Underwater Light

Hermione clutched harder at Ron to keep him down. Her mind was fragmenting into panic, every shard unacceptable. She couldn't look at Voldemort - God, he didn't even look human, he looked like one of those creatures from the cartoons of her childhood made flesh - and she couldn't look at Lupin, writhing with his eyes shut and foam at the corners of his mouth. She tried to look at Malfoy, see his face and catch some expression that might mean there was an explanation, and realised only in the sudden rush of betrayal that she had really trusted him.

"Hush," she whispered desperately. Who knew what Voldemort could hear? How were they going to get out?

"Commendable though your enthusiasm is," said Voldemort, and his voice made Hermione shudder; it had the quality of Parseltongue when he was speaking English. "I think we can continue questioning the werewolf along with his precious friend Black. You will bring them to my room." Hermione saw Peter Pettigrew's quick look, and Voldemort explained with a note of weariness. "You might know it better as your Charms classroom, Wormtail."

"As for you, Malfoy-" and at that point hope drowned in Hermione's outrage - "I like to see your viciousness, but it can be put to better use. After all, I think we all know Harry Potter is close. We only have to wait for him to come to us."

He beckoned as he swept out, and Malfoy followed. Hermione watched them leave with relief, feeling horror and betrayal recede so she was left with the single urge: to find a way out of this.

Ron lifted his head incautiously again. Hermione pulled him down hard, but she saw Lupin's eyes widen and was sure that this time, at least one person had seen them.

"I will tell you one thing, Peter," Lupin said conversationally, though his voice was still weak with pain and foam lingered at the corner of his mouth. "You always thought that being a werewolf was much like being an Animagus, only - less pleasant, and less voluntary. That's not true."

Peter Pettigrew trembled, uncertain, glancing at his fellow Death Eaters for help.

Lupin rolled, rising and breaking his cuffs in one smooth motion, and then stood facing Peter. Hermione had never seen her mild professor look like this: the set of his shoulders and glint in his reminded her of a savage animal.

"No," he said, and his voice grew thick. "I'm a werewolf all the time. And neither cuffs nor Cruciatus can slow me down for long."

He looked up for just a moment. Hermione saw his lips move quite clearly.

Then Lupin sprang, and as Peter Pettigrew went down beneath him and all the Death Eaters levelled their wands, Hermione hauled Ron up by main force and grabbed their moment of distraction to flee down the stairs and out of the Tower.

They staggered once they had gone down a few corridors, out of the mindless desire to escape and into their own terrible thoughts.

"I'll kill that bastard Malfoy," Ron said, and sounded like he meant it. "I'll go after him and kill him. What has he done to Harry?"

"Nothing," Hermione answered. She caught Ron's startled glance and threw him back an impatient one. "He would've told Voldemort - no, honestly, Ron, I will say it - he would've told him if he knew where Harry was. They must have split up, and that means we have to get back to the Great Hall and tell Harry at once."

She suppressed a shudder at the thought of telling Harry. She, Hermione Granger, supposedly clever, had actually trusted that bastard Malfoy, and God knew Harry had done more than that.

She couldn't think about this now. She had to plan. Lupin had given up his one chance at escape to give them theirs.

They walked to the Great Hall quickly. Hermione tried not to think every noise was a Death Eater, and kept searching her mind for spells. It had never seemed so empty.

When they heard the noise from above Ron seized her shoulders and tried to push her behind him. She pushed him away and grabbed for her wand.

Then they both actually looked, and it was Harry. His wand was drawn, and one black sleeve was ripped and hanging to show a bloody gash along his arm. The set of his shoulders reminded her of Lupin about to spring, and his eyes burned strangely in a white, set face.

For a moment she thought he knew, and found herself speaking rapidly, hopelessly, so they would not have to talk about it.

"We've seen Lupin. They have him and Sirius, they're taking them to the Charms classroom, Voldemort is there too, Voldemort is in Hogwarts, Harry, what are we going to do? We haven't seen Dumbledore. I don't think there's anyone here but Death Eaters."

She wished she had not opened her mouth when she heard how bleak all she had to say was, and then she looked at Harry's far bleaker face.

The enormity of this disaster swallowed everything else. Hermione stood still, all thought lost.

She tried to gather words from a sea of despair. "Then there's nobody to help us."

His white face was transformed by rage, like fire sweeping over oil. Hermione almost shied away from him. She felt for an instant that Harry was one of the things to be feared in this place of horrors that had been Hogwarts, that anything which got in his way might be consumed.

"Who ever helped us?" Harry snarled. "When did Dumbledore ever help us? We're on our own and I like it better this way. We can do this. Now where's Draco?"

Hermione had almost forgotten. She closed her hands, tight, as if she could crush this thing before it could hurt Harry.

Ron spoke before she could. "Malfoy's probably off torturing Lupin some more. We saw him do it the first time - while he was standing practically arm-in-arm with You-Know-Who."

Harry did not absorb the words at first. Part of him was still far away in that room looking at that withered old face, locked in that last stubborn determination to live. Part of him was still thinking, if his wand had been in his hand, I'd be...

He just stared stupidly at Ron for a few minutes, and then suddenly he was all there, in this moment, and absolutely furious.

"Please, be quiet!" Hermione hissed, grasping ineffectually at Harry's hands. "Please, please, stop. Harry, it's true. I saw it. I'm so sorry, Harry, but it's true."

He let go of Ron's shirt and stepped back, panting. He looked at her distressed face and wanted to run away from them - his best friends! - and put his hands over his ears. It was not true.

"Yes, Harry," Hermione answered tremblingly, and he fixed his eyes on her face, praying for to think of some explanation. She only stared back at him with pleading eyes. "Only - Voldemort said they did know where you were, and that Malfoy was being vicious. Which he can be, Harry, you know that-"

"Harry," Hermione exclaimed, her voice ragged. "I can't think of any other explanation. There's no reason for it to be Polyjuice, and Voldemort called him by name. He cast Cruciatus on Lupin. I saw him. It was him, and I kept trying to look at his face, to see if it was a plan, but I don't see how it could be. Harry, I know how you feel about him, but he's the spy."

"No he's not," Harry said automatically, and then stopped because he did not know how to tell Ron and Hermione who the spy was.

Who was to say there was only one spy? Didn't it almost make sense? Nobody would ever have questioned Dumbledore's presence... except for a Slytherin. The Slytherins had always been more hostile to Dumbledore, the Slytherins could have been a weak spot... unless someone they trusted absolutely was helping him.

"You didn't see his face," he added, more uncertainly, but he did not need Hermione's sad face to answer his unspoken question. He remembered recognising Draco departing in the night once, in first year. Draco was pretty much unmistakable.

"Yeah, you've been friends with him for what, six whole months," Ron snapped. "We've been your friends for seven years, and we're all in a bit more trouble than Draco Malfoy could make for us. We need to decide what to do."

Harry felt the clean rush of determination overwhelm all thought. He was so grateful for that: for the chance to escape thought in the call to action.

"You're right," he said briefly. "We need either Sirius or Lupin: we know that. If they're together, we can get them both - and then we'll see. I've got my Invisibility Cloak. Let's go to the Charms classroom."

As he unfolded his Cloak, Hermione's eyes lit up. "Do you have the Map?"

"I-" Harry remembered the Map, lying yellow on the floor of that room, and cursed himself. He was not going up there again, and Ron and Hermione could not see what he had left behind him. "It's gone."

Hermione looked disappointed, but she nodded. He looked into her absorbed face and saw she was already lost in calculating their chances of success.

He cast the Cloak over them all, and as he put an arm around Hermione it occurred to him what his hands had last done, and what her face would look like if she knew.

