Ghosts of a Former World

With furtive glances, give life to your love,
And give it callow wings to lend in flight.
Make it a visceral and an inspired dove
That's set to soar in a sweet burst of light

She was told not to go out into the rain. Something in the fluidity of its embrace persuaded her to do otherwise. Her voice rang out with a desperate laughter as the dynamic sound of rain against leaves and animals surrounded her.

Her Pre-Raphaelite hair was damp and clung silkily to her neck and upper back. She was enchanted with this rain, some release from the journey she had only begun. Foresight itself warned her portentously of doom. Certainty did not possess the caverns of her mind; it had been replaced shortly after leaving with the realization that there would be some death. The journey had affected them in ways she would not have thought possible. Ron's jocund face was now ashen, the line of his mouth perpetually straight with foreboding. Harry's hair no longer had life in it. It was tamed by his need to survive. All his energy went to keeping up with Hermione.

Hermione held strength in the hope that her intellect and the power of her adept hand at magic would guide them. Harry would be the final battle, but she would be the force that saved him before he would finally meet his final use. She knew he would have died by now had it not been for her. She had changed though. She began to think, and without shame, that Ron was feckless. She thought of him and his inability to defend himself as a hindrance to their cause. He had made mistakes, even with her explicit instructions. Because of him, the Death Eaters had known where they were even as much as a week before. Had it not been for her quick thinking, they'd be dead.

Perhaps Ron would kill them? Her conversations with Ron were not the energized usual of annoyance and disapproval, they were marked with grave importance. She never admired his face, but now she thought it stupid. Every moment was spent in the mode of survival.

On occasion, when Ron and Harry slept, gaining what strength they could, Hermione wandered out in the night and admired the world at her reach. She would see beauty in what she could, before it would completely fade. These moments were fugacious, but her mind was alive. She would be changed internally by beauty; just as she would be changed internally by the profundity of the words of books she would sometimes read in the night. She did not feel the need to sleep for long. Meager hours would suffice. Time where she could see what was beyond her gave her what rest never would, the impetus to keep going.

She could see the outline of a figure in a hood approaching.

"Tortus," she yelled. The figure froze in the invisible ropes that bound his feet and hands to the floor.

The figure was lean, and the fabric of his cloak was expensive. She lifted the hood of his cloak and looked at his face. She knew who he was, but she was stricken first by the despondence in his eyes. Fragility haunted him. He did not ask for an invitation to speak, and his voice did not plead. The voice he spoke with was hollow.

"I knew where you were. A Death Eater put a tracking device on Weasley. I was in charge of it. I escaped him; there are no others with me." She did not speak. "You have doubtless thought me cruel; I cannot say that killing me would not be condign. However cruel I was, I was not heartless. I used to read things. I loved literature and poetry; I was molded as a person by everything I read. I was aware of the nuances of the world, the power of subtlety in everything around. I figured you might understand that."

"Malfoy," she whispered, her voice barely audible in the rain. "You once said you were in it for your parents, to protect them. You were asked once to join our cause. Go back to your parents."

"I cannot say I loved them. I can say it was my duty to. I can say I was told to love them, and in the capacity of my soul to do what was right, I thought it moral to kill the world for them. You have to understand that the world I have seen, I was raised with violence; I have known it for these many years of life, but I had not known rape. I saw it. I've never... um... been with a girl..." His eyes met hers for a moment and shied away. "More and more I understood that the world of poetry and chivalry was dying, and I had known before that it was not only there that it was dying, but everywhere I looked. So I tried to be honorable in the only way I knew how to be. I thought the world was lost anyway... I should die. If you've ever known suicide, you will know that it is not just the world that haunts your thoughts; it is your own decisions that plague you. I began to think of who I would become, in a world where poetry did not even exist in books, where it would have been wiped from my recollection by the horrors I would have committed. I thought that there was nothing I could do except die. Perhaps Potter and Weasley are better than they, but they fight superficially I'm sure. I do not think they feel profoundly. I could not join them. Instead I would die. And I think I cried, because everything I had known was stolen, I had been unable to realize that my back so full of scars should have been smooth. I didn't want to live. I thought of every tragedy I have seen, every tragedy I had yet to face, and every perfidy of mankind around the world regardless of dark of light... the perfidy of being superficial... and then I thought of you."

She did not want to think. She did not want to do anything. He was enigmatic, this impossible source of honesty and virtue. She was ambivalent. The conflict and contradiction of emotions and expectations and logic did not let her speak.

"I did something." His hands began to shake. It was very slight, but there was a progression of physical manifestations of emotion across his face stemming from his fragility. His voice quivered with the knowledge of something he had done. "I killed my father. I thought I would show you his head, but it was impractical. I found a book on how to remove the Dark Mark with the dark spell involving a potion with my father's finger. It's erased."

She stepped behind him and tore off his shirt. There were whip marks on his back and the letters LM. On his arm, there was flesh burnt and red at once. She dug her nails unintentionally into this place and he yelped.

"Revelare," she whispered. Images of Lucius Malfoy with a knife and whip began to show. "We had this figured out. Nobody besides us would come. And even then, bringing Ron along was a mistake. How could you do this? You could have left us alone. You could have just run away."

"I have information."

"You think I don't know that?" She undid the binding spell. "We're going to wake Harry and Ron up."

"What about my shirt?"

"They're going to see it, Malfoy." He reached out his hand and turned her around to face him.

