Delilah in the Lethe

Chapter 76: Delilah in the Lethe

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

The hall was warded off until the aurors arrived. Umbridge stayed in the Entrance Hall with her patrolmen and a rapidly growing number of Ministry representatives — one of them seemed to hurry in from the courtyard every few minutes — while the Heads of House ushered their students out. Slytherin disappeared downstairs. Prefects were enlisted to guide stragglers. In these ways it felt vaguely like Opening Feast, only colored in a very different feeling.

Draco was among the last on the grand staircase, after the hall had emptied and the sun had set. Snape did not reappear; McGonagall, who had carried Harry upstairs in her own arms, likewise did not; nor did Umbridge seem to notice that Draco was in the room, so engrossed was she with the aurors.

He had climbed the stairs to Gryffindor Tower for five years. He knew them better than any part of the castle, and perhaps the Manor, come to that. Each creaking board and narrowed step, the chip in the banister where Neville dropped his cauldron, the windowsill where the Tower cat slept on sunny afternoons. When he’d first learned the winding stair, his name had been a muttered curiosity in the castle corridors, the echo of a man ten times his size and breadth and height, and he’d cowered under the carapace of it. The Tower stairs had left him breathless and aching, ending each day in a grueling ascent from the bottom of the castle to the top. So he had climbed them, though it made his legs hurt, and he crawled into bed miserable, wishing for an easier way home. And still, he had climbed, and climbed, and climbed these stairs, until he could take them two at a time, rising past classrooms, girls’ bathrooms, broom closets; rising by portraits in red robes who cried out in familiar tones; rising through classmates who fell in file behind him as he went, and first years who stepped aside to let him pass, naming him in whispers, Malfoy, Malfoy, Malfoy; rising past windows full of sunlight, rising through stories of stone and air, until he stood at the crown of the world, in front of a solemn portrait door.

“Password?”

“Alea iacta est.”

The whole House had gathered in the common room. Faces gazed alertly from every sofa and armchair, tucked in sills, flush to the walls, sitting on cushions and carpets and cold stone floors. Angelina sprawled on the staircase to the girls’ dorm with Lavender and Parvati. Romilda sat beneath them with Natalie Macdonald, who was always getting demerits for leaving her collar open, and her friend Jimmy Peakes, who had once subbed in for Harry at a quidditch practice. Victoria Frobisher and Alfie Chrissenpoffer sat four deep on a sofa with Colin and Dennis Creevey — when had Colin grown spots? — while tiny Euan Abercrombie perched on a windowsill with a grim and vigilant expression. Dean and Seamus and Katie huddled together with Fred and George and Lee Jordan, a tall gangly boyish collection that featured in prefects’ nightmares; Neville sat with the first years by the fireplace, whispering in a low, soft voice.

Ginny was splayed deep in an armchair, her knee cocked up, twirling her wand. When the door opened, she caught it and glanced up.

And in the middle of them there was Harry, pale and furious, hunched in a chair with a blanket around his shoulders, and Ron’s hands pressing both blanket and shoulders firmly down. Hermione was daubing ointment on a bruise on Harry’s cheek.

“There he is,” Harry said sourly. “My savior.”

“Get ahold of yourself,” said Draco disgustedly, shutting the door. “I’m sorry, did you want your wand snapped? Give it here, I’ll do it for you.”

“My head hurts, you know.”

“Stupidity is known to sting.”

“Oi,” said Ron.

“By the way,” said Harry, raising his voice, “what was it you said about Snape, again? We should trust him?”

“I said it was likely he was double-crossing her. I stand by that assessment.”

“Stand by it? How can you seriously still think that Snape’s on our side?”

“Because I would believe almost anything before the contrary,” he snapped. “You don’t know him as I do.”

He couldn’t explain it. He just knew his godfather; he knew the long, impatient length of his stride, the hunch of his back, and the way he swung his head around doggedly to scan a room once he entered it. He knew the way he held his arms dead straight at his sides, and walked with his head down, ill at ease in his own skin. He knew the way Snape’s fingers curled for his wand whenever someone reached too close to him.

Severus Snape would not have betrayed Lily Evans’s memory, because he would not have betrayed anything he cared for enough to bind himself to it. And he would not have betrayed Narcissa, lost to the world in Witherfell, even for a seat by the Dark Lord’s throne, let alone the Minister’s.

“Maybe not. But I know some things, ” snapped Harry. “Like how Padfoot’s good as dead if you’re wrong.”

“Dumbledore left two hours ago. That’s more than enough time for a wizard to get to London. If you’re correct—”

“If I’m correct? If? Draco, open your fucking eyes—”

“SHUT UP!” Ron bellowed.

It rattled the ceiling; several children squeaked.

Ron folded his arms and stabbed two fingers at Harry. “Give. It. A rest. Bloody hell. Half the Ministry’s down there trying to figure out how to lay hands on Dumbledore, and you think anyone’s bothering right now about fucking Padfoot? And if they are, you think he can’t manage himself? If there’s one thing he’s good for, it’s clearing off.”

It was not without bitterness; several people glanced around, clearly wondering who Padfoot was.

“And not for nothing,” Ron added, “but it’s not actually Draco’s fault if Snape’s an evil shit .”

Harry sealed his mouth and dropped his chin mulishly. Draco gave Ron a short, startled nod of acknowledgement, which was not returned.

“Potter, think about it. He told them about Dumbledore,” said Draco. “He didn’t tell them anything about you.”

“You don’t know that—”

“I know that because you’re not in Ministry custody,” he retorted. “Snape could have given them a pretext—”

“They don’t need a pretext!” Harry shouted. “They don’t need a reason to hurt me, it isn’t about fucking reasons, it’s about the fact that they can — they hurt people because hate them , and they hate anyone capable of stopping them—”

“They’ve been looking for a pretext to arrest you all year,” Hermione said. She folded her arms tightly. “I’m sorry. Ron’s right. I’m sure they would have tried to arrest Dumbledore anyway, but targeting you — the smear campaign, cancelling quidditch, dosing your friends with Veritaserum — they’re trying to get you to do something they can expel you over, so they can take you into custody. Like they would have a year ago, if Dumbledore hadn’t struck his deal with the Wizengamot.”

“Then they should have just arrested me,” said Harry savagely. “I don’t understand why — why they had to hurt everyone else—”

“Because they need something to ruin you,” she replied evenly. “Publicly. That’s why they went after you for Viktor, and when that failed, they changed course and started painting you as a revolutionary. People love you, Harry, you’re a symbol of the Second Wizarding War. They need people to lose faith in you before they can take full control. If there’s no Harry Potter, there’s nothing to fight for.”

Harry trembled. Then he made a wounded sound and hung his head, covering his face with his hands. Ginny unfolded herself from her armchair and knelt beside him, letting him rest his weight against her, as he canted to the side in a swift collapse — either of muscle or of will. She touched his face gently, with a tenderness uncharacteristic of Ginny. Her flame-red braid sat high on her head and trailed down her back, like a train of fire.

“We won’t let them get you,” she said, fierce and low. “They won’t take you. With an army, they couldn’t take you from us.”

“I’m not worried for me,” he said. “I don’t care about me.”

“It’s not your choice.”

“It’s me you’re risking your lives for. It should be my choice.”

“No.”

“‘No’? What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“Because they’re our lives,” she said. Then Ginny pulled his hand away from his face, flattened it carefully between her own and pressed her lips to his knuckles, lightly, a knight’s kiss for a prince.

Hermione glanced at Draco. Her knuckles pressed tightly to her mouth in thought. The white bandage clashed like snow against the bright pink of her lip. The world leaned off-kilter, the center of balance shifting perilously far. He knew the depths of his own guilt — in the weak and cowardly maw of him, in the empty chapel of his heart, where nothing immortal had ever really lived — that Ginny thought she spoke for all of them, and she was wrong. He would let them take Harry, if it came to that — under one condition and one condition only, but the difference between one and nothing was the difference between a coward and a knight. He felt heat in his stomach, his throat, his face.

But it was true for Ginny. It was clear in the guileless and unflinching honesty of her smile that she loved him; perhaps she had never stopped loving him, only charted her way to better waters in the sea of her love; from the fervent lovesickness of a ten-year-old to the steady, selfless sacrifice of a girl almost grown. It was remarkable, to love that long without hope.

“Let us help you,” said Ginny. “Fight. It’s what you taught us to do, isn’t it? Let us.”

“I won’t ask you to do that,” said Harry.

“You don’t have to ask us,” said Ron shortly. “And you can’t stop us, so don’t even try. If you turn yourself in, it’ll be me coming to spring you, and I’ll be bloody put out about it.”

“You can’t,” said Harry, pitching up in panic. “Hermione, you realize this is stupid — they could snap your wands. You could lose your magic.”

“Then I’ll lose my magic,” said Neville suddenly. Harry flinched.

Swallowing, Neville added, “Big d-deal. Never was much good at it anyway.”

“Yeah, let them,” said Katie, raising her voice. She jutted out her upper lip, and two piercings gleamed defiant in the firelight. “They have to get my wand first, don’t they?”

Harry cast his eyes around the room, desperately, on an array of faces hardening against fear. One could see, as the panic welled in his face, how swiftly it became clear to him what he had wrought: that his family, the one he must have longed and prayed for all the nights of his childhood, when it came, had come vast, and fierce, and loving; and on the second edge of love there lay sacrifice, the steady march into darkness, the column charge into the fire.

He had given all of himself to the place, little unloved Harry Potter, and now Gryffindor sat at his feet, patiently offering all of itself back.

“Draco,” he rasped. “Tell them to give it up. Tell them it’s pointless.”

The temptation would follow him for the rest of his life. An affirmative hovered on his tongue, coupled with an order to be reasonable. He knew his talents: he likely could persuade them not to go. Hermione would be the last holdout, but knew how to win that argument, too. If the plans went wrong, she would steer them all into ruin at the hands of the creature in the world she hated most. And she wouldn’t mind a gamble, Hermione, if she wasn’t playing with other people’s lives.

