Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn

Where There Is No Vision, the People Perish

It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom, for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.

- The Declaration of Arbroath

The Master said, 'Without recognizing the ordinances of Heaven, it is impossible to be a superior man.'

- The Analects, XX.3

The Master said, 'The superior man in everything considers righteousness to be essential. He performs it according to the rules of propriety. He brings it forth in humility. He completes it with sincerity. This is indeed a superior man.'

- The Analects, XV.17

Tzu-kung asked, 'Has the superior man his hatreds also?' The Master said, 'He has his hatreds. He hates those who proclaim the evil of others. He hates the man who, being in a low station, slanders his superiors. He hates those who have valour merely, and are unobservant of propriety. He hates those who are forward and determined, and, at the same time, of contracted understanding.'

- The Analects, XVII.24

... [I]t is hard to fight with anger. Whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of life.

- Heraclitus

... [V]irtue must have the quality of aiming at the intermediate. I mean moral virtue; for it is this that is concerned with passions and actions, and in these there is excess, defect, and the intermediate. For instance, both fear and confidence and appetite and anger and pity and in general pleasure and pain may be felt both too much and too little, and in both cases not well; but to feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way, is what is both intermediate and best, and this is characteristic of virtue.

- Aristotle, Nicomachæ an Ethics

'One doesn't know how much' - said Tucker with the placid assumptions of the Cambridge man - 'of how these Caledonian academies conduct themselves. But I gather there is a great deal of top-boy feeling all through. No waiting three or four years to see who is the better man but much importance given to the results of Professor Macgonigal's fortnightly test.'

- Timothy Tucker to Inspector John Appleby, in Michael Innes's Hamlet, Revenge!

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i. Draco Rex

He was almost of a mind to give in. To all of it, even to the appalling notion that Fate somehow intended him for his worst enemy. He was very nearly ready to surrender, if only to make the dreams stop.

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ii. Harry at Colonus

If this kept up - these sodding dreams of Victory Contingent Upon a Life of Playing Happy Families With the Ferret - he was going to ask Madam Pomfrey for a sleeping draught, and the war effort and his keeping an eye on Voldemort could go merrily to hell.

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iii. Albus as Antigone

He stood, of course, in loco parentis to all his students. His duty to them all was clear. He had also a duty to the world at large, and to wizardkind, and he had a set of duties peculiar to him in his capacity as commander of the forces of the Light.

All well and good. The path of duty was the way to glory, was it? Not bloody likely, it wasn't, when the paths of various duties diverged. In a wood. Near Florence, at that. And never mind the inscription over that damned archway hewn from a cave....

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iv. I shall not cease from Mental Fight / Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand

Dream-Hogwarts, in the first days after Draco had come over to the Light.

'The "healing power of love", my arse. You know what really works to reform a man?'

'Actually, I think I do.' Harry put his arms around Draco.

'Fear.'

'And hatred.'

'Yes. Yes. Exactly. Fear of an end suddenly seen clear, and hatred of, well.'

'Of what you've been and could become, and the paths leading to and from that.'

'And of those who, um.'

'Walked you there, prodded you along, lured you on?'

'Spot on.' Draco thought for a moment. 'How in seven hells do you know that, though?'

'What's the Muggle cliché? "Been there, done that", right. Well. I have been. And done.'

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Dream-Domdaniel, and the party marking Hermione's doctorate.

'The Perfect Couple.'

'Tony, if we didn't quite like you, I'd hex you into a Muggle and make you work at whatever's left of Barings.'

'No, no, no, Harry.' Draco's smile was sly. 'We'd memory-charm the City into thinking Goldstein a notorious wide-boy, and then make him a "name" at Lloyd's. All this time, and I've still not made a Slytherin of you.'

'For which the God of Israel, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, be praised; blessè d be He. But you are the Perfect Couple, or else. You're required to be, I'm afraid. If you quarrelled in public, there'd be a run on Gringotts. If you separated, there'd be a run on the Galleon. If you divorced -'

'The pound would sink, governments both Muggle and magical would fall, and there'd be a worldwide economic depression?'

'Don't look so damned flattered, Malfoy. You seem almost eager.'

'But, Tone, seriously.' Harry looked pained. 'We're not some, I don't know, fairytale couple.'

Luna, who had been passing rather aimlessly by, wavered and sank into a chair. 'People need myths, Harry.'

Harry's face twisted, sourly. 'Christ, no. I've had that. "The Boy Who" and All That. People aren't in want of still more comforting fictions in their lives.'

Draco snorted. 'Rubbish. It appears to be precisely what they're wanting, and what they desire.'

Luna shook her head, slowly. 'Myths. Not fictions. Not the same thing at all. A myth is truth. In parable. Imagine: the marriage of their favourite archetypes....'

'Now see here,' Draco said, mildly enough, 'I warn you, the first person who so much as mentions Plato or any other damned Greek is going to be sconced a case of Bollinger for it.'

'Daddy gave them myths,' Luna said, rising and beginning to waft away. 'His were truer than anything in the old Prophet. And at the end of the day, people had more truth from the Quibbler than they had from the Prophet, even on hard news. Think on that.'

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The spoils of victory....

'Harry? Blimey, mate.'

'Look, Ron. Um.'

'Honestly. Don't mind him, you look smashing,' said Hermione. She turned to his partner. 'Excellent work, Draco.'

'But.' Ron looked pained. 'I liked Harry just fine anyway.'

'Good God, Ron,' Draco drawled, amused. 'It's only a decent haircut and some wardrobe, er, improvements.'

'You can say that again,' said Hermione.

'Ron, I swear to you, I'm not trying to be posh or put on airs.'

Ron's face was a study. 'I dunno, Harry, looks like your gay side is taking over. That, or my cousin the Ferret is getting proprietary and acting as your personal shopper. What, Draco, you wanted him to be as exquisite as your museum pieces?'

'I didn't do this for me,' Draco said, mildly enough. 'I remind you that I fell for Harry, not his truly ghastly wardrobe and general, charming lack of sophistication. But if anyone's to underestimate Harry in future, it will be because it's his choice, made to his advantage.'

'You can take the boy out of Slytherin,' Hermione smirked, 'but evidently you cannot take the Slytherin out of the boy.'

Draco smirked back at her, evilly. 'If we didn't take the Slytherin out of the Boy every morning, we'd never get out of bed.'

'Do you mind,' Ron moaned, covering his ears.

'Oh, super,' Harry said. 'Apparently, I do look like your rent-boy, and you my sugar-daddy.'

'Not a rent-boy,' Draco grinned. 'Hire-purchase.' Harry sputtered. 'Ah, ah,' said Draco, almost laughing. 'None of your HP sauce, now.'

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The garden party for Hermione's D. Mag.

'Things are not stable. Yes, it's a rebuilding period, there are always dislocations after a war. But this is more than that. I have the first intimations of a Very Bad Feeling About This, and I assure you, that's an hereditary talent.'

'Is that a banker's thing, Tony, or a Ravenclaw thing?'