"You're smart. You can convince them." She could see his fine features in the light made wet by the rain. She decided then that he had the most beautiful face of any man she had ever seen. It was not rugged; it was almost feminine, but classically proportioned.

"It'll take every bit of intellect to save you from them killing you."

"Granger," said Draco, "I wanted to thank you for doing this. I don't think I would have in your circumstance."

"I'm ambivalent about you." As she walked to the boys' tent, she imagined Draco killing his father. She imagined what went through his head. She was intimidated by this person now. He scared her in a way he would never have been able to when they were at Hogwarts.

When all was explained, Ron took a deep breath and slapped Hermione angrily across the face. "You are stupid." His slap stung like salt on a wound, a wound festered by awareness of his incompetence.

Harry interceded." He can be her responsibility. If he is going to stay here, let her take care of him. He can sleep in her tent, walk where she walks, and we'll take him along."

"He can't sleep with me," Hermione stated. "I'm a girl, and besides, he's proven himself. All my life, I've been serving you. For all these years it was all about you, all about me sacrificing for you."

"You know we still hate you?" Harry asked Draco as he laid out his bed in the wandlight.

"Surely it is not so greatly as I hate you." Had Harry looked at Draco's eyes as he said this, he might have known the trouble bringing him along would create. "You'll find out soon enough that I'm valuable. I know how to protect against the vampires and such that lay around these parts."

Draco set his bed in a corner of the tent, away from the other two boys.

He did not sleep in it. He wandered outside, to where he knew she would be. "Why did you accept me?"

Her voice was low and soft. "All your life you are going to be haunted by murdering your father. I knew at once that this is going to play over and over in your head. If we win this war, we will all be haunted. You will suffer for the rest of your life, because I found out tonight that you are a good person. You're more noble than the world is prepared to offer. I feel like I want to know your every facet, your every passion, every flaw you have." She proceeded to step away. "I'm too shocked to unravel your enigma now."

"You realize I don't care about your cause?"

"It doesn't matter. You're helping it, and part of you does. Part of you sees some glimpse of the possibilities for feeling in the world you'll be fighting for. If you even look at the flower here, the faintest most delicate scent. Is that beautiful?"

"It's not profound. It's pulchritudinous, but not profound. Perhaps there are those who feel as I in this world."

"I do."

"If you weren't here, I would not be helping this cause. I would be dead, and my father alive. For that I thank you also."

The night lasted a while, and all of them slept with the knowledge that they would confront something transcending their own reasons for fighting. On them, the world depended. Even so, the four were merely ghosts of a former world.

On the forest floor, Hermione found something, a sort of page of Draco's neat script.

I knew with my ability to love so deeply that I would suffer if I ever would come to consuming life of slaving away for love. I ran it again over and over in my mind. I would die for love, suffer for love, kill for love. I should die for love before having known it, only the phantom that tells you how love is and does not have a face. I knew I could never love a person like my father, but where was the guarantee I would not? And even if I could find someone with a soul sculpted from the same shape of clay as mine, would I not suffer in our shared tendencies towards the extremes of ecstasy and despondence?

Perhaps it was part of a letter, perhaps a note, a story, a novel? There was something enigmatic about him, something so haunted, so arresting in his eyes.

* * * * * * * * * * *

When morning came and illuminated the interior of the tent, Hermione, who ventured inside could not help but to compare the rosy light to silken threads hung loose from the loom of the clouds.

When Draco awoke, he could see the soft, angelic beauty of her face inundated with the light, and felt captivated by the aesthetic in front of him. It was a feeling familiar to him, like the voice of inspiration at times of ecstasy. Inspiration came to him as an urge. Intoxicated by beauty around him, he needed to capture it, just to breathe. There was no use in beauty unless he could own it. This possession over him was evanescent and changed slowly. The thing which took its place coaxed memories in his mind in hand with the muddled picture of regret.

"Malfoy," said Hermione.

"Granger," he returned, without the slightest allusion to emotion in his voice, just the hollow that can be accredited to an emptiness that any person like him would trade for unbearable pain, if only to feel alive in the world. Emptiness was bred from survival, and survival was oblivious to desire.

"We have identified horcuxes. There is one we have not found. For a week we stayed at Hogwarts. In the restricted section was a book about prophecy. We caught information about an aqueous reverse seer who holds the records of time, who has seen all and knows nothing of the past." His mind wanted nothing to do with what she was saying. Part of him just wanted to look at the face in front of him.

"I have heard of such a creature from Snape." He closed his eyes and smiled while his forehead tightened, and his fists clenched. "It is held by the vampires of Scotland. They have a castle near Edinburg. I will give them my father's blood that I took in a vial as potential proof for you to take me in. They are Voldemort's allies." She nodded.

"This seems planned." He opened his Prussian blue eyes and examined her own tsavorite ones with a ferocity of outrage.

"Do not doubt the veracity of this statement: I have not planned enough as it is. Do not think that I am safe."

"You think you'll die when you find Voldemort?" she questioned, strongly resisting the urge to yield to the intimidating glances.

"I don't care if I die. I just care about who I'm able to kill before I go." The peremptory reply demanded all of her mental faculties. She could not reply. He stretched and stood up, completely dressed. He had indubitably been asleep for hours, and still he looked impeccable. He straightened his clothes for non-existent wrinkles and looked again at her. "I'm going to change."

