Balance

Chapter 20: Heads of House

Summary: We want four, we´ve got three, we need one...

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Harry stayed with McGonagall and Snape. Draco wasn´t really steady enough yet to be a good support for the Potions professor, especially not with Snape still in chainmail, and McGonagall seemed to be glad of Harry´s company. Woodwalker cleared a path for them to the most protected corner of the room. Dumbledore´s bed must have been moved there while they were still out in the storm.

Several of the teachers they passed greeted McGonagall or Snape, some of them with cool disdain and some with a nod of the head, or a small bow. Harry was startled to see Professor Lockhart tucked under a nearby bed, tied hand and foot with an elaborate scarf, and gagged with his own hat.

A young, exhausted-looking Pomfrey met them at the foot of an oversized bed, where Professor Sprout and Professor Flitwick were tucked in alongside of Dumbledore, one at each hand, and two more people, a witch and a wizard that Harry didn´t know, sat at his feet and his head. Dumbledore himself looked like a pale shadow against the pillow. He looked his full age to Harry, or more. His silver beard spread across the coverlet, still tangled with small sticks and matted in places with mud or worse. After a long, frightening moment, Harry began to discern the slight movements which signalled that Dumbledore was still breathing.

For now.

"I was beginning to think you´d never get here," Pomfrey cried, bursting into tears as she burrowed against McGonagall´s shoulder, and then lower against her side as the years fell away.

"It´s all right," McGonagall said, patting the sobbing girl on the back.. "It´s all right, Poppy. You´ve done well. And Severus has a trick or two up his sleeve. Don´t you, Professor Snape?"

Snape raised an incredulous eyebrow at McGonagall, who shrugged a little, coloring up. Pomfrey, who had gone quite young, looked up at Snape, scrubbing at her face with her hand and frowning. "Are you a mediwizard?"

"No." Snape said, soberly. "But I can help." He reached into his pockets for the potion vials that Filch had brought him.

"Thee should be takin´ thy help to the wee sma´ mon, then I´m thinkin´," a watching witch in a plaid robe said sourly. "Or there willna be enowleft o´ Ravenclaw to hatch afresh." She stepped forward and picked up Flitwick, passing him to Woodwalker before taking his place on the bed. "Don´t ye be wastin´ time at it," she ordered, and closed her eyes.

As Woodwalker turned to Snape, Harry got a good look at the Flitwick, and he was appalled. There were bruises everywhere, and where there weren´t bruises there were bandages. Harry thought Woodwalker seemed surprised by the fragility of his sudden burden - at any rate he was getting younger, and Harry hastened to help support the little Charms Professor in case the wizard from the past disappeared again.

Snape must have thought of that too, because he signalled Draco to help as well. Just in time. Woodwalker flickered for a moment and vanished. A small boy with a brown braid and a Hufflepuff badge on his cloak stepped into his place. "You need more badgers," the child observed solemnly, as he helped support the injured teacher. "The ones in the walls are hiding."

"There are badgers in the walls?" Draco asked incredulously, adjusting his grip to ease his sore arm. Harry was grateful for the Hufflepuff´s help. Draco was still a little green, to tell the truth, and with his hair disarrayed by the rain and wind, he looked oddly frail, like a bedraggled dandelion.

"Only some of them," the boy, who was getting taller rapidly, was undaunted by Draco´s disbelief. He craned his long neck to study the potion that Snape was tipping carefully into Flitwick´s mouth. He sniffed. "Wouldn´t that be better with a more concentrated solution of daisyroot?"

"Not in combination with this," Snape murmured, bringing out the second potion as Flitwick shuddered painfully and opened his eyes. "Filius, what hurts?"

"All..." Flitwick said, holding himself quite still after that first uncontrolled movement.

"I´ve got HealWellsalve," Snape said. "We´ll let the Restorus potion work for a minute, and we´ll start with the worst of it," he promised while Draco counted out the seconds.

"It works really well," Harry told the Charms professor, hoping to distract the small man while Snape stripped aside the nightshirt and bandages to reveal the damage. It was horrible. "When we were outside, in the storm, it fixed Professor Snape right up. You´ll feel a lot better soon." As he lost height, Harry had to hold his arms higher, to keep Flitwick level.

"You´re prattling, Potter," Snape pointed out, mildly for him.

"HealWellsalve, HealWell salve," the Hufflepuffman said. "But how did you get the unicorn liver? Or did you use phoenix egg?"

"Someone had been killing unicorns," Snape said. "In the forest, for the blood. The Groundskeeper frightened them off before they could eviscerate the last one." Snape tipped a few drops of the second potion onto Flitwick´s face, and the bruises and swelling faded. "Given how seldom phoenixes lay eggs, Dumbledore gave me permission to use the liver." As he spoke, he portioned out more of the careful drops. Harry could see the lump of a misplaced rib move back into place.

"I remember that," Draco said, watching the effects of the potion with equal fascination. "But won´t using pieces of unicorn mean that the people who use the salve will be cursed? For hurting a unicorn, I mean?"

"It would," Snape said, absently, "were I in any way responsible for the death of the unicorn." He peered at the vial, and then cast a grim glance around at the many beds. "Hopefully, there will be enough of this to go around. What else hurts, Filius?"

"My back. You´ll have to tend it, Severus. I shan´t be able to dance, otherwise." Flitwick said apologetically. He sounded better than he had, though, and he was smiling.

Harry replayed the last few bits of conversation in his head as they turned Flitwick so that Snape could attend to the damage on the back, trying not to think about how much less fragile Flitwick seemed on the healed half. Less like a bag of broken sticks. He hadn´t known that Dumbledore had found a way to use the dead unicorn. And Fawkes was a boy phoenix, so he couldn´t lay eggs, could he? "Wait a minute. Fawkes! Can´t we get Fawkes to heal the people who are hurt? At least some of them?"

"Fawkes is dead," Professor Trelawney said, from just behind Harry´s shoulder, and he had to keep himself from jumping. "At least, for the moment. But as the wizard, so the familiar, you know, so the bird should recover nicely once Albus does."

