Draco Sinister Part 11: The Sleep of Reason

dedicated to Heidi, Rave, Pandora and Rhysenn


***

"I need your help," Sirius Black said.
Without a word, Snape shut the door firmly in Sirius' face.

***
It was so clingingly wet in the corridors under the Burrow that
Ginny felt as if every breath she took filled lungs with water. She
could hear Ron, Hermione and Charlie behind her, splashing through
the puddles that became increasingly deep, Ron muttering under his
breath as he went. They were talking, but she didn't join in. She was
concentrating on following the very slight, very insistent tugging
sensation in the center of her chest, pulling her forward.
"So what exactly happened to Helga Hufflepuff?" Charlie was asking.
He was holding his wand high above their heads, lighting the path in
front of them. Of all of them, he was the driest, since his tough
dragonhide trousers kept off the water.
"Slytherin killed her," said Hermione, who had given up trying to
stay dry and was splashing through the puddles as if she enjoyed
it. "He killed Godric, too. And Rowena, but that wasn't on purpose.
Not," she added hastily, "that that makes it all right. I'm just
saying."
"He seems to have regarded homicide as not just a job, but a hobby,"
said Ron, still keeping a watchful eye out for spiders.
"Well, he was a general," said Hermione. "He had his own army. He
killed people all the time. I suppose he just," she shuddered, "got a
taste for it."
"Not to mention," put in Charlie, "that when you can flatten entire
cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-
things-from-the-other-fellow's-point-of-view is seldom necessary."
"That's true," Hermione agreed.
Ginny suddenly paused, and the rest of them paused with her. They
were at a place where the corridor split off into a triple-branched
fork: left, right, and straight ahead.
"What's up Gin?" Ron demanded.
"I can't quite feel which way to go," said Ginny, a little anxiously.
The tugging feeling seemed to have gone for the moment, and she
suddenly felt cold and rather damp.
"Well, you must have some idea," said Ron, a bit peevishly.
"Ron," said Charlie, warningly.
Ginny shook her head. "No, I..."
"Well, let's go straight ahead then," announced Ron, walking past
her. Ginny hesitated for a moment, and was about to follow after him
when, having taken no more than twenty steps down the corridor, Ron
suddenly vanished. Straight into agragog's arms, right?

***

"And you trust her?"
Draco rolled his eyes as Harry hissed in his ear. They stood side by
side, flattened against the wall of the wide stone corridor outside
their erstwhile prison cell. Fleur was down at the end of the
corridor, peering anxiously around the corner.
Harry shivered. Malfoy Manor was old, so was Hogwarts, but this place
was ancient; age seemed to seep, like cold, from its very stones. It
was dim, too – torches burned in brackets on the wall, but not very
many and not bright. He knew now from Fleur that they were at the
castle in the forest where Hermione had been held prisoner; Draco had
even claimed that he recognized the corridor they were standing in
from his previous visit, but then he had stopped, blinked, shaken his
head, and announced, "It's the same castle all right, but it
looks...different."
Harry had decided it was better to ignore him if he wasn't going to
say anything helpful.
"And you don't?" Draco hissed back.
"About as far as I could throw Hagrid. Come on, Malfoy. She's an
airhead, she's boy-crazy, what makes you think she could formulate
such an involved rescue plan?"
"She was a Triwizard champion," Draco pointed out reasonably.
"So was I, and you always tell me all my plans are crap."
"All your plans are crap. You don't think she might be a blessing in
disguise?"
"Well, if she is, it's a very good disguise."
"Any disguise involving a push-up bra is A-okay with me. Unless of