"In front of Ron and Harry?" she asked, surprised that he would do it. "I planned to use a sleeping charm on them. Even if I didn't though, I doubt they'd want to look."

"I took off your shirt last night because I wanted to see if you had the Dark Mark."

"I'm taking off more than my shirt."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Flashback

Ginny had arrived at school, and noticed as soon as she came on the train, a face she recognized. She looked at his robes and noticed the colors of Slytherin.

"You were the one at Bill's wedding," she said.

He nodded. "I come with a message from an admirer." His features were sharp and immobile, as if sculpted into stone by a man who thought it ridiculous to refine any features. Without refinement, she could not call his face rugged. It was not soft, but there were no vestiges of hair or of lines at the sides of his brow. His chin could have used a cleft, but had none.

"If it's from Harry, you can tell him I'm taken." She eyed him with disgust and the flicker of emotion on his face spelled out cruelty and humor.

"You aren't taken, but you will be." His voice was steely. "It's a pity I couldn't take you."

"Excuse me, but I've never taken kindly to those who speak in riddles."

"Tom Riddle wants you."

"Excuse me," she said, "I don't know a Tom Riddle."

"He wants you Ginevra." She wanted to ask him how he knew her name, but thought better of it.

"How is that supposed to happen?"

"In exactly four months, you will wander into the Forbidden Forest at ten o'clock pm."

"Great, I'll put it in my calendar."

* * * * * * * * * * *

Ginevra Weasley had shocked her parents with how perfunctory she became at the news of Voldemort's new power. In her mind, and in her heart, bruised by the rejection of a man who she had only dated to replace the love she had carried for another, she felt glad.

Ginny began to spend the hours repeating the name of Tom on her lips with a subtle smile and a downcast gaze.

Ginny was going to run away. She couldn't stand the ache of the callow fantasies that had long occupied her mind. She wanted it again, and now she could have him, she could have her Tom and be free of it.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"I have to go," Ron panicked, racing through the forest, or rather hopping. He had also managed to tug on Harry's sleeve, at which Draco raised an eyebrow.

"You don't suppose they're doing anything?" she questioned.

"You know Granger," Draco started, the intensity of his eyes growing softer with appreciation, "you have a dramatic and arresting beauty, and classic features."

"Just because they've discovered their love for eachother doesn't mean it's in the air."

"You are presumptuous, aren't you Granger?" He shrugged. "That wasn't my point. My point was that Ronald Weasley is so ugly that he'd have to get drunk to look at himself in the mirror. I wanted to ask because it bothers me that he dated you."

"I liked him once, he used to be funny once."

"He's hardly a wit." Draco smiled. "Ten points lower, and he'd have the I.Q. of a geranium." Hermione lauged warmly and Draco did for a moment too.

"You're implying that he's pretty."

"Who's pretty?" asked Harry from behind, with Ron.

"I guess nothing happened between those two."

"It's a shame, I was really starting to enjoy myself."

"You wouldn't have, if you look into the distance you can see four unicorns," Hermione

said. Indeed there were four unicorns, none of them more than thirty feet in front of them. "They're excellent runners, you know," said Hermione.

Draco did not waste any time in running up to them. The whitest amongst them looked into his eyes and nodded, and inched its way up to him before kneeling in approval and allowing him to mount her. Draco petted the behemoth in a way that none of them would have expected. It was obvious that Draco was taken with it. He persuaded the creature to walk to the gang, and they all held their mouths open.

"I thought unicorns didn't like guys," Ron voiced in shock. "That's what we were told in Care for Magical Creatures class."

"Well now you have proven to what depths you are inane, we might as well make a move for it if we are going to reach the vampires before sunrise." Ron did not waste time in running. The unicorns did not react with him as they had with Draco, they began to huff and drag their hooves in a manner most reminiscent of a bull preparing to charge. One unicorn with a particularly large horn, charged in an instants, a silver mercurial dash. It stood up and neighed and took a hoof and kicked Ron in the groin. The scream emitted resembled in its complex cacophony the sound of a banshee and mandrake in one ear-splitting combination. The noise subsided into the high pitched yelps of a prepubescent boy with two broken legs and a deep gash in his hip. Hermione began to run towards him. All were expecting her to comfort him, but she didn't, she began hitting him.

She yelled as she did, "You said you were a virgin and would wait for me you lying prick." Harry held her back after indulging in the sight with a wry smile as long as was excusable.

Draco sighed dramatically, "I suppose the ugliest of us can even get laid." He leaned forward, and hugged the neck of the unicorn he rode. "It doesn't matter, he can ride with one of you, so long as you are virgins."

"I'm not a virgin," said Harry triumphantly. The unicorn that had kicked Ron turned to Harry and licked him.

"He can ride with you then," said Draco to Harry. "The two liars, the virginal, and the not so virginal one together." Hermione nodded and claimed a unicorn of her own, and approached Draco, whispering something in his ear the other two couldn't make out.

"Ow..." moaned Ron, operatically.

"Just be thankful it wasn't its horn. You'd be able to make a fine career as a castrato," Draco pointed out. Hermione made a little motion with her hands involving holding something, cutting it off, and throwing it behind her. She laughed deviantly.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Ginny, being a girl of limited means, did not have clothes that fit, she was far too tall for

the clothes her mother had given her. She did not like the feel of polyester on her skin. She decided instead to wear something silken. She would run away in silk, a present from Harry. Wouldn't it be ironic to meet Tom wearing silk given to her from Harry?

