Draco Verdant

Chapter 3- The Sword of the Screamer

"Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey

And kill the bees that yield it with your stings!"

-Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona

It had worked. After three weeks of trying to find Aunt Petunia and explain to her, the spell had worked and Harry had only one second to see the look on her face before the house-elves had forcibly assisted him into the carriage. He felt odd about it now. Maybe he shouldn't have taken the spell off. No, he had to, or it would have led to insanity, but what about her having to face the reality of living in a wizarding house? What if that drove her insane? What would Lucius Malfoy do to her if he found out? He hoped she would have the sense to keep quiet.

They were at Platform 9 ¾ , and Harry was looking around for Ron and Hermione, but Draco tugged on his arm.

"Come up to the front of the train," he instructed him. "What are you looking for, anyway?"

"My friends," replied Harry. "Why should I come to the front of the train with you?"

"Because it is properly conductive to Malfoy pride to sit at the front of any moving vehicle, to demonstrate the dignity of the family name," Draco recited. Harry wondered what he was quoting.

"I'm not a Malfoy," Harry said. "I'm going to find Ron and Hermione and sit with them."

"I didn't say you were a Malfoy, Potter," drawled Draco insipidly."But I, as a Malfoy, must show brotherly conduct to you, who are now my relative, and I, as a Malfoy, must sit at the front of the train."

"Well, I, as a Potter, excuse you from showing brotherly conduct to me."

"Denied."

"All right," said Harry, "I'm sitting with Ron and Hermione at the back of the train anyway and you can choose between showing brotherly conduct and sitting at the front of the train."

"Fine," said Draco. "I'm sitting with you."

"Fine," said Harry, and then stopped. "No, wait a minute, it's not fine! Don't sit with me! Why do you want to, anyway? Go sit at the front of the train like you wanted to!"

"No," said Draco. "I refuse." Harry gave up and looked for Ron and Hermione again. They entered just then, all the Weasleys a wave of sunlight off fiery hair, with one brown head in the middle, and Harry rushed over to them, relieved. They looked relieved to see him, too, and Hermione hugged him fiercely. He hugged her back, and buried his face deep into her hair. She smelled like pumpkin pie. Looking up, he reached out for Ron and folded him into the hug as well. Ron didn't look very enthusiastic, but he embraced them just as tightly. Wordlessly they smiled at the other Weasleys and walked off toward the train, taking Ginny along as well. Draco followed. Harry knew he was there, but the others were so caught up in their greetings that they didn't notice him until they came to their compartment.

"What the hell are you doing here, Malfoy?" spat Ron. "Haven't you had enough of picking on Harry this summer?"

"Family," retorted Draco, "ought to stick together." Neither he nor Harry looked happy at being called "family".

"Some excuse," Ron replied. "Get the fuck out of here unless you've got something better to say."

"Actually," said Draco, thinking quickly, and replying with the first idea that came into his mind, "I thought the four of us might have a study group." Looking at their faces, he added, "We could trade notes, revise together, you know what a study group is. It would make sense. I am one of the best students in our year. Second after the Mud- after Granger."

"Yeah, right, go to-" began Ron, but Hermione stopped him.

"I think that's a very good idea," she said, although applying the word "good" to anything Malfoy still seemed disgusting. Ron stared at her. "Oh, don't worry, I haven't gone mad, I just want his Potions notes," she added. Ron remained convinced that she was mad anyway.

"Exactly," said Draco. "We all have strengths. I'm good at Potions, Potter's good at Charms, Granger's good at Transfiguration, well, everything really, and Weasley," -he paused- "er, Weasley, um, I'm sure he has some purpose. It's a bloody good idea," he concluded vehemently, before Ron could say anything.

"I hate it when people pretend I'm not here," Ginny suddenly proclaimed from the corner. "Just because I'm not in the same year as you."

"You're very noticeable. Back to the point," started Draco. But she was, actually. She was very pretty, he noticed uneasily. "The point, which was, um, that it's a bloody good idea."

"What are you trying to do?" asked Ron. He still seemed to be looking for a fight with Draco, as if he were set on "Automatic Malfoy Response." Once again, Hermione stopped him.

"All right," she said, ignoring her suspicions of Draco. "We'll meet in the library once a week." She looked around at everybody with an expression that meant, no arguing. Harry glanced pointedly at Ron. He nodded reluctantly. The three of them sat down. So did Draco.

"Malfoy," asked Hermione, "what are you still doing here?"

"Sitting with you," he answered.

"Why?" Hermione asked patiently.

"Because," he replied. Seeing that this would not pass as an answer, he added, "I don't want to sit with Vince and Greg. They're stupid."

"Fine," said Hermione, after giving him one last suspicious, questioning look. "Just as long as you don't insult anyone." Ron looked ready to explode.

***

The five of them each won a round of Exploding Snap (Draco was probably cheating, but no one could prove it) before someone else entered the car. Two someone elses, actually: Fred and George. Both of the usually vibrant twins looked rather peaked. Their idea of danger had previously been equated with Filch, but Molly seemed to have drummed it into their heads that this was no joke. Ron could not remember a time before when the pair had gone for more than five minutes without a single pun, quip, or prank. It worried him.

"Hello," said Harry. "Where's Lee?" A tense moment passed before Hermione explained what had happened, but she did not explain that she thought the potion was directed at Ron. Harry would know that, she was sure, and no one else needed to. This was the first of a series of tense moments that would be passing all over the place this year.

"About that," said Fred. "Hermione, I know you wanted information, and I've remembered something."

"Oh, good, hang on a minute," she said, pulling a yellow spiral notebook from her bag. It was the same little bag in which she carried her gauze, emergency magical supplies, several quills, a few Galleons, and, for some unfathomable reason, a lock of Harry's hair.

"You're taking notes?" Ron asked incredulously. She ignored him.

"The hag who dropped the vial," began Fred slowly, "didn't come from inside Knockturn Alley. She was entering Knockturn Alley, and it looked like she was coming from Madam Malkin's. So... you should have seen her. That's where you were, right?" Hermione bit her lip. "Did you?" Fred asked.

"Nooo..." she replied slowly. "I saw a dwarf woman, I think, but I would have remembered if I'd seen a hag."

"Well, you wouldn't have been looking outside the whole time," Ron said reasonably.

"Most of it," she muttered absentmindedly. "The girl who was there before me turned left when she was done, but she probably wasn't going to Knockturn Alley, and she definitely wasn't a hag."

"No one, then," said George.

"No," she said, chewing on her hair. After the twins had left, she added to the others, "which makes it so much stranger, and clearer at the same time. If she came from Diagon Alley, it couldn't have been an accident. She must have had it in advance. But how could there be a hag in Diagon Alley without anyone noticing? Unless she had a glamour on- but it's incredibly hard to make those person-specific. And if you were going to put a glamour on to do something terrible, you'd want it to be as unrecognizable as possible. It doesn't work, it just doesn't. And why Lee Jordan and not the twins?"

Draco did not say anything. But he suspected something. And when he got to Hogwarts, there was someone he would be talking to.

