Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn

'That Dweam Within a Dweam'

Die Weltgeschichte ist auch die Summe dessen, was vermeidbar gewesen wäre. (The history of the world is also the sum of what might have been avoided.)

-- Konrad Adenauer

O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashion: we are the makers of
manners, Kate; and the liberty that follows our places stops the mouth of all find-faults; as I will do yours, for upholding the nice fashion of your country in denying me a kiss: therefore, patiently and yielding.

(They kiss.)

You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate: there is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues of the French council; and they should sooner persuade Harry of England than a general petition of monarchs.

- Here comes your father.

- King Harry, King Henry V, Act V, Scene 2, Wm Shakespeare

Pride of Regiment and love for the Regiment's history and tradition is the sacred Ark of the Covenant on which the British soldier depends in battle and on which Britain, through him, has again and again survived and won through to victory.

- Sir Arthur Bryant

As Aristotle remarked, men do not become dictators in order to keep warm. If a ruling class has some other source of strength, why need it bother about money? Most of what it wants will be pressed upon it by emulous flatterers, the rest can be taken by force.

- CS Lewis, Surprised by Joy

What we see in Satan is the horrible co-existence of a subtle and incessant intellectual activity with an incapacity to understand anything. This doom he has brought upon himself; in order to avoid seeing one thing he has, almost voluntarily, incapacitated himself from seeing at all.... He says 'Evil be thou my good' (which includes 'Nonsense be thou my sense') and his prayer is granted.

- CS Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost

'I disbelieve the history because it isn't history.... *** If it had been Tutankhamen and a set of dried-up Africans preserved, Heaven knows why, at the other end of the world; if it had been Babylonia or China; if it had been some race as remote and mysterious as the Man in the Moon, your newspapers would have told you all about it, down to the last discovery of a tooth-brush or a collar-stud. But the men who built your own parish churches, and gave the names to your own towns and trades, and the very roads you walk on - it has never occurred to you to know anything about them.'

- Fr Brown, in GKC's 'The Curse of the Golden Cross'

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i. Draco: Line Upon Line

Family, damn it. Family mattered. And pride. He had not learnt every lesson well, but this much he knew.

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ii. Harry: Precept Upon Precept

Principle. Duty. The defence of others. These were what he had left, these and his pride. He had been gulled and deceived too many times, and too fatally, by dreams.

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iii. Dumbledore: The Rest and the Refreshing

If only they could shut off the clamour of their waking minds, and listen for their hearts.

If only he could silence his own night-terrors and his own grinding, busy wits.

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iv. Let the Dead Bury Their Dead

Once again, the dreams. Once again, as ever, framed by the scene of the two of them, wounded but alive, meditating the uses of victory amidst the groans of the wounded and the dying.

'Now we both have what we wanted. And we can do as we damned well please. That is what victory is, Harry. And that is what was worth fighting for.'

And Harry remembered the words of a seer from years before: neither may live while the other survives.... Perhaps, now, it would be possible to get on with life: to live, at last. But first, it would be necessary to bury the dead, and come to some terms with the past....

_______________________

v. To Every Thing There Is a Season

In dreams of schooldays yet to come and that are not....

He had gone home for the summer hols with but one thing on his mind: destroying Potter. He had vowed to do so when Potter took his father from him, dragged the Malfoy name through the muck, and somehow cozened the Ministry into gaoling a noble and pureblood wizard. He had renewed that vow when Potter and his filthy little hangers-on had hexed him - and Crabbe and Goyle, not that they mattered - into slugs on the Hogwarts Express.

That had made it personal. He would destroy Potter. He would drag him down, humiliate him, torture him, make him suffer and bleed, and only then, and then slowly and exquisitely, kill him.

Not for the Dark Lord. Not even for his father, now. For himself.

He ransacked the house for curses and Dark Arts manuals, devices, artefacts. He violated Lucius's wards, carelessly, seeking only to find new ways to torture and ruin and finally to kill, to wash away the memories of humiliation by bathing literally in Potter's dying blood.

He welcomed - at first - the visits of his Aunt Bellatrix (as he believed, not knowing that their visitor was actually a greatly-daring Tonks, sowing doubt and dissension by the simple expedient of telling the vile truth about Voldemort). And he rejoiced - for the first fifteen minutes - when, even after Bellatrix's insane praise of a Voldemort he was increasingly beginning to hate because of that very praise, he found at last his father's pensieve.

A few hours later, his determination, his rejoicing, and his goal had all gone the way of everything he had eaten in three days and had since sicked up. Voldemort - no lord, he, and, come to think of it, not even the name Voldemort was his own - Voldemort was insane, base, a petty tyrant, a psychopathic menace, not even a pureblood, whose schemes were directed to enslaving even his followers. And Lucius Malfoy, Draco now realised, deserved far more than mere imprisonment. His own father, a crawling toady to that abomination, and worse: a murderer and worse than a murderer, and not even from his own will, but as a slave. A coward and a cheat and a liar. As great a coward as Voldemort, whose very assumed name was a mark of cowardice, of a flight from death, fleeing in fear.

If he'd realised this in time, he'd have shouldered Potter aside to put Lucius in Azkaban himself. The bastard had done the vilest things, blacked the boots of the most base of masters, and finally made the Malfoy name a byword and a hissing, neither respected nor feared. It was Lucius who had ruined Draco's life, and for this?

To hell with that scrawny, bespectacled little shit, Potter. Draco had a true enemy now, and no time for schoolboy rivalries. (He carefully refrained from reflecting that he had been wrong to threaten Potter over Lucius, much less try to hex him, and that Potter's and his friends's reactions had been well-deserved.) No, Draco had a new focus for his considerable capacity to hate. And if that meant making an ally of Dumbledore, so be it.

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In the Hogwarts of dreams....

'I suppose,' Harry mused, 'my first thought was that Cho was ... pretty. And she was. Is. But my second thought was that I was surprised that I thought that.'

Draco nodded, and remained silent, a half-smile his only response.

'Obviously, Ron's next thought, or my dad's, or any other straight boy's - Roger's, Corner's, Cedric's - would have been, Why the devil am I surprised at this, wouldn't it have been. But I never had that third thought.'

Draco made a humming sort of noise indicating comprehension.

'I mean, how thick can a chap be? Right, I know everyone knew Cedric was one of the fittest blokes at Hogwarts, that was just a fact of life, and everyone noticed that, girls, straight boys, house elves. Hell, probably Minerva did. But I noticed his eyes a bit much, I think. Possibly because they were grey.' He shot Draco a shy smile, and his lover grinned back at him, blushing faintly. 'And ... Bill.'

'Ah,' Draco said, knowingly.

'Well.'

'Oh, yes.'

'Mind, he does stand out a bit, in any case.'

'The fang earring does have much to answer for.'

'But I ... noticed him. Far more than I ever did Cho, really. And wanted so much to be that ... cool. And must have been like a puppy going walkies when I got to take him about the grounds, with Molly, of course, what time we had the Tri-Wiz. And then there was Charlie.'

'Ah, yes, there certainly was and is, isn't there.' Draco grinned, reminiscently. 'Those arms.'

'Exactly,' Harry breathed. 'How I could have been oblivious to the fact that I was anything but oblivious, for so long.... Noticing these things....'

'Well, yes. But it's like that for all of us, isn't it. Thank God you never fell for Ron. Bit awkward, had you done.'

'Yes, well, Ron was eleven when we met, by the time he was as ... noticeable ... as the others, well, we were friends, nearly brothers, and it was painfully obvious that he was straight.'

'And hopelessly enamoured of Hermione.'

'Yeah, well, there was that, also.'

'So. Who was your very first crush, then, even if you didn't know it. Oh, wait. You and older boys. It was Wood, wasn't it.'

'Well, I thought so, for a very long time. But it's past time for you to counter with dark secrets of your own, you know.'

'Oh, mine are the short and simple annals of the fabulously rich, you know. Like you, I noticed - and unlike you, I noticed my having noticed - Bill and Charlie. Which was rather a facer, really, given the traditional amity and trust between the Weasleys and the Malfoys.'

Harry sniggered.

'And - obviously - I noticed Wood. Pucey, for that matter, though dear God the man was in want of a decent dentist. Blaise, of course.'

'Mmm. Yes.'

'A little less enthusiasm if you don't mind, Potter.' Draco's tone was not quite as waspish as his words, but it was a damned close-run thing.

'Sorry, love. I wasn't meaning to tease.'

'Well, all right. But that's the point, actually. As far as first crushes go, I seem never to have gotten past mine. On. Well. Upon a wide-eyed, scruffy, deliciously innocent boy with green eyes, just my age, whom I met once in a shop.'

'Funny,' Harry said, smiling, 'that's where I met mine.'

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In a dream-future, in Harry's headmastership, with Snape and Lupin to tea....

'It never ceases to amaze me how banal and stupid evil is.'

'Read some Hannah Arendt, boy.' Snape snorted.

'No, but really. Masks that cut off peripheral vision in battle. Robes that catch on things - also in battle - and make it easy for an opponent to break your neck. Convoluted plans that multiply the possibilities of something's going tits-up.'

'Occupational hazard for tyrants,' Lupin observed, mildly. 'An early success or two against the advice of your inner circle, and you believe you're infallible. No one dares suggest otherwise, and, there you have it. Bob's your uncle.'

'Besides,' Harry observed. 'When all was said and done, he was really only a parasite - yes, yes, as well as a parricide, very funny, love. I mean, what does the Killing Curse do, really, but take the life-force and magic from its object and transfer it to the caster? So, when it rebounded on him, when I was in nappies, he became no more than my parasite, and when he foolishly took my blood to recreate a body to inhabit, well....'

'Yes, yes, "neither shall live" and all that. But it wasn't only Riddle. Every one of the buggers. I mean, giving Umbridge the key to a slush fund? That's like putting vampires and Red Caps in charge of the blood-drive. And all of them so easily manipulated through their paranoia, you could play both ends against the middle all day and half the night. And, dear God, it's always so simple to provoke them into a blind and incautious rage - even by cheeky letters, as I recall.'

They thought back to that incident. They had not hoped, really, that it would lure Tom Riddle - as by then they derisively called him - into coming out to do battle, but they had known that it would, as it did, provoke a monumental rage in him, and consequent incaution and moves made stupid by haste and blind anger.

Harry had absorbed much from Dumbledore and the Order members, and it showed as soon as he had begun dictating.

'To Tom Marvolo Riddle, late a scholar at Hogwarts School, falsely styling himself a lord and falsely naming himself "Voldemort", Greeting and Defiance.

'Know that, by reason of your manifold murders and wanton viciousness, it is resolved that your deposition from such powers as you have usurped, your destruction, your debarment from all magic, and your death is to be encompassed, unless you shall have surrendered yourself, your followers, your prisoners and hostages, and all Dark artefacts and articles in your possession or control, to the undersigned by no later than the four-and-twentieth hour after your receipt hereof. Such surrender to be unconditional and at discretion.

'Know further that, in accordance with the Prophecy, and for to prevent the further effusion of blood, I, HJ Potter, do hereby challenge you to a single combat and monomachy, as an alternative to your death by other means, in the absence of your surrender at discretion. Such duel to be arranged by seconds in the proper manner.

'For the effecting of which, I do name as heralds and seconds my trusty and well-beloved agents pretending in your ranks, Messrs Lestrange, Lestrange, Avery, Jugson, and Dolohov, any of whom may act in this matter under the direction of my agent and the friend of my father, Peter Pettigrew, who owes me a life-debt in accordance with the laws of magic.

'And I direct that this challenge be written in multiple counterparts by my agents and distributed to my allies hidden in the ranks of the said Tom Riddle, so that any of them who has opportunity may present the same.

'Given under my hand this day at Hogwarts School.

'HJ Potter

'Wizard Commanding, Order of the Phoenix

'Countersigned:

'APWB Dumbledore, OM (1^st), GS, MW (late Chief Warlock), MICW (late Supreme Mugwump)

'Warlock-in-Chief, Order of the Phoenix.'