The cold was bearable; the wind was not, the night she ran away. She half wished for the worn out fleece and cotton of her unfitting clothes. She remained determined as she sauntered into the forest with the wind caressing her hair. Not a typical beauty, she was pleased to see the way the boys had looked at her as she dressed in silk, turning their head because of the allure of her sexuality, so powerful as to transcend her lack of beauty and charm so many.

As she came into the forest, she heard a snake and smiled. She let unconsciousness claim her frame and the last thought before she succumbed was of Tom.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The castle they found surrounded perpetually by lightning did not resemble architecture. It was a series of caves mounted opulently and majestically, and if one squinted the eyes, one might say that there was a resemblance to a palace. Hermione had expected the unicorns to stop before mounting the giant stairway to the first caves. How many vampires had been incubuses and held harems of their own within their caves? She reasoned they did not stop because they were the undead, and immortal, had no reason to suck the blood of unicorns, and the unicorns had no interest in the vampires' virginity or lack thereof.

Ron held to Harry in a way that suggested something beyond platonic kinsmanship, and Hermione took it in with definite shadenfreude. She glanced intermittently at Draco who whispered sweet words of encouragement to his unicorn all the while. Having enough, she struck conversation with Draco the moment the ascension to the vampires' castle began. They were many feet away from Harry and Ron, and with low voices were given privacy. "To be honest, I didn't believe you when you said you were a virgin," she said sociably.

His preoccupation with his unicorn ended and he confronted her with a wide grin. "Why?"

"It's obvious that at school, many girls were fond of you."

"Excuse me," he said.

"You're good looking," she said matter-of-factly, "you had the opportunity."

"I don't believe in casual sex." He smiled in embarrassment, "I suppose I'm waiting, until love at least, and I mean the type where I'm sure it'll end up in marriage and sex and babies."

"You're a conundrum."

"Pardon."

"You murder your father without attrition, and here you are telling me you want to be a virgin until you marry."

"I didn't say I'd wait until marriage, and my father did something to me."

"What did he do, tell you to be a bad boy?" He huffed dramatically.

"He was going to kill me," he lied.

"What kind of person have you been all your life, Draco Malfoy?"

"I told you I was disillusioned with humanity, your friends over there could drown in the Great Lake, and I'd laugh with mirth and joviality. I'd immerse myself in some tragic novel and think to myself how superficial they were." He sighed. "It's who I am."

"You hate them."

"I hate everybody." He smiled. "I like hating everybody; it gives me peace of mind."

"If I was drowning in the Great Lake, would you rescue me?"

"I told you that you were different."

"That isn't consistent with the way you've treated me for the past seven years."

"Sometimes, when I was inundated with my disgust at the rest of the world, I didn't think to look past the way you would be the same as your unfortunate friends."

"If mine are unfortunate, I would love to coin a word to call Crabbe and Goyle."

"Yes, I'd rescue you Granger. Just accept it and move on before I change my mind."

"You wouldn't."

"Even so, you're accomplishing nothing." He leaned forward again and hugged the unicorn's neck.

"What a world we live in." She took her hand and pointed to the pocket of her pants and enlarged a cloak in front of her. Draco gave it a look.

"What is that despicable material?"

"Moire, I think." He made a horrified face and blew it up in front of her. Ron watched the flames with delight on his face.

"Take this," he said, "enlarging a silken creation with double-shell ruffle sewn in vertical sinusoids at the edge of her cloak and ending in a coil and completed by brocade to suggest a bouquet of flowers."

"It's pink."

"You look good in pink." He smiled warmly. "It was my mother's; bless her soul, wherever she is." He handed it to her. "She's not dead, if that's what you're thinking."

"You love your mother?"

"The only person I ever have." She put it on. "What is your plan with the vampires?" he asked the now impeccably dressed Hermione.

"We have none."

Harry walked up to Hermione and tried to ask her something, but Draco wouldn't have it.

"You never told me why you didn't murder me when you first saw me," Draco said.

"Hermione would have killed me afterwards, she controls everything."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"This is her," said Voldemort, "you may go." He delivered an incantation and looked in a mirror and smiled. He was Tom Riddle.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The interior of the cave did not resemble the exterior, it was decorated like a cottage in the French country. A single vampire with horribly pronounced features and circles under his eyes surveyed the unicorn-riding bunch with a mixture of comic delight and annoyance.

"The last thing we need is the virgin squad," said the dry voice with a thick Scottish accent.

"With all this chintz and flowers, we thought our virginity would be apropos," said Draco.

"I'm not a virgin," said Ron, proudly. "I did it lots of times."

Hermione's face turned purple. "We have an offering, his blood for a look at the past," she said.

Ron screamed like an infant being delivered from the womb. "That won't be necessary," said Draco. "As useless as he is, his blood is polluted with filth and penury."

The vampire bolted in a flash to where Draco sat on his unicorn. "I'm listening."

"I have the blood of Lucius Malfoy in this vial." He brought out a vial and enlarged it into a gallon-sized one.

"You may stay for the night and morning, I promise you we won't bite." He smiled at Hermione, Draco, and Harry, but gave a lusty look at Ron. "I will review this with the king, if he likes it, we will let you see what you wish in our pool, if not, we will turn you away and let you escape with your lives."

"Fair enough," said Draco.

