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Between the Rising and the Setting of the Sun	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3650 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Between the Rising and the Setting of the Sun
- 1
Title: Between the Rising and the Setting of the Sun

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and her associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione.

Rating: R

Word Count: ~20,000

Warnings: DH spoilers, ignores epilogue. Profanity, some angst, references to sex, a touch of horror and violence.

Summary: Draco, for some reason, is receiving visions about James and Lily Potter. He wants them to stop. Harry wants them to continue long enough for him to understand what they’re trying to tell him.

Author’s Notes: Written for miss_zazlx, as a congratulations gift for getting her degree, and to the prompt: either Harry or Draco keeps having flashbacks to the other man's parents' pasts. (I don't mind if it's truly trivial flashbacks or something massively important related to buried gold and the cure for X). As such Harry (Draco) ended up contacting Draco (Harry) to try and unravel the mystery before Molly (Pansy) drags them to St Mungo's and a rather invasive barrage of mind-probing spells. The title comes from the quote by Augusta Jane Evans: “Life does not count by years. Some suffer a lifetime in a day, and so grow old between the rising and the setting of the sun.”

Between the Rising and the Setting of the Sun

            “Potter! Potter, wake up and get out here this instant!”

            For some reason, Harry could only remember one thing as he hazily opened his eyes in the dawnlight streaming through the window. He’d let Hermione persuade him to put wards on his small house on the outskirts of Hogsmeade that would interfere with visitors who intended to harm him or who had come because of his celebrity, but would permit free access to all others. He had thought it was a good idea because then his house could become an unofficial gathering place and refuge for good friends and the Weasleys, who sometimes endured the same sort of harassment he did from people who wanted the “real story” of what had happened during the war.

            Now he was certain he must have been drunk when he agreed.

            Sitting up, he spent a moment chewing the sleep from the corners of his mouth and rubbing at the fluff in his eyes. The pounding hadn’t stopped, but Harry didn’t intend to let it hurry him. He’d been hurried through enough of his life in the past three years, especially on the quest for the Horcruxes and just before he’d finally decided to give up Auror training. If slowness was good enough for him, it was good enough for the person who had come to visit him.

            Who sure didn’t sound like one of his dearest friends, anyway.

            Harry ambled out of his bedroom and across the small room beyond that was meant to be a sitting place but had become the home of broken brooms, Neville’s experimental plants, pranks George needed to keep out of the shop for a while until “things had cooled off,” robes that Ron liked but Hermione would banish him from the house for wearing, and anything else that was useful and couldn’t find a place in its owner’s home. Harry stumbled twice over the chairs he had bought when Hermione still insisted they would sit in that room and talk seriously about politics. It figured, he thought grimly as he dragged himself upright and made it to the small corridor immediately in front of the door. He never stumbled on any of the other rubbish, the same way he hadn’t been in the habit of tripping over trunks and clothes in the Gryffindor boys’ bedroom at Hogwarts, but make some attempt to set the place in order and he was hopeless.

            The knocking had paused when he stumbled, as if the person outside would take his stumble as vengeance for the long wait, but now the hammering began once more. Harry waited until the shouting voice had found a good place to pause and then tugged the door open.

            Draco Malfoy stood on his front step, blinking. His face was flushed, and he wore a set of robes that bunched around the waist. Harry raised an eyebrow. “It must be an emergency, for you to have emerged from the Manor looking like your mother didn’t dress you,” he said.

            Malfoy barreled past him and whirled around to face him in the middle of the corridor. Harry shut the door and examined him curiously through the light of the small glass panes set in the door; they were grimy but served well enough, and Hermione tended to shut up about the dirt whenever Harry suggested having Kreacher clean them.

            Malfoy was changed since the war, everyone said. Harry didn’t know himself, because he rarely ventured out in public due to the imminent threat of death by autograph-seeking mob. He hadn’t seen Malfoy since he testified at the other boy’s trial, telling the Wizengamot that he was basically a pathetic weakling who hadn’t been much good to either side and deserved to go free. In the end, the fact that he had used Malfoy’s wand to defeat Voldemort seemed to carry more weight with them than anything else. (Or just the fact that Malfoy’s wand had been involved somehow; no matter how patiently Harry explained the circumstances that had led to his being master of the Elder Wand, most other people were still baffled by it).

            But Malfoy had changed in outward behavior. He was full of energy, and of projects half-taken up and then abandoned. He had been an apothecary one day and an artist the next, and then there had been a rumor he was hunting Fawkes, for some reason. That obsession had lasted two whole weeks. Harry privately thought that Malfoy had wanted the excuse to hang about Hogwarts a lot and try to find the Elder Wand.

            Now he pointed a finger at Harry and advanced a step. He had grown unfairly tall, but the wrinkled robes and the hair standing out around his head like a hedgehog’s quills rather detracted from any dignity that might have given him. The large red handprint on his right cheek didn’t help, either.

            “I know you did this,” he said. “I know you cast this spell to torment me. Now take it off.”

            “Is it a spell that dishevels you whenever you get dressed?” Harry frowned at him. “I wish I could claim credit for it, but unfortunately I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

            “I’m talking about the spell that makes me have visions of your dead parents!” Malfoy clapped his hands together sharply, as if he would startle the truth out of Harry, and leaned forwards, frowning. “Take it off.”

            And Harry found himself staring, with no idea of what to say.

*

            Draco snapped his fingers in front of Potter’s face, and then sighed in annoyance. The idiot had gone slack-jawed. Of course he had. He’d made two attempts at wit since Draco showed up at his door. That had doubtless drained the power of his brain for the day.

            But Draco didn’t care how long it took. He didn’t even care that it had meant waking up at daybreak in order to be sure that he would catch Potter still sleeping and alone, without annoying Mudblood defenders around him—although he hadn’t managed to avoid Pansy. He’d lived with these visions in his head for a week now, and they were obstructing his attempts to live a real life.

            He’d had many ambitions since the Wizengamot had declared him free to go. What he hadn’t been able to stand about the war was the way it got decided far away from him. He’d tried to spare Potter’s life, and it got him his wand stolen. He’d tried to capture Potter in the Room of Hidden Things and bring him to the Dark Lord, and it meant he owed his life to the bespectacled git, yet again. He’d hoped he might get some respect when it was revealed that his wand had saved Potter’s arse in the final battle, but of course everyone looked at him vaguely when he mentioned it and went on to ask what it was like to share the school with a real hero.

            No, he was going to make a real contribution to wizarding society. He was going to force everybody to sit up and notice him.