"Hello, Sybill," Snape said. "Your timing is, as usual, alarming. Make yourself useful and get Filius something decent to wear, will you?"

"Says the man who converses in freighted ellipses," Trelawney answered with a raised eyebrow. "I´ve brought you a fresh robe, Filius. I foresaw the need."

"Thank you," Flitwick said. He sounded much steadier now, if a little muffled by being held upside down.

"Are divination spells working, then?" Snape asked. "Charms aren´t, at least not out there. And I´m not entirely sure why potions are."

"Because they were here already," said the Hufflepuff, who had gotten quite a bit older. "Like clothes. My clothes like to change with me. But yours stay the same and make you look silly." He cocked his head, now crowned with an embroidered tea cosy, ignoring Snape´s glare as he listened to something no one else could hear. "I have to go now. Hold tight."

With the warning, Harry was just able to shift position enough to support Flitwick´s head when the Hufflepuff vanished.

"It´s all right, boys," Flitwick mumbled into Harry´s shirt. "I think I can stand on my own now."

Draco and Harry put the Charms Professor down gently and stepped back to let Trelawney help him into the spare robes. Snape went over to the bed, where McGonagall had taken the place of the wizard who had been at Dumbledore´s head.

"Who´s going to hold Albus while we work?" he asked, nodding to the witch at the foot of the bed who nodded back and conceded her place to him before vanishing three steps away. "Once we draw the circle, those within must be reliable."

"I´ve been thinking about that," Professor Sprout said. "And I believe it will have to be current students. They vary the least. Choose them from a year that we know hasn´t graduated yet."

McGonagall opened her eyes, looking straight to Harry. "Mr. Potter and Mr. Malfoy have been consistent," she said. "Students from their year will suit the purpose."

"I suggest Susan Bones to stand for Hufflepuff, then," said Sprout. "She´s steady,and stubborn and she knows how to dig in."

"And I," said Flitwick, climbing back onto the bed and tapping the shoulder of the witch who´d taken his place. "Ask that you fetch Lisa Turpin to hold my place for Ravenclaw. Her natural curiosity will fix her to the task, no matter how strange."

"I´ll get them! I´ll get them!" cried Professor Trelawney, who was probably about twelve now, "I know just where they are!" She turned and darted through the crowd towards the student tables with her skirts held high, caroling the girls´ names for everyone to hear.

"You truly don´t need a loudspeaker with her about, do you?" offered a thin, bespectacled witch drily, and the kind of nervous laughter that interrupts a tense situation rippled through those close enough to hear her.

Amid the brief splash of amusement, a short wizard with the face of an elderly chimpanzee and a long thin beard appeared near the corner of the bed. Harry froze. The last time he´d seen that face it had been on a giant statue in the Chamber of Secrets.

Chapter 21: Lords and Ladies

Summary: Weft, woof, shuttle and loom.

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"And who´s to stand for Slytherin?" the new arrival rasped angrily. The elder wizard´s words echoed strangely, as if he were speaking in two languages at once, but his contemptuous tone was unmistakable.

A pool of silence spread out as several wizards and witches stepped away from this apparition, making an empty space around the bed. Harry and Draco stepped back uncertainly as well, but the Hufflepuff man with the tea cosy hat was in the way, and a moment later the crowd had washed forward again into a loose ring to watch from a safer distance. Even Flitwick and McGonagall and Sprout flinched, never quite losing their holds on Dumbledore, but shying away from the querulous old wizard, and hunching protectively over the unconscious Headmaster while exchanging grim, worried looks.

Snape alone hadn´t moved. He was still seated on the foot of the bed, his hand wire-taut atop Dumbledore´s blanket covered feet, as if he were fighting the urge to cling tightly to the Headmaster for support. Although he had lost no years, the Potions Professor looked strangely childlike, his black eyes huge in his pale face as he turned his head to look up at Salazar Slytherin. After a very long moment, Snape moved with deliberate caution; keeping his right hand curled protectively over the Headmaster´s feet, he rose from the bed to make a deep, formal bow to the Founder of his House.

The conversations of children who hadn´t noticed the confrontation carried over the crowd´s heads, but they sounded trivial, unreal. Even Madam Pomfrey´s voice, whispering something to the bed that made it rise so Snape could stand more comfortably upright while still holding on to the Headmaster, seemed muffled and distant.

Snape´s voice was soft, but it resonated in the cleared circle. "Draco Malfoy will stand for Slytherin House, my lord."

Heads turned sharply to Draco, who looked like he´d swallowed a Snitch. He stiffened to attention as Salazar Slytherin poured a contemptuous eye over him, and shivered when the Founder frowned.

"He´s puny," Slytherin spat."And damaged," he added with a dismissive sniff.

"He will rise to the task," Snape stated with steely certainty. "Draco has mettle which oft goes unperceived."

"But will he succeed?" Slytherin demanded. "Will he stand to the test?"

"I believe he can." Snape´s arms twitched, as if were stopping himself from folding them as emphatic punctuation. Instead he gently readjusted his grip on Dumbledore´s toes. "Whether or not he does, will depend on him."

"´Tis you are recommending we depend on the runt," Slytherin said warningly.

"So I am, my lord." Some of the color and hauteur returned to Snape´s face, and his black eyes glinted as he marked off his position.

Draco stepped forward, jerky as a marionette. "I can do it, Sir!" he exclaimed, his cheeks flushed and his pointed chin held high, like a wooden copy of his father.

"You don´t even know what´s to be done, you ignorant pup," Slytherin snapped."We could be asking you to chop your own head off."

Draco went white and lost a year or two, but he swallowed hard and held still, like a rabbit which had espied a fox. Only his gray eyes moved, looking to Snape.

"Nothing so wasteful," the Potions Master assured his student, giving Slytherina warning glare.

The Founder returned it tenfold, glowering contemptuously at the current Head of House. "But the task is still perilous. You cannot deny the inherent risk," he challenged, grim and gloating.

"Indeed I won´t," Snape agreed with ice-glaze calm. "The risk is immense... But it is a risk to us all," he added with impatient precision. "You understand that, else you would not be here. I know what my students are capable of." He glanced briefly at the blond boy, who was fighting to regain years. "Particularly when the stakes are so high. Draco Malfoy will stand for our House. He is my sole and unrivalled choice."