This had been copied out in several counterparts, in the handwriting - magically forged, by Dean - of several Death Eaters, including Macnair, Mulciber, and Rookwood, and surreptitiously and daringly introduced into the robe-pockets of several more by Snape, including the pockets of Lucius, the elder Crabbe, and the elder Goyle. Then the Order had seen to it that a copy in Lucius's handwriting, addressed to his brother-in-law, was intercepted.

It had not, in the end, drawn Riddle from his lair, but it had caused a huge upheaval and purge in the Death Eater ranks, accounting for more Death Eaters than the Order ever had done, and even those who managed to clear themselves in time were never after free of Riddle's increased suspicions.

The only thing Harry had regretted - and confessed incontinently to the headmaster, though Draco had managed to avert the confession until the letters were already in Riddle's skeletal hands - was having forged Dumbledore's countersignature, being sure that the good old man would not have approved the ploy. Harry was mistaken: Dumbledore had sighed, and indicated that the ruse was a legitimate one, but had grounded Harry and Draco both from the Gryffindor-Slytherin match to punish the forgery. It was after that that Draco had stopped quoting the maxim that 'it was easier to get absolution than permission'.

What, precisely, Albus had said to Severus, Remus, and Minerva, all of whom had been in on the plan, was never divulged, but the three had left the head's office looking as if they'd been caned.

'Persons who choose the Dark by definition are not given to incisive thought,' Snape said, and then put up a hand to forestall comment. 'As I was not thinking when I chose it, though - like Regulus Black - I came to my senses after, and was more fortunate than he in escaping. As a Muggle writer has noted, this whole "Evil be thou my good" posturing eventually decays into, "Nonsense be thou my sense". Shades of Sludge the Medium.'

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In schooldays that are but a dream, over hols, in London with the Tonkses....

'I,' Aunt Andromeda pronounced, with decision, 'was never one to have a fit of the screaming hab-dabs over the mere thought of social mobility. Tinker, after all -'

'Aunt?'

'Oh. Your Uncle Teddy, boy. Saddled with that nickname since his days at his prepper: "Tinker T. Tonks", "Tinkerty", and, in the end, "Tinker". I've even heard "Tinks" from one or two old boys from his Orley Farm days.'

Draco opened his mouth, paused, and wisely shut it, with a snap.

'It's precisely that look of horror that shows what irredeemably middle-class attitudes your father passed on to you, child.'

'Orley Farm?' Harry couldn't help but ask.

Aunt Andromeda favoured him with a smile, and turned slightly in her chair to face the door. 'TINKER! Shift your bloody arse!' She turned back to them and went on as if she had not just shrieked in tones that rivalled those her aunt's portrait could achieve. 'Yes, Harry, Tinker was down for Harrow until he got his Hogwarts letter. That's what I was telling you. Tinker's family came of a long line of nobodies - provincial solicitors, I believe - until his grandfather was called to the Bar and ended up on the Court of Appeal. Law Lord. Life peerage, of course: nothing to inherit there. The ... what the devil is taking the damned old fool all this time? TINKER!'

From down a hallway or two, they faintly heard Ted Tonks give tongue. 'Untwist your knickers, Andy, I'll be along in due course!'

'With the thunderous speed of an arthritic tortoise,' Aunt Andromeda snorted. 'THE HELL'D Y'DO, TEDDY-TINKERS, STOP FOR A SLASH? I TOLD YOU THAT ALL THAT DAMNED TEA WOULD BUGGER YOUR KIDNEYS! Now. Where were we? Tinker's father, right. Second son, of course. Guardee. Afterwards, got a sinecure as an estate manager for a Scottish earl, married one of his daughters, the Hon Honoria, known to one and all as Hon-hon. She was also referred to in the family as "the Scotch Mist", being, if sweet-natured, thick as fog. Quite likely in reaction to her mother, who was a stout little thing from our side the border, a fanatical huntswoman who looked like the back end of her own horse, and had all the grace and charm of a stable lad. The countess was the true original of that tale that's been told, by now, about half the huntresses in Britain. Came back from a long day afield, with her horse completely blown, and when the groom mentioned it, replied -'

'- "You'd be sweatin', yourself, Hobden, if you'd been between m'legs for the past four hours", really, Andy, that one's worn stale.' The speaker was a mild and amiable-looking old gentleman in tweeds so old and, by now, so shabby, that they might have been hand-woven by Picts what time the Roman surveyors were looking to site Hadrian's Wall.

Harry shot Draco a look, having heard Draco, once, make the self-same jest as Tinker's grandmother had. Draco merely looked all aback, wondering if perhaps he'd picked it up from Narcissa, and, if he had, if that meant she'd secretly stayed in contact with Aunt Andromeda, after all.

'Tinker, finally. The handsome one with the manners is Harry Potter, and the other one's Cissa's boy. Harry, Draco, the bundle of rags with the ragged moustache and the air of an inquisitive and well-meaning sheep is Ted-the-Tinker Tonks: wizard, Muggle-born, and the veriest tinker indeed in terms of general dilapidation. The man's a walking tip, and worse, it's communicable. He can reduce a drawing room into something out of the Blitz simply by walking in to it. Well, damn it, Tinker, what are you standing there for? Give the decanter a shove and totter into a chair.'

'Damn me if there's anything left in a decanter after you've been at it, Andy. Alcohol evaporates when exposed to air at an hourly rate; in minutes, when exposed to you. Harry, hullo, welcome to Bedlam. Draco. You look like your mater.'

'Not - most people think I look like Lucius, lamentably.'

'Well, you must have truly browned them off if they'd actually tell you so. I can think of few worse insults, m'self. Pinchbeck old sod.'

'Yes, well, I'm not altogether fond of him myself.'

'I shouldn't think so. Appalling shit, your father. If you were the sort to think highly of the bugger, I can't imagine we'd've let you in the house.'

'Don't be stupid, Tinker, if he were the sort to follow his father, Alastor Moody'd have his arse bunged up in a cell in Azkaban, with nothing but a piss-pot and some Dementors for company. Alastor Moody,' she snorted, fondly. 'Now there's a prophetically-named wizard for you.'

'As if names were destiny. Black Family superstition, I call it. Do I look like bloody Perseus to you, Andy?'

'Hardly, darling, or you'd have slain my sister the Gorgon long since. Don't flinch, nephew, I was referring to the bitch, Bella.'

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In after-days, in dreams of an impossible future, victory won, childhood over....

Harry hated publicity. Hated his life's being public property. Hated the speculation, the whispers, the attention. Sometimes, he thought he hated it more than he'd hated life with the Dursleys or the struggle against the late and decidedly unlamented Tom Mouldy-Wart Riddle. And he especially loathed, damned, blasted, and resented speculation about his - and by extension, Draco's - sex life.

Take the unceasing whispers about roles. Not that it was anyone's damned business - and most of them had no idea of the paradoxes of power relationships in gay sex - but he was absolutely furious to find that common opinion - 'dead common,' he'd snarled, when he'd first heard - had it that Draco was a complete bottom-boy, a submissive to boot, and the 'feminine' partner. Rubbish, of course: they'd both of them long since discovered, and nurtured, a deep and meaningful relationship with their own prostates, and they both believed in equal opportunity shagging. But that wasn't the point. It was absolutely appalling that people - strangers - had the unmitigated neck to speculate on their sex life. It was utterly unacceptable that their private lives were treated as public property - and used to make points concerning public policy. And most of all, it was wholly hex-worthy that the whole of Wizardom was presuming to look at Draco in ways only Harry had the right to do, damn it.

After all, he well knew why it was that all and sundry held the impertinent opinions they did, and it wasn't merely that they had a psychological need to see Hero Harry as the 'masculine' partner. No, damn it, the mob was presuming to look at Draco's arse. It made Harry's wand-hand twitch, just thinking of it. How dare they, damn them.

Admittedly, it was almost understandable. Draco's was an arse for the ages. Even Ron had confessed, once, when many, many sheets to the wind - and would never be allowed, by Harry or Hermione, to forget it, or live it down - that Draco had an arse off of which you could bounce a Sickle. (They had taken away his Old Ogden's after that, even though he'd had a lucid moment immediately after - sobered by his own shock - and had protested that, 'Mate, not that I'm into the rabid ferret, pain and bestiality are not my kinks'.)

Still, it made Harry a bit ... volatile. Given that the reward of heroism and victory had been that the Ministry, even under Arthur, much less beforehand, consule Madam Bones, had tended to keep half on eye on him lest he turn into a new Dark Lord, this made things even more difficult. (Power on his level inevitably makes people, and bureaucrats as well, a trifle nervous.) And it was true that his temper was still a touch unstable. He'd had a devil of a time explaining his reaction, after all, when someone had unwisely retailed a rumour about Ginny in his presence.

'Harry....'

'It was not an Unforgivable.'

'No, though I expect we'll be classing it as one now. The reason it wasn't technically illegal is that no one's ever

done it before, and you may be the only one with the raw power needed to do it. Be that as it may, Mr Potter, your new curse - Expugnote Voluntate - is if anything worse than Imperio. You cannot expect that it will be tolerated in future.'

'Besides which, it's very dodgy Latin.'

Madam Bones sighed. 'Madam Vance, if we could keep to the point? Thank you. Now. Harry. I realise -'

'Madam Bones. Please. Forgive the interruption, but ... look, there's really no such thing as an Unforgivable -

which this wasn't - anyway. I mean, we used them in battle against the DEs. Aurors don't go to Azkaban for using them. The -'

'Mr Potter, this was not a battle or a law enforcement situation. You hexed a wizard for speaking scandal about Mrs Creevey.'

'It seems to me that there should be an exception for defending a lady's honour. Ginny's like a sister to me. In fact, with Hermione, she's the closest thing to a sister I'll ever

have. You just may happen to recall that my parents are DEAD?'

'Harry.'

The room fell utterly silent, still, although it had seemed silent enough before. No one had noticed Albus Dumbledore's arrival, but now that he had spoken, he was in complete control of the chamber.

'Evil, Harry, always leaves a mark. It mars, even when defeated. It leaves scars - as you should know, none better. I am aware that ever since Tom Riddle's spirit possessed Ginevra Weasley Creevey in the eleventh year of her age, through that damnable enchanted diary, there have been those who have said cruel, foolish, and hurtful things, attributing to her all manner of wickedness, perversity, vice, and madness. Falsely, as we know. After all, in that same year, and always, you also have been slandered - because of the scar Tom Riddle marked you with, and the powers you possess.

'But the defeat of evil - which, my dear, dear boy, was very much at your hands - does not merely remove the evil yet leave the scars; such victory over evil also ... creates. Much is born, phoenix-like, from the ashes: even, quite often, law, and liberty. Your suggestion, that the defence of a lady's honour, excuses or condones or comprehends the code duello, is charmingly obsolete. The rule of law has been re-established, not least by your own efforts. We have, now, a Ministry worthy of respect and obedience. These matters need no longer be handled privately, by a young lady's husband or brothers or father. If for no other reason than to humour an old man who loves you very much, and would see no ill befall you, will you not let it go?'

Harry had hung his head, then, and nodded, biting his lip in a vain effort to control his countenance. Even now, it was hard for him to accept that there were those who loved him, and that the world was safe enough, and that the burden of all things was no longer on his shoulders alone.

'Madam Bones. Members. Harry is quite correct, as a technical matter, that he has broken no law. You are quite correct, of course, that he acted dangerously, and that a hair-trigger temper in a wizard of Harry's powers is not something to treat lightly. Will you leave this matter to me and to Harry, working together?'

'That, Albus, is perhaps the silliest question, rhetorical or not, you've ever asked. Obviously, we shall. Mr Potter? Harry?'

'Madam.'

'I think I speak for all of us in noting that we have acted, here, certainly from a concern for the public, but very much also from concern for you. It is little short of miraculous that you accomplished what you did, and have endured all that you have endured, without far greater psychic damage than you have. And we are eternally grateful for those accomplishments and that endurance. But, damn it, Harry, you need to take some care of and for

yourself. And I say that, not in any official capacity, but as - I hope I may still say - your friend.'