But she kept looking at him, half-pleading and half-commanding, and he realized it might not matter if he won the argument. Harry had said he was going, and so she would go. Wherever he went.

For a moment he wanted a different past, where the hat had said Slytherin or Ravenclaw for both of them, and she’d never met Harry Potter, and she had never sectioned her apostle’s heart into thirds. Where she belonged to Draco in the selfish, torrid, ordinary way.

But her bandage hung limp from her wrist, a heavy white flag.

Traitor. Traditor, tradere. Hand over; deliver; offer up. Sacrifice.

“It wouldn’t be pointless,” said Draco. He lifted one shoulder in acknowledgement of Harry’s betrayed look. “It wouldn’t be wise. But it wouldn’t be pointless.”

Harry exhaled. He slowly pushed himself to his feet.

The attention of the gathering sharpened and fixed on the boy’s narrow shoulders. The older students broke off from their private conversations to listen. The young students sat up straighter. When Harry drew breath, the room breathed with him.

“I’m not the Chosen One,” he said. “I’m not the Boy Who Lived. I’m not the savior of anything, I’m not a symbol of anything. I’m a real person, and if you ever have the choice, I would never — not in a hundred years — ask any one of you to put yourselves in danger for my sake. None of you. Not ever.”

He carded his hands through his hair, which was already so wild it hardly hurt. “Anyway,” he said, “I need to… I need time. To think. And we need time to come up with… a plan. But if you… if I go, we all go. I’m not leaving anyone here. No one left behind. That’s my… order, I guess. That’s what I say.”

The world outside of the common room seemed to exist again, suddenly, reflected at once in terrible glory by the scars it had left on those present.

The firelight gilded Harry’s scar like a sacred rune, splintering the skin of his forehead. The glint of it turned his glasses into white rounds, and with his flat expression, the result was not entirely recognizable to Draco as the boy who had lived for five years in the bed beside him.

The room rose, as one, and moved toward him. Fred and George clapped him on the shoulders; Katie cuffed him on the head; Dean and Seamus elbowed him. Victoria, daringly, threw her arms around his waist. The others crowded in a shower of light touches, murmured words, and Harry stood in the center, terribly still and quiet, like an idol of stone.

Hermione cut through the crowd to Draco and caught him, her hand encircling his arm. “Thank you.”

“For what?” he said. “I don’t want him dead, either.”

“I know you don’t see it the same way.”

“I didn’t lie,” he said. “It wouldn’t be pointless. I didn’t say it was a good idea.”

Her other hand caught his other arm and she looked at him gravely, as serious as a Killing Curse. Hermione reckless was normal and, however unpleasant, endurable; Hermione gentle was like watching a tiger try to prowl on eggshells, only more awkward and piteous. “It’s worth it,” she said. Trying to balance gentility with earnestness. Eggshells shattering on every word. “I’m sorry. I know you think it’s dangerous. It is dangerous, maybe. But we’re together. Just here there’s so many of us, and there could be more of us, too — people do love him, they love him without even knowing him, and if the world knew what he was like—”

“Granger,” he said. His hands found her waist. An unspeakable landscape of terrible truths waited for him to unveil it with a word. She was asking him to say that he had agreed for Harry’s sake, and not hers. Asking him to relieve her of guilt, to relieve her of the burden of whatever happened to him after, but he wouldn’t, and perhaps he couldn’t.

He was a bad person, but he wouldn’t free her of that knowledge. It tethered her to him. She had tethered herself to him. She deserved to own that weight.

“We’re both fools,” he said, as softly as he could, though the eggshells were breaking.

“Me? No,” she said brightly, too brightly. “I’m ‘the finest magical talent of this or any generation.’ And you’re quite good, too, on your better days.”

The room was too crowded for them: they ought to have been alone. Hermione, with her fingers digging into his arms like she could stop the future from taking him anywhere else, should have been able to do so, and he should have been able to put his arms around her waist. If the world were just, nothing would ever change. She would stay ferocious and bold and cocky and she would keep the frightened little grin on her face, and nothing would have taken it away from him, nothing.

---

For some time now the days had been growing longer, but not until a dry evening in late April did Draco notice that the sun still shone in the west when dinner ended, throwing deep shadows under the high table. Atop them, Umbridge held the headmaster’s chair. She was chatting with a square-faced middle-aged man in the Deputy seat that once belonged to McGonagall. The Transfiguration professor sat at the end of the table, six seats distant from Umbridge, and twice from Snape. Neither end of the table raised their heads from their plates.

The other aurors had remained, but ate at their own new table beneath the faculty, where they could keep full sight of the room. Sometimes they hung in the hallways outside of classrooms, or drew a student aside for questioning.

In the silent hall, the shuffling feet of hundreds echoed on the stones. Above the doors, the last Inquisitorial Decree hung in a frame of lacquered wood, announcing the new headmaster.

It was no use trying to avoid the Inquisitorial Squad. Tracey Davis and Blaise Zabini lounged at the foot of the staircase, taking demerits more or less at random; their job was to ensure students went directly to the library, or else their (own) common rooms. Another Inquisitor would be stationed at the library doors to take note of all visitors.

The corridors smelled of dust and mold and wet stone. Filch had been sacked a week after Dumbledore left. It closely followed a decree that the Ministry would not employ non-magical persons, which set off rumors that he had been a squib. Only in his absence did the miserable old crone’s love for the castle reveal itself: soot filmed thick on the sconces, and puddles of melted wax pooled beneath them, which no one had bothered to remove.

Slow days dripped into slow nights. Spring frosts iced over the bolted window-panes. The libraries filled in the evenings with students bent low over their desks, quills scratching at workbooks, while the smell of melting wax thickened under stuffy coils of smoke. New quiet hours kept the common room chatter to a minimum. Inquisitors perched around every corner and under each stairwell, directing straight files of students to and fro their appointed destinations. Cassius Warrington had taken to prowling around the grounds with the aurors, his purple cloak flickering among the pack of trench coats.

No word came from Sirius, Remus, or the Weasleys. Owl traffic in and out of the school had thinned. The Daily Prophet listed Albus Dumbledore as Undesirable No. 1, and a poster hung in pride of place on the notice board. His pallid eyes gazed deeply into Draco’s as he passed them on his way to meals. They seemed to mirror the memory of Snape’s dark ones: Say nothing. Do nothing.

But were they Snape’s orders, or Dumbledore’s? Had the old man been betrayed, after all, by his dogsbody of fifteen years? Were Snape’s final instructions to Draco in fact an act of self-preservation, an attempt to coax Draco away from the cliff’s edge of heroism? Or were they the standing instructions of the Order of the Phoenix?

He missed his mother with an ache that often seemed physical. It caught him unawares, a pang in his sternum, a wishing for one of her tart bon mots or crisp scoldings that snared him during moments of distraction at his books, or beats of silence at meals. It was not just her person he missed. She would know, he felt certain, the truth about Snape — whether he could be trusted, whether it was all a play — she would read from twenty years of experience the strange levers of Snape’s mind, and what inducements could provoke him to treason. But with Umbridge in the headmaster’s office, and Snape rarely seen without an auror at his elbow, the opportunity never appeared. In a fit of desperation he borrowed Victoria Frobisher’s owl and penned a missive in code, on the assumption that even if Umbridge read it, nothing in its descriptions of jasmines and red roses would incriminate them. The owl came back days later, seal unbroken: his mother was either still at Witherfell, or somewhere beyond the reach of owls altogether.

It was hard to account for the difference in feeling before Dumbledore’s flight and after it. Perhaps some resilient part of him, and of the student body at that, had believed that Dumbledore would save them all. That one bright morning, he would unleash the full height of his awesome power to banish the Ministry from the school, smite Umbridge, and restore the castle of yesteryear. Like Ron, they had all been waiting for Dumbledore to fight.

But he had fled, and stripped bare the ugly facts: no one was coming for them. They would save themselves, or nobody would.

Spring washed off the castle’s cloak of snow, and daubed sapphire nets of crocuses at the bottom of the oak trees. On Tuesday nights, Neville returned from the greenhouses with his Potions homework, drenched by rain, and carefully took notes as Draco explained what was wrong with it. He had stopped making the same mistakes, although each time invented some creative new ones. Sometimes, after his critique was finished, he gathered his notes and went back out to the greenhouse to try again.

Defense Club ceased holding meetings, for safety. They communicated by little slips of parchment that Hermione charmed to burn themselves up once read. The tension frayed them all to thin strands, impatient, unforgiving.

Michael Corner blacked Zachariah’s eye. Ron caught the counterjinx meant for Michael, and blacked the other one.

Millicent Bulstrode body-checked Padma down a flight of stairs. Tracey Davis gave Padma a detention for trying to trip her.

Draco pried Gregory Goyle off a bleeding Justin Finch-Fletchley; Hermione threatened Crabbe away from a cornered Euan Abercrombie; Cassius Warrington caught Euan again at the end of the hall. It was never enough. There was always something happening around the corner.

Draco slid down banisters and rounded corners with the haste of someone running from something, or to it, even when what awaited him was nothing more urgent than the library. Hours slipped through his fingers. Study, eat, study, train. He woke up and a minute later, it was noon.

There was something coming. Everyone knew it. But not everyone knew what it was.

Some days, he hardly saw Hermione, caught up in the thorny gridlock of studying and preparations. One evening, he found her in the common room, when the candles had burned low.

Her back was turned to the aisle, presenting him with the messy knot of brown hair pried up from her collar, her sleeves rucked up to the elbows, forearms dappled in inkstains. Her quill etched a looping, illegible scrawl in her journal, while her wand conducted several books in a revolving circuit, presenting themselves ritually to be consulted as she preferred.

He stepped behind her and waited, testing her. She raised her head and cocked it.