            He didn’t know what it was yet, but he could feel the great idea brewing beneath the surface of his mind, shifting back and forth, awaiting its moment to burst into the light and dazzle all those who had ever doubted him. And the visions of Potter’s parents were interfering.

            In more than one way, Draco thought, shuddering. Pansy had threatened to drag him to St. Mungo’s to figure out what was wrong if he didn’t do something. Pansy had, for some reason, got married to a Ravenclaw immediately after the interrupted seventh-years all managed to sit their NEWTS and then divorced him in a spectacular courtroom battle that the papers covered breathlessly whenever they could refrain from discussing Potter for a moment. She’d acted as her own solicitor and won so many Galleons that she could fill her house with them and go swimming if she wanted. And those triumphs had had made her a more formidable person than Draco was prepared to deal with right now. He had to show that he could get rid of the visions on his own, rather than by letting someone save him.

            Besides, they were no doubt a curse that Potter had put on him because he was jealous of Draco’s talent and energy, moldering in his house in Hogsmeade the way he was, and the best course would be to have him remove the spell, not to have the Mind-Healers at St. Mungo’s pry into Draco’s head. Draco shuddered again. No one had a right to pry into his brain right now. It was very…private in there.

            “What do you mean, you’re having visions of my dead parents?” Potter sounded strangled.

            Draco frowned. But he’d had personal experience of dealing with Potter, which most of those people pressing their fat faces against the wards out there couldn’t say, and he knew how to handle him. Be firm. Professor Snape had understood that lesson better than any professor at Hogwarts, and he got the results he wanted: Potter failing his Potions classes.

            Draco felt a sniffle trying to come on at the thought of Professor Snape, but he managed to stifle it in time. Mourning for Snape was very private, too.

            “Just what I said,” he snapped. “I learned how your father started courting your mother yesterday. Very innovative, I have to admit, dumping water over her when they were both fourth-years, but hardly likely to win him attention. And then the night before that there was the dream of the first time they visited Godric’s Hollow together as a married couple. I did not want to see what they were about to get up to, so I ended that vision early, but I can’t stop having them.”

            Potter took a step forwards. His eyes had started to glow with the most disturbing light. “Malfoy,” he said. “I know almost nothing about my parents.”

            Draco snorted. “Unless you were a one-year-old with an unusually good memory, I’m not sure why that’s supposed to surprise me.”

            Potter’s voice sharpened and his face turned red. Ah, this was the Potter Draco remembered, stammering and scowling sulkily in Snape’s class. (And that was a rather good feat of alliteration, if he did say so himself).

            “I want to know what the visions are,” Potter said.

            “And I want you to take the curse off.”

            Potter stared at him as if Draco were someone he could pity, which Draco didn’t enjoy at all. “Has it occurred to you,” he said, “that I could have hardly cast this curse to flood your head with visions of my parents when I don’t know anything about them?”

            “You’re a liar,” Draco retorted instantly. Have an answer for everything, his father had taught him. Half the time, it becomes the answer of the person asking you the question. “You probably did learn it from all the people who fawned on your parents during their schooldays. I had to watch McGonagall laughing at your father’s ‘incredible’ pranks half the night on Wednesday. Why she thought they were incredible, I don’t know. Your father was a disgusting little wanker.”

            For some reason, Potter smiled tightly. “That actually is one thing I did already know,” he said. “But—Malfoy, you don’t understand. I want you to tell me the visions you’re seeing.” His eyes were big with childish yearning. “I want to know what my parents were like.”

            “And how do you know they’re real?” Draco asked.

            “You just said—“

            “They feel real to me. But I could be lying.” Draco folded his arms and regarded Potter condescendingly. Really, it was a miracle that the Dark Lord hadn’t managed to finish him off, naïve as he was. And if he persisted in living behind such weak wards, some successor to the Dark Lord would manage it sooner or later. “You could at least give me credit for trying to pull off a plot like that. Assuming I’m telling the truth from the beginning is simply insulting.”

            Potter closed his eyes and spoke with great restraint. “You’re making no sense.”

            “Yes, but you’re insulting me. That means I don’t need to make sense.”

            Potter shook his head as if flies were buzzing in his ears, then said, “Why would my parents choose to give you visions?”

            “Why do you assume they’re the ones doing it? It’s likelier that this is the result of a curse, even if you didn’t cast it.” Draco peered closely at Potter, but reluctantly had to give up the notion that he’d cast the curse and was lying about it. Potter had never been good at lying. “Now I have to figure out who cast it.”

            “But I still want to know what the visions are like,” Potter said, opening his eyes. “The part about my Dad being a wanker makes me think they’re real.”

            “You have strange standards for truth, Potter,” Draco said, and cocked his head to the side as he surveyed Potter critically. “Do you regularly believe that something must be true because it hurts?”

            “Yes, actually,” Potter said, and his eyes began to spark and shine with temper. “Pity you’ve never done the same thing. When people told you you were a pathetic weakling who would never find the Elder Wand, you might have had the sense to believe them.”

            Draco flushed. He wanted to ask who had told Potter, and then remembered that he had no friends, or enemies either, who were stupid enough to do that. Potter was simply making an educated guess, which meant Draco could ignore it.

            And then he had a brilliant idea. It was a bubble breaking off the buried brilliant idea, he was certain, a premonition of the thoughts that would someday make him the most famous and beloved man in the world.

            “I’ll tell you what the visions are like,” he said.

            “If?” Potter said.

            Draco wanted to protest. Potter thought him honest about the visions instead of laying a trap, and now he wanted to think that Draco was scheming to get something in return for telling him the visions? Of course, Draco was. But Potter should make up his mind about how he was portraying Draco to himself. Really, Draco had no idea how he slept at night, with such muddled standards.

            “If you come with me to find out who cast the curse,” he said, “and help me take it off.”

            Potter thought for long minutes. Draco could practically feel his mind working, battering against the sides of his skull. Or, hmm, no, it wouldn’t do that, would it? That would imply that Potter’s head was too small to contain his mind. Instead, it was probably flipping over and over in the middle of a vast empty space, like a Galleon rolled on the floor in the Weasleys’ vault.

*

            Harry controlled his trembling. He was sure Malfoy would laugh at him if he noticed it, and Harry couldn’t afford that. This was too important to him.

            He had been missing, he thought, the sense of a past. So long as he had an immediate future to concentrate on, a destiny that would lead to the killing of a great villain and was all arranged by prophecy and everything, he’d been able to ignore his own lack of roots. He had a place in the world, solid and waiting for him whenever he thought about something other than Quidditch and homework.