"My wife will lead you to your rooms." The three unicorns were tied to a stable, and Draco waved goodbye tenderly. A tall, dark woman with a tan unbefitting of vampires lead them to a chamber with two adjacent rooms. She gave Draco a lusty look and gave him the feeling she was undressing him with her eyes. He shook his head.

"Two beds per room." She disappeared behind.

"I'm not sleeping with Malfoy!" Ron interjected.

"Well you certainly aren't sleeping with me," said Hermione.

"She'll sleep with me," said Draco. Harry was about to say something, "Don't worry

Potter, I still intend to use the unicorns when we finish."

"Fine," said Harry. "I'll kill you if you can't."

"I seriously doubt that."

111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

Draco was not modest about taking his shirt off in front of Hermione. She examined the front of his torso with wonder. It was toned and muscular. There were a few scars on his front, but they were few and scarce. "Are you averse to a bit of nocturnal reading?" he asked.

"No, what do you have."

"Shakespeare's sonnets, Great Expectations, Hogwarts a History, Les Miserables, Crime and Punishment..." She gasped.

"Most of those are muggle books."

"They're about the human condition, not magic."

"Sorry,"

"Want to borrow a book?"

"I'll read Great Expectations." Her mellifluous voice glided over the portion detailing

Miss Havisham strolling about the room proportionally to the amount of years she had lived alone, away from the husband who abandoned her on that wedding day, giving every nuance of verbal expression to give light to the bitterness, anguish, and the desperate longing of Miss Havisham's character.

Draco remembered the night he killed his father. She turned the book over to ask him a question, but he was in a trance. Subtly, his hands began to tremble and his eyes began to reflect on some unspeakable past, and then tears began to roll down his cheeks. Hermione was agog, to find him vulnerable like this in her sight. More and more she could see the underlying tenderness of his character. She went to his bed and surrounded his frame with the warm embrace of her arms. His arms did not know how to return it, but he learned, the first he had known of how to give a hug or how to receive one.

"I'm sorry you know, about the things I've done and said to you." He collapsed into her arms. "There are things I've done, things I'm planning to do. I regret in the night, things that I've done, self-invented ghosts of remorse and error, and ghosts of unrealized love, to feel the height of ecstasy and despondence in love. I have killed, I have killed because I thought..." She put her face on his and kissed him hungrily. He did not return it, or stop her. She noticed the taste of salt, the smoothness of his lips. He was not made of stone, scarcely knowing why, he returned her ardor and stroked the Pre-Raphaelite hair that had long since captivated him. He could feel his heart soar in the hope of feeling. His heart had always opened up with kissing girls, but now it seemed to be more and more veritable that he cared for her. Something in her touched his heart. And he began to regret what he was going to do. She massaged his roughened back and coaxed his groans. He parted from her mouth and kissed her Cygnus neck with passion. She tugged at the collar of her shirt and attempted to pull it up. His hands forcibly grabbed her wrists and pulled them down. "No."

"You don't want to?"

"I was serious you know, when I said I wouldn't do it." She moved away.

"You've awakened something within me. I can't remember feeling this way ever before, some intellectual parity, there's something in your soul that I feel I've known." She walked away and sat on her bed.

"Hermione," Draco said softly, "I want you to fall asleep in my arms."

"Is that wise?"

"What you feel isn't wise, nor is what I feel, but it's who I am." She ensconced herself into his arms and let sleep overtake her.

1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

The morning came with Harry opening the door of Draco and Hermione's room. Harry bound Draco to the bed and pulled Hermione up with a great force. "How long has this been going on?" Harry asked.

"We haven't done anything. The room was cold, we needed to keep warm." Harry gave her a look. "I like him," she said, he hasn't opened up to you like he has with me."

"You know I've had a crush on you..." She shook her head.

"That's a lie."

"Even if it is a lie, at least I'm not snogging the biggest prick to ever walk the earth."

"Really, that statement drives me insane. Are you a stalker, Potter?"

"How did you get out of the hex?" asked Harry.

"You thought I couldn't get out?" Draco looked at her with a wry grin and opened the

door to Ron's room. "Weasley..."

"We have to wait until night to go to the pool of future and past?" asked Harry.

"I don't mind at all," said Draco. "Hemione and I have lots of catching up to do anyhow."

1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediment. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever fixed mark

That looks on tempest and is never shaken

It is the star to every wand'ring bark

Whose worth's unknown though its height be taken

Love's not time's fool though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved

Then I never writ, nor has man ever loved

1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

The shadow of monotony staid still beneath the hands of the clock in his room. The door opened, and Hermione stood with an understated sadness in her eyes. "I want to talk with you, and without Ron." Ron muttered something crass under his breath and Harry nodded.

"All through my time with Ron, I always wondered what it would be like to kiss you."

"Are you with him now?" She shook her head.

"I don't know." Harry collapsed against the wall. "I don't think so."

Harry realized that this was his chance and he kissed her on the mouth. She melted for a moment but pulled away. "When I found you there, I was jealous." He smiled warmly. "I know this isn't the right time, but I want you to date me."

"He didn't kiss me, I kissed him first." She backed away. "We haven't talked about it. I just wanted to tell you first that you had a chance with me, but I don't think it would've worked." She stroked Harry's cheek. "We're so different. You're a dear friend, but I'll never feel that way about you because we're so different."

"And he isn't different?"

"He's like me, Harry, I truly think he is."