“Draco?”

He shifted to lean against the bookcases. “Proximity ward?”

“Among other things,” she said. She twisted around and leaned on the back of her chair, half-smiling at him. “You smell like smoke.”

“Tutorial with Longbottom and Finnigan.”

“He’s quite good at it,” she said, and she glanced over her shoulder. He identified the gesture as an assurance they were alone, and smirked, knowing what would come next: the double-take glance at his mouth, followed by the hooded, plaintive eyes that she made when she wanted something she didn’t want to ask for.

Draco braced his arm on the back of her chair.

Abruptly she shifted up like she was going to kiss him — he froze, because there were others in the common room, it was public, they would see and she didn’t want that, people seeing — but she kissed him on the cheek, her mouth hot against flushed skin.

Someone cleared his throat. Ron stood over her shoulder, pointedly looking at the floor.

Hermione discreetly shifted away from him.

“Ronald,” said Draco.

“Ron,” she said. “Hello. Did you need s—?”

“Word with Draco,” he said tautly. “Outside. Please.”

“About what?”

Ron looked at her, with a harsh, wry sort of look. Hermione reddened.

“If you have something to say to me, you should say it to me,” she said shortly. “I’m not an object. And if you’re going to talk about me like I’m not here—”

“I know,” said Ron pitifully. “There’s — I just —” He ground his jaw. “I can’t do this with both of you at once. It’s not about your thing. It’s about his thing and my thing.”

“What ‘things’? Ron, you’re not making any—”

“Alright,” said Draco, interrupting her. He nodded to the door. “A word. Granger, you get him next.”

Ron sighed in relief.

“Do you promise?” Hermione said sharply, eyeing Ron.

“Sure, yeah,” he said. “You can yell at me all you like.”

“Fine. Then I’m going to find Harry. Find me when you’re done,” she said, “and — I’m serious, Ron, I think the three of us really ought to talk at some point.”

“I agree,” said Ron, surprising her; Hermione never came prepared for anything but a fight. “We’ve got a battle plan to make, yeah? Let me do this bit first, though.”

Warily, she let them go, then turned back to find Harry. Ron wheeled open the portrait door. Draco stepped elegantly into the passageway, and Ron hauled it shut behind them.

There was an alcove ten or twenty stairs down from the Tower entrance, a flat shelf over which was cut a window facing the lake. Ron stepped into it and leaned against the wall, and Draco matched him, folding his arms. He waited for Ron to speak first, which he appeared to be attempting to; he opened his mouth and grimaced to himself several times.

The conversation that had been hovering over their heads for weeks fell all at once, like rain bursting from day-old swollen clouds, and brought with it a drench of silence.

“You were right,” said Draco, at length. “It was more than a friendship.”

Ron winced.

“We have a relationship. She and I. Don’t tell Potter.”

He swallowed. “Well,” he said. “That’s… not a surprise. Not Harry, really?”

“She wanted to keep it private.” It was inscrutably important to him that Ron understood that. “I wouldn’t have cared.”

Ron nodded, gnawing his cheek. “How long?”

“February.”

“Oh.” Ron paused. “Well, congrats. And everything.”

“I didn’t tell you to be cruel. If there were a way for this to avoid causing pain to you, I would. But I felt compelled to be clear.”

“I appreciate that,” he said. “I’m trying to be clear, too. But you get that there isn’t — there’s no world, right where that isn’t kind of painful, right, considering I fancy your girlfriend.”

Draco wanted to say, And I regret that as much as you do, but it seemed wrong.

Ron sighed and rubbed his temples, restless and agitated. “Fancied her for years,” he admitted. “I didn’t know it, but I did. And the two of you — I’m not stupid. I reckoned there was something going on. But I figured maybe if you two were just mates, like her and Harry… if I worked at it, and if I got to being a real bloke, with brains and everything… But I was kidding myself.”

The waters of the conversation were already rising around his neck.

“She would lie on a bed of nails for you, you know.”

“I know,” said Ron.

“She would give you an arm. A rib. Anything you asked for.”

“Yeah, and she could have mine,” he agreed. “We love each other. But it’s not me, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t play dumb,” he said, without malice. “She’s loved you since she was eleven years old. And even on my best day, I reckon I’m just fun to think about.”

His tongue felt thick in his mouth. “When she was eleven, she thought I was a coward,” he said. “And a bully. And a ponce.”

“She was correct,” said Ron mercilessly, “but she was still in love with you. And you’re still a ponce, but that hasn’t stopped her yet, so it probably won’t ever.”

Torches snapped. Wind hummed against the eaves.

“You were right, too. About ‘second place.’” Ron set his jaw. “That it shouldn’t matter. Usually. I know. But I — you know all this, but — sixth of seven, sixth son, and they stopped after the girl — forget that. Point is that I’m used to fighting for attention. Don’t,” he said warily, pointing at Draco, “think this is a pity thing. It’s not a pity thing. I don’t need you feeling sorry for Saint Ronald, who’s sad and poor and bad at quidditch. But you pissed me the fuck off with all that shit about not ‘getting it,’ the other day, like I’m always running to catch up with you. I can’t stand it. Because only one bloke ever really wanted me first pick of the litter, and it’s just my luck, the rest of the world’s trying to kill him.”

The overture hovered in the air, waiting for someone to complete it.

“You have an obsession with winning,” said Draco.

“I know. Hermione thinks it’s a problem.”

“I never said it was a problem,” he said. “In fact, I rather respect it.”

Ron smiled a bit. “Course you do. You’re the same. Used to think you’d rip someone’s head off to win a quidditch match, come to that.”

“That seems messy.”

“You would say that,” said Ron. “Anyway, you get why it matters. Being first choice.”

Of course he did.

But it was a part of himself he preferred not to voice. It was, among other things, the part that had wished ill for Viktor Krum about four minutes from his death, on the vile and arresting grounds that he’d received one of Hermione’s smiles.

“As first choices go,” he said, “you could have done worse than the Chosen One.”

“And you could have done a lot worse than Hermione Granger,” said Ron, with quiet resignation. Then he snickered to himself. “Guess that’s why all our luck ran out early.”

“Or none of us had any luck to begin with.”

“Hermione doesn’t need luck, she’s Hermione,” said Ron. It was wry and honeyed with the blind adoration of a first love.

He did love her. It would have been easier to resent him if he didn’t.

Ron said, “You know, there’s not enough time — there’s never enough time for shit like this. But definitely not now, and definitely not with your mates. Because — you know what’s coming. Haven’t got time to waste calling each other names, and fighting over this stuff. When I look back at these months, I want to think: ‘Yeah, that was how I want to remember it.’ Before the war.” He swallowed.

It was a bristling, even-shouldered dignity that Ron wrestled from disappointment’s jaws, a nobler and fiercer dignity than anyone could possibly demand; it was a refusal to indulge in the humiliation of showing pain, and a commitment to drive on through it with one’s head high, one’s back straight, and one’s wounds packed away where no one could see them.

It was something Narcissa would have admired, if she could find it in her to admire Ron for anything, which probably she could not.

“At the risk of stating the obvious,” said Draco, “you are also a pureblood.”

“At the risk of stating the obvious,” said Ron, “it’s not the same kettle of kelpies.”

“No, it isn’t. But it might occur to you one of these days, Ronald, that though the vast majority of you is Weasley, there remains a part of you descended from the House of Black.”

Ron’s tongue probed his cheek thoughtfully. Then he smirked.

“That goes both ways, though.”

“Pardon.”

“Bad news,” he said. “Means somewhere in all that pureblood swill, there’s a piffling little part of you that’s Weasley.”

Draco didn’t know what his face did then, but Ron laughed.

When they came in again, Hermione and Harry were speaking in low voices by the fireplace. With their heads bent together, the light fell evenly on their robes, their ties, their rumpled crowns of dark hair, and flickered brightly in their eyes: Harry’s electric green and Hermione’s soft, fathomless dark ones.

“Don’t like it when they talk like that,” Ron muttered. “He’ll do anything, and she can do everything. Oughtn’t let them make plans together.”

“Don’t remind me,” said Draco, painfully aware of sounding like a sop.

Harry, feeling their attention, raised his head and squinted, nudging his glasses straight with the back of an ink-stained hand. “Stop staring and come pull your bloody weight,” he said. “I know I’m gorgeous, but that’s no excuse.”

“Can’t expect us to resist you, man,” Ron said easily. He sauntered over and dropped to kneel at Harry’s side, scanning the notes. “What are you plotting at?”

“I’m ‘plotting’ the girls’ bathroom,” said Hermione, smirking at her own pun. Draco gave her a thin look. “Anyway, I have a new theory about Myrtle.”

“You’re still after Theodore Nott?”

“Of course I am. You don’t think he’s not up to something, do you? Anyway, I went looking for reports of Myrtle’s death, and I found out — one, the school archive from 1943 is a terrible mess, lots of pages are damaged or just missing altogether— but more importantly, she wasn’t the first one attacked. There had been a string of attacks happening at Hogwarts for weeks before. Petrifications. All the victims were muggle-borns.”

“Like in second year,” added Ron.

“Yes. Well, yes, but no,” Hermione agreed. A questing fire was in her eyes. “The attacks were similar, but no one died, and they would’ve likely continued indefinitely if Yaxley hadn’t been killed. But here’s the odd bit: After Myrtle died, the attacks just… stopped.”

“Like she was … responsible for them, somehow?” said Harry.

“No. The opposite. I think someone was practicing,” she said. “And with Myrtle, they finally managed the real thing.”

The wind scraped against the castle windows. Draco cleared his throat.

“What are you using the Map for, then?” he said.

