How We Shine

How We Shine

~*~*~

Part Three: Rubedo

Love is the only gold.
~Alfred Lord Tennyson

~*~*~

Harry Potter came into his sixth year of school knowing that he was the only one alive with the ability to destroy the Dark Lord and knowing that the fate of the world would soon depend on that ability. A lesser person would have been crushed beneath such pressure, but not Harry-- not the boy who lived. He was aware of the expectations placed upon him, and he remained undaunted. Hermione reassured him, sometimes, though he showed no need of reassurance. She made sure he kept doing the things of a normal student, though he was anything but normal. He still seemed to be spending a superhuman amount of effort on his studies, the ones assigned to him by professor and the ones he chose for himself that he knew would be far more useful to prepare for his particular future. He quickly mastered the difficult art of Occlumency and easily understood the most advanced theories of transfiguration. When he had a few free moments, he would spend them in the Gryffindor common room, playing games with his friends-- exploding snap or gobstones or chess, at which his skill could not be matched.

~*~*~

Ron doesn't know the charm Luna uses to make a rainbow shoot up from her wand, but that's just as well, really, because she probably came up with it on the spot. The rainbow is real, not the way he imagined it like a perfect arch plucked from some brightly colored child's painting. It's barely visible against the darkening sky, and like all real rainbows, there is gold at the end of it, not nuggets or bars of gold and certainly not any coins kept in a pot, but dust-- shining gold dust that falls from the sky as soft as snow and lays gently over dying grass. Ron can only admire it for a few seconds before the voice in his head tells him that he'd better begin making himself useful. So he starts to gather it into a bucket he finds in an old shed beside the ruins of Hagrid's hut.

He's not thinking now the way he has been all day, just moving his wand and saying the same word over and over again. "Accio. Accio. Accio." There's no time to wonder and worry over what will happen later, only to do what needs doing, and it's not that unpleasant, really. He doesn't feel like himself, not like Ron Weasley, the forgotten best friend to a dead hero, not like someone who still can't control his thoughts enough to block Dementors or fight Imperius or someone whose only bravery depends on someone else. For a few short moments, the only things that exist to him are the ground and the sky and the flurries of gold filling the air, and somewhere inside him, those moments last forever.

"Ron."

Again, Ron lets some hope creep into his thoughts. Maybe he and Luna really can do this. Maybe someday, he'll be mentioned alongside his brothers or even Harry, and maybe someday, he won't care so much about what people think and whether they believe what they read. Because some people are born to do great things, and some people aren't, but sometimes, it's the people who nobody thinks are anything special who do the most-- who do the greatest things of all. They can get away with it, because no one ever expects them. They're not trapped in the spotlight or actively avoiding it. This is strategy. This is what he's best at, or once was.

"Ronald."

There's a war still being fought by the smartest and strongest, and far away in a place that both sides have given up for lost, two people who no one bothers to think of are trying to turn the tide of it by doing what no army ever could. Ron smiles. He knows that this is the way it has to be. The opponent is busy planning for the obvious moves from the more powerful pieces, and the pawn's about to cross the board. Ron was good at chess, certainly better than Harry, no matter what Creevey said, and he still has a few moves left.

"You've got it all."

"Huh?"

Luna points to the bucket in his hand and then to the grass at his feet, which is now bare of all but the faintest sparkle. "There's not enough," she says.

"What?" Ron asks, and his voice is so rough he can barely recognize it as his own. "No. This can work. Do the spell again."

"It's too hard to hold, and it's too hard for you to keep Accioing. We'll be too tired to make the repairs." She takes the bucket and puts it on the ground then takes the galleons from his pocket and drops them in. "There's still not enough."

Ron shakes his head. "No," he says. "No, there has to be."

Luna gathers a handful of dust and watches it fall through her fingers back into the bucket, and Ron notices that there's less that falls than what she originally held. "We found what we could. We found what wasn't even there, and we probably did better than they ever expected, but there's still as much as we need."

She's right. They were supposed to find enough so that there would be at least a galleon sized piece in every room. It took a hundred years and more than a hundred people to build Hogwarts. It took even more than that to weave in all the magic needed to keep it standing, and wizards were more powerful then. They have only a few hours and the galleons they stole from Malfoy's pocket and a rusty bucket of gold dust that's already starting to fade from existence.

