Threads

Threads

Chapter 3

The dormitory had been dark and holiday-quiet when Ginny had gone to sleep, so she was surprised to wake to a flat shaft of pale moonlight on her face and the crackling of the fire. She turned sleepily and saw the window hangings a little drawn though she was sure they had been shut. She was to wonder later why she had not been afraid, but at that time she only sat up with interest and peered across the room to where a tall figure stood, with the smoke from the fire curling around it. Ginny slipped out of bed and went quietly across to the fire. She saw a thin angular girl in heavy worn robes bent over the fire, with a tangled swathe of dull coppery hair hanging down over her face. In the fire thick irregular scraps of canvas blackened and curled.

"You're Lily," said Ginny with a certainty that surprised herself.

The girl turned round, and there was the face that Ginny had painted, so familiarly bony and vivid. "Oh, you're awake." She had a clear high voice with the lilt of the Welsh.

Ginny looked doubtful. "Well, I suppose I must be dreaming."

Lily grinned faintly. "Yes, sorry, that's what I meant. You aren't afraid, are you? I especially made it a place you'd know. And you know who I am."

Ginny said slowly, "So you are making me dream you?"

Lily pushed the last of the canvas pieces into the fire and then, dusting her hands, moved away out of the acrid smoke and sat down on Ginny's bed. She looked thoughtfully at Ginny.

"You don't remember anything I've said before?"

"I've met you before?"

Lily frowned. "Yes. Many times - that's why I'm in your portrait, isn't it? But you seem different this time. "

"I've taken a Dream Remembering Potion," explained Ginny, looking uncertainly at the makeshift easy, now empty.

"Clever," said Lily approvingly. Ginny flushed, but the elder girl continued, "Well, then I am going to have to start from the beginning. It's very important you understand all of this."

"All of what?" Ginny looked uneasy.

Lily bit her lips and Ginny was suddenly reminded that they were not so different in age. "You were right," she began, "I am making you dream me. It's a difficult spell and I've been trying for - well - years, I suppose. I tried on Harry; I tried on Sirius and Remus. I tried on what seemed to be Harry's friends, though I had hardly any information. Not a lot comes through, you know, just snippets, séances, bits from Sybil Trelawney and sometimes the centaurs..."

Lily gave her a half-smile. "She's not a fake, you know. Still, it's so limited. I needed to tell Harry something and I tried everyone I thought was safe and close to him. Finally I tried Molly and Arthur and, well, there was no luck, but I did find that they had a lot of children. And I tried them. And I found you." She looked at Ginny, thoughtfully. "I don't know why it works with you. You'll have to find that out yourself, I think."

Ginny dragged her mind back from this interesting avenue and stared in some awe at Lily. "You have a message from the dead," she said uncertainly, wondering vaguely if it was bad manners to call somebody dead to their face. She supposed it wasn't a point of etiquette that would trouble her frequently.

"Well, from me, anyway." Lily paused for a moment, and when she spoke again there was a different note in her voice, like an echo of fear. "You know about Hallowe'en night, the night Voldemort came."

"Y-yes," stammered Ginny, flinching. Lily looked at her as though she expected more, so Ginny continued unhappily "Voldemort came for you and Harry's dad. And you put a love magic on Harry and saved him."

Lily's face softened, and Ginny could see that in another time and place she had been pretty. "That's a lovely way to put it, I'm so glad that's what Harry has been told."

"It's not true?"

"Well. In a way it is. You see, James, that is Harry's father, had put a love magic on me, to protect me. He was an extraordinary wizard and an extraordinary person, so it was a spell of great strength, and it included in it the protection of everybody who loved James, all wrapped around me. I was the best protected witch in the wizarding world with that spell. But we were in hiding. I thought I wouldn't need it. I was a grown witch who could protect herself after all, so I decided I'd transfer it to Harry. My love, James', all those many people who loved us like Sirius and Remus, all that love-protection on my baby. I thought he would be immune to nearly anything." She stopped and thought. Ginny looked wide-eyed at the thin flat-chested girl sitting in front of her talking about love and death and children, and felt the first twist of fear in her throat.