“Someone had to get in and out of the bathroom in order to kill her,” she said. “Myrtle’s body was found in the bathroom by a girl named Olive Hornby — whom Myrtle haunted, by the way, quite viciously, until Olive got a Ministry injunction — poor thing must have been demented, have you any idea how hard it is to sue a ghost? — but she found her in the bathroom where she died. That means either the killer went in after her, killed her, and walked out — somehow avoiding the notice of any number of students, prefects, teachers, ghosts, et cetera, all of whom would’ve been on high alert for suspicious activity at the time—”

“Or there’s a secret passage into the bathroom,” supplied Ron.

“Which you think Nott’s looking for,” said Draco neutrally. “Do you think he’s planning a murder?”

“No. There’s no one here it would serve him to kill,” she said calmly, sitting back on her haunches. “There are easier ways out of the school, if he’s trying to escape. But the easy ones are all fairly well-known. My current theory is that he’s looking for a passageway Cassius doesn’t know about.”

“Still begs the question of why,” pointed out Ron.

She hesitated, glancing at Draco. “Well,” she said, “I will say — if you must know — I happen to think he’s trying to find a way to get Daphne out of the school.”

Ron startled. “What? Why her?”

Hermione cringed and looked at Draco with a pointed, uncomfortable stare; Draco sighed, and rescued her. “Nott has an inexplicably enduring interest in Greengrass,” he said. “So’s Parkinson. I’m given to understand they have a safehouse of some kind. They gave her a letter at Christmas with some kind of code to access it; she claimed not to understand what it said, though I suspect she lied.”

“You don’t seriously think she’d join them,” Ron said in disgust. “After they’ve been shits to her for months. Years, basically. She — she’s closer to Lavender than she is to Pansy, nowadays. And she chose our side. She chose it good and loud, last year.”

Draco shrugged. “I happen to agree with you,” he said. “But it wouldn’t be the first time Nott was a poor judge of character. He thinks people are more loyal to him than they are.”

“Or more self-interested,” Hermione said idly. He looked at her. She raised her hands. “I’m just saying. There are … reasons it could be in Daphne’s best interest to be sequestered somewhere away from the fighting. It isn’t … an entirely bad idea, in terms of what’s best for her.”

“To run off with a pack of bigoted twats?” Ron exclaimed. “Blimey, you don’t have to like her, but you can say better of her than that—”

“I do like her, actually, she’s quite sweet when she’s not being condescending — but you know she has family troubles, and her parents are either in denial about her condition, or they simply don’t care.”

“Not her blood condition,” argued Ron. “They’ve had her in treatments for years. They coddled her for it.”

Hermione flushed. “I meant — being bitten,” she said. “Being ‘impure.’ From their perspective.”

“That’s not a condition. There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s safe, she’s got friends, she’s got hobbies. More importantly, she’s her own damn person, and she didn’t ask Nott or Parkinson to take her anywhere! She doesn’t need to be put up on a shelf, you know,” he said indignantly, “like a doll they’re sick of playing with—”

“I’m not saying she should, I’m saying what I think Theodore Nott would try to do,” she said patiently. “If he cared for her. Which, unfortunately, I think he does.”

“He doesn’t care for her,” Ron scoffed. “Hasn’t said three words to her in a year. That’s not what caring looks like.”

“I wouldn’t be certain,” said Draco. Ron scoffed again — but Draco was thinking of Severus Snape, and Narcissa, and of the way Narcissa looked when she heard Andromeda’s name, and he was reflecting on how much one could care without saying anything at all.

---

On the first day of exams, he didn’t sleep. He drifted out of a nauseous semi-conscious fog to the late-morning scramble of boys throwing on their robes, fighting for showers, pitching deodorant and spare socks around. He sat up with a wince and a flex of his knee, the one Goyle had broken almost a full year ago: it had healed, but sometimes the old tendons still twinged, to remind him of the cost he had paid.

He brushed his teeth and combed his hair, used a spell to iron his robes, and drew his tie snugly under the pressed flap of his collar. In a surreal haze, he slipped his wand into its sheath and his ring into place on his finger. For the first time in months, he did not take his books with him as he descended the staircase. Dean carried a seam-splitting load of notebooks — hoping purposively to cram some last-minute studying into the breaks and meals — but Draco, for whom the exams had once been a source of strain, now viewed them as a dull disposal of time. After the Astronomy practical, none of it would matter.

It was difficult, therefore, to tap into the trembling thread of anxiety that ran across the hallways, charging the murmuring crowds like electric current. He moved through the crowds with the tired ease of someone tall enough and sure enough to make them part when he wanted. At one point, he was sure, he would have swaggered, but this morning brought none of the requisite joy.

This had the unusual silver lining of making him extremely calm as he approached the testing hall, and consequently the subject of some resentment by his peers. He took some tea from the tea station and drank it casually, while a few people gave him resentful stares over the backs of their overcrammed notebooks. Ernie Macmillan mouthed his notes frantically from a six-inch notecard, which at an invigilator’s glare he stuffed into his pocket. Neville, clutching his stomach, abruptly whirled and shoved Dean aside in a dash for the bathroom.

Professor McGonagall gave the pre-exam briefing.

“O.W.L.s are spread over two successive weeks. You will sit the theory exams in the mornings and the practicals in the afternoons. Your practical Astronomy examination will, of course, take place at night. You may find the schedule posted on the notice board. When your scores are released, your names will be posted in sequence on the board, along with your results. Please hold questions until I am finished, Mr. Macmillan. You can expect your scores by the end of the term in early June. Participants who exceed the recommended length on their essays can expect additional delays — once I am finished, Ms. Patil — and participants found guilty of cheating or plagiarism will be disqualified. You may now ask—”

A copse of hands sprouted. McGonagall sighed, and pointed.

Draco threw back the rest of his tea and set it down. He ought to have eaten something. The caffeine made his stomach turn.

Hermione found him calmly waiting at the back of the room, twirling his wand through his fingers. She had three pens tucked in her breast pocket, plus a spare behind her ear, and she had braided her hair tightly out of her face. It had been slicked back with some sort of gel, or possibly sweat. From her apprehensive expression he half-expected an eager: aren’t you excited? Taking exams? or an impatient: give me a hard question, quick!, but he got neither.

“Ready for the easy part?” she said bravely.

“Desperately,” he said. “I could use a bit of fun.”

“Good. Take a pen. I’ve given them to Harry and Ron and Neville, and I double-checked with McGonagall that you can use them. There’s nothing in the rules that says you have to use a quill, merely tradition, and a pen writes twice as fast, so you can get more down on the essay questions. I have biscuits if you’re hungry. Are you hungry? I’m not.”

“Are you nervous?” he said, incredulous. “Over exams? Now?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t your nerves reached quota?”

“I can be nervous about many things,” she said indignantly. He snorted and refrained from quipping that it was the first principle of her personality. “There’s no law about how many things I can worry about at once.”

“Thank Merlin. You couldn’t afford the lawyers’ fees.”

“I’d bill you for most of them,” she retorted, scanning the hallway. “Only fair, since — hang on, is that Percy?”

Draco craned his neck. The examiners had lined by the door, and among them stood a tall, gangly redhead in a purple robe, his hideous glasses perched in a less-than-judicious position on his nose.

“Unfortunately,” he muttered. “Where’s Ronald?”

“Is he an examiner? I suppose he got twelve N.E.W.T.s. But he’s too young! The rules say examiners for the practical have to be seven years out at least, otherwise the adjudication isn’t impartial, and if a student’s even met an examiner before they can invoke a Section E appeal—”

“Granger. Big picture.”

She blinked, and her eyes sharpened. “He’s here to provoke Ron,” she said. “The whole Ministry has to know there’s bad blood. They brawled in the Atrium! If Ron assaults a Ministry official on school grounds—”

“Give him credit. If he sees Percy, he’ll realize all that, and even if he doesn’t, he won’t act out in front of Umbridge. He’s smarter than that.”

“Ginny isn’t,” Hermione hissed.

“Fuck. Good point.”

He shoved between a pair of fifth years and stalked through the crowd.

Ron had seen Percy before they had, and intercepted him before Draco could. Harry was close behind him, bristling, his hand a hairsbreadth from his wand — Draco caught it by the wrist, the motion hidden by the crowd, and though Harry glared at him, he reluctantly let his robes fall over his wandsheath.

The brothers collided within spitting distance of the door, though to Draco’s surprise, it was Percy who seized Ron, not the other way around.

“Uniform citation,” Percy said loudly. “Improper tie knot. What are the prefects getting up to these days? Step out, young man, and fix it at once.”

“Don’t touch me,” Ron said, outraged. “Keep your hands off me, you snivelling bastard—”

Percy ignored him and hustled him — impressively, considering Ron dwarfed him in height and doubled him in breadth — into a side corridor. Draco trotted after him, hand gliding to his wand, alarm prickling vaguely.

In the corridor, Percy craned his neck fearfully for onlookers, and then shoved Ron against the wall.

“Let go of me—”

“Is Father alive?”

Ron spluttered. “Yeah — I think, we don’t get owls here — why? What happened?”

“What happened? He was in St. Mungo’s! Did Mother drop you on your head again?”

“Yeah, like, five months ago,” Ron sneered. His fists clenched at his sides, but his expression was steady and cool. “He’s been out since February. Have you seriously not seen him?”

“No! I haven’t seen him since — since the last time I saw you.”

Ron curled his lip. “Couldn’t even be arsed with an owl,” he marvelled. He shrugged Percy off and tugged his robes straight. “Merlin. Why even pretend to care, if you’re so embarrassed of him?”

“I’m not embarrassed,” Percy hissed. He glanced over his shoulder. “He’s my father. They won’t let me contact him.”

“They? Who’s ‘they’?” Hermione said sharply. “The Ministry?”

“I — hello, Miss Granger,” said Percy stiffly. “This is a private family conversation—”

“She’s more my family than you are,” Ron snapped. “Answer her question.”

Percy flinched. “Well. I — well. Yes. The Ministry. Who else? You’re on a registry. All the Weasleys. Disreputable individuals, known connections to terrorism — I’m not allowed to see Father. Or Bill. Or Charlie.”