***

The train ride was lazy and uneventful from then on. Pigwidgeon pounced on a Chocolate Frog and wrestled it to the ground, to Ron's disgust. "Why can't you behave?" he hissed to the round fluffball, but when Hermione told him he sounded like his mother, he shut up. Draco performed tricks with the Exploding Snap set, until it blew up while balanced on his nose. Hermione babbled about the new Symbolism class until she noticed Ron banging his head on the window repeatedly. Harry told a joke that made Ron shoot pumpkin juice out his nose. Ginny fell asleep and accidentally kicked Draco, making him howl. A few students stopped in and were surprised by Draco's presence, including Neville, who turned white with shock. Crabbe and Goyle did not walk in on them, and Harry suspected that Draco had told them to stay right where they were and not come looking for him.

In short, nothing out of the ordinary happened until towards the end of the ride. Eventually they all settled down and waited for the journey to end. Harry happened to be looking out the window when he noticed the train change tracks. He frowned, thinking about this. He did not remember there being any tracks to change onto. After a minute to orient himself, he realised that they were turning away from Hogwarts, toward the area east of the school.

"Hermione," he said under his breath, "do you notice anything about where we are?" She looked at him strangely.

"No..." she began, and then suddenly realised. "Oh no. We can't be." She pulled out her wand and held it flat on her palm, saying, "Point me." The others were staring at them now; Hermione had not been whispering. "We are," she said, as the wand came to a halt. She looked up, worry filling her face. "We're headed away from Hogwarts. We're going too far east."

"What's to the east of Hogwarts? Just another moor, isn't it?" asked Ron, sitting up straight. He yawned, evidently less concerned than Harry or Hermione were. Hermione shook her head, looking puzzled, but Draco replied.

"Hogwarts is not quite in the real world, even by my standards of reality," he said. "Muggles can get near Hogwarts, but they usually don't. The path seems spooky to anyone non-magical. They don't like it. And if you get in the vicinity of Hogwarts, and head on the path east, you get to be less and less in the real world, physically and magically. It gets stranger, weirder, less real and more dangerous, as you go along. No one's been further than a few miles in and lived to tell about it, and not in the past thousand years at all, so no one knows what happens. Supposedly it's the land of Muggle legends. Olympus, Avalon, all that stuff, except it's definitely not good anymore. It belongs to the Unseelie Court, not the Seelie Court. Demons instead of elves, to oversimplify. If you kept on going into it long enough, you'd probably fall off the edge of the world into the jaws of the Sea Serpent, since it's not necessarily round like the Muggle world. It could even be round some of the time and flat some of the time, for all we know. Naturally, the entrance is heavily warded and we shouldn't be able to get in at all."

"Pleasant," said Harry with a grimace. "Who drives the Hogwarts Train? Who would take us into this thing?" This time Hermione answered.

"Nobody," she said. She sounded as if all knowledge had failed her and she could do nothing. "The train is called in by the Master- or Mistress- of Hogwarts. Dumbledore would call it at the appointed time, sitting at the top of the Great Tower of Hogwarts. His office is at the base of the tower, and that is the only place it is ever called from. Nobody should be able to make it go off course, unless they have a greater claim to Hogwarts than he does. Which is nobody."

"Except," said Draco, "that obviously it's somebody." Suddenly a surge of people pushed into their car, looking shocked and pale.

"The car at the other end of the train," explained George, who had been one of the first to rush inside, breathing hard, "has disintegrated. The process seems to be continuing down the train, car by car. Prepare for an overflow of students into this car. This is not a test. Thank you for listening to this announcement. Nobody's hurt, though," he added more seriously. It seemed his sense of humour was not permanently damaged, which Ron found relieving, although under the circumstances being relieved was a difficult thing to do.

"Good thing you didn't sit in the front, isn't it?" Harry told Draco as still more people crammed into the car. He could now hear what must be the cars in front of them breaking into pieces, a strange, crackling sound. Looking out the window, he saw them break off and shatter, and the remaining cars wobbled more and more on the track, jerking around.

"Shut up," said Draco to Harry, absentmindedly. He was peering at the end of the car, trying to see if that was who he thought it was. Everyone was panicked, and there was barely room to breathe in the jam-packed box, now that all the students had fit in. The very last had been Crabbe and Goyle, who had followed Draco's directions not to move so strongly that they had barely escaped. Harry found himself mashed against the window of the train with Hermione in his lap. However, he was more worried about suffocating than her presence. Ginny had woken up a few minutes ago and was now sitting on the table to make room for Neville in their seat. Everyone wibbled nervously. Harry wondered how all the Hogwarts students could fit in one car. He suspected it had grown in size, though it wasn't enough to be at all comfortable.

"Silence!" boomed a commanding voice from the centre of the car. The lights flickered. For a moment, utter darkness surrounded them, but then the lamps snapped on again full blaze. Standing tall in the middle of the car was a professor Harry had seen but did not know. Her robes were covered in strange patterns of shifting colors, and she wore a cloak with a wildcat embroidered on the back in gold and copper thread, with wild blue eyes. She seemed to be made of elements rather than flesh and bone. She raised her hand and the car stopped with a shudder and a groan. She drew a mark in the air with her wand: three loops crossed with a line. It glowed golden and shimmered, hanging in the air.

"Cynthia," she said, "I can keep the car from moving or dissolving with this mark while you find something to do and get us out of this mess."

"Right," said another professor, standing. Harry had never seen her before. She had wild, copious, frizzy blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a no-nonsense sort of stance. She was wearing Nikes, which were almost hidden beneath her long black robes. "Thank you, Catarina. If the Dark forces attack this car, I can keep them at bay, but at the moment there is no way to do anything. No Apparition will work here, or into Hogwarts, and only if Dumbledore can call this car back from what has drawn it here will it move. I advise all of you to be resigned to your fate."

"Cynthia, this is not an epic poem, nor is it one of your dreams in which the car will suddenly be overflowed with spaghetti," said the witch called Catarina. Catarina Alpha, Harry suddenly remembered, was the Symbolism teacher. "Find something to do and do it, or may jackals dance on your grandmother's grave!"

"Sheesh," said Cynthia, which Harry thought oddly childish for a professor who looked to be about thirty. "Fine. I'll go stand in front of the car and be a lightning rod for the Forces of Darkness. All my fault, I know, I took the job, but it was supposed to be easy. Teaching kids counter-curses, whoopee, how fun, nobody said anything about actual work. I love it when darkness envelopes the earth. Good-bye, kids, sorry I won't get to be your teacher this year, but I'm going to go die now."

"Cynthia!" shouted Professor Alpha. "I meant, think of some way to move this car!"

"OK," began Cynthia, "I could summon a roc to fly us to Hog-" Professor Alpha interrupted her.