They walked close together up the stairs and through the corridors of Hogwarts, conscious that the very echoes of their steps could betray them, but Harry could not stop thinking of a very different sort of betrayal.

The day they left Hogwarts, Draco had been writing a letter he had not wanted Harry to see. He'd said it was for Narcissa, but he'd Owled his mother the day before.

Draco hadn't shown any interest until - well, until Hogwarts had broken up, and he had lost direct contact with the Slytherins. Until Hogwarts was broken and Harry, perhaps, became a more important bargaining chip with Voldemort and got upgraded from friend to...

Exactly why had Draco changed his mind? Dumbledore had never loved him, any more than the Dursleys had. It wasn't likely that Draco had been overcome by Harry's appeal.

Hermione's fingers closed on his arm a second after he saw the Death Eaters. He levelled his wand and Petrified the first one.

The second spun around and Hermione caught him with the same spell, Ron the third, and Harry seized the cloak of the last one as he retreated and cast the Petrifying spell one last time.

Then Harry went over to the first one, lifted his head by the hair, and smashed his head hard against the stone.

"Anyone could come by and reverse the spell," he explained unemotionally. "I doubt they have many mediwizards, and I want every Death Eater possible out of commission. We're fighting a war here."

Hermione licked her lips. "Don't hit them too hard. You could cause brain damage."

"I don't think they'd be so touchingly concerned about you," Harry said. He felt numb as he looked at the horrified expression on her face. He didn't see why she had to look like that. He was only talking sense.

Once he was done, he got to his feet. Hermione shrank back from him slightly, but he felt a hand against his shoulder. He blinked, startled, into Ron's eyes.

"Of course we are," Hermione rejoined, her voice gaining strength as she spoke. "You only did what you had to do."

It was just the three of them, the friends he could trust completely, and that felt good. It felt right. He was able to walk on, into Voldemort's lair, and be certain that they had his back.

"I still don't believe Draco did it," Harry said in a low voice, and opened the door.

The empty, darkened room was something of an anticlimax. They stood under the Cloak for a few minutes, hesitating and taking in every detail of the room. The chairs and desks of McGonagall's classroom had been cleared away, and the room looked far larger than it had before.

At the far end of the room stood a throne, and what almost looked like a sceptre, standing fixed to the floor.

Harry felt at a loss. He had expected - something to be there, something to fight, and all he could do was stand here wondering if this was a trap, or if they had moved Sirius and Lupin somewhere else.

It was Hermione who broke the cover of the Invisibility Cloak, and walked out into the Charms classroom. She glanced over her shoulder at them, her eyes wide.

But Harry remembered. He remembered a Young Order meeting, with speculation on what Voldemort was doing with the missing students, and Hermione and Draco brimming over with knowledge about this one charm.

He could hear Draco's voice so clearly in his mind, drawling and precise. It's thought that Dark Magic has recently been used to create prisons within spheres. A thousand tiny Azkabans You-Know-Who can keep in his pocket, that Dementors can patrol and nobody can ever escape from.

He left Ron with the Cloak and walked to the spot where Hermione stood, stared where she was staring. There it was, the Captus sphere, left alone and unguarded. It was a round, dull-blue sphere, mounted on its metal plinth. Voldemort's version of a sceptre, with a stone containing hundreds of souls.

Draco's voice came back to him again. The advantage to us is that - perhaps we can get them back.

"Harry, don't you dare!" Hermione exclaimed. "That could kill them all. This is very old magic, and I have no idea what to do to free them. We have to get it to the Order of the Phoenix: they will know what to do. This makes finding Lupin or Sirius even more urgent. All their lives depend on it. We all have to get out of here."

Ron was folding up the Cloak: Hermione was staring at the sphere. Harry looked at them both, judging their possible reactions, and then decided he didn't care.

"Harry, for-!" Ron exploded. "He handed over all his precious housemates to be put in that! I know you liked him, but you have to face the facts!"

Yes, the facts. Draco had never been interested in making friends, until the Triwizard Tournament - which Dumbledore had engineered. Draco had written a letter and lied about it. Draco had admitted he was racist. Draco had never been interested like that until Harry was the last thing left for him to use...

He remembered Draco's face, sharp in some moment of unbeautiful intensity.

"Step back from the Captus sphere, Mr Potter," said a voice from the shadows. "I wouldn't want you getting any ideas."

Harry knew the voice at once. It had been years since he heard it, years, and the hatred of years unfolded in his chest, building into murderous rage, as Voldemort stepped out of invisibility, into the light.

He stood and stared down at Harry with those unblinking, slitted red eyes. His face was almost too inhuman to register triumph.

You killed my parents. You killed Cedric. You laid waste to my world and destroyed my school and I'm going to kill you, you bastard...

Still walking into the light, his white-blond head bowed, with that characteristic saunter. He carried himself with all his usual aristocratic poise.

He could see why Hermione and Ron had been so sure, even without seeing his face. But Harry knew Draco better than that.

It came as no surprise when his eyes met icy grey ones, and he looked into Draco's face, but older, and changed, as if someone had made deliberate mistakes.

The Death Eaters were slowly coming out of their invisibility spells, one by one, and growing at the back of Harry's mind was a realisation of how utterly he had been tricked, and a growing determination to take down as many as he could.

Centre stage was the one stunned thought running over and over again through his mind.

It would kill him. Somewhere even further back in his thoughts was satisfaction that Ron and Hermione could see now Draco was innocent, but innocent or not, this would kill him.

At least Draco was safe - and please, let him be safe, because he was sure now that Sirius and Lupin were in the sphere already, and Ron and Hermione were caught in this trap with him. Everything he loved, bar that one person, was here - and the Death Eaters were closing in.

"Now, now, there's no need to be hasty," Voldemort told him. "Kill the other two if he moves," he added casually to the Death Eaters, who closed in tighter around them. Harry felt Ron and Hermione draw closer to him, standing warm at his back. "This is no little squabble, no secret meeting in a graveyard that could be disrupted. I've won, Harry Potter. The wizarding world is mine. And I intend to enjoy this."

"Why?" Harry shouted. "What, it makes you feel important? You came back from the dead to stand around in a big gang of bullies and torture people who're smaller than you? That's pathetic. You're pathetic. You always have been."

He saw Voldemort's long fingers reach for his wand, and braced himself. He almost wanted Voldemort to perform Cruciatus. It would just be another reason to hate him.

He stared into those red eyes, daring him to do it, and then heard the door behind him open.

"Harry!" Draco said, sounding irritated and ordinary. "Why on earth are you shouting, the Death Eaters might - oh."

Harry turned away from Voldemort and saw Draco, going ashen as he took in the situation.

"On the other hand," Draco said carefully, "I can see you're busy. Perhaps I'll just go away."

Harry had thought that earlier, and not quite known what he meant. He knew now: he had said the words and meant to kill, and he had seen the limp thing after and known it was his doing.

Nobody tried to hurt Draco. Voldemort tilted his head. "It's young Malfoy, isn't it?" he said, as if they were playing meet-and-greet at a tea party but with awful amusement behind his manner. "Do come in. This should be interesting."

Draco advanced warily. He was so pale he looked ill, and Harry remembered this was the first time he had ever seen Voldemort, and imagined that the sight would fill your eyes and thoughts to the exclusion of all else, until...

Until Draco looked beside Voldemort, and his whole face changed. Harry did not think he was aware of Voldemort any more, or Harry, or anything but the joy and disbelief chasing each other over his face and making him smile, very hesitantly, as if he thought someone might steal the smile from him if he made it too obvious.

Harry looked at Lucius' face, and was violently aware again of how alike they were, this face that he loved and the other that he hated. Lucius' face was only more composed, with features perhaps less pointed, more conventionally handsome. There was nothing of Lucius in the sharp, hungry look of Draco, like a starved animal searching for a home.