Harry nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

'Well, then. I think we're done here? Right, then. Adjourned.' And the members of the special examining committee swept out in a rustle of robes, leaving Harry and Dumbledore alone in a silent room.

'I've ballsed it up again, haven't I, Professor?'

'Ah, Harry, my dear boy. Nothing of the sort. I was a wreck myself after defeating Grindelwald, you know. You have proven more resilient than any of us had a right to expect. But, you see, I had a secret.'

'A secret?'

'One that helped me get my feet back under me, and heal from the wounds of the soul that I suffered in fighting the Dark.'

Harry leant forward, eagerly, desperately. 'What was it, sir?'

_______________________

In a dream of the end of the summer hols, a few weeks before the start of a new term and year....

God only knew what the staff did in the summer hols. But there were, there simply had to be, wards and watches upon the castle, even if it appeared that no one was present. Otherwise, Voldemort - no: he would not use that false, made-up title, he would no longer give that creature even that much respect, even in his own mind: Riddle - otherwise Riddle would simply have captured it during the hols and held it against all comers.

Hogwarts, then. Sanctuary, refuge, safety. Draco made certain that the pensieve was secure, and took flight - in both senses - as he had never flown before.

_______________________

In a dreamt young adulthood, in a small Ministry cubbyhole, with Albus....

Yes, Harry remembered that day.

'A secret?'

'One that helped me get my feet back under me, and heal from the wounds of the soul that I suffered in fighting the Dark.'

Harry leant forward, eagerly, desperately. 'What was it, sir?'

Dumbledore smiled. 'Hogwarts, Harry. Hoggy, warty Hogwarts. To deal daily with those eager young souls, to heal their childish hurts and be privileged to help guide their minds ... it was quite as much a healing for me, and a guide to my mind, a lamp unto my feet. Their innocence refreshed me.'

'You hadn't much to do with Slytherin, I take it?' Harry's tone was dry.

Albus was having none of it. His responding look was stern, though his tone was gentle and grandfatherly. 'Ah, my boy.... It was a different era to yours, then, as it is, thank God, and thanks to you and the Order, different now also. Of all Tom Riddle's sins, one of his worst was his corrupting Hogwarts's innocence, in the 1970s and in your own day, infiltrating and infecting Slytherin, cutting them off from the other houses, seducing also members of those houses, dividing to rule, sowing dissension.... It is no longer so.'

'Headmaster -'

'Harry. In formal settings, if you must, but, please: am I not, after all we have been through together, simply "Albus" to you? I cherish your respect, Harry, but I much prefer your affection. And surely you know by now that you are like a son to me.'

Harry stammered, and flushed, and suddenly felt his defences crumble and his precarious dignity desert him. He had never known his parents, his family were unworthy of that name, Sirius had been taken from him; only Albus, and Remus, and the Weasleys remained as parental figures in his life, although Hermione was as much mother-figure as friend. He buried his face in Albus's robes, and let himself be held.

'My dear child. My dear young man. Tom Riddle ... Tom suffered greatly as a child. In his turn, he saw to it that you suffered. By his actions, and by existing, and by being the object of your fate, he stole your childhood. Even as was so for your Draco. The both of you need to recapture what you may of it.

'I know of no better place for that than Hogwarts. You deserve that chance. Believe me, it wounds me to this day that we were forced to condemn you to an existence at the Dursleys's. A lesser person would not have survived it, much less emerged from it sane, and I was burdened daily with that knowledge for seventeen interminable years. But your innate magic protected you, and still more did your mother's gift. A Muggle child would never have made it through, and it grieves me still that you had to do. But I had no right to tamper with that magic for which your mother gave her life, to trifle with the protections she placed upon you and render her sacrifice vain.

'All I can do now is to make such reparation as is in my power. You once said that Hogwarts was your home, Harry. And it is, in many ways. I would have you there, at home, to heal and to have some recompense for all that you were forced to sacrifice.'

'Headmaster -

Albus. I.... Um.'

'My dear boy, don't for a moment think that this is some form of charity, of alms. If anything, you would be doing me, and the Wizarding world, a great service. You and your friends have been away from Domdaniel for a year and more now. You all of you - you and Draco in particular - have done much for our community. And I well know that you - good heavens, even your official biographer - feel that you have seen too much action to be at peace in Academe's Groves. Yet there remains this: Hogwarts, in many ways, is your home. And even as you and Draco need your home, it needs you also. It would be a particular kindness to Severus, who wants a less onerous schedule, and would much prefer to teach Potions at the university level only. But the only successor he will hear of is Draco, and of course we well know that Draco will not come home unless you do. Hermione, on completing her doctorate, will be teaching at Hogwarts, and at Domdaniel. Neville is already home, if I may call it so. But Hogwarts is not complete without Harry-and-Draco, and everyone knows it. So, my boy. Will you make an old man happy, and come home to us?'

He had, of course. They all had, the wounded: he and Draco, whose childhoods had been destroyed in mere casual malice by a maniac, Neville, another victim of the prophecy, with Luna at his side, Justin and Blaise, who had outfaced so much prejudice, Hermione and Ron, whose loyalty to Harry had cost them so dearly and made them face scenes and trials, as children, no child should ever face. And Albus had, of course, been right. Life at Hogwarts and Domdaniel, the life of man called to be both schoolmaster and don, had done much to heal him, as it had Draco, as it had them all. It had made them able, when the calls came in turn, to bear the hot light and glare of public and ministerial life as well, with Hogwarts and Domdaniel always a refuge when the task was done, the duty fulfilled, the term of office completed.

He would always hate publicity, and speculation about his and Draco's life; but Albus had been right, and Hogwarts and Domdaniel had given him back his stability.

It was as well.

_______________________

In a dream of Hogwarts schooldays....

'Ah. Harry, my dear boy. Please, come in and take a pew. Tea? Biscuits? Sherbet lemon?'

'No, thank you, sir. Um.'

'You wished to see me.'

'Yes, Professor. I. Well, it's like I said in my note.'

'Ah, yes. It won't do, you know.'

Harry looked stricken. 'Absolutely? I mean, will I go to Azkaban?'

'What? Oh, no, no, not at all, dear boy. That's not it at all. I mean it won't do to have you going about unable even to say the words - and, while your fist is never particularly legible, I judge from the note that you could barely write the words, much less say them. Now, that sort of fear and anxiety simply will not do. And it won't do, either, for you to hear that from me and me alone. I can assure you that anything said in this office will remain in the strictest confidence; will you allow me to bring in an expert on the subject to address your fears?'

Harry squirmed.

'She's a very dear and kindly person, Harry, most knowledgeable, and wholly trustworthy. Indeed, she has shown herself your friend in the past.'

Harry wondered, wildly, if the headmaster were preparing to summon Hermione to the conference. But he had resolved to trust Dumbledore again, and to stop living in fear. He closed his eyes, and forced the words out: 'As you think best, sir.'

Dumbledore rose and crossed to the fireplace, patting Harry's hand in a grandfatherly fashion in passing. Harry could not hear the conversation that ensued, but as Dumbledore seated himself again behind his desk, the flames flared and Madam Bones flooed gracefully in.

'Mr Potter. Good afternoon,' she said, in that curiously deep voice of hers. 'Albus tells me you have what you feel is yet another burden to bear, and questions concerning it. Perhaps I can help.'

'M- Madam Bones. Hullo. I.' Harry gulped. 'Well, at least you of all people can tell me my legal rights.'

'Harry - may I call you Harry? Thank you. Harry, listen carefully, please. I am not here because I am the head of the DMLE. I am here because I am fit and proper person to mentor you.'

'Ma'am?'

She sighed. 'Harry. Look at me. Really look. I know that much in our world must still seem strange to you, and you are never quite certain whether similar things have similar meanings to those they have in the Muggle world. But, Harry, really. Damn it all.... If I were a Muggle woman you happened to meet in Little Whinging. Thick-set, heavy-browed, short-haired, with a monocle. Probably, if I were a Muggle, wearing somewhat mannish tweeds. What the hell would you assume about me?'

Harry blushed. 'Well, um. I'd probably imagine that, well, that you were a ... Lesbian.'

'Of course you would. And, Muggle or Witch, you'd be perfectly right. That should put paid to your fears about whether our world holds social or legal repercussions - especially as I am, as you noted, the head copper in it. Now let's see if you can manage to say the word "gay" without pissing yourself, and work on getting you to see that you've been given a gift in being gay, not just another damned burden, eh, m'boy?'

_______________________

In the late summer of dreams, before the battles....

Albus Dumbledore was walking about peaceably, humming to himself, enjoying the feel of really comfortable socks, when he was staggered by a sudden disturbance in the wards of Hogwarts. Calling Fawkes to himself, he was transported immediately to his office there, and as he sensed the full nature of the disturbance, and all that it implied, he moved with a rapidity that belied his age, summoning Severus, Minerva, and Poppy.

As soon as he was assured that they were in transit, he crossed to the fire that burnt there always, Summer and Winter alike, and called urgently for Remus Lupin, at Grimmauld Place.

_______________________

In a dream-future, of a life together and a future assured....

Yes, Harry would always hate publicity, and speculation about his and Draco's life; but Albus had been right, and Hogwarts and Domdaniel had given him back his stability.

It was as well.

On a cool and blustery March afternoon, under a steely sky, two wizards, each in the twenty-eighth year of his life, were making their way across Salisbury Plain, Apparating from point to point. It was a day whose atmosphere was fitting, to their minds, unfitting though it were to those they saw on the Plain. They were combining a sort of Apparition-strolling, an afternoon ramble, with a dutiful journey. They were not due in Salisbury yet awhile, though they would be there in good time, and so they took the opportunity to see what was afoot upon the great downland's chalk. Both were more than powerful enough to ensure that their Apparitions were silent and their appearances unnoticeable to Muggle eyes.

Near Stonehenge, they stopped a moment, looking with some exasperation at the Muggles there, tourists and travellers and people dressed up in what they imagined to be the garb of Druids, and another group, just dispersing, that was even more odd. The blond rolled his eyes; his dark-polled partner showed a certain distant sympathy, mixed with regret for the follies of mankind.

It was at that point, shockingly, that a man from the dispersing group began to approach them. He was tall, fat man in shorts and hiking boots and a glaringly-coloured anorak, obviously a foreigner. He was not, they were certain, an American: his was not the wobbly fatness of the Yank tourist, but a solid layer of tallow. One could see him, readily, upon an Adriatic nude beach, slapping his belly and barking instructions to younger and less competent bathers, and making stilted conversation, at once polite and condescending, with the swarthier natives. There was an air about him that spoke unequivocally of Mitteleuropa, where Slav and Teuton met, and - given his apparent age - of a youth behind the Iron Curtain.

His accent, when he greeted them, confirmed their impressions, as did his curious half-bow. 'Good afternoon,' he said, carefully. 'You are magical folk, yes?'

'How d'you do,' the blond wizard answered, repressively, with all the frigidity an Englishman can muster. His companion frowned, slightly, and answered more politely: 'Hullo. We are wizards, if that is what you are asking.'

'So. Yes.'

'I take it you are not a Muggle, either?' The man with the riotous black hair was making a rather too obvious effort to be polite.

'A - ah, yes, that is the English word for non-magical ones, yes? I am not a Muggle, then, no. A wizard also, at your service.'

'Durmstrang, I suppose?' It was the blond who drawled the question.

'Alas, no. In my youth, the regime in my country all magical education opposed. It was to the Party thought inimical. But those are past, those days, yes? And thus am I free to travel, and learn. It is from a ceremony of a local hearth that I have just come.'

'A local ... I'm sorry, what?'

'A hearth. Or kindred. Though I myself more than one path follow, I am with heathenry most comfortable.'

'Heathenry.' There was a faint suggestion of a snort in the darker English wizard's voice.