            And then he’d defeated Voldemort and found himself without a future and without a past. He’d gone in for Auror training, the way everyone expected him to, but he found that he didn’t really enjoy it, and he’d started wondering if his father would have expected him to be an Auror just because James had been one. And then he’d looked at Ginny one day and realized how much she looked like the pictures of Lily in his photo album minus the green eyes, and he’d also started wondering if he was only dating a redhead because his mum had been one. He wanted to know more about his mum than the fact that she’d had red hair and been good at Potions and Snape’s friend.

            He’d tried to go back to the Muggle world for a little while, but he didn’t know basic things about living there; the Dursleys hadn’t taught him when he was a child, and then he’d spent his adolescence in the wizarding world. And so he was living here near Hogwarts—no coincidence—and it seemed now that he’d spent three months trying to work up the courage to go and ask McGonagall and Hagrid for details about his parents.

            That was weak.

            Malfoy could offer him some answers, probably, and he was at least a spur that would get Harry out of the house and working to know his own past. Then he could move on, and maybe he could even start being an Auror again and marry Ginny, if he had a good idea about how his parents would have regarded those things.

            “All right,” he said, and then thought his voice had faltered too much as he cleared his throat. “I’ll—I’ll go with you, Malfoy.” He paused, and his sense of the fitness of things came back to him. Malfoy might have showed up at his door with a disturbing tale concerning his parents, but that was no reason to go blindly trusting the prat. “Do you have any idea who might have cast the curse on you? Not to disparage your instincts, but your first one was that I did it.”

            Malfoy sighed. Harry thought he might have rolled his eyes, except that he didn’t wish to use up his day’s worth of dramatic gestures on just one incident. “Of course I do,” he said. “Who hates me more than anyone else in the world? Except you, of course.”

            “I don’t hate you—“

            “Yes, you probably call it loathing or some other fancy word you didn’t know before Granger entered your life—“

            “But I would reckon it was your father, if I had to make a guess,” Harry said, determined to override Malfoy’s words and score a hit that would make the other boy listen to him. “You know, for generally letting down the family name during the war.”

            Malfoy’s mouth fell open, and Harry winced in spite of himself at the look that filled his eyes. Yes, he’d wanted to hurt him, but he hadn’t thought that Malfoy would show his pain. He’d tried never to do so, at school.

            “How dare you,” Malfoy said, and his voice had gone high and queer. He folded his arms across his chest. “My father loves me.”

            Harry coughed and looked away. “I know,” he whispered. “I saw. The way he hugged you in the Great Hall after the battle.”

            “At least I know my father loves me,” Malfoy said. “You don’t know that about your parents.”

            “Everyone says—“

            “Who’s the one having visions of your father?” Malfoy folded his arms again, but now it looked less like he was trying to hold in his guts and more like he genuinely felt smug. “And I won’t ever tell you what I saw in them concerning you unless you apologize.”

            “You saw me as a baby?” Harry asked, scandalized.

            “Of course.” Malfoy stared at him. “These visions aren’t chronological. They show me your birth, you as a baby, your parents in school, and sometimes them puttering about that horrid small house they bought.”

            “Doing what?”

            “Whatever Mudbloods do,” Malfoy said. “Now apologize.”

            Harry choked back his anger. If he insulted Malfoy again, it was possible he’d never get to hear what his parents had said and done in the visions. And this was the closest he’d come to them since he saw his mum in Snape’s memories. Oh, yes, he could drive Malfoy away and still listen to stories from people who’d known them. But he didn’t think that would be as satisfying as hearing them described by someone who’d seen them in his head. Hagrid and McGonagall and the rest had all had eighteen years in which to forget the way his mum smiled, or the way his father looked when he was sleeping.

            “I’m sorry,” he said.

            Malfoy cupped a hand around his ear. “I don’t believe that you’ve quite said that loud enough for me to hear,” he said.

            “I’m sorry,” Harry said.

            “Now say it and bow.”

            Harry gritted his teeth, but managed what he thought was a passable bow, waiting until he had lifted his head to say, “I’m sorry,” again, so Malfoy couldn’t accuse him of mumbling the words whilst looking away from him.

            “Now grovel.”

            The last of Harry’s sympathy drained away. “Who hates you the most after me, then?” he asked. If he pandered to the few of Malfoy’s delusions he could stand indulging, then he might get him to tell the visions and leave sooner than he would otherwise.

            “The Weasel, of course,” Malfoy said, and grabbed Harry’s wrist. “We’re going to find him, and then you can reason with him. If rabid animals respond to reason.”

            “I—“

            But the words got Splinched as they Apparated. The last coherent thought Harry had before he vanished was that he was going to kill Hermione for suggesting he leave anti-Apparition wards off the inside of the house.

*

            Draco knew he was a powerful Apparater. It had saved his life a few times during the war, when he needed to get from one part of the Manor grounds, where Bellatrix or the Dark Lord was raging, to another. He’d found Potter’s house on the first try, though he’d only heard descriptions of it and never seen it. But even he hadn’t expected his gift to be strong enough to tear down the wards around Weasley’s pathetic little house.

            A moment later, he rather wished it hadn’t been.

            Someone shrieked. Draco flung an arm frantically across his face, but that didn’t stop the sight of naked flesh, frizzy brown hair, and nasty freckles from entering his eyes, and it certainly couldn’t block the memories.

            “Mate, warn us—“ said a deep voice that he remembered belonging to the Weasel as he mumbled his way through early morning classes.

            “Ron, make them go away until I can put some robes on!” And that was Granger. Draco had never known anyone else to get that shrill when she was upset, even Pansy.

            “Mate, is that Malfoy?”

            Draco dropped his arm, but turned his face firmly in another direction, so he wouldn’t be confronted with the sight of that again. “I demand you take the curse that you put on me off immediately, Weasel,” he said haughtily. “You’ve already traumatized me enough with the sight of your girlfriend.”

            “I’ll give your ears a good cursing, you little—“

            And then another vision gripped Draco and forced him to his knees, which started an unfortunate train of associations. Gasping, he tried to shove the thought of the Weasel or Granger being on her knees out of his head, but that left him with less concentration for fighting the vision.

            Now he could see a woman standing in front of a small house, in the middle of a riotous garden of flowers that his mother would have turned her nose up at and ordered the house-elves to discipline. He had learned from hearing James Potter address her that this was Potter’s mother—and there was no mistaking James Potter. She had the same intense green eyes as her son, too, just to make the identification easier. Draco had been forced to admit she was uncommonly pretty for a Mudblood.