There was hunger and hope in Draco's face now. Lucius stared at him coolly.

"I - I mean Father," Draco faltered briefly, his eyes still fixed on his father's face. "I thought you were dead," he went on in almost a whisper.

"Clearly not," said Lucius. "You never did know when to shut up, Draco. I'm sorry to see the years haven't changed you."

He still looked dazed, but he was the only one moving. Everyone else seemed caught, still in the face of Draco's utter refusal to recognise that anyone but his father existed in the world. Harry saw a few Death Eaters move, but Draco was Lucius Malfoy's son and they seemed uncertain of what to do.

Not so Lucius. "Come here, Draco. This is no time for your incessant chatter."

Draco's face was clearing. "I thought you were dead. You - I saw you die!"

He did not say it with suspicion. Harry had only met Lucius Malfoy a few times, and he was certain. Nobody playing a father would think that the appropriate emotion to display toward his long-lost son was annoyance.

"Yes. You proved an excellent witness. All we had to do was create a storm, spell the boat to break up, create an illusion of the Dark Lord and you reacted quite predictably by overreacting."

It was strange. Harry had only seen them together once before, in second year when his main concern had been Draco laughing at him because he had soot in his hair. Now they were all standing in front of Voldemort and his minions, who kept appearing round the room in greater and greater numbers, and through his rising anger Harry could still see... why Draco was the way he was.

Not because Lucius was evil, but because he had a politician's trick of seeking out the weaknesses of those he came in contact with. He had not missed a single weakness in the only person in the world who loved him. He saw them all and he'd made Draco suffer for them all.

He'd missed the whole point of Draco, and Draco was still moving towards him, like a bird hypnotised by a snake. Why wouldn't he? Harry had sat beside him and stroked his hair while Draco poured out all his delusions about his father, and Harry had never corrected one of those statements Draco wanted so desperately to believe. He'd thought it would hurt less for Draco to believe the lies, thought it wouldn't harm anyone.

Voldemort spoke then, as if offended that anyone would question his decisions. "Your father had rather too high a profile and rather too black a record to be of use to me in his position. Moreover, he has never been one of my more trustworthy servants. I required him to prove his loyalty, and I required an assistant slightly more competent than Wormtail." He spared Lucius a casual glance. "I suppose he has proved his worth, such as it is."

Even the Dark Lord did not move Draco's gaze from his father, but as Voldemort spoke his face changed.

He addressed Lucius. "You faked your own death so you could act as the help?"

Harry almost laughed out loud. It was so absurd and so like Draco, and Lucius had raised so much more than he'd bargained for.

"Lucius," thundered Voldemort. "Will you muzzle your insolent brat, or must I?"

"I apologise, my Lord," Lucius said quickly. "Draco, I know you are not this unintelligent. You've shown me that much at least over the last two years."

"Really? I thought all I did was overreact." Draco's voice was dry, but he was still moving towards his father.

Harry could not move, could not grab the idiot and hold him back, because the Death Eaters were under orders to kill Hermione and Ron if he stirred. He could only watch.

"No," Lucius said smoothly. "You surprised me, actually. You didn't consider your actions, of course, but you did effect something, Draco. You rallied your peers behind you. No matter how wrongheaded your actions, you did something, and you did it well - and you did it for an admirable reason. For family, and to avenge me."

Harry had never heard Lucius speak like a politician before, like an orator, his voice rich, rolling and convincing. He suspected that neither had Draco - at least, not when Lucius was speaking to him.

"But you see now it was not necessary. You never wanted to ally yourself with blood traitors, with fools who sink the wizarding world in the mud with every stupid concession they make for the Mudbloods. Now is the time to leave them, Draco. Now is the time to show me what you can really do."

It was probably the most praise Lucius had ever given his son, but Harry realised that Draco's eyes had finally found something more worth looking at than his father.

"You people took my Slytherins," he said, pretending to acknowledge other people when really he was only speaking to his father. "You took my-"

And then another unexpected appearance was made. The invisibility spell faded to disclose another dozen Death Eaters coming into view as if invisibility was a tide receding from the room.

Harry felt another weary pang of betrayal. He had liked her. God, they had all been stupid and blind.

Only... no. In his dream, she had screamed. She had been tortured. She had not been taken willingly.

She held herself a little stiffly, as if her body was aching still, but she stood by her husband's side and her face was calm.

"Draco, please come here," she said, and the quality of her voice changed as if her throat was tightening. "I know you may not like the idea, but we have no choice. He's won, and we have a chance to survive. So do the children you sent to me - as long as we choose the winning side."

So she had not gone willingly. She was using Dumbledore's logic now, the logic of survival. Harry could not see if it was affecting Draco or not. His eyes kept moving between his father and his mother.

The Lestranges had materialised behind Draco's parents now. He could see the curl of Draco's mouth on the mad face of Bellatrix Lestrange. They were all of the same blood, and blood had always meant so much to Draco.

"Now is the time to choose your family," Lucius said in his compelling voice. "Besides - you don't think this craven bunch of Mudblood-lovers ever really thought you were one of them. They never trusted you. You've slaved for them and they all thought you were the infamous Hogwarts spy."

Draco moved then, and not towards his father. He turned and cast a look over his shoulder at Harry, warm as a kiss.

Not even when his father spoke did Draco look away. He still looked sick with shock and fear, but there was trust hard as steel in his eyes.

Now was the time to say something, to accuse Draco's father though he never had before, to say he hadn't ever really thought... Now was the time, with Draco in the balance, when Harry had to speak.

"Are you sure about that, Draco?" Lucius inquired. "I heard them talking. Do you think your - friend Harry Potter will tell you that he never doubted you, not even for a moment?"

A question clouded Draco's face, and when Harry did not speak, just kept staring with the intensity of a prayer, the trust in his eyes shattered.

"You were never one of them, and they knew it. You're one of ours. You're my son. You only have your family. Don't let me down, Draco. Come here!"

You have to speak, Harry thought to himself furiously, but he felt too sick of words to open his mouth. Dumbledore had talked, and Lucius, and Narcissa. It didn't prove anything. It didn't mean love.

Draco turned his face away from Harry a little, and Harry saw his face grow darker as he did so. A slow, cold smile came over his lips, like the one on his father's face, like the one on Bellatrix's. He looked in that instant like the perfect product of their pure blood, a mirror held up to his forebears.

"I'm coming, Father," he said, and walked the few steps to his father's side.

"How very touching," Voldemort remarked. "Now, unless another of my Death Eaters feels like staging a dramatic family reunion, can we perhaps attend to business?"

Harry was still watching Draco. He had his eyes lowered, like shutters slammed hard over windows, and he was standing with his family. The only trace of expression on his face was spiteful.

He'd been betrayed over and over, and if Harry knew him at all he was seething with it and with fury, waiting to lash out at something. Draco had never been good at hiding anything for long. Harry watched, and Draco did lift his eyes. He did not look as if he was prepared to forgive Harry for doubting him. He looked helpless, and torn, and ready to kill.

Harry met his gaze with a fierce thrill running through him. I do know you.

"I clung to the driftwood for hours before I was rescued," Draco remarked reminiscently.

Even Voldemort looked at him when he spoke, unable to believe he had chosen this time to start complaining. Draco's eyes were still locked on Harry's over Lucius' shoulder.

"I shouted for you until I lost my voice. I thought... since you were dead, I might as well be dead, and this was hell."

Harry took another step forward. Voldemort's eyes narrowed for a heart-stopping instant, and then they turned to the sound of Lucius' exasperated snap.