'So. Ah, you are English, I know. Whatever else the Party in my homeland did before it fell, it freed us wizards at least of - Muggle, yes? Muggle - superstitions. We who are magical wights, Wizard and otherwise, are engaged in rediscovering the ancient way of magical peoples - and,' he said brightly, 'we have had much help from foundation in the American province of California.' The blond English wizard was the one to snort, this time.

'Ah. But I have heard that your people do not this thing accept. The Headmaster of Hogwarts and the Minister for Magic in your country are very young, yes?'

'Wars,' the dark-haired English wizard said, with careful dignity, 'do rather tend to result in that. I mean, after all, wiping out the generation you would be a part of, and all. Nobody really to hold those offices, bar, oh, Arthur Weasley and Amelia Bones and a few others, between the McGonagall generation and - our own. I assure you, the Minister and the Headmaster alike feel that they are much too young to be forced to take on those roles, which is why, nowadays, the current generation treat those offices as part of a rota, and never spend more than a year, two at most, in them. The Minister will be stepping down shortly in favour of Dr Hermione Weasley, for example, and the Headmaster, in favour of Neville Longbottom. All of this is the consequence of war, and the loss of a whole generation.'

'Sehr treu. Most true. This I can see. Yet it is to us in Europe strange. Even the Americans, many of them, have cast aside the Muggle superstitions and embraced the old ways, yet in England, tolerance is much spoken of, but such wizards as have any religion at all seem to follow Muggle ways. Even your Minister and the Hogwarts headmaster are said to go to Muggle services on occasion. Your hospitals are named for saints, you have godparents just as Muggles do ... it is all very curious.'

'Possibly,' the blond said, staring at the foreigner as if at a talking dog, 'just possibly, this is because those ways go back in our English wizarding families to St Alban's time, and Patrick's. And in other families now in England, rather longer. The Zabinis, for example, have been RCs since St Peter was the bishop of Rome, and of course the Goldsteins's religion is older than that. They being, after all, Jews, don't you know. Rather an ancient faith, I believe.' The blond's eyebrow could not go any higher, by this point.

'You say so? Ah. That is interesting. But I hope I am not keeping you from a feast of your own.'

'Precisely the opposite,' the blond said. 'I was under the impression that today was a fast-day.'

'Today? Quatsch. It is Ostara, Eostre's day, the Spring equinox!'

'Ah. So that's why all the buggers are faffing about -'

'Love, be kind.'

'Sorry.'

'You will permit? Do I take it that you two are a couple?'

'Certainly,' said the dark-haired wizard. (The blond muttered, under his breath, 'Take it however you like, you bloody impertinent Baltic Hun.')

'And yet, being that and magical folk also, you follow - what? Not an old way, certainly, or you would be feasting today.'

_______________________

In dreams of the afterglow of victory....

'Call it what you will,' Tony Goldstein had once said, with a shrug. 'There is an active principle of evil in the affairs of mortals. You may personify it if you like. What you cannot in honesty do is to deny its existence: more especially when you look at the way in which evil befalls both the Muggle and the magical world at similar times, or, often, precisely the same. On the one hand, there is Tom Riddle, yes, with his personal history; but do not forget what Barty Crouch the Younger said, that he and Riddle alike had served the Dark Order first by parricide; and do not ignore that Riddle first murdered his parents and went in search of the Dark in 1945, even as the news of Grindelwald's death resounded and both the Muggle and magical worlds awoke from war to a full knowledge of the horrors behind that war. And also, he called his adherents "the Knights of Walpurgis". There are always connections, themes; history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.'

'Is there no end, then?' Harry's question was wary - and weary.

'Until all the shards of all the shattered vessels, all the husks, are hallowed? No.' Tony's eyes were very wise. 'Yet - as with Albus - it does not fall to the same man each time to lead the fight: each champion of the good finds and trains his own successor. As you shall, in your time, until the world is set to rights: tikkun olam.'

'You seem remarkably complacent about living in the midst of a battlefield,' Draco said, frowning, 'surrounded by an unending cycle of struggle between Good and Evil.'

'"Unending"? I did not say that. Each time the dark rises, light confronts it, a Divine Light. There is always a champion of right called up by the challenge, baruch HaShem. And with each defeat, the Dark is less able to rise anew.'

_______________________

In the Hogwarts of dreams, at summer's end, when Draco began his redemption....

'Remus is bringing Harry.'

Snape rolled his eyes, but knew better than to interrupt the head at such a juncture.

'Poppy, my dear, if you would prepare two beds in the Infirmary. I will watch over the lads, and do you, Minerva and Severus, uphold the wards.'

'Whatever for, Albus? Why are we here in midsummer, preparing the Hospital Wing for Harry and young Mr Malfoy?' McGonagall was tartly disapproving.

'Because Mr Malfoy will be joining our fight, on our side. And he cannot do this until he and Harry have resolved at that lies between them of the past.'

'It is more common, Headmaster,' Snape drawled, 'to have the fisticuffs first and then the stay in hospital.'

'The fisticuffs, Severus, are unlikely to occur on any physical plane. These two are destined magical partners, and quite possibly more.'

Snape groaned, and McGonagall drew her mouth into its most disapproving and purse-like lines.

'And that means that we are soon to witness something Hogwarts has not seen in centuries: a Grand Hypnomachy.'

'Albus!'

'You cannot possibly approve this, Headmaster! Even a common hypnomachy -'

'It is not for me to approve or disapprove. The wards and their reaction to these events leave no doubt of it. It will occur whether we are here or no. And it were better, obviously, that we be here.'

'And if, Headmaster, they resolve these differences: not "all passion spent", then, but, with their extreme emotions towards one another, all -' Snape spat the word - 'passion channelled elsewhere than to hatred? You have said they are destined magical partners and, God help us all, "more", whatever that implies. Will you stand by should this become a Hypnerotomachia?'

'I'm impressed, Severus,' McGonagall sniped. 'You might lecture the Muggle Studies course on smutty incunabula of the Renascence. Though I cannot grasp the appeal of erotic dreams about architecture.'*

'Oh. Severus only reads it for the typography and the woodcuts,' Dumbledore smiled. 'But to answer the question, I can only say that I should take a leaf from my kinsman, Dr Johnson: I shall withdraw my attention and think about Tom Thumb.'

Snape snorted, which was always impressive, given the echo-chamber properties of his nose.

'Really, Severus, I should have thought you would credit me with not being a voyeur. Even were I so, my interests would hardly extend to watching two men, and even were that the case, I cannot imagine finding any thrill in the first fumblings of spotty schoolboys. I shall stand guard over the conflict. If they resolve it in the way your fears so obsessively suggest to you, I shall stand aside. Or have you any other aspersions to cast upon my character?'

Severus winced, and one could see his sallow blush. 'Damn it, Headmaster, you know that I -'

'I do not doubt your loyalty, Severus, or your gratitude, though I would far rather you did not labour under a sense of obligation. You have my respect, my dear fellow, as I know I have yours; I merely wish you would rein in your tongue. But I apologise for snapping at you: we are all, I know, on edge, given what impends.

'Poppy, I shall walk you to your domain now, if I may. Remus will meet us there, with, I trust, a properly supine Harry. Amazing things, Severus's sleeping draughts....'

_______________________

In dreams of secure adulthood....

The blond wizard on Salisbury Plain, staring with disbelief at the foreigner, thought back to a day, before the war, at Hogwarts, in Albus Dumbledore's office. Harry Potter, Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall, and one Draco Malfoy had been there when the conversation had taken a left turn. And had thence taken farther digressions, academics being notorious for an inability to stay to the point....

'My dear boys, you mustn't think we regard you, either of you, as mere weapons, tools of war. I am confident,' the Headmaster had said, 'that you will both of you "outlive that day and come safe home" -'

'If you yearly feast your neighbours on Crispin's Day,' Snape had interjected, 'please, don't trouble to invite me. I have seen all I wish to see of your scars and heard all I care to of such feats as you've done, upon that or any day.'

Draco had smiled, cheekily, at his professor, and said, all mock-innocence, 'Don't worry, sir, I intend to keep any "little touch of Harry in the night" all to myself.'

'Mr Malfoy -'

'Now, Minerva,' Dumbledore had said, with a grin. 'Back to our muttons. It is because I am so certain that you will have futures, futures after the war, futures after what will, after all, be very much

your victory, that I am sending you to spend some time with Ted and Andromeda Tonks, for your better education in ... certain matters.' Harry and Draco looked at one another with wild surmise. 'But I am also concerned by another matter. Viktor Frankl - a Muggle who survived the death camps of Germany's Third Reich - stated that one can survive any "what" so long as one has a "why". The two of you have been through a great deal, and I am afraid that you've both of you a good deal more to go through. Now, Hogwarts, unlike its Muggle counterparts, has never run to keeping an official connexion with any religious establishment, nor expected its masters or headmasters to be in orders. Not, mind you, that there have not been several who were, including Albertus Magnus after he quarrelled with Durmstrang's methods and came here, and before he left Hogwarts to teach at the Sorbonne, and Friar Bungay when he was Head of Hufflepuff House, before he and Friar Bacon had that unfortunate accident with gunpowder....

'I am not, of course, suggesting you need either of you make any professions to me, or at all. I merely note that in quieter times, the sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts have included optional courses in religious instruction - Celtic, Roman, Kirk of Scotland, and C of E: we have always had special arrangements, when needed, for other religions, though I admit, as Mr Goldstein has observed, it's not as easy as it might be rounding up a minyan in the wilds of Scotland -'

'Albus? Those muttons you referred to?'

'Thank you, Minerva, quite so. My point is simply that even now, as we gird for war - perhaps especially now, even though such courses have had to go by the board, just as we have had to reduce the seventh year classes for the witches -'

'Sir?'

'Hmm? Oh, come, Draco, and you raised in a Wizarding household. The kitchen magics, of course, stillroom spells and butler's-pantry piseogs and cooking cantrips, and all that. And other matters we need not concern ourselves with, childbearing and child-raising and the like.... Minerva's province, not mine.'

'Headmaster -'

'Minerva, I realise we are in the school term, and I expect and anticipate that Harry and Draco know the rules; but we are all Order members here, and you know my views on

that subject.'

'I ken them all too well,

Albus. You expect to run it like a regimental mess, with everyone on a basis of Christian names and the only man to be referred to by rank being the colonel - that is to say, yoursel', as Head of the Order, and even then we "senior officers" may call you by name. It maun be confusing in the extreme for the younger ones.' As was not infrequent when in unbuttoned circumstances, the double-tongued witch cast off her precise English and spoke 'braid Scots'.

'Do

you wish to call me "Severus", Potter?' Snape's tone was very nearly droll.

'Not in this lifetime,

sir,' Harry replied, fervently. Albus's throat-clearing was at once a reassertion of control over the wandering conversation, and a stifled chuckle.

'At any rate, I am saying, my dear boys, merely this, that should you be interested in such matters, you deserve to know that there are those here who can speak of them with you, and you need not hesitate to ask. Despite the cult of literary neurasthenia we associate with the Great War in Muggle letters, after all, not everyone had the vapours after serving as a subaltern on the Western Front. Sassoon and Graves, yes; but not Tollers and Jack Lewis.

They, you see, had a "why" that met their needs. And, also, if nothing else, you should understand our heritage, even if you and your contemporaries are not thus inclined - although the aftermath of war may change that, it quite often does, you know.'

'You cannot,' McGonagall added, 'understand the past if its mentality is wholly foreign to you. And not the remote past only: your ain mither and feyther, Harry, took tent o' it enough to have you hurriedly christened and a godfather for you within-midst a war. And, forbye, even if, nowadays, even the witches and wizards who profess any faith at all, tend to do so as the price vice pays to virtue, that is, hypocrisy, I mind me that such a society is preferable to one in which vice feels nae need to pay virtue any service at a'.'

'Is ...

Severus ... secretly the school chaplain?' Draco was irrepressible when there was an opportunity to bait his honorary uncle.