Tony Goldstein looked levelly at Draco. 'It's a Jewish thing.'

Draco, remembering his past self, paled, then flushed red, writhing with embarrassment.

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Dream-Hogwarts, as Draco, newly redeemed, plays himself in on the side of Light.

'Have any of you any idea of what it's like to find you've been lied to all your life, about everything?' Draco's voice was just audible.

It was Harry who answered. 'Yes. I have. I was, for the first eleven years of mine.'

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On the lawns of Hogwarts / Domdaniel, in a dream of peace, at Hermione's party.

'Draco, it's forgiven. Not forgotten - by either of us, I think; how could it be - but it is forgiven. How could I not believe in repentance, forgiveness, and redemption? I say the Amidah, daily; how can I forget, in the midst of my prayers, these very concepts of repentance, forgiveness, and redemption, when daily I recite those prayers: Teshuvah; Selah; Geullah?'

'But -'

'There are an astonishing number of people who began their lives filled with bigotry and unthinking prejudice who yet ended those lives as amongst the Righteous Among Nations. You have grown, Draco, in this as in your rejection of wizarding blood-prejudice. Indeed, I note that - to quote one of your own - "the heresies men leave are hated most", no?'

Harry, listening, thought back on their University careers. He could hear Draco's voice now, in memory, plangent, suasive, with a metallic ring, all the old disdain transmuted now into a purely intellectual arrogance, and arrogance that at least, this time, had the virtue of being defensible, Draco's intellect being in fact superior. 'Indeed, I should go further, and argue that there is no such thing as a "Muggle", properly understood. If a witch or wizard can be born to "Muggle" parents, as of course we have seen they can be and are, can we persist in this distinction any longer? If witches or wizards can have children with non-magical partners, and those children have children, and in any given generation a child of the union can be magically gifted, can we pretend any longer that we are not one common people? We are but sports of their rootstock, if I may purloin an analogy from Professor Longbottom's discipline. Consider what Professor - soon to be Doctor - Hermione Granger Weasley has published regarding the Evans lineage: research that it has been my privilege to assist. Indeed, in a world in which the floral names of budding witches are a tradition, it should have surprised none, as it did not so much surprise as it pleased the Evanses, that Lily Evans, if not Petunia, was magically gifted. The gift of magic is a recessive trait, and may emerge anywhere - or fail to do, as in the cases of those we, I most of all, should once have cruelly labelled "squibs"; seeing this, confronting this fact, can we persist in the bigoted folly of maintaining a false distinction between ourselves and the greater humanity of which we are sprung and to which our lines may at any time return?'

But Tony Goldstein was still speaking quietly with Draco. 'The Muggle counterparts of Grindelwald, who persecuted my people, who bear the guilt of the Holocaust, persecuted not my people alone, you know. Men such as Harry and yourself were also put in the camps, for no better reason than that they loved one another. They branded my people with the Magen David; yours, with the pink triangle. Wizards and Muggles alike, in their persecution of the "other", the alien one, run very much to type, and persuade themselves to evil through the same myths. Myths that attribute, at once, and without logic, to the same group, both weakness and mysterious power, alienation and the desire to corrupt and convert, covert control and conspiracy.... What they say of the Jews they say of gay men and lesbians, and Muggles say of wizardkind. So, no, Draco. When I say to you, as I have said, that I have a certain insight, a sense of when danger impends and it is time to make sure! one's valuables are easily portable and readily convertible, I do not mean that I know this because, as you so guilelessly suggested, I am a banker, or a Ravenclaw. It is because it is the survival instinct of a Jew in a world that remains forever dangerous to the People of the Covenant, whom God chose.'

'I'm sorry, Tony. I really am awfully sorry if I seemed to suggest anything, well, flippant, or hurtful. It's just that I don't, any longer, even think in those terms.'

'And for that I am not ungrateful, Draco. It is a measure of how very far you have come. Perhaps finding yourself a member of a minority not unused to persecution and prejudice has helped; who knows? It is grateful to me that you see me and do not simply think, "Ah, it is the Jew, Goldstein, the Kabbalist of Ravenclaw"; that you see instead an old classmate, a friend, a fellow wizard, a banker.'

'Look,' said Harry. 'You're as British as we are, come to that, Tony.'

Goldstein smiled. 'Harry. Never lose your innocence. Yes, in a way, we are. The House of Goldstein and Zabini has offered merchant banking services in Purse Lane since the XIIth Century, and who better? Goblins aside, who else should do the banking but Jews and Lombards, the traditional bankers of Europe? So, yes, Blaise and I, in our different ways, are as British as any other family that has been in Britain for eight centuries. Certainly, Blaise would think as you do.

'But, my dear Harry. When you think of yourself in relation to Muggles, you think of yourself as a wizard. When you think of yourself -' and here Tony's voice became extremely dry - 'in relation to those who, through no fault of their own, do not have the inestimable advantage of being British, whether they be Muggle or magical, you think of yourself as British. But always, always, in those contexts and in many others you cannot grasp or imagine, it is my privilege and my fate to reflect that I am, first and foremost, a Jew, a member of that people who are at once the prey of every despot - and the princes of the earth, chosen of God.

'There. I cannot expect you fully to understand. But you will, I know, at least grant me this: that your Christendom, your Western Civilisation, has two great sources, Jerusalem and Athens, the moral Law that was given my people and the philosophies that the Greeks and Romans evolved. And both of these founding strains would teach, with a single voice, that there is no darker and no more dangerous seduction than that of power without responsibility. In your English tongue, you have heard the words thus: "Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" - do you remember?

'That has been the dream of tyrants from the dawn of time: power without responsibility, power outside the law, power unloosed from moral consequences. It is not the seeking of power, in itself, that is evil, but the purpose of it. And there comes a time, my friends, when even an honest, humble wish to decline formal power may be irresponsible. In politics as in physics, Nature abhors a vacuum.

'Think on these things, as Luna says. And know, both of you, that I stand with you, as Blaise does, and many others, with whatever of power and influence we have.'
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Hogwarts in dreams, in Professor McGonagall's offices, the day after Harry's and Draco's bonding.

'To begin with, the both of you are old enough by now to know that Albus Dumbledore has a pawky sense of humour and that Severus Snape could no more resist plaguing you, either of you, than he could tone down his desperate instinct for dramatics.' Professor McGonagall's expression was wry. 'Of course the Headmaster would not have set out specifically to make the two of you anything more than allies and magical partners. Given, however, that the particular bond that occurred does render you both legal adults, he would then encourage any form of closeness that would keep you both together and yoked, for the sake of victory; and neither he nor Professor Snape could be expected not to tease you about one possible interpretation of the bond. Forget their years, my two fine laddies, and ken the fact only that they are two o'ergrown schoolboys at heart.'

For a moment, Harry could see in his Head of House exactly what Hermione would become in a few decades, right down to the dismissal of Typical Male Idiocy.

'You mean,' Draco said, slowly, his ears beginning to pink up, 'that the Headmaster and my own Head of House were. Were -'

Harry finished for him, too affronted by the antics of two men who ought to have known better to watch his language: '- Were taking the piss?'