"It's a beautiful old spell and the translation of it is love transferred, though it's in a horrible complicated old language," continued Lily. "I worked and worked on it, without telling James, all that time we were in hiding. I had to get Remus to help me a bit with the runes and things. Then it was Hallowe'en. The spell wasn't finished you see, and I heard the Fidelius break, it makes a noise like glass shattering." Lily's voice was quiet and halting now, and her eyes were focused somewhere inside herself. Ginny came and sat down beside her on the bed, mesmerised.

"I knew the spell wasn't finished. I ran upstairs with Harry - anything for more time - and I gabbled away, trying to make him safe, and I did finish it, I finished it and then - although that wasn't how it was supposed to happen - I sealed it. With my life, you see. It all made sense, just at the end, a perfect spell, my baby safe. I thought I had saved him forever, because a spell finished with a life can never be dissolved."

"You did save him." Ginny looked puzzled.

Lily bit at her nails nervously. "I made a mistake in the spell."

"What?"

"I made a mistake in the spell. I wasn't good enough reading the runes, I was panicked, I don't know. I meant to do just love transferred, but what I seem to have done is fate transferred."

**

"Well what?" said Draco equably. He sat back against the dragon's side, his legs stretched out on the grass, his body rising and falling peacefully with the creature's breathing. He looked as peaceful as a baby in a rocking cradle.

"Well, what happened?" Harry was not an effectual angry person; he paced stormily up and down, not looking at Draco, marking a crooked flattened ellipse in the grass. "You disappear off and then you just don't come back? You just ignore the plan? We have to come and rescue you on a dragon for heaven's sake; doesn't that deserve a bit of explanation?"

"Very gallant of you," agreed Draco. "It'd make a good centre page in Teen Witch Weekly, don't you think?"

Harry scowled furiously."And the plan didn't work," he added, after a moment, suddenly slumping.

Draco glanced over to where Hermione sat at the edge of the clearing, staring dully at the grass in front of her. "No, it didn't."

"You think you can just not explain?" Harry sounded wondering.

"We were on top of a flying dragon before," Draco pointed out reasonably. "Noisy place. Wings, you know, and air rushing and the occasional flame burst..." Draco trailed off and looked up at where Harry now stood so close his robes trailed over Draco's feet.

."Malfoy..."

Draco sighed. "Right, right. I went home on Christmas morning, all right? I went to attack the Grangers, and I knew the spell wasn't ready but it might just have been all right had the blithering idiots not run out of their back door straight into Avery's arms."

"They ran out?" Hermione's voice was uneven. Both the boys looked quickly at her.

"Yes," said Draco in a different voice, watching her warily. "They ran out. The attack itself was a shambles as I had intended but that clinched it for them. When I got home my father clearly had things to say; more to the point he wanted me to say things, and he's low on patience so he had me say them under Veritaserum."

"He knows everything?" Harry stared at Draco, his mouth falling open.

"Something will fly in there if you don't watch out," Draco told him calmly. "He knows nothing."

"You lied under Veritaserum?"

"He asked the wrong questions." Draco's eyes held a glint of amusement.

"What?"

"Did you plan this, Draco? No, Father. Where's the girl, Draco? I don't know, Father. You knew this would happen. No, Father....and so on."

Harry looked disbelieving. "Those are lies."

"Really? I didn't plan for them to die. I didn't know where Hermione was, in the library, in the Great Hall, shagging you senseless on top of the Astronomy Tower, how should I know? I didn't know it would happen." Draco's ego and his honesty struggled visibly in his face for a moment, which surprised Harry who would have thought it an unequal contest at the best of times. "It was luck," he admitted finally. "I think my father knew it, too. He locked me up whilst he thought about it."

"Yeah, in your bedroom with a window and a broomstick," said Harry pointedly. "Pull the other one."

Draco looked briefly cross and then contemptuous. "You underestimate him. The broomstick isn't summonable through three foot stone walls you know. The window and the roof beyond..." Suddenly he stopped and had Harry known Draco a little better he might have been suspicious of the blond boy's sudden blank stillness.