1111111111111111111111111111111111111

All at once, Ginevra felt a familiar pining for the sinister affection she once knew. The face she had adulated in her youth with its sharp features and the capacity for the secrets of consuming love was now before her, and she bowed to it. "Tom, I've waited for so long."

His mouth was now upon hers, and it was new because adulation had not allowed the physical manifestations of love. It was in fact the first time she had touched him. And at first touch there was kissing.

All of youth's fantasies were about to be realized and were realized now.

* * * * * * * * *

The vampire they met at the entrance was immediately in Ron's room at sunset. "You're lucky, the king has allowed you entrance into the pool."

Draco dressed in a heavy fur, Hermione wore Draco's cloak, Harry wore a red cloak with a high thread count, and Ron wore polyester. There were many stairs, one after the other winding on and on and on. The vampire that led them through was a blonde with a crooked nose, and held a torch with green flames. Draco walked ahead of everyone, with Harry a couple steps behind. Hermione stood many steps behind with Ron.

They reached the top level at last with its dank rancorous atmosphere.

They noticed at once the fog over a giant pool, and a man before it with white features, light blue eyes, and painted red lips. "I am the king of this domain. I have allowed you entrance into this pool. We are thankful for the blood, it will do much to foster the children of the night." His cold marble face seemed to momentarily gain an evil color.

They could hear the sounds of squeaks in the other room to the tune of "Music of the

Night."

"What music they make," said Hermione, covering her ears.

"Silence!" bellowed the king. Hermione observed he had a regal air about him. "I

consulted the future to see what would happen if we kept you here for other reasons."

"The future wasn't no good," sang the vampire who had escorted them.

"You were obviously important, so I knew I would have to help you. If you had fought, you would have murdered my sixty wives, all who ache each night for contact when I am not with them."

"Where are they?" asked Ron

"How are we to see the past?" asked Harry.

"You must consult the seer." All at once, a thousand bubbles came, and Hermione shrieked.

"It's the giant squid." Indeed it was, and when it spoke it was thunderous.

"You," he spoke, pointing to Draco. "You are the favorite student of my love. He is not at Hogwarts, where is he?" Draco gave him the sort of condescending look he gave Harry and Ron when Hermione wasn't looking. "I want Ducky. You might know him as Snape."

"You had a love affair with Snape," asked Draco incredulously.

"One day, hurt by every squid's refusal to be with me based on my greasy tentacles, I was looking on the land. All of a sudden I saw Ducky, with his greasy hair and knew it was meant to be. Many a day we would float on the giant lake and sing the Rubber ducky song from Sesame Street. Not to mention, the sex was amazing."

"I think I'm going to be sick," said Harry.

"It was true love," continued the squid, "until he started chasing after that Evans woman." Harry fainted. The vampires all of a sudden raced to him, but Ron flashed a stake at them with a cross.

"Snape's gone after Trevor, Neville's toad," lied Hermione.

"But Trevor was my special friend."

"Apparently he's a lot of creatures' special friends," Ron whispered under his breath.

"We're here to see the final horcrux," said Hermione, "we're chasing Voldemort. If you help us, we'll return Ducky to you for all of the bathtimes you want."

"We're allied with Voldemort, you insolent girl," said the king vampire.

"You will listen to her!" exclaimed the giant squid. "I know how you feel about water."

The king vampire was silenced.

"Harry Potter is the last horcux."

"Thank goodness he's knocked out," said Draco with a malicious smile. Hermione

walked up to him and punched him in the chest.

* * * * * * * * * *

They were all grateful that Harry was unconscious. They all knew they would have to tell him a lie.

"I knew this was going to happen," said Ron despairingly. "He's my best mate, whenever

I got laid, I told him, whenever I got into a fight, I told him."

"Personally, I wish both of you were the horcruxes," said Draco. "Potter and Weasley, dead. I can't think of anything more glorious." Hermione ignored him.

"We'll tell him it's the ring of Voldemort," said Hermione.

"Someone has to kill Harry as he's killing Voldemort." Ron began to cry, and Hermione felt a tear roll down her cheek. "I don't have the heart."

"I'll do it. Please let me do it," said Draco with his hands in the air.

"This is hard for us."

* * * * * * * * * *

Narcissa Malfoy was a cold woman with a cruelty festering in her heart. She did not spend her time in trivial pursuits but harbored revenge in her heart.

Retribution was her favorite word. Draco Malfoy was young and capable, and she raised him to worship her. When he grew up, he would kill for her.

She remembered every death of every friend, every Death Eater uncle and cousin, and Draco acquiesced to kill the murderers every time.

* * * * * * * * * *

They had decided to go shopping and get food for the last time, because Harry would not be alive when they returned.

The path from the vampires to town stretched on an on as a snake slithering in the desert.

Hermione kept crying intermittently, and cried harder every time Harry tried to comfort her. Her eyes were wasted and the will to preserve left her slowly. She did not have the strength that she once had. The possibility of death was not what she faced now. She knew she was going to face it. She was going to go all this way, and face it.

Draco smiled many times because he was happy that Harry was going to die. He heard the words of his mother over and over in his mind. She wanted Harry Potter dead for killing her uncle, and Ron Weasley dead for killing her cousin. That was not to say Draco didn't have his own reasons. He hated the superficiality of the two boys. To him, they were the quiddity of selfishness.

In all his joy, he still would gaze at Hermione's forlorn face and feel the shadow of attrition. Draco had within his soul a true dualism. He hated, but he could also love more deeply than others could be persuaded to feel. .