'Ten points from Gryffindor for your language, Mr Potter. And ten to both houses for observation.

'Professor Snape cannot resist the lure of seeing the worst - and to him, Harry, in some ways, Draco's involvement with you is precisely that. As for the rest of Staff -. All of them, not excluding the Headmaster, Professor Flitwick, Professor Hagrid, even Professor Vector ... all the magical Staff - I exclude Argus Filch - are in one respect no better than Lavender Brown, the Patil girls, and the whole of Hufflepuff House. The Headmaster, moreover, cannot afford to be nice in his feelings, and has his own, perfectly justified, motives in stressing the utmost possible interpretation of your bond. Nonetheless, it is a fact, obscured by the Headmaster with his usual cunning, and immaterial to Professor Snape in his prophecies of disaster and ruin, that your bond may, but - as you so choose - need not, be a pair bond in any quasi-marital sense. Legally, I again stress, it is endowed with most of the same rights: it emancipates both of you from your families and makes you legal adults, and between the Malfoys and those Muggles, I doubt me which of you ought be more relievit. But you are in no way fated to some predestinate "marriage" against your wills, whatever. You are permanently allied, yes, you have created a magical partnership that cannot be dissolved, and you cannot harm each other now or be used by others to harm your partner. But the ... extreme ... interpretation of the bond is in nowise mandated to the both of you, but you elect that it be.'

'But. Professor McGonagall. Why -'

'Why I am telling you this, when no one else will do? Did you not hear me the now? Albus - for reasons of grand strategy - would be inclined to encourage anything that promoted your further bonding. Severus-"Eeyore"-Snape cannot imagine anything else, because anything else were the less annoying to him - and would afford him less scope for bitter comment. But, above all, all the Staff, bar Severus, all of them - Albus included - suffer from a character trait that affects their judgement and predisposes them to imagine a future of hearts and flowers for the both of you ... and I do not share that trait. It gives me no pleasure to confess it, but the Staff of Hogwarts, but my ain self, is, in frankness, a gaggle of hopeless romantics. And in all my years, I can say, No one has ever accused me of that.'

'Professor Snape ... enjoys the doom and the gloom?'

'Mr Malfoy, you are surely more observant than that question suggests. The man may as well marry Trelawney and be done with it.'

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Dream-Hogwarts, in the weeks after the Bonding, in Severus Snape's dungeon offices.

'Contrary to what is evidently believed by the vulgar, you wretched boy, I was once your age. Do you think I do not know how easily, how fatally, humiliatingly easily, a youth such as you are can be led about by a firm grasp on his member?'

Draco shuddered. This was not a conversation he would ever have wished to have had, and least of all with his Head of House. Most particularly not when his Head of House was Severus Snape.

'Do you take me for a fool, Mr Malfoy? We, at least, need not pretend, you and I, that you are unaware of my history: both as a Death Eater and as an Order spy. Do you think that I was like that clotpoll, Black? Regulus, I mean, not that ass, Sirius. What were the Death Eaters's aims to me? What were bloodlines and politics and the rest of ... Riddle's ... party programme to me? Ambition I had: oh, yes, to my sorrow: but it was all, all, devoted to my art, my vocation, my beloved potions and their craft and mystery....'

Snape's voice had trailed off, and he seemed very far away. When Draco broke the silence, his voice was hesitant. 'Then. Why, sir?'

'You will admit, if only under the influence of Veritaserum, and then only with reluctance, that you are not the most handsome youth at Hogwarts: ferrety, pallid, pointy. Compared to what I was at your age, however, you are almost as godlike as your vanity pretends. Do you think I did not know then what I was? Do you imagine I never saw the pity or the distaste or the cruel, mocking amusement in the faces of girls I fancied? Do you truly conceive that I was not made aware, painfully aware, of precisely, exactly, to the last drachm and gill, how exquisitely humiliatingly a boy could be rejected? And not rejected, only, but made to be shamed, publicly, for so much as daring to imagine any other response?

'And in my youth, my -' he spat the word - 'innocence, I thought that the pains of those hurts were the worst a man could ever be expected to bear. And I resigned myself to bear them, and to hide from the world that sought from me nothing more than that I did hide from it and spare it my presence.

'And then, when I had ceased to hope, it seemed that hope had been rewarded. She was very beautiful. She was fascinating, as well, with a mind that endlessly absorbed me. She was also, socially, a perfect match, and that pleased my family no end. And most intoxicatingly of all ... she left another for me. For me. The appeal to my wants, my desires, and my vanity, was irresistible. It was at her behest that I followed her into the ranks of the Death Eaters. It was for her that I wrecked my life, believing that I was saving it, believing - as I was led to believe - that the unimaginable had happened after all. It was to her, not to Riddle, that I pledged my true fealty in joining that - misbegotten rabble.

'And when I was well and truly hooked, reeled in, in the creel, poor coarse fish that I was, I learnt that there were many tortures and many pains, infinitely worse than those of rejection and unrequited ... love. And the chiefest of them was this, that she had never cared for me at all, and all her long seduction was but a task, carried out with distaste, for her master, to ensnare a pitiable but useful potions-master-in-training who was so obviously vulnerable to such persuasion.'

Snape's self-loathing filled the room like a choking fog. Certainly something was causing Draco's eyes to prick with tears and his words to catch in his throat.

'But, sir. Harry's not like that.'

'No,' Snape said, with a grimace of distaste. 'It is your own motivations I am speaking to, not his, assuredly noble, ones. I am suggesting, Mr Malfoy, that you be sure you know what you are doing, and why, and that anything you may ... build ... be built on some other foundation than the mere sands of desire.

'And as you are dying to ask, though you dare not, I shall tell you what you so wish to know. I do not suggest that Harry is in any way like your - then unmarried - Aunt Bellatrix. Now go away, and we shall never speak of this again.'

Draco stumbled out, reeling, and Snape's door slammed, shatteringly, behind him.

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Dream-Hogwarts, beside the Lake, a few days after the Bonding.

'You tell me, mate.'

Draco looked at Ron and nodded. 'Yes. That may be best.'

He paused, though, for a long moment, before he began.

'You've won. You can afford to be generous - and being a Gryffindor, you doubtless shall be. You'll certainly will yourself to be.

'Then there's the fact that Harry's won. And you love him. In ways I can't and never can, if not in the way I am beginning to and shall. You, your family, Granger: each of you loves him in a slightly different way. The point is, you all love him. Consequently, his having won means you've won.

'And you are the chess champion, the strategist, the indispensable right hand. You know that I am a - that my defection is an accession of strength to you, my mere being here is valuable.

'You're also, fundamentally, a decent person, much as it once pained me to admit that. It bothered you that we hated each other. Or, rather, it bothered you that a person whom it was proper and natural for you to hate: a dark Malfoy: was also a schoolmate. My crossing the lines means you can hate nobly, you can be righteously angry, you can direct all your wrath, your fire, upon my father, instead, and accept me as just another one of your Black cousins, one of the tolerable ones, like Tonks, like Sirius. You need no longer feel any niggling guilt at hating the enemy.