The original plan needed the gold to strengthen a simple repairing spell so that even said only once it would have the effect of being performed hundreds of times and with more force behind it than any one person had in them. It could have worked, Ron thinks again. It could have really worked. If there had been enough gold or enough time, they could have saved Hogwarts. But there's no way for it to work now-- unless.

"I have an idea," Ron says, without thinking, and he instantly hopes Luna hasn't heard him, but she has, and she gives him an expectant look. He hesitates to say it, but only for a moment. "Instead of putting gold in the castle, we could cast the spell directly through it like a wand . . . like a giant golden wand."

It's a terrible idea. Hermione would shout at him for even thinking of something so dangerous, and not even Harry would agree to actually do it, but Luna nods. It's not a happy nod. It's the kind that speaks of duty. "Okay," she says. "Are you sure that will work?" And Ron knows that she always tells the truth as she sees it no matter what the consequences, and he knows he was once honest like that in a stupid, careless way, and a part of him still is. He's just been trying to hide it for a long time, so long that he started to forget and began to feel like hiding was the only thing he was still good at.

"Yeah," he says. "It'll work. I'm sure."

~*~*~

On the first day of the duel, the sun rose barley seen into a blood-red sky. On the second day, it was obscured by the overcast and shrouded in white mist and gentle rain, and on the third day, the sun didn't rise at all. It was Harry Potter's eighteenth birthday, and no one will ever know whether he even realized it. Weakened but still arrogant, the Dark Lord sent wave after wave of Death Eaters to attack the boy who lived, but all were brushed easily aside, and Harry Potter wasted little energy to dispose of these unworthy foes. Alone and with no one coming to his aid, he pushed through their ranks until he stood face to face with the Dark Lord himself.

Though Harry Potter was stronger, the Dark Lord was dishonorable in his fighting and called upon the worst and darkest of magics to aid him. So there was a great battle between them, and it led over fields and through forests, into dark caves and over hills until finally, on a bare patch of earth, the Dark Lord sent the killing curse at Harry, but the magical shields he had surrounded himself were stronger than Voldemort's will, and their twin wands locked together, enveloping them both in a net of golden light. Fighting with everything he had inside him, Harry forced the magic back towards the Dark Lord, and when he was hit by such power, he instantly shriveled and died. Then Harry fell onto the dry and dusty ground, and for the first time in his life, he let himself rest, while across the country, fireworks went off in his honor, and the world celebrated his victory and an end to the war.

~*~*~

Luna follows Ron to an open courtyard at the center of the castle. He pauses for a moment to look up at the huge towers swaying slightly in the breeze and then takes a deep breath. "This is the best spot, I think."

She nods and looks down into the bucket she's carrying, which has been leaking out of a small hole in the bottom. "If you're sure."

Ron shrugs. He walks to the base of the castle, and on the bottom stone, he uses his wand to write, Dedicated for the enjoyment of future generations by Luna Lovegood and Ron Weasley. If the stones of the castle were stronger or still protected by spells, Ron wouldn't have been able to mark them with such a simple charm, but he watches as the letters sink down as if they've been chiseled there long ago.

Luna walks up beside him, and with her wand she writes, and Draco Malfoy just below their names in loopy handwriting, which too sinks down into the stone.

"What did you do that for?" Ron asks, rolling his eyes, and Luna gives him a sharper look than he expected.

"He should be remembered too."

"Remembered for what, being a git?"

"Maybe," she says and then, "Yes . . . yes, we should remember people for who they really are, not who we wanted them to be. And he helped, even if he never wanted to and even if he'll never realize it. He helped. We're using his galleons."

Ron nods and follows her back to where she left the bucket on the ground and watches as she begins to empty it onto the cobblestones. "Yeah, someday, someone will read Creevey's stupid book, and instead of just believing it, they'll want to know the real story. If we manage it, then they'll see our names here, and they'll know it was us who did this. They'll know we were here too."

She goes still, and for a second, even the falling gold dust seems to hang unmoving in the air. "If we manage it?"

"What?"

"You said if we manage it." She looks nervous, and it's not right to see her look nervous. "What if we don't manage it?"

Ron shrugs, because he can't go on lying now, and he's knows she can tell by his face he was never really sure. So he gives her the truth as far as he can guess it. "Then I doubt they'll be anything left to see."

"Do you know how my mother died?" she asks, and something in her voice tells Ron that he shouldn't interrupt, not even to tell her that the gold on the ground is starting to disappear faster. "She died trying to invent a spell, but something went wrong. It backfired."

