, holding it up for her to see, and then with his other hand, which just happens to be bleeding onto the sleeve of his robe, he grabs the sword by the hilt and picks it up off the ground. "And this-- this is the sword of Gryffindor."

"Oh, okay," she says, looking from one hand to the other. "That might actually be useful, the hat, I mean. It could be cold when we get down to the dungeons. The heating charms have probably gone out ages ago. Do you want it?"

"No," he ventures, still vaguely confused.

"That's good."

Her fingers brush his as she takes the hat from his hand, and she examines it for a while, as if to find the proper hole before taking the sword from his other hand and dropping it inside. Then she puts the hat on her head and begins to whistle.

~*~*~

The air is getting colder. The lead has melted, and now, as the last embers of the fire beneath flicker and die away, it forms a coagulated mass at the bottom of the cauldron. Someone is singing nearby, but you can't hear it. Your body is lying on the floor of the potions room, but your mind is somewhere else entirely.

Inward focus, Flamel wrote, visions brought on by a meditative state-- not this, not this trance, not this sleep that so closely resembles death. You should have known better than to believe the writings of a Gryffindor. You're in what looks like another dungeon, dark and made of stone. You feel things, cold stagnant air and the grains of sand beneath your feet. This is more real than any dream, more real even than the days that passed since abandoning you post and starting to put your plans to work. And you can't wake up.

You're standing in front of a worn, black curtain that's blowing gently outward, yet you feel no wind. You can hear voices-- strange and familiar voices coming from the other side, and you've grown so accustomed to silence these last few days that you can't seem to pluck any words, any meaning out of the ocean of sound. You hear your mother, though, and your master. You hear the dark, smooth voice that's unmistakably Snape's and another snapping back against it that could only be--

"Potter?" you whisper to no one but yourself, "Potter."

There's a rustling, a jumble of quickly spoken words and unseen motions, and then there's a name, "Malfoy," your name called out from behind the curtain-- the veil-- you start to think of it as that, because it's not really a curtain at all. Curtains block light, and there's no light here, just darkness pouring out from behind that thin piece of cloth, more darkness than you thought could exist in the world, the kind of darkness that swallows you whole and makes you forget about things like sunlight and clear water.

"Potter," you whisper again, taking a step forward as part of the veil is pulled aside, and you see an all too familiar figure standing there as casually as he would in any doorway. It doesn't surprise so much that you can see him when everything else is just vague forms and shadows, after all, no darkness could ever touch Potter, and you would hate him more for that if it were possible to hate him more than you already do.

"Malfoy," he says, pushing his glasses up his nose. "You're here."

You take another step forward and blink. "Potter?"

"I wouldn't come any closer if I were you," he says with a sharp smile.

"What? Why?"

Potter shrugs, but his smile remains. "Maybe," he says, "I should just let you try it and you find out."

You instinctively take a few steps back. "Where am I?"

"I'll give you a hint," he says, looking back into the darkness behind him. "You're not in the department of mysteries." He laughs to himself, but it sounds more like a cough. "Well, in a sense you are."

You don't understand what he's saying, even if you can make out his words. You think of what you've read of the secret places of the word and the things that hide in the dark and the times Flamel wrote of, the fractions of moments when all of life's questions can be answered. Then Potter turns back to you, and you give an indignant sneer. "Were you always this thick?"

He rolls his eyes and cocks his head to the side. "Were you always this dead?"

"What?!"

"Oh," he whispers, and you barley hear it over the screaming of your own thoughts. "Oh, that's great. You really haven't figured it out yet. I thought you were just being difficult. You're dead, Malfoy, or very close to it."

You try to say something-- anything. You try to shout as loud as you can manage so someone who's not dead will hear you. "No! No, Potter! I'm not-- I . . ." But doubt creeps in, as it has so many times before, and realizing you don't have vocal cords makes it nearly impossible to speak. Your mouth opens and closes, but you can't seem to make any sound, and you stomp you foot hard on the floor, but no noise comes from it. You're floundering. Maybe you're even starting to disappear, because you know that you-- the real you is still in the potions room at Hogwarts.