course we're talking about Hagrid in disguise, and I just went to a
very dark mental place here... Distract me, Potter. Say something."
"Fleur's coming back," said Harry, pushing himself off the wall.
Fleur smiled at them as she hurried up, her silver hair bouncing in
thick waves on her shoulders. "Allons-y," she directed, gesturing
that they should follow her. "The `allway is clear. Come on."
"What I wouldn't give for my dad's Invisibility Cloak," muttered
Harry, as they raced along the corridor, sticking close to the wall,
dashed around the corner, and followed Fleur as she yanked a large
door open, and pelted inside. She closed the door behind them, and
leaned against it.
They were in a narrow stairwell whose stone spiral stairs led down
into darkness. It was so dim Harry could only see Draco and Fleur as
vague shadowy outlines, both crowned with silver hair that shone like
beacons in the darkness. He reached into his pocket and felt for his
wand –
"No," said Fleur urgently, grasping his wrist. "No magic."
"Why not?"
"There are wards up all over this castle. We cannot risk setting one
off."
"But it's dark, Fleur. We'll break our necks."
Fleur said something in French that Harry strongly suspected meant
that he was a toad-faced worrywart, and marched off down the stairs.
Hesitating slightly, Draco and Harry followed. Sure enough after they
had made three turns round the stairway they found a torch burning in
a bracket high up on the wall. Fleur hoisted it down, and they went
down the stairs in a line: Fleur first, then Draco, then Harry, the
torch casting their eerily elongated shadows against the stone walls.
The staircase set Harry's teeth on edge. There were of course no
handrails, and the rough stone was made for tripping on. He was
fairly sure that at any moment he'd catch his foot and go careening
headfirst into Draco. They were just making their tenth and he hoped
final turn around the stairs when Harry heard Fleur give a little
gasping scream. He craned his neck but couldn't see over Draco's
head; Draco exclaimed suddenly, "Fleur, back up!"
She backed up quickly just as Harry came down the stairs and saw what
had startled her.
They had reached the foot of the stairwell, which ended in a large
oak door covered in intricate carvings of leaves, flowers, and
twining vines. In the center of the door was a carved face: beaky-
nosed and saturnine, with an upturned, narrow mouth. The eyes of the
carving were alive, they darted from side to side, alight with
sardonic amusement.
Draco took a step down the stairs. "Ahem," he said. The door looked
at him. "Do you talk?"
The door made a faint creaking sound. It sounded a little like rusty
hinges, and a little like "Maybe."
"So you speak English?"
"Yes," said the door, looking irritable. "I do speak that human
language."
"Do you really speak it, or are we just going to spend the next hour
asking each other the way to the beach in very loud voices?"
"I told you I speak it," snarled the door. "Now what do you want?"
"I want you to let us out," said Draco, turning back to look at
Fleur, who nodded.
"Are you sure you want to go out there?" the door asked, with soft
malice. "It's not very pleasant out there. Much safer in here." So
this is the door from Hitchhiker's Guide, right?
"We're sure," said Harry, who had reached the foot of the stairs now.
"You do know what you're getting yourselves into –" began the door,
and then Draco moved, intentionally or not Harry couldn't tell, so
that the torchlight fell on the sword buckled at his waist. The door
almost seemed to shrink back. "I did not know it was you," it said to
Draco, and swung wide.
Draco's face had gone blank with surprise, but Harry didn't pay much
attention. Through the open door, he could see a strip of starry
night sky and a narrow expanse of grass –outside, he thought,
finally. He stepped through the door, and Draco and Fleur followed.