"And I am supposed to trust your judgment?" Slytherin drawled witheringly, casting a cold glance at Snape´s left arm. His head shifted from side to side like a considering cobra.

Snape bared his teeth in something that was not a smile. "Yes," he insisted, "because I am the one who returned."

"Came crawling back to save your own skin, you mean," Slytherin accused with a wintry smile.

Now Snape smiled back, briefly, easily. " `Survival is the only hope worth having´," he said evenly. "Or am I misquoting you?"

Slytherin went gray with rage. "Listen, you arrogant swamp-get, you haven´t - "

"I can do it!" Draco shouted suddenly, eleven years old and shrill as a steamkettle. "I will do it! My blood´s as pure as yours!" He started around the bed, as if to come to Snape´s defense.

The Founder turned on Draco, sneering when the boy froze beneath his basilisk stare. "Yes, I can see that you descend from a long line of first cousins."

Draco´s mouth fell open with a small squeak, like an outraged hinge, and he turned scarlet.

"Think you´re a champion, do you? You´re no more than a puling infant," Slytherin went on mercilessly. "Rude, and unkempt, as well..."

"You´d be unkempt too, if you´d been out in that storm!" Harry heard himself say, and felt as if he´d caught up with the words only once they were out of his mouth. Nothing else for it. He had to go on. There wasn´t time to just stand and listen. "We´re not all going to die because no one´s good enough for you." He took two long strides, to bring himself up shoulder to shoulder with Draco. "Either you weren´t here, or you weren´t listening. It has to be someone from our time who stands for Slytherin. Someone who won´t vanish or run away. Professor Snape knows the students he has to choose among. You don´t. So it´s his choice, not yours."

The Potions Master stared as if Harry had suddenly started spouting Parseltongue. The Founder looked Harry over, like a vulture examining an unusually unprepossessing heap of bones for remaining gristle, peering curiously at his scar before transferring his glittering gaze back to Draco. "Who´s your scruffy friend, boy?" he asked drily.

Draco, fifteen again and sure of himself, snorted, "We´re not friends." But he didn´t step away from Harry. "Merely allies. For the moment. Against that!" He flung a dramatic hand towards the magic-devouring vortex near the ceiling.

Slytherin didn´t even glance upwards. "Alliances with Gryffindor are a thankless business," he warned bitterly.

"Maybe that´s true, and maybe it isn´t," declared a deep voice from behind Harry. A heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and he turned his head enough to see Godric Gryffindor smiling first at him and Draco, and then, almost fondly, at Slytherin. "Come on, Sal," the red-haired Founder coaxed warmly. "Time´s a-wasting. And you´re the one who´s always said that we must surpass ourselves in order to survive."

"And we´ve done that, love," said a buxom witch nearby, the badger cub nestled in her shawl grunting agreement. Her blonde hair flowed down out of its bun and she grew younger and lovelier as she smiled at Slytherin, "Our dream is realized, Salazar. But now it is the children who must preserve it."

As Slytherin´s eyes met hers, he grew younger as well, decades falling away to reveal the studious young man with the scholar´s stoop. He straightened haughtily, drawing his robes into order and granting a regal nod to Snape. "Very well, House Master. Your choice stands."

"Thank you, my lord," Snape drew his own robes into order, somewhat handicapped by the need to keep one hand on Dumbledore, but the nod he returned to Slytherin was just as dignified. Harry wondered if the Potions Master even knew that he had echoed the gesture.

Slytherin looked now to Gryffindor. "And what about you, Godric? I suppose that insolent brat is your choice to defend the honor of that overcompensatory heap of rocks you call a tower?"

Gryffindor laughed, low and rich. "Well, he´s bold enough, Sal." He looked down to meet Harry´s gaze, shaking the boy´s shoulder gently. "What say you, lad? Will you stand for our House?"

Feeling as if he were about to drop into air for the most important Quidditch game of his life, Harry opened his mouth to say yes, and then hesitated and looked to Professor McGonagall where she sat cradling Dumbledore´s head between her hands. "With all respect, Sir," he said carefully, "the decision isn´t up to you; Professor McGonagall is Head of Gryffindor now."

The small smile McGonagall gave him felt like a reward. "I think you´ll do just fine, Mr. Potter," she said, inclining her head respectfully to the Founder. "Although I am pleased to know that my choice is uncontested. Please forgive my not curtsying, my lord. At the moment I´m quite sure that if I once got down, I should not be able to rise again."

"Well, she wouldn´t be the first lady to fall at your feet, Godric," laughed Helga Hufflepuff, as the growing brock clambered up onto her shoulder, "but really, there isn´t time."

"There´d be more time if the two of ye didn´t insist on bangin´ thy horns together in season and out," grumbled the black-haired witch who had taken Flitwick´splace earlier, stepping between Slytherin and Gryffindor. She nodded curtly to each of them and bestowed a more friendly look on Helga Hufflepuff as she walked over to stand behind the Charms teacher. A large black raven circled down to caw informatively at her. She smiled thanks at the bird and turned to peer over the varying heights of the milling crowd. "Here they come."

The throng rippled apart, revealing Susan Bones, who was leading Lisa Turpin by the hand as they threaded past teachers and students. Susan picked up speed as they crossed the cleared space, giving only brief, curious glances to the gathered Founders as she brought her companion to stand obediently before the current Head of Hufflepuff. "Professor Trelawney said you asked for us, Professor Sprout."

"So I did, child." Sprout drew Susan to her and scooted Lisa towards Flitwick.

"Come closer, bairn," Rowena Ravenclaw beckoned.

Lisa, momentarily eleven, stared up at her with undisguised curiosity. "Why do I hear you talk twice?"

Ravenclaw smiled and ruffled Lisa´s hair with gentle approval. "And wi´ our students comin´ from every pocket kingdom on these isles, how else are we to be kenned, but wi´ a spell? Now, my child, come ye nigh the bed."