"I'll admit you're just about the last person I expected to see here," Potter says, raking a hand through his still messy hair. "I figured a ferret like you would be hiding in a hole in the ground until it was safe to come out. Did you judge wrong, Malfoy?"

You close your eyes, half-believing that when you open them again Potter will be gone, but you only end up smelling something waxy and unpleasant. You concentrate and start to feel hard ground against your back and distant singing in your ears. Potter's still there when you open your eyes, and you can't help but grin at him, because for however long it has yet to last, your life hasn't ended. You're not dead. And he was wrong to say you were. "I'll have you know, Potter," you say, brushing some imagined dust from your robes, "that I am in the process of summoning a philosopher's stone. When I find my way out of this . . . place, I'll have nearly done it. I'll have the elixir of life. So get a good look now, because when I'm through here, you'll never see me again."

You were hoping for Potter to be upset by this, by being proven wrong, and because your hopes are so rarely met, you were at least expecting for him to get a little annoyed, but the look he gives you is almost pitying. "I was warned about your type," he says. "Hundreds come here every year claiming the same thing that you are now. Some of them are even muggles. Do you know how many make it back?" You roll your eyes, and when Potter speaks next, his voice is harsher than it had been, harsher than you can remember it ever being. "In the last thousand years, how many made it back for good? Do you know? Do you know how many are alive now?"

"One," you say, glad that you know the answer, "only one. Nicholas Flamel. I've seen his journal. Soon it will be two."

"None, Malfoy," Potter rasps, staring right through you. "Flamel is dead, just like you are . . . or will be soon enough."

"Shove off," you say, because you don't know whether Potter's right or not, but he probably is, because he usually is. And it would be just your luck to die here with him watching and talking about how he knew from the start that you would come to a bad end.

"Why on earth did you try it?" he asks, adjusting his glasses again, as if they really matter here. "You were never even that good at difficult magic. You couldn't even get an OWL in charms."

"I'll get it," you say, not really sure who you're trying to convince. "I'll get it."

"This isn't a Quidditch game," he snorts, and you think it's just like him to bring up charms and Quidditch and everything else he always beat you at. "You'll find you can't cheat so easily here. You can't cheat at all."

"I'll get it, Potter," you say again through gritted teeth, because a part of you hasn't given up yet. And you know he's looking at you like you're the most pathetic thing he could possibly imagine, but you're willing to give everything you have to wipe that look from his face.

"How?"

"What?" You close your eyes for just a second and try to smell the potions room and feel the stones against your back, but you can't. The world is slipping away from you, and the darkness is creeping out across the floor. You feel dizzy and start to shiver upon realizing that it's not cold anymore, and the floor seems too smooth like ice or polished glass, and you nearly slip when you try to move a few more steps back from Potter and the veil.

"How will you get it?" he asks slowly. "If you've read Flamel's journal, you know what you have to find to get back."

"Find?!" you shout incredulously before remembering that there is something you have to find, something from a book that might make more sense here than it had before, if only you could remember. And you keep shouting, hoping to spark that memory or at least get Potter properly mad. "Find?! Find, Potter?! There's nothing here except the floor and empty walls and-- and you! Nothing!" You don't mention the veil or the darkness stretching infinitely behind it, and Potter notices this and raises his eyebrows.

You close your eyes so you don't have to look at him anymore, and you try to remember the real details of your life before, not just the vague disappointments, but instead you think about hats and singing and the feel of the sky on spring days when you're flying and the taste of butterbeer in winter, shared with friends you never really had. You think of swimming in a clean lake and pulling gnomes up from a garden and being completely happy. A part of your mind screams that these aren't your memories, but the rest is foggy and distant.

You remember something you once read about lines drawn between opposites-- life and death, intense heat and impenetrable cold, love and whatever love's opposite really is, probably indifference or disdain or the exact way Potter's currently looking at you. And you remember something else you read, a bundle of half-lies and complete truths woven so tightly you couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. You don't know what to believe anymore.

But even if your mind is foggy and your perception clouded, there are some things that were kept other places. When you're truly sure of something, you can feel it all the way down to your bones, and you really do hate Potter with every part of yourself, and there is something else, something you know by heart.

~*~*~