"You can think of it silently," she told her. Cynthia grimaced. Harry was no longer listening; he was staring out the window again, into the night. Evening had just fallen, and the land they were in was one of willows and beeches, the moon just resting above their tops. It would have been beautiful if it were not for the sense of evil and of absolute dark that hung over the whole scene. Even the stars looked subdued and duller, somehow. Hermione slipped off Harry's lap to go offer suggestions to the professors. On the opposite seat, Draco also stood up, after ascertaining that Harry wasn't looking. He segued over into the corner of the car, where he found the person he had been observing for the past minute or so. She was a small girl with ebony hair cropped short around her head, leaning majestically in the corner. She exuded an air of sarcasm, though the friendliest of smiles was on her face. An inherent sense of importance resided in her stance and in her eyes, which were as dark as jet.

"Aimee," Draco hissed, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Moi?" the girl asked, trying to look innocent, something she failed at miserably. "But I have done nothing, Draco! Always you are suspicious of me." She smiled flirtatiously.

"That's not going to work on me. How did you do this?"

"I did not do this! I am confused like everybody else," she exclaimed in her light French accent. Recalcitrantly she added, "I have done something, and I have more plans, but this I am very unhappy about like the rest of you. I am not stupid."

"Good," said Draco. He lowered his voice even more. "Was the work in Diagon Alley yours?"

"Yes," she said proudly.

"Never mind. You are stupid. Nice glamour, but getting the wrong person is not exactly helpful, don't you think?"

"I begin to wonder if you have any loyalty, Draco," she pouted.

"Don't insult me!" he spat. "I am a Malfoy and I will uphold the Malfoy name. I will do my part. You make sure that you do yours properly. Now, if I remember correctly, you could get us out of this situation immediately."

"What- you mean the ring of my grandmother?" asked Aimee. "For so many people- and the car as well? I do not think it will work."

"All I want," he said through clenched teeth, "is for you to try."

"All right, all right!" exclaimed Aimee. "I will blame you if it does not work."

***

Dumbledore stood at the top of the Great Tower of Hogwarts. The tower presided tall over the others, at the centre of the castle. And yet few knew of its existence, for only the Headmaster ever ascended its winding stair, for privacy and for the danger of the rusted iron steps. Each brick in the tower had a name engraved upon it in the runes of eld, and he whose ear was attuned to the songs of stones might hear their harmony, balanced one upon the other. At the top of the tower was a small room of crystal, and this alone was free of the electric rosy ivy that surged up the wall and housed the birds and lizards that could withstand the power of the stone. Below it could be seen first the vast expanse of rooftops studded with towers, then beyond that the winding grounds. To Dumbledore, this crystal room was deafening, though others would find it perfectly silent. He could hear each and every atom of the marble bricks proclaim its place in the universe, both physically and magically.

From this room he focused his thought beyond the walls of Hogwarts, and searched in his mind's eye for the train once again, the train that had begun to elude him twenty minutes ago. He could not spy it anywhere, and this was why he knew exactly where it was: moving quickly beyond the worlds. That path had been barred by the Founders of Hogwarts one thousand years ago, when power still was settling down to its chosen people, and no longer jumping through the veins of the Earth.

He could hear the Founders in his head now, as he could hear all the past men, women, and things that had held Hogwarts. "The Power beyond the Worlds bequeathed magic to us, and our descendants, no more!" cried Salazar vehemently"It said nothing of those who would seek our halls without ancestry of Its gift." He would have gone on, but Rowena interrupted him.

"It would not have given them the Gift, had they not been worthy!" she cried, her eyes flashing. Her voice was mellifluous, yet tinged with a sorrowful anger that made it strident.

"Peace!" shouted Godric. "Quarrel not. We need all who will come to the Sealing of the Gates."

The Sealing of the Gates. The Founders had worked their whole lives to seal them, and when they closed at last, Salazar Slytherin was on the other side. The rest had passed away, living their long lives out at Hogwarts, training the students and eventually their successor, until one day they had died as all normal people do, but Dumbledore knew not whether in that land beyond the worlds where Salazar had gone there were either time or death. The door opened behind him. He jumped. Turning, he saw Professor McGonagall, flustered and confused. He recalled with relief that he had given her the password to the tower, to be used in only strictest emergency. This certainly would qualify.

"Albus," she said. "The train is late. What's happening? Where are the students?" For a minute, he did not answer. He leaned on the windowsill.

"Beyond the worlds," he said.

***

"Professor?" a voice asked Cynthia from behind Hermione. Hermione stepped out of the way, turning sideways, and saw a girl she thought she recognised, though she didn't know from where. Then it came to her: the girl had been in Madame Malkin's the day that Fred, George, and Lee had wandered into Knockturn Alley. She wondered how she could not know the girl from Hogwarts, when she obviously went there.

"I am Aimee. I think I can get us out of here," said the girl, and then Hermione realised. This was the foreign-exchange student for the year, replacing Lavender Brown.

"What's your idea?" Cynthia asked. "I'll take anything that doesn't involve giant monsters picking us up and carrying us there, which is all I can think of. That and walking, which is a very bad idea."

"This ring was given to me by my grandmother. It is a ring of transportation," she said, pulling it off of her finger. The ring was small and simple, made of ivory. "You turn it and it takes you where you wish to go."

"You realise we can't use this to get onto the actual grounds?" asked Cynthia. "Unless we want to be cut up into very, very small pieces. We could get very close, I suppose. But how is it going to move the whole car? I assume you mean that you have it on your finger when you turn it."

"Yes," said Aimee. "It moves me and whatever I can carry. I am not sure being on my finger is a requirement, but still I have no idea how it can move this whole car."

"I think-" began Hermione, but at that moment the car shook, hurling her to the ground. Cynthia grabbed onto a seat to keep herself from falling, and pulled a sword from her belt. Hermione gasped. She had not noticed the weapon hanging at the teacher's side. It was not a northern sword, but a scimitar of Damuscan steel, gracefully curved and so sharp it seemed to cut the air around it. On it were written strange words: Sa macha shain. It was no language Hermione had ever seen, but in her mind it translated itself: I am the sword of the screamer. She had no time to think about it before Cynthia wrested open the door and jumped out onto the tracks.

Cynthia, jumping into the darkness, suddenly realised the coldness of the air around her. She tried to breathe and felt ice. With her left hand she pulled out her wand and cast a spell for heat and light, to warm the air enough so she could inhale. Barely any of her concentration remained focused on the spell. Most of it went to searching the darkness just outside of the reach of her glowing wand. She could see nothing except the barest outlines of trees.

She slid one foot away from the car, then another. I am about to do something incredibly stupid, she thought. Glancing around, she cried out, "Stand forth and do battle, one who haunts the night!" She had never said anything like that before. It came directly from The Auror's Handbook of Catchy Phrases. Normally she just found evil stuff, whatever she meant by that, and blew it up, which was fun, but now she felt as if she were in an epic movie and had better use some more epic speech.