            She cradled something in her hands, staring at it with a puckered brow and pursed lips. Draco tried to see what it was, but he couldn’t. That was part of the frustration of the vision. Unlike a Pensieve memory, he couldn’t move in any direction and view things from every angle. He had to stand at a certain distance, by the garden’s front wall in this case, and see and hear only what happened within the immediate vicinity.

            The door of the house opened, and Potter’s father leaned out. “Lily?” he asked, his voice gentle. “What’s the matter?”

            The woman turned and looked at him. She had shoulder-length red hair that blazed in the sunlight. Draco sneered. It was no wonder that Potter had fallen for a Weasley. If Draco was pressed, he would admit that Lily Potter didn’t look quite like one of those carrot-tops, that her hair was a little closer to auburn, but he failed to see who would be able to press him that much.

            “I’m worried about this thing that Sirius gave us,” she said. “Is he sure his mother won’t notice it’s missing?”

            Potter laughed and stepped out to put his arm around her. He might be a good-looking man if one’s taste ran to messy mops of hair and wild looks around the eyes, Draco thought critically. “Sirius explained that,” he said. “It used to be a Black family heirloom, but the moment he took it out of that bloody house—“

            “James!” Lily put a hand on her stomach. Draco hadn’t noticed before because of her shapeless robes, not at all in a proper style, but it did bulge a bit. “Such language in front of the baby!”

            Potter kissed her cheek and went right on. “It’s lost its power. He provided me with the spells that would make it a Potter heirloom instead, bonding it to anyone who has our blood or takes up our name by marriage. I just haven’t performed them yet.”

            “Then do it!” Lily pushed the thing she held at him. Draco rose to his toes but still couldn’t make out what it might be, to his frustration, though it sparked so brilliantly in the sunlight he knew it must have metal pinned to it somewhere. “Within three days. Otherwise I’ll bury it in the back garden. I don’t want it in the same house with our child.”

            “Really,” Potter said. “You’re so protective now that I shudder to think what you’ll be like when he’s born.” He bent and assumed a grave expression, peering at his wife’s belly. Draco shuddered. He was certain his parents hadn’t played such games with him when he was in the womb; pure-blood pregnancies were too important and rare to be treated like toys. And even if they had, they wouldn’t have giggled like morons whilst they were doing it. “Do you hear me, little Prongs?” Potter asked. “You’re to grow up and become a good Marauder, and ignore all your mother’s fussing.”

            Prongs?For the first time in several days, Draco experienced a doubt as to the authenticity of his vision. That didn’t sound like a detail that fit into any version of the Potters’ legend as he’d always known it.

            Well, I should mention it to Potter and see if he recognizes it, then. That might convince him I’m telling the truth.

            Lily giggled again and swatted her husband’s head. He hurried back into the house, taking the artifact, whatever it was, with him. A moment later, the woman smiling after her husband and the flower garden and the little house dissolved into a whirl of color and were gone.

            Draco slowly opened his eyes and shook his head, feeling hands on his shoulders for the first time. Potter yelled his name in his face, and he reared back, saying irritably, “Yes, yes, I’m fine, I just had another vision.”

            Potter immediately let his jaw fall, then snapped it back up and stared at him expectantly. Weasley and Granger, both luckily with some clothes on, peered cautiously over his shoulder.

            Draco stood and made a great show of brushing the dust off his robes. They would expect him to be fussy in any case. He was really thinking furiously about the vision he’d just had and how much of it he would be wise to trust to the Three Idiots.

            A Black bloodline artifact! Draco had no doubt that was what the object was, and not just an ordinary heirloom, from the way Potter had spoken. Bloodline artifacts were enormously powerful weapons that had the most strength when inside the family’s ancestral home, and did indeed respond to both members of that family by blood and members by marriage. Draco had never heard of a spell that would take them away from one family and bond them to another, though.

            So Potter might have been lying on that head to soothe his wife, or he might have misunderstood the Sirius—Sirius Black, it must be—who’d given it to him. And who was to say he’d ever completed the spells if they did exist? Perhaps that artifact was still lying in the ruins of the house Godric’s Hollow, waiting for an heir of the Black line to come along and claim it.

            And Draco would certainly count. It would even explain the visions. The artifact had obviously sought someone worthy to wield it, and it had sensed the brilliance waiting in Draco’s mind, only needing the right circumstances to flourish. His father was too old and had too many failures, and he was a Malfoy by blood anyway, which outweighed the marriage tie. His mother was too passive; even when the Dark Lord threatened her family, she’d sought for help with Unbreakable Vows instead of fighting. The artifact would disdain the Mudblood side of the Black family. No, he was the rightful wielder of it; he had to be.

            But he would not tell any of that to Potter. Doubtless he would misconceive the artifact as something left over from his family that he wanted and was entitled to, and would try to claim it. And he would die if he tried that, and his death would be blamed on Draco.

            He gave Potter a brilliant smile and began to lie his head off about the vision.

*

            Harry eyed Malfoy with some distrust. He was so wide-eyed and smooth-faced and innocent that he had to be lying. Why he’d wish to start now, though, instead of doing so from the beginning so he could lure Harry into a convincing trap and kill him, Harry didn’t know. He only knew that none of these same signs had appeared when Malfoy had been telling him the story of the visions and the curse before.

            “I saw your parents at what I assume is the house they were killed in,” Malfoy began. “The house was rather small. Your mother was in the flower garden. She was holding a dove in her hands. Apparently she meant to use it as a messenger instead of an owl. Or maybe she intended it as a symbol of something. I’m sure I have no idea.” Malfoy sniffed. “She opened her hands, and the dove flew away. It had a trailing green ribbon on one leg.”

            “A green ribbon?” Hermione asked thoughtfully. Harry dared a cautious glance at her. She had on a jumper, and if she wasn’t wearing anything below the waist, at least the sheets of Ron’s bed firmly concealed that. “That’s a symbol of fertility and springtime in some magical traditions. Muggles used to wind ribbons around a Maypole.”

            “She was pregnant with you, Potter,” Malfoy suddenly added. “I’m sure the ribbon was a symbol of fertility.”

            “And I’m not,” Harry said. “You said you saw my parents. What was my father doing?”

            Malfoy’s smile curdled. “Just hugging her and whispering nonsense to you,” he snapped defensively. “It’s a good thing they died when they did, or their own soppiness would have melted them.”