“Yeah? What happens to you if you talk to him?”

“Isn’t it obvious? ‘What happens’ is I lose my job!”

“Oh, your precious job! When did you pick your conscience out of the rubbish? You didn’t care when the Ministry put Harry on trial, and you didn’t care when they were carving up your brothers and sister—”

“Carving up — what? What are you talking about?”

“—didn’t care about us before, when you could watch us suffer from a distance, so don’t come crying now—”

“I don’t know what you’re saying to me! You’re mad! Ron, are you really involved with a rebellion at Hogwarts?” Percy whispered, pale and aghast. “The things they’re saying about you — about everyone — you don’t know how bad this could be for us. Bill’s being followed. Father has a file. Platinum clearance, they won’t even let me read it. And they have your names — yours and Ginny’s — on a list. Do you understand? I’m trying to warn you. You’ve no idea the risks I’m taking just to be here.”

“Yeah?” said Ron coolly. “What’d you do?”

“I lied to Lord Selwyn. Madam Umbridge thinks I have his permission to be here. I had to forge a document—”

Ron stared at him, stunned with contempt.

“You fucking idiot,” he said. “I don’t know how bad this could be? I don’t? You’ve had a desk job for two years, and I don’t— never mind. You know it’ll be you next, right?”

Percy choked. Ron straightened his tie, and then said curtly: “These people don’t believe in anything but blood. Once we’re gone, they’ll come for you. And when they do, remember that you sold out the only people who would’ve stood by you.”

He swept out.

The bell rang. The doors to the Great Hall parted, and the crowd tightened in a sudden suction through its arch.

“Ron!” Hermione caught him by the shoulder, and Ron flinched. “That was well done,” she said breathlessly. “Really well done, keeping your cool. Are you—”

“Are you seriously asking me if I’m alright?”

Ron glared at her, and it became clear she could not have asked a worse question if she tried. He looked as if he had found his own death warrant crumpled up at the bottom of a bin, covered in grease, and it put a fire under him. It was an expression that could have worn a black eye without any loss of dignity. Ron, Draco had discovered, would rather suffer a great deal than lose his dignity.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” Ron said. “Nobody’s alright. Fucking nobody. Not one single person in this place, and nobody anywhere else. Ever.”

“Beside the point,” said Draco, stepping out of the crowd behind her. Students shuffled warily aside to make space for them, especially after Ron’s outburst. “Do you need a moment?”

“I’m fine.”

“The exam—”

“Draco, I’m not taking it. See you after.”

“They’ll suspect something if you’re not there.”

“My name,” said Ron calmly, “is on a list. That kneazle is out of the bag. Will you bugger off, please? I’m going to hit something, and right now I’m not really fussed if it’s you.”

The tremor in his voice made Draco release him. He brushed him off and cut through the hall. Everyone moved around him, giving him space, some with more grace than others. Across the hall, in the Slytherin line, Daphne followed him with her eyes, and sent Draco a worried, probing glance.

Percy skulked over to join the examiners. Someone from Hufflepuff leaned over and gave a distinct retch, which set off a chain reaction of retching in several other locations about the hall. A few Ravenclaws kept quizzing each other. Umbridge stood at the base of the staircase and watched Ron leave with a small smug smile.

The gong sounded, and the doors breached. The examiners filed into the Great Hall, and Draco found himself caught between the flurry of movement and the doors and, in the opposite direction, the sweep of Ron’s hem as he climbed the stairs. He found himself wondering, in a blear of uncertainty and anxiety, if Ron didn’t have the right of it; if it weren’t foolish to sit here and scribble down answers on paper, as if nothing were wrong, as if they were going to have normal grades and normal careers and normal lives; but what else was there to do? What was there except to plod on in the direction of the current, if for no other reason than that it was better than doing nothing at all?

Then the crowd drove forward like a long black river, the currents catching and dragging and eddying in small exclamations of panic and despair. They were all drowning, but only a dozen people seemed to know it.

---

Draco did not remember his O.W.L.s individually, but sequentially, as a blur of parchment and torchlight and Hermione’s ballpoint pens. His hand cramped around the third day, and by the sixth it had subsided to a dull, constant ache. He wished that he had thought to develop wand-dexterity in a different hand he wrote in, since it made a proper grip in the practicals difficult, though luckily, the practicals were by and large a bore. In Defense, he did not draw his wand until the fifth challenge — to subdue a caged gnome, and cast a Patronus for the bonus point.

He could not help it: despite knowing it would not matter, he wanted to do well. In the Potions exam, he cut a blazing swath through six essay questions and doubled back in a rare moment of self-doubt to rewrite the first, scribbling out more notes in the margins. With three minutes left in the test he recalled a better counter-stirring method than the textbook recommended, and scrawled a postscript on the back of his essay detailing the relevant chemical proofs. In all exams, Potions especially, the nearby sweating and whimpering of other fifth years distracted him, and he nearly lost focus in his Charms essay on Disillusionment theory when Dean escaped to his fourth bathroom break of the hour. Electives were smaller, though the diminutive size of the Runes O.W.L. cohort — a piffling thirty-four, as compared to the full cohort for the core classes — only increased the tension when one student stood up to turn in their paper ludicrously early, or flipped their page obnoxiously fast. In this, he practiced minor incidents of Occlumency, flattening his thoughts to the safe plane of black glass; it could not close out the sound of quill-nibs scribbling, but it flattened his thoughts to a dark pinprick, from which he could then expand back to the rectangle of the page. There, the only enemy was the empty space beneath the question, the distance between his penpoint and the last line.

Potions, Transfiguration, and Defense came first in the week, and they took their price in morale: students wandered out of them dazed, quiet, as if they had been strapped down and flogged. The later exams of Charms, History of Magic, and Herbology brought spirits back up again. A few cheaters were dragged out of the hall with Korrecktall Kwills or transfigured cheat sheets; Umbridge sent them back to their common rooms with ‘T’ stamped on their exam cards.

Harry and Ron said little to each other and less to anyone else; in Gryffindor, the atmosphere formed shallow, fast-moving eddies of anxiety. Hermione became sleepless. Her hands were caked in ink, and she haunted the common room well into the dark hours of the morning, scanning the Marauder’s Map for something perhaps even she did not know the name of.

At the end of the second week, the Astronomy exam came. He spent three hours, i.e. several months, trudging blindly through a spate of questions about constellations and trines, after which they emerged into a fruitless and indolent and intolerable afternoon, offered as a break in preparation of the practical.

Atop the Astronomy Tower, a row of telescopes stared like cannons over a dark vista, stars spread thick like scattered salt over moon-glazed hills. The moon, one sliver removed, sat high at the heart of the sky, and the light was like bathing in milk. Daphne came over from the Slytherin line at once and knelt at a telescope by Lavender and Parvati, who leaned in and started whispering; at the examiner’s call, they broke off, furtive.

Harry leaned on the rail. The examiner, a witch with curly white hair named Griselda Marchbanks, told them to open their pamphlets and begin, but Harry didn’t move for several moments. His glasses caught the moonlight like round stars. Ron clapped his shoulder warily, and he turned to find a telescope.

It took at least a month to finish the exam, which might have elapsed in ten minutes. Marchbanks’s voice broke him out of a daze, and he drew his pen slowly from the parchment, rubbing his hand. Astronomical symbols he had little memory of drawing littered the parchment. Draco rolled it up and dropped it into a box at the door to the tower, then descended with the crowd of other fifth-years to the bottom of the staircase.

Hermione found him as they left, giving a bracing breath. “It’s over with,” she said. “It feels like it just started. Did you find the trick question?”

“Yes, both of them.”

“Both of — no, there weren’t two — were there? No. You’re joking. You are joking? Draco—”

“Completely. Yes, I found it.”

“Oh, you’re such a prat.”

“I might worry if I thought you minded.”

“I do mind,” she muttered, but her blush revealed her for a liar. He laughed.

Their relief was short-lived. At the bottom of the stairs to the Astronomy Tower there was a commotion: through the gloom and sea of dark robes, Harry and Ron pushed through and stood apart from the others.

Cassius stood at the foot of the stairs, his smile split in thirds by the wrought-iron bars. His wand was sheathed; his arms were folded, and he balanced his weight on one hip. When Draco rounded the corner, his eyebrow twitched, but he did not reach for his wand.

Around him stood four aurors, their greatcoats gleaming, brass buttons bright as gold. On the far side of them stood Cho. She hadn’t taken the Astronomy exam; the last Draco had seen of her was at the Defense practical, where she had produced a watery patronus. Now she was haggard and distracted, her tie askew, and tears made her face a terrible motley of grief and salt.

“Potter,” said Cassius.

“Cho,” said Harry, as if he were not sure that she was really there. He moved towards her, but Cassius held out his arm and stopped it. “What’s going on?”

Cho shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Harry, what’s going on? I don’t remember how I got here.”

“You talked to them,” said Hermione tonelessly. Her face was a rictus of absolutely nothing: no feeling, no emotion, only the flicker of her eyes darting between the aurors and Cassius. Her fist curled close to the hilt of her wand. “Didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t,” she cried. “Talked to who? I don’t know what’s going on!”

“Her memory’s been tampered with,” said Cassius. “She doesn’t remember most things before October of 1995. I don’t suppose you know why that might be?”

Hermione said nothing. In the lamplight, her eyes shone furious, as dark as pitch. Harry made a sound that the drumbeat in Draco’s ears blotted out.

“Excellent charmwork, Malfoy,” Cassius admitted. “Really exceptional. I don’t know how you managed it. It’ll be a shame when they snap your wand.”

