By now the images were familiar.

Their appearance tonight did not surprise him, though they still brought a chill into his very marrow, even as he fought to keep from waking so he could stay in the dream for as long as possible--so he could see and hear and know as much as possible.

Harry had been waiting for the nightmare to come back to him ever since he had learned of his godson's disappearance. But as suddenly as it had come in the first place, it seemed to have abandoned him at the most crucial time. He still didn't know why it had; perhaps it had been his connection to Jack that had somehow blocked the part of him that had been conjuring up the unwelcome images, or perhaps fate had simply been too cruel to let him call them up when he most needed to see them, but whatever the reason, he had cursed himself for drawing a blank in the days since Jack had vanished.

Ron and Hermione had been going out of their minds with worry over their son, and he had had to watch it, all the while knowing that he--the one who seemed to have held some sort of key that he still didn't understand and couldn't quite grasp--was powerless in bringing any new information to light.

And so when darkness overtook him, and the familiar shapes and shadows began to materialize, he surrendered himself to them. He was ready. He was ready for them this time. He was ready for the disorientation of being in a stranger's body, wearing a stranger's clothes, and gripping a stranger's wand; for the feel of air being slowly drained from his lungs; for the smell of fear and dread and utter panic in the very mist that encased him.

The mist began to thin and break apart around him, giving way to the path ahead. In time, he learned to see through these new pair of eyes, and he blinked about, trying to take in his surroundings. This wasn't the Forbidden Forest, he could tell as much, though he hadn't really expected to be dreaming about Jack. But it wasn't anything like the forest out on the Beauxbatons grounds either, nor were these the hands of a thirteen year old girl who had struggled against her attacker.

It was then that he realized that he was not dreaming of something that had already happened; he was seeing something that was yet to unfold.

There was a split-second when he wondered whether another child had been taken since Helene had escaped her captor, whether he was cursed once again with having to watch helplessly as this monster struck again. But no... some unnamed intuition deep within him was telling him that this hadn't yet come to pass. And there was still time to save this child.

Goosebumps dotted his flesh again, as a gust of wind brushed against him, bringing along with it the keen awareness that he was not alone...

"I knew you would come..."

It was that voice again. The one that was neither male nor female, which seemed to come, not from a human being, but from a disembodied phantom. The one that oozed with malevolence.

Harry slowly turned around in this foreign body. There was a figure in front of him, not a tree nor a beast, but a person, shrouded in a cloak that was colorless in the darkness that enveloped them. She wore her hood up; Harry knew it was a woman now. He could sense she was smiling beneath the thick folds of her hood, and his stomach twisted inside.

"You couldn't stay away, could you?" she taunted. There was pure venom in that voice.

Harry clenched his fists at his side, feeling the unfamiliar wand in his grip. A stranger's heart was pounding inside his chest; a stranger's head was spinning, but he himself felt no fear.

"Who are you?"

He heard her laugh, and a chill tore up his spine.

"I'm the one who will succeed where Drucilla failed..."

And then his eyes snapped open.

It took a few moments, after he had come out of the haze of dreaming, before he became aware of his surroundings, before the nightstand on the other side of the bed, and the window behind the headboard reminded him that he was not at home, in his own bed; he was at Ron and Hermione's house, where he and Ginny had gone after coming back with them from Beauxbatons.

"Damn it!!"

His head felt as if it would come apart at any minute now. He sat up and dug his elbows on his thighs, burying his face in his hands. So close. He had been so close. But he still couldn't do it--he just couldn't do it. He looked back down on the bed, his eyes now fully adjusted to the darkness. He'd felt Ginny stir beside him when he sat up, but to his relief, she hadn't woken all the way, and had fallen back asleep after nestling in closer to him. He brought his hand just over her forehead, but he pulled back just as he was about to touch her, deciding that it would probably be best to let her sleep. If he woke her now, she would only be worried about him, as she had been worried about him every single day of these last two weeks.

He knew she had had other things on her mind as well: Emily, who was safely hidden at the Weasleys', though she dominated her parents' thoughts every single second of the day; Ron and Hermione, who had miraculously kept themselves from cracking throughout this ordeal; and of course, Jack, who was--though Ginny would probably never admit it out loud; she was much too diplomatic for that--her favorite nephew.

He watched her sleeping for a few more moments, then quietly, gently, slipped out of bed and out of the room. There was light coming from downstairs. Harry slipped on his glasses and made his way down the steps, following the glow of the lamp that he guessed to be on in the library.