'After all. If Lucius had married Aunt Andromeda. Or if Mummy had been more like Andromeda. Right; start over. If I were the son, simply, of one of the Black sisters, one who had married and then divorced Lucius and raised me in the Light, with Sirius, say, as my favourite cousin and godfather. If, in other words, I had been a reformed, tame Malfoy when we were eleven, and had come into the compartment on that train and offered you and Harry, both, my hand, in honest friendship, that would have been the high point of your life to date.' He held up a hand. 'And of mine, yes. And it's what ought to have been, if the world were fair and just and Lucius weren't what he is.

'But make no mistake, Ron. There is some darkness in you. There's darkness in Harry, come to that, and in Gr- - in Hermione. Even in Nev, I think. It makes you all the more formidable. It makes you better fitted to defeat the Dark, by knowing what it is. Still, though. You and I both know there's a certain deep, dark satisfaction here for you. You've won. With the centuries of bad - if shared - blood between the Weasleys and the Malfoys, well, of course you've had your fantasies about what winning - what beating me - would be like. And I'll wager none of them was quite as satisfying as the reality: not some dream of me defeated, not some fantasy of me broken or overcome, but the much more satisfying reality, of me crawling, penitent, to Harry and Hermione and you for absolution and sanctuary. There has to be something deeply and uncomfortably, darkly, satisfying for you in that.'

Ron cut him off.

'No.'

'No?'

'No. Yeah, I've a temper. Yeah, I've a dark side. It festered like hell round the time of the Tri-Wiz, mate, I tell you straight. And yeah, if you'd've asked me before all this happened, I'd've said, I never imagined, but, right, the idea of the Ferrety Git on his hands and knees is a vision of Heaven.

'But now, it isn't. Or it wouldn't be. Because no matter what you feel about it, you're not. You may have thought you needed to crawl to Harry, but Harry ... Harry has a way of putting people back on their feet. He doesn't wish you kneeling, he needs, wants, you standing: at his side - instead of at his throat - and facing in the same direction as he is, wands out and advancing on the enemy. And because he does want that, he's got it. I can't gloat over this, because Harry wouldn't. Doesn't. And you're for it, now, Draco: you're going to have to accept the two rules of being a Potter sidekick. One, you're always in danger, and it's worth it because that means you're next to Harry, and there's no better place to be. And, two, you have to try and live up to his standards, and that's more dangerous than the daily run of sudden death, basilisks, trolls, Death Nibblers, and deranged Dark wizards bent on world domination. But you do it anyway because, well, see Rule One.'

Ron put a meaty paw on Draco's slim shoulder. 'My own compromise here is pretty much what you were just on about. I'll let myself gloat, a little, at the fact that Lucuis's son and heir came over to us. But I'll just accept and welcome the fact that my ickle cousin is home at last with the sane lot in the family, all right?'

'I. I still have trouble with the idea of your doing this for me.'

'I'm not,' Ron said frankly. 'I'm doing it for Harry. And for me. My conscience. Just remember, though. You said it yourself. We've finally scored off of Malfoy, and that's super. But you're not "Malfoy" any longer; you're my cousin Draco, and if you haven't yet learnt what being family means to the Weasleys, you poor naïve bugger, you're doomed to find out.'

'Oh, God. Is it too late to back out?'

' 'Fraid so: Mum's already started knitting you a jumper, and we can't have her wasting wool.'

_______________________________

'There's something remarkably humbling about having tried so hard to be a nemesis, only to find that all you really were, was a lay figure on whom the hero could practise his skills before going off to meet the real enemy.'

_______________________________

'Oh, and Draco?'

'Yes, Ron?'

'About Harry. The darkness in him. It's there, I suppose. Enough that he's boxed it up and used it to be able to comprehend it in others. But it doesn't - in either sense - comprehend him.'

'No. Light comprehends Darkness; Darkness can't comprehend the Light.'

Ron nodded, sharply. 'Thought you might have tumbled to that by now.'

'Oh, yes. Not really a new insight, though, is it? Except perhaps to us, individually. But it's right there in the book of the words, all along.'

'Yeah, mate, I know. "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehendeth it not...".'

_______________________________

Hogwarts in dreams, in the Room of Requirement, with Draco taking his place in the DA.

'I mean, masks with eyeholes? That's still the uniform, right?'

Draco looked a bit uncomfortable, but Harry answered first. 'Right, Nev.'

'Well. I mean, are we sure Riddle was, really, in Slytherin? Not over bright, that.'

'Anonymity from prosecution and the inspiring of terror,' Draco said. 'I gather those are the goals.'

'Yes, I do see that,' Neville said, mildly. 'And I did have a word with Bellowes about terror and - what was it? Right. "Asymmetrical warfare", he called it. Seems to me, though, that peripheral vision might be a sight more important in battle.'

Harry grinned. 'You see why Nev is indispensable. Hermione would have looked that up, Ron would have gamed it out, but Nev went right for it.'

Draco grinned and bumped shoulders with Neville. 'Well,' he drawled, playing at his old reputation, knowing that Neville by now knew better than to be anything but amused, 'there is that old saying. Advice for Evil Overlords? "One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation." So I can see where Longbottom -'

Neville laughed, and punched Draco on the arm. 'We've all these brainy types and boffins and toffs about. Occasionally, somebody wants to save the day with some simple Northern common sense.'

_______________________________

Dream-Hogwarts, by the Lake, after the Bonding.

'It's still rather difficult for me to accept.'

Ron gave him a long and steady look. 'Harry's not perfect, mate. I know that better than most. But he's fundamentally good. And there's something about him ... you stick by him too long, you'll find you wish to be better, to live up to standards. Don't ask me why you end up doing, except perhaps that he tries so hard to do. Every death, from his mum's and dad's on, he feels, he takes to himself, on himself. You can't bloody live next that, see that every day, and not need to try and help him carry some of that burden.

'I don't like you yet, mate, not by a bloody longish chalk I don't. But I'm willing to. I'm willing to believe that my cousin Draco, of the Black side of the family, is someone worth coming to like, or at least tolerate. And that's because I think you can be good for Harry, a help to him. But if you ever hurt him, in any way - I mean if you so much as give him a paper-cut - I'm going to remember the Malfoy I hate, and I'm going to see that you're that Malfoy, not this new Cousin Draco. And if that ever happens, when they find your corpse, you'll've been hanged from a noose of your own living intestines.'

Draco paled, almost noticeably. He was reasonably sure that this was not metaphor.

'You're the one said you recognised the darkness in me, mate.' Ron's voice was level. 'And you'd best know as well, Hermione and I have you - and Harry - sussed. So you'll understand me when I say, You want to be very good to him and for him in that way, as well. Because he matters that much to us. Not because of the scar or because he's the Boy Who Lived or any of that rot, but because he's Harry, our Harry. Yours, too, or you're for it, Malfoy. If I played for the team you two play for - shut your cakehole, I told you we had you two sussed; not like you've not hinted enough, even all but said it outright - I'd've been there before you, with Harry. I don't love him that way, I'm not aligned to do, but understand this: I, and Hermione, and a whole lot of other surprisingly dangerous people, love him that fiercely in every other way there is to love him, and we're not to be crossed. Be good to him. You don't want to imagine what! you have coming to you if you're not.'