A thought skittered wildly across the dull film of Draco’s brain: We could run. He could take Hermione and run. They would let them go, if Harry stayed, and he would — staring at Cho, he was rooted to the spot. They could run to Hogsmeade and Floo back to King’s Cross, and she would keep her wand and Cassius Warrington would never look at her again, would never see her, or Draco would carve his wand-arm off at the elbow. He thought desperately that Harry would even bless the plan, if they had asked him, would clasp their hands and tell them Go, with a sad smile of parting, and the innocent, trusting warmth of a cow plodding into the slaughterhouse— but there ended the thought. The sea would rise before Hermione would turn her back on that face, and even Draco was not sure how far they could have made it before he looked back, either. They had already passed under the slaughterhouse gates.

Adrenaline and fear had obscured the other faces in Cassius’s party, but there were several. Dawlish, Robards, Cortwaite, aurors all, had drawn their wands and stood poised to move swiftly, though they would not need to; at this distance, aurors could not miss.

“Draco,” said Cassius, “will you come over here?”

Hermione stepped in front of him. Draco shouldered her out of the way, awash in regret and fear and loathing. He drew his wand and held his arm across her, although it would make no difference, with three aurors. He might have taken Cassius, by himself; the rest of the party, he had not a chance.

“Oh, I won’t harm you,” said Cassius. “I’m merely curious what on earth moved you to do this. You understand, old boy, you’re going to be expelled for this. Your name can’t protect you from everything.”

“Your mistake is thinking your name will protect you from anything,” said Draco, because it did not matter, anyway, they were going to be taken and expelled and his wand would be snapped and it did not matter, it wouldn’t matter, he was watching the aurors and he was holding Hermione back with one hand and sometimes the world simply had to come a few seconds at a time.

Cho was still crying. He didn’t care. He would find rage for her later. There would be plenty of it to go around.

“I don’t need my name to protect me,” said Cassius. He tapped his wand idly against his palm. “Names don’t protect anyone, you unlucky fool, and neither does blood. Names and blood are the only things worth protecting. You’re supposed to die for them, you’re not supposed to let them die with you. I don’t suppose it’ll be any use to you, knowing that now, but it falls within my purview to occasionally engage in pedagogy.” He smiled. It stiffened the scars on his face where Draco had once cursed him. “And discipline.”

“What would you ever know about it?”

That was Hermione, with her empty hands and her mouth full of fire. Righteous, defiant Hermione, the voice in the back of his head. The echo on every selfish thought. The glowing jewel at the center of his greatest selfishness. She looked like a hurricane in a necktie, a hotheaded backtalking incorrigible walking site of chaos. She was not chaotic now. She was calm and even and perfectly, terrifically angry. It filled him with a strange and shameful pride to be standing next to her, to have been chosen to stand next to her, with his mind full of cowardice and his veins full of ice.

“What would you know about sacrifice?” she said. “When’s the last time you ever did something you didn’t stand to benefit from? What have you ever given up for the House of Warrington?”

He expected Cassius would give her the acknowledgement of a reprimand or nothing. Instead, Cassius looked on at Draco and said, lightly, almost smiling: “A girl.”

A cry interrupted them. Cho had tried to break away from the aurors and make a run for the gates, towards Harry; Harry surged forward to meet her, but she was caught by Dawlish, and Harry was hauled back by Ron.

“Let me go!” she screamed. “Let me go, let me go, I didn’t do anything— please!”

“What did you do to her?” Harry shouted, his voice shredded by grief. Ron grappled him back, with difficulty, as Harry fought him with real kicks and punches that drew grunts of pain. “What did you make her do?”

“You know, I do resent your tone,” said Cassius, glancing at last away from Draco. “I didn’t waterboard the girl. She came to me of her own free will. I’d say ‘ask her,’ but… well.”

“What did you tell her?” said Hermione. Through Harry’s shouting, her voice was flat and sharp. “Did she think you were going to spare us?”

“She made certain assurances. Which I plan to keep, by the way. I’m a man of my word.”

“What assurances?” said Ron roughly, heaving for breath. Harry had gone still at the word assurances. Cho was staring at Cassius, and between her and Harry it was hard to say who was more stricken.

“That she wouldn’t be expelled for sedition,” said Cassius, “and neither would Harry Potter. You know, Weasley, I’d be flattered; she tried to make a deal for all of you. Unsuccessfully, of course, but she did try.”

“No,” said Cho hoarsely. “No, I wouldn’t do that. I would never do that to Harry.” She turned to Harry wildly. “You believe me, don’t you? I wouldn’t do that, they’re lying, they — they must have tricked me, I don’t remember—”

“I believe you,” said Harry. Hermione made a sharp sound in her throat. Draco looked at her, and she was staring at Cho with cold eyes.

“So you’re arresting us,” said Ron.

“Well, not you,” said Cassius. “What use would that be? Some nobody son of a nobody’s son. It’s Potter they want. Poor Miss Chang, she wasn’t terribly bright, even before you lopped off a year of her mind, Malfoy; I doubt she realized that Potter was never going to be expelled in the first place. Only a fool who lets his enemy out of a cage. No, he’s going to stay right here, and we’re going to expel the rest of you. As a lesson. And once he’s no longer furnished with a coterie of enablers, I think Mr. Potter is going to be much more cooperative with the Ministry.” He twirled his wand and slotted it into the overhand grip, casually flexing his wrist. “As a gesture of gratitude to Miss Chang, we’ve agreed to let him keep his wand; the rest of you, I suppose she thought she couldn’t save.”

“Cho,” said Harry.

Cho jerked.

“I forgive you,” he said. “You don’t know what for, I guess, but I do. And I’m sorry it came to this. I don’t blame you for protecting your mum. I hope I would’ve done the same.”

Cho clapped her hands over her mouth, and gave a sob.

Harry let them take his arm without protest. One of them, Robard, touched Hermione’s shoulder, and she wrenched it away. She stepped closer to Draco, who put his hand on his wand and sneered at Robard as coldly as he was able. The auror was clearly not intimidated, but he raised his hand and looked to Cassius for direction.

“Don’t touch me,” said Hermione, sharp. “I don’t want you touching me.”

Robard reached for her anyway. Draco caught his wrist. Robard jerked his hand free.

“She said not to touch her.”

“Draco,” she hissed. But Draco and Robard were both looking at Cassius.

“We’re coming quietly,” said Draco. “Touch her and I won’t be.”

Hermione breathed deeply, rubbing her shoulder, and shifted a half-step behind him. There was something pleasant about the way Robard appraised him, half-irate but half-unsure, as if he mightn’t be a little dangerous. He was a little dangerous. If they touched her, he could be more than a little dangerous.

“Warrington?” said Robard. “I don’t want a mess.”

“Then don’t leave one,” said Cassius mildly. “It’s Potter we need.”

“They’re children. And he’s the next Lord Malfoy.”

Cassius twitched in irritation. “Not to mention a blood traitor.”

Dawlish said, “The laws don’t make him less a lord for that.”

“Merlin. What’s he going to do to you? He’s fifteen. He won’t even have his wand in a day’s time.”

But now the aurors were restless.

“I met Lucius Malfoy, once,” said Cortwaite quietly. “He didn’t need a wand.”

A chill draft whistled underfoot. Leaves whispered fretfully in the dark woods at the aurors’ back. The hilt of Draco’s wand pressed into his palm, and he lifted his chin. He could feel the man they were remembering as they stared at him, like a double-image sitting over his own face. Like a mask. For once, he did not mind it. For once, he could feel his father’s ghost standing at his back, and the chill did not frighten him. It felt like strength.

He peeled his lips back in a sneer, and let history infuse it with a menace he could not.

For once, his father’s ghost did what he needed it to.

Cassius wet his lips. “Fine,” he said shortly. “Walk them. If they run, it’s on your head.”

Hermione exhaled and slipped her hand into Draco’s, her fingers clutching his tightly. He clasped it back and drew her close to him as they walked, keeping one eye on Robards, one hand on his wand.

They were walked down through the castle. Torches guttered low in the halls. Up the stairs, shadows thickened in the halls, and Cassius lit his wand to lead them along the winding stone passages to the headmaster’s office. The griffin revolved, turning the stone staircase into view, and they climbed in single file up the steps.

The silver instruments were gone. Umbridge had cleared the headmaster’s office of any touch of Dumbledore; the portraits of old headmasters had been removed, as well, replaced by oil paintings of what appeared to be scenes from history. In one, a wizard with a silver beard stood with a goblin’s severed head under his foot; in another, a witch stood high atop a rock amid surf, her wand outstretched and gleaming red over a fleet of howling mermaids. The books had been removed. Wall-height shelves of oak and stone stood bare save the rare decorative plates or flower vases, whose presence merely served to emphasize the empty spaces. All had been removed from the antique desk but a stationery pad, a quill and ink, and a portrait of the Minister of Magic.

The room did not look like it had been re-occupied; it looked like it had been scoured, a field razed and salted.

Umbridge stood behind the desk, her lacquered nails braced lightly on a piece of parchment. By the fireplace knelt three red heads and a pale one: Ginny, George, Lee, and Luna were on their knees. Purple bruising mottled George and Lee’s faces, and a lace fringe of blood flowed down Ginny’s face from her temple, while the same caked under Luna’s nose. Severus Snape leaned against the wall behind them, turning his wand delicately over in his hands. When Draco came in, his wand stilled, and his expression took on a cool, acid stiffness.

“You’re a traitor,” she said, faintly wondrous, her rage so soft it verged on grief.

The word passed cleanly through him, a bolt of clearest diamond, and left his body clean. It almost surprised him. It took no blood; it left no bruising. It was a combination of syllables that had ceased to mean anything he couldn’t look in the eye.

He said nothing. Hermione shouldered in front of him. Umbridge’s eyes slipped at her and tightened.

Ron lurched towards his siblings, but Dawlish caught and shoved him back. Ginny’s head snapped up when they came in, and the air went out of her with a sound like something puncturing.

“Where’s Fred?” Hermione said sharply.