***

Bang.
Snape heard the door shut behind him and felt a savage satisfaction.
As the door had swung shut, he'd seen something change in Sirius'
face, shock moving into incredulity into despair. He had been so sure
that Snape would help him with whatever his sordid little problem
was. Because Sirius had always one of those to whom everything came
easily without struggle or hardship; the sort of person who others
fell all over themselves to help. The sort of person to whom the
world had been given, no questions asked.
But of course that wasn't entirely true.
Not really focusing on where he was going, Snape walked into his
kitchen and stared blindly at the opposite wall.
Azkaban.
That had stopped Sirius laughing, had shut up his laughter forever.
Sometimes Snape dreamed about Sirius in Azkaban, his laughter
shattered forever into screams like bright shards of glass. And there
was some pleasure in that imagining, but also a gnawing sort of
darkness. It was strange – of all of them he would have said he hated
James the most, hated James for what he was rather than what he did,
because while Sirius liked to torment Snape, liked to hide his books
and distract him during exams by humming rude songs, James
just...ignored him. Looked at him as if he were less than nothing,
certainly not anyone who mattered.
And then James had saved his life, and that had been worse. He
remembered James dragging him back from the Shrieking Shack, throwing
him on the ground, cursing Sirius under his breath, and Snape had
thanked him, and it wasn't like him to thank people but he'd still
been shaking with fear and reaction, so he had thanked James for
saving his life even though they weren't friends, and James had
looked at him out of cool gray eyes and said,
"I would have done the same thing for anyone."
And he had hated James in that moment more than he had ever hated
anyone in the world or would ever hate anyone again. But James was
dead; there was no point hating James any more. James was dead, and
Lupin was pitiable; there was only Sirius to hate. Sirius, who had
never been looked at in a way that told him he just didn't matter;
Sirius, who James had loved in a way that Snape couldn't even imagine
being loved. Not by a friend; not like that.
The Dark Mark on his left arm was burning as it sometimes did when he
was agitated, and his hands were shaking. He sat down at the kitchen
table and switched on the radio. The sharp sounds of the WWN
announcer filled the room:
Further news has come from the Ministry regarding the disappearance
of Harry Potter. Apparently, there is another boy missing with him,
Draco Malfoy, son of the late Lucius Malfoy of the prominent
wizarding family. Both boys have now been missing for a day, and the
Ministry urges anyone with information regarding either of the boys
to come forward as soon as possible. Meanwhile the wizarding world
faces the awful possibility, "Have we lost the Boy Who Lived?" In
other news --
Snape got to his feet, switching the radio off as he did so, and
almost before he knew what he was doing he had turned and walked out
of the kitchen, had raced down the corridor to the front door and
thrown it open, letting in the cold night air.
And there was Sirius, still standing in front of the door, head
bowed, less like someone who was waiting than like someone who had
nowhere else to go. His head whipped up as Snape opened the door, his
eyes lighting with surprise and anger and – hope.
Snape clutched the knob of the door hard in his hand and
snarled, "All right, Black. Tell me why you're here in ten words
exactly, or I'll activate the Repulsus Charm that's on this porch and
it'll hurl you halfway to Hogsmeade."
Sirius looked as if he were counting to ten and finding it
insufficient. "Because I need your help," he ground out, through
gritted teeth.
"That's five words."
"Because I need your help, you very smug total bastard," he snapped,
losing his temper. "There you go, Snape. Ten words of your very own."
The letter shook in his hand. "You want me to beg? Is that what you
want?"
"I know you'd rather die than beg me for anything," said Snape.
"I would," Sirius agreed. "But I'm not the one who's going to die."
There was a short silence. Then Snape stepped out onto the porch, and
crossed his arms over his chest. "Talk," he said.
In several short sentences, Sirius told Snape about Lupin, and what
had happened to Harry and Draco. "If I can help Remus," he
finished, "then he can tell us more about Slytherin – he's been being
Called to a location, he must know where it is. Don't look skeptical -
- I looked it up – no one's ever been brought back from being Called
before. It could work. It might be my only chance to get to Harry
before it's too late. And I can tell by your expression that you
don't believe me," Sirius' voice climbed several degrees in
pitch, "and I'm telling you, Snape, that if you send me away from
here without even hearing me out, I swear to you I will hunt you down
and I will make sure that you spend the rest of your life sucking all
your meals through a straw –"
"That won't be necessary," said Snape.
Sirius paused, and blinked. "What?"
"I was wrong about you once," Snape said, taking a secret and
surprisingly satisfying pleasure in the dumbfounded expression on
Sirius' face. "I'm not wrong often." He swung the door behind him
wide. "I'm not planning on being wrong again."
Sirius looked from Snape, to the door, then back at Snape, as if he
couldn't quite grasp what was happening. Then, with a sharp twitch of
his shoulders as if he were shaking off some dark shadow that clung
to him, he walked over the threshold and into Snape's house.