She peered ahead, waiting for the attack. Naturally, it came from behind. I should have finished reading Jurassic Park, she thought, rolling to the ground and then jumping instantly to her feet again. What stood over her, however, was hardly a velociraptor. In the faint light of her wand she could just see it. A djinn towered over her, not the sort that's transliterated into English as "genie" and lives in a lamp and grants wishes, but a great, dark, entirely solid one about seven feet tall. It did not resemble a man, but it seemed to have hands and eyes in the correct places, and yet it was surely made of some stronger medium than flesh. Behind it imps were amassing, ready to quarrel over scraps of her flesh should the djinn kill her. Contrary to the djinn, the imps were about one foot tall, gnarly little creatures with hard heads and tiny sharp teeth, of a colour that could only be named 'non-descript'. Cynthia swallowed. Flipping through The Auror's Handbook of Catchy Phrases in her mind, she found the section on djinns, relatively short compared to the rest of the book, which concentrated rather annoyingly on dragons. It did not seem to notice that most dragons now lived peacefully in captivity.

"O djinn who stands on this path between the worlds," she addressed it, and then forgot the rest of the phrase, "we were just trying to leave, so if you'll excuse me, I'm not really going to fight you. Sorry about the misunderstanding."

"Obstinate mortal!" cried the djinn. "Here you shall meet your death. None has trod this path since he who placed me here one thousand years ago. I swore that death would greet the first who dared to trace my master's footsteps, and so it shall." Raising his fist high to the heavens, he let out a shouted command, and rusty orange lighting leapt into his hand. He cast it down to where Cynthia stood, crackling and sped with the force of destruction, but she met it with the blade of her sword, turning it back to the sky. It dispersed into the air, fizzing away.

"Today is not really a good day for that," she said. "Maybe tomorrow?" She blocked another blast of lightning. When it hit her sword, the sound of a whip burst from it, and the force jolted up her arm, forcing it backward with its shock. She grimaced, realising she would have a bruise or two the next day. Instead of flinching back, she leapt toward the djinn, and swung fiercely at it. Before her sword could reach the monster, she tripped on an imp that had pulled at her feet. She cursed and spat the mud from her mouth. Sitting up, she dealt it a deadly blow. It squealed as it died, splattering Cynthia with blood. But by this point the lumpy brown imps were swarming all over her, pulling at her wand, her sword, and her hair, and she could see nothing. Yelling, she leapt to her feet. Most of the imps scattered when she stood, although they had wreaked some havoc already- Cynthia was sure she didn't want to see what her hair looked like. She flung one from her hair with a flip of her ponytail and smote one on her leg with the scimitar. The only good thing about imps, she thought, is that they're small. She wiped off the foul black mud that covered her face and pulled her hair back into its scrunchie, where it simply refused to stay. She was just in time to deflect another fistful of lightning.

The djinn looked down at her and shook its head. Turning to the train car, it began to levitate it. The car shivered and lifted off the ground jerkily. Somebody, probably Neville, screamed. Immediately, with a roar, Cynthia lunged forward and got in a blow at the djinn's arm. It drew blood, thick blood of an oddly greenish colour, with an strange odor of something rather like sardines, and the djinn clasped the wound, inadvertently letting go its control of the levitated train-car. The car fell to the ground with a thump and rattled the students inside.

The monstrous djinn raised both its hands high now, and as it pulled them up, it grew. It surged higher and higher, and now it towered above the treetops, at around forty feet. The lightning that clashed around Cynthia surrounded her this time, and was accompanied by a thunder that rang in her ears for a minute after. The wind jerked her scimitar around, not letting her reach the lightning, but sweeping in a circle around her and pulling the lightning along with it. The lightning swirled around that circle and sprung up and down all around her to surround her entirely. Now a cage of sparking lightning encompassed her. Putting away her wand in her robe pocket, she grasped the sword in both hands. The wind again tried to pull it away from her, but she pulled back, struggling to keep the scimitar upwards. She pointed it at the djinn she could not see, and, mustering the little voice she had left (she thought she must have been screaming without realising it), shouted hoarsely above the storm, "Displodo!" She would never have trusted such a simple spell if she had been armed only with a wand, but perhaps with her sword it could gain enough power. A fiery purple blast burned out of the end of her sword, jerking her arm with its power once again. The beam of light was strong and thrice-woven, of a colour as electric as the lightning, and full of her last ounce of will, the last energy that had kept her standing. The blast hit the lightning cage, which shuddered with the impact, and the lightning began to assimilate itself into the sword's power, meshing together. It fizzed and sparked, tremors running up and down the cage, raining electrical clumps down onto Cynthia, and then it came together for one final moment and blasted towards the djinn. The beam hit it. It screamed in agony, and hurled a final fistful of lightning at Cynthia, but its own weapon caught up in the electrical mess that was destroying it. In a wreath of fire, the djinn exploded with sparks, its horrid skin wrenching apart and its blood spattering the tree-tops, dissolving into nothing but a purple dust that powdered the ground like snow.

Cynthia collapsed into the molasses-like mud. The cringing imps, who had backed away during the final collision of the two duelists, rushed up to her and began to drag her away, heaving with all of their little impish might, only succeeding in moving her by virtue of their numbers. They nipped at her hair and robes, shredding and tearing wherever they could, and inflicting their little rotten teeth onto her bruised skin. One jeering imp tried to grab her sword, which she still clasped near her, but it dissolved into a rain of violet sparks, shrieking. The scimitar still gleamed with power from its last battle, and sang with the lightning of its glorious charge, for it could not see that its master lay forsaken in the mud.

Hermione and Aimee ran from the door of the car to the limp professor. The rain was pouring down in torrents now, and the girls splashed the loathsome mud all over their new school robes, but they hardly noticed. Reaching the professor, they too were attacked by the imps that swarmed all over her unconscious form. Those little monsters were now in the full heat of their madness, and they leapt feet into the air to scratch at the new prey that ran before them. Hermione fumbled for her wand in her robe pocket, cursing herself for not having already had it out, and shot a temporary charm at the imps that blasted them backwards. Aimee hit a few with a slippery, moss-covered branch that she had picked up, forsaking all the thought required for spells and trusting in the strength of her arm. The imps shrieked and clamoured as the girls hit them again and again, jumping up and grabbing hold of their attackers' robes with their claws even as they were blasted with Hermione's spell or bashed with Aimee's branch. Finally, when all the imps were silent, the pair of rescuers pulled their feet out of the mud that was grasping them as firmly as the imps had, and bent down toward the ground to lift their professor. They took hold of Cynthia and carried her back to the car in complete silence, except for the sound of their shoes squelching in the mud. Cynthia's light spell was still going- Hermione had never seen a spell keep going after the caster was knocked out, and she wondered at this. Aimee, holding Cynthia's head, climbed into the car first, awkwardly trying to hold the inert teacher and pull herself up. Justin Finch-Fletchley stretched out a hand to help her. Hermione was just about to follow her when a recovered imp latched onto her leg, biting furiously. The imp scratches had been mere annoyances, but the bites made her whole leg contract with pain and twisted her stomach. She let go of Cynthia and swung at the imp. She slipped into the mud.

Hermione grasped for her wand frantically, searching her robe pockets once again, trying to remember a spell for the situation. She found the wand and hit a few imps, but the number she could repel with her charm was significantly less than the number that kept coming towards her. They were biting and scratching, furious that their prey was getting away. One of them pulled off her shoe, tugging at her already throbbing leg, and flung the sneaker into the air. Hermione watched with dismay as it twirled high away through the sky. It landed twenty feet away in a mud puddle.