But he did not, so he said irritably "What?"

"The windows and the roof beyond are charmed," said Draco rather quietly. "They sound like a thousand klaxons if you go out there."

Harry shrugged. "Well I wouldn't trust a Malfoy charm as far as I could throw it," he said dismissively.

"Or someone switched it off," Hermione offered abstractedly "Anybody that might have helped you out in that house of yours, Malfoy?"

Draco went very still. "No," he said finally. "No. Nobody."

**

Ginny had been looking at the floor for some moments so it was a surprise to feel hands come quietly down on to her shoulders. She kept her eyes down and muttered, "I don't understand."

"I think you do," said Lily patiently. "The fates of everyone who loved us are upon Harry. You understand what that means?"

Ginny kept her eyes firmly down on the place where her pale toes were spread on the wooden floor. "You and Harry's dad died. So that means Harry's going to die? That's your fate, isn't it?"

Lily put a quick hand under Ginny's chin and tilted her head up; with a shock Ginny saw that the other girl's face was flushed and sharp with urgency. "You have to listen," she hissed. "James and I had a fate that we don't know. Voldemort has the power to twist fates, that is his great strength, he made ours death. Harry is not going to die, he is going to fulfil the fate we didn't."

Ginny stared at her, paralysed. "Is that bad?" she croaked at last.

Lily gave her a look half-sympathetic, half-contemptuous. "Would you like to lead somebody else's life? And even before the bit we don't know, there are terrible things that mustn't be repeated, Ginny, things that probably led to our defeat, to Voldemort's rise. There'll be fights and betrayals and people dying. It has to be stopped."

Ginny's eyes widened. "People - you mean more people than Harry are involved?"

Lily frowned. "There must be as many people as fates in this spell, and there are as many fates as people that loved us..." she trailed off and looked at Ginny with the first traces of hopelessness. "Do you understand now?"

But Ginny, who was some seconds behind the conversation, was still on Lily's last speech. "You want me to stop it?"

Lily's narrow face suddenly rippled and she was smiling. "I don't expect you to," she said kindly, and unreasonably Ginny bristled. "I just need you to tell people. Dumbledore. Harry."

"You should have told Hermione," said Ginny crossly. "She'd understand."

"Hermione?" Lily's eyes flashed suddenly very bright. "I've heard about her. Harry's friend, isn't she?"

Ginny shrugged. "When she isn't lecturing him. Or making him do homework."

Lily grinned widely. "Clever, is she?"

Ginny nodded. "Very."

Now Lily's mouth worked and Ginny was not sure whether it was amusement or sadness. "Hermione," she repeated, as if tasting the name. "Well. Yes, perhaps I should have."

Ginny gave her a furious look. "Why don't you try that then?"

Lily glanced at the younger girl and said gently, "No. I found you. Go and tell them. If you are far enough from Harry, you might not even be involved. That will be better. And...I trust you. I knew your mother."

In spite of herself, Ginny stared into Lily's eyes and the desperation there was compelling.

"All right," she said, as Lily kissed her on the cheek and walked towards the fire. "All right."

"Thank you Ginny," said Lily's voice from the hearth, but when Ginny looked there was only smoke there.

**

"I can't go back," said Draco perfectly calmly.

"Ever?" demanded Harry, incredulous.

"Ever," Draco agreed.

Albus Dumbledore looked at him speculatively. "You wish to be in hiding from your own father?"

"Pretty much." Draco was leaning against the doorjamb with his arms folded; now he unfolded them and began to list points on his fingers. "One, he thinks I am a traitor. Two, he likes to kill traitors. Three, he would have no scruples about killing his son. Four - oh. I don't believe I need a four, actually."

Harry searched the other boy's face for some sign of bitterness or misery but there was neither. Draco glanced sideways and seemed to do some mind reading.

"I don't mind. That is dark wizardry. I am a dark wizard. If he didn't kill me he'd be a weak fool. That doesn't mean I want to die. At the moment."