            Harry reminded himself that strangling Malfoy, no matter how emotionally satisfying, would probably bring him into conflict with the Aurors, and Ron would feel some sort of public duty to try and stop him, since he’d remained in the training. Besides, the reporters would find out and write all sorts of clever and stinging insults about him that would get to Harry like the bites of gnats, no matter how many times he told himself to ignore them. “Right,” he said. “Then why are you having these visions at all?”

            “I don’t know.” Malfoy struck a pensive pose. “But maybe your parents just want to talk to you, only you don’t have the sensitivity, so they reached through me instead.”

            Harry swallowed. He liked that explanation, probably too much. He had always wanted to know more about his parents, and maybe they’d sensed that, but because they hadn’t lingered as ghosts, they couldn’t communicate with him directly. Wouldn’t it be pleasant if they had found the nearest messenger and given him messages until he was overflowing with them and carried the visions to Harry? Not because there was any destiny mixed up with it, or because they needed him to perform some task for them, the way all the Muggle stories of the restless dead had it. Just because they missed him and had finally found some way to tell him all the little anecdotes they would have whispered to him if they survived.

            “I don’t believe you, Malfoy.”

            Unsurprisingly, Ron was speaking. Harry looked up and blinked. Ron had his wand out—when had that happened?—and aimed at Malfoy. Before Harry could protest, he saw that the wand glowed red at the tip.

            He narrowed his eyes and turned on Malfoy. Harry didn’t know the spell himself, but all the Auror trainees had learned it the week after he left, and Ron had bragged about it enough for him to have a good idea of what it did. It would detect large and obvious lies, though unlike Veritaserum it couldn’t force the truth from the person it was cast on, and it wouldn’t catch mild misdirection or lies of omission. If Harry had been smart, he would have coaxed the incantation from Ron himself weeks ago and then used it on Malfoy the moment he started claiming to have visions of Harry’s parents.

            “It’s true!” Malfoy insisted. He glared at Ron’s wand. “What does that mean, anyway?”

            “It shines red when you’re lying, white when you’re telling the truth,” Ron said smugly. “It shone white through part of that telling, but turned red the minute you mentioned the dove Harry’s Mum was ‘holding.’” He pitched his voice high in imitation of Malfoy’s. “I had the wand under the sheets so you couldn’t see it.”

            “Believe me, I have no desire ever to see your wand—“

            Harry drew his own wand and cast a spell that produced a thunderous booming concussion from the rafters, one of the tricks he’d mastered to send reporters scurrying out of the way when they’d upset him. Both Ron and Malfoy turned to stare at him with open mouths. Harry lowered the wand and said, “So you saw my mother at Godric’s Hollow in the flower garden. Tell us the truth about what happened after that.” He felt better now, strong and confident. Yes, this had been what he needed: someone to stir him out of his self-imposed apathy and set him up facing the realities of the world again. Obviously Malfoys would always lie. It was a good job none of them had chosen to testify at their own trials, or they’d probably be languishing in Azkaban by now, Harry’s words notwithstanding.

            Malfoy stared at him for a moment with his lower lip stuck out. Harry found himself choking back laughter with an effort. Malfoy might have a bustling energy and grand ideas that would make him a genius if he ever managed to put any of them into practice, but he was a boy at heart still. He believed the world was fundamentally fair to someone with his last name and that he could earn some of that fairness if he looked pouty enough.

            “I’m not Snape, and I’m not your mother,” Harry said, aiming his wand casually at Malfoy. “I’m just someone who wants some answers. Tell me what happened after my mother went into the flower garden.”

            “She was holding something in her hands,” Malfoy said sulkily. He had folded his arms across his chest now and was gazing moodily off into the distance, which was apparently his way of trying to recover as much dignity as possible. Harry saw now why certain members of Slytherin House were apparently fond of him, especially the girls. There was an endearing quality about him, though Harry didn’t know the right word for it. Perhaps simply endurance.He kept going and pushing and whinging even when he should have known that it was his own actions that had pulled the falling wall down on his head; he kept trying to stand up under the tumbling stones. “I couldn’t see what it was. The visions don’t let me see everything.”

            Harry shot Ron a glance, but the light on the tip of his wand was white.

            “Then your father came out and had a confusing conversation with her.” Malfoy shrugged defensively when Harry glared at him. “Half of it was soppiness, like I said. The other half was about some gift they’d got from Sirius—Sirius Black?” At Harry’s tight nod, he continued, “And there was something about spells to make the gift really theirs. I didn’t understand that part. But your mother didn’t want the artifact in the house with you,” he finished on a rising, hopeful note.

            Harry understood him perfectly. Malfoy didn’t want to be dragged into danger the way he thought he would be if Harry went after the artifact. But of course Harry was going to look for it. If it survived, it would be something his parents had touched and handled—something his mother had touched and handled. He couldn’t be sure of that concerning either the Marauders’ Map or his Invisibility Cloak.

            “You can stay here if you want,” he said.

            “Not here, mate,” Ron said sharply.

            “Well, then, somewhere in the general area.” Harry rolled his eyes. “I don’t care. But I want to see what my mother thought was so dangerous.”

            “We’ll go with you,” Ron said at once. Harry smiled at him. He knew part of the reason Ron sounded so eager was that he was envious Harry and Hermione had visited Godric’s Hollow without him, but any motive that brought him along was welcome to Harry.

            “We can’t,” Hermione said, and leaned forwards to rap the back of Ron’s head with her knuckles. “We promised that we would take care of Victoire today, remember?”

            Ron groaned. Harry chuckled. Victoire was Bill and Fleur’s daughter, only a few months old now, but already more of a menace than most wizarding children because her accidental magic had manifested unusually early. Toys whizzing across the room were the least of it. Hermione reading a book in a calming tone often put the little girl to sleep, but she still needed someone in the room with her in case things got bad—and even Victoire’s exhausted parents wouldn’t leave her unless there was that guarantee of a second person.

            “I’ll go then,” Harry said. “I can’t imagine there’s anything as dangerous there as what we already confronted.” He touched his wand, and his and Hermione’s eyes met in a silent passage of understanding.

            “I want to go,” Malfoy said suddenly.

            Harry turned to glare at him. He had hoped the news of something dangerous potentially lurking in his parents’ house had dissuaded Malfoy from accompanying him. “What? Why?”

            “Because you promised to help me find out what was causing this curse,” Malfoy said stubbornly. “And because that’s not the only vision I had.” He gave Harry an uncomfortable smirk. Of course he would take pleasure in the suffering of others even if it meant his own suffering was involved, Harry thought irritably. “If you don’t take me with you, then you’ll never find out what the other ones are.”