"Oh," Ron says tonelessly. "We don't have to do this now. We still might not have enough. Maybe it can wait."

Luna shakes her head. "No. It's night. It has to be now."

"It'll take a while for the spell to reach the castle after we do it. Maybe we'll have time to get out, or maybe if we stand back far enough--"

"No." She closes her eyes and splits her wand over her knee. Ron watches silently as a few blue-white sparks rise up into the air and keep floating until they disappear far above the tallest towers. From the cracked wood she gently pulls a unicorn tail hair so thin it looks like the strand of a spider web.

By the time Ron on snaps his wand in two, the full moon is hanging high above the castle and his hands are shaking so badly that it takes a few tries before he can properly pull the shimmering hair out and set it down beside Luna's on the pile of gold dust and Malfoy's galleons.

He takes a deep, shaky breath and wonders whether he's being brave or just stupid and if the only way to tell the difference between the two is to wait and see if everything works out well in the end.

Gently, Luna grabs his hand and pulls it down beside her own into the gold, and for a few seconds he feels the magic spreading through his entire body, stronger than he's ever felt it before. Their eyes meet briefly, and then they each look up towards the castle and say the words.

~*~*~

You know that you're stretched out on the floor of the potions laboratory, even if you don't remember falling asleep, just that you had the kind of strange dream that starts out as a nightmare, until you realize that it's your nightmare, and you realize it doesn't have to be, so it isn't any longer. You change things around until they're just as you like them. That's how the best dreams always are. In order to turn out right in the end they have to start out dark and horrible. You fight against the part of yourself that's still half-sleeping to try and pull back some details, a few images or words strung together. There's a dull ache in your back and a sharp pain in your stomach, as if someone kicked you there, and there's a voice in your head that sounds familiar but feels distant.

"Malfoy, Draco was it? Ah yes, I remember you. Not very good tempered but loyal-- yes blindly loyal and quite able to work hard-- able to work obsessively when you got it in your head to do so." You feel a strange weight over face that you didn't notice at first, because everything felt so strange, but it's quickly becoming suffocating, and the voice in your head continues. "You wanted so badly to be a Slytherin, but I always thought you would have done well in--"

Your arms feel heavy, and your fingers twist themselves uselessly together as you try to lift a rather dingy piece of cloth up from over your eyes and slap it with your hand to stop the voice. Seconds later, a sword falls to the ground beside you followed by a stone falling on top of your head-- the philosopher's stone.

You don't understand how it got there. You're not done making it. There were other stages. There were supposed to be stories and more incantations. You had the book-- the book about Potter, but you're not sure where it is now, and the cloth that was over your head is actually the sorting hat, and the sword lying on the ground has the name Godric Gryffindor emblazoned over the blade.

The philosopher's stone is sitting in your lap, and you're afraid to touch it or even look at it too closely. And you don't know what scares you more, that it might turn out to be a fake, that your efforts were all wasted and you truly did fail, or that it might not be fake at all, that you might have really pulled it from nothing, and you wonder if a person can ever be the same after doing something like that. You reach down with one tentative finger and there's a rush of energy all through your body as you brush its surface. It's warm and glowing softly and pulsating in a steady, definite rhythm, like a heart beating in your hands. You take a deep breath, and to your surprise, you don't choke or cough from the thick smoke hanging in the air.

Things like this are supposed to happen to Potter, not you. You knew the difficulty of what you were attempting, and for all your arrogance, you never really expected to get it, not like this. Things don't come to you easily, not things that can't be bought or blackmailed or stolen, not things that matter. But maybe things didn't come all that easily to Potter while he was alive. He certainly wasn't that bright. He only got the grades he did because professors felt sorry for him having to be the boy who lived and all that rot. And you may never have beaten him to the snitch, but he lost third year to Diggory. And he was a disaster at chess. You blink, and you wonder how you could know that but decide that by the look of him, it's easy enough to tell he was never one for strategy-- the same with Occlumency, really-- he certainly never learned that. You blink again and look down at the stone, still very real in your hands. Perhaps doing ridiculously stupid, dangerous things pays off, even for people who aren't Potter, even for bumbling fools not worth a proper mention in stupid books.

The problem with not really expecting to succeed from the beginning is that now you find yourself holding what may be the most powerful magical artifact ever created and having no idea what to do with it. Its throbbing is getting quicker, and it's reaching out to you, to whatever part of you wanted to live forever. 'Make the elixir. Make the elixir. The rest is so simple.' And it scares you. You don't want your life prolonged only to have it ruled by something other than yourself, and you don't need to make gold, really, though your pocket does seem mysteriously empty.