Inside the car, Harry and Ron were trying to push past the students blocking their way to the door. Harry finally managed to duck under Ernie Macmillan's arm and from there wended his way to the door. He jumped out amongst the imps, and blasted them with any spells that he could think of, including one that turned several of them into daisies.

"Hermione!" he shouted, pulling her up off the ground. He cleared some of the mud from her face. She was covered with absolute filth, inches of mud with twigs and leaves sticking out from it, and her robes were tattered.

"I'm all right," she said, grimacing as she stood on the leg the imps had torn with their fangs. "Watch out for the imps. They bite, and it stings very badly."

"Come on, get in the car," he said. "We need to get out of here now." She nodded and hoisted herself inside the train. Harry began to follow, but an imp jumped directly into his face. He scrambled to get it off, tearing it from his face and tearing his face along with it, for its claws were firmly hooked in his skin. It bit him on the nose and pulled back as he began to bleed all over his robes and the knobbly-skinned imp.

Inside the car, Hermione asked Aimee to give her the ring. She could barely get the words past her sore throat, for she too had been screaming. Aimee slipped it off her finger with a little difficulty, for she had not removed the ring for quite some time, and handed it to the mud-covered girl. Once again Hermione pulled out her wand, which was starting to look fairly battered, and this time pointed it at the ring. "Engorgio!" she cried with rasping voice. The ring grew and kept on growing, as Hermione pointed her unsteady wand at it. As it grew too large for her to hold, she dropped it to the floor. The rest of the students backed into the corners of the car, as the ring began to fill the room. Eventually it was so large it just touched the ceiling. She said to Aimee, "Turn it."

As Aimee, joined by Draco and Ron, began to rotate the enlarged ring, Hermione ran to the edge of the car, pushing back all the students standing there. "Harry!" she screamed. "Harry, we're going! Harry, get in here!" Harry dashed an imp to the ground and looked blankly at her. She stretched out her hand to him, and just as the car blinked out of that place and he threw the last imp from his shoulder, he caught it.

***

At the top of the Great Tower of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore suddenly stood up. He peered through the crystal window into the distance.

"What is it?" asked Minerva, the lines of worry in her face deepening. "Has something happened to the train?"

"Yes," he replied calmly. "It has returned."

***

The little that remained of the train pulled in. The car was battered and dented, and the wheels were almost stuck in place with mud and twigs, not to mention that they had been hammered out of shape by malevolent imps and were therefore no longer round. It teetered on the track, since it no longer quite fit where it was supposed to in the narrow rails. Inside it, the atmosphere was both terrified and jovial with relief. Some third years wondered if it would be in the papers. Hermione reassured a few first-years, saying that everything was all right. Ron made himself particularly unhelpful by adding that this sort of thing happened all the time. Harry just stood beside the two of them and kept quiet. Fred and George were discussing the invention of Chocolate Exploding Djinns for their business, seeing the incident as an opportunity for humour already.

The students pushed and shoved each other getting out of the car when it finally stopped by the lake. Terry Boot almost elbowed Ron in the eye in his hurry to see familiar ground. Not a breath of wind touched the surface of the lake, which lay there without any movement. Even the giant squid must have been sleeping. The water mirrored the sky, and its blackness seemed double with its calmness. Someone, however, was not calm. Hagrid stood there looking extremely worried, twisting his hat in his hands, and inadvertently twisting some of his beard along with it. When Harry, Hermione, and Ron squeezed their way out of the train, Hagrid nearly went mad with relief.

"Where've you three been?" he shouted, nearly trampling a very small first year in his attempt to reach them.

"Calm down, Hagrid! We're all right," said Harry. It was the first he had spoken since he had returned to the train, and even these words came from him as though they were unfamiliar to his mouth. Hagrid did not notice his far-off tone of voice, but Hermione did.

"All righ'? Of course yeh're not all righ'. Look at yeh, Harry! And you, Hermione! The both of yeh are covered in imp bites," Hagrid insisted. Looking down at himself, Harry saw that he was indeed marked with the imprints of very small and sharp teeth. Seeing them, he realised that they stung. His nose felt as though it would fall off at any minute.

"We'll get them fixed," he reassured Hagrid, and said goodbye as they left for the castle, and as Hagrid began to call the first-years over to the boat. They headed over to a carriage, and the first years headed to the boats. They climbed into the first carriage they came to. Neville was about to follow them, as he usually did at the beginning of the year, but Draco cut him off.

"Pleasant trip, all?" he asked. No one answered him. "I trust not. Well-"

"I'm sick of this," said Harry quietly, stopping Draco from saying whatever he was about to say. "I'm sick of being pursued by Dark creatures everywhere I go. I'm sick of fighting evil. I'd rather be a Muggle and have a completely boring life, just as long as I could have my parents back. I hate this." Everyone else in the car looked at each other. Ron and Hermione had expressions of alarm, hardly believing that Harry could feel this way, so unheroic, so self-pitying. Draco's expression was indescribable.

"Don't feel like that," Hermione whispered to Harry, or not exactly whispered but said very quietly and privately to Harry alone, forgetting the others in the carriage with them. "It won't do anyone any good."

"I don't want to do anyone any good," answered Harry, who was not whispering and not intending to be quiet, but was barely audible anyway, only just managing to get the words choked out of his mouth. Only Hermione could hear him. "I'm done. I'm done being the hero, all right?"

"No," said Hermione. "It isn't all right, and you know it." He looked at her for a minute, as though he were not behind the face, the eyes that were looking into hers intently, and then he snapped back in and began to cry, leaning on her shoulder. She hugged him close to her, and whispered something into his hair. Draco and Ron shifted uneasily in their seats, looking very uncomfortable and wishing they were somewhere else.

***

Cynthia leaned on Madam Pomfrey on her left, and Professor Alpha on her right. She had barely managed to stand up when the train had pulled in, but insisted on walking into the Great Hall. She had never been carried anywhere since she learned how to walk, she told them, and would not begin now. "I can't believe you did that, Cynthia," said Professor Alpha. "I have known all the years that we have been friends that you were completely mad, but I hardly believed you would leave the car, shout out for something to attack you, and explode a lightning wall. I should never have bought you that phrase-book for Christmas. You are utterly incorrigible."

"It's my charm," Cynthia grinned weakly. "I look my best when I'm blowing up servants of evil."

"To the hospital wing, now," chimed in Madam Pomfrey.

"These three as well," said Cynthia, waving her arm at them. "Harry and Hermione are absolutely covered in imp bites, and Aimee here was in it too, I believe. Sting, don't they?" she added.

"Horribly," replied Hermione.

"I am not bitten, just scratched. There is no blood. May I go directly to the Great Hall?" Aimee asked, and Madam Pomfrey, after checking her injuries quickly, agreed that she did not need to come to the infirmary.

"I've heard imp bites are poisonous," asked Hermione. "Is that true? I wasn't sure of my source."