'Ron.... I want very much not to hurt him. Ever. But - this is new to me.'

'Yeah, all right. Honest mistakes, I get it. I've made them. The time of the Tri-Wiz. Before. Before Cedric was killed. I was a shit. May well be why I'm protective now. So, I'll make you a wizard's bargain. If I ever hurt him again, and it not be an honest mistake? You have my full permission - sod that, you have my instructions - to flay me alive and Crucio the remains.'

Draco wetted his lips, nervously. 'I'm trying to be a reformed character here, Cousin. Don't tempt me.'

It was when Ron gave him a lopsided grin, and hugged him, roughly, that Draco lost the battle against his tears.

_______________________________

In a dreamt future beyond Domdaniel.

'Someone,' Seamus said, 'is trying to be artful. And I'll not have that. Not in my manor.'

For a few unguarded moments - unguarded because there was neither point nor need in maintaining polite fictions with Harry, after all - Seamus was himself. Even now, old schoolmates still saw the Seamus Finnigan of the Gryffindor Common Room, if a little older and a little harder. A slightly older but barely matured 'Shameless Finnigan', steadied - if at all - only by his lasting relationship with Dean Thomas, the artist and Charms genius; Finnigan, whose vaguely defined position with Ogden's only enhanced his standing as the life of any party.

Harry was one of the very few - and the only one, other than Dean himself, not in Ministry service or sworn to the Privy Council of the Wizengamot - who knew better. Harry was one of the select few who knew the real Finnigan, the man behind the cover story. Not even Draco knew - though he probably had guessed - that Finnigan was an Unspeakable. Anyone, though, would have known, could they have seen him in that moment, as Harry did: a man with hard eyes, a hard man, another in that unending line of mad Irishmen who had given their loyalties and talents to the secret world of the equally mad British: a man like innumerable Irishmen over the years who had staffed the Muggle armies and the Muggle Special Branch and the Muggle secret services, with a wink and a nod and a light acknowledgment of the insanity of it all and the irony that Mother Ireland's sons were serving the ancient enemy even whilst preserving their own judgement.

'Look, Seamus, no. This can't be starting all over again. I mean, this is where I came in, right? Haven't we done enough? Haven't - well, damn it, haven't I done? Damn and blast it, Finnigan! Are we never to be free of it? Haven't we, all of us, earned a sodding rest?'

'Calm yourself, Harry me lad. Chummy's no Dark Lord - yet. Just a minor villain gathering a few likely lads for a spot of naughtiness ... so far. And old Moody had the right of it, he did, and the Muggle feller Burke, it's eternal, constant vigilance that's wanted to preserve the good. But it's not sitting about with our thumbs in, that'll prevent the next Dark bugger from trying it on. Dark Lords rise when we're all too fat and happy to pay them mind until it's too late. And the problem there is now, it's that everyone thinks as you do, that we can all take a holiday from life and there'll be none to try and fill the vacant spot left when you took Riddle down.

'Nature abhors a vacuum, Harry. With Riddle gone, every minor villain on our patch begins to get ideas. And the Minister, God love the dear man, can't do everything alone, and there's a vacuum on the Light side as well. Arthur's a darling man, he is, but Albus is old, and deserves his rest. It's not been the Ministry, not in living memory, that's been sufficient in itself to serve as the focus for the Light. There are other axes and foci of interest.'

'You're slipping, Seamus. That last point was too well expressed for the stage Irishman.'

'And is it masks I need to be wearing around you, Harry Potter? You're a lovely man, you are, but you make a poor fist of trying to change the subject. Do you think Albus Dumbledore, after saving the world from Grindelwald, didn't wish that he could retire on his laurels and live the peaceful life? But he can't live forever. You've had your rest, Harry. Life goes on. You have influence as none other, even more than did Dumbledore after Grindelwald's defeat. He made a life for himself, but he also fulfilled his duties, and we're alive to tell the tale because he did. It's time you came back to the fight - before it becomes a fight. To prevent it's becoming one.'

'I'm not Dumbledore. I may have some influence -'

'"Some", is it? Mother of God! Whether you like or don't like, boyo, it's influence you have, and in trumps. And it's your absence that is slowly killing us, destabilising things. Influence you have, Harry; it's time you coupled that with some responsibility. Power without responsibility is a dire thing, it is, it's what makes Dark wizards, and if ever you went Dark....'

'God damn you, Finnigan. God damn your eyes. Haven't I given enough? Damn it, Seamus, I don't fucking have anything else to give!' He was on his feet now, shouting at his old friend.

'Do you not, then? And is it Harry Potter telling me that he's alone now and overwhelmed? Tell me, then, Harry, what is it that made you special, you not believing, as we all know all too well, that you're special in yourself? What buoyed you up and shielded you?'

'Nothing! I wasn't special! It was never me! It was. It was luck. Nothing but luck. And love.' His voice faded, wearied, and he fell back bonelessly into his chair.

'And are you now no longer possessed of luck and love? I suppose it is that people like you the less now, and you've fewer allies, because of course no one is grateful for what you've done already, are they, now. And Dumbledore did what he did all alone, and you with another wizard almost as powerful as yourself bonded to you as a magical partner; I can see that we're asking far too much of you, that I can.'

Abruptly, going in for the kill, Seamus dropped the act that was by now second nature to him. 'Harry, you silly bugger, I'm not asking you to give up a damned thing but your own irresponsibility. I'm not asking you to give up Hogwarts, to become an Auror or an Unspeakable, to join the Ministry and play politics, God damn it all. I am telling you that you are needed, that Dumbledore has earned and surely wants a rest, that you and the Ferret want to stop playing at life and start living it, as adults, like the rest of us. Yes, you've sacrificed far too much, and more even than have the rest of us poor sods. And stuff that for an excuse. Get your thumb out, Harry, and take steps now before we are facing a new Riddle or Grindelwald. Do as Albus did; live your life, follow your vocation, but do your damned duty as well, even if it means agonising through the occasional committee meeting or late sitting of the Wizengamot and eventually taking your place as Albus's successor in various offices. You and that git Malfoy, both. Damn it, man, you're a Gryffindor.'

_______________________________

In a future after University, in which Harry and Draco are together....

'Look! I don't - I hate politics, Draco! I loathe it! Look what it does to people. Percy. Fudge.'

'Lucius, for that matter. Yes, I know. I know. You hate politics, and you hate war. For similar reasons, my little Gryffindor. Both are brutal. Neither is glorious now, if ever they were in more than myth; they're squalid undertakings. And there's no room anymore for heroism.' Draco's eyes were mischievous; Harry sputtered. 'But, love, they're all, I'm afraid, right. Tony, Seamus, Luna.... Nev. Hermione. We have a duty to fill the vacuum, before something worse does. We can't be irresponsible in seeking private contentment before public duty. And the reason is simple. Politics - well, the whole thing is hateful, but not as hateful as is war, darling. And, if often imperfectly, inadequately, statecraft is our best hope for avoiding and preventing war. I don't see how we can very well refuse.'