***
Harry felt a keen shock of disappointment as soon as they stepped
through the door. They were outside the castle in a sense, but not
really outside. He found himself in a space between two very tall
walls that rose up and up, making a walkway that ran from where they
stood to an open door in the far wall at the opposite end. It was
thickly overgrown with grass, as if people rarely passed there. Above
him, Harry could see that the moon was lopsided, not quite full, but
it gave more light than he was comfortable with. He craned his neck
back and looked up and around – the castle seemed bigger than he
remembered, and much less tumbledown – the moon-silvered battlements
were very forbidding in the darkness, and there were dark shapes
ranged along them.
Guards, he thought, and Draco and Fleur followed his gaze upward, and
nodded. Fleur's face was pale with fear in the moonlight. "We must be
very careful of those," she whispered. "Those are shapechangers. They
are Slytherin's creatures. Each possesses several shapes, and one
must dispatch them in each shape before they can be killed." Then she
pointed across the narrow walkway towards the door in the far
wall. "We are going there," she whispered. She looked at Harry. "You
go first."
They went forward in a line: Harry, Fleur, and then Draco. At first
it was bare moonlit ground, but it kept getting rockier and weedier,
and they had not gone very far when it turned into wet knee-high
grass. A cold, wet, close sensation overtook Harry, as if he were
crawling through a slimy cave. It was extremely unpleasant. He shook
his head, looked up – and nearly yelled out loud.
Three dementors were looming over him, their black cloaks turned
gunmetal gray by the moonlight, their scabbed, rotting hands
outstretched. His yell choked itself off in a gasp and he scrabbled
backwards on his hands, his heart slamming against his ribcage, his
mouth going dry. He glanced around wildly for Fleur and Draco, but
saw them nowhere.
The dementors were advancing slowly towards him. Harry scrambled up
to his knees, thinking desperately – happy memory, happy memory. He
cast his mind back to the night before, lying on the couch in the
Burrow with his head in Hermione's lap, her hair falling down around
them. Listening to her quiet breathing. He shut his eyes. Hermione –
and the tight knot of cold around his ribcage eased a little bit –
but then he thought of her as he had last been with her, in the
Weasleys' kitchen, her small hand in his, freezing cold with her
terror, and a black wave of fear for her swept up and over him like a
dizzying tide and –
Hands came down heavily on his shoulders, pulling him roughly
backward.
The kiss, he thought, they're going to perform the kiss –
Kiss you? I hardly know you, came Draco's amused voice, cutting
through the cold fog in his brain like a sharp knife severing a skein
of wool. Harry blinked his eyes open, and saw Draco standing over
him.
Get up, Draco told him, sounding less amused this time, and Harry got
to his feet. His hands were still shaking but the cold fog seemed to
have lessened. Come on, and Draco grabbed him by the shoulder and
propelled him forward. Harry took two steps, and the grass twined
itself up around his legs with blades as sharp as swords and began
cutting into his skin. He yelled. Draco's grip on his shoulder
tightened. Think about something else, he told Harry urgently, and
keep moving forward, and Harry thought hard about Hermione, squeezing
his eyes nearly shut, even though every time he took a step he felt
as if the grass was cutting his legs to ribbons. But he went on being
able to walk on them long after they should have been mincemeat, and
after a few strides he was able to ignore the feeling.
What's going on? Harry demanded.
Nightmare Grass, Draco replied shortly. Makes you see whatever you're
most afraid of. Trick is to walk right through it and ignore the
pain; it goes away after a little bit. The slower you go, the more
nightmares you get.
And it doesn't bother you? Harry demanded incredulously, thinking
that this seemed unfair.
That potion Snape gave me helps. Also, I knew what it was. That helps
too.
Don't tell me. Your dad used to grow it back at the Mansion.
Got it in one, Draco replied shortly.
Didn't your father ever consider putting in maybe a tennis court or a
nice gazebo instead?
Don't knock it – my Dark Arts background just saved your hide,
Potter. But don't worry, I'll be sure to call in your expertise as
soon as we have to deal with, say, a small box of puppies.
Harry was about to retort when he caught sight of Fleur, lying in the
grass on her back. She seemed to be involved in a battle with her own
hair, shrieking and flailing with her arms at nothing. Draco knelt
down next to her and touched her shoulder gently. She yelped and hit
out at him, screaming in French.
Draco caught one of her arms and Harry seized the other. It wasn't
easy holding on to her – she was kicking and screaming and seemed
inclined to bite as well. They dragged her quickly from the grass to
the dirt at the foot of one of the walls. She went instantly quiet,
and pulled away from them, gasping and wide-eyed. She stared up at
Draco, who was closest to her. "You're all right?" she said, in a
quavering voice. "Your bones aren't coming out?"
Draco blinked. "It's me."
Fleur took a shuddering breath. "What was that?"
"Never mind," said Harry, and craned his neck back, pointing up to
the dark shapes on the silvery battlements. They were no longer
still, but moving slowly, purposefully, torches raised... the guards.
I think they heard us yelling, he thought.
You mean they heard you yelling. Draco glanced up, then held out a
hand to Fleur and helped her up. You all right?
She nodded.
"Then run," he said, and broke into a flat-out run, Fleur and Harry
close at his heels, They flew through the Nightmare Grass, reached
the far tower, and hurtled through the door, slamming it hard behind
them.
They found themselves in a dimly lit entryway – there was only one
window, and it was nearly overgrown with ivy. A long corridor snaked
away into darkness to their right. Still shaky from exertion and
adrenaline, Harry started off down it at a run, the others behind
him. Or so he thought. Having gone no more than a hundred paces, he
came up short at a tall wooden door. He grabbed the handle and
tugged; it was locked.
"Fleur, is this the way –" he began, turning. And blinked. Draco was
standing behind him, looking curious, but there was no sign of
Fleur. "Malfoy? Where's Fleur?"
Surprised, Draco turned. "I thought she was behind me."
Harry lowered his hand from the door. "We'd better go back."
Draco opened his mouth to say something – and a cry echoed through
the corridor, originating back where they had come from. It was a
sharp, distressed cry, and the voice was obviously Fleur's.
Both boys bolted back down the corridor. They burst out into the
entryway, and stopped dead.
Fleur, holding a thin-bladed knife, was backed against a wall by one
of the guards: a tall man in a heavy cloak, a short sword in his
hand, his back to them. His shadow, in the pulsing torchlight, clawed
at the ceiling. Fleur's eyes flew wide when she saw her companions,
and she gave a little cry of relief.
A little cry, but it was enough. The guard spun around, raising his
sword, and advanced on Draco and Harry.