"Excuse me," Susan asked, keeping her attention stubbornly fixed on Professor Sprout. "But why did you want us?"

"There´s work to be done," Helga Hufflepuff said, coming to the girl. At Sprout´s nod, Susan allowed herself to be turned to face the Founder. Her eyes widened when the badger sniffed at her face and began to chuckle nikinikiniki at her, but she withstood the scrutiny calmly and held up a hand to be snuffled. "You´ll do," Hufflepuff chuckled after a moment, and a small smile flickered across Susan´s face at the approval.

Gryffindor steered Harry over to McGonagall. Draco stalked around the end of the bed to Snape, being careful to keep the Potions Master between himself and Salazar Slytherin. But he performed a precise bow to the Founder, to which Slytherin nodded imperiously in return.

In a few moments Founders, Heads of House, and chosen students had arranged themselves so that each House held one edge of the Headmaster´s bed. McGonagall cleared her throat. "Well, Verna," she said to Sprout, taking undisputed charge of the gathering as Deputy Headmistress. "You´ve had the most time of any of us to consider the matter." She looked seriously down at Dumbledore´s drawn face, still cradled between her hands. "How bad is it?"

"Bad enough." Sprout said somberly. "We´re going to have to use the Summons Home."

The ripple of awed, worried agreement that ran through the adults gathered around the bed stopped at Snape, who stared at his colleagues in something like horror. "That´s a cure or kill spell," he protested. "Surely, if we were to use the Hands of Four, he would recover enough for the use of healing potions." He didn´t sound confident, and his age was slipping downwards.

Harry couldn´t blame him. Dumbledore looked awful, like a waxwork that had been left in the summer sun. There was a strange sheen to his skin, and he was shrinking somehow. Melting. "Couldn´t you do both?" Harry blurted out, growing smaller. "He´s really --" He couldn´t finish the thought. He took hold of the blanket and tugged it straight as he tried to hide his dismay. "Will a spell be enough? I mean -- charms aren´t working very well."

"Waving a wand is but the simplest way of casting spells, child," Flitwick said, with authority. "There are other methods, more difficult, and more certain. You´ll study them in time." The Charms Master turned to the Potions Master. "Severus, it must be the Summons Home. Can you not feel it?"

Snape frowned and studied the imperiled Headmaster, then lifted his head as if searching or scenting the air. Long moments passed before he met Flitwick´s gaze and conceded with a reluctant bob of the head. "It will turn out right," Flitwick reassured him gently. "This is Albus. I doubt he´s gone so far that Hogwarts is no longer his home."

"If it´s the Summons Home you´ve chosen, you´d best cast it at the Center," Slytherin said peremptorily. "Bring the bed." He drew his wand, held it out like a dowsing rod, and started off down the hall. People scattered hastily out of his way, and the murmur of conversations rippled outwards through the congregation as word of what was happening was passed along.

"Go on then, push," Helga Hufflepuff ordered cheerfully, taking one of the corner bedposts. "Salazar´s generally right about positioning pattern magic. He´s very good at finding the strongest flow."

"Nice to know someone thinks Slytherins are good for something," a young Draco muttered resentfully as he tried to get a grip on the bed with his good arm.

"Never said they weren´t," Godric Gryffindor said, bending to the task of moving the bed. "Hogwarts without Slytherin House would be a three-legged cow, indeed."

"A three-legged cow?" Susan echoed uncertainly.

"Of limited usefulness and damn difficult to defend," huffed Rowena Ravenclaw. "And as hard to shift as this bed. Go left, Godric!"

"Your left or my left?" Gryffindor grunted as the bed swung like a rusty pendulum. Draco and Snape scrambled to swing it back the other way with difficulty; Draco was no more than thirteen, and Snape was going younger. He looked like his leg was starting to bother him, too.

"It might be easier to move the bed," Draco grumbled, glaring at the three teachers still riding along with the Headmaster, "if there were only one person on it."

"We must not lose the balance, Mr. Malfoy," McGonagall said. "We must hold on."

"Well, hold on and push, then!"

Harry thought about that. McGonagall was hurt, Sprout looked about twelve, and Flitwick... well, Snape was having trouble hanging on to Dumbledore and pushing, and he was the tallest of the Heads of House. Flitwick could never manage it. And with only two people on Slytherin´s side, it would be even more out of balance if the other Heads of House started pushing on their sides.

"What we need," Harry decided, "is more people to help push."

"Done!" cried a red-haired boy with a Gryffindor scarf who had been a tall balding man moments before. He all but leapt out of the watching crowd, as if he´d been waiting for a chance to serve. "Martin Weasley, at your service," he announced with a grand gesture. "You lot, climb aboard! There are plenty of us to do the work. Weasleys! To me!"

It was a little like being in Ron´s room, surrounded by orange and black Chudley Cannons posters, except that now the black was Hogwarts robes and the orange was all on the tops of the heads of the dozens of wizards and witches who answered the call. They came in every size, like matrioska dolls with painted smiles, chattering happily as they swarmed the bed and began to push.

Madam Pomfrey hastily persuaded the bed to grow larger and Susan and Lisa clambered up, like Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, needing no help. McGonagall freed one hand to steady Harry as Ron boosted him up beside her. Rowena Ravenclaw was gallantly helped aboard by a young, slender Arthur Weasley and someone who looked like a twin but was wearing fourteenth century robes. Draco yelped and clutched his bad arm as he got a lift from Percy. And Snape was so startled to be seized from behind by Fred and George and deposited unceremoniously on the bed that he slipped down to a first year and let go of the Headmaster.

Dumbledore shuddered, deep wracking convulsions that hurt just to watch, and the other three teachers cried out wordlessly. Draco caught Snape´s hands and ruthlessly clamped them around Dumbledore´s feet. Bewildered, the younger boy tried to pull away again, and McGonagall snapped out like a blade, "Mr. Snape! Hold on and concentrate!"

The greasy-haired child scowled, and his shoulders hunched up angrily, but his age started up again and he stopped resisting Draco. The blond boy, no more than thirteen himself, said testily, "Just hang on. You have to. It´s important." He shot a glare at McGonagall. "Not that I know why."