_______________________________

On the dream-lawns at the garden party for Hermione....

'Mr Malfoy.' Snape's nod was curt. 'Potter.'

'Glad you could join us, Severus.'

'Are you, really.' Snape sat, in a swirl of robes. 'I take it that you, Draco, are responsible for this festival of light to honour Granger-Weasley's doctorate?'

'Harry and I, yes.'

'Judging from the quality of the collation, I shall presume that such matters were left to your fine Malfoy hand. And knowing you as I do, you wretched boy, we'd be sitting here in the sleet had not Young Harry With His Beaver On had the sense to charm the lawns. You were never one for mundane detail.'

'Got it in one, Uncle Severus.'

Harry twitched the corner of his mouth.

'You disapprove of your partner's form of address towards me, Potter?'

'You've met Vernon Dursley, Severus.' Harry was calmly cheeky. '"Uncle" is hardly a term of praise in my book, even as a courtesy title.'

'I can only imagine. I assume that Black was never so ... honoured ... by you? What of Lupin, then?'

'I can't really see that he'd care to be referred to as "Uncle Remus", actually.'

Snape bared his teeth in what might have been a smile. 'Godson,' he said to Draco, 'you are an appallingly bad influence on, um, Harry - and the gods know he hardly needed further encouragement in impertinence.'

'Did you stop merely to compliment us, Uncle Severus, or have you a further motive?'

'Insolent child. In fact, I do have another string to my conversational bow. You will recall Flitwick's reaction to the slough conjured by the Weasley twins, consule Umbridge?'

'Yeeeeesssss....'

'Much as it pains me to admit it ... Harry ... our reaction to this bit of magic is on par with Filius's reaction to preserving the Weasleys's bit of marsh. Minerva and Albus and I will wish to speak with you later about making this permanent.'

'Sir?'

'Paracelsus wants a Fellows's Garden, Potter, and we're rather fond of what you've done.'

_______________________________

In dreams of days after victory, in a time of peace, at Domdaniel....

'Professor Snape?'

'We've been through a war, Potter. You may as well dispense with titles.'

'Sir. Um.'

'Eloquent as usual, I see. You have a question?'

'Well. Look, Remus, basically, told me to ask. He feels. He feels, well, we have been through a war together, and, well....'

'Lupin is of the opinion we ought mend our fences. Yes, I know. I attempted to make clear to him that the mending of fences, like hedging and ditching, is a matter best left to workmen. I am a Potions Master, not a navvy.'

'All right. I understand.' Harry made as if to leave.

'Oh, sit down, boy. We may as well have done with it. When a werewolf suggests that two wizards needn't be at each other's throats, there's irony enough in it to command attention. You are, doubtless, here to ask why I detested your father.'

'No, actually. I'm not. I've, well, you know perfectly well I've seen your view of him. And Remus ... as the last Marauder, he's given me his own views. And I've spoken to others who knew him, and my mum. I've come to terms with that, and integrated all those perspectives into seeing him whole. What I can't understand is why, even now, after - as you say - we've been through a war together -'

'Why I cannot abide the sight of you?'

Harry's eyebrows shot up, and when he spoke, it was a bit stiffly. 'Not quite the way I'd've chosen to put it -'

'There's no point in sugar-coating it, Potter. You are well enough aware that my opinion of you is not precisely pleasant.'

'Right. Why not, then?'

Snape's answering look was stony, but it was not, quite, a glare. 'I will eschew unnecessary detail. The short answer is, I loathed your father, and that loathing was more than reciprocated. You, for your sins, markedly resemble him, in character, in inattention, in demeanour - and regular misdemeanour - and in attitude, and of course in looks. You are the son and the very image of one of my worst enemies, you are the godson of, and you openly revere, an enemy of mine who did all in his power to have me bitten by a werewolf, and, worst of all, your father saved me from that fate. In so doing, he caused me to incur a life-debt to him, and to you, by extension; and, as you are well aware, on the day your parents were killed, I - like many others, I admit, but none who owed him a life-debt - utterly failed him, and you.

'I look at you, Potter, and I see the face of an enemy, my greatest humiliation, and my greatest failure, all in one markedly annoying and impudent youth. Worse still, I and all our world owe you a further life-debt, because, at the end of the day, you first defeated and then, at the last, finally slew, the greatest threat wizardkind has ever faced. Under those circumstances, can you wonder that I can hardly bear to be in the same room as you?'

Harry was silent, absorbing Snape's remarks. Silent, and oddly calm.

'Thank you,' he said at last. 'That's very clear. But you're wrong, you know.'

'I have been wrong very rarely in my life, Potter.'

'Then chalk up one last time on whatever slate you keep, Severus.' Harry was uncompromising, and his tone was brisk. 'You've more than repaid any debts you owed my father, or me. I told you that once, the day Draco and I were first bonded, but it seems to have slipped your memory. You've saved my arse on numerous occasions, and we are quits, even, level. I told you then I appreciated it. I thank you again for all you've done - and taught me. And you are Draco's godfather, and important to him beyond what you may know. We needn't ever like or be at ease with one another, you and I; but I will always be your friend.'

Snape raised an eyebrow. 'Albus and the werewolf have finally taught you something, after all, I see.'

'They had help. Yours. I shan't forget that, and you are always welcome in my and Draco's home - and circle of true friends.

'Good day, Severus.'

As the door closed behind him, he heard Snape's quiet riposte. 'Impertinent Gryffindor.' Harry smiled.

_______________________________

In Domdaniel dream-days....

'Ah,' said Dumbledore, around a mouthful of Brighton rock. 'Virtue is not the sole province of the pleasant and the pretty. That, my dear Harry, is a lesson too often unlearnt.'

_______________________________

In the Hogwarts of dreams, in the months after the Bonding.

'Twelve of me, at least.' Draco paused. 'I saw you, you know. I mean, well. The pensieve and all. My God, Longbottom, you took on that raving bitch my Aunt Bella. Mad cow. And it's always been that way, hasn't it. Standing up for what you believe in, even, in first year, against the Holy Gryffindor Trinity. Soldiering on. Whereas, I funked the Forest, I funked duelling Potter - Christ, I've funked more challenges than Lockhart ever did.'

'That's because you've imagination,' Neville said. 'No, listen. You're the sort as calculates the angles and such, thinks ahead - the way Ron Weasley does at chess. When you're imagining the worst, well, that's rather like facing a Dementor every time, isn't it? I'd think anyone might funk that.'

'But -'

'Give over, Malfoy. You're not hopeless, you know, if you'd just ... stop posing. You're always on about some new role: Prince of Darkness, martyr, tortured anti-hero, the Grand Penitent. Too much drama, seems to me. Turns out you're no worse than most and better than some. That's enough, surely? You don't want to be over the top all the time, in the spotlight. It's ... it's so unnecessary. Just another form of that damned side you put on.