“Hospital Wing,” George croaked. “It was an ambush — they grabbed us from the dorms—”

“—used a firework and tried to divert them—”

“—Fred was too close — his arm—”

“Severus,” said Umbridge. Snape rolled his eyes and flicked his wand. Three voices vanished at once, cut by a nonverbal Silencio.

“Longbottom’s been apprehended, as well,” said Cassius, tossing his cloak to the sofa. “Alquist had to Stun him, and took Reiner to find the others.”

Umbridge closed her eyes and delicately rubbed them. “How large was the conspiracy?”

“It’s hard to say. We would have got it out of Miss Chang, but—”

“I wouldn’t,” Cho cried. “You’re lying—”

“—the information appears to be lost to her.”

“He’s not,” Hermione said curtly.

Ginny gave a cry of rage, and sprang up on one knee. George surged after her, but a twitch of Snape’s wand bent them both back to the floor.

“The brat’s lying, I expect,” said Umbridge impatiently. “Veritaserum will change her tune.”

“If you’d given me Veritaserum to begin with, we wouldn’t be here,” Cassius retorted. “Dumbledore left weeks ago. I told you to dose Potter the night he left—”

“If only someone had not spent their stock questioning the student body,” drawled Snape. “Worth it, though, I am sure, to discover that most students already believed Harry Potter to be what he is: a fool and a liar.”

She jabbed a finger at him. “You will be quiet. You have twice failed to brew it for me. This disaster is on your head.”

“Veritaserum is a temperamental brew. It mislikes the presence of aurors in close proximity.”

“I thought I had warned you often enough of the costs of disobedience.”

“Your unhappiness is not a cost to me.”

“If my threats have been insufficiently specific—”

Dawlish cleared his throat. “Dolores,” he said, “please manage your staff on your own time. I must report to the Minister before daybreak.”

Her chest heaved with frustration. “Fine,” she said. “The report. Yes. You may tell him that seven — no, eight — students have been expelled tonight. And Harry Potter will be enrolled in a Ministry protectorate. That will make him happy. Yes.”

“What of the conspiracy?”

“Tell him we are in the process of rooting it out. We have made progress on it — we have acquired an artifact, which we believe the conspiracy has used to send coded messages to each other. Accio map.”

With a flutter, the Marauder’s Map tore itself from Hermione’s bag and flew to her hand. Harry choked. Umbridge unfolded it with an expression of great satisfaction.

“‘Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs,’” she read out clearly, then lowered her glasses and peered over the parchment in amusement. “Those are code names, I believe, yes? Four names… four ringleaders. Which one were you, I wonder?”

Ginny spat at her. “Bitch,” she said. “Fight without an auror at your fucking back, see what happens, rat-faced fucking cunt—”

“Severus,” Umbridge said sharply. Snape flicked another Silencio at her, and Ginny’s next string of profanity was nonverbal.

“Stop it,” said Harry. His voice quivered with anger. “Stop cursing her. You’re an adult. And she — she’s bleeding. Let — let us take her to the Hospital Wing, at least—”

“Tell me how to open it,” said Umbridge, lifting the Map, “and I will.”

Ginny gave a muffled cry of denial. She shook her head doggedly at Harry, grappling against the bindings on her wrists.

Hermione’s hand was hot and damp in Draco’s. She clutched his fingers, slick with panic. Her pulse thundered under his touch, keeping pace with his. “Fine,” she said steadily. “It’s — not a communication device. It’s a map of the castle. But you can’t open it, because it’s a decoy. I have the real one. If you let me, I can go get it.”

But it was too late. They were too far behind the quaffle, and Umbridge knew it.

Umbridge smiled indulgently. “Perhaps,” she agreed. “Miss Chang, come here.”

Cho shrank into the door. Cassius caught her elbow and dragged her forward.

“Mr. Potter,” said Umbridge, drawing her wand, “you are going to tell me how to open this… map. Each time you fail to answer me, Miss Chang is going to experience quite a bit of pain. Cassius, her sleeve, please.”

“No!”

“No, please,” Cho screamed. Warrington grappled her in front of Umbridge’s desk, and wrenched out her arm. “Please, no. No, no, no, nononono, pleasepleaseplease — please , professor!”

“Take me!” Harry roared. “Take me, don’t touch her, she doesn’t even remember!”

“No,” said Umbridge sweetly, “but you do, don’t you?”

Cho wailed. Draco felt his mouth fall open, and despite himself, he jerked his head to stare at Snape.

The Potions Master was a professor. A member of the Order of the Phoenix. Dumbledore had trusted him. And he was avoiding Draco’s gaze, rolling his wand as as if he intended to watch the torture of a student without lifting an eyebrow. In his eyes lived a flat black nothingness, devoid of warmth, devoid of empathy, devoid even of interest in what was happening. An icy crust of desperation sealed over Draco’s sternum.

He tried to imagine what his mother would do. Narcissa would have known how to make Snape do what she wanted. She would have known what to do now; probably she could even have made Umbridge stop, if she were here.

Then it came to him — not what she would do, but one thing she could.

Discreetly, under the cover of his robe, he drew his wand. Amidst Cho’s screaming and Harry’s ragged protests, few noticed him rolling his wrist to angle his wand at Snape, inside his cloak, nor the whisper that slipped through gritted teeth.

It was desperation that moved his hand and his tongue; he had no idea if it would work, but he had watched his mother do it perhaps half a thousand times. He had felt her do it, as well. He could at least guess at what the spell entailed, what it required of the caster.

The spell was an act of violation, his mother had said. It was an act of violence against the mind of another being. So he brought his will to bear on it, drew up all the fear and frustration of watching the betrayal of Dumbledore, the disgust and repulsion of watching the torture a fifteen-year-old girl, the withering hatred that accrued from a year spent in suffocating fear of pain, and imagined himself driving a blade between his godfather’s eyes.

Legilimens.

His mind became a pane of flat black glass. The room blurred and slipped away. He plunged into the lightless space of the mind, falling in it. He took the thing that was his consciousness, the space it occupied in the realm of Occlusion, and for the first time, he cast it probingly outside of his Occlumency shield.

The pane of black glass became a knife, and it flew. The rush of airless space dizzied him.

His mind slammed against something so hard and cold his body convulsed in physical space. It was more than a mental shield. Touching Snape’s mind was like driving at full speed on a Firebolt into a castle wall. It left him starry and pulsing with pain.

The world slotted back into place. He staggered and nearly collapsed into Dawlish. Hermione caught him and dragged him away from the auror.

“Are you alright?” Her fingers winding tightly in his shirt. He nodded shortly.

Snape made a guttural noise. He was braced on the wall, one hand lifted, as if to block a blow to his eyes; he stared at Draco, mouth parted in an uncharacteristic posture of surprise, as if Draco had neatly gored him.

“Draco,” Hermione pressed. He curled his hand around her waist and braced himself on her, cold sweat dampening his temples.

“I’m fine.”

“Obviously not—”

“Later,” he muttered, though he did not know what or when later would be. From her distraught stare, neither did she.

Cho had dissolved from screaming into babbling sobs, braced on her knees in front of Umbridge.

“Dolores,” murmured Cassius, “the girl’s mother works at the Prophet.”

“Are you questioning my order?”

Cassius shrugged and tipped his head towards Ginny, saying nothing. Umbridge blinked, and then she smiled.

“How apt,” she said. “Thank you for your counsel, Cassius. Bring me the other.”

He tossed Cho aside. She stumbled and collapsed to the floor, catching herself hard on her elbows. Ginny was hauled forward, her heels skidding against the floor, thrashing and snapping at him with her teeth.

The replacement changed Harry; instead of shouting, he dropped to his knees and fell completely, terribly still, staring at Ginny as if she were the only living thing in the room. His stare was transfixed.

“Please,” he said, with a low broken voice, like prayer. He was not even really talking to Umbridge anymore.

Ginny was wrestled to the floor, her arm wrenched out. She panted, staring doggedly at Umbridge through the red and bloodied curtain of her hair.

“To demonstrate,” said Umbridge. “Mr. Potter, tell me how to open this map.”

“Please,” said Harry, incoherent with grief.

“No,” she said sadly. “That’s not an answer. Diffindo.”

Ginny screamed. Red slit her forearm. Blood welled and wept from the cut.

“Episkey,” said Umbridge, after a moment. The cut sealed over neatly, though the blood still dripped from Ginny’s arm. She turned to Harry and inclined her head knowingly. “Do you see?” she said. “Do you see what happens to them?”

“Please,” said Harry, distantly. His eyes were swollen. Tears dripped from his face, new rivulets spilling every time he blinked. “Professor. Please take me instead.”

“You can’t do that.”

Umbridge twitched. Hermione had spoken, and when Umbridge paused, she spoke again.

“You shouldn’t,” she repeated. It was flat and cold and clear and hopeless. “It’s against the law.”

Hermione did not touch her wand. She stood before the headmistress, weaponless, with the long stare of a girl with a prefect’s badge who knew she was right, and also knew that it did not matter. That she was standing on the hill of a dead cause, and she, too, meant to die there.

Nausea gripped him. He wanted to haul her out of the way, out of sight, but it wouldn’t do any good. No matter where he took her, she would fight her way back to that spot. Through anyone. Through him, if she had to.

“Not that it matters to you.” Hermione clenched two fists full of nothing but air, small and bold and clever and terrible. “You don’t care what the laws are, so it doesn’t matter. You’ll do what you want anyway, because you can, and you think that’s a good enough reason—”

“Severus,” Dolores said, but Snape did not respond.

“—to hurt people who don’t do what you want — nobody respects you, they’re just afraid you’ll hurt them. Only it was a poor strategy,” she said, “because you forgot something about children. You don’t really understand children, professor, I suppose it’s because you don’t like them very much. But they learn by copying, you see. They follow the example of their teachers.”

“Silence, Miss Granger!”