Another step with Draco's narrowed eyes on him, and no-one else's. Another step closer.

Emotion leaped into Draco's face, white-hot feeling that could have been love or hatred or sheer relief that he could act at last.

Lucius fell at the feet of his Dark Lord, who was almost knocked off balance, and Draco stood over him looking ready to hit him again. The Death Eaters surged towards their master in a disordered rush.

Harry leaped forward and dashed the Captus sphere down from its pedestal and onto the floor. It smashed into a thousand pieces.

She had been Confunded. Ginny remembered that much, remembered all the lists of symptoms her mother had shown her. This is what strangers might try to do to you, this is how you'll feel, you must try to think clearly, you have to protect yourself!

Simple as Muggle mothers teaching their children not to accept lifts from strangers. Only she had not been able to protect herself.

She had seen - she would never have dreamed she was in danger, and then...

But everything else she thought she remembered was impossible. Her misty horror was the product of a spell, and their situation. She could not allow herself to get lost in dreams of horror. Not when Dean was always beside her, and needed her help. He was more disoriented than she by the Confundus charm and what had happened to them, and that made her think of her mother too.

The Muggleborn were sheltered by the lack of magic in their childhood. Their instincts were not the same, their lives were untouched by the shadow of the Dark Lord. One part of them would never believe there was danger.

It filled her with tenderness, and she held on past the fear to his hand, murmuring nonsense words of comfort. He replied in kind, and through the days they kept up a conversation that meant nothing.

It was so dark, and time passed in endless confusion. Trying to think was like trying to move underwater, and the other prisoners were almost all as helpless as Dean. She thought she heard a girl whispering to some children a few times, her voice angry and persistent, but mostly people were silent, out of despair or magic-born confusion.

She had been Confunded, and now she was imprisoned. That was all she knew.

All she felt, besides confusion and affection, was that they were being watched. That was another reason they were all crouching in darkness and semi-silence: they could all feel the malicious eyes watching them, as if they were being kept as pets, to look at.

Then the world was smashed. She could feel it breaking apart around her, along with the last effects of the Confundus charm, and wild fear rose inside her. She could feel the world breaking, and surely the shards of such destruction could kill them all.

Ginny kept tight hold of Dean's hand, gasping as if freedom had become an alien atmosphere, and as her eyes adjusted she saw where they were now.

There were Death Eaters everywhere, some fallen among their fallen as if they had exploded into their midst. Ginny could see Hermione and Ron, who she was absolutely sure had not been taken, and she would have run to them if she had not had to keep hold of Dean. She could see Voldemort, who looked just like the bogeyman her brothers had described him as through her childhood and nothing like Tom Riddle.

Harry Potter stood at an empty stone plinth, with glass and liquid scattered about him. Ginny stared at the pieces at his feet. They had all come out of that, she thought, amazed, and then she was more amazed that her immediate reaction on seeing him had not been relief. His face was white and grim, and ready to kill; he did not look like a boy hero any longer.

Draco Malfoy was standing beside Voldemort and beside the Lestranges. His father - his father? - seemed to have been one of those knocked down by the prisoners' eruption into the room, but it looked as if Malfoy had chosen his side.

As the room slowly began to arrange itself into sides, Ginny saw that the captured Slytherins had come to the same conclusion. A hush of dismay hung over them all, and they stayed in the centre of the room as everyone else chose.

Some of them were looking to Malfoy for clues, but he was staring down at his father. Some of them clearly recognised family faces beneath those black hoods.

The silent hesitation lasted only a few moments, but at a time like this moments became heavy with significance and passed slowly.

A girl picked herself up from the floor. Ginny recognised her black hair and hard face: it was Pansy Parkinson.

"I don't care," she said, and Ginny realised with a shock that the stubborn voice talking to the children in their little prison had been Pansy's. She looked at Malfoy, and then at one particular Death Eater, and then she went on. Ginny had never thought she would hear a Slytherin's voice breaking. "I don't want to-"

She stopped, face twisted as if she was holding back tears by main force, but she walked away from the little knot of Slytherins and toward the side of the room that constituted the side of light.

She stumbled as she reached them, but Ron stepped forward and caught her. Ginny's big brother kept his hands steady under her arms until Pansy was on her feet and facing the Death Eaters with the rest of them.

Those who were holding back hesitated again when Malfoy looked up from his father and saw them. Ginny saw the flash of pride in his face when he saw where Pansy stood, and realised she had made a mistake.

Lucius Malfoy struggled to his feet. He had a bloody lip, and Ginny wondered stupidly how it had happened for a moment. Then he launched himself at his son.

Everyone broke from uncertainty into violence and the room seemed suddenly to be full of shoving bodies, and the air of curses. Ginny saw the contingent of Slytherins in the middle, being led by someone she thought was Blaise Zabini, towards Voldemort - and then she squinted and realised they were going there for Malfoy.

Someone grabbed her arm and she had her wand out in a second, before she looked up and saw that she was once again pointing it at Ron.

"Ginny," he said, and the force of her name meant that he loved her and he had been scared to death, "Are you stupid? We need to fight!"

"I will!" she shouted. "I need to get Dean to safety, he's still Confunded-"

"No," Dean replied, his voice dazed and close to her ear. "No, I'm all right, I can help-"

She turned around gladly as he spoke, and looked into his clearing eyes for one moment before a Death Eater shouted "Stupefy!" and he fell to the ground at her feet.

The Death Eater was closing in, sights aimed on the easy prey of a trembling girl and an unconscious boy.

She cast the Jelly-Legs Jinx on him with the reflexes born of a lifetime with Fred and George, and when he almost toppled onto Dean she hit him very hard. With her wand.

He went over on his side, eyes closing as he fell, and she stooped and gathered up Dean half into her lap as best she could with one arm, staying crouched above him with her wand at the ready.

She thought Ron might help her, but when she looked he was going down under three Death Eaters. She had a moment of fear for him, but then she saw that one of the Death Eaters already had Pansy Parkinson on his back, clubbing him around the head with her wand, and Hermione was advancing on another with a purposeful look in her eye.

That left her without allies. She had no choice but to protect Dean herself.

People who had fallen were being crushed underfoot. Perhaps the man she had brought down was being crushed now... but he deserved it, and Dean did not. She was damned if she was going to let anything happen to him.

People were screaming and dying around her, there were very young Confunded students about. She saw Professor Lupin snarling as he defended eight of them, and Professor Black laughing and cutting down whoever threatened Lupin when he was distracted. There were children gathering around Pansy Parkinson, and Ron was sticking with them. Ginny looked down once, and saw two first years, one trying to shield Dean's head, but both really just trying to be close to her.

She thought they outnumbered the Death Eaters, but so many on her side were confused, so many were helpless.

She only just missed cursing Hermione, who clutched her arm as she went by. Hermione's hair was a seething mass about her wild face.

"I don't know and I don't care," Ginny said briefly. Hermione could even look scandalised in the middle of outright war. "I mean - I do, of course I do," Ginny amended, "but... I can't help him. I can help them."

Hermione stared at her, then nodded and pushed her way savagely through the crowd and towards Harry. Ginny wished her luck.

"Ginny?" she heard Dean say softly from the ground, struggling back towards consciousness.

"Yes," she said, pleased to find her voice as steady as her wand. "I'm with you."

When Hermione saw the flash of white-blond hair her heart leaped: surely Harry would be close to Malfoy.

As she fought her way closer, she saw that this was not true. Malfoy and his father were throwing each other about the place. Locked in his struggle, he had probably not even noticed leaving Harry behind.

Someone had to protect the younger ones, someone had to fight Lucius Malfoy. But someone had to get to Harry. If he lost, the war was lost, did nobody else realise that?