Hermione was hunched over at the desk, with several gargantuan books spread open before her, and another stack right behind her that was almost as tall as she was (Hermione had not grown beyond the 5'3 height she'd reached in fourth year, much to her dismay). Harry could see that the candle inside the lamp was barely an inch tall at this point, and its flame flickered wildly, causing Hermione to lean in further and squint every few seconds to keep reading whichever book she happened to be reading at the moment.

For a moment, he felt as if he were sixteen years old again, and had just caught Hermione studying in the common room again, long after curfew. The only thing missing, Harry noted, was Ron sleeping right beside her, his head pillowed in a book.

"D'you find anything yet?"

Hermione gasped, jumping out of her chair.

"Harry! What're you doing up?"

He shrugged.

"Couldn't sleep." He walked over and pulled up the other chair, then sat beside her. "See you couldn't either."

"No," she said softly, then went back to her books. "And neither could Ron. He wanted to come down here and help me look for information, but I told him he needed to sleep. He didn't agree, of course." She looked up and smiled. "Needless to say, he lost that argument."

"Reckon he'll be coming down here any minute now, then? After his nap?"

She laughed. "Yeah, I reckon so."

But her downcast eyes belied the grief that was just below the carefully constructed surface. Harry reached over and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She settled her head on his shoulder for just a moment--for just a split-second--before she straightened once again and retrieved one of the books from the stack behind her.

Harry caught sight of its title: The Most Dreaded Death Eaters.

"Not one bloody mention, Harry," she suddenly spat out. "Not one bloody mention of Drucilla in any of these damn books!!"

Harry had heard Hermione swear very rarely in all the years he had known her. He and Ron liked to tease her that Ron's foul mouth must have had some influence on her since they'd been together, but the truth was, she was still the one with the coolest head of the three of them, and it took extraordinary measures to get her to erupt in this kind of an outburst.

"I know I've heard the name Drucilla before," she said. "I'm telling you, the minute Ron said her name, I knew I had heard it from somewhere... Harry, I can almost hear Professor Binns' voice telling us about her, and yet... I just can't find anything in any of these books!"

"Hermione, come on... it's late, and you're probably exhausted-"

"I'm not tired, Harry-"

"Like hell you're not!" he said. "You're working on adrenalin, but how long do you think that's going to last?"

"Until my son is back home."

Harry knew better than to argue with her when she was like this. She could be a pit bull when she needed to be, and both he and Ron bore the scars to prove it. Without another word, he reached for one of the few books she didn't have open and read next to her in silence.

"Hey... there room for one more in this party?"

Ron didn't wait for an answer; he walked in anyway and summoned another chair towards him, then grabbed one of the books from behind Hermione.

"What do you think you're doing?" Hermione said.

"What does it look like, love?" he said. "I'm helping."

"You have gotten no more than ten hours of sleep in the last four days, Ron Weasley--I am not going to watch you run yourself ragged until you collapse in a heap in front of me!"

She watched him, as if waiting for him to move.

"You promised me you'd get some sleep."

"And I did, but now I need to do this."

"Ron-"

But Ron, apparently, was not about to budge on this one.

"You might as well give up the fight now, Hermione," he said. "I'm not going anywhere."

She opened her mouth, then closed it again after a few seconds, without saying anything. All that came out of her mouth was a frustrated groan, and Harry made sure to fix his eyes on this yellowed, dog-eared page he'd been trying to read for the last few minutes; he couldn't risk catching Ron's eye, lest he let out a laugh that he knew would definitely not be appreciated by Hermione.

They sat there in silence for a long time. After a while, Harry noticed movement from the corner of his eye; it was Ron, who seemed a bit distracted and kept turning his head towards the window.

"What is it?" Harry said. "Why do you keep looking at the window, mate?"

"I'm... waiting for something," Ron said.

This time, Hermione looked up as well. "Waiting for something?" she said. "Ron, it's after midnight--what in the world could you possibly be waiting for?"

"You'll see."

That was all he said. Harry could tell from the way he was avoiding their eyes that he was most definitely up to something.

"Ron, what's going on-"

They were interrupted by a soft tapping at the window. Harry thought he could see some movement just outside--perhaps wings? Clouds obscured the moon outside, splintering the light. It was too dark to see if there was indeed anything out there, or if it was just a branch that was hitting the window.

"Just what I was waiting for," Ron said, and he got up to unlatch the window. A dark gray owl flew in and perched itself on the top shelf of Ron and Hermione's bookcase. "All right, little fellow, let's see what you've got..."

