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The Shining Courts	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 2852 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 1-The Shining Courts
- 1
Title: The Shining Courts

Disclaimer: Characters are the property of JK Rowling, et al. This was created for fun, not for profit.

Pairing: Harry/Draco

Rating: R

Warnings: Mild angst, mild violence, sex, invocations of a very weird Faerie, humor, ignores the epilogue.

Word count: 31,500

Summary: In the courts of a Faerie that is all flux and fire, Harry and Draco chase a Potions ingredient that can change, and are changed.

Author's Note: Written for savagesnakes for hds_beltane 2012. This uses the following ideas from savagesnakes’s prompt: Harry/Draco/Severus (or combination of) must go to the Faerie realm, which (according to actual legend, I'm not just being silly!) only opens on Beltane, for potions ingredients. Betaed by L. and K. Hats off to you, ladies. Hope you enjoy.

The Shining Courts

            "I have to work with Malfoy?"

            Harry made his voice neutral, but it still caused Head Auror Karen Jennings to give him a sharp glance. After a few moments of studying him, as if to make sure that he wasn't about to burn down the office in a fit of rage, she nodded and rearranged the papers in front of her.

            "There's no getting around that," she said. "I don't know whether the Potions master he serves considers him expendable or doesn't believe in this legend of Faerie opening on Beltane or considers Malfoy the best of his apprentices and the only one who could manage this. It doesn't matter."

            Harry ground his teeth. Most of the time, he got along with Auror Jennings, but she said that things didn't matter far too much for his taste. Of course they did. And she could affect them more than she did, if she wanted to.

            But they had a cautious Head Auror this time, a cold one, one who had read all about the past abuses that people in her position had caused before she accepted the job. Harry reckoned he couldn't blame her--they'd had a really awful one right after the war and then a placeholder who had done exactly nothing, and apparently some awful ones in the forty years before that, too--but it did frustrate him when she flew in the face of objective reality.

            "With respect, Head," he muttered, "it does. If we can't get along long enough to find this ingredient, then we--" He swallowed. "I don't want to think about what could happen, if it is the only cure to the Red-Ear Curse."

            "We don't know that it is," Jennings said, leaning back behind her desk and studying him now as if she had expected some rebellion from him, but not this kind. "It's only the best lead that we have right now."

            Yeah, a lead on a half-legendary thing from Faerie that the books we have don't even describe properly, Harry thought. Yeah, sure we aren't desperate. But he said nothing.

            Jennings shuffled a few more papers, and then looked up. Harry winced internally. She had a great trick of doing that, meeting your eyes and making you feel as though she knew every one of those thoughts you hadn't voiced. She leaned forwards and tapped one long fingernail on the polished black glass desk in front of her, with faint echoes.

            "If you and Malfoy don't get along," she said, "if he makes one move towards that old rivalry that I know from your files you used to have, then it's up to you to be the bigger man, Auror Potter. Ignore his taunts. Keep your eyes on what you have to find. He's only coming with you in the first place because the Ministry asked his master for a favor some time ago and this is his repayment. His presence isn't meant to help you so much as placate someone else."

            Politics, Harry knew. The reason why he wasn't Head Auror in Jennings' place. Well, that and the sparring match several years ago in the Training Hall.

            To keep from thinking about that, he nodded instead and said, "All right, Head. I'll do my best."

            Jennings gave him a half-smile and reached out to shake his hand. "When you want it to be, Potter, your best is terrifyingly competent," she said, and stood. Harry stood with her, and turned towards the office door. "I'll be waiting for results. Report to me when you get to the woods on Beltane night."

            "And then when again?" Harry asked, as he paused in the corridor and looked back at her.

            Jennings smiled a little, brows lifting above her dark eyes. "I don't think the messengers will fly from Faerie, even your Patronus. Report to me when you come back."

            "You're awfully confident about that happening," Harry muttered, and didn't think she had heard until she laughed, a faint noise that always sounded more like a gasp for breath to Harry.

            "Terrifyingly," she said, and then sat down and began to mark parchments again. Harry took a deep breath and shut the door behind him.

            He reminded himself again, as he began to walk towards the door that would lead him to the Apparition point, which in turn would lead him to the part of the North Downs where he was supposed to meet Malfoy, that he had changed since the war. There were incidents since then that meant more to him than anything except his killing of Voldemort and what he had shared with his friends through the years. He was no longer the boy he had been, and that meant he could get along with Malfoy, at least in the way that he did with people he hated in the Department, by means of nods and monosyllables.

            But his skin still prickled when he thought about it, and as he reached out to put his hand on the door of his office, something occurred to him that never had before. Tolben, the young pure-blood he'd nearly destroyed in the Training Hall that day, had looked a lot like Malfoy, pointed chin and blond hair and all. Only his eyes had been a different colour, severe and mocking green.

            Harry shuddered. I never realised that I hated Malfoy so much.

            And he had learned to distrust those secrets of his he had never run into before.

*

            "You're sending me off on this expedition because I'm expendable."

            Potions master Neptune Polaris didn't even look up from the vial in front of him, in which something thick and white seethed slowly, bubbles popping up to the surface of the potion and bursting with a milky sound. "You can think of it that way if you want to, Malfoy," he said, and began to scribble something on his parchment, something that Draco couldn't read from this angle but wanted to, something alive with thick curls and lines so thin that they looked as if he was bleeding them rather than writing them. "But it is not the truth."

            Draco ground his teeth. He had wanted service with a Potions master who was somewhat indifferent to who he taught, he reminded himself; that was the only way to find an apprenticeship after the catastrophe of the war and what it had done to his name. But he hadn't thought it would mean someone who didn't care about his life, or saw no difference at all between apprentices.

            "I don't think it's real, sir," he tried. "And if it is, then who's to say that there's going to be enough of it to both serve as the Ministry's cure for this curse and as the base for the experimental potion you want to construct?"

            Polaris laid his quill on the table and looked up at Draco. Draco took a step backwards in spite of himself. He hadn't meant to, but he had developed a dread of the slow, dark blue eyes, and the way they would turn on him.

            "You don't know that," Polaris said, his voice gentler than someone might have expected unless they had heard him on the edge of exploding before. "You don't know anything, Malfoy. Isn't that why you took service with me? Because you don't know how to survive in the world on your own?"

            Draco choked back the response he wanted to make to that, and nodded reluctantly. "Yes, sir," he said. "But--"

            "I am sending you on this expedition because you need more experience," Polaris continued, leaning back and giving Draco a cool look. The effect of those blue eyes surrounded by the pale white robes that some Potions masters, including the ones of the school where Polaris had been trained, affected, made Draco fall back another step. "Much more experience, if you are going to serve me adequately. And you will go, and do your best, and not fuck up. Do you understand?"

            Those last words made Draco blink again. He didn't think he had ever heard Polaris curse. Perhaps it meant something new, that he was finally giving Draco the experience that Draco had begged and pleaded for some time to have.

            Or perhaps it just means that you've finally so irritated him that he doesn't care anymore what happens to you.

            "Er, yes, sir," Draco said, and then backed away and bowed once, to see if that would placate the man.

            Polaris watched him, then flipped one hand to dismiss Draco and grunted back to his work. Draco watched the line of his shoulders for a moment, and wished he knew whether this was meant as punishment or privilege.

            Especially since he was going to have to work with Potter, of all people.

            Draco scowled as he stepped out of the cool and half-underground Potions lab where he served his apprenticeship and made his way towards the Apparition point in the middle of the large herb garden. He hadn't thought much about Potter in the last few years, because he had been busy surviving, and then deciding what he wanted to do, and then making that dream come true in spite of all the opposition that the Ministry could put in his way. But the more he thought about him, the more, he thought, he would come to resent him.

            I'll wager he's been doing whatever he wanted while I was stuck slaving away here. Opportunities would have rained down from the sky on him. He can do whatever he wants, yes, and I have nothing except what I fought for.

            By the time he Apparated, the bitter tang of resentment overlay Draco's tongue, and he almost looked forward to seeing Potter again, simply so he could compare the results of hard-won labor with the pampered spoiling that should have been his.

*

            "Potter."

            Harry would have known that drawl anywhere. He thought he would die knowing it. He deliberately didn't turn around and glare at Malfoy, who of course had Apparated into being behind him without the telltale sound he should have used. Harry wondered if he had mastered silent Apparition so that he could sneak into people's protected stores and steal their Potions ingredients.

            Of course, experience doing that could be of use when we're basically going to steal something from Faerie.

            Harry hated it when his mind insisted on being reasonable. He coughed and said, "Malfoy," and then waited, because he wasn't about to give Malfoy any more than his name when Malfoy hadn't done that for him.

            Malfoy said nothing, but moved up beside him, so Harry had no choice but to see him out of the corner of his eye. Harry grimaced, rolled his eyes to heaven, and then turned to face him, because no one was going to be able to say that he was a coward.

            Malfoy wore pale robes that looked like spun glass. His white-blond hair hung around his face in a smooth cut that Harry didn't believe stayed in place without the help of spells. He had fingernails that Harry thought he must go and have trimmed by some professionals in Diagon Alley, because they didn't get like that by themselves. He faced Harry and stared at him, his robes swirling around him and then coming to a stop.

            For a moment, there was such tense stillness between them that Harry thought it would have been appropriate to waiting on the edge of a crater for a volcano to explode. And no one would say anything, it appeared, until the end of the world. Harry shook his head and decided that he could give in, this once.

            "I assume you brought the proper collection vials?" he asked.

            Malfoy blinked slowly, as though he hadn't expected a reasonable question. Or perhaps hadn't anticipated someone who would ask it without a Potions master's education, Harry thought.

            Harry's stomach clenched for a moment. He had done a lot of proving himself to Malfoy and his Slytherins in school--proving he was smarter, faster, superior to their little plans. It seemed that he wasn't done with that yet.

            Or with hating him, either, whispered the back of his mind as the vision of Tolben drifted across it.

            God knew what Malfoy would do with that secret if he discovered it, that Harry had nearly killed someone who looked so like him. Harry didn't intend to let him find out. He just held Malfoy's gaze, smiling blandly, and waited for him to answer.

*

            How does someone like Potter even know about collection vials?

            Draco reminded himself swiftly that Potter could have learned about them from someone trained, educated, experienced, who had given him that knowledge so he could represent the Ministry and look good doing it in front of one of Master Polaris's apprentices, but on the whole, obscure disappointment ran through him like tar. He had expected…something else. Not this bland man in Auror robes, who would look nondescript even up close if not for Potter's scar and striking eyes.

            He had expected the swagger, the shine, and had almost looked forward to seeing it again, to seeing how the years would have changed Potter and how they hadn't. Where was it?

            But meanwhile, Potter was staring expectantly at him, and Draco could remind himself that, one way or the other, he had won the first round, forcing Potter to speak while he maintained his silence. He could answer this particular question with no loss to his pride. "I have several," he said, and opened a pocket in his robes, pulling back the top like the lid off a box, to show the vials.

            Potter peered in, exactly as if he had the expertise to tell one kind of vial from another, and then his brow wrinkled and he stared at Draco. "Do you think we're going to catch fish or something?" he demanded, jabbing a finger at the small group of vials that did indeed, Draco had to admit, look like the kinds of bowls that Muggle children might keep goldfish in.

            "Or something," Draco said dryly. "This ingredient changes its form as it runs through Faerie; you know that."

            "I heard something about it, yes." Potter seemed to realise that he was standing too close to Draco then, or at least too close for his Gryffindor Auror comfort, and took several steps backwards. He still divided his gaze between Draco and the contents of his pockets doubtfully. "But in that case, will a vial hold it at all?"

            Draco shrugged. "In its original form, it's a small blue flower, and it will change form and rush away only if we're careless enough to let it. We ought to grasp it quickly."

            Potter scowled. "No one told me what it looked like."

            "Or how the gate would open, either, I imagine," Draco said, and turned to look around their landing point for the first time. Potter had taken his attention more than the landscape, something he could admit to himself but would have denied vehemently if anyone had tried to force him to confess it aloud. Now he could see that they were on the eastern slope of a faintly green hill, with a tight ring of small trees around them, blocking their view to the top. The grass around them formed a clearing, and when Draco bent down and sniffed at it, he could catch the faint but distinctive scent of natural magic.

            "No," Potter said. "We had to be at this point, on Beltane, and the gate would open. That's all I know."

            Draco rolled his eyes and reached into his pocket for the key that Polaris had given him. He had treated even that artifact as though he didn't care whether or not Draco brought it back, which was all the more infuriating. He took it out now, and held it towards Potter.

            Potter looked at it, and found it hard to take his eyes away; Draco knew from the way he blinked and craned his head around again. "What is that?" he whispered. "It is made of sapphire?"

            Draco let himself smile, although it was partially wasted effort because Potter wasn't looking at him and partially because he had asked the same thing the first time he saw the key. The delicate dark blue loops and whorls, touched with gold around the edges, did look as if they might be carved of a jewel. "No," he replied. "Rather, the frozen air of twilight on a Beltane eve." He bounced the key in his hand. "This unlocks the door into Faerie."

            He turned, and lifted his head. He could feel Potter staring beside him, but at the key or at him or at the passes Draco was making with the key through the air, he didn't know. He only knew that this was the right place.

            It had to be, or he would kill Polaris for making him look stupid in front of Potter.

            The key buzzed in his hand suddenly, and Draco only managed to hang onto it because Polaris had warned him that might happen. It moved forwards, and the confidence in the motions infused Draco's limbs, too, and made him feel less like he was only a puppet of events, or the gate.

            The wind picked up around them, and Draco heard the pulsing of voices, half-audible, and the chanting of a clear, high one that he had heard one Beltane when he was a child, and watching the passing of the Shining Ones out the window of Malfoy Manor. He smiled and looked over his shoulder at Potter.

            "Do you know what Beltane is, Potter?" he asked, not raising his voice. Potter wouldn't experience the magic around them the exact same way, but he stood in the same enchanted sphere the key was creating. He would hear Draco without trouble. "Have you ever celebrated it?"

            Potter frowned at him, his eyes darting in several directions, his hand hovering near it. "I know it happens on the first day of May," he said sharply. "I know it's a fertility festival, and people used to celebrate it by jumping over fires and that kind of shit."

            Draco laughed. Magic was singing up his arm from the key, and he dew the last line and stepped back as the crystalline sketch of a door came to life on the air before them. "Oh, Potter. So much more than that."

            The door had strength, solidity, and power, suddenly. Draco could no longer see the trees through it. It was the wavering dark blue colour of the key in the centre, still lit around the edges with pale fire. And it was swinging open.

            Through it came--

Light.

Well, Draco had expected that. Few of the reports of Faerie said it was a dark place, except the ones from people who thought they had been taken Underhill. But this was a light of a kind he had never expected, shining, blue and white, blazing, and with a rosy undertone to the back of it that made him think of a sunrise.



            Potter made a little sound. Draco turned, and saw his face by the light pouring through the door. He looked absurdly young. Draco was reminded of the eleven-year-old he had met on the train, when Potter had refused his hand.

            But no, whispered his memory, before Draco could work himself up into proper indignation. That's not the first time that you met him, remember? You saw him first in Madam Malkin's, when you didn't have the slightest notion who he was.

            Draco didn't want the memories, and he didn't want the voice, and he didn't want any little fold of conscience interfering in the way that he preferred to treat Potter. He shook his head roughly and stepped forwards, stretching one hand out. "Come on, then," he said loudly. "We have to go through it."

            Potter didn't seem to hear him this time. He stood there with his eyes fixed on the gate, and shivered, and Draco wondered if he had worn that expression his first year in Hogwarts when no one could see him.

            But at last he also stepped forwards, and then picked up the pace, and Draco found himself walking beside Potter as they passed through the gate.

            Inside, they met the waterfall.

*

            Faerie was making Harry remember the dreams he'd had as a child, when he sometimes woke up crying at the Dursleys' because he had dreamed of a place where he was loved and wanted.

            He didn't like it.

            The air around him was the same, full of darting colours and warm breezes plucking at the corners of his vision. Harry turned his head away and focused on the air in front of him, which seemed less likely to be full of things that he could only notice out of the sides of his eyes.

            And there was a waterfall, a tumbling thing of sheer white beauty, which made a series of small, sharp noises like fireworks going off when the water hit the pool beneath it but otherwise was silent. Harry halted and stared at it, at the cliff of sapphire rocks that it spilled over, and then the pool at the bottom, deep and dreaming, green in colour, and shook his head.

            There was nothing behind the cliff except shifting dark mist. When Harry turned and looked over his shoulder, the door had already vanished from behind them. Malfoy stood at his side on crystalline ground that trembled and cracked like a floor of glass made to bear their weight.

            "Are we supposed to have come out at a point of Faerie that would show us this ingredient?" Harry asked. His voice had too many echoes in this place, he thought, too much motion that danced around the tones and then subsided. He shuddered and rubbed his arms. Now, instead of reminding Harry of some of the dreams he'd had on Privet Drive, it reminded him of the nightmares.

Malfoy moved forwards, ignoring Harry as he studied the waterfall. Harry bit his tongue and said nothing. It was possible that Malfoy might know something about the nature of Faerie that Harry didn't, and any knowledge that could help them survive this and return with the ingredient was knowledge he needed to hear.

            The Red-Ear Curse turned the victim's brain to blood and made it pour out their ears. So far, there was no counter for it, and the Dark wizards using it wielded it more and more often, leaving dead bodies in their wake where before they might have been stunned or wounded ones. They had to find some cure for it.