"Nox," Hermione hissed, waving her wand in front of a Death Eater's suddenly-blind eyes.

Malfoy wasn't even using curses on his father. They were rolling together, exchanging real blows, spilling blood, as if they hated each other too much even for the distance of a wand. Hermione hesitated, waiting a moment to see if she could curse Lucius and be sure of not getting Draco by accident.

Then she saw Peter Pettigrew creeping up behind Draco, and levelled her wand there instead - only to find him going down. Narcissa Malfoy stood over him with her own wand raised.

Lucius Malfoy spat blood down onto his son's face. "So my family is a pack of traitors," he began, when Draco lunged up, catching him off guard with a blow that left him stunned.

Then Malfoy was up and hurtling towards her, and Hermione froze in shock as he pointed his wand and shouted:

She turned in time to see Bellatrix Lestrange's hair burst into flame, and then turned away from the screams to the pressure of Malfoy's shoulder against hers.

"Watch out, Granger, you stupid bitch!" he snapped. His lip was split in two places, his face was bruised and there were red marks on his throat from when his own father had tried to strangle him.

There was time to hit Mr Lestrange over Malfoy's shoulder with a Stupefying curse. She let the corners of her mouth turn up.

Malfoy's eyes glittered and moved from his fallen father to her, quick as beetles in a sudden rush of light. Hermione was astonished to find she felt safer with him at her side, as if he was as much of an ally as any Gryffindor.

"Harry'd murder me if I let a hair of your frizzy head be harmed," he murmured, and then his voice grew sharper. "Harry. Is he by himself?"

"I was a little occupied! Hundreds of people exploded into the room!" Hermione shouted above the sounds of battle.

He caught the look on Hermione's face before he saw anything himself. She was frozen for a crucial instant at the sight: at Narcissa Malfoy on the ground with blood on her bright hair, and Lucius risen from the floor, his face cool and his wand pointed at his only child.

She wanted to shout out to Draco, but her throat was dry and he could see, they could both see. It was just, as she realised in this fraction of time, that there was no time, and Lucius Malfoy was determined.

He did it. Draco's his son and he did it, something in Hermione's mind screamed, wanting to run back to her parents and be safe, have this whole thing a nightmare, not have to watch Malfoy die before her eyes.

Someone had seen the danger before either of them. Even as Hermione watched, sure of what she would see, the corner of her eyes registered two bulky shapes running towards them faster than she had ever seen them move before.

Goyle somehow got in front of Malfoy before the curse hit, and suddenly Malfoy had not died before her eyes. He was kneeling on the ground beside Goyle, and Goyle was dead.

Hermione's hand went over her own mouth to stop her scream. She bit on her palm and tried to hold her wand ready, and all the time she looked at Malfoy's white pinched face and thought ridiculously: he looks so young. She'd thought he could be all these sinister things, but he was only young and stunned at how much the world could hurt him, and Gregory Goyle, lying there, was just a big boy.

Hermione wanted to cry. She met Crabbe's eyes and saw her own horror reflected there: and then she looked at Draco's face again.

He stood up, leaving his dead friend on the ground. The look on his face reminded her of Harry's earlier, the look of someone who had gone through the fire and come out like steel. He didn't look young or sorry any more.

The triumph was fading from Lucius Malfoy's drained face. He doesn't have the energy to cast the Killing Curse again, it dawned on Hermione slowly. He doesn't have the magic, he doesn't have the power.

Draco looked desperate and wretched and furious and sure. He did not hesitate, out of either love or pity.

It was not until Lucius was on the ground that Hermione became aware that she had never thought Malfoy could actually mean the Unforgivable Curse. Not with blood and magic, not enough to kill his own father.

He had meant it, though, and now he could never pretend to himself that there had not been one moment when he wanted his father dead more than anything in the world.

At the next moment, the Order of the Phoenix burst through the doors like a miracle, and began to cut a swathe through the Death Eaters. Snape was in the lead.

Hermione would never forget Draco's face when he realised that if he had waited an instant longer, he might not have had to do it.

She hovered, torn between fear and sympathy, which was when they heard the terrible cracking sound from the other end of the room where Harry and Voldemort stood facing each other.

Draco's eyes, fixed on some cold remote place, snapped back into focus. He grasped Crabbe's arm, fingers white as they dug into his skin.

"Stay here," he ordered. "You're not to go into danger for me!" He looked at Crabbe's speechless, mulish face and shook him. "You stay with him," he snarled. "Someone has to stay with him. You can't let people walk over him and crush him."

"What about your father?" Hermione blurted, and then wanted to bite out her own tongue.

"He deserves it," Draco snarled. "He deserves worse. We need to go help Harry."

Then the noise became a thunder and they exchanged looks and began to run, even though Hermione was sure there was no helping Harry now.

Harry saw the memory of the beginning in those narrowed, watchful eyes, saw Voldemort's fingers wrap around his wand with lingering little touches, like a man with a long-desired lover, and over the abiding fury he felt a rush of sheer irritation.

This thing had been allowed to define his life for almost his entire life.

He'd wondered, sometimes, if he was able to kill. Now he already knew he was. He'd killed Dumbledore. He'd loved Dumbledore.

This creature had killed his parents and taken his friends and caused this war that had threatened everyone he loved and he was vermin. He had to be destroyed. It was all very simple.

Harry held onto his wand and remained calm, searching the face before him for his next move.

Voldemort looked grotesque, he realised in this new, cool place. He had walked through blood and risen from the dead to become this thing when once he had been human, and he stood there looking pleased with himself. Where was the victory in that?

"I've been waiting a long time for this," Voldemort whispered, voice pitched low and almost intimate.

His mind was empty of everything but this one urge to kill, and all the ways he could do it.

It was going to be something simple. Like a mother defending her child. Like before, when Dumbledore's wand had been just out of reach.

... and without that chance Harry would have died, because Dumbledore had been too powerful, just like Voldemort was now. This wasn't going to be some game with props and the headmaster watching, like taking a sword out of a hat. Harry had taken advantage of a small thing and then he'd wanted to shut his eyes but he couldn't, he had to keep focused, and he was looking into his eyes as he raised his wand and said...

The sound of the Killing Curse was in the air, as if providing Harry with a prompt, and Harry felt a pang of fear for who it might have struck down.

There was no way to see, and the Killing Curse was not going to work here.

Voldemort was waiting for it, and he had his wand in hand. But there was a problem Voldemort would have duelling Harry, and that might give Harry a chance.

Voldemort waited, but Voldemort had been waiting years to kill him and it must be getting old. He lifted his wand and opened his lips, and Harry, waiting for this moment, lifted his wand and spoke as well.

Then their wands were frozen, magic trembling in stasis just as it had been in fourth year, and Voldemort stood with his magic locked with Harry's and no other defences. The battle had centred in the middle of the room, and even Nagini was slithering and biting among the bodies.

It was very clear suddenly to the killing machine that had been his mind. Voldemort was physically vulnerable. Sixteen years ago, it'd been his body that was destroyed, and his new body, bought with Harry's blood, meant he was flesh and blood again.

Anything that was flesh and blood could be killed, and he was ready to do it. He wanted to do it. He thought suddenly of how people who magic had warped were killed in Muggle stories: never with magic, always physically. Push them in the oven, roll them to death in a barrel, come hurtling out of the sky and crush them...

There were screams behind him, screams and curselight making a battlefield within what was supposed to be a classroom. People were dying. He had to stop this now.

The ghosts were squirming out of Voldemort's wand now, but he had killed enough people over the years so that they were strangers, pale strangers whispering encouragement he did not need, people he could not save.

Dumbledore had never expected him to try and fight him. There was one thing these people did not understand.