"Yep," said Cynthia, grimacing as she shifted her weight. "Not enough to kill you, but you'll have some nasty bruises for about a week. Hey, I can give you house points, can't I? Wicked. Fifty points to Gryffindor. You guys did some pretty brave things today."

"To the hospital wing, NOW!" repeated Madam Pomfrey. Cynthia saluted and began to march off military-style, as best she could, which was not at all, and Professor Alpha had to catch her as she tripped over an uneven brick in the floor. Madam Pomfrey caught her on the other side, and they began to walk as before.

"I saw you use that sword as a channel for magic," Hermione told Cynthia. "That was amazing. I know it's incredibly difficult, but other than that there isn't much information on it in the library. I've been looking for simply ages."
"It's not taught much in England," Cynthia replied. "Yes, it takes the breath out of you, but with the right weapon and the proper training, it's incredibly effective. So incredibly effective that you have to be licensed to do it. One of the reasons I've worked in America most of my life. Magic is significantly less bureaucratic there."

"I thought your accent was a bit muddled," said Hermione. "Will you teach me how to do that kind of magic?"

"Tell you what," Cynthia said, "when you have your apprentice period this year, before you take your O.W.L.'s, why don't you apprentice with me? I'll see what you can make of the magic, and if you have a talent I'll teach you. If you're not good at it, I won't risk you getting blown up, so I'll teach you something else."

"I'd love that!" Hermione exclaimed. "I was wondering- what was that writing on your sword? Sa macha shain. I am the sword of the screamer." Cynthia stopped walking.

"You understood that?" she exclaimed. "I didn't think it was possible for you to know that tongue."

"I'm not sure I do," said Hermione. "I just knew what that meant. Why does it say that?"

"It's a long story," answered Cynthia. "Besides which, it's not one I'm not going to tell you." Her frankness had disappeared in an instant. When they got to the hospital wing, Madam Pomfrey made all of them sit down as she rubbed juniper and rosemary on their imp bites. The paste looked odd for a moment, but then it dissolved into their skin. The outlines of the bites could still be seen, but they no longer stung. Madam Pomfrey made Cynthia go to bed, despite her protests that she was as well as ever, but sent Harry and Hermione back to the Great Hall, since they seemed to be fine. Harry's nose still hurt a little, but it was no longer bleeding, and other than that there were no problems.

"Hermione," Harry said awkwardly, once they were outside the infirmary. She turned around and looked at him. The torches in the hall cast a strange light and a stranger shadow on the pair's faces. Harry thought that Hermione looked like some spirit, something that could call itself human when it wanted to, entirely magical when it felt like it, and could disappear entirely on the slightest whim. Hermione thought that Harry looked like Alexander the Great. Harry was dark, where the king had been fair, but it was more in his stance than in his colour that she based her idea. "I wanted to tell you," he swallowed, "I wanted to say thank you. For getting us all out of there. You thought and I didn't. I just turned a bunch of imps into daisies. And, er, thank you for letting me be stupid. I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry for anything," she said. "I'm sorry that I made you come out there."

"You didn't make me do anything," Harry said. "I just came because you were there." They were standing very close together, next to the wall. Harry took a nervous breath, and dared to do what he had wanted to do all day at least. He smoothed out a little of her hair, very slowly let his hand fall to her shoulder, and then to her waist. She did not show utter horror, as he had feared, so he bent down and kissed her. As she kissed him back she was laughing, and they felt that all the importance of the universe was in the other's lips. Harry did not even notice the pounding rage of his still-tender nose.

***

The sky above the Great Hall was awash in stars. Harry and Hermione slipped into seats at the Gryffindor table next to Ron. "You haven't missed anything," he informed them. "McGonagall's still trying to calm down the first years." Next to Ron was Aimee, who smiled and waved at Hermione. She did not have to be sorted, since to take Lavender's place, she would have to be in her house. Aimee greeted Hermione happily. Inwardly, the dark French girl grimaced. She had known since the second she had seen Hermione that she hated her with a fiery passion, and therefore it was her to whom she would have to appear most gracious, so that her astute mind would suspect nothing. It was for her that Aimee knew she would have to devise the most brilliant plan.

"Hello," she said. "Your school and your friend are both fascinating. So different from Beauxbatons." Ron blushed. At the high table, there were two new faces- a dark, stern-looking woman that Harry had never seen, and a red-haired man who- but surely it couldn't be-. Before he could tell, the first years entered and assembled in a vaguely orderly fashion. All of them looked nervous, and some were whispering amongst themselves. Ron remembered the wild theories that he had heard before he had seen the hat for himself and been reassured that it was not actually a troll to be wrestled. Harry glanced to the Sorting Hat at the end of the hall. It pulled itself up tall and breathed deeply, inasmuch as it could breathe, being, after all, a hat. A talented hat, but nevertheless a hat.

"At the Sealing of the Gates there stood,

In ages long ago,

Four wizards who would close the path

That none could ever know.

In the west there stood brave Godric,

And for earth his place did stand.

In the east there was cold Salazar,

With fire in his hand.

In the north stood Rowena fair,

With air at her control,

In the south stood bonny Helga,

And in water was her role.

The end of their lives were near,

They left a school behind,

And magic learning lay there

For the chosen ones to find.

It was in me they placed their trust,

To keep the school aright.

I'll sort you in their houses,

Even if it takes all night!"

Everyone applauded. "Its wording is getting a bit odd," said Hermione, "but that was the most useful thing it's ever said. There isn't half enough about the Sealing of the Gates in Hogwarts, a History."

"That's the first time I've ever heard you complain about that book," observed Ron truthfully.

"Amberic, Michael!" cried McGonagall, and he became a Hufflepuff. He didn't know which one the Hufflepuff table was, and at first wandered over to the Ravenclaw. Everybody laughed, and the Ravenclaws showed him where to go. The Sorting continued all the way through, "Zallin, Umberto!" who was a Slytherin, and looked extremely smug about it. He certainly knew which the Slytherin table was; he had been looking at it ever since he had entered the Great Hall. There was another Creevey this year, Annie, also a Gryffindor, but that was the only name Harry recognised. After the Sorting finally finished, Dumbledore stood up to make an announcement or two. Harry noticed with shock that Dumbledore was not moving quite so quickly anymore, with a little more cautiousness in his movement. He looked much older and grayer than he had last year.

"We have a very interesting situation with professors this year," he said. "I would like to introduce you to Cynthia McGregor-" he held up his hand to prevent applause, as one or two of the first-years had begun already "-but alas, she is not here at the moment. She will be teaching Defense against the Dark Arts." Some people clapped in a confused manner, unsure of the protocol during her absence. Harry, Ron, and Hermione decided to clap, even though she was in the hospital wing, as they had been much impressed by her battle with the djinn and were almost thinking of her as being in the same work as they were. "Next," Dumbledore continued, "two teachers will only be here off and on this year, as I have asked them to accomplish certain tasks for me, and therefore they will have assistants. Professor Snape will be assisted by Maria Hamke." The stern-looking woman stood up gracefully, with an elegant movement of her arm, and bowed. Everyone applauded, which made her quite pleased. "Professor Hagrid will also have an assistant. Charlie Weasley." Almost the whole school leapt to its feet immediately, cheering. Charlie was a much-loved legend at Hogwarts. Dumbledore waited for them to sit before he continued. "And last but not least, I would like to introduce Aimee LeVert, the foreign exchange student replacing Lavender Brown this year." Polite applause ensued, and Aimee smiled and waved in a friendly manner.