'I am, as you well know, you impertinent brat, at best a nominal Catholic, and certainly not in even the most minor of minor Orders. The emotional consolations of religion have never spoken to me, quite probably because they

are emotional. Nonetheless, greater minds than any of ours, wizards amongst them: Albertus Magnus, for one, his great pupil, Aquinas, for another: have found these matters worthy of intellectual study, not sneering.'

'I never got to go to church,' Harry mused. 'The Dursleys went twice a year, Easter and Christmas, to see and be seen. And of course,

I was ... not to be seen. Mrs Figg always took me in, and anything I know of all that sort of thing, I got from her. She explained where the Dursleys were, you see. And, well. She at least taught me the name for what the Dursleys were: "pharisees".'

'Funnily enough,' Draco said, quietly, 'there was a time.... After Harry first took Riddle out, before Riddle came back. When Lucius was almost a father to me. He had no use for the traditions, of course, but the man does have a few æsthetic instincts. The two years before Hogwarts, I spent in a choir school.'

Harry's head snapped up, and he looked at Draco. 'I didn't know ... perhaps, some time, you ... you could sing to me,' he said, softly. Not softly enough, as Snape's pained snort revealed, to Harry's blushing humiliation.

'You have the makings of a singer, yourself,' Albus interjected, 'if your speaking voice - and your Welsh blood on the Evans side - are any indication. Much spell-casting, even though not incanted any longer in these times, is not far from plainsong, after all. Sadly, we've not had the leisure for or luxury of a real choir here in some years. Again, another debit on young Master Riddle's account. After the war, I think it would be worth pursuing that, Harry, if you are interested: a magic far greater.... I am sure there are some excellent Elizabethan and Jacobean duets for your baritone and Draco's tenor: I do so love a good madrigal....'

'Albus.'

'Yes, yes. Well, that was, I suppose, the main burden - that was a madrigal joke - of my remarks, that there are things to live for through this war, other than mere revenge or some Stoic and dispassionate justice: concepts that comport with love and harmony, be they music, art, or such religious traditions as you choose. Powers that the Dark Lord, so-called, knows not. And of course, for you, Harry, there are always the day-to-day aspects of Wizarding life that are even yet unfamiliar to you, and which a looming war has kept us from teaching you: the arts of peace, as it were. But surely it has not escaped your notice that St Mungo's is named as it is, and that Sirius was your

godfather. Our world, I simply mean, is not so very different to the Muggle world - even in its laxities and hypocrisies, to be sure.

'Most importantly, of course, you have your bond, the two of you. And that is to be relied upon, as a very present help in time of trouble. Are things progressing well in that regard?'

'Headmaster, I believe you have managed to call up a blush in the cheeks of both of them,' Snape said, darkly humorous.

'Come, come, it's nothing to be ashamed of. It should, indeed, be a great joy to you both, to have found a magical partner who is also your soul-mate.'

'I'm not ashamed,' Harry said, 'and I don't think, sir, I could ever be ashamed of Draco and what he means to me. Um. It's just not something that, well....'

'Not something we're altogether easy in discussing with two bachelors and a spinster considerably our seniors,' Draco said, firmly.

'Ah, ah,' said the headmaster, his eyes twinkling. 'That's a widower, a bachelor, and a spinster, dear boy. But it's not as if it's not a regular topic of conversation in the SCR, after all.'

Harry stood up, his face white, then angrily red. 'Our relationship is the common gossip

of the Hogwarts staffroom?'

'Not at all, Mr Potter,' Snape snapped. 'Control yourself, and sit down.'

'I did not mean to give that impression, Harry, and I quite see that it would be offensive if that were so. What are common topics are the magical partnerships, and the probable future marriages, of those students who have a role to play in the coming struggle.'

Harry nodded, partly in apology, partly in understanding.

'Weasley and Granger, for example,' McGonagall said. 'If they work together at their full capacity, they have great potential. If they hold to their sniping and bickering, they can do great damage to the cause. Yet they are, clearly, destined to be.'

'Much as you may disapprove,' Snape added. 'You're the only nun in the Kirk of Scotland, Minerva.'

'I ken fine that chastity is not a popish notion, Severus, or do you not mind John Milton? My people hae been pillars of the Reformit Church since the days of the Covenant, laddie, my great-uncle having been Moderator of the General Assembly of the Kirk, forbye. It's nae papistry that caused me to choose the maiden life, my lad, but that my magic was at its peak in itself, without partner or admixture, and I doubt me but that Miss Granger's might be also, but Ronald Weasley being concernit in it.'

'And yet the McGonagalls are Irish in origin,' Snape said, silkily. 'Why, you probably have ... "papists" ... in your own family tree.'

Dumbledore intervened, hastily. 'Would anyone care for a biscuit? Or more tea?'

'No, thank you, Headmaster. Perhaps Professor Snape would like a rusk? Or a Bath oliver?'

'You know perfectly well I abhor all such things.'

'I ken you make a show of it, but I still have my suspicions as to who it is pilfered my tin of shortbread, Severus.'

'That would be the shortbread sent you by the truly Scottish side of your family, Minerva? Piscies, I believe?'

'Of

course my mother's people are members of the Scottish Episcopal Church. It's only since the 1914 War they stopped passing their glasses over the water carafe to drink the Leal Toast! The Jacobite succession, the Stuart kirk: they were aye for lost causes, the creatures.'

'Gryffindors to a man, then?'

'Severus! Minerva! Please! We are wasting time - including Harry's and Draco's.'

The professors visibly startled, having forgotten that students were present for the latest round in their incessant sparring.

'I think,' Albus said, with a wink at the boys, 'you two will see that the SCR are better off discussing future marriages than politics and religion. But, yes, we do monitor these things. Not from any improper or unkindly interest, but because, in wartime, so much hangs in the balance. The -'

'Headmaster?'

'Yes, Harry?'

'You say that Ron and Hermione are destined, and that's not news to anyone, of course. Did ... I mean, did you foresee that Draco and I...?'

'Ah. I cannot say we foresaw it. We anticipated it, I think. Partly because we could not see anyone else for either of you. For example, Harry, so many prospects would not have been worthy of you - but then, you would have been unworthy of them, as well. Not for lack of worth in yourselves, but because you did not match. Take Mr Longbottom and Ms Lovegood. She is one who sees with the eye of faith, sees what others do not and what they dismiss if they do see: is that not precisely what Neville needs? Oh, it will take the war and some maturing, they certainly aren't suited

now, but, at the end of the day.... Or take Miss Ginny Weasley. She is on her way to becoming a most formidable - and may I say, a most Slytherin - witch. Don't look startled, Draco, you know perfectly well that the twins would have been very much at home in your House also. She needs a young man who can lighten her darker moods - who suffered as she did from Tom Riddle's deeds, but was not so affected by it - and who will let her lead. With you, Harry, even the confident Ginny of today would always be the beggar-maid to your Cophetua, the eleven-year-old with the crush on the hero. But she and Colin Creevey, now - ah, I see you had not yet heard the gossip: Gryffindor common room must be more discreet than commonly. Colin ... well, there's more to him than you may think, and he is right for her in the ways I have suggested. And, my dear boys, never underestimate a man whose gift it is to catch the most fleeting of moments, to frame them, to capture them, to preserve them for analysis and revisiting, and to maintain always the slight, ironic distance afforded by looking at life through a lens. There's a mental quality in that talent that has its place in the great scheme of things.

'But we mustn't detain you any longer. Do please bear in mind, though, that resources are available to you should you ever feel an interest.'

'It's an old enough way for us,' the blond wizard told the foreigner, there on Salisbury Plain.

'So. To each his own, of course. I am only surprised that in your generation these attitudes persist. Even, as I hear, with your new Minister and with the Headmaster of Hogwarts. You have a fast, you say, to keep?'

'Yes,' said the dark-haired wizard. 'Our feast is on Sunday. Today is Good Friday, and we're going to the Cathedral. Our parish isn't having a fully sung liturgy, and we're both in the choir there, as well as licensed readers. The Cathedral will have as much music as one can get on Good Friday, though I'll be glad when Easter comes and we have hymns and anthems again.'

'Ah. So. Music is of course a very great magic. Go your way, then, I would not - detain? Yes, I think that is correct: detain - I would not detain you from that. It has been an honour to have spoken with you. I am called Andris Silins, of Tallinn,' he said, bowing.

Draco gave a predatory smile. 'And I, sir, am Draco Malfoy, the overly youthful and overly pious functionary who currently has the honour to hold the seals of office as HM Principal Secretary of State for Magical Affairs, in which office I was preceded most recently by the gentleman to whom I now present you, the Rt Hon Harry Potter, OM, currently Headmaster of Hogwarts. Good day, sir,' he said, with what was almost a smirk, and tugged Harry with him as they Apparated away to the Cathedral Close, leaving a gobsmacked, innocent foreigner behind.

'That,' Harry said, 'was a bit unkind, love.'

Draco looked behind him before he answered, as if Andris Silins, of Tallinn, might be following them quietly on all fours. 'I'll make a special note of it in the General Confession. Besides, with the Great Liturgy for Good Friday, he's already down to be prayed for.'

'With the other "Turks, infidels, and heretics"?'

'Precisely. I don't mind his practises, but - salve reverentia - I'm damned if I'll stand that sort of cheek, especially from some bloody foreigner.'

Harry sighed, and headed through the great doors into the narthex. 'With luck, the Dean will give his little homily on Christian charity today,' he sighed.

'On Good Friday? More likely a meditation on sacrifice, my love, which is a subject you know rather too much about.'

Harry rolled his eyes. If there was one fixed point in a changing world, it was that Draco would always insist on having the last word.

_______________________

In a dream of a dream of a vision, gone to ground at Hogwarts at the end of the summer hols, with all things in the balance....

They were in a place that was no place. Underfoot was cold stone. Before them was a four-poster. To their left, a gaol-cell in Azkaban prison. To their right, a graveyard, one Harry recognised all too well: the yew-draped, overgrown graves in the churchyard at Little Hangleton, next the lych-gate. Behind them was nothingness, impalpable yet impenetrable.

And above them, in letters of golden phoenix-fire, were the words, It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

'I thought the traditional choices were fight or flight,' Draco snapped, 'not fight or fuck.'

'Well,' Harry said, a bit shakily. 'If these are the three alternatives, I hope that bed is big enough for the two of us.'

'Potter, we're enemies.'

'We aren't any longer. We are - well, what we are about to become is, I'd say, pretty bloody evident.'

'Sod that for - a shag.'

'Do you see any alternatives?'

'No, and I'm bloody annoyed by that. Would simple neutrality, even mere friendship, be too much to ask?'

'With our history? With how extreme our reactions to one another have always been? Don't be more of an ass than you can help being, Malfoy. The possibilities represented here are the ultimate consequences of our possible choices. It doesn't mean we'll reach those ultimate states immediately.'

'Good God, I should hope not.'

'You would prefer Azkaban or the grave?'

'Hmm.'

'Well?'

'I'm thinking, Potter, I'm thinking.'

'Get stuffed, then, and be damned to you!'

'Oh, put a sock in it, Potty. There's years of enmity here between us - or had you forgotten?'

'Why the bleeding hell d'you think we're here?'

'I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE "HERE" IS!'

'And you a wizard from a long line of wizards. This is a hypnomachic arena, Ferret-face. Where we have it out at once - and for all.'

'It's -. You ... how in Merlin's name does a little ragamuffin of no family know that, and I didn't?'

'Possibly because it involves Defence, and Light magic?'

'Sod off, Scarhead.'

'Your choice, mate. Even I know enough to prefer you to a Dementor or being dead.'

'I should hex you where you stand!'

'WHY DON'T YOU, YOU FUCKING IDIOT? THAT'S WHY WE'RE HERE!'

'Will it show? Will it hurt us, wherever our real bodies are?'

'Bloody hell! Who in all hell knows?'

'Why, Potter, I though you knew everything about the Grand Hypnomachy.'

'Scared, Ferret-face?'

'You wish, Scarhead!'

'Right, then! Wands out, you insufferable little shit!'