***

Hermione's stomach dropped down into her shoes. "Ron?" she shouted,
running forward and nearly elbowing Ginny aside. She could hear
Charlie right behind her as they approached the spot where Ron had
disappeared. "Ron! Where are you?"
A very irritable voice spoke out of the darkness. "Down here."
Beside her, Charlie raised his wand, flooding the corridor with
light. The uneven walls were suddenly thrown into sharp relief, the
muddy floor that stretched in front of them...and ended, rather
suddenly, in a gaping, jagged-edged hole. Hermione raced to the edge
of the hole and peered down.
Ron's pale, annoyed face looked up at her. He seemed completely
unharmed. Hermione sagged in relief. "Ron, are you all right?"
An expression of distaste crossed his face. "Mud," he said
succinctly. "And it's dark." He glanced around him, squinting. "Could
somebody toss me down a wand? I think I dropped mine into the mud and
I'd like to find it."
Hermione tossed her wand down to Ron, who caught it.
"Lumos," he said.
Bright light burst from the wand, illuminating the space around Ron.
Hermione watched as his expression changed to one of gratified
amazement. Instead of the disgruntled look of someone who had fallen
out of an airplane without a parachute, Ron now looked like someone
who had fallen out of an airplane without a parachute, only to land
in the hot tub at the Playboy Mansion.
"You have got to come down here," he exclaimed.
Doubtful, Hermione peered over the lip of the hole. Before she could
move to do anything, though, Charlie had leaped down beside Ron in
the pit, landing on his feet as lightly as a cat. Then he turned
around and held his arms up to Hermione. "Your turn. I'll catch you."
Taking a deep breath, she jumped. Charlie caught her easily and
lowered her gently to the ground. She stifled a smile – the rough
feeling of the dragonhide against her skin made her think of Draco.
She heard the sound as Ginny jumped down after her, but didn't turn –
she was too busy staring around her. The expression on Ron's face
suddenly made sense.
It looked as if they were in some sort of underground vault. The
floor was covered in mud, but stone shelves ranged along the walls
held overflowing piles of valuable-looking objects – jewels, gold
coins, bolts of tapestry, silver plates, cups and bowls. To be sure,
much of it was ruined with age – the cloth rotted through, the silver
tarnished – but the majority of it was surprisingly intact.
Hermione looked over at Ron, who was still staring around himself in
shock. She could read the look on his face as clearly as if she were
reading a book: All this was down here all these years, and we never
knew.
A sudden burst of sympathy for him propelled her to his side. "Ron..."
But he was examining something in his hand. "Look at this." He held
out a gold coin to her; she took it without much interest—then
stared. The face stamped on the coin was ... familiar. "That looks
like Harry," she said blankly.
"It's Godric Gryffindor," said Ron. "It's a Gryffindor Galleon.
Really old. They're worth loads." He looked at it a bit wistfully. "I
wish we could show it to Harry – he'd think it was hilarious, him on
a coin."
"He'll get to see it," said Hermione firmly. She slipped it into
Ron's breast pocket, and patted the pocket closed. A gleam at the
corner of her eye caught her attention, and she turned and picked up
a tiny round mirror, edged with silver. It reminded her strongly of
the Mirror of Erised, with a very slight difference –
"I think we probably shouldn't take anything from here," said
Charlie from behind them. Hermione turned and looked at him. He was
wearing an expression of mingled amazement and wariness. He pushed a
stray lock of dark red hair back from his eyes, and sighed. "I know
it's tempting, but you never know what kind of spells – Ginny, what
are you doing?"
Hermione and Ron both turned, and saw Ginny. She was standing in a
corner of the room, staring quite fixedly at the wall. Exchanging
looks, Hermione and Ron hurried over to her. "Gin, what is it?"
Ginny pointed. She was looking at a wall of even, gray stone bricks –
or so it looked from a distance. Up close, it was possible to see
that one of the bricks stood out. It was a pale silver color,
metallic. All around it the wall was thick with dust, but it was
clean, untarnished. Etched across the side of it was a sentence of
what looked like poetry in thin, engraved letters:
To be gold is to be good to be stone is to be nothing, to be glass is
to be fragile to be cold is to be cruel.
Ron made a little groaning sound. "Another riddle?"
"It looks like it," said Charlie, ever the cautious voice of
reason. "Anyone want to venture a guess?"
I know the answer, Hermione thought to herself. But instead of
speaking, she looked at Ginny.
Ginny hesitated. She took a step forward. Then she raised her hand,
and with her right index finger drew, in the dust that covered the
wall beneath the silver brick like a thick powdering of flour, the
shape of a heart.
Hermione thought she heard a faint chiming noise, as of distant
music – and the brick slid out of the wall and toppled into Ginny's
outstretched hands.
From which it was immediately removed by Charlie, bent on examining
it. It turned out not to be a brick at all but a sealed silver
casket, rectangular in shape. The top was engraved with a raised
emblem: a magical creature with a lion's body, the head of a man, and
a scorpion's tail. The tail was curved into the shape of a sideways
8. Infinity. Under its feet stretched a line of words in Latin.
"What do those mean?" inquired Ron, staring suspiciously at the box.
"I think it translates roughly as "This huge sausage looks very
suspicious," said Charlie, looking wise.
"It does not," snapped Hermione, taking the box from Charlie's
hands. "It means `This belongs to time and the dark places.' There's
also another word here, which looks, well, a bit like the word
for `death'...but it might not be." She peered at it closely. So did
Charlie.
"Erm," he said, "it looks like there's a button here on the side that
could be pressed..."
"No," said Ron, sharply. "I mean, come on, this box has the
word `death' etched on it. It says it belongs to the dark places. Now
if it had a nice little placard saying `This is an Orgasmatron' on
it, I'd be the first to try your basic button-push approach, but what
with the death and the darkness and –"
"Accio," interrupted Ginny, firmly. The box soared out of Hermione's
hands and landed in Ginny's grasp. She glanced up, saw them all
staring at her in astonishment, and smiled serenely. "This is mine,"
she said, with quiet conviction, and touched her hand to the side.
The box emitted a single sharp musical note, and opened like a
flower, the lid sliding back. Bright light shone from its interior,
illuminating Ginny's pale face as she reached into it and drew out
something that dangled and shimmered on the end of a finely wrought
gold chain...something shaped like an hourglass, something ornately
wrought and carved...
"Oh," breathed Hermione, looking from the glittering pendant to
Ginny's startled face. "It's a Time-Turner."