"Professor Dumbledore is the keystone," Sprout explained in professorial tones. "As each Headmaster has been in turn. Once healed, he might be able to keep the castle from shaking itself apart."

The five students on the bed stared at her.

"Might?" Draco said with disbelief. "Only might?"

"Without him, we´ve no chance at all, Mr. Malfoy," Flitwick said sternly.

"Oh." Draco´s voice cracked and he swallowed hard. He patted Snape´s shoulder, losing years as the Potions Master blinked older, coming at last to the age of understanding. "All right now, Professor?" the blond boy asked, taking the young man´s startled, curt nod as agreement.

A shadow from above distracted Harry and he looked up in time to see Tom Riddle hovering on a broom, scowling down at the bed. The Slytherin Prefect was so absorbed in his scrutiny of Dumbledore that he wasn't paying attention to the swirling menace descending from the ceiling. The greedy whorl was going to go right through him on its way to the bed.

Before Harry could think to warn Riddle, Angelina Johnson swooped into view, holding a singing jack-o-lantern snugged like a Quaffle under one arm. "Watch it!" she cried, kicking Riddle's broom into a distancing spin as if he were a troublesome Chaser. Her robes brushed the tops of the bedposts as she barrel-rolled into position and hurled the pumpkin into the maelstrom, forcing it back towards the ceiling.

Harry barely noticed the shouts of congratulations and thanks from the spectators nearest the bed. His eyes followed Tom Riddle, who fought his broom to a stop and spun around to glare at Angelina. For a fraction of a second, Harry thought he saw the Prefect´s features alter -- his eyes flashed red, and his features shrank into the twisted mask of Voldemort.

Harry's scar flared with pain. He was on the bed and above the bed. Two images of the Great Hall danced in front of him, and when he closed his eyes, only one of them vanished. From thirty feet high he found himself looking down, witnessing the ghostly, ghastly appearance of masks on dozens of faces in the milling crowd. So many... everywhere... The masks grew whiter, brighter, blinding him and obscuring the identities of their wearers. There was one of them near Dumbledore, too near! Harry snapped his eyes open in fright, and found himself jerked back to his own body, looking up at Voldemort´s cloaked figure on the broom.

And then the Dark Lord vanished, the broom falling harmlessly into the hands of a waiting Ravenclaw Prefect, who mounted it in a businesslike way and headed down to where Filch was handing out enchanted objects.

"Brilliant!" Ron cheered near Harry´s ear. "Go Angelina!" He was grinning. He hadn´t noticed Voldemort. In fact, no one else seemed to have noticed, either. "Was that pumpkin singing Christmas Carols?" Ron wondered cheerfully as he bent to push against the bed again.

"Yes," sighed Professor Sprout wistfully. "I never did get that enchantment right."

One part of Harry's mind wondered how the pumpkin had ended up confiscated by Filch or one of his predecessors, but he had to find the Death Eater he´d seen through Voldemort´s eyes, the one that had got so close to Dumbledore.

Maybe it was Snape that I saw. The Potions Master was still aging -- he had his left arm tucked against him as if it ached again - but he wasn´t looking around the way Harry thought he should be, if he´d noticed Voldemort.

Besides, Harry had thought that the white mask was near the bed, not on it. But it was all Weasleys around the bed. Now that he was taking the time to look at them properly he could see that not all of them had red hair, but the family resemblances were unmistakable. They wore the scarves and badges of every House, including Slytherin, but they worked together with only friendly familial squabbling. Percy had his Prefect badge displayed prominently, and was watching for the return of the whirlwind, calling instructions about avoiding it, which the other Weasleys cheerfully ignored. Martin and Arthur and a curly haired woman were shouting directions too and the fact that they were contradicting one another bothered them not a whit.

Harry looked up again. There were five or six flyers lurking near the ceiling, some of them in archaic Quidditch robes, holding objects ready to throw at the next resurgence of the magical vortex. Of Voldemort there was no sign. Harry hoped that Professor Lupin and Sirius Black were old enough to remember to watch Quirrell.

And there to watch Quirrell. If Quirrell was even there at all. Harry got up on his knees, using Ron´s shoulders to steady himself as he looked out over the heads of the Weasleys to study the hall. It was quite dizzying, watching people age and youthenand vanish altogether now and then. And there were so many people. Looking hard, Harry recognized only a few faces from among them. That was Cornelius Fudge, pompous even at thirteen, and that was Mr. Ollivander, old as stones as he rose from a bench, only to vanish and reappear as a small, scrawny first year in an outsized robe.

Hermione and the other researchers were busily pushing book-laden tables out of the way. Harry craned his neck and glimpsed his mother again, tall and lovely, smiling at two black-haired toddlers who were neatly penned in by stacks of tomes.

He didn´t see Quirrell, though. Or Voldemort. And his scar didn´t hurt now.

"See anything exciting, Harry?" Ron asked.

"I thought I had," Harry answered as he turned his head full circle one last time. "But he´s gone now." He sat down again, and met McGonagall´s questioning look with a small shrug.

"Clear this space!" Slytherin´s voice commanded from nearby. A quarter of the Weasleys ebbed from the bed to start helping push aside tables, which improved the view of the Founder, who was casting around with his wand, testing several flagstones before settling on one of them. "This is the center," he pronounced, marking the spot with a spark that scorched the floor. He directed the remaining bed-bearers to the place and instructed them when to stop. "That will do. But you´ve got him oriented the wrong way," he reprimanded Flitwick sternly.

"A matter of expedience, my lord. When I was injured I fit better on the bed this way," Flitwick said agreeably. "You´re quite right, of course - Ravenclaw should stand at his head. Turn the bed one quarter-turn to the left, please," he addressed the company, "and we shall rearrange ourselves."

"Do as I do, Mr. Potter," McGonagall advised. She turned to Gryffindor, who looked ancient, silver haired and frail. The two haggard adults helped each other off the bed, a process made more difficult by McGonagall´s need to keep one hand always on Dumbledore. Harry felt very young as he hopped down between them. He grew, though, to take the weight of a hand on either shoulder as the parade of Founders, teachers and students shuffled awkwardly around the corners of the bed, trailing their fingers along the Headmaster´s silent form all the way. Only Flitwick remained on the bed, picking his way very carefully as Madam Pomfrey convinced the bed to shrink until it was no wider or longer than a cot.