            Harry doubted that was the reason Malfoy's master had sent him to seek it, but he suspected he was the better fighter. If necessary, he could battle Malfoy back and take the collection vials.

            As long as you don't kill him, whispered his conscience, which remembered Tolben.

            Harry bit his lip, hard, in vexation, and concentrated on Malfoy, who had walked a few steps forwards and then paused, head tilted as if listening to distant music. He took a vial from his pocket, sealed the cloth over the rest, and then held the vial up so that he could catch the breeze that was swirling past them.

            Then he tried to slam a cork over the top of the vial, with a swiftness that somewhat made Harry change his mind about how able he was to actually take Malfoy in a fight.

            It didn't work. Something like a white butterfly with too many wings squirmed away from the cork and then landed on a stone at the base of the waterfall's pool, staring at them with quivering, multi-coloured eyes.

            "I thought it was a flower?" Harry muttered out of the corner of his mouth to Malfoy, while trying to come up with a way to move towards the creature that wouldn't immediately startle it into flight again.

            "It was supposed to be." Malfoy ground his teeth and bit his lip, both unpleasant motions to watch. "Potions master Polaris could have been lying, or exaggerating. He does that sometimes, as a test."

            Harry spun towards Malfoy, hands locked on his wand. "People are dying, and he thinks that kind of thing is funny?" he asked in incredulity.

            The butterfly-like creature took off again, changing as it moved. Now it resembled a small monkey with dark blue fur, pumping its way through the air with limbs instead of wings. Now it was tumbling over and over itself in a waterfall of light, apparently borrowing tiny gleams from the large one above it. Now it was nothing but a scrap of shining cloth, dancing with the wind, blown back and forth.

            "Wonderful, Potter," Malfoy said, without much change of expression. "I suppose that we could have done other things to start the flight and the shapeshifting, but you chose this one. Good show." He began to follow the creature, now and then jerking his head to the side when it flew behind a curl of mist that hung in the air.

            "If he gave us wrong information just to fuck with us, or because he dislikes you, or whatever," Harry snapped, still following, "then I think I deserve to know it."

            Malfoy held up a hand, and despite himself, Harry found something in the gesture so commanding that he fell silent. Malfoy counted beats under his breath for a second, and then flung himself up and into the air, reaching with his vial and cork to catch the edge of the creature's tail. For a moment, Harry even thought it would work.

            Instead, the creature turned and dived straight into the waterfall. Malfoy landed on the slick stones at the edge of the pool and had to scramble to catch himself, looking for a minute as if he would lose fingernails as he dug at the rocks.

            They stood there in silence, Malfoy's mouth seamed with bitter lines, and watched the waterfall play into the pool. Then Harry took a deep breath and nodded at Malfoy. "We have to follow it, yeah?"

            "Yes, we do," Malfoy said. "And water in Faerie is always a border, a curtain, implying some separation between what lies on one side and what lies on the other. We cannot be sure if the air of Faerie there will be air as we understand it, possible to breathe."

            "I have a spell that can keep us alive in all sorts of circumstances," Harry said. He grimaced as he spoke; he hated casting the Survival Curse, which would drain him dangerously near the point of magical exhaustion, but he would if he had to. There were people back in the real world who needed this cure more than he needed to avoid going into the waterfall. "Come on." He splashed into the pool.

            "Potter!" Malfoy snapped.

            Harry paused and looked back at him. The water swirled around his legs, singing with a faint, high, sweet sound like a bird on the edge of exhaustion. Harry could already feel it pulling him towards the falls. Well, so be it, since they had to go in there anyway. "What?"

            Malfoy's lips worked for a second. Then he said, "This gate--this gate led us to a part of Faerie where there aren't many creatures, by design. But we can't guarantee that the same thing will be true of the land on the other side of the waterfall."

            Harry grunted and shrugged. "Then we can't. We'll bear up somehow." He turned his back on Malfoy once again and began to slog. The water now sounded as if it was being crushed, like grass.

            "There could be tests to pass there." By the sound of it, Malfoy had come down to the very edge of the shore, following him. "Tests that would change us, or perhaps kill us."

            "But not prevent us from returning to the real world?" Harry squinted. No, he didn't think it was his imagination. The waterfall in front of him was wavering back and forth slightly with the push and tug of something that was not wind, parting like curtains to swing and gesture. As he watched, one tongue of whitish water even unfolded into a beckoning hand.

            "If we live."

            "That's all I need to know, then." Harry took another step, and the stones gave way beneath his feet so that he was in water up to his neck. He treaded it, noticing that it was cold only in random places against his skin, and gave Malfoy a sweet smile over his shoulder. "Coming?"

*

            Draco wondered if he could explain to Potter why this was a bad idea in the minute and a half he might have before Potter vanished entirely behind the waterfall and left Draco behind to take the blame for his disappearance.

            Probably not.

            Draco gritted his teeth and stepped into the water. Of course it swirled strongly around his hips, and of course it pulled him deeper; this was crossing a boundary, too, the one between water and land, though not as large as the border that the cataract marked. Cross into a different place, change the location of your feet, and you might be changed, too, transformed beyond sense and recognition.

            From the looks of it, though, Potter wasn't worrying about that. He splashed merrily in the direction of the waterfall, and Draco caught a glimpse of the deep, swirling colours beyond it. The water was already letting them through, then.

            Even if Polaris's instructions to him had been mostly lies, Draco didn't think his warning about venturing deeper into Faerie than necessary had been.

            He gave a martyred sigh that would have done his mother when confronted with Death Eaters sitting on her furniture justice, and followed.

            The water stung at his skin, and when he was moving under the fall, suddenly the full noise of something this large was there, cascading in his ears, slamming into his skull. Draco ground his teeth down again, probably removing another layer of enamel, and waded, and struggled, and swam when he had no choice. He remembered, dimly, that the more vigorously one tried to cross a border, the worse the effect would be, because free choice mattered in Faerie.

            But he had no choice now. Potter had already vanished ahead.

            One moment he was stumbling through cold darkness with the pressure of water all around him, and the next he stood, not even dripping, in the middle of a huge dry hall. Draco craned his neck to stare up at the ceiling. It reflected stars, arranged in constellations that he didn't know, with faint lines of white light roping even the various planets into pictures.

            "Welcome!"

            Draco snapped his head forwards and down. In front of them was an enormous golden table, either the real metal or so skillfully shaped from wood the same colour that Draco couldn't tell them apart. The woman who stood behind it saluted him with her cup and then bent from the waist, offering an interesting view down her white gown.

            "I welcome you to the Kingdom of Under-Hill, Forever and a Day!" she cried.

            She had high cheekbones, shining green eyes, spun gold blonde hair that put the table to shame, and too many joints on the fingers of her hands. Elf, Draco was sure in an instant. One of the highest creatures of Faerie.

            And the waterfall had brought them straight into the centre of a court of them, as Draco could see by glancing warily up and down the room, all sorts of elves and other high-ranking creatures seated at the table and eagerly staring at them.

            Shit.

*

            Harry braced himself against the wall behind him, which thrummed for some reason, and stared around. He didn't see the bright creature they'd followed in any direction, but of course, he was sure that was intentional on its part. It could look like anything, and a crowded room was probably the best place to hide.

            The elves bowed to him, and the woman who had welcomed Malfoy lifted a golden cup that was transparent enough to show Harry the wine--or whatever else it was--inside. It surged like blood against the sides. The elf smiled and drank, and then held out the cup to him. "Will you not try?" she whispered, in a voice just this side of enchanting.

            Harry felt a compulsion grip his legs, trying to move him forwards. But although he didn't know much about Faerie, he knew that eating or drinking anything in it wasn't a good idea. He shook his head and stayed put.

            The elf tossed her head backwards, staring at him. Her fingers closed around the goblet and curved inwards as if they would crumple it. Harry stared, and saw her nails flowing and changing like the waterfall, becoming hooked.

            "You idiot," Malfoy hissed into his ear, and then leaned forwards in turn and cleared his throat. "Dear one, you know that if we did that, we should be compelled to return to Faerie again and again."

            The elfwoman turned a bright smile on Malfoy and half-bowed her head. Her hair fell around her pointed ears, rich with red undertones that made Harry wonder where they had been a moment before. "But I would like that," she whispered. "A chance to know you, a chance to love you." She turned and shifted towards them so that they could see her face was flowing in turn, becoming ever more beautiful. Or Harry reckoned it would, eventually; at the moment, the sight came close to nauseating him.

            "Ah, but in time we would pine and die away for want of you," Malfoy breathed at her, actually fluttering his eyelashes. Harry ignored the odd reaction in his gut when he saw that. It was probably related to the fact that he had seen Tolben's eyelashes doing the same kind of helpless flutter after he had defeated him, he decided. "And then you would have to behold our mortal bodies, and mortal bones. I know that the sight of anything ugly is harmful to you. I would not cause harm for the world."

            The elfwoman shuddered and placed a hand on the long expanse of neck that she seemed to have grown, above her breasts. "Thank you for your care," she said. "I would indeed not want that."

            All right, so you have to flatter them, and do it with pretended courtesy, Harry thought grimly. And that just meant he was more fucked than ever. He had never been good at courtesy.

            He glanced at Malfoy, who gave him a grim little smile that seemed to encourage Harry to trust him--not that Harry was happy about that, either--and then abruptly shot a hand down and gripped Harry's, drawing it up. "You have a famous man among you, my lords and ladies!" he cried out, like a trumpet. "Did you know it?"

            Something with a dragon's body and a boar's head leaned forwards across a golden platter filled with so many strawberry tarts that Harry couldn't imagine even a real dragon eating them. "In what way?" he asked, his voice sounding exactly like one of the reporters' that Harry spent so much time dodging.

            Malfoy ignored Harry's unsubtle yanking on his hand, and reached up with his own free hand to smooth Harry's fringe back. "He is marked," he whispered. "Marked by the hand of the storm, marked by the hand of the heavens. Do you see? Do you know who he is?"

            There came a gasp that seemed to sweep through the room, and then the elfwoman who had welcomed them first bowed down so that one of her ears lay on the table. Her hair dipped into a bowl of what looked like volcanic chocolate, but she took no notice of that. Her wide green eyes were fixed on Harry. "Do not destroy us!" she begged. "We did not know!" Her voice rose into a wail.

            Harry had no idea what was going on, and had the impression that this was enormously important, at the same time. For some reason, he thought of the thrum in the wall behind him.

            It had felt as if he could still feel the waterfall tumbling down. And he remembered the way that the elfwoman's face and claws had altered.

            Changing. Like water…

            It meant something. Harry had no idea what it meant, at the moment, but he knew that it was something added to his perception of the court around him, and the elves, and the way they had spoken and the way Malfoy handled them.

            He stood there with his head up, and looked properly silent and aloof for the moment. Malfoy gave him a single glance, and nodded. Slowly, Harry thought, biting his lip to keep himself silent, as though he hadn't thought that Harry could do anything to impress him, but he did it.

            "He will not have to destroy you if you permit us free passage through your court," Malfoy told the elfwoman who seemed to be the speaker for them all. "Allow that, and there is no reason that we should think of you with anything but friendship." He weighted his words down meaningfully, and spent a few minutes holding the elf's eyes.

            She stood up now as if she had never pressed her head to the table and regarded them with distant eyes. "Everyone who comes here uninvited must pay a toll," she said. "They must offer us a gift in return."

            "We have," Malfoy said, but Harry thought he could feel it slipping, flowing, melting away, whatever control he had tried to exert over the Faerie creatures in this particular place. "Your lives."

            The elfwoman laughed, her voice so piercing that Harry winced. It was like being stabbed in the ear with a glass needle. "Those are not yours to give. Tell us what you will pay." She glanced at Harry, and there was no concern or fear in her face now, the way that there had been only a few minutes ago. She leaned forwards as though she would leap the table and tear the scar off his forehead if necessary.

            Chaos, Harry thought. Changing all the time, like water. Any deception we come up with doesn't need to last for long. Just for long enough.

            He tossed his head back and bared his teeth. The elfwoman took a cautious step away from the table, but it was the kind of step that could change into rushing around the further end and coming at them, as Harry knew from seeing other enemies do that.

            "Lightning," he said. "Thunder. The sight of glory unleashed. That is what we will show you."

            And he swung and pointed his wand at the wall behind them, the one they had evidently passed through when they came from the waterfall, and roared with all his power, "Fulmine! Fulmine! FULMINE!"

            He didn't often pour as much magic into his incantations as he could. There was such a thing as overkill, and not every battle he fought as an Auror was the equivalent of the battle that had killed Voldemort.

            But this time, he wanted that effect, he wanted that power and that air of command, and it answered him. The court filled with lightning, leaping and shining, cutting away from him and into the walls in blue-white, twisting jags. The floor shook, and Harry heard howls. It was simple to cast an illusion that made the lightning seem to come from his scar, even if only for a moment.

            "Mercy!" the elfwoman shrieked. Through the dazzle and glare, Harry thought he could see her clinging to the table as if she thought it would dissolve and run away from her. "We accept the gift! We accept the toll!"

            Harry twisted his wrist, casting a nonverbal Finite, and smiled at the elfwoman. He didn't bother turning his head to check the expression on Malfoy's face. The important thing was that he had done this much, and he had achieved momentary dominance of the watery Court. He had to fight to keep it, now, before the moment passed and he lost it again, but that wasn't something he was exactly adverse to.

            "Then you will let us pass," he said. "Lest we stand here and stay here, and dwell within the lightning, and make it impossible for you to dwell."

            The woman cowered and gasped and nodded, and her hair swayed back from her pointed ears. Harry thought he could see the changes trying to overtake her mood and face, but as yet, the impression of the storm he had created was too strong. Of course, lightning was something that creatures who were part of water probably got to see up close at least some of the time.

            "We will be leaving now," he said haughtily, and turned towards the far wall.

            At once, a door opened in front of them, a silver gate studded with pearls and something shiny that Harry thought was mother-of-pearl. Pretty, glimmering, rainbow-coloured shells also clung to the outside of the gate. Harry gave them a chilly smile and a nod, and then sauntered towards it.

            Malfoy caught his arm. Harry turned to look at him, grinding his teeth and holding back the protest that he wanted to make, because it wouldn't do to show the elves a divided front.

            "The creature," Malfoy breathed, and shot a glance over the court as though the butterfly or scrap of drifting cloth might come out of the corners, impressed by their magic and their persistence.

            Harry grunted. He understood the importance of what Malfoy was suggesting, but still. He thrust his arm out, ignoring the way that some of the satyrs and undines ducked under the table, and called out, "Accio ingredient!"

            One of the strawberry tarts on the plate in front of the creature with the boar's head leaped into the air and sped towards them. Harry started to open a hand, amazed and surprised that what they’d come for was just going to fall into their palms after all.

            But the creature writhed in midair, and changed, and then sped furiously in the direction of the gate. Either it didn't know a different way out of here, either, or it was stupider than he thought it was and simply decided to take the first one available. Either way, Harry wasn't going to argue with it. He promptly began to run, ducking and dodging in out of the other food that had fallen off the table when the tarts spilled off the tray.

            Malfoy followed him, still murmuring what sounded like courtesies to the upset elfwoman, and maybe some of her followers. Harry didn't have time to listen, but he felt his lips quiver. Malfoy had saved their lives when he insisted on politeness. But it seemed he also liked it for its own sake.

            There was the gate, and Harry flung one more dramatic lightning bolt up at the ceiling, just in case someone thought about shutting it, before he leaped through. He could feel the whip of robes on his ankles as Malfoy jumped, nearly crashing into him, and they plunged down, and down, and down…

            Just when Harry was beginning to contemplate the reminder that they hadn't asked for safe passage out of the court, they landed in deep water.

*

            Draco held his breath, not knowing what would happen if they accidentally swallowed the water of Faerie while swimming in it, but not wanting to know. He struck out for the surface, his strokes strong and regular. Thank Merlin that his mother had made him take swimming lesson when he was younger. Draco hadn't wanted to, in part because his father had considered the pursuit vulgar and Lucius's word was law to Draco then, but sometimes they could come in useful.

            His head broke the surface, and he snorted and looked around, both to get some bearing on their situation and because he wanted to find Potter.

            A mop of dark hair drifted just beneath the surface of what looked like fairly ordinary water, although pearl-coloured instead of blue. Draco darted a hand out, grabbed the back of Potter's neck, hauled him up so he could breathe, and gave him a bloody good shaking at the same time.

            Potter came up with his eyes swimming, reflecting red that Draco didn't see around them. Draco stared in wonder before he realised what was going on, and struck the back of Potter's head as hard as he could. Potter gasped, and coughed, and choked, and two tiny scarlet creatures leaped out of his eyes and darted away beneath the water.

            "What was that?" Potter said, shaking his head and glaring at Draco. "Apart from you hitting me as hard as you could for the fun of it, I mean?"

            Draco snorted. "You had blind-fish in your eyes," he said. "They make you dream of visions of blood and shedding blood until the dreams replace your reality. And in Faerie, the reality is already deadly enough."

            "And constantly changing," Potter muttered, then shook Draco's grip from the nape of his neck with a grimace and began to swim towards the shore. Draco nodded and followed him. While he didn't think either of them had swallowed any water from the pool or they would already be feeling the effects, it probably wasn't the best idea to stay in it for long.

            The shore turned out to be smooth white pebbles, which rattled and ran away from any attempt to get a firm grip on them. Draco sighed and dug his fingers deep, into the grasping stand under the stones, and hauled himself up. Potter had already figured it out and sat on the higher part of the bank, head bowed as he tried to dry his hair by squeezing drops out of it.