You've been advised to be careful what you wish for often enough. It's what Snape said the night you told him you wanted to receive the mark and follow the Dark Lord's cause wherever it would take you. And now, you're here, back in the potions dungeon of a Hogwarts very different from the one you knew as a student. And you think that being disappointed with the things you once longed for is far worse than receiving nothing at all.

The energy is still pouring off the philosopher's stone in waves, and you can see it shimmering around the edge of your vision. The stone walls twist and change shape, and strange shadows gather around you, nonsense-beasts with crumpled horns or spiraling long necks, lumbering across the floor and flying through the air on invisible wings. This isn't real, you try to tell yourself, but a stronger voice cuts through your thoughts. 'The rest is so simple. You'll die if you don't. You'll die if you don't.'

You take a deep breath, wishing for the world and your head to slow their spinning. Flamel never wrote about this. He said the stone had power, certainly, and Potter said something about having to not want it for yourself. You blink. And you and try to shake away all thoughts of Potter-- Potter, who is dead-- Potter, who probably wasn't the least bit afraid to die.

You're not afraid now, not like you were when you started, and you wonder what changed. Nothing in you is burning or freezing, and despite a stomach ache, which is likely caused by hunger, your insides aren't in knots. You're not feeling particularly violent or jumpy either. And if Potter were here, you would much rather listen to him list his past embarrassments and failures again than try to kill him, which wouldn't really do anything at all. You blink. It was a dream, you think. And you finally start to pull back some memories from it, but the memories seem far too real.

You don't hate him. And once you thought that if you gave that hate up it would leave you with nothing left inside, but there's still something there, something strange that you're not ready to think about. The stone is still calling to you, but a voice of your own is rising above it. You have to see Potter again. You have to make him absolutely miserable. He said you wouldn't get the stone, but you did. You proved him wrong. And he said he wouldn't see you after you had it, and you have to. You have to prove him wrong . . . again . . . even if one day you have to die to do it.

The stone is glowing in your hand like a miniature sun and bouncing up and down, as if trying to take flight. You could make the elixir now. You could take it just once for the promise of a long life, but then the fear will come back, and you'll make it again, trading away your sanity for just a few more years spent alone with your horded gold, finally living up to your name. If you use it, you won't be able to stop. It will destroy you-- whoever you really are and however pathetic some people might think you-- you don't want to lose yourself that way.

You look back to the stone, now floating a few centimeters above tour hand-- powerful and beautiful and proof of an impossible achievement, of you doing something that even Potter could not do. You look at it, and you don't want it. You close your eyes and imagine the veil blowing outwards and the darkness spreading across the floor to meet you with soft, steady whispers and the promise of everything that comes after.

You stand up, still holding the stone, which seems unnaturally heavy for something of its size. You think, for a second, that maybe you could do something with it, something for the good of the world, but you've never cared too much about that. Destroying it will break whatever hold it has over you, and for all the diseases that could be cured and gold that could be conjured for the poorest of people, there are still some things you want only for yourself.

It would be dark if not for the light of the stone, but no darker than whatever lies beyond the veil. And the air not reached the stone's warmth is cold. You suppress a slight shiver and then realize that there isn't anyone staring at you anymore, so you let your shoulders shake and your teeth chatter. The sorting hat is fraying and dusty from lying on the floor, but so are you. And you only feel slightly foolish putting it on your head, content at least that no one will ever see you like this.

You take the sword with you too, because you think you'll need it for what you must do, and because you'll be able to sell it when you're done and get at least a fraction of the gold you could have had otherwise. You know that even a fake Potter artifact will fetch a decent price in the least reputable stores of Knockturn alley.

You make your way up the stairs and outside onto a cobbled path of one of the small central courtyards. It's night, and that doesn't mean much to you in terms of counting the hours, because you're not even sure of the date. But there is something comforting about the darkened sky, something restful and calming, like the gentle rain that keeps falling after a storm or returning home after being too long away.

You know you can't let yourself rest yet, but you tell yourself that you will soon. And you throw the philosopher's stone down, hoping it will break, but it doesn't. So you use the sword to cut it. You try slices first, steady and even, but that doesn't work, nor does using it as a saw, which only leaves a slight dent and a few scratches. "Godric would have split it down the middle-- easy," says the hat, and you start at first and then shrug.