            “Oh, let him go,” said Ron, and flipped a hand. “He’ll never best you in a fight, failure that he is.”

            Harry suspected Ron only wanted Malfoy decisively away from the Burrow, but the scowl Malfoy gave Ron in return for his words made him forgive his best friend. Harry himself spent a few minutes studying Malfoy, trying his best to imagine whether he would be more trouble than he was worth. Malfoy promptly widened his eyes and tried to look innocent again.

            God, he’s so hopeless at most things, but he just keeps on trying. Harry had to admire that quality whether or not he liked an enemy possessing it. It was the same one that had kept him going even when the Horcrux hunt had seemed hopeless.

            “All right,” he said, and seized Malfoy’s hand. “You’re coming with me to see my parents’ graves after we visit the house, though, and if you make one disrespectful remark, I’ll hex you to bounce so hard all your brains will leak out your ears.”

            “You don’t know me very well, then.” Malfoy lifted his head until his nose pointed at a decidedly slanted angle. “I’m never disrespectful in graveyards.”

*

            Godric’s Hollow, Draco decided, was an unprepossessing place. He had never seen so many Muggle homes huddled close to so many wizarding ones, and the cloud that had come over the sun since he went to awaken Potter made them seem dreary and cheerless. It was June, but so many of them had dying flowers at their windows that Draco thought a Death Eater must have cursed the place in frustration at not finding the Chosen One here. He followed Potter up the dismal street that led towards the center of the village, biting his tongue firmly on all the remarks he wanted to make. He hadn’t been able to hold back as much information as he liked; it seemed Potter intended to search for the artifact. But at least he could avoid displaying so much resentment that he sensed how important it was.

            Potter halted suddenly, and Draco looked up without interest. In the center of the village stood a tall obelisk of some sort, carved with names. Draco snorted. A Muggle memorial, and typically shoddy workmanship. The thing would probably crumble in a mere hundred and fifty years.

            But Potter had an odd smile on his face. Draco glanced at him incredulously. “You can’t tell me that this stirs fond memories of home for you,” he said.

            “I remember a lot more than you might reckon,” Potter snapped at him, and for a moment his face darkened with outrage. But then he shook his head and stepped closer to the obelisk. Draco followed him, keeping a wary eye on a young Muggle girl who had crossed the street behind them and was examining their robes with a sly gaze. She looked just the sort who would make a living robbing travelers.

            When the girl had passed and Draco had time to pay attention to other things than the safety of his pockets, he realized the memorial had changed. Instead of an obelisk with the names of Muggle dead, it had become a statue of three people. The chubby baby sitting in the woman’s arms could have been any chubby baby, but the faces of the man and woman were too familiar from the past week for Draco to doubt his visions any longer. These were James and Lily Potter, and of course they carried a young Potter with them. Draco rolled his eyes. Of course the wizarding population would have put such a statue up, to claim the only glory their insignificant little town would ever have.

            Then he shivered. Something was—wrong about the statue. He pressed closer to it, studying it, and Potter stepped out of the way. To Draco’s surprise, he didn’t make a cutting remark. Perhaps he could sense that Draco needed to look at these faces for reasons of his own.

            Draco shivered again. A cold wind seemed to have got inside his cloak and was curling around his ribs. If he listened hard enough, he could hear voices whispering. Whose? Were Muggle children hiding on the other side of the statue and laughing at the strange visitors staring so intently at what to them would seem an ordinary memorial? If Potter had brought him to a place where ordinary Muggles would laugh at him, Draco was going to kill him.

            “Potter,” he said, to take his mind off the strange feeling that grew and grew from moment to moment and which he was sure he needed to understand, “did your father call you Prongs?”

            Silence for long moments. Draco turned around, beginning to become impatient, and found Potter with his head bowed. His hands were clenched into fists in front of him, resting almost on the base of the statue. Draco stared at those fists and found his words drying up. He cleared his throat awkwardly and shifted his weight.

            “I don’t know if he did,” Potter whispered. The sound of his voice made Draco flush and glance away, though he wasn’t sure why. Should he be surprised Potter’s grief was embarrassing? Everything else about him was, starting from his hair and working its way down. “But Prongs was one of his nicknames. So, yeah, he might have called me by it.” Abruptly he straightened and turned towards Draco. “I want to know what kind of soppy baby talk they made about me. All of it.”

            Draco repeated it as best he could remember, trying to work out as he did why Potter’s father’s name would have been Prongs. Some reference to his cock? But surely if he was that disfigured, someone would have found out and spread a rumor, and he couldn’t have got married.

            Well, maybe he could have. Mudbloods have strange taste. Just look at Weasley and Granger.

            He stopped talking, and only slowly realized that Potter had not demanded they move on, or, indeed, made any new demands of them at all. He looked up and found Potter staring off into the distance with a faint, bittersweet smile on his face, like Draco’s father when he realized that a new curse he’d discovered was one the Ministry would be able to trace in an instant if he used it.

            “Yeah,” Potter whispered. “Yeah, that sounds like them.”

            Draco turned away again and glared at the statue. The strange feeling had gone away whilst he spoke to Potter, but now it had returned and was growing, eddying around his face and hands. He rubbed the latter together and found they were freezing cold. He stared at them in surprise.

            And then yet another vision seized him and knocked him down.



            Lily Potter was running wildly through the small house, jumping now and then as if she could catch something above her. Draco tilted his neck back—or at least that was what he envisioned doing, because even though he had a definite presence and vantage point in these visions, he never had a body—and saw a toy broom flying overhead, nearly colliding with the ceiling. Astride it was a much younger Potter, waving his fists and laughing in little baby squeals.

            Draco stared. Somehow he had never imagined what Potter would look like without the scar on his forehead, although the statue had provided an example. He could have been an ordinary child. His mother was certainly running after him as if he were one, shouting his name and warnings that had nothing to do with the Dark Lord.

            “Harry! Harry, you come down from there right now!”

            The baby laughed and drummed his heels against the broom, which promptly swooped over his mother’s head and soared into the next room. She ran after him, and Draco’s perspective shifted forwards a giant, unnatural step, so that he was standing near the other room’s fireplace.

            I always knew that that time at school wasn’t his first time on a broom, Draco thought, to recover his balance, no matter what the legend said.