            "I reckon you don't know where our ingredient went?" he asked Draco in some resignation, tossing his head back so that wet strands draped across his face.

            Draco stared, feeling his breath catch. And the memory of Potter casting lightning was right up there, too, ready to strike him now that they weren't running for their lives. Potter looked different from what Draco had thought him. He had never seen Potter with wet hair and splotches on his robes like this, or in the middle of a storm of his own power.

            He licked his lips and tried to reply in a casual manner, disconcerted by his own thoughts, hoping Potter wouldn't sense them. "Not at the moment. But the Potions master I work for, Polaris, thought we could catch it, and we never will if it could run anywhere. That gate only led to this place. It must be around here somewhere." He sat back on the heels of his hands and looked around, glad for the excuse to remove his gaze from Potter.

            This part of Faerie was crowded with constant, shifting, changing grey-white clouds, wrapping together and then warping apart. If Draco concentrated, he could hear what was probably the hidden trickle of a stream running down to feed the pool they had dropped into, but perhaps not. Faerie didn't have to obey the same natural laws that the wizarding world did, after all. It was just something that happened at times because it was more convenient for the elves and other creatures in some places.

            But no trace of the ingredient appeared. Draco flexed his fingers over the collection of vials in his pocket and scowled.

            "Thank you."

            Draco started and turned to check on Potter. Potter, who was closer than Draco had realised he was, the way he was leaning, and whose face he almost brushed with his cheek. He shook his head. "For what?"

            "I didn't know that courtesy would keep us safe from them." Potter shuffled his hands in the stones beneath him, as if he didn't like the way Draco was staring any more than Draco liked doing it, but he didn't look away. "I assumed that we had to do something else, or--I wasn’t even sure about the food."

            "Why didn't they send a more experienced Auror?" Draco demanded, appalled.

            Potter leaned away again and directed his own scowl at the irregular slope behind them, which quickly vanished into the clinging mist. "What, you think there's a lot of Aurors out there with training in finding magical, shapeshifting Potions ingredients in Faerie?"

            "No," Draco said, and drew away, feeling the beginning of what could have been something different between them chill its way into ashes. "I only meant--I only thought that they might have informed you about Faerie the way Polaris informed me."

            Potter shook his head and stood, fighting to keep his balance on the rotating stones. "They didn't. They just told me that I had to work with you, explained what we were looking form, and informed me where to go. Now. This way?" He pointed up the hill, and then paused there, looking back at Draco.

            Draco would have liked to continue the discussion, somehow, except that he had no idea how or where it would go. So he ended up gritting his teeth and nodding. Potter grunted at him, and they moved on in silence.

*

            Harry kept his head down, partially because he did really have to watch the stones stumbling along beneath his boots. This was the very worst sort of ground to walk on, all pebbles with no bed for them to settle on. Somebody would break a leg if they weren't careful.

            But partially so that he didn't have to look at Malfoy.

            He felt bad about arguing with the bastard. Which made no sense, considering some of the things that Malfoy had said to him.

            But Malfoy had saved his life. And bought Harry the time he needed to understand what was going on in the watery Court and come up with a suitable ploy. And not acted like a complete prat when they came up out of the water. He might even have saved Harry's life again in the pool. Harry didn't really remember. He had been shocked senseless by the fall and the plunge, and almost swallowed water.

            The stones nearly spilled him onto his arse. Harry kept his balance less because he wanted to than because he could just imagine what Malfoy would say if Harry fell like that in front of him.

            It was, ultimately, just something that had to be lived with, the fact that they had saved each other's lives, along with the fact that he had to work with Malfoy and Faerie was confusing. Facts, deeds. Harry lifted his head and studied the ground ahead of them as he thought about that, wondering what was next.

            The clouds above them began to part as he looked. Harry didn't know why he expected sunlight on the other side of them, except that they had been as thick as some clouds in storms he had seen. But it wasn't sunlight they got, only a glimpse of a hill that was shaggy and brown.

            Harry halted, blinking. That looked like honest, ordinary dirt. Something he hadn't expected to see in this glittering Faerie.

            Malfoy put out a hand beside him, perhaps needing the support because he was tripping on the stones, perhaps to get his attention. Harry thought about being an arsehole for a moment, and then shook his head in irritation--at himself, not Malfoy. He let Malfoy take his arm.

            "I think I know where we are," Malfoy sighed into his ear, coming closer than Harry would have liked, his breath warm and wet and more than a little slappable. "The Court of Earth. There's at least one for each element."

            Harry grunted. He thought Malfoy was probably right, given the stones and the dirt, two forms of earth, but fuck if he was going to give him the satisfaction of saying so. "How do we cross into it?"

            Malfoy blinked at him. "We're already in it. The pool was the boundary."

            Harry started to say that the border between the pool and the slope they had started climbing hadn't been sharp enough for him, and then sighed and chased the notion away with a sharp shake of his head. He expected Faerie to make sense?

            "All right," he said. "The Court of Earth. How do we act here?"

            "The opposite of how we acted in the Court of Water," said Malfoy, and began to walk up the slope. Harry had the distinct sensation that Malfoy was angry with him, and he hastened after.

            "What does that mean?" he demanded, out of breath, as Malfoy paused once to tap the stones ahead with one foot and find out if they would roll. "Just--no courtesy? No need to frighten them the way we did with the lightning?"

            "We." Malfoy paused once to roll his eyes at Harry. "That particular charm was all your own."

            "But it wouldn't have worked if you hadn't told them that the lightning bolt scar marked me out as some kind of storm god," Harry said. "So. I'm still trying to learn about Faerie, to become a little less unprepared." He wanted to make Malfoy laugh, for some reason, and felt a stupid surge of triumph when Malfoy half-smiled. "Is it courtesy this time?"

            "The Court of Earth," said Malfoy, his eyes half-shut as if he was reading from the memory of a textbook page, "is said to be home to the gnomes, the kobolds, and the others who are more ungainly and less graceful than the inhabitants of the other Courts. They can be made sensitive by that. To remind them of their lack of beauty and the heaviness of their bodies is enough to make them kill you."

            Harry nodded. "No taunting them. Got it."

            "It's more than that," Malfoy said, opening his eyes all the way again and glancing at Harry. "If they think that you think that way about them, then they're just as likely to attack and kill you as if you insult them."

            "Wonderful," Harry said. "A world full of subtle creatures who think they can read your mind and have the right to act on the thoughts they read there. Just like the Ministry."

            Malfoy started, as if the comparison wouldn't have occurred to him--or maybe, Harry thought, because he hadn't thought Harry would think of it that way. Harry leaned closer, suddenly intensely curious, wanting to ask Malfoy what he thought about the Ministry, what kind of life he had imagined Harry as living these last several years.

            Before he could speak, though, Malfoy said, with a nervous bob of his head, "We should get moving," and pressed on, up the slope, towards the brown hill that lay on the other side of the clouds.

            Harry bit his tongue, stared after him, sighed, and then resumed the walk behind Malfoy, wondering as he did so whether he would have to use some of those earthquake spells he had studied last year. He had never been much good at them, but that could easily be an advantage in a situation like this. The Faerie creatures might laugh at his incompetence and be inclined to spare them because of that.

            Or kill me. Or kill Malfoy.

            Harry shook his head and continued to follow Malfoy. Even if his magic had been what saved them in the last Court, he still hated this place.

*

            Draco ran all the information he had told Potter through his mind as they toiled up the hill, and wondered if he had forgotten anything. He didn't think so, but then, if he had, he would hardly remember that he had forgotten it, would he?

            Such thoughts would make him as mad as Potter in the end, if he was not careful. Draco shook his head and focused his gaze on the slope as it welled above them, simple brown earth, thick and fertile as their shoes squashed into it, the kind that would turn into mud in a rainstorm. And was utterly useless, and likely to create mudslides, without plants to hold it down.

With Faerie magic, that more than likely doesn't matter, Draco thought, and looked around for anything other than earth.

            As yet, none. When they left the white stones, the clouds had drawn back, and in front of them, instead, rose this hill. Draco shrugged and continued wading through it. Potter looked as though he was sweating and miserable under those heavy Auror robes.

            You could suggest that he take them off, Draco thought, and then bit his tongue in reality and inside his mind, shocked at his own thoughts. He grunted, and Potter turned his head and pinned him with a green gaze that was too intense and knowing for Draco's peace of mind. He struggled to keep from blushing.

            "What's wrong?" Potter asked quietly. He seemed to have got the hang of the slope now, and could climb it without squinting at it through his glasses the way he had been doing. Draco wished irritably that Potter had gone on having to look. What was the good of him having vision problems if it couldn't be convenient to Draco occasionally?

            "Nothing," Draco said, and forced a laugh. "Just wondering if I might have been mistaken. This is only a hill so far, not a Court."

            There was a soundless flash, and a tall, stocky figure appeared in front of them. Draco jerked to a halt. You'd think, he thought, his heart thudding furiously, that I would have learned better by now.

            The creature had the look of a giant, at least in the way its head sat on its body and its limbs were formed, but its bright golden eyes held more intelligence than Draco knew he would ever find in one of those brutes. Boar's tusks thrust from the sides of its mouth, and heavy, mud-grey skin dangled from its jowls. It bent towards them, and the hand that crushed down in its grip on its weapon, a cross between a shovel and an axe, rippled up and down, fingers appearing to trade places.

            "You wish to visit the Court of Earth?" it asked. Its words emerged precise and clear around the tusks. Of course that would happen, as well, Draco thought. Even creatures like this were skilled in the ways of glamour. The tusks might not be real, or the voice might not be. It was childish to think that things were as they seemed in Faerie.

            "We thought we already were, sir," Potter said, in an amazingly polite voice. Draco thought it must be the tone he usually reserved to talk to the Head Auror in; he couldn't have more than one of those. "Do we have the honour of addressing a--a king of Earth?"

            Draco released a soft sigh. That was about the safest thing Potter could have said. If the creature was of lower rank than a king, they might have just insulted it, but not nearly as badly as if they had said something the other way around.

            The creature's laughter struck over and around them like an earthquake. "I'm only a courtier," he said, when the laughter ceased and Draco had removed his hand from Potter's arm and told himself that he had not clung to him like a child needing support. "Come and see the king, then." He turned his back and began to walk up the slope, which melted into stairs in front of him. Large stairs, Draco noted, ones that were suited to the distance between the creature's strides and the length of its legs, but easier to climb than the curving slope.

            Potter followed the creature, which left Draco to follow him. "Leave it up to me," he muttered in Potter's ear, while Potter half-turned his head back to listen. "I know how to talk to them."

            "Even the ones like this?" Potter's smile flickered on and off like a lantern. "It seems to me that I've done all right so far."

            Draco shook his head. "Done well, but by chance and not training. Please let me handle the next encounter." He could feel the skin on the back of his neck prickling as Potter gave him a heated stare, but he didn't back down, wouldn't back down. His own strange thoughts would simply have to stand aside.

            Potter walked so far up the earth stairs before he replied that Draco had to begin to follow. Then he shook his head and murmured, "All right. If you want to."

            Draco cocked his head to the side and hid his relief behind a winsome smile. "What, Potter, don't you trust me?"

            "Not all the time," Potter said. "But after what you pulled in the Water Court before I could come up with the lightning idea, yeah, I'd say that you've earned some." He turned away, his face flushing as he ducked his head, and continued walking up the stairs, this time watching the edges of the stairs through his glasses as though his vision had begun to fail him.

            Draco gaped as he followed, and then told himself that he was the proud and relentless Draco Malfoy, someone who should have anticipated and accepted Potter's answer even before he began to give it. Of course Potter would agree that he was worthy of trust. Of course Draco was able to impress even his worst enemies in the end, with nothing more than the extent of his abilities.

            Except that the previous five years had proved to Draco that that view of the world simply wasn't true, given how little he had done in converting Potions master Polaris to his cause.

            Draco let twenty more stairs pass before he said, "If I see an opportunity for you to use your skills, Potter, I'll tell you." He hesitated, and then flung himself into space, because his curiosity about what would happen if he did wouldn't stop plaguing him. "After all, we worked together to escape the last trap, didn't we?"

            Potter smiled at him over his shoulder, and said, "We did," and then continued walking up the flight of stairs in silence. Draco blinked and followed him, feeling unaccountably happy.

*

            So far, Harry wasn't impressed with what he'd seen of the Court of Earth. He was more impressed with Malfoy, walking silently behind him and now and then shaking his head as if practicing speeches for the eventual king to himself.

            And I'm not thinking about that.

            So he thought about the slope in front of them instead, and the utter absence of any grass or trees or flowers, and the way that the ogre--Harry had decided to call him an ogre until proven otherwise--simply wouldn't stop walking stolidly ahead of them. They walked, and walked, and walked, and walked, until Harry's legs burned with the stretching of the stairs. Several times he started to open his mouth and call out to the ogre to stop until they managed to rest a bit, but he thought of the way Malfoy had said they took offence and shut his mouth each time.

            He tried to slow the pace, but the ogre promptly began to disappear in front of them. Harry sighed and sped up again. The ogre glanced back at them as though wondering what was taking them so long, or as though he heard the sigh.

            "Remember," Malfoy whispered beside him, voice low enough to make Harry shiver. "They will assume it’s something insulting."

            Harry nodded, and looked at the next step, which looked wider than the rest, so that he could know how high he had to move his legs. The stairs seemed to be changing shape lately, which he took as a hopeful sign. Maybe they were finally coming to the end of their journey.

            And then he cried out, and might have reeled all the way back down the staircase if Malfoy hadn't caught him. Harry grunted a thanks, and went on staring at the stair in front of him. Malfoy followed his gaze and stiffened, a motion that Harry could feel intimately through the grip that connected them.

            Ahead and above them came the ogre's booming laughter.

            The stair in front of them swarmed with tiny beings, some of them seated around a miniature version of the table that they'd seen in the Court of Water, some of them hunting through a forest of swaying brown trees, some of them dueling each other, some of them feasting. Harry caught a glimpse of what he suspected was the king, a man with antlers and grasping root-like feet stolen from an oak tree, laughing and holding up a cup to celebrate a victory.

            Malfoy started to reach down and poke at the stair. Harry caught his hand. Malfoy visibly restrained himself with a grinding noise of his teeth, and then nodded at Harry and moved back, staring at the step as he went.

            "You wished to visit the Court of Earth," said the ogre, which had trod a few stairs back down towards them. "You have been inside it all along. Our realm is as vast as the world it is named for. It is your own fault if you never looked." He had a low, dangerous, purring amusement in his voice. Harry didn't think they wanted him to laugh much more.

            "Our fault, indeed," Malfoy murmured, and then looked up and smiled. "But wide as your realm is, it does not contain one thing."

            The ogre stiffened and glared at Malfoy. "And what is that?" he demanded.

            "The kappilarrakka," Malfoy said, or something like it. Harry thought he lost track of the word by the third syllable. He certainly couldn't have reproduced it if someone had asked him. "The creature that flits freely through the air and becomes a flower when it wishes to. It cannot be here, being of air and light that it is."

            "The air bathes the earth and nourishes it," the ogre said, gnashing his tusks. "The light brings growths from it. Who says that it cannot be here?"

            Malfoy shrugged. "We have not seen it since we crossed the border. We do not know where it is."

            The ogre spent a moment staring at them with its arms folded. Harry wondered what kind of trick Malfoy was trying to pull, and whether it would work. A moment later, the ogre grunted in disgust and twitched its head to the side.

            "For the honour of my Court, I shall prove it to you," he said. "That does not mean that you have won a victory."

            Malfoy had learned to conceal his triumph, Harry thought, or at least he expressed it in a different way than he had when he was at Hogwarts. He inclined his head forwards and placed one hand over his heart as he bowed. "We would be in your debt."

            The ogre pointed one thick finger on the end of an arm that seemed to start a great deal further back than it did. "I will be along someday to claim that debt, at a time when you might prefer that I did not," he rumbled. "See to it that you remember what you have said."

            Malfoy's face whitened, but he nodded. "As you say."

            The ogre clapped his hands, and the world swirled around them. As they began to shrink and grow smaller, Harry found himself thinking about the whiteness on Malfoy's face, and whether it meant more than he thought it did. What kind of risk was Malfoy taking, to owe a debt to Faerie? He knew, and he had taken it on anyway?

            Harry licked his lips. The Malfoy he remembered would never have taken a risk like that, even to get someone else in trouble.

            As they shrank, he managed to reach over, for a moment, and touch Malfoy's shoulder, hoping to convey that way a sense of silent admiration and support.

*

            Potter had touched him, and not for the first time on this journey into Faerie.

            As he landed in the Court of Earth and the noise exploded into being around them, Draco was still shuddering with the strangeness of that touch, more than with the strangeness of their transition.

            He found himself in the middle of a hot, smoky cavern, with a table in front of them that looked like it was carved from the spine of a giant lizard. The vertebrae projecting off to the side formed seats for more creatures like the one who had brought them here, tangle-haired elves, satyrs, dryads, and what Draco thought must be more earth nymphs, with bark on their bodies and dirt in their eyes. Not many of them turned to look at Draco and Potter. Their voices raged up and down around them like a wind.

            Draco's first, irreverent thought was, Mother would have thrown them out of the house for getting mud on the carpets.

            His lips twitched, and of course that was when the King stood up and turned to them, his wooden crown bouncing in his crown of antlers.