***

As the guard came towards them, Harry saw with shock that it wasn't
human, not a werewolf either, but something else entirely – it had a
wrinkled, piglike face with long tusks that protruded from either
side of its mouth. It moved towards them swiftly, but before Harry
had time to do more than step back, Draco had raised his sword and
put the blade through its face. It made a noise like a bucketful of
water being poured into a patch of mud, staggered back and collapsed
to the ground, blood pouring from its head.
Draco looked ill. Harry, who had drawn his own sword, took a shaky
breath and clapped him on the arm. "Well done, Malfoy."
"No!" cried Fleur, hurling herself off the wall she had been pressed
against, "they are shape-changers, I told you—"
She was right. As Draco and Harry gazed in horror, the dead-looking
guard on the floor wavered and blurred and became a squat, scaly
creature that leaped to its feet and charged at Draco again. Looking
startled, he dispatched it for the second time, and it became a many-
limbed snaky thing. This time Draco chopped off its head, using
another fencing move that Harry would have recognized, except by this
point Harry had stopped watching, because a second guard had come
into the room and leaped straight for him.
He swung the sword at it and managed to slice open its throat. This
did very little good, as it immediately turned into a tall man
carrying a longsword, and charged at him. Harry stopped thinking and
let the sword in his hand do its work – he had already discovered
that if he cleared his mind, it seemed to come to life in his hand,
or, more likely, that the undercurrent of knowledge from Draco was
able to work its way up and direct his arm. But every time he tried
to analyze what he was doing, he lost his footing or missed a stroke,
so he stopped trying to plan and let his instincts take over,
catching at the unfamiliar names of the motions he was making as they
fled under the surface of his mind: bind, double bind, circle parry,
riposte.
He quickly slaughtered the longsword man-shape, which turned into a
wolf, which turned into a large, fox-like creature, which turned into
a petite beautiful woman in a leather breastplate. This last
incarnation startled Harry so much that he staggered back and nearly
lost his footing. He had barely a chance to blink when something
silver whipped over his head and embedded itself in the shape-
changer's chest. It was Fleur's knife.
The creature screamed, blurred, and folded like a rag doll; this
time, when it crumpled to the ground, it bled inky green blood and
lay still.
Heart pounding, Harry glanced at Fleur, who was looking down at the
dead guard with a dazed expression. "Thanks," he said, and glanced
past her to Draco, who was standing over the dead body of the first
guard, white-faced, and looking just as shaken as Harry felt.
Feeling Harry's gaze on him, he looked up and quickly rearranged his
features a look of bland amusement. "So," he said. "Did anything
about that strike anyone else as ... unusual?"
He grinned the smug grin that Harry always wanted to hit.
"Shut up, Malfoy," said Harry wearily.
Fleur meanwhile was bending down to retrieve her knife from the
guard's chest. "More of them will be coming," she said,
straightening up and turning -- and then quite unexpectedly, she went
white and pitched forward onto her hands and knees.
"Fleur—" Draco covered the distance of the room in a few strides and
knelt down next to her. "What is it?"
In response, she clutched at his arm. Normally Harry would have
thought this was some sort of ploy, but she really did look
distressed – she was paper-white and gasping, her other hand pressed
to her chest. Slowly her breathing slowed and she glanced up, her
forehead beaded with sweat – and Harry saw the fear in her eyes.
Draco touched her shoulder. "You all right?"
She nodded, almost speechless. "Yes – just give me a moment."
Draco glanced up at Harry. Potter – go and see if you can get that
door open. Use magic if you need to. We have to get out of here as
soon as possible.
Harry nodded and headed off down the hall, still ruminating on the
odd look of fear in Fleur's eyes. Well, they were in a very dangerous
situation, it made sense to be afraid, but still... something about
it troubled him.
What did she know that they didn't?