            The young Potter was now in danger of careening into two elder Potters, as his father had been waving his wand over something that sparked and glittered. He sprang to his feet with a word that made his wife say, “James!” when he caught sight of his son. He cast several spells at the broom, but it was always a touch too fast for them, and managed to swoop into the far corners of the room whilst the spells broke a few vases and scorched the curtains. The room was a large and open one, Draco had time to note, though with small alcoves carved on either side of the fireplace and in the walls under the chairs that seemed perfect for hiding things.

            He suddenly thought of something and turned hurriedly back to the object the elder Potter had dropped. Yes, it showed a glint of metal like the thing Potter’s mum had been cradling in the flower garden. Draco strode over eagerly and thrust out a hand to pick it up, only to remember that he didn’t have a hand when nothing happened. But at least he could look.

            It was properly dangerous-looking, which increased Draco’s suspicion that it was a bloodline weapon. It had a blade on one end, with several spikes projecting from the socket where the blade ran into the rest of the object, and the whole of it was a deep black except where the metal filigree shone. Or else it was a deep green, Draco thought. Of course. That would make the object the colors of Slytherin House.

            Then his view was interrupted as the broom carrying the baby dived past and nearly hit the floor. Young Potter squealed again and reached out a hand to clutch for support, catching at the blade of the weapon.

            The weapon skittered out of the way with the quickness of a Summoning Charm that Draco knew one of the Potters must have cast, though he’d have preferred to think that the device knew the touch of unworthy flesh and had removed itself. He watched with a sniff as Potter soared back up to hover near the ceiling.

            “AccioHarry’s broom!”

            The Summoning Charm finally pulled the broom down, though even then it bucked and danced, as if fighting the magic. Finally Potter was safely contained in his mother’s embrace, and he waved his arms several times more before he appeared to realize that he was no longer flying. Then he began to bawl in earnest. Draco rolled his eyes. Clearly Potter has always been somewhat slow of intellect.

            “Finally!” Lily turned around and glared at her husband. “I am going to kill Sirius!”

            “Now, Lily, I said that the purchase of a toy broom was a good idea—“ her husband began placatingly.

            “Not about the broom,” she snapped, and pointed her foot at the bloodline weapon. “About that thing! Did you see how close Harry came to slicing his hand open on it? I won’t have it in the house another minute, James. The spells Sirius gave you to bind it to the Potter family clearly aren’t working.”

            Draco caught his breath in triumph. Yes!

            “It might take a few more days, but I’m sure I can make it work,” Potter argued, stepping past his wife to pick the weapon up by an interesting-looking conglomeration of tubes at the back. “Besides, what else do I have to do when we’re under the Fidelius like this?”

            Lily looked at her husband for a moment, and Draco saw bitterness and anger in her face that must have been months in the accumulating. He supposed it couldn’t be easy, hiding under the Fidelius Charm for a year or longer and knowing that the Dark Lord’s Death Eaters would destroy you the instant you put your foot outside them.

            Draco coughed to chase away his moment of sympathy. So the Potters had had hard lives. At least they’d had a choice about their hardship. They always could have stepped outside the wards and ended things if they really were that intolerable.

            “I don’t know,” Lily said at last, her voice like letters etched by a diamond on a glass pane. “But I know that if you keep the thing in here, sooner or later Harry will trip on it or cut his leg open on it.” She raised her voice to be heard above the baby’s sobbing. “You’ll take it into the garden if you want to keep working on it.”

            Not stupid enough to argue the point, Potter nodded and picked up the bloodline weapon, marching out the door that must lead to the flower garden. Draco followed him with his eyes hungrily, and hoped the vision would shift after him as well, but he remained in the same room with Lily and the baby. She began to dry the child’s tears, whispering words to him that Draco couldn’t make out, though he knew the comforting tone of them was more important than the sense. His mother had whispered to him often like that when he’d disappointed his father as a child, or failed to live up to some impossible standard of perfection.

            Then the room and the vision faded. He opened his eyes to find Potter crouched in front of him, staring at him in consternation.

            “What happened?” he demanded.

            Draco smiled and began to tell the vision. He was certain, this time, that Potter would not demand more details. He would be more interested in the way his parents had taken care of him than the bloodline weapon, which he wouldn’t recognize even if Draco described it.

            And that means he’s unlikely to notice when I find and take it for myself. Draco was sure James Potter would have failed in his attempts to modify the weapon. By the size of the baby in the vision, it wasn’t too long after that when the Dark Lord had come and killed the elder Potters.

            Again he felt a fleeting moment of sympathy when he looked at Potter, whose face was brilliant as he drank in what Draco himself would have regarded as commonplace and mundane details of family life, not worth this worshipful regard.

            So what? Maybe he had to grow up without parents and I didn’t have to, but I’ve suffered enough. I should have this little legacy from my mother’s family.

*

            Harry felt as if he were walking into a dream.

            The small house he and Hermione had glimpsed more than two years ago was before him again, but this time the leaves of ivy climbing the wall were green, and he could look past the horrible damage done to the house by Voldemort’s magic. Even the sign that rose to greet him when he stepped up to the gate, explaining that the house had been left ruined as a monument to his parents’ courage and his own remarkable survival of the Killing Curse, couldn’t depress him. He leaned his elbows on the hedge and stared at the place for long moments.

            On his insistence, Malfoy had described the rooms through which his parents had chased him, the toy broom, even the angry words they’d hurled at each other. Malfoy had smirked nastily as he recounted those, but Harry didn’t care. They made Lily and James real, living people to him, without the perfect gloss that some of their friends would put on them or the happy, innocent surface the photos hid them behind.

            He was meeting his parents now, getting to know them for the first time, realizing how much they had loved him in a way that knowledge of his mother’s sacrifice couldn’t give him. The only thing better would be if he could have had the visions himself.

            Why was Malfoy gifted like that, with the intense images of people he couldn’t care about?

            Harry gave him a sideways, resentful glance, and was startled to see Malfoy regarding the house not with a curled lip and contemptuous eyes, as he would have expected, but with a brilliant shine to his face. Harry stared at him. Malfoy caught his eye and immediately tried to reshape his expression into something more like his normal one, but Harry’s suspicions had been aroused now and he wasn’t so ready to let it go.

            “What do you hope to find here?” he demanded.

            “A cure for the curse plaguing me, of course,” Malfoy snapped at him, and opened the gate, making a mocking bow towards Harry. “Shall we?”

            Harry gave him one more distrustful glance and stepped through, his hand resting tightly on the end of his wand. If Malfoy made a move, at least Harry was warned now.