He didn't want his last thoughts to be of Voldemort. Voldemort wasn't worth that, so instead in that split second before pain and darkness he thought of everyone lost in the screaming tumult of war. He didn't have time to wonder if they were all right, he could only called up their names, to remember they existed as well as Voldemort, and they were more important.

"Goodbye," said Harry. He broke contact by a fraction, and pointed his wand at a spot just over Voldemort's head. "Accio wall!"

He brought the entire south wall of Hogwarts tumbling down on them both.

People stopped as the stones crashed around them, when Hermione and Draco were already running toward the sound of the wall going down.

"Support spells!" Lupin shouted at Sirius and the world in general, and as Hermione and Draco ran Hermione became aware that it was the spells of their own side that kept up the stone floor they were racing along, and kept the ceiling from falling.

Ahead of them was rubble, and beyond that the night sky. Stars looked impassively in on the ruin of Hogwarts.

The Death Eaters were not casting spells. Those left alive had dropped their wands, and were holding onto their arms where the Dark Mark lay as if their master's death left an ache behind. The Order of the Phoenix, without missing a beat between battle and arrest, began to round them up.

Hermione wanted to be lost in triumph. She wanted to find Ron and punch his arm and cry and say, He did it, I knew he'd do it! Instead she ran beside Draco Malfoy towards the heap of stones - the cairn, she kept thinking, while her mind tried to hide from the word - that Harry had made.

They reached it much too soon. Hermione could see the huge blocks that had held up Hogwarts, a heap on the flagstones, and she knew that anyone beneath would have been crushed.

She heard someone cry out behind them, and recognised Pansy Parkinson's voice. She must have found Goyle, Hermione thought dully.

There was only the suddenly-quiet night and this heap of huge, stupid stones. It was never supposed to be like this.

"He did it," she whispered, and was suddenly fighting back tears. "I knew he'd do it!"

"Don't be more absurdly sentimental than you can help," he sneered. "I knew he'd do it, too. Now let's get him out."

She stared at him, not wanting to say the obvious, not when the ugly strained calm on his face was clearly the edge of despair, but others began to mass behind them and someone spoke.

"Shut up now!" commanded Draco, wheeling on Zabini with an almost relieved burst of savagery. "He's not dead!"

Even with death all around them, she could see part of him was surprised at the unfamiliar intimacy of his name in her mouth. Hermione did not care. She was too busy trying not to hear what she was saying.

"I think... he's right. These stones are enormous. They would have crushed his spine - they would have broken every bone in his body-"

He would have known that, before he brought them down. Hermione pressed her hand over her mouth as she tried not to think about it, tried not to imagine what Harry must have felt. She was so grateful for Ron's strong arms suddenly sliding around her, and Ron's hands closing over hers. She felt him tremble with the same horrified grief.

Draco looked vicious. "I don't care! We're wizards, Granger, in case you forgot. It doesn't matter if his skull was caved in, as long as we can get to him on time. Now help me get him out!"

Hermione leaned back into Ron's embrace for a swift, sweet moment, as if winning meant that she could rest. Then she opened her eyes and looked at the night and the wounded and the dead, and Draco Malfoy covered in blood and dirt, cutting open his hands as he tried to lift a stone by himself.

They all began to levitate stones. At first it was only Hermione, Draco, Ron and Pansy Parkinson, but others started to join in. Soon the night was full of flying rocks, some thrown against the other walls in their haste. Those crashes and the murmurs of the wounded were the only sounds as they worked on, in silent, desperate haste.

Then they came to the first body. It hung like a doll, like a huge black puppet used to frighten children at a party, and for a moment all of them hung back, not daring to touch it. He was supposed to come if you called, and he never died...

She took a step forward, and realised Draco had taken one at the exact same time. He looked more apprehensive than she felt, but his face was grim. She felt Ron at her back, and all three of them together lifted the inhuman, broken thing and threw it aside like rubbish.

Hermione was filled with tenderness, raw as a wound. She wanted nobody to touch it: she did not want Ron to comfort her, she did not want to look at Harry anymore. He had broken his glasses again, she thought stupidly. He was always breaking his glasses.

She was crying. Draco was swearing, kneeling beside the body - Harry - his breathing like sobbing but his eyes tearless.

Hermione screamed as the bones in Harry's arm crunched together, making the rasping sound of something too shattered ever to be put back together.

"No," Draco said. "No, I won't. He's not dead, he's not dead because I say so! Damn you, Harry, open your eyes!"

This was nothing like victory as Hermione had imagined it, with their castle half in ruins and people still dying around them.

But when Madam Pomfrey pushed away a crying Hermione and a swearing Draco, took Draco's place at Harry's side and pressed two fingers briefly against Harry's neck, she said she could feel a pulse.

He blinked and tried to focus. It was a cloudy grey morning, he saw through the infirmary windows. The sunlight did not even appear to be trying, and fell far short of his bed. He felt as if someone had been grinding his bones with a pestle and mortar.

Draco was sitting in a chair beside his bed, leaning forward and watching him with pale eyes. He reminded Harry a bit of a vulture, hunched over in a tree and waiting with intense patience for his intended meal to die.

Harry smiled at him as best he could, and the tension flowed out of Draco's shoulders.

"Draco," Harry said, testing his voice and finding it cracked but still working. "What happened?"

"Well, I don't really know how to tell you this, Harry, but after you killed Voldemort Peter Pettigrew took the leadership and won the day. We were allowed to live to be his slave boys of evil."

Harry laughed cautiously, even though he had a dire foreboding that it would re-break his ribs. Draco's face softened further, smoothing out lines of bitterness and weariness until he looked almost normal, familiar and beloved.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, and in the absence of hostility or humour his tired drawl sounded almost sweet.

Harry levered himself up with great care, then relaxed into a sitting position against the pillows. "I'm... a bit surprised not to be dead," he answered honestly. "Why do you think that is?"

"We think Voldemort saved you," Draco said. "He fell on you, and the man was seven feet tall with an oversized head. His body protected you from the worst of it. Please don't die of the irony, Harry."

Harry only raised his eyebrows. He was still trying to test out all the bones in his body, which kept insisting they were broken and that being healed was a hollow illusion, liable to disappear if Harry made any sudden movements. If he had been protected from the worst of it, the worst must have...

"Weasley and Granger are all right," Draco said at once. "So are Professor Black and Professor Lupin."

Relief was all he felt for an instant before he remembered that this time it had not been a small group in danger: that this time, it had been war.

"Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown," Draco answered flatly. "Natalie McDonald - we think she and Malcolm Baddock were trying to protect each other. Neither of them succeeded. I don't know which other Gryffindors you know."

He sought cold comfort in the idea that this would be the last list of people he had not been able to save.

Draco complied, his voice toneless as if he had memorised the list already. Harry listened, catching names he did know among the strangers he had not saved. People from school. People from the Order of the Phoenix.

"Wait," he said. "What? The Order of the Phoenix? How did they get there?"

"Oh, it was a miracle, they appeared in the nick of time, it is a sign from above," Draco answered glibly. At Harry's extremely sceptical look, he added: "And I Owled Snape from the Owlery when we split up. I... nobody was supposed to know where he'd gone, he cast spells so nobody would find him, but he gave me an address and I gave my word I would never tell anyone. So - I lied to you about the letter I was writing, and I lied to you about why I wanted to split up. It was stupid. You were right to doubt me."

Harry did not ask how Draco had known Harry'd suspected about the letter. He suspected that Draco had been thinking over all the reasons Harry might have had to distrust him, as well as learning lists of the dead by heart.

Draco moved his hand away slightly, and returned to reading his invisible list. Harry let his hand fall.