***
Sirius stood in Snape's workroom, strange smells tickling his nose.
They weren't bad smells, in fact he thought of it as the scent of
magic at work: burning pitch, charred stone, mysterious herbs. Thick
gray smoke rose from the cauldron over which Snape stood, twining up
towards the high-raftered ceiling and smelling strangely of mint and
cabbage. Fires burned along the table, crowned with fat-bellied
cauldrons, glowing blood-red with heat. That, combined with the
warmth of the rising smoke, was making Sirius sweat through his
clothes. Some people are going to like that imagery.
Snape, by contrast, was looking almost cold, hunched into his robes
and muttering over his cauldron. Sirius cleared his throat. "What,
exactly, is going into that potion?" he demanded.
Snape raised an eyebrow. "The old standards. Windpipe of
thistlethrush, eye of salamander, fanbelt of Jaguar..."
Sirius stared. Was Snape making a joke? Should he laugh? No, surely
he couldn't be expected to –
The moment passed. Snape hunched back over his cauldron. "Adjustments
will have to be made," he muttered.
"Adjustments?"
Snape glanced up and nodded. "The potion as I brew it is for
administration to human beings. One of the key ingredients is
wolfsbane. Obviously, some replacement for wolfsbane will have to be
found in this case, as I doubt it would agree with your friend
Lupin."
"Quite," said Sirius, feeling lost. Potions had never been one of his
favorite subjects. He much preferred Transfiguration, at which he had
excelled. He thought fondly back to one spring afternoon when he had
turned Snape's cauldron into a fat orange hamster which had bitten
Snape on the toe. No, he told himself, mustn't think about that...
"But then you always were far more interested in Transfiguration,"
said Snape, his beady black eyes glancing over Sirius, who jumped.
"Erm," said Sirius. "yes, yes I was," and he began prowling up and
down the room, trying to look preoccupied. It wasn't hard: there were
diversions enough in Snape's workroom to preoccupy anyone. Cauldrons
of all sizes, jars of dragon's blood too hot to touch, flasks of
weeping willow tears, caskets of powdered mandrake, silver jars of
powdered unicorn horn. Absently, Sirius paused to examine the books
stacked haphazardly on a table. One caught his eye in particular: a
heavy burgundy volume with a gold-stamped spine that read Demons,
Demons, Demons. He picked it up and flicked it open. Everything You
Wanted to Know About Hell's Denizens, and Several Things You Didn't,
read the flyleaf.
"What are you looking at, Black?" demanded Snape.
Sirius brandished the book in the air. "Demons, Demons, Demons – what
a title."
"It's a book about demons. What would you call it?"
"The Book of Demons?" Sirius suggested, flicking idly through the
pages.
"A name rife with single entendre."
"It was just a suggestion –" Sirius broke off, staring down at a page
of the book, his eyes wide. He raised his head. "Hey – can I borrow
this book?"
"You want to borrow my book?"
"Is there an echo in here?" Sirius said, then shut his mouth
hurriedly. Something about Snape reduced him to the approximate age
of thirteen, try as he might to fight it. He just couldn't be in the
same room with the man without having fantasies about hanging him
upside-down by his ankles over the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall
with the words "Kiss Me: I'm Irish" magically emblazoned on his
shorts.
Not that Sirius had ever done such a thing.
Certainly not.
"I mean, yes, I'd like to borrow it..."
Snape slammed the beaker he was holding down onto the table with
force. "You having a problem with demons?"
"You might say that."
"Typical," said Snape shortly, without raising his head. "Take the
book if you want it."
"Thanks," said Sirius. He realized that this was the first time in
his life he had ever thanked Snape for anything. It seemed momentous,
but Snape apparently hadn't even noticed. He was leaning back, his
gaze fixed on the smoking cauldron before him, a look of satisfaction
on his face. "It's done," he announced.
Tucking the book under his arm, Sirius strode over to the cauldron.
The liquid in it had stopped bubbling, and had settled down into a
thick, smooth silvery-gray material, somewhat reflective, like
mercury, or moonlight. It was almost pretty. Sirius reached out a
hand --
"Don't touch it," said Snape harshly.
Sirius took his hand back, nettled. "Well, pardon me for living."
Snape looked up at him from under beetling dark brows, his black eyes
flat. "No one gets pardoned for living," he said. "Not even you."
To that, Sirius found he had nothing to say. He watched Snape as the
Potions master filled a glass, copper-bound flask with a measure of
the pale-gray liquid from the cauldron. He held it out to Sirius, who
reached to take it. As he did, the firelight struck a spark off the
red stone in his bracelet.
"Vivicus charm?" asked Snape, eyebrows high.
"Harry," said Sirius shortly, taking the flask and stashing it in the
inside pocket of his robe.
"It's good that you have that," said Snape shortly.
Good for me? Sirius wondered. Or good for Harry?
He looked at Snape. Snape looked back at him. Sirius realized that
they were done. He felt slightly lost. Now what?
"Look," he began, haltingly, "do you want to come with me?"
Snape blinked at him. "What?"
"I thought," said Sirius, wondering if he might be going mad, "that
you might like to see the effects of your potion. To know – that it
worked. That's all."
"I made it. It will work," said the Potions teacher coolly.
"Oh." Sirius blinked. "Well, in that case, I should tha—"
"Don't thank me," interrupted Snape. "The image of you trying to
force that potion down the throat of a half-crazed werewolf is really
all the thanks I need."
Sirius looked down at the potion, and then back at Snape, who wasn't
exactly smiling, but had a smug sort of look around his eyes. "This
potion," he said, "it isn't going to make Lupin sprout bat ears or
boils or any other side effects like–"
"Oh, bugger off, Black," interrupted Snape in exasperation, and
Sirius, realizing that he was fighting a losing battle, Disapparated,
flask and book in hand.