Ron coaxed the owl down from the top shelf and onto a lower one, then untied the envelope attached to its leg.

"Who would be owling us in the middle of the night?" Hermione said, coming to his side.

"I owled all the wizarding schools I could think of," Ron told her. "They should know what's going on and be on their guard. I told them to owl me at night in case they needed to contact me--might be safer than trying to contact me during the daytime..."

"Well, she's definitely going to strike again," Harry said grimly.

Ron looked at him.

"I had the dream again."

"You... what?? What did you see? Did you-"

"No," Harry said, knowing what Ron was going to ask. "No, I didn't see who she was... I'm sorry, Ron..."

Ron sighed. "Not your fault, mate," he said softly. He looked down at the letter in his hand.

Hermione nudged him gently. "Let's see what it says, then-"

"Bloody cat!" Ron said suddenly.

It was Jeeves, whom he often referred to as Crookshanks' spawn from hell (when Hermione wasn't around, that is; when she was around, Ron simply referred to him as, the pet). He had leapt onto the shelf where the owl had been standing by. The owl screeched as Jeeves managed to claw at one of its wings before it made its escape through the open window. Jeeves kept up the pursuit but got as far as the window sill before a livid Ron got hold of him and closed the window before the cat could jump out of it as well.

"What in bloody hell was that??" Ron said.

Jeeves squirmed out of his angry owner's arms and ran out of the room.

"God, he's worse than Crookshanks ever was," Ron moaned. "I swear, he gets more and more like Mrs. Norris every day, chasing around anything that moves, hissing at it... What?"

Harry turned to look at Hermione; something about her had obviously caught Ron's attention. She did have a strange look on her face, come to think of it.

"Just that... you mentioned Mrs. Norris, and it reminded me of Filch, and... it reminded me of..."

She didn't bother to finish the sentence. Harry watched her brush past Ron to head for the bookshelf, scanning the rows for something. She found it on the third row from the bottom, apparently, pulling out a book, then bringing it over to the desk, where she let it fall open with a thud.

Ron exchanged puzzled looks with Harry, then joined her at the desk, Ron looking over one shoulder and Harry looking over the other.

"Of course," she was murmuring. "Of course... why didn't I think of it before?"

"What is it? What are you reading?"

She looked up, her eyes flashing dangerously. "I knew I had heard that name somewhere--but I've been looking in the wrong books!!"

Ron flipped over the cover of the book. "Famous Squibs of the Thirteenth Century... Hermione, this isn't even a book on Death Eaters-"

"I know," Hermione said. "Because she wasn't a Death Eater, Ron."

"What?"

"Drucilla wasn't a Death Eater. She had nothing to do with Voldemort or his terrorizing of Muggles--he hadn't even been born yet when she was alive-"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute... Slow down, love... What is all of this?"

"Are you saying this isn't some vendetta against the Muggle-born?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying, Harry," she said, then she turned to Ron once more. "We had it wrong... This wasn't someone trying to bring back Voldemort's legacy..."

She held up the book for both of them to see, pointing at a particular paragraph.

"Look here... Drucilla the Weak was a Squib... She was born into a very powerful wizarding family, who had looked upon her as shameful because she had almost no magical powers whatsoever..."

Ron took the book from her and began to read. "Drucilla the Weak discovered that certain children of Muggle descent have very potent magical powers, and that these powers could be tapped... and claimed for oneself..."

He stopped, slowly lowering the book to the desk.

"Oh my God," he said. "That's why... that's why they were being taken?"

Hermione nodded. "This wasn't some revenge against the Muggle-born, Ron. Whoever this is has been taking the children so she can steal their magic!"

"And Harry thinks she's going to do it again," Ron said. "Well, I'll be damned before she succeeds..."

"What're you going to do?"

Ron held up the letter in his hand. "I contacted all the schools," he said. "And it wasn't just to warn them, either. It was to ask them if any of their students had emerged as possible targets."

"Brilliant, Ron!" Harry said. "So we go to that school and we try to head her off!"

"Right... 'cept I'm going to take it a step further..."

Hermione took a deep breath, then released it slowly, as if she already knew the answer to the question she was about to ask him. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"Simple," Ron said. "I'm going to disguise myself as one of the students-"

"You're going to what??"

Harry could have sworn that that was a twinkle in Ron's eye.

"Polyjuice Potion, love," Ron said. "The oldest trick in the book. I'm going to set up a trap--and I'm going to be the bait."