            He was bigger than the giant who had led them, bigger than anyone Draco had ever seen, even though he was shorter than the half-giant who used to work at Hogwarts, and of course shorter than the roof. It was just--there was something about him that loomed beyond the room, that had to do with who and how he was. Draco found himself holding still, holding his breath as though that would make him able to escape the King.

            The King of Earth laughed at last, a laugh that stirred the dust to life under Draco's feet and made him want to run. He held still. He thought he knew what the King was, even though he had only heard of the Courts and not the particular monarchs who ruled them. There was a figure in Faerie legend who blew the horn for the hounds, who lived and died in their mouths, who stepped out of the trunks of trees. This was probably him, and Draco knew that he didn't want to run.

            "Visitors," said the King. He added something in a high ringing tone like a horn to the giant who had brought them, and the giant gave a complicated gnashing with his tusks and withdrew. "We have not had visitors in a long time." He cocked his head to the side, and Draco thought his antlers would brush the walls. They didn't, but the shadow of them did. "What have you come here seeking?"

            Draco winced when he remembered the boast that had won them entrance to the Court. The King would take it as bragging, and probably impale him.

            "We're looking for a creature that can change shape," Potter said, taking over the conversation before Draco could convince his voice to come back. "It starts out as a flower, and it was a butterfly, and a scrap of cloth, and a strawberry tart in the Court of Water."

            The King moved away from them, the wooden crown in the middle of his antlers clinking against them, the wreaths of ivy and leaves and berries around the tines hissing softly together. "What makes you think it is here?"

            "It came this way," Draco said. "Through the pool, and up the white stones." He had no idea if the King would understand what he was talking about, or admit it if he did. But they were in the middle of this game now, and it had to be played out.

            "Did it." The King turned back to the table he had risen from, and the games and the feast began again as if they had never stopped. Draco thought he could make out a gameboard like the one used in chess, but filled with sixty squares on a side and far too many different colours and kinds of pieces. Someone smashed an ivory horse into a horsehair elephant, and there was a brief cheer. The King turned back to them. "I have seen this thing."

            "Then will you give it to us?" Harry asked, bolder than Draco would ever have dared.

            "That, you will have to prove to me that you are worthy of." The King folded his arms. Massive talons gleamed on the end of his fingers, curving out from beneath ordinary human nails. "You came here invited, but not by me. You will have to prove yourselves in a test."

            Draco grimaced and waited for Potter to say something stupid, but surprisingly, it didn't happen. He held his tongue and looked at Draco. Draco blinked, and then realised that Potter had evidently decided to trust his leadership and do whatever he suggested.

            It was still unsettling and unbalancing for Draco, having Potter, of all people, do that.

            He cleared his throat. "Will you assign the test, or can we choose what it is?" he asked, and the King bent down to look at him.

            Being that close to the great face, stag and boar and other wild beasts hunting and turning at bay, made Draco bite his tongue. By the quiver of the King's delicate nostrils, he could sense the scent of the blood. He turned his head to the side, and Draco braced himself, not daring to reach for his wand until he saw those antlers actually coming at him to poke out his eyes.

            "That you dare to stand there and ask me that," the King said.

            The watchers turned away from the feast and the duel and even the game that they were playing in the centre of the table, which until that point had absorbed the attention of the greatest audience. The world went still. Draco stared at the King and wondered if there was a way that he could signal Potter to run without being obvious.

            "Is the kind of daring I like!" the King said, and stepped back from Draco, stamping his root-feet on the floor, to roar at the roof. "Let our guests choose!"

            The slamming of hands and hooves against each other was deafening all by itself, never mind the sounds of great voices cheering the generosity of their King. Draco waited until it had somewhat died, so that he wouldn't make himself ridiculous trying to shout over it. He couldn't count on pleasing the King like that a second time.

            "Then I choose a contest of skill," he said. "Have you any objections to that, King?"

            He felt Potter's elbow dig into his side, but he didn't turn around. He knew that Potter would want to argue, but Draco didn't want to listen. He knew what he was doing. He only had to hold to that, and they would come out of this intact, which they wouldn't if Potter started interfering, with all his political un-instincts.

            At least, Draco thought he knew what he was doing.

            But that way lay madness, trying to second-guess himself and play against the Faeries at the same time. He lifted his head and watched as the King's nostrils flared, this time for all the world as though he was sniffing for deficiencies in Draco's plan.

            He wouldn't find them, Draco decided, and folded his arms to prevent himself from shivering, for what good it would do.

            "No!" the King roared, and as before, his voice shook the Court of Earth. "Now. To business! I will choose two of my own to oppose you, and then you will name the contest!" He closed one eye in what Draco might have taken as a wink from someone other than a Faerie creature, and suddenly wondered if he shouldn't think of as one anyway. Which made him wonder about the King's sense of humor.

            Which made him worry.

            "We wouldn't want it to be unfair, after all!" the King boomed cheerfully off the walls. He turned back to the tables, where his courtiers had lined up in ranks and were watching him with large eyes and only a few waving hands from those eager to be chosen. Draco experienced a brief flash of the way that Master Polaris ran his classes, and wondered if Polaris hadn't picked up more from Faerie than some knowledge and some Potions ingredients.

            "What the hell are we going to do?" Potter hissed into Draco's ear.

            Draco patted Potter's elbow without looking at him. The King had chosen the ogre that led them here, probably as a punishment rather than a reward, and was now looking closely at a stag-headed man. "Don't worry about it. I know what I'm doing."

            "Sure you do," Potter muttered, but just then the King touched his antlers gently to the stag-headed man's, and he got up and walked over to stand beside the ogre. The King nodded and turned to the two of them.

            "Our guests choose the contest," he said. "Our guests choose the skill."

            Draco stood up with his heart pounding crazily. Of course, the first thing he had thought of was a brewing competition, but he knew Potter had had no skill at that in school, and just because he knew something about collection vials didn't mean he had it now, either. And for all he knew, the Faerie creatures had techniques that might outlast his own.

            "A battle potion creation contest," he said. "I am a brewer. My companion is a fighter. Together, we will create something that can be used in battle."

            The King bent down to look at Draco, with a weirdly graceful elongation of his legs behind him. This time, Draco wondered too late if he had defied the King. He had chosen the best compromise he could think of between his skills and Potter's, but of course, in some ways, the King might see that as the most amount of cheek, picking a game the humans stood a chance of winning.

            "So it shall be," the King said suddenly, solemnly, his words crashing to the ground around them like great bells, and making the hall vibrate with something more than sympathy. "I shall create the arena." And he lifted his hands and gestured with the fingernails above the talons, while the claws moved as gracefully as reeds.

            Before Draco could take a breath or even gasp in awe at the sheer amount of magic this took, there they were, in a clearing with a stone altar in front of them and a river behind them. On the altar sat a conch shell that Draco assumed was meant to serve as a cauldron, a forked stick that might make a passable stirring rod if one was in the wilderness--or thinking from the wilderness, like the King--scooped-out turtle shells for vials, and a variety of flowers. Draco shivered.

            When he glanced back across the river, there was another altar where their competition stood, and they had already started cutting flowers apart on the ogre's tusks as if they knew exactly what they were doing.

            "I hate you. A battle potion. Really?"

            Draco turned around and lifted a soothing hand to Potter, wondering if he should have done that earlier. Potter looked honestly ready to kill. "It was the only thing I could think of, and the only thing we both stood a chance at. Honestly, do you think that I could ordinarily survive a brewing contest with them, or you could survive a fight?"

*

            Harry bit his tongue as he glared at Malfoy. Of course he wanted to argue that he could, that the best things Faerie could throw against him were no match for his skill.

            But he didn't know that, and when he did fall too far into the fight and become intent only on winning the duel, not doing it with grace and honour, then things like destroying Tolben in the sparring room happened.

            "Let's start brewing, then," he muttered, turning to the pitiful materials on the table. He knew nothing about Potions, really, and he could see they were pitiful. Why did Malfoy have to make what so many people were depending on the subject of a stupid bet? "What other ingredients do you need?"

            Malfoy smiled thinly and stepped up. "Has it escaped your notice that other than water from the river, we have no ingredients? The grass is coarse and short, and I think we could walk over it for miles in either direction and find nothing else. No, we have to make do with what we have here."

            "I really hate you," Harry said fervently. "What am I supposed to be? Your trusted advisor? I know nothing about battle potions, Malfoy! When you said that it would draw on my expertise--"

            "You know nothing about Faerie, either," Malfoy interrupted smoothly, picking up one of the turtle-shells and tossing it to Harry. He caught it before he fumbled the catch, luckily. "We can use one other kind of ingredient. Fill that with water."

            "What's that, then?" Harry muttered to himself, striding over to the river and bending down. It didn't smell or look any different from ordinary water as it gurgled into the shell, at least. Good. "Your arrogance, which is thick enough to sound out a choking cloud in all directions?"

            "Harry."

            Harry stiffened, and barely resisted the urge to turn his head around. It was the tone Malfoy used that did it. All that patience, all that stripped-down emotion that suddenly shone through like a bright stone underwater.

            "We have to survive this," Malfoy said quietly. "The King might kill us if we don't. And he surely won't give us the ingredient that you need to cure this curse and that I need because Polaris wants it."

            "I know we have to survive this," Harry told the river, and finally scooped up the tortoise-shell dripping full of water. He concentrated fiercely as he carried it back towards the table. He wasn't going to drop it and be forced to go back and get more. Not that Malfoy would force him, he would just tell him, and that was even worse. "That doesn't mean I know what to do."

            "I do." Malfoy took the shell of water from him and poured it into the conch shell that Harry assumed he was using as a cauldron. The water seemed to light up from the inside. Harry took a careful step back, just in case Malfoy had put something in there that would explode. Or the King had. He was probably the likelier suspect, now that Harry thought about it.

            "How?"

            Malfoy looked up and gave him a small smile. "We can use ingredients that we imagine, Harry. Our willpower and our desires are our weapons here. The King would ordinarily think that Faerie creatures would have the advantage over us there, because that's the kind of magic they use all the time."

            "He's right," Harry muttered.

            Malfoy slammed his hands down on the table and leaned forwards. "Do you want to survive or not?" he snapped. "Because, at the moment, you're not acting much like someone who does!"

            Harry gritted his teeth and said nothing for a moment. Then he muttered, "Fine. Say that I do. How in the world are we going to be better than two Faerie creatures at something that they've been doing all their--lives?" Since they were probably immortal, Harry didn't know if it was appropriate to speak of them as having lives, but he didn't know any better word, either.

            "Because," Malfoy said, leaning forwards until it looked like he would fall onto the shells, "I have an imagination that the war exercised. And so do you. Not to mention our training. And the fact that our imaginations have always come alive around each other."

            Harry stared at him. "What?"

            Malfoy took a deep breath that would have been appropriate if he had been about to fling himself off a cliff and try to fly. Then he picked up Harry's hand and held it between his fingers as delicately as he held the edge of the cauldron.

            "I know that you've felt it," he said, voice low and eyes burning. "The way that we keep responding to each other ever since we've come here. The temptation to call each other by our first names. The attempts to get along better than we ever have. The success we've had in getting along that way," he added dryly. "How else do you explain that than the effect we have on each other, the way that we can make the fires of our imaginations leap?"

            Harry stared at him, lips slightly parted, wondering if that was real, if it was true--

            And then he remembered something Jennings had said to him, and snorted, shaking his head. "You're mistaken," he said flatly. "We entered Faerie on Beltane. The Head Auror told me that we might feel inappropriate flares of emotion because of that. It doesn't mean that we really desire each other."

            Malfoy didn't let his hand go. "We're far from those parts of Faerie we first entered," he said quietly. "And while it's true that in a sense all Faerie dances to Beltane, I don't think the Courts are susceptible to its influence as much as the human world is. No, this is happening to us because our minds and emotions burn around each other."

            His hand tightened on Harry's.

            Harry spent a moment wrestling with himself. He didn't want to give in and then have Malfoy laugh at him later for going along with the joke. On the other hand, he had no idea of how to make the battle potion or survive the predicament that it seemed Malfoy had got them into by choosing this as his contest of skill.

            "All right," he said at last. "I'll grant that. Does that mean that we have to imagine the ingredients together?"

            Malfoy's eyes shifted towards a lighter grey when he smiled, and Harry wished he hadn't noticed that. "That is one way to compensate for the greater power that the Faerie creatures hold because this is their native magic," he conceded.

            Harry nodded, once. "All right. Then how are we going to do that, without some kind of mental bond?"

            "For a potion like this, I think that it would be easiest to work with the Faerie water," Malfoy said. "Use it as a base." He moved Harry's hand towards the conch cauldron and held it there, above the water, and Harry was becoming more than a little paranoid that he showed no sign of letting go of it. "Now. What do you think of, when you think of battle?"

            Harry shuddered. The image of the Forbidden Forest filled his mind, and the taste of his heartbeat echoed in his mouth. That was still the moment he thought of as the ultimate test of his courage, the time when he had felt most violently alive. "When I went to die to defeat Voldemort," he murmured.

            Malfoy's fingers flexed on his, and Harry thought he was fighting the impulse to flinch at the name. He looked up, and sure enough, Malfoy's eyes had gone a darker grey. But he merely nodded, as if he had expected the answer. "Even if you didn't actually strike a blow in that battle? Your image of battle is surrender?"

            "I had to make a choice, although I didn't know it at the time," Harry said, and thought of the misty world of King's Cross, the way he usually only did now on the edge of dreams. It was the only time he could permit himself to do it. "I could have chosen to stay where I was, and not come back. Voldemort wouldn't have--I don't know if he would have died, but someone else could have killed him, then. He was mortal."

            "Mortal," Malfoy breathed, and this time, he sounded as if he had managed to successfully ignore the name. "That's it, then. That's what you think of when you think of battle. Mortality. That's the weapon we can use. It's the antithesis of Faerie."

            Harry frowned and looked at Malfoy. He seemed confident in what he was saying, but then, he used to seem confident when he took Harry on in Quidditch, too. "Really? There were duels going on in the Court of Earth."

            Malfoy nodded. "But the losers come back to life and get to relax while someone else takes a turn the next day. It's not as though they permanently die." He leaned forwards, almost confidingly. "But we can make them do that, if you want to."

            Harry blinked. Then he said, "I--will we have to use this battle potion?"

            "Perhaps only on something that the King creates," Malfoy conceded. "I don't know if he would want to risk one of his courtiers to it. But yes, we will have to use it. So think of mortality, and that journey you took to face him, and hold onto it as long as you can." He reached over with the hand that wasn't holding Harry's and began to slide his left sleeve up.

            Harry knew what Malfoy's part in the potion would be, then. He half-lidded his eyes, to make Malfoy think he was concentrating as hard as he could, but in reality, he didn't need to concentrate. The memory of that walk would be with him always.

            And he wanted to see.

            Malfoy flinched a little as the sleeve came up above the Dark Mark, as though the cloth stung him when it rested on it, and it felt good to be moved, or maybe vice versa. Then he moved their joined hands towards the cauldron and closed his eyes.

            "Don't we have to be thinking of the same thing?" Harry muttered, though he was almost loathe to disturb the warm silence that had fallen between them. Malfoy only shook his head.

            "We are thinking of the same thing," he murmured. "Mortality. Death, and how close we came to it." He shut his eyes fully and bowed his head, his breathing becoming fast and shallow.

            Harry thought of all the times that Malfoy must have almost died that year, and found himself squeezing Malfoy's hand comfortingly before he thought about it. Malfoy sucked in a deep, surprised breath, and when his breathing settled into a pattern again, it sounded slower and calmer.

            Harry found himself walking through the Forest again, in mind, in memory. Dirt crushed beneath his feet. Leaves touched his hair. The night air seemed to pull itself in and out of his lungs, without him having to do anything.

            The dead encircled him.

            He didn't know if Malfoy knew about that part, or if he would have to tell him. If they were thinking of a concept instead of a thing, or just one general part of everything, then perhaps not. Harry let his head fall forwards and his breathing settle into its own pattern, his hand in Malfoy's swinging lightly back and forth.

            He would never forget what his parents looked like, how they had looked at him. How Sirius and Remus had seemed young again, laughing. What it was like to be the Master of Death, if only for that one hour.

            He could be it again, now. He could remember that, and send the memories into the water, concentrating harder and harder, with only the slender, pale fingers clasped in his that kept him grounded.

            "Potter!"

            Harry started, and jerked himself out of the headlong fall into memory. The cauldron was shining intensely now, red and feverish gold, like the colours in the Gryffindor common room when the firelight fell on them. It was almost overflowing, and Malfoy pulled his hand from Harry's with a jerk and began to tend to it, waving his wand and murmuring soothing words.

            Harry opened and closed his fingers, not willing to admit that he missed the feeling of holding Malfoy's hand, and then turned his head to see what their counterparts across the river were doing.

            Currently, staring at Harry and Malfoy. Their own potion shone in the cauldron like a star, but they seemed so stunned that two mortals had managed Faerie magic that they weren't attending to it, and the water bubbled up and out. The stag-headed man dived after it, and the ogre shook his head and turned his back.

            "Concentrate!"

            That was Malfoy again. Harry whipped back and started to think of the Forest again, but this time Malfoy caught both his hands and pressed them down on the conch shell. Harry flinched instinctively, but he didn't feel any heat beneath his fingers. He blinked and then looked at Malfoy, waiting for instructions.

            Malfoy bent lower and nearer, his eyes brighter than anything. "Think of a time that we faced death together," he demanded, asked, cajoled, pleaded. "We've contributed to the potion as individuals, now we need to do it together."