***

Ron, Ginny and Hermione were sitting in the living room of the
Burrow. They were waiting for Charlie to come back from the kitchen,
where he was having one of the Aurors who had been guarding the house
hex-test the Turner for malicious spells.
Ginny was waiting impatiently for Charlie, Hermione was reading a
copy of From Basilisks to Werewolves: Anglin's Magical Bestiary, and
Ron was busy examining Fred and George's magazine collection, which
had turned up under a paving stone in the cellar.
Hermione shook her head at him. "I cannot believe you are reading
those."
Ron grinned. "These are quality publications."
"Ron, nothing you have to read sideways is a quality publication."
"You know, these magazine are really old," he observed,
conversationally. "In fact, I swear that's Professor McGonagall," he
added, holding the magazine up towards Hermione, who glanced at the
indicated page without a great deal of interest.
"It does kind of look like her," Hermione agreed. "Who knew she owned
a kimono, or was so strangely fond of marmalade?"
"Or was ever blonde?" put in Ginny, leaning over.
Ron hastily yanked the magazine away. "Ginny! You're not allowed to
look at that!"
"Why not?"
"Because you're a girl – and you're too young."
"Hermione's a girl."
"Yeah, but Hermione's been hanging around with me and Harry for
years. She's thoroughly corrupted already."
"Ron, I've got six older brothers. I'm thoroughly corrupted as well."
Hermione giggled. "Gin, don't say that, you'll give Ron an aneurysm."
Ron grinned at her. Instead of making her want to grin back, though,
she felt a wave of sadness. Ron smiling, his dark blue eyes narrowed
with amusement – it hurt a little, looking at him, because while she
loved having Ron around, even just the sound of his voice threw into
painful relief the fact that Harry wasn't there. So much of her life
now it had always been both of them, Ron and Harry, Harry and Ron,
flanking her, her constant companions. When she wanted to find Harry
in the Great Hall, she would automatically look for Ron, his height
and flame-colored hair making him stand out, and there would be Harry
next to him. Looking at Ron brought vivid pictures of Harry to her
mind: Harry and Ron tearing into their presents Christmas morning,
bits of wrapping paper flying around them; Harry and Ron both trying
to sneak looks at her notes in the library. She remembered telling
them both that someone had written OWL RON WEASLEY FOR A GOOD TIME on
the girls' bathroom wall in foot-high letters, and Harry laughing so
hard that Ron had to hold him up. It was as impossible to separate
them in any permanent way in her mind as it would be to separate
Harry from his scar, or Draco from his acid sense of humor.
Ron waved a hand in front of her face and she came back to reality
with a start. She tried to smile at him, but could feel her mouth
being uncooperative. Ron looked curious. "What's up, Herm? Thinking
about your dreams again?"
"So what if I am? Dreams have meaning," said Hermione firmly.
"Tell me about it," agreed Ginny from the other side of the
table. "The other night I dreamt that Draco and I..." she caught
Ron's look and shrank back. "Uh, it wasn't Draco, in fact it wasn't
me either. It was my friend Sue's dream and she doesn't remember
it...although just out of curiosity, how much do you think silk
sheets cost?"
Ron used his warning voice. "Ginny."
"Here it is," announced Hermione, suddenly. They both look at her
blankly, and she smiled, turning the book around so Ginny could see
the picture she was looking at. "The engraving on the lid of the box –
it's a manticore." She read out loud: "the fearsome manticore has
the body of a lion, the face of a man, and the stinging tail of a
scorpion. Its huge jaws, as well, are unique: They hold two rows of
razor-sharp teeth, upper and lower, that interlock like the teeth of
a comb when the beast closes its mouth. The teeth can slash nearly to
ribbons, and the manticore is said to relish feasting on humans. The
most dangerous aspect however is its tail. There is no cure for the
poison of the manticore, and no help for the victim who is but
scratched by its deadly sting." Hermione shut the book and looked
over at Ron, who was looking impressed. "See, there are worse things
than spiders out there."
Ginny looked surprised. "Why would that be on the lid of my box?" she
demanded. "Do you think that means there's something bad in there?"
"Apparently not," said Charlie, coming back into the kitchen holding
the Time-Turner. "Clean bill of health, I'm told," he added, although
he continued looking at it with suspicion.
Ginny held out a hand, her eyes lighting up. "Let me have it, then."
"No," said Charlie firmly. "Not until I've talked to Mum and Dad."
"But there aren't any hexes on it!" Ginny's voice came out on a
squeak.
"I know," said Charlie, looking apologetic but firm. "Gin, I just
can't. It might not be safe. After what happened with that diary, if
I gave you this without asking them, they would –"
"Charlie!" Ginny looked aghast. She spun around, looked at Hermione,
who was anxiously fingering the Lycanthe around her neck. "Hermione,
tell him—"
"Ginny," said Hermione firmly. "He's right."
Ginny's dark eyes flew wide, and without another word, she leaped
from the table, and fled upstairs. Hermione heard her bedroom door
bang shut.
Charlie bit his lip, looking at Ron and Hermione. "You understand, I
just can't –" he began, then sighed, turned and left the room,
closing the door behind him.
There was a short silence. Hermione pushed her chair back from the
table. "I think I want to go be by myself for a while," she said,
biting her lip.
Ron looked up at her, his mouth drawn down thoughtfully. "Do you
really think the Turner might be dangerous?"
She didn't meet his eyes. "Are you willing to let Ginny risk it?"
Ron looked startled. "When you put it like that...no."
Hermione passed the back of her hand across her forehead. "I'm tired.
I'm going to go lie down."
She could feel his anxious gaze on her as she left the room, but she
didn't turn around.

***