'Look here, though. You had the sheer neck to steal Lucius's pensieve, do a bunk, and join the right side. That's enough heroics for anyone, I'd think. You're not a coward, really. Any more than you're a hero, or I am, come to that. Just stop dramatising, and realise you're an average decent chap, or becoming one, and then, happen you'll go on to being a better than average wizard and a reasonably decent sort. Happen you'll even be something rather special, something more than run of the mill. But the way there's through slogging, not all these dramatics. All right?'

'All right.'

'Right, then. I say it as shouldn't, but I'm for a bit of tucker. Come on, then, it's shepherd's pie tonight. Won't do you any harm, by the looks of you.'

'Longbottom -'

'Come on, now. Stop worriting about keeping your girlish figure.'

_______________________________

In a dream future beyond imagining, after Domdaniel, in the prime of their young adulthoods.

'Dead.' Harry stood and walked away, to stand by Draco. 'God damn it. To have survived the war only to end up dead in Dye Urn Alley.'

'Do you know,' Finnigan said, 'if it were the war he'd died in, I'd be ... well, put it this way. That he made it through all of that, only to end up dead, here, now, has its implications, to be sure, but the chiefest thing it does is give me the wind up.'

Ginny's mouth was set in a thin line of righteous anger that boded ill for whoever was behind this. 'It should do, Seamus. But if nothing else, it's the ultimate bona fides, isn't it. Death is the seal of truth; it assures us his information was on the up.'

Draco and Harry both shook their heads, and Finnigan winced. At Harry's nod, it was Draco who answered. 'I'm afraid not, Ginny, darling. Whoever is behind this -'

'- "Chummy" is shorter,' Seamus said.

'But much more vulgar, dear boy. When an informant is killed, it is no guarantee of the truth of his information. Chummy -' Draco's voice did irony frightfully well - 'does tend rather to count on our thinking so, I'm afraid. Such as they ... the "Chummies" of this world are, after all, wiser in their generation, or at least more cunning, than the children of light - or at least the Old Bill, however lightsome. Stuffing an expendable nonentity full of disinformation, allowing him to think he's escaped through his own cleverness - and when, pray, was he ever clever? - and then killing him in hopes that that alone will cap our willingness to believe the falsehoods ... it's been done.'

'So the fact he was killed means nothing, then?'

It was Harry who answered her, gently. 'It means everything, Gin. And I promise you, it shall mean a reckoning, in time. But, on the level we must concentrate upon, it does not mean we accept the information he brought, without further vetting. On that level, what it means is, this was important. We simply don't yet know whether the importance is that his information was true ... or that it was disinformation in a game that is suddenly, because that is one thing this killing does tell us, a game that's suddenly being played for the highest stakes.'

_______________________________

Dream-Hogwarts, in the days after the Bonding.

'That is between you and Ron. If that division, that distinction - "Malfoy" against "Cousin Draco" - works for him, and you, super.

'But you and I.... Those are just terms we threw at each other like Unforgivables, as insults. In hatred and, well, now, in whatever this is and is becoming, we -. We were. Um.'

'We were and are ourselves? Not the Malfoy heir and the Boy Who Lived, not the Slytherin marked for a life of Dark Arts and the Hero of the Wizarding World? You always saw me, not my bloodlines. And I always saw you, not the scar.'

_______________________________

In the days of dreamt adulthood.

Draco stroked Harry's hair, and spoke quietly. 'We could round up every Dark artefact in the realm, darling, every grimoire, every scheduled and restricted potions ingredient.... And it would accomplish very little. The danger would remain, as it has always remained, in the human heart and will, the lust for power without law or sanction. It comes down, my darling Harry, to the factor that most worked to open my eyes to the oneness of magical and non-magical humans alike: the shared characteristic of Original Sin.'

_______________________________

In Hogwarts after Domdaniel, in the Staff Common Room, and they in dreams the newest Masters.

'So, Nev. Bit of a dark horse, that. You marrying Luna, and all.'

'The thing about Luna is ... she understands the Darkness, but it doesn't seem to've touched her. Gin ... Ginny needed someone like Colin, someone young and bright and lively, like. Ginny'd had enough contact with the Dark, what with the basilisk and all that's happened after. And you know how she is about, well, family and all. I don't know as she would have been able to withstand it - the situation with Mum and Dad, that is. I'm right fond of Ginny, always was. But Luna.... She's my strength, when I want strengthening, and comfort. Ginny's strong, feisty, I grant you that; she'd've been able to go toe to toe with Gran, I reckon. But Luna and I have complementary strengths. Gin and I have too many of the same weaknesses, in the same aspects of life. And Luna, well, she understands silence.'

'Like Coriolanus's wife.'

'That, exactly. "My gracious silence".'

_______________________________

In the Room of Requirement, in the Hogwarts of dreams, days after the Bonding.

'It wasn't simply, or solely, the bowing and scraping, you know.'

Harry reached across the desk and put his hand on Draco's restless one. 'I know.'

'When. When I said that. That appalling, shitty threat, about how Granger would be next, and Ron, and then you, now that the Dark Lord had returned. He might have kept some hold upon my loyalties a little longer had that been true. Not, I don't mean as to you three, in particular.' Draco shuddered at the prospect that he now saw as horrible. 'I mean that my blindness might have been extended a bit longer had his next moves been against Muggle-borns and their allies. But not even I could remain blind to what was wrong, and evil - wicked - when that half-blood viper took to killing purebloods in his own service, and members of my extended family. That's not the most honourable basis for a moral epiphany, I know, but it was the best I could do.'

'It was enough. You're here, now. You're here. Home.'

Draco's eyes closed, delicately, and he let himself fall into Harry's warmth as Harry came around the desk and held him.

_______________________________

Hogwarts in dreams, in the Room of Requirement, with Draco taking his place in the DA.

'He's not rational,' Draco said flatly. 'That's the nature of evil, isn't it: always hiding that "small, mad smile" even as it makes your flesh creep.

'But there's a façade, a top-dressing of rationality. I'm certain Lucius has a hand in that.'

'But why? Why,' Ernie asked, 'would the bastards target everyone save us and our families? Are we - are we not the danger to him?'

'Of course we are, in our way. More than the Ministry are. Not so much as, um, some others are.'

'We all know the Order exists, Malfoy. No need to be coy.'

'Right, then. But that's the point. Already, by not targeting us and our families, Riddle has made you doubt your own effectiveness. By giving us a free pass, he may succeed in diminishing us in the eyes of those who ought be our allies - imagine, for example, how that fact, if noted, would play at the Ministry, amongst those who still hope that if they close their eyes and pull the bedclothes over their heads, this will All Go Away. It sows dissension. It may end by causing some to wonder if we're really on the Light's side, as we seem to be being protected.