            Harry took a breath. "The Fiendfyre," he said, and of course it was the only reasonable choice, but maybe the potion's colour had suggested it to him, too.

            Malfoy paused, and then hope dawned on his face. "Yes, of course," he whispered. "Good, Harry. Good. The Fiendfyre." He closed his eyes and began to speak, his voice a low, running commentary.

            "The flames sprang up. I was so frightened that you would go on, that you would fly off and leave me there."

            "I couldn't have left anyone there," Harry said simply. "I thought about it, but only in the part of my brain that hated you unconditionally. I never thought about it seriously. It wasn't something I could do. I would have saved Crabbe if I could."

            Malfoy half-flinched, but then whispered back, "I know. And then I reached up to you, and you reached down for me. Held out your hand, that time."

            Harry ignored the half-sneer in the back of Malfoy's voice, and the urge to argue with him, and he said, "Your hand was so sweaty when I touched it. And then when we were on the broom, I thought you were going to squeeze all the breath out of me, you were holding on so tight."

            "The fire," Malfoy whispered. "The beasts. The leaping flames. There was only one place in the world for me to be safe, and that was with you. The fire was eating all the world."

            "I was there."

            "You were there."

            "We were there." And they said it together, and Harry felt an enormous drag of magic leap out of them, into the air, and down into the potion, like leaping flame itself.

            Malfoy opened his eyes first. Harry was somehow sure of that, later, even though he was occupied in the opening of his own eyes and the shining of the potion, so he didn't know how he knew.

            But perhaps it didn't matter how he knew, not right then, not in the middle of Faerie, and the potion that blazed in front of them, with colours of red and gold woven through it, around touches of black like ash, blue like phoenix-flame, and green like the leaves that would spring up after the fire.

            "It is time," Malfoy said quietly, and reached over to pick up the shell of potion--

            And like that, they were back in the Court of Earth again, with the King striding towards them from the table, his root-legs digging into the ground and his hands reaching greedily for the conch shell.

*

            Draco lifted his head and maintained his posture and his grace, although the strength the potion had taken from him made him want to sway on his feet. But you didn't sway on your feet in front of one of the Kings of Faerie, unless you liked not being able to do anything but sway your leaves in the breeze ever again.

            Potter stood tall and strong beside him, as though he hadn't been affected at all. But the memory of the words they had whispered together stayed the usual jealous hatred that Draco might have felt.

            That, and the fact that he had a hand on the conch shell, too, helping to brace it without looking at Draco, so taking the chance that the mere fact they both had to hold it wouldn't give anything away to the King.

            "What does this battle potion do?" the King asked, and bent down so that his antlers ticked the edge of the conch shell. Draco's eyes locked on the wooden crown that sat among those antlers, only a few inches in front of his eyes now, and he sucked in his breath.

            Harry, Potter, was the one who answered, his voice gentle and low, as though he was speaking to the walls of the cave or the other courtiers in the room just as much as the King. "Why not test it and see? Surely you have someone here you've created, or someone who's displeased you, that you want to test it on?"

            "Yes!" the King roared, and took a step back, shaking his hands out as though he was trying to get an invisible chain off them. Draco watched as the stag-headed man and the ogre who had been across the river from them and failed to make a complementary battle-potion in time appeared in the middle of the Court, now decorated with very visible chains and kneeling down until their chins touched the earth.

            Potter shifted, and Draco prayed that it wouldn't turn into a suicidal death-charge at the King. Potter ought to know that they couldn't get themselves out of this, and the deaths of two Faerie creatures were a small price to pay for getting the ingredient they needed and out of Faerie alive.

            But Potter didn't protest. Instead, he just said, "Of course. Would you like us to dump the potion on them, or cast it on them, or do you need us to move back and then rush forwards and fling it out of the cauldron on them?"

            "That last is the best option," the King said, in his voice like a deep horn booming through the woods of spring. He clapped his hands, and the claps had echoes, too, ones that made the Faerie creatures of his court hurriedly push the tables out of the way and stand back along the walls. That left them with a good, if not flat, stretch of floor to rush over and fling the cauldron's contents on the ogre and the stag-head.

            "Do you know what you're doing?" Draco muttered to Potter out of the corner of his mouth as they walked backwards, cradling the conch shell between them.

            "I have an idea about what this potion might do," Potter muttered back, in the same way, and then he turned his head and nodded regally at the King. "When you're ready to tell us we can, Your Majesty."

            Draco nearly dropped the conch cauldron at the next clap of those huge hands, making the echoes dance around them like firelight. "Now!" the King roared.

            Potter began to run, and Draco had to do the same thing. He heard some of their potion slop to the ground, but it didn't appear to harm anything. Perhaps this was like most battle potions that Draco had brewed in the past, then, and worked solely on living flesh. That was only sense. You didn't want your potions to damage the buildings or the artifacts that you might intend to occupy or take.

            Of course, Potter thinks that he knows what it does, and I can't see him agreeing to dissolve other people into puddles of bloody foam, even if they're enemies.

            What, then?

            They were three steps from the failed Earth courtiers now. The roars of the creatures around them packed them and wrapped them in a solid wall of sound. Draco discovered that he was shuddering and could not seem to stop. He sucked in a deep breath and felt the weight of the cauldron drag at his arms.

            Then Potter caught his eye and winked.

            For some reason, that made Draco smile, and more widely still when they were two steps away, and then one, and Potter swung his arm first, drenching the courtiers with the shining potion from the mouth of the conch shell.

            Flames leaped to life, swirling, and Draco's first suspicion was that the potion must have absorbed their memory of the Fiendfyre and it would be unleashed here. But then the flames closed around the ogre and the stag-headed man, and bowed to them, and leaped back and up and around and down, and Draco thought he could see their shapes flowing, changing, transforming. They didn't cry out in pain.

            There was still some potion left inside the shell. Draco became aware of that at the same moment that Potter swung to the side, pulling Draco with him, and cast the potion out and around the walls and the tables and the watching courtiers and the King.

            There were shrieks and cries and roars and the thunder of stamping, but above them all--although maybe he could only hear it because of what he had shared with Potter in the past half-hour--Draco heard Potter's laughter.

            The tables burned with a merry light. The courtiers who reached out to them with weapons turned into butterflies and flew up towards the ceiling with phoenix feathers gleaming on their wings. Others became stately peacocks, darting fish, monkeys with fiery tails and pieces of stone gleaming in their hands, everything shining and new.

            Draco didn't dare face the King until Harry completed their spin around and he had to. A Faerie King was powerful enough to resist wizarding magic, even the kind dressed up as Faerie magic, and Draco dreaded their punishment.

            But he was melting and flowing with all the rest, perhaps because he wanted to, perhaps because there was no choice, and from his mouth came a fall of flaming flowers, and his crown leaped into the air and showed wings and a gaping mouth of its own like a baby bird.

            What we came to track.

            Draco didn't bother shouting the words out to Potter, who probably couldn't have heard him anyway. But he saw Draco's finger pointing, and his face changed, and he laughed and nodded, and then they followed the darting thing through the Court of Earth in the direction of a wall of dirt that burned into bright and lively dust as they watched.

            Draco was braced for another fall as they escaped the Court, or another tedious staircase up a hill. But it seemed that Faerie didn't like to do the same thing twice, or perhaps they were simply emerging into another Court.

            Because they hurtled through the dancing dust after the kappilarrakka, and they fell, and they fell, and there was no ending to the fall.

*

            Harry gasped and blinked. He had thought there was dust in his eyes, but there was only fine and stinging wind, everywhere around him, blowing into his limbs, blowing along his heart, billowing his hair behind him.

            He looked over, and found Malfoy falling beside him. He clasped his hand so they wouldn't get separated and looked ahead for the thing they had come to pursue.

            It was far below them, a round stone now, marked with blue and red and green and violet. Harry reached for his wand, intending to Summon the bloody thing the way that had almost worked back in the Court of Water and have this be the end.

            Malfoy caught his wrist and shook his head. Harry swung himself as close as he could, pulling his body up along Malfoy's arm, so that he could make out his words over the rush of the wind.

            "You can't cast a spell like that here!" Malfoy yelled at him, and Harry flinched back despite himself from the volume of his voice, closer and clearer than he had known it would be in this kind of place. "You'll lose your wand!"

            "Just from the pace of the fall?" Harry yelled back. If it was because of the environment of Faerie, he wasn't going to believe Malfoy. They had used Faerie magic before, but he had also used a few ordinary spells.

            Malfoy shook his head, and threw his arm out in front of him. Harry began to look where he was pointing, and not just at the falling stone in front of them that had occupied all his attention up to this point.

            The sky slanted in front of them, coming down, not like the usual curve that a sky made it when joined the horizon but like the roof of a house. The gulf was blue beneath them, black above, and filled with glittering stars and drifting leaves, as if they fell through the branches of a vast tree. And sometimes Harry caught a glimpse of a great bird, huge enough that he didn't want to get any closer, curving and soaring in pursuit of its shadow.

            "This is the Court of Air, then?" he shouted to Malfoy.

            Malfoy nodded, and the next moment they stood on solid air, and their fall was ended. There was no shock of landing; they passed smoothly from falling to stillness. Harry and Malfoy looked up.

            In front of them was a hill of what Harry would have said was blue glass if he had seen it outside Faerie, but here it might be woven sunlight or more solid air or something else. On top of the hill was a house open to the wind, with pillars supporting a slanted roof like the one that had sloped down in front of them, and lazy, trailing ribbons and pieces of cloth springing from the base of the pillars.

            Someone stepped out of the house and stood looking down on them. The house looked small, but the way this person looked made Harry decide that it was simply small with distance. The shadow they threw was certainly long.

            Harry could make out a woman's face behind a bird's beak, but the body that appeared under them seemed taut and masculine. Long hair hung down around the giant, conical white wings that draped the body, sharp as a child's drawing of a hawk. The being beat the wings once and leaped upwards, and then flew towards them.

            And then it was there in front of them, and yes, it was enormous. It landed on hands and feet, keeping the wings clear of the blue peninsula that Harry and Malfoy stood on, and then went on looking at them.

            Harry swallowed and gave a little bow from the waist. He could feel Malfoy staring at him from the side, but, well, sometimes he learned. He had learned that courtesy was a good default in Faerie, for example. "What is your name, Your Majesty?" he asked. It was a good bet that this was the ruler of the Court of Air, since there was no one else in sight.

            The being stared at them for several moments, and didn't answer. Harry heard Malfoy mutter beside him, "And do you have any other ideas for handling this situation, genius?"

            "Only the ones that you taught me," Harry said out of the corner of his mouth, and then shook his head. It solved nothing for them to snap at each other. He focused on the bird-like being, which still stared at them, and took a deep breath.

            "Can you tell us if we are welcome here?" he asked. He reckoned that his first question could be seen as a little rude, especially if it wasn't the ruler or if it didn't want to tell them its name. Harry thought he remembered a snippet of lore or legend about true names in Faerie being extremely powerful.

            The being lowered its wings at last and said, in a voice whose shrillness or beauty--Harry couldn't decide which--brought tears to his eyes, "You have no idea what you have done, by coming here."

            "Did we cross a border we should not have crossed?" Malfoy asked, his voice all smooth glass. "Did we touch something we should not have touched?"

            "This is the Court of Air."

            That was all the being seemed inclined to say, although they waited for several moments more to see if it was or not. Harry finally glanced at Malfoy and found that he was locking his eyes on the hawk-like ones in front of him as if that would tell them something that the lack of words had not. Maybe it would, for him, Harry had to admit. Malfoy had obviously received more training in the niceties of Faerie than he had.

            Harry felt inclined to resent that for just a moment, that he was once again dependent on someone who knew more than he did, the way he had with Dumbledore, and then pushed the thought firmly to the back of his queue of concerns. His pride had to play a minor role in this situation. It was his survival that concerned him most.

            The being, as if relenting, or explaining things to a small child, at last said, "And those who cannot fly are not welcome here."

            "We can fly," Harry said, surprised into speech.

            Malfoy turned on him and hissed, "Now you've done it!" But the being was examining Harry in the first really serious gaze that it had used so far, and he didn't have attention to spare for Malfoy's worries.

            "Then where are your wings?" it asked at last.

            "We fly on brooms, by means of magic," Harry said, and nodded at it. "Not by wings, like you. But it is nevertheless a form of flight. Do you want us to call up brooms and demonstrate?" he added, since it seemed that the being wasn't going to stop staring at them, or at least pass by, until they flew.

            "Don't!" Malfoy said, this time in what wasn't even a hiss so much as a clamping on Harry's arm and face both at once. "You must never make a bargain with a creature of Faerie and allow them to set the terms of the bargain. It could be fatal for us both, and that means--"

            "You will fly before me, now, or you will not fly," the creature announced, and the solid blue air beneath them trembled for a moment.

            Harry caught his balance, and swallowed. He didn't want to look at Malfoy in case he had an expression of triumph on his face, because he couldn't deal with that right now and would punch the smug git in the mouth. Not the most productive thing to be concentrating on, when they had to meet the being's challenge.

            "All right," he said. "All right."

            This time, he was sure that Malfoy's fingernails left grooves in his arm. Harry took a deep breath and turned around to face him, wondering as he did so what solution they would come up with to get out of this one. Because fuck if he knew.

*

            Draco wanted to say something to Potter about bargaining with Faerie creatures, and he wanted to say that he should have done this alone, and he wanted to say that Potter would have done all right if he had let Draco handle everything. Then they wouldn't stand a chance of dying in front of the enigmatic ruler--it must be the ruler, it couldn't be anything else--of the Court of Air.

            He wanted to say those things. But he didn't.

            So he bit his tongue, and thought instead of the immediate challenge. Of flight without brooms. Of the magic that lay in their wands, none of which, as far as he knew, could command the art of flight the way that the Dark Lord and Professor Snape had been able to, at the end of the war. He blinked and he thought, and at the end of that period of thought, he was still no nearer the answer than he had been.

            The being rustled its wings once, opening and closing them.

            Draco racked his brain frantically for any memories of what he might have heard about the Court of Air's inhabitants, the special traits they had, the ways to bargain with them. Unfortunately, he only remembered stories about people ravaged by giant rocs and trading their souls for a single night of true flying. No help there.

            The solid air quivered beneath them again, and for a moment Draco thought he was falling through that first tremendous plunge into the Court again. He winced and opened his mouth to say something—what, he had no idea.

            "I have a solution," Potter said.

            Draco turned to gape at them. He was the one who had got them into this predicament in the first place, and he had a solution?

            Potter seemed to feel Draco's incredulous stare, because he flushed red all along the side of his neck, but didn't turn his head to acknowledge Draco. He just kept staring at the being, which focused on him as intently as a hawk on prey. Not a bad comparison, given the parts that made it up, Draco thought, his mind running in circles so he didn't have to focus on the fact that they were going to die.

            "You see that we have no wings," Potter told the being. "So that means we have to fly without them, and you acknowledge that, don't you?"

            The being opened and closed its wings, and said nothing.

            Potter evidently decided to take that as agreement--wise of him, Draco considered, when the alternatives were taken into consideration. "And part of flying is falling, the way we did when we first came into your Court. Then," Potter said, and reached out for Draco's hand as if he intended to die and would find it comforting to take Draco with him, "I'll show you a fall into the unknown, a plunge of the kind that I would never have dared to take before I came here."

            Draco's tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He found that he was suddenly more afraid to discover what Potter was talking about than he was of what the being might do to them, and he started to speak, to refuse.

            Potter didn't give him the chance. He turned to face Draco, staring into his eyes, and then leaned forwards and kissed him.

            Draco gasped. The kiss surged back and forth like an ocean wave in the Court of Water--he didn't know how, when he wasn't actively participating--and smothered Draco's protests like the Court of Earth. And yes, it was definitely a fall. All sorts of pieces of Draco cracked off him and plummeted into some unseen abyss, and only slowly rose back to the level of his conscious mind, where he could control them again.

            Then the tide withdrew, and left him shaking, shuddering, spent, in the wake of what had happened.

            Potter turned to the being and said, "You're stronger than us. You could sense how our heartbeats changed, I'm certain. You could sense the desires that curled through us, and the way they took flight just then. Or, well, my inhibitions certainly did." He chuckled, not looking at Draco. "You could sense it, couldn't you?"

            Draco just stared at the side of Potter's face, and wondered how in the hell he could have known that Draco would agree to that, or that the being would approve.

            The answer came to him in a flash like the lightning Potter had used to save them in the Court of Water.

            He didn't know. He just had to go ahead and take the risk, and hope, by some crazy chance, that one of us would approve.

            Draco shook his head. He didn't know how he felt about that, and he didn't know what he was going to say to Potter about the light that seemed to have been torn open in his mind, the rift blazing through sunlit clouds, the--

            "It counted for you."

            Draco looked up. The being had bent down so that its great beak was a few inches from his eyes. He practically stopped breathing, and hoped that he didn't look enough like a mouse to tempt the being to stab him. Or enough like a coward to convince Potter to abandon him, either. It was the first time he had ever worried about things like that.

            Not true. You didn't want him to think you were a coward in the war, either, or before that, at Hogwarts, even though you were pretty certain that you were, even though you hated the way that you yearned for his eyes, for someone to look at you--

            And thank you so much, Potter, Draco thought, grinding his teeth until he thought the enamel was on the point of fracturing, for bringing up those memories and letting them churn around in my head like dust floating in sunlight.

            "It did not count for him," the being said, and inclined its head towards Draco. "He must face a different challenge. He must show me that he can fly in a different way."