Or a bier.

Awful thought. Harry clutched at Dumbledore's sleeve, and then made his fingers relax when he felt the warmth of the arm inside it. He´s still warm. He´s still alive. The bad shape just made it easier to reach the Headmaster now, that was all. Still, now that Harry was touching Dumbledore he didn´t really want to let go.

"What do we do now?" Susan Bones asked, holding a fistful of blanket near Dumbledore´s feet.

Flitwick took out his wand. "You four students will hold the Headmaster in balance while we four teachers work our spell."

"And the four of us will stand back and let you work," sighed Helga Hufflepuff, now a plump crone and pale as candlewax. "It´s all I can do not to fade away, much less attempt spellwork. We´d throw the circle out of true, were we within it." She nodded to the other Founders, and they stepped back, carrying the tide of Weasleys along with them and clearing a large space around the bed that was empty of everyone but its eight attendants.

And Ron, who still held one of the corner posts and studied McGonagall uncertainly. "But, Professor, Harry... and Malfoy... they´ve had a hard day of it. Shouldn´t someone else take their places? I´ll do it, if you like." His head cocked to one side a little as he looked at Harry. "Sorry, Harry, but you look like a bludger caught up to you." Draco laughed and Ron glared at him. "So do you, Malfoy. Two bludgers."

Draco scowled. "We´ve done all this already. We´re chosen, you´re not. That´s all there is to it. Get lost, Weasley."

"We´re all right, Ron," Harry said, smiling as best he could at his best friend, and almost certain that he was telling the truth. "Thanks anyway."

Ron looked down at Harry and then patted his shoulder with a sad smile. "You always get stuck holding the baby," he said, his voice cracking as he gained another year. "And I´m always the one who has to wait."

"At least I always know that someone´s waiting," Harry´s own voice shook a bit, and he swallowed hard. "It´s not like the Dursleys would care. But we have to get started. Go on, Ron. Get somewhere with a good view - find Hermione - she´ll have got a good spot so she can take notes."

"Maybe she´ll lend them to me," Lisa said tightly, as Ron nodded and stepped back into the crowd. "I´ve only ever read about pattern magic. It´s very complicated. And I still don´t know exactly what we´re meant to be doing."

"Nor do any of us," Snape muttered under his breath as he shifted his chain mail and twitched his cloak into order. "That´s how it works," he added in a mocking, unhappy sing-song, as if he were quoting an inadequate text.

"Don´t fret, Severus," soothed Flitwick amiably, placing Lisa´s hands on either side of Dumbledore´s face. "You'll know the words as you need them. They are in your heart." Smiling confidently up at Snape's queasy scowl, the tiny Charms teacher went to the corner of the bed and slid down the bedpost. He raised his wand in jaunty salute and walked away. Near the edge of the cleared area, he touched the tip of his wand to the worn flagstones and proceeded deosil, leaving a pale line that looked like chalk behind him.

As Flitwick passed between the bed and Rowena Ravenclaw she stood straighter and taller and called out in that language that wasn´t English, and this time there was no echoing translation. He went on, past Gryffindor and Hufflepuff and Slytherin, and each of them called out too, although Slytherin´s words were different. Whatever they´d said, it meant something, for wizards and witches moved forward at their beckoning, and displaced the Weasleys. The Founders nodded to the people they called, and they all formed a broad circle just outside of Flitwick´s line of chalk.

Harry recognized Woodwalker standing near Helga Hufflepuff; everyone in her quarter of the circle seemed to have something of the gardens about them. Beside Slytherin stood haughty wizards and witches, silver serpents wound through the patterns of their robes. Rowena Ravenclaw had gathered to her side more witches than wizards, ink-stained hands and spectacles as common as grass among them and gazes drifting hungrily towards the tables full of books.

Strangely, there were fewer witches and wizards standing with Gryffindor, stretching out their arms to fill the space along the chalkline. They shared a spark of laughter between them as Neville Longbottom pushed forward to the front with a tray full of sandwiches and a face full of confusion. He looked up at Godric Gryffindor, offering the tray and saying something, but Harry couldn´t hear him properly; Flitwick had finished the circle and all of the sounds from beyond it were as distant as dreaming.

The current Head of Ravenclaw returned to the bed, and nodded solemnly up at his colleagues. "Ladies, Severus," he invited. As McGonagall stepped back Harry brought up his other hand to cover Dumbledore's fingers. The skin was warm where McGonagall had been holding it, cooler where her hand hadn´t reached, dry and soft as aged parchment. Draco held Dumbledore's other hand, looking rather startled.

"Skin against skin will work best," Sprout tugged away the covers so that Susan could take hold of Dumbledore's feet. "Get a good grip, dear. He´s ticklish." She rolled the covers up and tucked them under the bed entirely while Flitwick went round examining each child's grip upon the sleeping man and murmuring approval.

"Don´t forget, children," he instructed somberly, "whatever happens, do not let the Headmaster leave your grasp until our healing spell is complete."

Harry nodded, and exchanged glances with Draco, Susan and Lisa. They all looked as nervous as he was. "Is that all we have to do?" Draco asked, "Just hold on?" Harry was grateful that someone had voiced the question. Holding on didn´t seem like much of a help. He´d been expecting to have to chant incantations or something complicated.

"That will be more than enough," Snape said drily. He´d moved back so that he was halfway between the bed and Salazar Slytherin´s place at the edge of the circle, directly behind Draco and opposite Harry.

"Are we ready, then?" Flitwick asked. "Everyone in place?"

"Except for you," Snape´s voice lacked its usual acidity. The Potions Master closed his eyes and stood straighter, drawing his wand and holding it out at shoulder height, both arms extended, the wand held lightly in one hand with its tip resting in the palm of his other hand. Harry glanced left and right, and saw that Sprout, who had settled into a comfortable stance several feet behind Susan, and Flitwick, who had taken his position behind Lisa, were holding the same pose. Sprout nodded to Flitwick, and behind him, Harry heard McGonagall assent to the unspoken question.