He had told her what Hermione wanted to hear. It was true he did not hate her, but neither did her like her. The other night he had been attracted to her, and bared the underlying humanity he never had any wish to display, and it scared him. But as he journeyed on, he began to miss the talks he would have with her. Before, when she was bored with the density of Ron and Harry, she would go to him and she'd talk philosophy. This is intellect, he'd say to himself.

When night came and covered the wood with stars, Draco came out of the tent and sauntered to Hermione's and found her there.

"He's just a friend," he said.

"Why are you here?"

"You're one of the most stunning women I have ever seen." He did not like her, he thought. He was only attracted. He wandered to where she was and sat behind her, stretching her shirt over her shoulder and kissing it. "What do you want?" he asked in a hollow voice.

"I want to understand happiness beyond the scope of whatever any person I've ever known can say."

"You don't know the first thing about how to get it."

"I want to know love that is consuming. I want to feel the ecstasies that can only be ascribed of love beyond what Harry or Ron have ever felt. I've never been in love, but I think the closest I've ever come to it was Harry. It would be smart to end up with Harry, I'd be contented all of my days. Part of me though would be lacking, some part of me able to understand the depth of devotion, the ability to connect profoundly with someone who could understand me. I know that I wouldn't feel the usual pain of love with Harry, but never would I feel complete. I want to know every passion of my love. I want to feel the despondence that would result, the absolute consuming nature of love's pain just to know how it feels. I want to experience it whether it's healthy, destructive, or sinister. I can feel that way."

All at once Draco turned her around and looked into her eyes. She would be his, in her depths of feeling and intellect. Never mind that she would never understand his hatred. She would never find a man more willing to succumb to love, more willing to be molded by love. "Hermione!" he groaned, strain written on his voice. The intensity of his feelings then crept into him. "You are my soul." The feeling of drowning into her arms and drowning his mouth in hers at once thrilled and scared him. Here was a girl who had every bit of potential to hurt him, a girl who could claim him.

It was not long before her fingers traced scars on his bare torso, and his hands were massaging her lower back. His mouth proceeded to fondle her neck, and she moaned. "You told me you didn't want this," she said quietly.

"I love you." She collapsed within his arms. "I've found you." His eyes held the truth in their gaze.

"I have known pain in the drive to create." He reminisced of their talks, the poetry they had written and shared, she would be his muse.

"You can have me. I am yours to do with what you will." In his head, as she pulled on the pants at his waist, there was desire and want. "When the war is over," he said. She nodded and kissed him. As she fused with him, he thought she would not care when Ron and Harry were dead, she would be too consumed with him.

In the recesses of her soul she knew that he would never be like Harry. He would never have the slightest interest in the well-being of the world. Everything he did had a personal reason, and Hermione did not mind that he was this way.

* * * * * * * * * * *

"Why did you kill your father?" asked Hermione, massaging the burn on his arm where the dark mark used to be.

"You shouldn't ask me that," he replied.

"I'm with you, whatever you did."

"He was with another woman," he said, "her eyes were yellow and her accent gauche. She

was uncouth, and cold, and hard."

Hermione stroked his shoulder in encouragement.

"My mother told me to kill him. I told her of the women he'd raped, and that he told this woman he loved her. I prepared to leave the world I knew. I had killed for them, and I learned to compact it in my mind so I would not be haunted by remorse or penitence. I could not compact the images of my father with that woman telling her he loved her. Neither could I compact the way they raped the girls they'd bring to the meetings. I had prepared to leave them, and when my name was called to be initiated into the raping, I killed the woman he had been with, the girl I was supposed to rape, and my father. I apparated with a vial of my father's blood so I might rid myself of this mark." Hermione traced the burn on his forearm.

"How many people have you killed?" she asked.

"I have counted up to twenty-six," he said.

"Do you regret what you did?" she asked.

"No, I do not regret what I did. I am sorry that they are dead, but I am not ashamed of my actions." She was five foot ten, and on his six foot frame, she had to crouch to bury her head into his chest and waste the tears he would not shed. He pulled her up, and wiped a tear, and touched his forehead to hers. "If you cry, I shall cry. It will not be from remorse, but at your suffering," he said.

"If I could only mold you into something kinder, something better," she said.

"You could mold me, I sought to be molded by love," he replied. "I don't think you want me to be kinder, I don't think you want me to support the cause as you do."

"I'm not sure."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Harry was lying on his bed when he was awakened by the sound of feet approaching. Ever vigilant, he drew out his wand and uttered, "Lumos." He could see Hermione with the barest of smiles on her face. "Every part of me that is not Draco's is yours. I always have been yours. The part of me that started SPEW was yours and the part that rescued Sirius was yours, and little girl who cried because you hated her." Harry placed his mouth on hers and she did not protest. Initially stunned, she met it with all the parts of her soul that could, the sweeter, kinder places wasting away with the days.

"Where's Malfoy?"

"Sleeping in my tent." His mouth was back on hers, and he pulled up his shirt. He was

not as muscular as Draco, but his skin was not bruised and scarred. She began to kiss his collar and he moaned in the physical ecstasy. His hands were nimble in removing her blouse and in kissing her neck. His hands unclasped her bra and she was surprised at the urgency of his touch. She bade him rehook it.