The Expelliarmus hex and Draco's cast of Stupefy passed one another at a high rate of speed, the sounds of their passage loud in the stillness.

_______________________

In dreams of the future and the fruits of victory....

Harry's first ministry had effected sweeping changes - or, rather, formalised the changes that the War had catalysed - in the relations between wizardkind and other magical beings. He had been as adamant as Hermione, if not more so, in seeing that those changes comprehended the house-elves. The balance struck, in the end, between the house-elf need to belong and the house-elf right to be free, was a simple one: house-elf contracts could run for any period of whole years, from one to seven (Tony Goldstein had suggested that particular cut-off, and every eighth year was a Year of Jubilee for any house-elf who had worked the preceding seven, even if each of those years had been on a single-year contract and each with a different family). Charms were in place to monitor house-elf treatment, and would alert the Bureau of House-Elf Welfare immediately upon any incident of impropriety. The date on which house-elf contracts renewed, each year, was the Saturday before Michaelmas, at the annual House-Elves's Mop Fair, at Woodhenge. The irony of having Draco Malfoy as the official in charge of the Mop Fair and as Co-Protector, with Dr Hermione Granger-Weasley, of House-Elves and Permanent Co-Secretary of the Bureau of House-Elf Welfare, was lost on no one.

'MALFOY!' Hermione's peahen-like shriek caused him to jump, which, as he was seated at the time, caused him in turn to fall out of his chair. Just as he was getting up and dusting himself off, she swept in, and the door slammed-to behind her. 'YOU DISGUSTING PIECE OF OFFAL!'

'Wh- - Hermione - what -'

'I should have KNOWN you would never really change! Once a Malfoy, always a Malfoy! You vicious little ferret!'

Draco was, if not nonplussed, still very far from plussed. They hadn't been 'Malfoy' and 'Granger' to one another in years, and as for her hints and allegations....

'HOW DARE YOU CANCEL THE MOP FAIR? WHAT ELSE ARE YOU ABOUT, RE-ENSLAVING THE HOUSE-ELVES? YOU, YOU - YOU OPPRESSOR!' She was drawing her hand back in a worrisomely evocative way that made the side of his face ache already. Hermione, as he had occasion to recall, had a palm - and an arm behind it - much more iron-like than her delicate frame would suggest.

'Hermione!'

'DON'T YOU "HERMIONE" ME!'

'Fine! Then ... SIT DOWN AND LISTEN, GRANGER!'

'You have FIVE SECONDS before I start hexing!'

'Statute of Secrecy! Is that quick enough for the quick version?'

'What?' Hermione seemed to deflate, suddenly, and fell gracelessly into a chair.

'For reasons that, like the peace of God, pass all understanding, every WI in the Stonehenge Deanery will be descending upon Woodhenge on Mop Fair Day - the parish of St Mary and St Melor, Amesbury, having spearheaded the notion of a good old-fashioned Michaelmas Fair and Harvest Home. A fact I learnt of solely by accident, I may add, and only yesterday at that - through the bloody parish bulletin!' Draco's tone was increasingly waspish. 'Rather than have every Wizarding householder in the British Isles suddenly Apparate into the marquee where the cake-judging has degenerated into a slanging-match between the warden's mother from All Saints, Durrington, and the wife of the vicar of St Giles, Wishford Magna, I thought, perhaps, with your kind permission, GRANGER, we might just possibly WISH TO RESCHEDULE THE DAMNED THING!'

Hermione looked at him, opened her mouth, and incontinently and uncharacteristically burst into tears. Worse still, as Draco stared at her in shock, Ron and Harry burst into the office, both still travelling at a rate of knots.

'Ron - er -' Draco was edging away from his desk as he spoke - 'I, she simply, I didn't -'

'Not going to hex you, Cousin Ferret, belt up,' Ron said, hastily, wrapping Hermione in his arms. 'Bloody hormones - darling, listen, it's all right -'

'I yelled at him,' Hermione hiccoughed. 'I didn't mean to -' and she burst into still louder sobs.

Ron looked at Draco - and at Harry, who had moved to stand beside Draco - over his wife's shoulder. 'Takes her this way every ruddy time.'

'I hate myself,' Hermione sobbed.

' 'S as if she's so buttoned-up normally that it's worse for her when she does let go, which is only when she's preggers - here, love, take my handkerchief, 's clean -'

'Pregnant?' Draco was, if it were possible, more pale than commonly.

'Not as if it's her first, mate - there, there, love, no one's angry -'

Draco and Harry reacted as might be expected of two single men, and still more of two single men with less than no interest in women. Draco started babbling - 'oh Lor', does she need anything, I could ring for someone, is she all right, I didn't know, she's not, er, showing yet -' and Harry poised himself to bolt.

Ron shooed them away and, in response to a beseeching look from Harry, nodded towards the door. 'And this,' he muttered, 'is why we don't see much of you two poofters for about seven months before we give you another godchild. Except when she's really on her game and won't frighten you delicate flowers. All right, all right, I'll handle it.... C'mon, love, let's sit easy a bit and then we'll go home....'

Harry and Draco fled.

_______________________

In the dream of the vision, the Grand Hypnomachy, on the cusp of change and adulthood....

The air sang with the sounds: sizzling sounds, grating sounds, metallic sounds, the characteristic sounds of curses and hexes flying, white-hot with anger.

The air reeked with the pong of magic and sweat and the coppery halitus of blood and the acrid, acetylene stench of fear and adrenaline.

_______________________

In schooldays that are but a dream, over hols, in London with the Tonkses....

'He was a counterjumper.'

'Now, Andromeda -'

'A shopkeeper, Tinker.'

'Ignore your aunt, m'boy. He was quite the successful merchant.'

'Merchant?'

'Owned a string of Wizarding shops -'

'Oh, God. Some self-made Brummagem capitalist, no doubt. Or perhaps he started as a barrow-boy. A costermonger made good? Or a commercial traveller, perhaps? A chemist whose shops incorporated a circulating library? A jobbing builder who went partners with a colourman and sold flocked wallpaper and Stafford trinkets and pegged-together chairs to the masses -'

'Oh, sit down and cease your incessant dramatising, child. Lucius's grandfather was a perfectly pureblooded Wizard, if not particularly adept.'

'HE WAS A SQUIB? HE WAS A SQUIB AND IN TRADE?'

'Draco! Be silent!'

'Best listen to your aunt, old boy. You don't want to cross Andy when she's on a tear.'

'Tinker -'

'Oh, just bloody tell the boy, Andy!'

'If I am allowed to do without interruption, I shall. Now. Nephew. Your great-grandmother on the Malfoy side was an only child. A girl - obviously. Last of the line. It was felt necessary that a collateral of some sort be found to marry her, change his name to Malfoy by deed poll, and get on with the business of manufacturing heirs.'

'She, at least, was a true Malfoy?'

'Sadly, yes. She -'

'Andy -'

'Belt up, Tink. They're my family, I shall be as insulting as I wish. She was a true Malfoy in the sense you mean: a cut above her husband, socially irreproachable. But she was no saint. In that sense also, she was a true Malfoy. She and Cassiopeia Black - one "Mama Cass" crack, Tinks, and I'll Crucio you - got along famously because they saw eye to eye on blood status, blood prejudice, and the right of pureblood wizardry to use any means necessary, including Unforgivables and Dark Arts, to maintain their due and just supremacy.

'The thing about your great-grandfather was, he tried rather too hard. He was not a particularly well-educated man -'

'Sent down from Hogwarts after his OWLs - none of which he passed, I b'lieve,' Tinker mused. 'Seems to have made him resentful, in after years. Relegated to a Muggle eddication, after that.... Some redbrick, Muggle - yes, Muggle - place in ... was it Exeter? It was. Exeter Technical ... renamed it the Royal Albert Memorial College, I b'lieve, then started calling itself The University College of, God help us, the South-West of England. That's the place. They call it Exeter University now, don't they?'

'TINKER!'

'Sorry, m'dear.'

'- Your great-grandfather, as I was saying, was not a particularly well-educated man, and had no breeding to speak of. He bore a grudge against the world in any case, after being sent down from Hogwarts, and then to be plucked out of the -'

'Gutter?' Draco's voice was bitter.

'Heavens, no,' Aunt Andromeda snapped, in cut-glass tones. 'That would have been rather less embarrassing. Rather, when he was plucked from the poky little bungalow with the aspidistras, let us say.'

Draco whimpered.

'When he took on the Malfoy name and the headship of the Malfoy family - in right of his wife - it went to his head, and he made an absolute exhibition of himself. A Dark wizard-aristocrat is, in himself, sufficiently beyond the pale. A jumped-up mercantile little snob aping his own imagined conception of such a being ... the man was miles over and beyond the bounder-y line. Evil aristocrats are bad enough, nephew; as we have seen with Master Thomas Riddle, wicked vulgarians attempting to act the wicked aristocrat are simply intolerable.'

'O, God. But - my grandfather -'

'Was horribly embarrassed by his father, by the whole, parvenu mess. That is why he developed a stammer as a young man, and was rather painfully shy, really, although that in the end merely led people to think him aloof. Had it been left to him, he should have married - oh, I know he thought of Aggie Leatherbarrow -'

'Nev's gran?'

'Yes, Harry, dear -'

'Oh. My. GOD.' Draco was working himself up to a fit of the vapours.

'- And the Prewett girl, and Lovegood's aunt....'

'Kill me now. No, really, I no longer wish to live.'

'All perfectly respectable witches of impeccable ancestry, my young gentleman. It was hardly his fault there were no women of his generation in the Potter, Smith, Mason, Fletcher, Longbottom, Black, or Weasley lines.'

'W- Weas- oh, sweet Christ....'

'Drama queen.' Harry wasn't having it.

'Right,' Draco snapped back, 'because you're so markedly butch yourself -'

'Ahem.'

'I'm sorry, Aunt Andromeda. Please go on.'

'I fully intend to. In any event, your grandfather died rather young....'

'Don't tell me. The counterjumper brained him with a heavy set of scales he'd kept since his days in a shop.'

'I'd not put it past him. Or, of course, something Πdipal could easily have been one of Lucius's earliest childhood manifestations of accidental magic.'

Harry snorted.

'Be that as it may, the Merchant of Venom wasted no time in moulding young Lucius into his own image: a peacocking, money- and status-obsessed, anxious parvenu, with all the insecurities and defensiveness to go with it. Lucius became precisely what his grandfather had tried to make of himself: a redbrick-trained, bourgeois merchant's fantasy of a wicked aristocrat. Hopelessly middle-class. Boastful about possessions and money - it is from your great-grandfather's time and influence that Malfoy Manor came to resemble a shop floor from a Tottenham Court Road merchant specialising in ultra-shiny reproduction "antiques", rather than its resembling anything remotely "U". Lucius became a name-dropping, bullying, blackguardly bounder, a braggart, oh-so-very-grand, ostentatious, vulgar, and crude. It was solely the fact that he was a dangerous man and had cowed half the Ministry and bought most of the other half that kept the whispers - that "he was not quite, quite" - from being derisive shouts. He was, and everyone knew he was ... and he suspected - and it drove him still further beyond the pale, and to the Dark - that everyone knew him to be ... an appalling, nouveau riche shit.'

'In short, the Wizarding world's answer to Vernon Dursley.'

'CHRIST.'

'I'm afraid that's very true, Harry, dear. And of course, Lucius managed to instil these same attitudes, alongside an ignorance of the real standards, in my nephew.'

'Oh, God. Just when I thought I knew the worst. So. Lucius was a murderer, a liar, the adherent of a despot ... and worst of all, utterly down-market. And he brought me up to be the same.'

'Yes, darling.'

'Why did Mummy marry the wretch?'