            Potter turned silently to face Draco. He had his head up, his mouth and chin set in that adorable stubborn way, his eyes full of fractured light like the memories in Draco's mind. At least the kiss hadn't unsettled only him. Draco didn't know for sure what it had done to Potter, but his eyes were enough to break the heart.

            Draco reached out and wound one hand roughly through Potter's hair, intending only to drag him close enough for a kiss and be done with it.

            "You must do something different," the being announced. There was a tiny crackle of interest in its voice for the first time, like distant thunder. "Something more than just the meeting of lips. Something that will unsettle you and make you dance through the air inside your mind." Its wings beat. "I can feel that. Very changeable, the flow and rise of your thoughts.'

            Changeable, Draco thought, must be its term of praise. He had the weird feeling that thoughts like that could insulate him from other thoughts, namely the one of what he must do. He trembled, and shook, and his hands closed on Potter's shoulders.

            "Words, then," he said. His voice was faint and far and foreign. He coughed until he could get the spit into his throat and bring the emotions to the surface. "My way of flying through the world is words."

            "That will do," said the being, though the stretched quality of its voice didn't seem as though it would. Draco glared at the creature, his face feeling pale from the way that his heart throbbed.

            "Good," Draco said, endeavoring to appear haughty though he felt as if he were already falling, and then turned and faced Potter. Potter held his gaze and jerked his head up a little, as though encouraging Draco to go on. He was pale about the lips, but he wasn't more nervous than Draco was, Draco was sure. It wasn't possible to be more nervous.

            Time stretched and strained between them the way the being's voice had. Draco saw it chop its wings down and decided that he had best begin before it cut the air out from underneath them.

            "You have no idea how involved you were in my life, when I was a child," he told Potter. "Part of that was because everyone made everything about you. My father raged that you had managed to overcome the Dark Lord when you were just a child. Mother was sure that someone with a Mud--sorry, Muggleborn mother didn't deserve such praise and attention." From the slight widening of Potter's eyes, he might understand, though the being probably wouldn't, how just changing the term he used to refer to non-pure-bloods was different and difficult for Draco. "And I started resenting you because everyone had heard of you. People had heard of my last name, of my family, but not of me. I started telling myself I would be famous someday."

            "Sometimes I thought about that, too," Potter tentatively offered. "I would make up stories about how everyone would hear my name, and how I was really special, with special parents."

            Draco snorted. "Why would you need to make up stories like that? For you, it was true."

            Potter gave him a completely humorless smile, something that Draco would have said was an impossibility before this. "You never knew my relatives," he said.

            The being made a warning clack with its beak, maybe because Potter was talking instead of Draco. Potter fell silent, and Draco nodded and plunged ahead into the stream of dangerous words that he might as well say now that he had begun them.

            "Then I met you, and I saw it as my chance to be even more famous. You didn't know anything about the wizarding world. I thought I could be the one to guide you around, teach you. People would know they could only approach you through me."

            Potter stared at him, then rolled his eyes, but he didn't say anything else that the being could take exception to. Draco was glad of that. He shivered, then raised his hands high and let them fall.

            "But I muffed that. You'd already chosen Weasley as your friend, and instead of getting into your good graces, I managed to alienate you further." He felt his face burn, because he really hated to confess this next part, but if it was the one that would get him further along in the conversation they needed to have and then result in them being able to leave, he'd say it. "So I decided that I would become famous somehow. Your enemies had to be famous, too, didn't they? Everyone knew the Dark Lord's name--"

            Potter made a little movement that Draco guessed would translate to And didn't say it if he was speaking it aloud.

            "And didn't say it," Draco finished, and smiled, somewhat enjoying the way Potter's eyes flashed in amazement as he caught his gaze. "So. People would know of me as the rival to the Boy-Who-Lived, and maybe the one who destroyed him someday. That was what I thought. That was what I thought I was doing when I pranked you, or came up with that trick to use your fear of Dementors against you, or got you in trouble."

            "When did you change your mind and decide that it wasn't worth doing that anymore?" Potter's voice was almost passionless, his head inclined and his eyes fastened on Draco's face as though he just wanted the recitation to be over with.

            Draco paused, wanting to ask how Potter knew he had changed his mind at some point.

            Because there would be no point in doing this if you didn't. Because you chose this as the means of showing that you can fly.

            "The year of the war," Draco said, and he didn't mean to admit it in a whisper. It just came out that way. "When I saw that you cared about stopping me, but that I wasn't famous. And I wasn't going to get that way by becoming the one who let the Death Eaters into the school. Everyone cared about Professor Snape killing Dumbledore, they didn't care that I'd been the one to repair the Vanishing Cabinet, and the Death Eaters despised me so much by that point that they didn't care about my accomplishments, either."

            Potter tossed his head up and then froze, tense and trembling. Draco knew he probably wanted to yell at Draco for his part in repairing the Vanishing Cabinet in the first place, but he bit his lips, first his bottom one and then his upper one, and kept silent, instead.

            Draco was glad for that. It meant he could flow into the next, and even more embarrassing, words uninterrupted.

            "And then--during the war itself, during the year when I spent my time under the Death Eaters in Hogwarts or in the Manor with V-Voldemort, all I wanted was someone to rescue me. Sometimes I thought about running away and taking my chances, but I couldn't get past the hope that someone would come up with a plan. Mum or Dad would have to fight their way out eventually, I thought. I'd been raised with the notion of the invincible Malfoys. They would talk him around, or they would find a way to kill him and come out the heroes. That was what I hoped."

            Potter nodded. His eyes burned on Draco's face. Draco doubted that he had blinked once so far.

            "That's when I realised how much had changed," Draco whispered, his body swaying a little with the memory of the shock that had swamped his younger self at the realization. "I used to think of wealth and fame and power, and now…now I was thinking of something else entirely. Hoping my parents would be the good ones. The heroes. The saviors." He laughed a little. "The ideals I used to despise were the only ones I looked forward to."

            Potter shifted a step closer, cast a glance at the being that ruled the Court of Air, and stopped.

            "And then I started dreaming about you, too," Draco said. "And realised--realised that it wasn't so much envy that had made me want you to look at me, or at least not envy of your fame. I wanted to be up there, acknowledged, but you were the one that I wanted to acknowledge me. It wouldn't do any good if the rest of the world did and you didn't."

            Potter made a small noise, but only nodded when Draco looked at him again.

            "So you were the one I hoped for," Draco said, low-voiced, restless, wishing he could look away from the burning green eyes locked on his. "The one that I wanted to see. And then, when you showed up at the Manor, you weren't in the position to rescue me after all."

            "I was busy being tormented by Fenrir Greyback at the time, yes," Potter said lightly, but still his eyes never wavered.

            "And then, in the Final Battle--" Draco hesitated. This part was hard to talk about not because it was so embarrassing, but because he still didn't understand why he'd made the decision that he did.

            "After all that," he said finally, "after acknowledging that I just really wanted out, after thinking about you as my hero, I turned back to my old desires one last time. I decided to capture you and bring you to the Dark Lord, because if I did, then everyone would have to see that I was strong. Smart. Special."

            Potter didn't nod or shrug or do anything else that would have made the confession of that moment easier for Draco. Just stared.

            "When I got there," Draco said, and swallowed. The flames danced in his imagination, the way they had when he was getting ready to pour the memory into the battle potion in the Court of Earth, but different now, because of the words. "It turned out that I lost one of my best friends, and saw how even he despised me. And you rescued me once and for all, saying that it was my new dreams and not my old ones that I needed to trust."

            "I don't know about that." Potter's voice was slow, hesitant, as though he wanted to reassure Draco and not reassure him at the same time. "I know--I know that I helped you. But you rescued me, too. At the Manor."

            "And only made myself even further into someone I didn't recognise." Draco smiled mockingly, though by now he couldn't have said who he was mocking, Potter or himself. "Someone who could play the part of the hero sometimes. That was one reason I decided to go into Potions after the war. I knew it was a career you would never choose, and I thought that the further I isolated myself from you, the better it would be. The chance to recover some ground and learn who I really was."

            He glanced off to the side, and shivered. He had always heard people speak of confession as though it was a relief to have the words out, but he didn't think so. It only made him ache and tremble further.

            And he still had one more part to go.

            "It didn't work," he whispered. "Everything around me reminded me of who I'd been. Some of my fellow apprentices despise me because I'm a Malfoy. Potions master Polaris doesn't hate me, but he doesn't care. I still have friends who remind me of the past every day. And here I am, working with you again, as if nothing has changed."



            Potter gave him a tentative smile and reached out as though he would take Draco's hand, then paused with another glance at the being of the Court of Air. It didn't move, however, and Potter's hand crossed the last distance between them, his fingers closing so firmly around Draco's that Draco started and shivered again.

            "Some things have changed," Potter whispered firmly. He sounded so certain that Draco opened his mouth to question how he could know, but Potter was rushing ahead, plunging, the way that Draco's words and his kiss had plunged them into new waters. New airs. Whatever. "That I heard those things means that I understand you a little better now, and the kinds of things that you were--sort of asking from me without realizing that you were asking them, you know."

            Draco narrowed his eyes in spite of himself. "No, I don't know. I'm telling you the story of what I was, how pathetic I was. I was demanding things of myself. Not you."

            "That's not what you said," Potter said instantly. "That you wanted my attention and for me to think of you as an equal, that's part of what you said. Well, that's what's going to happen, I promise. You've saved my life a couple of times here already, and we've saved each other's. I think that should count, don't you? Even if it is in Faerie."

            "Time stands still in Faerie," Draco muttered. Or, at least, he had always heard it did, and he fervently hoped it did, right now, so that they might come back to the world and find nothing changed for their stupidity. "I have--there's no reason that we can't come back to our normal lives and totally ignore what happened."

            "There's a very good reason," Potter said, staring at Draco in disbelief.

            "What's the good reason, then?" Draco felt exactly as mulish as he had in fifth year, when not even Umbridge's noticing what an arse Potter was made up for all the shit Potter got away with.

            "Because you said this, and I heard it," Potters said simply. "That changes things. And I kissed you, remember? That changes things, too."

            Draco shook his head, pinching his lips shut. He wanted to say that there was nothing like that here, that it didn't count when they had only done those things to prevent the Court of Air's ruler from destroying them, and--

            "You have flown," said the creature, and stretched out its wings so that Draco felt the scratch of feathers against his cheek. "You have changed. I accept."

            Draco opened his mouth to yell, to tell the creature that there was nothing it could do to mark them as changed--

            And then he and Potter stood somewhere else, under a different sky, and before a forest that glowed a dim red in the pale light before them, the light that shone like a setting sun.

*

            Harry swallowed and let his heart beat without any more exertion for a moment. He was standing still, hanging on to Draco's hand, but he felt no impulse to let go. These abrupt transitions through the heart of Faerie were hard on him.

            Either they weren't as hard on Draco, or he thought there was no reason for them to be connected after what had happened, shared life-debts or not. He began frantically to wrench at his hand where Harry held it, and Harry let him go, checking a sigh as he did so. It wouldn't do any good to hold Draco against his will.

            "This is the Court of Fire," Draco said abruptly, staring at the firelit forest in front of them. "Or it should be."

            On the other hand, I'm not just going to let him ignore what happened.

            "Fascinating," Harry said, and the drawl he used to say it, a deliberate imitation of the one Draco had used when he was a student at Hogwarts, made Draco swivel around and stare at him suspiciously. Harry shrugged and then stretched his arms up and back, letting a luxurious ripple travel through his muscles to relax them. "I could use something to eat before we go into it. What do you say?"

            "Time isn't actually passing, Potter," Draco snapped, holding himself up so haughtily that Harry could see the brittleness beneath the steel. He wondered how long that had been there, and how many people knew about it. "It halted when we went into Faerie. You only think you're hungry. And the food here isn't safe to eat, anyway."

            "Then I'm thinking with my stomach as well as my brain," Harry said mildly, and ignored Draco's mutterings about how that wasn't a surprise as he turned and began to rummage in his robe pockets. "I'm going to eat something. Let me know if you want it."

            He'd carried some food with him on every Auror mission he'd had so far, simply because he never knew when he might suddenly have to go on the run or be imprisoned without it. Ron laughed at his paranoia, but Harry had spent the first three weeks of his first true case in the Forest of Dean, encircled and hunted by enemies. He'd never forgotten the sheer misery of trying to find something to eat, how all his other concentrations and ideas and problems seemed to full to pieces in front of those concerns. He had concerns now that he wanted to focus on.

            Besides, he was hungry.

            He looked up and smiled at Draco, who had narrowed his eyes when Harry pulled a sandwich and a small jar of grapes out of his pocket. "Grapes?" Draco asked, leaning close as if it was illegal for Harry to be transporting fruit anywhere. "Honestly?'

            "Yes, honestly," Harry retorted, and reminded himself that Draco might be going mad with hunger, poor thing. "You want some?" He fished out a few grapes, washed them with a slight Aguamenti charm, and then extended them on his palm.

            Draco narrowed his eyes. "I'm not some kind of wild dog that you're trying to tame, Potter," he snapped.

            Harry smiled at him. "Of course you're not. I wouldn't feed a dog grapes. Maybe a deer, though--"

            "I'm not fragile," Draco hissed, and this time he did walk closer, although he looked as if he wanted to hit Harry instead of kiss him. "You don't need to treat me like I am. Yes, once I needed rescue and wanted it, but that was years ago. I'm not going to let you use my weakness against me."

            Harry faced him and dropped all pretense of teasing around the bush. "I think you took an enormous risk, sharing that with me," he said, in an intense whisper that made Draco have to listen because otherwise he might miss an insult. "I want to show that I'm sensitive to that, that I appreciate what you did. You were only trying to make sure we survived, yes," he added, seeing Draco's mouth open and sure about the denials that would come out of it next. "That doesn't matter, you know. Not really. What matters most of all is that you shared that with me, and I want to honour your trust."

            Draco shook his head and glanced away, looking like a bird smoothing down ruffled feathers. "You can't do anything for the boy I confessed to being, Potter. He's six years gone."

            "But you said yourself," Harry murmured, pitching his voice low on purpose, "that you found out you couldn't cut the present off from the past. You tried, when you went into your Potions apprenticeship, and all it got you was misery. Are you going to try again, and make yourself miserable and upset?"

            Draco's jaw tightened, but he didn't respond, not even with a twitch or a nod.

            "You know," Harry continued, letting the words ride out on the tiniest breath, "that if you try to return to your normal life without confronting this, you'll only grow tenser and more miserable as time passes. You'll always be convinced that I'm about to stab you in the back, even if I don't intend to do anything of the kind, because you don't trust me and so you have no reason to take my word for it. Whereas, if we settle things between us, then you can at least be sure that you got the best of the bargain."

            Draco whipped around and stared at him. "Why in the world did you kiss me, Potter?" he demanded. "Why that?"

            "Because," Harry said, pulling his hand back because it had started hurting and eating one of the grapes himself, "I've been feeling this pull towards you since we entered Faerie. And even if I wasn't as conscious of it as you are--"

            Draco muttered some insult that it was clear he hadn't put his heart into.

            "I think that I've felt a pull towards you for a while," Harry continued. "When I heard that I was going to work with you on this case, I felt this immediate and visceral hatred. Why, when you hadn't done anything to me or anyone I cared about in the last six years? It made no sense. And a while ago, I almost destroyed someone who looked a lot like you for insulting my family."

            Draco rolled his eyes. "And that should make me feel so much better--why, exactly?"

            "Because it's evidence of that draw that was there," Harry said simply, and went back to eating. The grapes split in his mouth with a juicy sound, and Draco wouldn't stop staring at him. For the moment, he felt as though those were things to be equally grateful for. "It's a strange thing to ask you to find comforting, sure. But say you don't believe me. Say that I kissed you just because it was the way to save your life, for the same reason you confessed those secrets to me. Does that make it not matter?"

            "Yes," Draco said, and turned as if to stare into the fiery forest. Or, rather, as if that would keep Harry from speaking. Harry pitied him a little for that delusion. "The things that we do here to save each other's lives don't matter."

            "Why not?" Harry shifted and settled himself on the lump he was sitting on. Log, stone, mound of dirt, giant ember…it was hard to tell what it was. But as long as it wasn't actively dumping him on the ground or demanding secrets from him, Harry thought it worked, for Faerie. "Life-debts are important, Hermione's always told me."

            "Life-debts in Faerie only matter as much as we want them to," Draco said, and hunched his shoulders. "Once we get back to the real world, we'll never see each other again."

            Harry sighed and finished eating. Maybe this was the wrong time to confront Draco about this, when they were still searching for the ingredient and Draco would need to concentrate on that. But there was one more thing he wanted to say.

            "We can do that, if you want," he said, standing up and dusting unidentifiable bits of Faerie off his arse. "But I can tell you one thing."

            Draco eyed him over one shoulder, and then turned and faced the red-lit forest again.

            "You'll have to make it clear that you want to do that, that you want to ignore this," Harry murmured, stepping up beside Draco and bending close to whisper in his ear. "Because I won't do it of my own free will."

            Draco shook his head and stood there, given what Harry could see from the side, with his eyes closed. Harry shrugged. Yes, forcing Draco to pay attention to this would be cruel right now, and he didn't see what he could do that he hadn't already done.

            "The Court of Fire," he said. "What are the natures of the creatures we meet there going to be like? Quick to take offence?"

*

            Draco took a quick, nervous breath, and then winced, waiting for a chuckle from Potter. He wouldn't let a chance like this pass by to laugh at an enemy's weakness, would he? There was no way.

            But Potter only waited for Draco to answer his question.