Dumbledore said gently, "I can't hide you in Hogwarts, Draco. Your father is a Governor. He can inspect at any time, and he could bring considerable magics to bear on any deceptive charms I might employ here."

"So I'll hide somewhere else. And I won't be hiding alone," said Draco coolly. "Hermione's is going to die if she stays in public view. Avery doesn't mess around. And his son is here at Hogwarts."

Suddenly the headmaster looked profoundly sad. "To think that this war should be within my own school," he said quietly. Harry looked quickly at him but the cataract-filmed eyes were opaque and unreadable.

There was a moment's silence, and then Hermione spoke. She hadn't spoken since they had come into the office and her voice was hoarse and harsh. "Hiding for how long?" she said. "For the rest of my probably very short life?"

Draco looked hard at her. "That wasn't what I had in mind," he said mildly. "Avery is the only person who really cares now. You thwarted him. Otherwise you're just a name on a very very long list."

"You mean as soon as somebody knocks off Avery..." began Harry, and Draco saw a light start to flicker in the other boy's eyes. He did not know Harry very well, but he recognised that light from other faces, and for a moment he felt a new and alien respect.

Dumbledore interrupted. "You will leave that in the hands of the Order." His voice was suddenly very stern and Harry flushed guiltily.

"Why?" he muttered rebelliously.

"You would have killed a man. For Hermione's freedom, I know, but the only reason to kill is in self defence, Harry. Otherwise that is Dark Wizardry."

"It's in her defence," said Harry, irritated, but he knew a losing argument when he heard one, and there was a large part of him that was relieved. He was thinking so hard that he failed to notice Hermione staring at him with a sort of blank appalled wonderment.

"There is no question," said Dumbledore, going purposefully to the fireplace. "There is no question because you are going with them."

"What?" exclaimed Harry and Hermione together. Draco nodded.

"It is just an acceleration. Harry. We would have had to make a safehouse for you after school in any case. And I think we are clear after the events of last year that Hogwarts is no longer safe. So perhaps this is all for the best."

"NEWTs," said Hermione reflexively. Dumbledore smiled over his shoulder at her. "You will study and take them all the same." Draco and Harry looked briefly disgusted.

"Charles Weasley," Dumbledore ordered the fire. It turned green, but no head appeared. "It sometimes takes a little time from Romania," explained the headmaster.

"Why do you keep bringing Charlie into it?" asked Harry suspiciously.

Dumbledore looked thoughtful. "He is an affable young person and a good but not exceptional wizard. However he has some proficiency in spells of subterfuge. He has not only tamed dragons in Romania, you know." Harry did not know but Dumbledore's face had acquired a closed look that he recognised. "He'll be good with Hiding Charms," added the Headmaster.

"Not Fidelius," said Hermione suddenly. Harry stared at her. "No," he said carefully after a moment. "Not Fidelius."

"Fidelius is a terrible spell," remarked Draco conversationally.

"I know," spat Harry.

"Oh yes. So you do," said Draco . Dumbledore sighed. "It appears Charlie is otherwise engaged," he murmured, just as the fire rose up green and roaring and not one, but two Weasleys came ricocheting out of it.

**

Another December

"I don't like this," said Lily. She fiddled unhappily with the unfortunate gargoyle outside the Headmaster's office. "We'll never get out, we'll spend the rest of our lives running from place to place..."

The gargoyle squawked in protest and gave Lily an irritable look from its round stony eyes. James Potter put his hand over the bony one currently trying to twist the gargoyle's ear off and felt it go still under his. "No," he said firmly. "No. Voldemort is going to be defeated. It's only till then. A few months. Maybe a year."

"A year is a long time," said Lily slowly.

James smiled at her and his eyes made promises that she understood, the promises that had never yet been spoken aloud. "But after that we've got the rest of our lives," he said. And Lily, despite herself, smiled too.

**

Next chapter: Harry and Draco have an epiphany, Ron and Ginny experiment with free will, Hermione chooses another novel route to recovery and there is fear, bliss and tomato sauce in hiding.