'Even Lucius was frightened of Bella - possibly the wisest conclusion the little sod ever reached. And I made damned sure I threw my bonnet over, with Tinker, before the Dragon Lady - that is to say, Our Beloved Mater, your dear grandmother - could sell me off to the bastard. We were Blacks, Draco. We had very valuable blood, all sorts and conditions of Dark artefacts to bargain with, vast, tumbledown, heavily-mortgaged estates, and nowhere near enough crispies to be getting on with. Lucius had money and was in want of a wife - not least to stop the rumours, because, let us be honest, the man certainly acted the simply ravingly over-the-top queen, whatever he actually got up to in bed - and an heir and better bloodlines.'

'Wait a moment, though.'

'Yes, Harry?'

'I mean. Well. Sirius was ... well, he wasn't exactly short of the ready.'

'Precisely, dear. Sirius wasn't. Although that was only because Regulus got himself killed. The estates were entailed, there wasn't money enough, outside the vaults reserved under the entail for the heir, the male heir, to keep them up, and keep the rest of us in the style to which we all felt the House of Black were entitled, and that meant that unmarried daughters were a commodity to be auctioned to the highest bidder. Believe me, if our barking mad aunt the Dowager Empress, the Old Dragoness herself - only woman I ever met, bar Bella, who could make Mummy look mild by contrast - if Auntie Maim had been able to find a way, she'd've broken the entail, cut Sirius off with the proverbial Knut, and blued the lot on Baby Regulus, whom she could keep on leading-strings, but she couldn't. That, even more than the politics of it, was what cut her most deeply when Sirius did a bunk and Regulus first tried to do the same, and succeeded only in getting himself killed for his efforts. It wasn't that she'd lost sons so much as that she'd lost any hopes of wheedling, cozening, or nicking the Galleons.'

Tinker stroked his moustache, thoughtfully. 'Funny damned thing about extremist politics. Worse still, arranged marriages based on 'em. Quickest way I know of to make those involved non-U and declassed. Look at the bloody Mitfords.... Well, there's one thing that's damned certain, anyhow, I've yet to meet a pureblood supremacist who wasn't a walkin' refutation of his own claims.'

_______________________

In dreams of a sudden emergency and a sea-change, at the end of hols, between two momentous years at Hogwarts....

In the Hogwarts Infirmary, Albus Dumbledore watched the two still forms to either side of him. Watched the bruises blossom, as from thin air. Watched, with no small surprise, as Draco's body suddenly gave proof that Harry had picked up something from Ginny Weasley: a Bat-Bogey Hex of rare potency. Albus Dumbledore, wincing but unmoving, watched, stood guard, and waited.

_______________________

In schooldays that are but a dream, over hols, in London with the Tonkses....

'Wotcher, ancestors! Wotcher, Harry! Wotcher, Cousin Ferret!'

'Nymphadora! Damn it, stop yodelling like this! It's bad enough you enter a room like a stampede of erumpents.'

'Now, Andy....'

'Sod off, Tinker. There's a difference between bein' downright and bein' ridiculous. You, daughter, are fooling absolutely no one with this silly pretence of being a girl-of-the-people and trying to speak slangy, glottal, Estuary English. And if you are going to parade about in an original Clash tee-shirt, for God's sake don't ruin the damned thing by cutting off the bottom half. As the only other people here happen to be your parents, your gay cousin, and his lover, no one in this house really cares that you have breasts, so there's little point in showing them off.'

'I dunno,' Harry grinned. 'I think I felt my latent heterosexuality sit up and take notice.'

Draco, Tonks, and Andromeda all slapped his arms and hands at once.

_______________________

In dream-space within dream-space, in the arena of the Grand Hypnomachy....

By now, they had both tossed their wands aside. There was no satisfaction in it. They were down to straight pummelling, now, the crunch of fist on jaw.

This was what they had sworn to do, a thousand times. This was payback. This was for all the times the Ferret had called Ron a weasel and a pauper, called Hermione a Mudblood, insulted Molly Weasley, harassed Ginny, chivvied Neville, mocked Harry's parents's deaths, mocked Sirius's. This was for the time Potty the Scarheaded Wonder Boy had presumed to decline an offer of friendship, a hand extended, from his immeasurable superior, for all the detentions, for every single Quidditch loss, and for putting Lucius in Azkaban. This was a fulfilment of vows, not least the vow, You're dead ... you're going to pay ... I'm going to make you pay ... I'll have you....

It didn't matter that Draco had changed his allegiances. It didn't matter that he was dead to Lucius and Lucius to him. It didn't matter, even, that there was a vow: the Malfoy conception of honour hardly impelled him to fulfil that. This was simply an eruption, an unbottling, a disgorging of years of hate and fear and resentment, an orgasmic and ejaculatory unstoppering of festered hate.

_______________________

In schooldays that are but a dream, over hols, in London with the Tonkses....

'Mummy,' Tonks said, wheedling. 'You're not going to put poor little Cousin Draco through the utter hell that was my deb year, are you?' She turned to Draco, her wicked little heart-shaped face alight with mischief. Harry was struck by the sudden subtle resemblance, the stamp of shared blood, he now saw on those two faces, Tonks's and Draco's. 'It was awful,' Tonks said, confidingly. 'Mummy tried to make me - me - the complete Sloane Ranger.'

'Rubbish,' said Aunt Andromeda, roundly. 'You mustn't tell such awful lies, Nymphadora.'

'I have never understood,' Tonks said, 'why it is that, if being one of us is a licence to behave as we damned well please, I should have to pretend to be a conformist.'

'Don't be silly, girl. Certainly, within reason, the only point to being our class is the liberty to do as you wish so long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses - although gentlemen have much greater licence than ladies do, particularly young, unmarried ladies - but you were simply posturing. And do yet. It's not the thing at all to go about with the set purpose of frightening the whole bloody stable, child. And it's quite silly, as well as fooling no one with eyes, for you to go on in the way you did, trying so desperately - and that of course is the problem: trying, and doing so obviously and desperately, trying for effect: our sort needn't try, ever - going about, as I say, trying to hide the rather evident fact that you are, at the end of the day, a nice-minded, rather sheltered, slightly romantic, somewhat shy, little - virgin - maiden.' Andromeda smiled, shark-like, as her daughter flushed red and gaped at her. 'Overcompensating doesn't become you, Nymphadora.'

'MUMMY!'

_______________________

In the vision-place of souls....

Harry had Draco down, both of them bleeding freely, from knuckles, noses, and lips. With the good eye left to him, the other being almost swollen shut, Harry saw that he had forced his enemy back almost to the margin of the Azkaban boundary. In that moment, he realised what such a fate, in life, would entail: the grinding hopelessness, the daily deepening despair, the sordid inevitability, and at last either death or - if they had not already gone over to Voldemort - the Dementor's Kiss.

Above them, as Harry stood over his prone and gasping rival, the letters of phoenix-fire flared: It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

Harry stepped back, spat out a gout of blood, and slowly stretched out a hand to help Malfoy up.

Malfoy made his choice. He took Harry's hand and let himself be helped to his feet. Then, without warning, he barrelled into Harry, punching and kicking furiously, forcing his enemy back towards the boundary of the graveyard at Little Hangleton.

______________________

And once more....

Draco had Harry down, thanks to barred holds, foul play, and a judicious knee in the balls. He saw, through a red haze of anger and of blood dripping from a split brow, that they were at the margin of the Little Hangleton graveyard boundary. In that moment, he realised how close he was to choosing Harry's death, and, by extension, his own: for the only reason why Voldemort would not kill him once Harry was gone was that Lucius would kill him first.

Above them the letters of phoenix-fire flared: It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

Draco stepped back and held up his hands, palms out, surrendering. Harry groaned, and got up, unaided, swaying on his feet.

Malfoy made his choice. He took Harry's hand and then let Harry drape an arm over his shoulders. Together, painfully, trying not to groan aloud in the other's presence, they staggered towards the bed, and sank down side by side, bleeding onto the counterpane.

______________________

And yet within the vision....

'I don't want it to be this way - the first....'

They were sprawled atop the bed, still feebly combatant, neither trusting the other, and both with tears mingling with the bleeding. Each was a stew of volatile and immiscible emotion, of love and want and hatred and resentment and aggression and need.

'Battered and bleeding? What makes you so certain this isn't a Slytherin kink - or mating ritual?'

'It's - hell. It mustn't be this, and it mustn't be this way.'

'It must. What else? This ... this is simply who we are -'

'This who we were.'

'We are who we are, we are who we've been.'

'Balls. We are who we choose to be.'

'It will be as it must.'

'Balls. It will be what we make of it what we choose.'

'You actually sodding believe that -'

'I sodding know it - actually.'

'Do this often do you, Scarhead? Spend much time in other people's minds?'

'You have no idea.'

'I don't believe you, Potty.'

'You're the one brought up the scar, Ferret-face. Well, there it is: a two-way link between my mind and what passes for Riddle's.'

'You're mad.'

'Not yet, though the bugger's certainly tried to drive me mad.'

'You're raving, Potty....'

'And you're scared enough to piss yourself.'

'You wish.'

'You're terrified that this means he sees us ... now ... here....'

'And you're not?'

'You don't seriously believe that I spent my evenings with Snape doing remedial potions - and my summer hols with Dumbledore being fêted - do you? If I couldn't block the bugger we'd all long since be dead, you prat! Do you not realise how much of what is in my head he mustn't ever, ever, know?'

'My head of house and the headmaster have been teaching you occlumency?'

'And legilimency.'

'Shit.'

'And, no, Snape is not working for Riddle.'

'Stop calling him that!'

'Snape?'

'No!'

'Riddle?'

'The Dark Lord.'

'He's dark enough - is he your lord?'

'No!'

'Then why call him that?'

'Why do I do half the things I do?'

'Bloody good question, bugger if I know.'

'Oh, you cannot be that thick.'

'Humour me.'

'You've the rest of the Wizarding world for that, Golden Boy.'

'Damn it, just stop faffing about and tell me.'

'Tell you what?'

'That you're bloody terrified.'

'D'you think that's why I despise you?'

'You don't despise me.'

'I beg to differ.'

'You're more likely to beg to be buggered.'

'Eat shit, Potter!'

'Not up to your usual level of repartee.'

'I really ballsed it up when I didn't kill you on the train.'

'You couldn't have.'

'Oh, is the Golden Boy too powerful - or do you think pity would have stayed my hand?'

'It's all in the prophecy, Draco: the one your father got his arse slung in Azkaban trying to steal.'

'LUCIUS IS NOT MY FATHER!'

'Precisely.'

'What prophecy?'

'Only I can kill Riddle, only Riddle can kill me. You think I keep taking the bastard on by myself out of some sense of knight-errantry? Christ, man, think.'

'Bloody sodding hell....'

'So it really does come down to this: it's time you placed your bets. Either you are with me, or you are with Riddle and his little terror band who don't have the balls to show their faces.'

'Why should I choose? Why choose at all?'

'Because neither side will let you be neutral - and besides that, you've already made your choice.'

'Balls.'

'Oh, you have.'

'What possesses you to come to so idiotic a conclusion? I knew Gryffindors were dim, but this is a bit much even for you.'

'We've been obsessed with each other since that day in Madam Malkin's -'

'Mere schoolboy rivalry -'

'You gave me a veiled warning on the train the very first time we were actually introduced -'

'That was an offer followed by a threat -'

'You warned us to get Hermione away from the World Cup when things went pear-shaped -'

'That was a taunt and a threat -'

'- Instead of setting the DEs on us. You confirmed that Riddle was back when others still doubted -'

'I was crowing -'

'And warned that Ron and Hermione were targets -'

'Merely spreading fear, alarm, and despondency -'

'You've been giving me veiled hints and warnings for years -'

'Hedging my bets -'

'- At considerable risk and with no apparent payoff - which is highly un-Slytherin of you.'

'And you would know that because?'

'The Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin, you know. Had to jaw it into changing its mind.'

'Bloody fucking hell.'

'So don't think I'm not on to you, Malfoy: I have you sussed.'

'Oh, do you, Scarhead?'

'And I understand why you've felt it necessary to play both ends against the middle.'

'Oh, do enlighten me.'

'What I cannot understand is why you can't simply admit that you've been running scared for a very long time.'

'Are you mad?'

'There's nothing wrong with being afraid.'