            Draco pivoted in place at last, and stared at Potter. Potter was studying the forest the way that he should have been all along, a faint frown on his face. When he saw Draco staring at him, he nodded back and indicated the forest with one hand. "So. What should we expect when we go in there? We've defended ourselves so far with lightning, the memory of Fiendfyre, and then words and gestures that burned us. Can we come up with some new definition of fire to use in this Court?"

            Draco paused, startled. He hadn't thought through the common theme of all their defences, but evidently Potter had. With a small grunt, Draco conceded that Potter might have some background training in magical theory even if he knew nothing about Faerie.

            "Maybe," he said. "Or maybe we'll have to use the other elements, since fire is the one that's kept us free and safe so far. It might be impossible to use it against the beings that we'll run into in the Court of Fire."

            "Is that forest the Court, or just the border?" Potter murmured. He looked at Draco, but Draco only shook his head, not knowing himself. Familiarity with the general existence of the Courts didn't tell him what they looked like, or he would have known how to conduct himself better in the fall into the Court of Air.

            Potter took something from a robe pocket, which looked like a scrap of parchment. He conjured a breath of wind that blew it into the forest.

            To Draco's eyes, it looked fine as it passed under the branches and even further on, into the underbrush that wavered when he looked at them sideways like shadows on the flame. Then, suddenly, the parchment piece puffed into brightness, a brief spark tattering itself and falling into light.

            Potter whistled through pursed lips and nodded. "We might need protection even as we go in there," he said, and then turned and scanned the low purple sky above them. "What do you think? Could the thing we're looking for have gone a different direction?"

            "If we can't enter the Court of Fire safely without protection, all the more reason for it to have gone there, right?" Draco said, shaking his head. He rubbed his hands and studied the forest. A solution was coming to him, but he thought it would take a few more minutes for the notion to mature sufficiently. "And there are rules about things like this in Faerie. It's gone in a straight line through the Courts so far. There's no reason to assume it would be able to turn aside now."

            "We didn't actually see it leave the Court of Air."

            "We can assume that it fell and fled ahead of us," Draco said simply. "Because doing anything else would mean we had to go back into that Court, and I don't think that the being we met would let us go a second time."

            Potter grimaced. "Good point. What, then? Do you think our magic would protect us from burning, or do you have a potion?"

            Draco lifted a hand. The thought was still coming to him in its entirety, but he could think it through and articulate it very soon. Potter fell silent, chewing his lips and staring into the distance as though that was the only way he could keep from blurting out demands for Draco's knowledge immediately.

            "I think," Draco said at last, "that we can enter the Court of Fire with only charms to protect our senses and open minds."

            Potter blinked, and let his jaw fall open in an unattractive fashion. Draco told himself that it was unattractive, at least, because the last thing he needed was to be thinking that Potter was handsome--even if the words he used to himself were "handsome fool."

            "Why do you think that?" Potter asked at last. "None of the other Courts have been that easy. And it should be harder than the other places. At least we can breathe air and walk on earth and swim in water. Those are the places that creatures live in our world. Nothing lives in fire."

            Draco stared at Potter for a moment, wondering if he was better at Legilimency than he pretended to be. A moment later, he flung the thought away. What mattered was that Potter would therefore understand the idea that Draco was going to try and explain to him, since he had hit on the same one.

            "Exactly," he said. "Life in those Courts therefore exists. It might not be the same as the kind that we're familiar with, but it's there. Some of the lore that I've read suggests that there isn't life in the Court of Fire as such." He nodded at the forest. "Those aren't trees, if you look closely enough; they're solidified flame. And nothing can pass under the branches without changing into fire."

            "That still doesn't sound as though it solves the problem." Potter seemed willing enough to surrender the notion that they were special and important to each other now. He leaned closer with his arms folded and his mouth worked into a sneer. Draco tried not to remember the taste of it. "After all, we're alive."

            "And living things can change," Draco said. "The parchment didn't have any choice. It burned. But it also wasn't alive. We can choose to accept or resist the change that the Court of Fire brings to us, and either way, transform into something that can survive there for long enough to find the kappilarrakka. It's Faerie logic, Potter," he added, when Potter opened his mouth. "In our world, life doesn't live in fire. Here, it might, as long as it's willing to change into something that can. We can come out of the fire in the end. Not be consumed, because we are alive and can make our own choices."

            "Including the bloody stupid one to walk in there in the first place, sounds like," Potter muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "Besides, the other Courts obeyed the rule of having life in them that applies to our world. Why do you assume that the Court of Fire is going to disobey the rules that apply to ours, then?"

            "Because you're looking at it from the wrong perspective," Draco said, and hoped he was right, and also that he would be able to persuade Potter. "Life in the Court of Water? Not the same kind that exists in our world. Likewise with the Courts of Earth and Air. And that means that life must be different in the Court of Fire, too. I'm wagering that, in this case, that does mean it exists, that that's the difference."

            His own head was spinning from the dizziness of the logic, and he couldn't blame the skeptical look that Potter gave him. "You're wagering."

            "We think the kappilarrakka went in there," Draco said. "And it's alive. Why would it do that if going into the Court might destroy it?"

            "You said something about rules," Potter said, "although no one knows if this damn place has any rules--"

            "It does," Draco said, not anxious to hear Potter disparage the knowledge that had kept them alive so far.

            Potter rolled his eyes at him and went on. "But we don't know if those rules are the same ones. Maybe Faerie creatures can survive there and we can't. Maybe we're going to be fucked in there because we've been relying on fire to protect us so far and there's something in there that's going to take exception to that. We don't know, Malfoy! I think it's a little much to ask me to walk in there on the off-chance that the rule will be that life can survive there!"

            By the end, he was shouting, and Draco was grinning. Strange or not, he liked that response, and he understood it. He knew where he stood with an angry Potter, and especially with a Potter that he had angered.

            "There's something else, Potter," he said. "Something else that's more convincing, something that we can count on."

            "I can hardly wait to hear this," Potter said flatly, now lounging against the air as he stared at Draco.

            "The kappilarrakka is a shapeshifter," Draco said. "We've seen that, seen it disguise itself as flowers and animals and objects. I think that might have been the reason it fled through the Courts, because it knew that it could hide in them. And survive. There's no reason for it to enter the Court of Fire if it wants to die."

            "Faerie creatures do things for strange reasons," Potter muttered, but Draco could see that he was starting to listen.

            Draco rolled his eyes. "Yes, they do. But this makes a kind of logical sense to me. And I told you that I know a little bit about Faerie's rules. I've never, ever heard of a Faerie creature committing suicide like that. Valuing something more than life, yes, but not randomly deciding to die, or even just fleeing randomly like a frightened animal."

            "Maybe it values its freedom more than its life."

            "What Potions master Polaris told me about the Court of Fire," Draco went on, valiantly ignoring the interruption, "is that you have to either accept or resist what happens to you in there. You can't run away. That's what other people have said. And yes, there have been people who entered it and survived."

            Potter stared at him, then snorted. "Why didn't you just say that in the first place, instead of speculating about this kappi-thing and telling me that there might be a chance to survive here because we couldn't just walk into a fire in the real world and all the rest of this shit?"

            "Because it comes down to the same thing in the end," Draco said. And because I might have wanted to see if I could get you to listen to me.

            But that was neither here nor there, which meant he wasn't going to admit it. "Listen," Draco said. "They were willing to face the changes that the Court made to them--and one thing that doesn't alter from our world is that fire changes the things it touches. It might be changes in shape, in memories, in purpose. But they came out the same as ever once they returned to our world. The damage that Faerie does doesn't last, not if you enter it at a protected time, like Beltane, and you know the rules that you can use to survive."

            Potter rubbed his head above his ear and said nothing for a few minutes. Then he gave a short laugh and said, "Why the hell not? Why not try it? We don't have anything else to do, and returning to the world without that thing is not an option."

            "Because of the people who are dying from the curse," Draco said, and barely managed not to make it a question. That was the reason for Potter, of course. Coming into Faerie, surviving numerous challenges, and kissing Draco were subordinate to that one burning desire, the same desire that Potter had always had: to do his duty.

            Trying to think of why that made him want to grit his teeth would only drive Draco mad, so he waited for Potter's nod. He added, "Have you seen anyone affected by the curse?"

            "One person." Potter's eyes deepened to the colour of an ordinary forest at night. "And that was enough.'

            Draco nodded, not actually that anxious to know more details. "Fine. Then you accept that we should try to go into the Court of Fire for the reason and in the way I described, and get the kappilarrakka back?"

            "Yes," Potter said. "Don't see what other choice we have, really."

            The defeated tone of his voice was enough to make Draco stretch out a spontaneous hand to him. "We'll survive this," he said. "I promise. If you let me cast the spells that I've thought of and do exactly as you're told, there's no reason that we shouldn't."

            Potter blinked down at the hand resting on his elbow, and then looked up and at Draco. Draco's face burned as he remembered the words he had said to Potter, both in the Court of Air and after, and he would have snatched his hand back if he'd thought it would do any good.

            But it wouldn't. He'd already violated the covenant that he'd tried to set up between them, the one that said they were going to ignore anything that had happened in the Court of Air, and he would have to live with the consequences. He cleared his throat and turned awkwardly away. "All right. Will you let me cast the spells?"

            Silence from beside him, and Draco thought he felt a finger brush down the centre of his palm. He jumped, and then decided that he wouldn't make a big deal of it. He just caught Potter's eye and waited, and Potter smiled at last.

            "Go ahead and do your worst," he said.

            The hint of challenge in his voice comforted Draco as he began to cast the spells that would shield their skin from sensations of extreme heat, their eyes from brightness, their noses from the smell of smoke. Yes, this was normal. They were going to come out of Faerie with nothing changed between them, no truth and no life-debts and no touches.

            Keep telling yourself that.

            The voice of his own conscience sounded like Polaris's when he was chiding Draco for making a mistake in a potion. Draco could have done without that. He kept casting the spells, but he knew he had lost his smile, and that Potter was watching him.

*

            Harry deliberately pictured all the different people who would say that this was stupid. Hermione, who would want to research a different solution. Ron, who would tell him that he was being a bloody fool if he trusted Malfoy. Head Auror Jennings, even, who would want to find some other way and tell him that just working with Malfoy didn't mean he had to sacrifice his life to get along with him.

            But Harry knew that he had made the choice. Besides, none of those people were here right now. Harry had to do what he thought was right, ultimately.

            "All right," he said, when Draco's spells had settled into their bodies and seemed to have no worse effect than a faint ringing in his ears and a faint red halo around the edges of his vision. "We're going to just walk in?"

            "Do you need another way to enter a Court that's right in front of us, and looks like a forest on fairly flat land?" Draco snapped back, and then began to walk.

            Harry reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. Draco stared at it, and then at Harry, as if there was some handy, neat explanation for this.

            "Thank you for trying to guard me," Harry said quietly. "And for suggesting this. I would never have had the courage, even if I had the idea."

            Draco snorted. "Harry Potter, lacking in courage to find the solution to a problem that threatens other people's lives? I have a hard time accepting that one."

            Harry shook his head. "No, really. I mean it. I don't know anything about Faerie, as you keep telling me, and I can't go on my instincts the way that I can do with Auror cases. And I wouldn't know what spells were the best to protect us, and why, even if I did want to venture. So. Thank you for having the knowledge."

            Draco looked back at him for a minute or so, then seemed to come to a consciousness of what he was doing, and turned resolutely for the forest. "You're not that wise to trust me, Potter," he muttered, sulkily. "What would your friends say?"

            "But I do trust you," Harry said calmly. "And I thought of that, what they would say, I mean."

            "And you're still here?" Draco glanced around as though he thought that Harry's friends might be hiding in the bushes, waiting for him to run away.

            Harry sighed and shook his head. "Yes, I am. Don't interrupt."

            "I was unaware that you were putting together thoughts in that logical a chain." Draco folded his arms and looked as if he would be happy to step out from under Harry's hand, but didn't quite have the courage to do it.

            "Stop it," Harry said, catching his eye. "Maybe you're right and this won't matter after we leave Faerie, we'll have to go our separate ways and forget all about it. But for now, as long as we're here, it matters."

            That just made Draco gape all the more. But after a moment, he seemed to see the sense in that way of talking, and nodded jerkily. Harry went on with a small sense of luxury. He had no guarantee whether Draco would always listen to him, and perhaps he had had no right to ask for that, anyway, but at least he knew Draco was listening now.

            "You've saved my life," Harry said. "I think that I saved your life, too, back in the Court of Water. We've cooperated. That's sort of the way that I made friends with Ron and Hermione, you know? We fought a mountain troll together. We really hadn't been Hermione's friends before that, but after that, it sort of--fell together."

            "I'm so flattered to be compared to people who tagged along after you and didn't mind standing in your shadow," Draco said, staring off to the side now. "How could you think I would want that, when I specifically told you that I wanted to be more famous and powerful than you ever were?"

            "That was the past," Harry said. "This is the future, even if it's a short-lived one. You've fought beside me in Faerie so far, so I choose to trust you with this, too, and to keep thinking that you'll go along with it instead of betraying me."

            Draco grunted, but ended up saying nothing when Harry looked at him.

            "So, thank you," Harry said, and squeezed Draco's shoulder, and stepped back. "That was all I wanted to say."

            For a moment, he thought, or hoped, that Draco would say something back to him, from the way his head turned and his mouth opened. But then he bit his lips and seemed to decide that anything he said would cost him too much, though Harry didn't know what scale of value he was using.

            "Come on, then," he said gruffly, and walked towards the flame-coloured forest.

            Harry followed him, shaking his head. He would have liked to step into those glittering ruby shadows with Draco's hand in his, but if it wasn't to be, it wasn't to be.

            At least he could make sure that he was close enough to defend Draco from any threats that came along, assuming those threats responded to wizarding magic.

            Draco did turn around before they actually crossed under the branches and pin Harry with a hard stare. Harry froze in response to it and stood there with his heart pounding while Draco glared at him.

            "You have to remember this," Draco whispered. "This is the most important thing that I can tell you about surviving in Faerie, even more important than courtesy. You have to enter the forest ready to face everything that happens to you in it. You might choose whether to accept it or fight, but you can't turn your back."

            Harry took a deep breath and shifted his shoulders. "All right," he said. "I'll try. But I do deny some things, you know. Fight against them by not facing them. That's happened to me before with things like--like fancying you."

            Surprisingly, Draco smiled at him. "Remember that I don't want you to turn away," he said. "That's something else that you're good at, isn't it? Sacrificing and striving for other people instead of for yourself?"

            And in the end, Harry had to nod and follow Draco under the branches. The trees sang and creaked above them with something that Harry didn't think was wind, and they reached the place where the parchment had burned up and he realised that he was tensing his shoulders, despite himself, for an attack. He lowered them again and kept on walking.

            Nothing touched them, at least no bright spark of fire like the one that had consumed the parchment into ash. They went on.

*

            Draco saw the trees shift around him and blur into a single bright corridor stretching ahead of him. He winced, but kept walking. He didn't turn to check if Potter was still behind him. He reckoned that he wouldn't be, and he had enough to deal with without the panic attack that might overtake him if he was forced to notice that.

            Yes, he did have more than enough to deal with, he thought, when the trees became stone walls around him, and he found himself in the dungeons his father had made the Manor's cellars into. Draco shuddered deep beneath his skin, and kept walking.

            Someone was standing in front of the cell that Draco knew had held Lovegood and Ollivander in the real world. Draco assumed without thinking much about it that it must be the Dark Lord. So few other people stood like that, careless and with more power flowing away from his form in those seconds than most other wizards would use in a week.

            But he turned around, smiling, and Draco's legs nearly went out from underneath him when he saw Potter's face.

            Potter with thicker, darker hair, and more muscles, and fewer circles under his eyes, as if he had actually groomed himself and had the chance to get some sleep and food. He stepped towards Draco, staring at him intently. Draco gritted his teeth and looked back, wondering for a moment if this image had the real Potter's personality behind his eyes. The forest was going to change them, but Draco was unsure whether it was changing both of them now or only Draco.

            "Yes, you are the one I wanted," Potter said, in the same kind of hoarse, dark voice that Draco had heard Aunt Bellatrix use sometimes when she thought she could get him to look at her, and then reached out and took Draco's chin firmly between his fingers, bringing him closer. Draco's feet dragged, but after a moment, he went. Potter was smiling at him, though it was the kind of smile that could turn into a bite.

            Then Potter kissed him.

            Draco shook his head and stepped back in spite of himself, in spite of the scolding he had given Potter about accepting whatever changes the Court of Fire tried to make in them. This was one change that he wouldn't take.

            Potter, the Dark Lord, raised his eyebrows. "I had the feeling that you wouldn't object, Draco," he murmured, and stepped forwards. "Were you not begging for my attention and focus only a short while ago? It's a little different from what you were imagining, perhaps, but one's imagination and one's reality don't always coincide."

            Draco controlled the temptation to flinch back without any more context and said only, "You don't talk like him. And you don't kiss like him, either."

            This version of Potter did prove that he had the other one's startling quickness, as his hand dropped to his hip and pulled out his wand. "I beg your pardon?" he asked quietly. "Which lover have you been taking?"

            "Not taking," Draco said, wondering where the courage came from. Perhaps simply the knowledge that this wasn't real, and he could say what he liked and still have the chance of coming back to the real world. "Talking to. And it was the real you, the one who fought the Dark Lord in my world and survived, and the one who came here with me. Next to him, you simply aren't attractive."