"This year will be a serious one for all of us," Dumbledore announced. "If you were at Hogwarts last year, then you will know that dark forces are at work in the world. I will be plain. Voldemort has risen again. The Ministry will not acknowledge this, and so it falls to us to lead the battle against him. I do not wish for any students to take matters into their own hands-" he smiled at Harry "-but rather to inform myself or one of the other professors if they think there is any information that will be needed. Naturally, if any of you find yourself in a situation where you are in danger, I will expect you to act with maximum safety for yourself and others. In interest of this safety, we ask that someone know your location at all times. You are all aware that a disturbing event has already occurred this year. Rest assured that, for most of you, this is likely to be the only event of that sort that you will have to experience this year. I trust you all to take this in utmost seriousness." Harry glanced at the Slytherins. Normally he would have expected Draco to be sneering, but he was not. He looked serious but emotionally uninvolved, like most of the students minus their nervousness. The rest of his crowd were unsure how to act without any expression of his to guide them. They were settling for appearing nonchalant, an emotion which fell easily to the faces of some and looked unnatural on others. Crabbe and Goyle looked as though they were trying to avoid being called on in class, which seemed to be their all-purpose expression of stupidity.

The schedules were passed around. With the addition of another class in fifth year, the teachers gave up trying to teach the houses individually. Every class was shared with another house. The Hufflepuffs in Herbology and Divination, the Ravenclaws in Astronomy, Transfiguration, and Charms, and the Slytherins with them most of the time, in Potions, Care of Magical Creatures, Symbolism, and Defense Against the Dark Arts. Ron groaned and Neville almost fainted into his mashed potatoes.

The rest of the evening passed pleasantly enough. There was more than enough food for everyone. Fred and George re-enacted the exploding djinn scene using a carving-knife for a scimitar (Fred surreptitiously charmed it to keep it from slipping from his hand) and food for lightning to be rained down from the heavens, blasted by George with beautiful splatters leaving colourful designs. Professor McGonagall came flying over in a fury to stop them and was hit by the explosion of several potatoes. Dripping with tuberous innards, she took twenty points from Gryffindor and gave them both detentions. Hermione had to listen to Parvati Patil tell her all about the most handsome French boy that she had met over the summer, not to mention all his gorgeous friends. Hermione considered saying something shocking just to get her to leave. Neville was more nervous than ever before and dropped things like mad, from his fork to an artichoke that someone had thrown at him in the spirit of a hot potato, not realising that the artichoke was indeed boiling hot. Yet all in all, it was a meal full of jokes and tall tales. When they left the Great Hall, they were full to bursting and happily tired.

"The password is harpy," Hermione told the others as they headed to Gryffindor Tower. Hermione and Seamus were this years' Gryffindor prefects. Harry and Ron hadn't even applied, as they had no desire for the responsibility. But before they could get very far towards their warmly waiting beds, Professor McGonagall stopped them.

"You will be there to hold Quidditch try-outs tomorrow morning?" she asked Harry. Harry gaped. "You will accept the position of captain, will you not?"

"Yes," said Harry. "I will."

***

Draco returned to the Slytherin common room alone. The password, to his disgust, was amazingly simple: viper. He slid through the door, glanced briefly at the still-empty social area, and passed through the common room to his own room that he had as a prefect. He had not seen the room before, and stopped short when he entered. It looked incredibly official and properly decorated. There was no grace in the room, no well-designed lines at all, just an idea of everything properly set up. The school symbol was everywhere: on his quilt, above his desk, painted on the wall, on the closet door. The walls were a solid and sensible green and the wood was painted in the dullest shade of silver. The Slytherin serpent appeared properly on the stationary set that graced his desk. It was a room he intrinsically hated, a room that oppressed him the minute he stepped into it. Yet there was one thing that he sensed was not quite proper about the room. He looked next to the door, where his trunk sat ever so orderly. He opened the closet and looked at the prim pea-green coat hangers. He looked down at the moss-coloured carpet, and there he saw it. Growing precisely in the middle of the floor was a very small twig, bare, without a single leaf. He sat down on the ground and examined it. He decided that, though odd, it did not surpass the rest of the room in interesting him. And yet, as he observed the twig, his mind slipped away from him, and he sat there for a while thinking of absolutely nothing.

Eventually he shook himself and stood. He moved to the desk, and instead of using the Slytherin stationary sitting there, he called the private Malfoy stationary from his trunk. He sat down with an elegant quill and began to write.

Dear Father,

So far things are going well enough. There have been disturbances, but nothing that will interrupt the plan. I know you will already be aware of the incident on the train. I did not understand it, but I am sure that that is simply because of my ignorance. You understand it perfectly, I'm sure. Dumbledore announced that the Dark Lord is risen, but that doesn't mean anything except silly security rules.

I have managed to chip a little way into the circle of Potter and friends. I am suspicious of the Mudblood simply because she seemed to trust me too easily, which I don't believe is like her. I will watch and see what she really knows. Weasley hates me, of course, and Potter doesn't like me but won't get rid of me if that Granger girl tells him not to. Aimee, being a Gryffindor, has their immediate trust. I believe I can leave Potter's friends to her. I myself am planning already what to do about Potter, to get him to our Master. It shouldn't be too difficult.

Draco

Looking down at the letter, Draco wondered why he had written it. It was the sort of progress report his father would like, but Draco knew that writing these never helped either of them in the slightest. He knew how to write letters that gave information by hidden means that his father would understand, letters that would be useful, letters that sometimes even helped him manipulate his father a little. This was not one of them. Of course, it might not be particularly helpful to the Dark Lord for Draco to give this information to his father. Draco knew that Voldemort liked to keep his workers from sharing information as much as possible, that he wished for only he himself to have all the pieces of the puzzle, and that that was the only reason so many Death Eaters remained at large. Lucius had the dubious honour of knowing every one of them, and consequently his master resented any information he might be forced to bequeath to him. Lucius' position, that of the right-hand man of the leader of the forces of darkness, held as much peril as power, and if he had indeed been plotting rebellion, to lead the dark forces himself, as Draco suspected... The letter that was not at all useful to him would certainly have pleased his master.

Draco looked around the boring room. It was all so uniform, except for that one little twig there. He looked at that twig again, that strange twig that made no sense in the rooms' context at all, and then got up to mail the letter. There was a chute in all the prefects' rooms that could send their letters straight to the Owlery. He pushed the rolled-up and thoroughly sealed paper through this chute. He went to brush his teeth, glancing again at the twig, and by the time he got in bed, he didn't even remember sending the letter.