"Aedicula me insurgere!" The four Heads of House commanded in unison. As they spoke the incantation, the air above their hands changed, as if it were being transfigured, folding in and in and in again on itself like an origami paper gone wild. Snape reached into the tumultuous air with his free hand and came away grasping a goblet of green glass. Sprout held a coin of gold, Flitwick a second wand of bright ivory. Harry risked a glance over his shoulder. McGonagall was holding a sword of beaten steel upright, as if it weighed no more than the wand in her other hand.

And then, to Harry´s astonishment, Flitwick began to sing, in a clear high tenor. His words were doubled, echoing strangely as the Founders´ words had, but under and through the strange syllables threaded the meaning.

"To fly in your light, I would cross a thousand oceans..."

A breeze sprang up, swirling joyously around the bed. Under Harry´s hand, Dumbledore took a deep breath.

McGonagall´s surprisingly sweet voice rang out, "To bathe in your truth, I would walk the world round..."

Warmth spread through the circle, and color rose in the sleeping man´s cheeks.

Then Sprout sang, alto to McGonagall´s soprano, "To gaze upon your face I would climb the highest mountain..."

Scent of roses, and the muck the roses grew best in -- Dumbledore turned his head a little, eyes closed, as if to smell it better.

Snape´s gruff baritone gained in strength and certainty with each word. "To be still in your grace, I would change all that I am."

Sweat beaded on the Headmaster´s forehead, as if a fever had broken, and his hand grew damp in Harry´s.

Draco´s eyebrows looked as high as Harry´s felt. He was staring past Harry at McGonagall. Lisa and Susan looked shocked too.

Snape suddenly took a step forward, his wand swinging wide, the tip trailing a line of luminous aquamarine that spiralled upwards as he spun and paced sunwise. All four teachers were moving now, dancing, treading paths interwoven as they swirled past each other and around the circle. Each wand trailed a ribbon of colored light that rose into the air; amber, scarlet, aquamarine, and cerulean interlaced like Maypole ribbons.

"Stay with me," Flitwick and McGonagall sang high and clear, their notes searching, shimmering like heat haze.

"Stay with me," Sprout and Snape echoed on the heels of the phrase, their deeper voices summoning, drawing like earth and tide.

"Walk with me," exhorted the first two.

"Walk with me," the low echo returned.

And then, all four voices together, blending, entreating,. "With your hand on my shoulder...."

Dumbledore gasped and writhed, and Harry wrenched his attention away from the dancers as the song continued.

"Here with you,"

"Here with you"

"I mean to stay;"

"I mean to stay;"

The voices reunited. "We choose to love and live this day." It was a promise, sung in a harmony that was sweet and good. For a step or two of the dance, the four teachers were all facing inwards, their unified melody strong and commanding. "Stay with me."

And Dumbledore changed! One moment he was himself, the next he was shifting, twisting, his skin bubbling out and growing slimy as he transformed into a huge eel with baleful eyes and a mouthful of needles. It was at least twenty feet long; its coils twisting back and around, but never over the edge of the bed. Harry pressed back against the cold fishflesh, wondering if the spell had gone awry.

"Tam Lin!" Lisa Turpin exclaimed, letting it sink those wicked teeth into her left hand. Tears sprang to her eyes, but she wrapped her other hand over the predatory snout. "Hold on tight!"

"Like you´ve got a choice!" Draco exclaimed. He´d stopped himself from flinching away, the same as Harry had, and now he spread his hands against the eel´s side. "You´re not getting rid of us that easily, old man."

Susan nodded from her end of the bed. "We´ve got him, Lisa," she reassured her friend.

Would talking make things worse? Harry looked around him. Flitwick had begun a second verse of the song, and all four of the Heads of House were moving in their patterns again. The tune skipped from teacher to teacher and above them a glittering fretwork of light glowed lacily, forming gradually into a dome shape over the bed as they continued their intermingling dance.. Small flickering shavings of neon-bright light escaped from the curling ribbons of the spell, falling softly down like confetti onto the children and the eel. They didn´t last, or tingle, or hurt, and Harry decided not to worry about them.

Beyond the circle, Harry was vaguely aware that the Founders and their chosen wizards and witches were holding the line, singing the chorus in counterpoint to the verse. Above them, he thought he could hear the cries of the people on the brooms, dealing with the intermittent appearances of the whirlwind. Beneath him, the castle trembled.

The eel shrivelled inward and changed shape, turning back into Dumbledore. Lisa sobbed with relief as her hand was freed. But as the song went into another verse Dumbledore´s hair began to grow soft red-brown, and he started shrinking further and further in from the edges of the bed. For a moment Harry thought that the Headmaster was finally growing younger. But then he felt Dumbledore´s bones modifying grotesquely inside his skin. "Hang on!" Harry cried, as claws raked his palm. The man changed into a fox, nearly flirting his tail free of Susan´s grasp. She sprawled forward onto the bed with a yelp, but she didn´t let go of that teasing red flag. Harry dug his fingers into the lush red fur with his right hand and caught her sleeve, pulling her up onto the bed with his left. Draco was helping Lisa, who still had her grip on one of the fox´s ears.

It´s going to keep happening. He´s going to keep changing. Harry tried to think ahead as the chorus ended and Dumbledore returned once again to his own self. I don´t think he can get bigger than the bed. "If he goes even smaller than a fox, keep at least one hand on him," he commanded. "Box him in!"

"How small could he go?" Draco asked, taking advantage of the momentarily safe shape to scramble half onto the bed. Harry did the same.

"He can´t be anything we can´t hold," said Susan. "Can he?"

"I think we´re about to find out," Lisa said, as the song swung into still another chorus and Dumbledore trembled under their hands and began to dwindle into a glimmer of honey-gold.

"Snitch?" Harry wondered.

"Bee!" Draco countered.

In a fumble of sweaty hands the four of them managed to follow the transfiguration down and forward. Wings whirred against Harry´s palm, and he felt something that might be a stinger scrape past the sore clawmarks. He clamped his other hand over the first as insurance. "Stay with me!" he tried to sing with the teachers, hoping it would help.