“I cursed Cho,” Hermione spat, bitter with a razored edge of pride. She did not look at Harry. She held her head high like the queen of a burning Carthage, for all she cared what anyone thought of her. “It wasn’t Draco, it was me. At the beginning of the year, I cursed everyone in the Army to forget everything that would incriminate Harry if they ever betrayed him, and when she came to you, she triggered the curse. A mudblood cost you your conspiracy, put that in your report to the Minister. Want to know where I got the idea, professor? From Veritaserum. You can’t force someone to say something they can’t remember. I can’t say the Ministry never taught me anything. I can’t say you didn’t, either. You taught me what fear is. You taught a lot of people what fear is.

“You made children bleed for telling you the truth,” she said coldly. “You made them hate you. And then you taught them how to handle pain. What do you think people do when they’re not scared of bleeding anymore?”

“Right,” said Umbridge furiously. “Right. Cassius, I think Miss Weasley has had enough. Bring me Miss Granger.”

Bellows of objection came from Harry and Ron. But Draco was moving already, without thinking, without deliberating, a completely instinctive movement for his wand. He drew it and had the curse on his tongue, a bitter word he had read written in a book, a word to cause pain — regardless of the aurors, who in the blank rage-hot panic of that moment he really did think he might be able to kill, if they tried to stop him — and Snape clutched his arm.

Green flames erupted from the fireplace. Silhouettes bloomed from the smoke, an auror’s greatcoat, first one, then another, then a third. A man stepped out of the hearth: broad, but slender, with a mane of sabled tawny hair and ragged brows that framed a pair of shrewd, yellowish eyes, the pale green of algae on a scummy lake. He stood with a hunch, hands behind his back, as if the shape of his spine was wrought for the purpose of looming. He swept out, red ashes crunching under his boots.

He paused when he saw Ginny on the floor, blood drying on her arm, and Harry on his knees. But with a glimmer of something in his expression, he visibly set it aside, and focused on Umbridge.

“Auror Scrimgeour,” cried Umbridge. “You — what are you doing here? Dawlish was soon coming in to make his report—”

“This is an emergency.” Scrimgeour’s voice was hoarse and deep like a chain-smoking giant. He gestured to the aurors, and they moved at once to his side, abandoning their posts by Warrington. Umbridge’s eyes darted to follow the movement, and she moved further behind the desk. “I came because an owl would arrive too late. You must secure the school.”

“The school is secure,” she said irritably, gesturing at Harry. “We have apprehended the rebel, and we will soon have his conspirators, so there’s really no need for you—”

“Forget the boy, what does he matter?” Scrimgeour snapped. His voice was an icy lash to the throat. Harry lifted his head, staring blearily at Scrimgeour in confusion. “You have greater concerns than student discipline. I come to tell you that you must raise the castle wards. I’m putting a detail of dementors at the gates.”

Umbridge paled. “What happened?”

“There was a break-in at the Ministry. The Department of Mysteries has been sacked.”

“Dumbledore,” she gasped. “It was Albus Dumbledore, he came to—”

“No,” Scrimgeour snapped. “Not Dumbledore. A contingent of Unspeakables allowed a party of unidentified wizards to pass unnoticed into the Ministry and remove a vast quantity of Dark artifacts without being identified. All of the Department’s security features were disabled. None of the recording devices have captured anything from the period of the invasion. No fewer than sixty-three Ministry employees have failed to report to auror summons for questioning. Whoever did this has fingers deep inside the administration. The operation required the cooperation of dozens of employees, if not hundreds—”

“The Order,” she cried, “the Order must have done it, at Dumbledore’s behest—”

“Dumbledore did not have platinum clearance! This was a conspiracy, Dolores, and it came from within the Ministry! Either the Order has done it, and the Order has infiltrated the Ministry so thoroughly we may as well surrender to it—”

“That is not possible!” Umbridge screamed at him. “That cannot happen! You are mistaken!”

“—or we are facing another terrorist cell,” said Scrimgeour, ragged. “One much larger than the Order. One that has lain deep in the shadows for a great deal of time.”

“It’s Voldemort,” said Harry. He did not raise his voice. His eyes were shut. “I told you. I told you a year ago.”

The door creaked. Draco turned his head and caught Snape slipping out of the room, his cloak flickering behind him. No one else appeared to notice; Umbridge and Scrimgeour were caught in a fierce battle of inexorable truth against immovable will.

“Check how many of the missing employees are purebloods,” Harry added dully. “Actually, don’t bother. I can tell you.”

“What does Albert say?” Umbridge croaked. “What does he think? What — what does he want me to do?”

There was a long pause. Scrimgeour’s expression mingled pity with contempt.

“No successful attempt has been made to contact the Minister,” he said.

Umbridge gave a cry, clutching the desk for strength. Harry barked a laugh.

“You would never suggest—”

“He was not at his residence when aurors arrived. There are no apparation trails. He is gone.”

“Then they have kidnapped him,” she gasped. “They have — have taken him, this sect, or else— or else he is dead, then—”

“Dolores, take hold of yourself.” Scrimgeour raised his voice. “We have no Minister now. That is all that matters. We must protect the school. We must raise our defenses—”

“Albert would not betray us—”

“—elect a new Minister, if Runcorn cannot be found—”

The door was still ajar. Draco thought again of running, wildly, of dragging Hermione with him by force, but his dream shattered against the knowledge that there was nowhere to go.

“Keep everyone inside the castle,” he said. “No one comes in. No one leaves it.”

“You cannot command me,” Umbridge retorted, moving furtively back from the desk. “I serve at the Minister’s discretion—”

“Let him come to reprimand me,” snapped Scrimgeour. With the firelight at his back, he approached her, and his shadow bloomed over her pinched face. She stumbled away from the desk, and he stepped around it, edging her out of the headmaster’s seat.

“This is against the law,” she shrieked. “This — this is a coup! I am the rightful headmistress — the school is mine! The auror office cannot just take it from me! You cannot do this, Rufus!”

“We are facing a reckoning,” he replied. “I regret that the law does not abet this. But these are not lawful times. Dolores Umbridge, in my capacity as Head of the Auror Office, I direct you to surrender control of the castle, or else it will be taken from you.”

It escaped no one’s notice that there were now no less than six aurors in the room — six aurors, eight students, and Cassius Warrington, whose expression remained impassive, lightless, and cold.

“Do as the aurors suggest, madam,” he said. It was the first time he had not called her professor. “For both of us.”

“You,” she cried in outrage. “After what I did for you— after all I gave you—”

“You will be permitted to retain your post as headmistress,” said Scrimgeour. “This is a security measure. If you comply with my orders, you have no cause for concern.”

“It is my school!” she screeched. Her face was a red crumple of unhappiness. “Mine! It isn’t fair!”

“What is fair will yield to what is necessary.” Scrimgeour turned his back on her, and addressed the aurors. “Take the injured to the Hospital Wing,” he ordered. “Shutter the Floos. Lock the Owlery. Inform the faculty. No one can leave Hogwarts until more is known about the nature of the crisis.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir.”

“Sir.”

Underneath the clamor, Harry had crawled across the floor to Ginny, and held her face between his hands. He spoke to her in low, hasty murmurs; her eyes, dazed and starry from pain, fixed on him as if he were the sole lighted object in the room. When he used his sleeve to scrub some dried blood from her temple, she gave him a brave, weak little smile.

Cho pushed herself to her feet, swaying some. “Hermione,” she said quietly, “can you— can you undo the charm on me? I’d like to — remember, please.”

Hermione took a deep breath.

“I don’t know,” she said coldly. “You should see someone about it.”

Cho flinched. “You — but — sorry, what do you mean? You do know how to undo it.”

“I mean what I said. I don’t know a countercharm for Obliviate. Do you?”

“No, but you must!”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Hermione!”

“What?” she snapped, whipping her head around. “What is it? What? Did you hear anything Scrimgeour said? There are more important things to think about—”

“Not to me! You stole a year of my life!” Cho was furious, but her voice had the shrill cadence of a plea. “You can’t just do that to a person! I didn’t betray Harry! Even if you think I did, I don’t — I can’t remember that, it isn’t fair!”

Hermione drew her head back. Her eyes were dark pits with coal guttering at the base.

“Consider this a chance to start over,” she said.

Something in her tone snagged at Draco’s ear. It came to him belatedly, as Cho crumpled under the unabating sear of Hermione’s glower: he recognized Hermione’s tone because it sounded very much like himself.

Consider this a chance to start over. He wore her signature so deeply and so clearly on his soul that it had never occurred to him to check hers for his fingerprints.

Scrimgeour and Umbridge were conferring in deep tones. George had joined Harry and Ron at Ginny’s side, and Luna was holding herself, rocking back and forth, mumbling. Hermione reached for Draco blindly, and his hand was there where hers sought it, winding around hers like two vines that grew together on a castle wall.

She turned to him, and a wild light guttered in her eyes, fierce and frantic. He had never seen her so except when she was about to curse something or weep. Rage or grief. The coin was in the air. There remained but a moment, a slender one, when it could be pushed.

He drew her hand up and pressed his mouth to the back of her knuckles. His lips touched the fingers that had cursed the girl who betrayed them, and they loosened at his kiss.

Hermione’s shoulders sank. Relief broke up the rigid lines of her face, softened them, but let the fear come, too. She tightened her grip on his hand. The fire carved the silhouette of two creatures limned in darkness. The coin fell.

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Well, this has been a real “martha i’m back in the fucking building” kind of year for me so far, but the good news is, I’m not dead, and neither are you. I can’t say much of anything except that on God, I will finish the story I started, no matter how long that takes me. I’m committed. I am also, however, a frail human being who gets swatted around like a horsefly by my schedule + health sometimes, so my promise to update is not immediately time-limited. Also, Book 5 in general has been fighting me in the edit, but I’ve finally wrestled this chapter into something publishable, and I shipped it to you as fast as I could.

I love you guys. Stay safe out there. Next chapter: “I Will Not Tell Lies.”

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