"Is Pansy-?" he asked when Draco paused in the seemingly interminable list, and then did not end the sentence. If so many people could be dead, Harry felt like saying the words could make it true.

But Draco said, "She's all right. She'll be touched you care, though I'm afraid nothing is going to drop Weasley from the top of her Most Likely Gryffindors list at this point. She clearly took a blow to the head which has gone untreated."

"Don't fret. I don't believe she's planning to break up Granger and Weasley, especially considering the fact she was wondering whether she should let her bit of Hufflerough knock her up so she could get out of the NEWTs."

He was too tired to muster up any real indignation, but he felt it was a bit much all the same.

"Spending all summer in school to do it," Draco confirmed. "Granger is disgustingly happy. I blame our new headmaster for everything."

Harry's head was starting to pound, as if all this new information was battering down a door in order to enter his mind.

"I thought you would be glad. Of course, I consider it a scandal. It should have been Professor Snape. At least he might get the Defence Against the Dark Arts job, now that Dumbledore's dead."

It was as if someone was opening and closing blinds in Harry's mind. Open, he saw this mercifully still infirmary and closed, nothing but the memory of that night when Dumbledore...

"I know he's dead," Draco answered. "I know the cleansing spell to lift the record of spells you've cast from your wand. Snape taught it to me. It comes in very handy."

He took Harry's wand out of the belt loop of his jeans and, after a moment, Harry accepted it.

"All the people taken were Confunded," Draco went on. "Nobody's quite sure of what they saw. Nobody would believe you. I didn't suspect - and I never liked him, and I suspected everybody. He died in battle. That's all we need to say."

Harry cleared his throat and spoke the whole truth to Draco, because Draco would understand it completely.

Draco nodded, in easy acceptance of the rage that would have made anyone else back away. Something disturbed the calm of his face, but the emotion passed too fast for Harry to identify it.

Harry wanted to say something. That he was glad Lucius was dead didn't seem appropriate, and the silence stretched on, drawing tight as a pulled string in a musical instrument until a broken noise must emerge.

Draco made it. "He killed Goyle," he went on, and his voice broke. "He meant to kill me, and Goyle got in front of me, and I don't know why he did it!"

"Goyle! I can't understand. He's dead because of me and I still don't understand why he did it!"

Harry didn't know if he did. He certainly didn't know how to say the right thing, not with Draco drawn with pain and confusion, and looking to him angrily for answers.

"I loved my father," he said. "I can't... I never knew how to love anyone else. He watched me and trained me when I was young, and I thought that - I don't know, I thought that he would love me if I could only make him proud enough! He was a bastard, and he was ready to crawl and kill to get what he wanted, and I understand killing now but I'm damned if I'll ever understand crawling. He never could have loved me, and Goyle died for me, and I had it all wrong."

Harry reached out, testing a sudden theory, and saw Draco move his hand away again.

"I'm still who I am," Draco said. He looked pinched and miserable, as if he was bullying himself and being extremely cruel about it, as if his father's voice was still ringing in his ears. "I would have been a Death Eater if he hadn't gone. I would have done it, to win some approval from him. I would have gone down that path, thinking he knew best, and by the time I learned otherwise it would have been far too late. I still don't know how to do it right. I still don't know any of the words.

"My friend died for me, because I told myself stupid, pathetic lies about my father and I didn't kill him the moment I saw him, and I don't even know why anyone would have done that for me!"

Draco avoided his eyes and tried to resume his calm. "Not to enact you a three-act drama when you're still hospitalised," he said after a moment. "I just wanted to tell you why... you know. It wouldn't work."

There was a silence. Harry waited until Draco gave him a cautious look, and then he glared at him.

Hermione, on their hourly Harry check-up, opened the door and saw Harry and Draco in the middle of what looked like an intense conversation. Her first thought was that she was going to Stun Draco and put him in a corner somewhere to think about why harassing invalids was a terrible idea.

Her second thought was to close the door as tactfully as possible, and lean back against it.

"What? Nothing! No reason. Let's take a walk!" Hermione suggested brightly.

Ron eyed her dubiously. "I think I want to go inside," he said, in a tone that indicated Mrs Weasley hadn't raised a fool.

"So?" Ron said. "That's good news. We get on quite well when he's conscious, remember?"

"Upset?" Ron exclaimed. "I'm not going to get upset. Why?" His voice was rising with each word. "What is there to get upset about?!"

Hermione took a deep breath. "Nothing," she answered. "I didn't like it myself - well, I'm still not sure I like it, but Harry's serious about it, and it's not as bad as I thought. They have a strange way of getting on that does seem to be working and at least now I'm sure that-"

"Hermione, if you're trying to tell me that Harry's having a personal moment in there, you only had to say."

The corridor outside the infirmary was not large enough to contain all of Hermione's surprise. Ron looked ever so slightly smug.

Hermione could not seem to shut her mouth. It hung open uselessly. "You did?"

"Well, Harry said there was someone and after that I would've thought it was fairly obvious."

"And I think you're right," Ron continued blithely. "It could be worse."

"You think so?" Hermione had the horrible thought that perhaps he was considering Snape.

"I'm not crazy about Slytherins, but, well, if you chose the right side I suppose it doesn't matter which house you belong to. Anyway, Harry's been camped in the Slytherin dungeons half the time for months." He gave her a little, teasing smile. "It doesn't take a genius to put the pieces together, you know."

"Well... well, no, of course not," Hermione answered, and was able to regain control of her facial muscles enough to give him an approving smile. "You're being very sensible, Ron. I must say, I wouldn't have expected it."

He tugged down the frayed sleeves of his jumper, which she thought was the Ron Weasley equivalent of preening himself.

"I'm tolerant, that's what I am," he informed her. "Anyway, really, I quite like her. She needs to get new friends, of course, but Harry's friends with Malfoy too, so it won't bother him."

"Sorry?" Hermione said. "What did you say? She - who are you talking about?"

Ron blinked at her. "Pansy Parkinson, of course. She's the only girl in the group of Slytherins Harry's been hanging around, right?"

In the space of two minutes Hermione came up with a hundred sentences that began: That's absolutely true, Ron, but...

"Are you taking my name in vain, Weasley?" asked a cheerful voice, and Hermione lifted horrified eyes from her intense contemplation of the floor to Pansy Parkinson, coming down the corridor.

Frankly, Hermione preferred Draco. At least Draco cracked a book once in a while, and didn't wear those shocking skirts.

While Hermione fought off hideous visions of Draco Malfoy in a shocking skirt, she heard Pansy strike up what appeared to be a friendly chat with her boyfriend. One part of her mind noted that Ron had said he quite liked her. Hussy that she was.

"I'm bringing chocolates," Pansy informed him. "I've hardly eaten any at all, too. I saw, um... girl Weasley and Patil carting their wounded around the lake in some sort of love fest for our war heroes, and I thought this would be a good time to feed the silly twit."

"Is he?" Pansy inquired. She paused thoughtfully. "I expect they're busy in there, then. I shall just have to eat these myself."

She flipped open the lid. Hermione noticed that Ron was looking even more confused than before.

So Seamus and Dean were both up and about again. They had been the last of the badly hurt, besides Harry. Seamus had been forced to re-grow the bones in both legs, and Dean had been in bed getting over Cruciatus for two days. Ginny had slept on her cloak beside his infirmary bed.

Perhaps Seamus could comfort Padma a little. She'd been so quiet, ever since...

Hermione wrenched her mind away from the thought of Parvati, and thought about Seamus and Dean again. They were walking, and Harry was awake. It was more than they could have hoped for less than a week ago.

She felt fond of everyone, even Pansy Parkinson, who now seemed to be taunting Ron with her chocolate box.