He spared a glance for the dancers, and the pattern of light. He saw Snape growing younger; stumbling as he reached his early twenties; and then recovering onto his injured leg and growing rapidly older again. The stumble shook his wand, snarling the trail of light, and Harry despaired, but when Sprout twirled into the place Snape had left, she drew the same snarl into her line, and so did McGonagall and Flitwick. Now Harry noticed other bobbles and curlicues in the lines already interwoven, each peculiarity meticulously replicated in every color.

"What else can he turn into?" Susan asked, and Harry concentrated on Dumbledore as the song wound round into another chorus.

"Tam Lin turned into a block of ice," Lisa said grimly, tears streaking her face. "And a bar of red hot steel."

"Don´t give him any ideas!" Draco protested, as the bee expanded and changed, and they had to adjust their positions on the edges of the bed. For the pause between chorus and verse, Dumbledore was himself again. Then the color began to drain out of him, even out of his nightrobe, as he became a statue of transparent ice.

Not ice. Glass. The smoothness under Harry´s hands was warm, not cool. A bloom of red lingered at the Headmaster´s heart. For a breath and a half, Harry hoped that this would be an easy transformation. The Headmaster´s face shimmered, refracting his own heart´s light and reflecting the glow of the spell-threads above him. His mouth opened, although he did not speak and his eyes stayed closed.

And then the heartbloom of red brightened to yellow and then to white, and the smooth translucent skin began to burn against Harry´s palm. Harry withdrew one hand, meaning to spit on his fingertips before he placed them back again, the way he might protect himself a little from a hot pan on a stove.

The glass began to melt like taffy over his other hand. Harry was too startled to pull away - it hurt almost too much to feel the pain, as if whatever nerves were there to feel with were being burnt away. Draco was screaming, but he hadn´t moved back - he couldn´t, his hands were caught fast. Susan was holding on with her hands somehow clenched inside the glass, and blood starting to drip from the lip she´d bitten through. Lisa was the only one who had managed to pull away. Dumbledore shuddered and she quickly pressed forward again, her tears falling to sizzle against spun-sugar strands of glass hair.

Harry stared at the statue. Fractures were forming in the glass, running instantly out from the hot center, bringing red light and heat with them in thin lines and broad, dividing and dividing again, like blood vessels into capillaries. They spread like branched blades, demarcating the injured man into a million pieces that might momentarily fly apart. Harry grimaced and put down his other hand, trying not to breathe in the smell of burning meat.

The crazing of the glass slowed, and Harry made himself look up so he didn´t have to watch his hands burn. He stared at the colored lights, listening to the pounding of his pulse inside his ears. It kept rhythm with the throb of the pain and the music.

There were more voices singing now. It wasn´t just the teachers, or the adults who had joined the Founders. There were children´s voices, some of them cracking their way from note to note as the song wove down through a massive chorus. The words echoed in the great hall like lightning, like thunder; the air shook with their commanding plea.

"STAY WITH ME!"

Snape, McGonagall, Sprout and Flitwick spun back into their original places and poses, attaching the lightstrands to the symbols they carried. The bound-off threads of light floated up into the spellweb overhead and deftly wove themselves into the edges, the symbols becoming ethereal as they hung like bracelet charms at each of the cardinal points. And then the whole thing began to sink rapidly towards the bed, curling its skirts under itself like a jellyfish. Harry shuddered as the energies collapsed icily right through him and the other three, to wrap tightly around Dumbledore.

The pain ended.

There was silence.

Harry blinked the afterimage of the light-ribbons away. It seemed dim now in the Great Hall with only the light from the torches on the walls. No one was moving. No one was saying anything. Was the spell finished? Carefully, Harry let himself look down at the Headmaster.

Dumbledore was resting on the bed, flesh and blood once more. Harry still waited, afraid to let go. A tear ran cool down his cheek and his neck and he knew it hadn´t been the first. Across from him, Draco´s cheeks were tear-tracked too, and the Slytherin boy was breathing hard. So was Harry, come to think of it, as hard if he´d tried to run up all the flights of stairs to Gryffindor. Lisa´s eyes were huge in her small face, and every freckle stood out on the back of Susan´s hands.

Susan has hands.

With that realization, Harry dared look at the ends of his own arms. The barked knuckle he´d got from a tree in the forest was healing, and a deep scratch had become no more than a thin scar. Cautiously, keeping the back of his hand pressed against Dumbledore, he turned one palm up to look at it. The dark charred flesh was healing. Charcoal bits fell away, leaving skin that was puffy and red one moment, flat and white the next, and then... then somehow the burns were gone. The blisters he´d got from the rope at the edge of the world appeared, only to heal in an eyeblink, their scars fading as he watched. The scrapes from the foxclaws barely showed up at all before they vanished, and other small scars were getting harder to see. He wondered if the scar on his forehead had faded too; when he touched it, would the familiar ridge still be in place?

McGonagall´s trembling hand on his shoulder brought him out of his thoughts. He saw Snape take Draco´s shoulder and gently move him a half-step to one side, freeing a space to lay his other hand shakily against the Headmaster´s arm. McGonagall was tugging at Harry, too, making space for herself. He made himself step aside, but her hand closed next to his on Dumbledore´s hand, and the hand she held on his shoulder kept him from leaving.

Dumbledore´s chest moved slowly, as if he were sleeping.

Professor Flitwick scrambled wearily onto the bed next to Lisa, using one of her shoulders for support as he cupped a hand against Dumbledore´s cheek. Susan gave way to Sprout, steadying the Herbology professor when she staggered. Their hands overlapped on the sleeping man´s bare feet.

McGonagall leaned forward. "Headmaster?" she said hoarsely. "Albus?"

Dumbledore´s eyes opened and he turned sleepily to look at each of the four who had danced for him, and the students who stood nervously beside them. "I heard you calling," he said at last, with a curious smile, and Harry´s heart flipped with joy, for the Headmaster´s voice was strong and sure. "Have I missed anything important?"