            Potter stood there with a complex expression on his face, but not the kind of complex one that Draco had seen there more than once, so far, during this adventure. Then he nodded, almost imperceptibly, and surged forwards, his hand rising to knock Draco on the jaw.

            Draco got his wand in the way in time, though, and cursed him with the Leglocker Jinx, not the most sophisticated spell but the first one that came to mind. Potter fell with a curse and a crash, and stared at Draco in a way that said no one had dared to challenge him for far too long.

            "This is what you might have become without me," Draco said, hardly aware of the specific words that were tumbling out of his mouth, only knowing that he didn't want to look away from Potter and so wasn't going to. "This is what you've turned into with no one around to ridicule you and remind you of what you were, what your limitations were, and that you could have rivals instead of just people who adored you or despised you according to what the Daily Prophet told them to do."

            "You have no idea what you're talking about." Potter hadn't undone the jinx, perhaps because he thought it would be more amusing to force Draco to undo it. Draco had seen that form of "fun" from the Dark Lord more than once. "You were never important to me. You never mattered to me as much as I mattered to you."

            Draco caught his breath, because that was the thing he had most feared during his confession to Potter in the Court of Air, that Potter would laugh and look at him with cruel, narrowed eyes and say that Draco must be mad to think that he had any importance whatsoever in Potter's plans--

            And then he found himself laughing, and Potter, this version of Potter, staring at him.

            "You have no idea," he whispered, shaking his head. "I've just had a conversation with your counterpart who's been making the point that he finds me important, even if it's only now. And that I matter to him in weird ways, that I stayed with him and got under his skin." He bent down until his face was a few centimetres away from Potter's, and saw the Dark Lord blink and try desperately to focus his eyes. That did wondrous things for his memories as well as for his self-confidence. From now on, if he could think of the Dark Lord like that, it might lessen the pain of some of his nightmares.

            "I'm more important to him than you'll ever be to me," Draco whispered. "Think about that." And he did something he'd wanted to do for years and spat in the Dark Lord's face.

            For a moment, the figure on the ground had the bone-white noseless face with red eyes that haunted Draco's dreams, and then it burst into flames. Draco stood there and watched it burn down, turning to glowing embers that he scattered with a simple motion of his hand.

            Then he turned away and went on, walking down the stone corridor that changed back to a corridor made of fiery branches as he watched. His heart was beating hard, but he was sure that his smile was cool and calm, because he had so badly wanted it to be.

*

            The first time the forest began to change around him, Harry ignored it. But then it changed again, and deposited him in the middle of a broad green field with other people playing Quidditch ahead, and he hesitated and looked around.

            Did resisting the things that the Court of Fire wanted to do to him mean that he should just keep walking straight on? He had no idea if those people were real and could see him, but refusing to go towards them--

            Then the person playing the Seeker, at least if the way her broom dived and curved was any indication, saw him and shouted. Everyone stopped playing and turned towards him, staring.

            That was all they did. Just stare. Harry felt his ears heat up, but he kept walking.

            Then the laughter began. Someone started waving a newspaper, and other people zipped over and clustered around him, leaning dangerously off their brooms so they could read it. The Seeker darted towards Harry and grinned at him from midair. She looked like Ginny, but Harry didn't know her.

            "So it's true?" she asked. "The Boy-Who-Lived was afraid to show his face in public because he does like to fuck Death Eaters?"

            Harry felt as though most of the blood in his body was collected in his face. He opened and closed his eyes and said faintly, "Excuse me?"

            "Oh, you're going to pretend you don't know!" The Seeker bobbed her head. "Well, that's fair. I might have done that myself if I was in your position. But it won't do any good, you know." She leaned nearer and winked at him. "He already made the confession to the papers. Your boyfriend. Your lover. All about how you decided that his past didn't matter and you could fuck who you liked, but, well." She gave him a faux sympathetic look. "He's wise enough to know that the past does matter. And his going to the papers like this really does prove that he was right, doesn't it?"

            She rose and zoomed away.

            Harry looked up, sure that this wasn't real, but that the Court of Fire would bring him the evidence that it was. And sure enough, a copy of the Prophet glided through the air towards him, as though whirled from the hands of one of the broom-players, and settled at his feet.

            Harry picked it up and read through it with trembling hands. On the front page was a picture of Draco looking much the same as Harry had last seen him, although dressed in shining blue robes covered with stars. He had his arms folded and his very familiar smirk on his face.

            DEATH EATER AND BOY-WHO-LIVED…LOVERS?

            That was the headline, and that was what the article claimed, too. Draco talked about how he'd been in Faerie with Harry--although he called him "him" or "the Chosen One" all the way through it--and how Harry had insisted on maintaining their connection once they came back to their world. How Harry had coaxed and slobbered on and seduced him. And how Draco had broken it off.

            "Not because the sex wasn't good," said the quote in the article, "but because he was so foolish over me. Romancing me, worshiping me with his eyes, dismissing the idea that there was anything wrong with what we did. And I couldn't stand that. Of course there was. We come from different worlds, as different as the wizarding world and Faerie. We always will."

            Harry shut his eyes and opened them again. Some of the Quidditch players had gone, but others were lingering on the ground, laughing, staring at him.

            And as they watched, Harry stuck out his wand and lit the paper on fire.

            Ashes whirled into the air, and burning scraps of paper that Harry destroyed with more and more vicious sweeps of his wand, and the smug photograph of Draco that he made vanish with another flick. Then he turned and marched straight towards the people snickering at him for being taken in by a Slytherin.

            They looked more and more uncertain, the longer he walked towards them. Harry met their eyes and smiled, hard. If he had to resist whatever the Court of Fire wanted to do to him, well, then he was. He was going to take the route he had been walking before this. He was going to face his enemies.

            They began to back up as he approached. Harry didn't know for sure if that was because they feared what he'd do to them or just because they were uncertain. He did pause in the middle of them and gave them a long, measured look. A few snickered.

            "Yeah, you can laugh at me," Harry told them. "I can't stop that. But I can bloody well not run away."

            A few more snickered, but most of them seemed simply confused. Harry had to wonder, as he walked on down a corridor of fire that bloomed open in front of him and behind him, whether the same thing would happen if a story like that came out in his world. He'd spent so many years fearing and avoiding things like that, being insanely careful about his lovers or dating someone under a glamour, but he would probably live through the moment of embarrassment and come out the other side.

            Something to remember, if Draco refuses to be with you or does something like that once you return.

            He didn't look back.

*

            Draco halted at the centre of a crossroads, a cobbled red-stone walkway yielding to a deep blue bridge over a current of flames straight ahead, while the red stones turned off to the side, and wondered which way he should go. Either way would probably do to get him through the Court of Fire, ultimately, but there might be one right answer as to where he should go to find the kappilarrakka.

            "Draco!"

            Draco blinked and turned around. Potter was jogging up behind him, the real Potter, or at least a much better projection than the last one the Court of Fire had managed. Draco nodded to him. "Potter. What did you see?"

            "A betrayal," Potter said, and smiled at him. "And you?"

            "A way to live down my nightmares," Draco said, deciding that he didn't need to be more specific if Potter wasn't going to. He started to turn away. "Can you see any clues that might let us track this thing?" He was the one who knew more about it, and Faerie, and the methods of tracking in the first place, but at the moment, he didn't mind admitting that he was utterly puzzled.

            Potter's hand caught his elbow. Draco stared down at it, and wondered if this was another trick and it would grow claws in a moment or do something else to rip him to shreds.

            "Draco," Potter said in his ear, and pulled him gently around.

            Draco turned, because this was the Court of Fire and he had to face what came, and because he was thinking of the way the Dark Lord had burned and how he had decided that he didn't have to be afraid anymore.

            He didn't have to be. Not if he didn't want to.

            He met Potter's eyes, and blinked. Potter was studying him as though he didn't know whether to kiss him, or--

            No, Draco couldn't tell what the other option was. As he had tried to argue with the Court of Fire, he didn't know Potter that well.

            But well enough to remember the way he speaks, and what his kisses taste like.

            Draco winced, and told the laughter in the back of his head to fuck off. It seemed as though Potter had something important, or at least polysyllabic, to say, the way he was hesitating, so Draco stood there and waited for him to say it.

*

            What can I say? That I saw him betray me after we came out of Faerie and it hurt worse than I thought it would? That he was right about the way we shouldn't associate with each other after we're out of here?

            But Harry couldn't say either, and he didn't want to try. Instead, he murmured to Draco, "I think that we can track it further in a moment. But there's something else I want to say first. Will you let me?" He curled his fingers into the hair at the nape of Draco's neck and stroked it, liking the softness.

            Draco remained still for a moment as though considering his options. Then he nodded, jerkily.

            "I'd like to kiss you again," Harry said. "And I thought the betrayal came from you, and it was--I didn't like it. If we do only have what we have in Faerie, if these moments are the only ones we get, then I want to make them count."

            He kissed Draco, who didn't protest, although perhaps only because he was dazed. But then his mouth parted under Harry's, and his tongue struck out to touch Harry's, and Harry remembered the words Draco had spoken in the Court of Air, how his voice had shaken, as though he expected Harry to hate him for what he was saying.

            The secret went too deep for that, and so was the reason Draco had spoken it, the risk he had taken, to save their lives and make a change between them, like the being in the Court of Air had wanted. Harry pressed him against the railings of the bridge above the current of flame and kissed him harder, deeper.

            Draco's hands wavered up and down--

            And then clutched his shoulders, and settled, and stayed.

            The railings dissolved beneath Draco’s spine, and they began to tumble down, down, down, through endless misty corridors of fire. Draco bucked for a moment as though he was afraid they would crash, and then he settled back in Harry's arms and laughed into his mouth. Harry pulled back and looked at him.

            "I wondered when we would come to the part of the Court of Fire that more resembled a true Court of Faerie," Draco whispered, and turned his head from side to side.

            Harry followed his gaze, and saw that the world around them had gone soft, and also that they were falling more slowly than normal, allowing them to take everything in. Waves of blue and red and gold and orange, undulating up and down and rippling slowly back and forth and rising in hazy columns to meet them, were the only things in sight. Warm air caressed and slid back and forth over their skin, beneath their clothes. Harry heard a faint, shrill song that might have been the reflection of a phoenix's voice, and might have been only the song of the fire on the edge of hearing.

            "We're here," Draco whispered, reaching up to take Harry's cheeks in his hands and redirect his face towards Draco's. "We might as well use it."

            Harry closed his eyes and kissed him.

            It didn't seem to matter that he had his eyes closed; the colours of Faerie danced behind his eyelids, sparked and coruscated and were there with him, with them. When Draco ran his hands under Harry's shirt, his palms were flushed and the warmth made Harry's hair tingle. When Harry kissed the outside of Draco's lips and the skin beneath his nose and his chin, he noticed no difference in heat and softness from the inside of his mouth. When Harry cast his cloak beneath them to provide a bed of sorts, it rose and undulated like a flying carpet, and they settled on top of it, even as they still continued to fall.

            Draco kissed him and took off his shirt, and Harry let it happen. He slid Draco's shirt from his shoulders while kissing his collarbone, and Draco let it happen. But when they both reached for each other's trousers at the same time, Draco caught his eye, and Harry found himself smiling.

            "I want to," Draco said, breathless, a humid gasp that covered Harry's face with a fine dew of fire.

            "Yes," Harry said, and kissed Draco again, and let Draco wrap his legs around his hips with them both still clad in their trousers and pants.

            It wasn't simple, what they did. They rolled over and over, the cloak slipping from beneath them and then catching up with them again, the sparks and embers leaping from the walls to dance around them, Draco's breath warm against his throat and his fingers hard in their pressure against Harry's back, between the shoulder blades.

            They kissed, and their teeth clacked, the hardest things in all that whirling soft space.

            Harry knew that sometimes he was clasping Draco as they fell towards the walls, and sometimes Draco was clasping him as they fell towards the unknown bottom, and sometimes they orbited each other. He didn't know how to keep track of that. He didn't try.

            They whirled, and they shone, and then Draco's hips jutted into his as hard as his fingernails scratched down Harry's back and the flooding warmth began to build to a literal climax. Harry snarled into Draco's mouth and thrust back as hard as he could, up or down it made no matter, and rejoiced when he heard Draco's breath start out of him.

            By now, Harry had worked his hands beneath Draco's trousers on the arse, too, and he squeezed. Draco laughed, and gripped Harry's thighs, holding him still as he thrust. Harry bit his lips and pushed Draco's tongue towards the back of his throat with his own as he came.

            And he came.

            The pulsing, tingling crescendo went on, throughout the fall, through the scrabbling that was Draco's orgasm, throughout the reaching of feathery tendrils of fire towards them. Harry's body arched, and his fingers and his legs and his mouth dived in, kept him falling, kept him clinging there.

            Part of him would always be there. No matter where they went after Faerie, no matter what happened.

            Ever after.

*

            Draco opened his eyes. What he saw in front of him made no sense, and he shook his head and lifted it, half-expecting to pick grass out of his hair, as they seemed to be lying in a field.

            They. Yes. When he turned his head, Potter was still asleep beside him, shirtless. Draco's shirt was gone, too, for that matter, and Potter's cloak was stretched beneath them, bright green here and there in places from the grass.

            Draco sniffed, and thought he caught a lingering scent of fire. He turned his head blearily, blinking, wondering if they were on the other side of the Court of Fire and in a different part of Faerie, or back in their own world.

            Back in their own world, he was utterly certain, when he felt no heavy magic pressing against his skin. Besides, he had heard more than once, from Polaris and others, that in that particular part of Faerie that contained the Courts, the Fire one was up against the wall of Faerie. There was no place to go beyond it.

            Which meant…

            Which meant the kappilarrakka had to be here, somewhere.

            Draco sat up, and made a quiet show of stretching his arms above his head and yawning, while really watching beneath his eyelids for any sign that something else shared the meadow with them. There were flowers, yes, and leaves lying on the ground from the small copse that stood not far away, and birds singing in the trees and hopping about among the grasses…

            And there. A single butterfly, wings the white of water, marked with patches the brown of earth and the blue of air, and fringed with drooping red tassels the colour of fire, moving wearily from blossom to blossom. It was the guise the creature had taken at first, or at least startlingly like it. It must be exhausted.

            Draco took one of the collecting vials from his pocket, moving quietly. He made sure not to disturb the cloak as he stood and slid towards the kappilarrakka, not only because it would alert the creature but because he didn't want to wake Potter. What they had shared last night, or however much time their journey through Faerie had actually taken, should last as long as it could.

            He wandered behind the butterfly, pausing now and then as though he wanted to examine the flowers and perhaps add some of their petals to his vial. Then he thought he was close enough, when the butterfly paused on the edge of a narcissus hanging over the water, and he struck hard.

            The edge of the vial hit the ground, but not the butterfly, which flew up before him in a panic. Draco cursed and surged to his feet, chasing it desperately now, knowing that there had to be a door to Faerie near here somewhere if they had come through it, and that if the kappilarrakka found it and fled through it, they would never catch it again--

            A breeze grabbed the edge of the butterfly's wings and blew it backwards. Draco jumped up and managed to snatch it in the wide mouth of the vial, one of the specially-made ones that Polaris had given him for a task like this. The butterfly tried to climb up towards the rim, but Draco popped the lid into place and stood there, panting.

            He looked up, wondering where the convenient breeze had come from, and saw Potter smiling at him.

            Draco flushed scarlet, a hue that, he realised, extended all the way down to his waist in Potter's view, since he wasn't wearing a shirt. He slid the vial back into his pocket and cleared his throat. "I hope you slept well," he said, since it was less stupid than the first ten things that popped into his head.

            "Very well, actually," Potter said, and stood up, collecting his cloak and casting a Cleaning Charm in the same movement. "I don't feel the various pains and aches of our journey through Faerie at all." He stretched, and Draco tried not to watch the muscles in his back, or the way that they seemed to create a ripple of movement that pointed straight towards that fine arse.

            "I told you that would happen," Draco said, glad to take refuge in trivialities. "Now, we should get this back to Polaris. He'll know how to divide it so that the Ministry can have what it needs to cure this curse, and he wants--"

            "Draco."

            The word made Draco dizzy, far dizzier than the sight of the Dark Lord with Potter's face had. He shuddered, and except that it would be silly to run away and Apparate with no shirt and an Auror chasing him, he would have fled.

            In silence, he stood there as Potter walked across the flowering field, with the sunlight pouring down on him and the birds singing merrily, and took his hand.

            Potter looked at him, studying his face as if he knew all the arguments Draco would make and was silencing them, one by one. Draco stood there until all the words he might have spoken were burned away, and then, and only then, did Potter bring Draco's hand to his lips.

            His kiss on the back of it made Draco's skin flush and his head spin faster. Potter's kiss burned like the Court of Fire.

            "I know," Potter said quietly. "It will be hard. But I want to try. Please?" he added, and smiled at Draco.

            Visions shifted up and down in front of Draco's eyes. Potter casting lightning to save them in the Court of Water. The way they had worked together to produce the battle potion that saved them from the Earth King. How Potter had acted first when the being questioned them in the Court of Air, setting his bridges on fire with an action that he must know Draco might have hated him for.

            How they had been together, all the way through it. Together.

            It wasn't what he had once wanted. But there was no law that said desires had to last forever. They could change. Shift. Blend.

            Because desire was akin to fire.

            Draco nodded, and then he leaned forwards and kissed Harry there, in the middle of the flowering field, with the sunlight pouring down on them, the taste of air and water in their mouths, solid earth under their feet.

            The End.
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The Shining Courts