She couldn't help but to compare Harry to Draco. In Harry's arms, every thing she did to kiss him was planned, something she had to think about. His arms were warm, and there was a feeling of safety. There was a stability.

In Draco's embrace, she felt like her heart was shattering. She would kiss him and wake up to see her soul, the dark, intellectual, cruel person she was. And wasn't she being cruel to kiss Harry now?

In Draco's arms, she felt like his arms were her own. She felt like this was who she was, that she was fated to be with him. His mouth could be poetic, or intimidate her with the razor of his wit. She found him beautiful in a way that she could never find Harry. His face was gentle. His eyes were not. His eyes seared against her own. They were intoxicated with her, in love with her. They adored her, and they hated her for the power she held over him. He celebrated his vulnerability with her, and was scared of it. But in him, she found a man she could love infinitely, and never admire his character.

* * * * * * * * * *

Draco had woken up aware of his being alone. "Hermione," he yelled in frustration. He

ran outside shirtless and barefoot, cutting his feet with the incisive twigs on the floor. He did not find her outside, so he wandered into the tent in which he was meant to sleep.

Harry was caressing her hands and kissing her.

There was not time enough to realize what she had done, the feeling of betrayal and longing he felt at that moment, trying to find her in his loneliness and coming out with her and him together.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"I can't," she said, as his hands went to unbutton the jeans that would not let his hands slip under. She couldn't do it because the agony of what she was doing began to haunt her.

"You said you loved me." She began to cry.

"I know I shouldn't, but part of me needed to know what it would be like to be in the arms of Harry Potter." She felt the tears overwhelm her. "You're going to die. You're the last horcrux." She handed him his shirt. "When I say love to you, I mean that you have given me something, you have given me friendship for the last seven years. I'm eighteen now, and so are you, but I think I know who I am, and it took a decision to know." She was now fully dressed and her eyes were lit with anger. "I will never be as brave as you are, or as good, but if you were to live, I wouldn't keep loving you. I could feel it fade the moment I saw him in the forest. He's better looking, and he loves me in a way that defines who he is, and you will always be defined by being Harry Potter. You're elegy will call you a hero, not a lover. Draco could love me in a way you couldn't. That isn't to say your love isn't real, but it wouldn't stay there if I changed, and I'm changing. There was always some knowledge you had that I would place books and intellect over you and I have." She walked out the entrance and saw Draco with his back to the wall, naked. She dropped down beside him.

"You never said you loved me," he said quietly, "I said it, but you wouldn't." He took off a necklace he wore with a single tsavorite garnet. It brought out her eyes. "My mother gave it to me... she never told me she loved me, and sometimes I tried to tell myself she did, because sometimes she looked like she did. It wasn't enough; she should have told me that she loved me. I heard what you said in there, but it didn't seem like you loved me, the thing is when I want to be told that you tremble when I touch you, and when I look at you, your heart takes wing and sits upon a cloud and understands there is nothing better. You told him you loved him, and I knew that you didn't know what love is, you simply took my perception of love and made it poetic." His voice sounded in its hollow state. He handed her the necklace. "You can't say you love me when you don't," his voice cracked and he could feel the tears come out like music from the violin of his heart in his despondent concerto. "I told you that loving you would be painful, even if I knew you were mine. For those brief moments I deluded myself into thinking you did, it was painful, but it was the only bliss I have ever known. Now, I realize that you could love me, not today, but someday. I cannot love someone so much, and not know they would love me, for we were part of each other."

"But you want to hear it," she said. He nodded. "When I saw you in the forest, I thought you were the most beautiful man I had ever seen. When you talked, I was captivated by the depth of your feeling, by your enigma, by your intellect. You probably believe I couldn't love you so much as you love me. I have loved you all my life and never known you existed, never believed that someone like you could have survived. I'd wanted you to be kind, as Harry is, but one cannot wish for the moon and the stars and the world."

"I would be the world for you."

"I'm scared that you would." He climbed ontop of her and she admired the view of him naked upon her. "I love you." At last he understood she was his and held her in his arms. He got up and carried her to her tent, with his mouth on hers. One name would not be on the list... And there was potential that another two would be off should she ask.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Ginevra woke up covered in linen that surrounded her skin like the embrace of water, it surrounded her. Tom Riddle was not in her bed, he was a man with snake eyes and two nostrils resembling slits. She searched her mind and spoke his name, "Lord Voldemort," she said...

* * * * * * * * * * *

Flashback

Narcissa Malfoy had seen her son as he was hurrying out of the house. "Darling, where are you going?"

"I'm leaving, I can't be here. I'm going to track Potter down and kill Voldemort."

"You aren't brave," he grinned then.

"I just killed my father, which is the definition of bravery." Narcissa shook her head.

"Only Harry Potter can kill him. He killed my cousin. That Weasley boy just killed my

uncle. I want you to kill them, I've always been fond of retribution... and when you kill them, I want you to make them suffer." She smiled. "I have a list of people you want to kill, they're all part of that circle. When you kill them you'll have no reason to not do it in public, you'll come back a hero. But when you kill Harry Potter and his friends, you must do it in private"

"I will do as you ask." She kissed him on the cheek.

"Take money and commit the names to memory."

"Crabbe... his wife; my best friend

Potter... my cousin

Weasley...my uncle

MacNair... his brother; my former lover

Zabini... his brother; my former lover

Nott... his wife; my former lover

Granger... my uncle, my former lover, my friend, my cousin"