"From what I hear, he was better practiced with people."

"I didn't say I wanted him here now, did I?"

'It was implied,' you think back at it, clenching your teeth, and you try to stab the stone through its center, but only end up taking a few chips of the sides.

"Come on, boy. Put your back into it."

"Shut up!"

"I was told earlier that if I gave advice to you children, you would listen. Now, concentrate, and try to follow through with your swing."

The stone is still calling, still trying to reach you, but its voice is weakened or at least drowned out by your own thoughts and the hat's not-so-helpful encouragement.

"Malfoy, it is vitally important that you break that stone, NOW!"

Your ears are still ringing as you lift the sword over your head, and your whole body shakes as it smashes through the stone, shattering it into hundreds of pieces. You're sent of balance by the force of the blow echoing in your shoulders and in your chest. And you topple over onto the grass, which proves quite fortunate, because right then, a giant, shining stream of white-gold sparks rips through the air just where you had been standing.

The power of it makes you feel weak and lightheaded, and you wonder if the battle has finally reached here too and what kind of army it would take to throw such a spell. You wonder if that means the end. "Get a hold of yourself," the hat whispers to you, smugly amused, and you don't even bother to try. Your thoughts come fast, but time itself seems to slow. You watch the light as it floats down toward the fragments of the stone and shoots off again as it is reflected in a thousand directions. And you lie there, breathing hard in the center of this web of bright light and strong magic, using one hand to clutch the sword to your chest and the other to search your robe pockets for your wand.

Slowly, the light changes color from gold to red, and you notice that the stone has disappeared. The castle is shuddering and starting to take on a soft glow, and you pull yourself up and run along the path until you come upon small pile of shining dust and a few galleons that look remarkably familiar.

"Don't touch it!" you hear someone shout, just as you reach down to pick up your coins, and you notice that they're fizzling with a strange sort of energy and look like they have been half melted.

"It's still too hot," you hear another, softer voice say, and you turn to see the weasel and Loony Lovegood peeking out behind a corner of wall.

"Weasel," you say with a sneer, "resorted to picking pockets, have you? I should have known it was you who stole my money. Even out of your poor excuse for a family, you're the only one pathetic enough to--"

"M-Malfoy!" Weasley shouts. "Malfoy, you're alive!"

You raise your eyebrows at him. "I say, Weasley, you really do get stupider by the second."

"You're alive . . ." Weasley says again with a smile. "Bloody hell!"

He looks far happier than he should, and he hasn't yet realized that you've just insulted him or his family. This is not the reaction you expected, but you try not to stumble, and you sneer again and roll your eyes for good measure. "Of course I'm alive."

"And we're alive too," Lovegood says in her half-there half-not voice.

"Wow!" Weasley shouts, rubbing his hand over the castle. "It worked! I mean, I knew it would work . . ."

There's a strange glint in his eyes, and you tighten your grip around the hilt of the sword and pull it back up to your chest. "What worked?"

"It did!" he shouts, moving his hand quickly from one stone to another. "We did it! I can't believe we actually did it! You did it too, Malfoy. You made the light go all wonky. I thought we were going to blow a hole in something and get ourselves killed! It was too strong, but whatever you put on the path deflected it or reflected it or something like that!" He pauses for a moment to take a deep breath and leans his back against the castle before shouting again. "We did it!"

"Did what?" you ask, but nobody answers. Weasley looks like he's about to start jumping up and down, and Lovegood smiles and presses her ear to the castle wall, as if listening for a heartbeat. Then she starts to laugh.

"It'll fade, right?" Weasley asks her, suddenly sounding tentative and resigned. "It won't be like this forever?"

"No, not fade," she says with a very odd smile. "It'll go deeper. It won't leave, not ever again."

"What on earth are you two on about?" you ask in a louder voice, and Weasley turns to you looking a bit more like the bad tempered idiot Gryffindor you remember.

"Touch it, Malfoy!" he growls.

And you shrug, and reach your hand out for the castle. When your fingers meet the stone, you feel a shock of magic running through your body that makes the power that came off the philosopher's stone feel like nothing at all. "Wow," you breathe, and in your head, the sorting hat starts murmuring about how it feels like home, but it doesn't feel like anything you've imagined before.