'This is what Bellowes says is now called, by the Muggles, "asymmetric warfare", which is another way of saying that Riddle, in the final analysis, is simply a terrorist. Targeting Muggles is terror tactics. Not targeting us is a divide-and-conquer tactic. And, too, you must realise, they really believe they will win. And they want us alive for ... afterwards. For vengeance, yes, and also to leech our powers and incorporate those in their own. Which is itself a dire vengeance, after all.'

'And there's this,' Harry said, hesitantly. 'In a way, everything else is a sideshow. A diversion. We can't imagine what form the war will take at last. Perhaps it will be like the Muggles's Great War, perhaps it will be over in a day. But whatever else happens, we do know that it comes down to single combat, in the end. Him or me.'

_______________________________

Hogwarts in dreams, after the Bonding.

The Colonel had been, at first, taken aback, when someone, having taken him off the shelf for a consultation, had casually mentioned that Malfoy was giving Harry a crash course in cultivation.

'Damme,' Bellowes had said, too shocked to be much louder than an average thunderclap, 'I thought Malfoy at least had breedin', if no morals. Gentlemen don't do these things. I mean, damn it all, you might suggest a chap go see your tailor, but.... I recall the time some jumped-up feller from nowhere in particular somehow got in on a house party with a chap I knew. Had to toss him out on the milk train; feller had the damned cheek to admire the chairs! Malfoy's s'posed to be a gentleman, damn it, not a draper, cutter, or cabinetmaker!'

It took a goodish deal of explaining before the penny dropped. Finally, though, the gallant Colonel twigged. 'Ah! Well, then, that does explain it. Didn't realise there was a touch of the Oscar Wildes about the lad. Right, then. Carry on.'

_______________________________

Dream-Hogwarts, on the Quidditch pitch, a month or so after Draco joined the Light.

Draco had been flying, easily, gracefully, catching and releasing the practise snitch, over and again, rapt in the sheer unthinking drill. Harry, unbeknownst to him, was sitting in the Gryffindor tower, in the window, watching affectionately.

It happened suddenly. Draco's broom went mad, and he couldn't control it. It flew at break-neck speed for the Hogwarts boundaries, to punch through the protective wards and take Draco outside their security. In Gryffindor tower, those in the Common Room heard the window shatter as Harry's raw power surged, and heard, also, Harry's hoarse Accio! as he seized and mounted his own broom in hot pursuit.

But not even Harry could catch up with the hexed broom that was bearing Draco away. 'Draco!' His scream was barely audible in the winds of their furious passage. 'Drop the snitch! It must be a portkey!'

But Draco had already dropped the snitch, if only to hang on to, and try to wrest back control of, his broom. And so soon as the broom shattered the wards on Hogwarts's perimeter, it was evident that it was the broom itself that was the portkey. He vanished, with Harry's grasping hand just a few fatal inches from his heel.

Harry's agonised scream rent the air, shattering every window in Hogsmeade.

_______________________________

Hogwarts in dreams, in the Room of Requirement, the day after the Bonding, a few hours after the meeting with Professor McGonagall.

Draco's elegant and ancient pensieve, carven with the Malfoy knot and the Malfoy charges in riotous bas-relief profusion, was on the desk between them.

'If we're. If we are ever to build anything. We can't build on sand, Harry. I would rather undergo Cruciatus again - and I have; I know what I'm saying - than admit to so many things I must admit to. But whatever else we may be or become, we are bound now, as magical partners, and we must build on firm foundations.'

'I know. But I want you to know this. That you are here, at all, is foundation enough for me. Whatever we may or may not become, other than partners in magic, we are friends. Friends first, yes, but friends always. No matter what. All right?'

Draco closed his eyes, and nodded, trying to hide his raw emotions. 'I'll go first.'

He stayed there, his eyes tightly closed, not daring to watch, certainly not daring to touch Harry and be drawn into walking through the memories with him; alone, eyes closed, with that queer tickling sensation in his brain where the memories ought have been.

He knew what Harry would see. Lucius, in the years before Voldemort rose again, calculating the angles as accorded with his sole conviction, that power was all; encouraging Draco, preparing Draco, to wield power and to serve power, and, in pursuit of power, to be ready to befriend and co-opt the Boy Who Lived. The meeting in the shop. The meeting on the train. The rejected hand. And, after, and increasingly as it became clear that the old, Dark power was rising, a power more congenial to Lucius and therefore to be preferred to Harry, a power deemed by Lucius to be greater than Harry's, there came the reaction to that rejection. The fantasies of hate. The fantasies that became darker each time, more bitter, bloodier, until, with the onset of puberty, they began to incorporate sexual elements. Fantasies of revenge that were become increasingly explicit, sadistic, and sexual.

And then, he knew, Harry would see the last set of remembered fantasies, daydreams of hope, now, in the wake of his sudden revulsion against the Dark. Fantasies so strong, so hallucinatory, that they seized him even in waking moments. Fantasies now of rescue, of being rescued and taken away, healed, protected, saved, by Harry. Fantasies he at once clung to and resented, hated, feared, because his saviour in them was his enemy. Fantasies that humiliated him (though Harry, in them, did nothing to humiliate him), that humiliated him as horribly as, in his earlier fantasies of domination, he had humiliated Harry; fantasies that humiliated him because, by now, all his fantasies of Harry, of Harry as his rescuer quite as much as previously of Harry as his victim, were inextricably entangled in overmastering desire and need.

He startled, when he felt Harry's living hand on his face, and opened his eyes, and say the pensieve stilled and calm-surfaced between them. Harry's face was naked, vulnerable, with his glasses off, and desperately earnest. 'It's all right, Draco. It's all right.'

Draco was silent. How could it be all right? Dully, wearily, he replaced his memories, and waited for Harry to extract his own memories and place them in the pensieve.

It did not take long. It seemed to take no time at all, and forever. It was Harry's hand, gentle, on his shoulder that brought him back, surfacing, his mouth agape.

'When I first confronted it,' Harry said, quietly, 'I got the wind up so badly I actually thought of taking a header off the Astronomy Tower. I mean, look. First I find out I'm a wizard - and the only relations I have call me a freak for it. Then there's the Parselmouth rot, and everyone thinks I'm the Heir of Slytherin, then people think I killed Cedric and that I'm mad to believe that Riddle's back.... Then Sirius ... is lost.... I mean, how much more could Fate fucking through at me? On top of all this, I have to be Harry Poofter, as well?

'But. Well, you saw. I tried to despise you.'

'I was reasonably despicable.'

'But whenever I imagined a victory over you, it turned into that. The victory was in rescuing you, reforming you, making you ... mine. The same exact dreams you came to have. That has to mean something, when destined magical partners have the same dreams.

'So. Like I said, right? It's all right. We'll see where it goes, but it'll be all right, it has to be. Friends first, all right, then?'

'Friends first. And last. And always.'

'Besides,' Harry said, with a shy smile. 'I hear that the exploring part, from friends to, well, something more, is rather fun.'

Draco blushed lightly and looked away. 'Oh, really, Potter. Malfoys don't have plebeian fun.' But the laughter in his voice betrayed him.