"That's right," Ron said, staring at them with a wistful air. "I don't even want one."

Pansy had caught the edge to Hermione's tone. "Don't worry," she said, sounding maliciously amused and thus rather like Draco. "I'm quite happy with my Hufflepuff."

Ron's mind, briefly distracted by chocolate, veered back to his original point. Hermione had known this was coming.

"Wait," he said. "If you're here-" Pansy smiled and toasted him with her box of chocolates - "Yes, but if you're here... then who's in there with Harry?"

"Do," Pansy urged him, and then seemed struck by a pang of conscience. She held out her box of chocolates. "You'd better take a chocolate first," she added kindly. "Take one of the ones with alcohol inside. I think you're going to need it."

Harry looked at him, and had none of the right words. He was sure, all the same.

"So you loved your dad. Most people do, and he was a bastard, and you did the right thing. It doesn't matter what you think you would have done if things were different. You did the right thing."

Draco looked as if he had a reply already burning his lips, but he never got a chance to deliver it. Madam Pomfrey added the final touch to the charm of the grey infirmary by walking out of her supply room with a vat of stinking liquid.

"Where's that Dean Thomas? He's not skipping his Fortifying Syrup again," he announced briskly. She gave Harry a scrutinising look, and delivered her medical opinion. "You're awake."

"Good thing too," Madam Pomfrey said severely. "Now perhaps Mr Malfoy will go to his own bed, and get some sleep. Excuse me."

She left the room, intent on fortifying Dean by any means necessary. They heard her scolding some students for loitering around the infirmary, and the door shut with a bang.

"I merely dropped by briefly on my way somewhere else. This is my first visit, as a matter of fact," he assured Harry. "The woman is mad. Stays in her supply room all day long mixing up her syrups and possets and suchlike... It's the fumes," he added peevishly. "They melt the brain. Stop smiling."

Harry didn't. It was only a small smile, all he could manage when the list of people he had not saved kept repeating in his mind, but he had just recaptured the feeling he'd had, just before that night full of death, that someday he was going to be ridiculously happy.

There was time now, all the time in the world. The lingering horror would not stay forever. He could work up to it.

He realised part of the reason the sky was dark was because there were huge stones being levitated in the air past the window. There was a noise, suddenly, like... someone playing bumper cars with enormous slabs of granite.

"Watch what you're doing, Black!" Snape's unmistakable voice snapped from below.

Contentment rolled over Harry like a wave of warm water as he realised what they were doing.

"Anyway, someone had to stay here and prevent innocent children from accidentally seeing your pyjamas!" Draco announced, with the air of one producing his trump card. "I thought I'd burned all the things like that in your closet, but no, Granger comes up with that - that monstrosity, and claims it's your favourite pair. I screamed and tried to rip it off, but Granger misinterpreted that completely."

Harry looked down at his pyjamas, and remembered hiding them under a pillow to save them from their fiery fate. That had been - God, it felt like years ago.

"You're not taking it back," he said abruptly. "I won't let you. You're bloody mine."

Draco stared at him. "Tell me that I don't have to explain to you that - what I said on the train wasn't an actual proposal of marriage. Tell me that, Harry."

"Doesn't matter. I understood what you meant," Harry said. "And you did mean it. The only thing that's different is that we're not going to die. Are you scared?"

"You've seen me fail," Draco told him, with his father's mocking twist of a smile. "It's one thing I do really well. My failures are spectacular."

Draco was eyeing him as if he was a wild animal escaped from a cage. "You'll change your mind."

"Draco Malfoy, you stupid git. You're so lucky that I'm even more stubborn than you are."

He grabbed the bedpost and hauled himself up, his back giving a silent, prolonged scream of agony. Draco got off his chair, his voice suddenly sharp with concern.

"Harry, stop that! We had to re-grow almost every bone in your body - Harry, you'll hurt yourself!"

Every bone in Harry's body shouted vehement agreement with him. Harry winced as his feet hit the ground, and then he tried bearing his own weight. It worked, just about.

Draco was standing up, looking at him uncertainly. Harry imagined he was torn between the logic that said not to touch Harry and an irritated impulse to throw him back on the bed.

Unfortunately, Draco did not give way to his impulses. Harry took a step towards him, and then faltered from mingled pain and sudden, real doubt. He was sure, but... what if...?

"Where are my glasses?" he demanded. If he could see, he might be certain.

Certainty came over him, as warm and enveloping as contentment, when Draco suddenly spoke in a more decided tone.

He stepped into Harry's personal space, so close that Harry felt the hitch of breath in his chest. His hands were held up in a gesture of surrender, a fraction from Harry's skin.

Harry put his hands on Draco's hips and pulled him in that extra fraction. Standing up was sending a dull ache all through his body, but his palms were pressed against the hot line of skin between Draco's jeans and his T-shirt, and Draco's breath was against his cheek. It was sort of worth it.

"It wasn't your fault about Goyle," he said softly. "It's - God, it's bad, but it wasn't your fault. I trusted someone too much as well, but I'm not going to stop trusting everyone. I can't - you idiot, d'you think you're the only one who's bad at saying things? I was raised in a cupboard, I couldn't - I don't want anyone normal."

He was sure Draco was raising his eyebrows at this oddly worded compliment, but even pain was fading to the back of his mind as Draco breathed in, slowly, and then suddenly had his hands gripping tightly at Harry's shoulders. He held on too hard. Harry liked it.

Draco moved his face into alignment with Harry's, slid his mouth over his for a sudden, slow kiss. Harry's grasp of his hips turned possessive: he was sure now.

"There's more," Draco breathed into the kiss. "I'm disgusting. I'm embarrassed to know myself."

"What else?" Harry pursued. His chest felt full and warm, somehow: his blood was thrumming with the urge to act, and yet he was happy to just stand there and watch Draco fumble for his words.

"I," Draco said. "I, there's something I should - I like the stupid way you dress. I even like the way your hair is always horrible. Harry, I'm a very sick man."

Harry leaned back about half an inch as realisation of what Draco was actually saying dawned.

"Yeah, absolutely. How could I be so blind? It was so obvious that 'don't talk to me, don't touch me, don't look at me' meant 'Come to me, I want you.'"

Harry might have been snickering a bit. Draco was going more and more pink.

"Shut up. Go back to bed," he muttered. "I thought you were mad about me. Where's the adulation? Where's the worship? I thought I was going to be your alabaster idol-"

"No you didn't, and don't ever say those words again," Harry instructed him.

Draco took shameless advantage of his weakened state by taking a firm hold of his shoulders and pushing him down onto the bed. Somehow Draco ended up on there too.

Harry was extremely grateful for the softness of the pillows beneath him, but a bit more grateful for Draco on top of him, giving him a very disappointed look and fiddling with the buttons on his pyjama top.

"By the way," Draco remarked, "I've decided that since we're having a new summer term and everything, any Quidditch matches are null and void. Which leaves Slytherin still in the running for House Cup. We'll get it this year. Just you wait and see."

There was light in the infirmary now, because of the lack of flying stones in the sky. Lupin had probably called a halt to rebuilding in order to tell off Snape and Sirius. There was enough light to see something as plain as this.

He was already breathing hard, but he lifted his hand and pushed a strand of Draco's hair back for the distracted, surprised look that came over Draco's face. Over something as small as that.

Saying things deliberately was hard, but he did want to mark the moment.

"Shut up," Draco told him, and at Harry's quick frown he laughed and kissed him again, teeth lingering on his lower lip as if he did not want to let go of the kiss. He was laughing and breathless and caught in the kiss as he looked down at Harry, the light turning his hair gold.

Second Place- Alternate Universe Third Place - Romance

Second Place- Alternate Universe
Third Place - Romance