The philosopher's stone wanted to take something from you. It only offered its use in exchange for a part of yourself you weren't willing to give up. But this-- the magic you feel now-- you wouldn't be able to resist sacrificing anything to it, even if you are stronger now than before. "No," the hat whispers, "Too much has already been lost." And you feel that too. You feel the way it gives, wanting nothing in return. You feel the memories of a castle, shifting stairways and towers rising up to meet the clouds and the footsteps of the generations that came and left and should never have been forgotten.

You let the sword fall to the ground so you can put both hands flat on the surface the wall. If you had the philosopher's stone, you would be able to keep going forever, but not really live, not gain anything, certainly nothing like this. You could have been alive for a thousand years, or longer than that, or longer than anyone has ever lived before without learning a single thing from it. "I can tell you," the hat says softly, echoing what you already feel in your hands. "If you listen, I can tell you."

You tear yourself away, just for a second, and even in the dark, you can see Weasley smirking at you. "So?" he asks.

You take a deep breath. "That's new."

"Yes," Lovegood says. "It's only a few seconds new, actually or a few seconds old. I'm not sure which is right. You're wearing the sorting hat, you know."

"Yeah, it looks good," Weasley adds with a sharper smirk. "It really hides your pointy head." You blink and let your fingers find the wall again. He's making fun of you, but he's making fun of you the same way he probably made fun of Potter's terrible hair or Granger's unfortunate teeth, and Lovegood's looking at you as if you're the one who's crazy, but you don't care.

You turn back to the castle, and every place you touch seems to offer new secrets. You look closely and see that there are tiny cracks in all of the stones that have been filled in with gold, and you remember what Weasley said just moments ago. You did this, all of you. Somehow, through their spell and the stone you kept Hogwarts from falling. The hat tells you to look down and shifts itself forward so that you can't help nod towards the ground, and you see that Weasley and Lovegood have carved their names into one of the large stones at the castle's base. You kneel to get closer and see the way each letter is shining and golden, and your eyes go wide when you see your name there too. "What?" you ask, looking up at them and then pointing back at the wall. "What is this?"

Weasley mumbles something inaudible and turns very red, and Lovegood smiles, as if she has some wonderful secret. "Come on," she says, grabbing you by the arm. "Lets see the rest of it."

You could find the wand somewhere in your pockets or pick up the sword at your feet and be done with both of them as soon as you'd like. You could start a fight and shove her away or insult Weasley again. You could just tell her no and stay there staring at your name in the stone, seemingly untouched by the darkness of night. But instead, you let them both pull you to your feet, and you follow behind them along the faint trail of golden dust.

~*~*~

There are whispers rising up from the battlefields that something big has happened, though no one can be sure exactly what. For a few seconds, everyone's eyes turn to the north, and those gifted with the strongest sight claim that there are strange lights rising up into the sky. A few drop their packs and scurry up trees to see farther. Some declare that the light comes only from lingering dust burning orange with the sunset. Some tell of faint fireworks shooting up amongst the stars. Others say that there is nothing at all to see.

It takes a few minutes, this time, for everyone to fall back into their places-- to give members of the opposition back the wands that may one day be used to curse them. And despite the dark and the exhaustion that now comes so quickly after day has begun, the fighting continues. Because things change, but never easily.

Sometimes, when someone recognizes an enemy in a curse-hole or in the courtyard of a castle, they will kill them, and sometimes they will be killed. It's difficult for anything else to happen. Nobody wants to be the first to lay down their wand. It's a gamble, they know, and a chance, and they have only their lives left to bet with. But it's easier to trust an old friend or dorm-mate or Quidditch rival, even if they wear a different mark on their arm. It's easier to believe in someone who once shared a school and a home-- still hard, but easier-- possible. The war will end, one day. One day, enough people will take that chance.

Far away, Hogwarts stands over the rocks as straight and as strong as it had when it was first built, and it shines softly in the moonlight in a way that it never has before. There were deaths then, a thousand years ago, just before the shielding spells were woven through the stones. There were deaths so no one without magic could tell of what they'd seen-- twisting towers and moving staircases. But now, that sword has been left behind, and three people step out of the front archway onto the cool grass beneath the stars and the shadow of the castle.

Luna looks into the forest and waves companionably to a few black horses with wings like pressed leather.

Ron stares out onto the lake and notices that the water seems to have risen and is clearly reflecting the night sky.

And Draco lights his wand and watches the sparks of gold still swirling through the air. Then he turns back to the school. It will open again, and it will teach magic-- spells and charms and potions and things far more important. On his head, the sorting hat begins to sing a new song that only he can hear, and he smiles.

The End