***

Ron and Aimee lingered in the common room, talking. The girl had babbled on all evening about various topics; France, school, her family. Everyone found her nice enough to listen to, as she told very strange stories. Her speech contained both humour and a taint of anger at the darkness that had touched her, a slight resentment of the cruelties of the world to her. Her life had been battered in many ways, and yet she had had joy.

"I once had a friend much like your friend Harry," she told Ron. "He was very well-known in France for having saved a magical wine festival from robbers. People always recognised him for a while after that."

"They don't anymore?" asked Ron. "What happened to him?"

"I am not sure," said Aimee. "It was very odd. He made himself so that people would not want to remember him. He stopped to trust me. He would not tell me anything or listen to anything I said to him. I could talk for hours about a sister who I do not have and he would never notice a thing. I only saved my friendship with him by leaving him alone for long periods of time and never telling him anything serious. He and I got along well enough if we never had to talk about anything important. I now speak to him only of fêtes and silliness. I see your Harry becoming like that. He will not be forgotten, of course, but he will... I do not know why it is. But it will keep on and get stranger, if he is feeling the hatred of fame as Jean began to, and he will no longer live in the same world that you three now have just for yourselves. Do not be surprised. I have seen your little world, the way it only exists for you, and I have seen that he is slipping back from it into one even further away. Oh, but I will not speak of Harry like this to you. I am sorry, it is not polite of me, and I should not be judging anyone by the way that I have been betrayed. I will tell you of the many things that I became interested in when I dropped my worry over the friendship of Jean. I joined a theatre group for a while- but no, why do you not tell me of your interests?"

"They're not that exciting," muttered Ron, who felt that he couldn't keep up properly in his conversation, and had been growing more and more embarrassed. "Quidditch, I like the Chudley Cannons, even though I know they're kind of second-rate. I reckon you wouldn't like them much. I play wizard chess. I'm fairly good at it, I guess. Nothing really spectacular."

"The game of chess is fascinating," said Aimee. "It is one of the most magical games in the world. Why don't you play it with Harry? Perhaps it will bring him back to your world."

"Actually, I haven't got a set right now," Ron said, embarrassed and colouring brilliantly now. "My old one beat itself to death, and I, er, haven't had a chance to buy a new one." He didn't want to tell Aimee that he couldn't afford it.

"I am sure you will find a set soon enough," said Aimee. "Good sets can be found all over the place. Excuse me, but it is late now, and I feel I must go to bed."

They said goodnight and ascended the stairs to each's room. When Aimee entered the girls' room, Parvati was fast asleep and snoring wildly. Now that Hermione was a prefect, and with Lavender in France, only Aimee and Parvati occupied the fifth year girls' room. Aimee strode toward the window-door and opened it. The night wind cooled the landscape deliciously, and the stars shone with clarity over the grounds. Only the trees protested the calmness of the night, teasing the wind, begging it to play with them. She stepped onto the tiny balcony that graced the window. She breathed deeply and smiled a sinister smile. Chess, she thought. Chess should work very nicely. I will find the pieces tomorrow. As for Hermione- I believe I have an idea for her. Then she took a piece of paper from her pocket, scribbled a few lines, set it on the ground, and burnt it. The message was sent.

***

Ginny slept thinly. A sort of oddness patrolled the border-marches of her mind. As she slept deeper and deeper she could not forget it, and when she slipped into dream she found it there with her. She did not see it, or anything except a little spot on the Hogwarts grounds that she visited when she felt badly. The spot had replaced Tom Riddle's diary in being her place to think to herself of all her life and its troubles, whether they were petty or real. It was a simple glade, with young apple trees, a few tall rocks, and a small river. And in this spot, her special spot, someone else was with her. Perhaps not someone else. It might certainly be only a thing, only a presence, that had invaded her dreams. She asked it.

"Who are you? What are you?" Her voice echoed off of the rocks, and her echo shaped itself into her answer.

"I am your talent, Ginny Weasley. And through you I am the survival of the world. I am the Sealing of the Gates and I am the reason that they must be kept shut. I live a little in your Sorting Hat, but that is not I. I am the force that guided Godric Gryffindor to find the school. In a way I am this school. And I am your talent."

"My talent? How can you be a thing like my talent when you're a being all by yourself?" she asked it.

"I am many things," it answered. "Made like the rest, for neither good nor evil, yet put in the hands of the good Powers to guide those that they chose, of among those to whom they had given the magic of the world. But if you will not say that I am your talent, say then that I will give you your talent."

"What talent?" asked Ginny.

"You will see. You will see it tonight, and you will see it often when you sleep for the rest of your life. Here." The special spot of Ginny's dissolved. In one second it came back into focus, but this time it was filled with people. All of them were looking at one rock, Ginny's rock that she often sat on, and on each side of this rock there was a person. One of them was very tall and redheaded. He reminded her of her brothers, and she liked him immediately. Next to him was a dark woman, very beautiful and very calm. On the other side of her stood a devilishly handsome but very annoyed man who seemed to be sulking at the others. The last was a short, slightly pudgy woman with blond hair and a soft smile. Ginny took to all of them instantly, except the handsome man. She was about to speak, but the picture faded and she stood once again in the grove that she knew.

"What was that? Where was that?" she demanded. "Is that supposed to be my talent?"

"It is," said the voice. "This place is also another form of myself, and you seem to have a strange connection to it. Your present time is a dire one, Ginny Weasley. Its future is bleak and hopeless. The hope of the future is in the past, and this place through all its times past is your talent. You will play a role in all the historical events of that place. The time in which you just viewed it was the time of the Sealing of the Gates. The four whom you saw were the Founders of Hogwarts- four of my special protégées. I must admit, you're the only one I've really found interesting since then."

"How can I change the past?" she asked.

"I did not say you would change it," it said. "I said you would play a role in it. Now pay attention. It is this place, and this place only, that you affect. Do not step outside of it, no matter what desperate pleas you receive. The Dark, too, knows of your connection to this place. It is not quite limited to that little grove. There is also a small cottage, and a cave, and a tiny pond that are part of that place. You will find your way into them when it is time, not before, and not after. When you reach the limits of the area in which you are to roam, you will feel a buzzing sensation. Do not ignore it. It is the sound of your own essence fading from you, and if you pass beyond this boundary, you will no longer exist."

"Why is this restriction on me?" she questioned it.

"I did not place it there, nor did any servant of the Light or Dark," said the presence. "It is simply a matter of who you are, and what your talent is, and what you are intended to do with it. I must ask you to cease your questioning now, for it is dawn in your time, and I must leave. Farewell."

***

That night Harry dreamed again, the same sort of dream he had had at Malfoy Manor. Again the bloody shadows appeared, and again the presence came. He could not exactly see it, but he thought he caught a glimpse of red hair. It pulled at him. It was pulling against gravity, pulling him off the face of the earth. Yet it seemed to be to pull itself in rather than take him away. He reached t and grabbed an insubstantial hand and brought it gently towards himself. He could feel it smiling at him, and he reached up to hug it, but then in a green flash it disappeared. He woke up crying.