'Says the Golden Boy of Gryffindor -'

'And there's nothing wrong in admitting it -'

'Quoth the Boy Who Lived -'

'Look, I'm just Harry!'

'Balls. Absolute rubbish. And I don't hear you admitting your fears.'

'Well, no, you wouldn't.'

'Because it's dangerous!'

'Dangerous be damned! All it means is - look, damn it, when you say, "I am afraid", you're saying, "comfort me"....'

'You're mad as a March hare. Admitting "I'm afraid" is saying, "Hullo, over here! Look, look! I have a weakness, exploit it"!'

'Oh, that is simply ridiculous.'

'Oh, and I suppose that's why we all see the great St Potter going about announcing his fears all the bloody time?'

'Of course you don't, you great ass, it's generally in a battle situation and people haven't time to stop and deal with me - and besides that, you've not been on the right side of the battle-lines to have seen anything of who I truly am, have you?'

'I've seen quite enough, thank you: Bumblebore's Golden Boy, the Boy Who Is Too Thick To Know He's Dead, the great sainted hero -'

'Then you've seen an illusion, which is damned odd, given you've been watching obsessively for a very long time.'

'I am not bloody obsessed with you!'

'Oh put a sock in it, of course you are. You've spent your life hearing Lucius maunder on about me and you've spent your schooldays locked in struggle with me: what the hell do you call that, if not obsession?'

'Oh, I don't know ... perhaps vengeance? After all, I have spent interminably boring hours listening to Lucius obsess over you - you: a runty little ragbag who presumed to reject my hand when I offered and who has run roughshod over me in every sodding confrontation since!'

'You've given as good as you've got.'

'It's not enough!'

'What would be?'

'It's not enough, damn you!'

'What would be? What do you want?'

'I want to STOP BEING TERRIFIED, damn it - damn you, I want to stop waiting for the bloody balloon to go up, I want it all to stop, it's cold and it's dark and it's lonely and I am so damned sick of shivering! I want it to stop!'

'What do you want, really?'

'I want power, you don't think its your bum I want, do you, Scarhead, it's your power, it bloody radiates, and I want it because if I finally - if ... if ... if I could just finally get my hands on enough power I could stop being afraid, power, wherever it comes from: you, the Dark Side, I don't CARE: I just want to not have to be so bloody frightened all the time!'

'No, God damn you, Malfoy, TELL ME THE TRUTH! WHAT DO YOU WANT?'

'I want out I want to live I want to be free I want them out of my life I want my life to be my own!'

'WHAT DO YOU SODDING WANT?'

'I want, I want - I want to know that I can ... that someone will ... that, that -'

'Do you want comfort?'

'Yes, damn you!'

'Do you want love?'

'Yes, you bastard!'

'Do you want to know you're not alone, that you needn't be alone, that you are not fated to live alone and die alone?'

'You son of a bitch!'

'Do you want someone who understands an empty childhood, all alone, with no one to look to, particularly the family who are supposed to care?'

'You bastard! You bloody bugger!'

'Do you want to be trusted and cared for, and cared about, and held when it's just too bloody much?'

'You bloody, bloody bastard....'

'Do you?'

'Yes.'

'DO YOU?'

'YES! YES, you bugger! YES! Are you done yet, are you happy now you've broken me -'

'No.'

'What?'

'No, I'm not happy you had to break to admit it, but, yes.'

'Yes, WHAT?'

'My Muggle relatives kept me in a cupboard for eleven years. Lied to me about everything. Worked me like a house elf.... If I'd been a Muggle child I would have died from it, from the lack of love and touch, and any encouragement to thrive.'

'So?'

'So let me tell you what I want. I want someone who can understand the loneliness. Who can grasp what it is to be marked at too bloody young an age for a fatal destiny. I want someone I can trust and care for, and care about, and hold....'

'So find a nice Hufflepuff girl!'

'What part of gay as a maypole do you not get, Draco? I took Parvati to the Yule Ball and left her standing - but I noticed what you were wearing. I kissed Cho and it did nothing for me, my only thought was, Well, that was soggy - but we have always, always, been the centre of one another's attention!'

'Well, fuck me.'

'I'm not bloody offering that - yet!'

'Wh- Bugger!'

'What I am offering is this. I will save you as well as the rest of the lot, or die trying. And I will give you a place at my side, so that if I do fail and die, you will die with me in clean battle, rather than be taken and tortured. What I am offering is trust and friendship, and, yes, I can't help the fact that I - want - you, so I'm offering that as well, and if you throw that back in my face -'

'I won't!'

'What?'

'I can't.'

'Why not?'

'Because I am already on your side, you stupid twat!'

'I know.'

'Balls! How could you know?'

'Occlumency.'

'You'd bloody well better not have used legilimency on me without my consent!'

'I wouldn't.'

'No, come to think of it you wouldn't, would you. Bloody nobility'll get us all killed yet.'

'Nor would I need to do. It's the occlumency. You couldn't be here in this mindspace of ours if you weren't already on our side.'

'Then why in buggery are we having it out?'

'Would you rather be having it off?'

'Potter!'

'Because that I do need to know, and I won't use legilimency to find out. I need to know if you're here because I am offering you a place in the battle line and because it fits your Slytherin self-interest, or whether all these years have meant something else as well: these years of hints and equivocal warnings and half-made suggestions....'

'Will you throw me back to them if I say I'm here out of self-interest?'

'No.'

'Will you, if I say it's purely conviction and no more?'

'No.'

'Of course you wouldn't, you great bloody fool! And that's why those are not my reasons, that's why I - why you mean a good deal - why -'

'The word you're groping for is, "love".'

'Not yet.'

'Perhaps not yet, but it will be.'

'But not yet.'

'Draco?'

'Harry?'

'In that case....'

'Yes?'

'Would you get your hands off my throat?'

'When you stop digging your wand-tip into my carotid artery, yes.'

'We won't remember this, will we.'

'I think we'll remember that we got past our past. I gather the details will be a buried dream, fugitive and unremembered....'

'Then we may as well make the best of it....'

'POTTER!'

'Well, face it, first times in waking life are unlikely to measure up -'

'Then why have them - oh GOD, POTTER!'

'Because practise makes perfect....'

'Stop flannelling and do that - OH GOD, YES! - again....'

And then the only sounds were those of hitched breaths and throaty moans and whimpers just on the edge of hearing, of wetness and heat and suction and hard, heated flesh upon flesh, and the only scents were those of maleness and need, of saliva, sweat, and spunk.

______________________

In the Infirmary, in dream-Hogwarts, in the last summer of childhood....

The bruises and hex-marks and wounds had evanesced. The signs that now marked the bodies of the two youths were wholly different, now. Albus Dumbledore rose, with a sardonic grin, and left them to it, warding the area and mounting guard without. This was not something anyone else ought yet know, and it was assuredly something he had less than no interest in watching.

______________________

In the whirl of hypnomachic vision....

Draco remembered something his mother had said, impatiently, when he had gone to her, smarting under the lash of his father's well-honed sarcasms and his father's insistence that Draco 'stop acting like a half-blood Hufflepuff and set these rumours to rest by shagging and being known to shag whoever that year's school tart was.'

He had surprised himself and Narcissa both when he had told her, more than asked her, If magic was so integral to sex, had he not better save it up for a proper and acceptable mate. She had pinned him with a glance. 'You cannot possibly be seeking to fool me, Draco. I can assume only that you have deceived yourself. Because what that drivel amounts to is that, deep down, you want it to be -' she took a breath, the better to infuse her words with scorn - 'meaningful. I suppose you want rose-petals and white gowns. I am shocked at you.'

'But -'

'Oh, really, Draco. Sex is not "an expression of love between two people". That's what God gave us gemstones for.'

Gemstones. Rot. Rubbish. Utter balls. If ever he saw his mother again, Draco reflected, acidly, he had a comment or two regarding emerald eyes to make.

_______________________

In schooldays that are but a dream, over hols, in London with the Tonkses....

'This,' Aunt Andromeda said, 'is another classic sample of why it is that you two are perfect for one another. I imagine that Harry's dreadful relations - one cannot call them a family - live in a world of "serviettes" for napkins, "crystal" for glasses, "afters" - oh, I shall be fair: "the sweet" - for pudding, and post-prandial telly-watching in what they no doubt call the "lounge".'

Harry sighed.

'Bloody telly,' Tinker muttered. 'Americanising the bloody language. Bloody people don't know enough to dial 9-9-9 rather than the Yank 9-1-1 in an emergency, these days, people tell time differently to the way they did when I was young, and even the Treasury and the FT don't know what a billion is any longer -'

'TINKER!'

Harry sighed, again.

'Yet Harry is inherently a gentleman.'

'And I'm not.' It was Draco's turn to sigh.

'You know the words, but you were assuredly not taught the tune, nephew. I'm certain that my sister at least raised you to speak properly and know which fork to use. And, no doubt, to shop.'

'Well....'

'Tell me, nephew. Do you care about clothes? Do you know how a table is set - or at least realise if it's been set differently to that at home? Do you feel yourself well-versed in the social graces?'

'Well, it wouldn't be very pleasant to Mummy to say otherwise.'

'But your attitude,' Tinker interjected, 'is all Lucius. As it stands, I'm afraid that what they've managed between them is to fit you for a life as a caterer, or an upper servant in a very grand establishment - what was that story about the day at Clarence House when some squabble below-stairs upset the schedule, and the Queen Mother rang and said, "I don't know what you old queens are doing down there, but it's past four now and the old Queen up here wants her gin"?'

Draco whimpered.

'In fact,' Tinker maundered on, 'you'd make, as it stands, a superb shop assistant at a Savile Row tailor's -'

Harry gave in to his rising hysteria, and howled with laughter. 'M- he - "Mister Humphries",' he choked out, and Tonks burst out laughing as well, as did Tinker, and - when Tonks, with perfect mimicry, fluted, '"I'm free, Captain Peacock, I'm free",' and made a comment about Draco's taking an inside leg - even Aunt Andromeda could not forebear to smile.

'I hate you all so much,' Draco muttered, his face buried in his hands.

'Whereas,' Aunt Andromeda went on, ignoring him and wresting the conversation back by main force, 'you, Harry.... Would you rather shop, or play a friendly with your, ah, mates? Do you care at all about your clothes? Would you prefer tickets to the World Cup, or to an opera?'

Harry shuddered, and, before he could speak, was cut off.

'Precisely,' Aunt Andromeda said. 'That's your true member of the upper classes, there.'

'But our sort of people go to Glyndebourne,' Draco objected, pouting furiously.

'As a social obligation,' Tinker said. 'And for those excellent sandwich baskets, the picnic thingies, with the little curly cheese whatsits and the champers and the berries, those are excellent, and the Eton Mess - damnable name, but awfully good nosh -'

'TINKER!'

'- But, aside from that, damn it all, we'd all a damned sight rather be at Goodwood.'

'Lucius liked opera,' Draco muttered.

'I'm sure he did,' Harry said, dryly. 'After all, from what I know of it, there are no happy endings and everyone ends up stylishly and lyrically dead in the last act. Right up Lucius's street, really.'

'That would be Lucius,' Andy murmured. 'Equal parts Scarpia, Alberich, and Mefistofele.'

Draco sniggered.

Tinker looked pained. 'I say, nephew, you're not a bloody æsthete, I hope.'

'Be kind, Daddy,' Tonks interjected. 'Draco is a sportsman, and a very fine Quidditcher.'

'Well, that's a start,' Tinker muttered. He did not sound terribly convinced.

'The point,' Aunt Andromeda said, sharply, 'is that Harry has the right instincts, and Draco has the theory down. We can work with the both of them. You, Harry, simply need polish.'

'And I?' Draco kept his face down, his eyes trained on his hands.

'We,' Aunt Andromeda replied, with a grim smile, 'are going to make a gentleman of you, nephew. Or, of course, die trying.'

_______________________

* Snape and McGonagall are referring to Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii, one of the strangest books ever written, but a milestone in type-setting.