            The garden crunched and sighed softly beneath their feet. Harry knew they were crushing weeds and blown flowers that his parents hadn’t chosen; doubtless all the plants they’d put here had long since died. But he wondered if the small, scraggly tree in the corner of the stone wall had seen his parents alive, and he paused a moment to stroke the branches, ignoring Malfoy’s snigger.

            Abruptly, Malfoy fell silent. Harry turned around again, hoping another vision had come to him, but instead he had turned white. He was standing absolutely still, looking so intently at the weeds that Harry looked down, expecting a poisonous snake.

            A white-blue mist was rising instead, lazily eddying back and forth, one moment moving like a tossed feather and the next like heavy smoke. Harry drew his wand and cast a charm Hermione had taught him that would dissipate most gases, but the mist continued to rise. He cast the Bubble-Head Charm next, first on Malfoy, then on himself. Malfoy shivered violently and lunged at Harry, grabbing him so firmly on the arms that Harry was sure he would leave bruises.

            “I can hear them!” he screamed into Harry’s face. The clear helmets the Bubble-Head Charms had created to surround their heads clashed madly together, and Harry staggered, losing the sense of Malfoy’s words for a moment in his pain.

            When he thought he could concentrate again, he yelled back, “Hear who?” The mist had climbed as high as their waists and was rising faster all the time. Harry could hear it hissing like steam that had escaped a kettle, but he doubted it was that harmless.

            “I can hear your parents, screaming warnings at me!” Malfoy shook Harry so that his teeth rattled. “Damn it, I should have realized this isn’t a curse, it’s a bloody—“

            And the mist surrounded them. Harry caught a glimpse of reaching fingers, distended mouths, and one pair of oddly-shaped eyes with slit pupils like a cat’s before frost formed on his bubble and didn’t let him see anymore. He realized suddenly that his fingers had gone numb and his toes had died without a tingle.

            He slumped forwards, and knew only that he had hold of Malfoy—or so he thought; maybe his hold on the other man had come undone when the cold affected his fingers—and that they were falling.

*

            When Draco woke up, he didn’t even care to open his eyes and evaluate the situation; he was too busy telling himself off for being an idiot.

            He should have realized at once that the visions he was receiving weren’t a curse. He had a history of such things in his family. One of his great-grandmothers had been a Seer. The other had been something never named aloud, but the knowledge had drifted through the family and into Draco’s ears anyway, bit by bit and tendril by tendril. She’d been a necromancer, and had walked through a world where the dead were as likely to speak as the living. Her children had worked hard to disassociate themselves from that, but no one knew better than pure-bloods how long a scandal could last and how many impurities could manifest themselves through a tainted family line.

            Draco had inherited a talent for speaking to the dead.

            Not speaking to ghosts, of course; everyone could do that, since ghosts were there partially because they couldn’t forsake the company of the living. But Moaning Myrtle had had an unusual attachment to him, and he had sometimes passed through areas in Hogwarts that made him shiver and draw up his collar. The dead who had died violently but managed left no ghosts were roused by him, and reached out to him when they could. They didn’t want to return to the world, but they wanted to tell their stories, which most people stood in danger of forgetting.

            Draco had got drunk one day in his fifth year and wandered through the corridors near Professor Snape’s office, lost and getting more and more so. And then he’d found a room that made him scream and thrash; it was full of swirling blue-white mist and constantly whispering voices. His screams had summoned Snape, who’d brought him out of the hidden area. Draco had nightmares for weeks afterwards. He’d found by accident—and he could never find again—the place where Salazar Slytherin had been murdered, most foully and unnaturally, by Godric Gryffindor.

            He hadn’t connected these visions of Potter’s parents with his unwanted gift because they were so different from the dark impressions he’d received before. But he should have realized the truth the moment he stared at the statue and felt the cold coiling along his ribs. The visions had been meant to lure him close enough to the house at Godric’s Hollow that the dead Potters could reach him in the more traditional way.

            And of course they had both died violently.

            Shuddering, shaking, he opened his eyes.

            It was worse than he had thought, worse than he had known he could be. When he had had those impressions of death at Hogwarts, it had been like standing in a Pensieve memory, or a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from. The horrible events rushed past and around him. He endured them, and the knowledge that he couldn’t affect them was at the same time a torment and a comfort. He would wake soon. Or he would wake eventually, but he would be left the same except for the scars the visions might inflict on his brain.

            But now he lay in a room that felt solid beneath him and looked solid around him. It was dark, completely, and he shivered at the intense cold. Both were typical of a death memory, but even in the image of Slytherin’s doom, there had been the gleam of a lighted wand. He’d never seen a place with the darkness so thick.

            Then someone moved beside him and he nearly screamed aloud. He whipped around and found himself staring at Potter’s face. He had his wand lifted in front of him and lighted. Draco felt like a right prat for a moment. He could have done that himself if he’d thought of it, and then perhaps he wouldn’t have been so frightened.

            “What did you do?” he snapped. Maybe he could get away with making Potter think this was his fault.

            “I don’t know,” Potter said shortly. “I don’t know where we are, and I don’t know what happened. I don’t even know why the Bubble-Head Charms that I cast on us are gone.” He stared unblinkingly at Draco, which was an even creepier sight than normal in the glimmer of the Lumos light. “You said you could hear them.”

            “No, I didn’t,” Draco said quickly.

            “You did.” Potter leaned forwards like someone not about to be dissuaded. “Who could you hear?”

            Draco swallowed hard. This was the part he didn’t want to admit to. “Your parents, I think,” he said. “I could hear their voices screaming. Your father was saying something about your mother taking something—someone?—and that he’d hold him off. And then your mother screamed—“

            “That Voldemort could take her, and not me,” Potter finished flatly. “Yeah, I know.”

            Draco stared at him. “How did you know?”

            “That’s the memory I have whenever the Dementors come near me. Of my mother screaming for Voldemort to take her and leave me alone.” Potter blinked rapidly for long moments, his eyes containing a suspicious brightness in the light of the wand, and then looked around. “Nothing about that explains where we are now, though.”

            Draco swallowed and turned away from Potter just as he turned away from his mother in the vision. Flashes of sympathy were all very well, but he knew that Potter would never waste any of them on Draco.

            The room around them continued to be dark, and even when Potter danced in front of Draco like a monkey and jabbed his wand defensively towards the corners, the shadows hardly drew back. Draco eventually saw enough decayed cabinet doors and faded household charms that he thought it was the ruins of a kitchen.

            “How did we get from the garden into the house?” Potter whispered.

            Draco glared at him. “What makes you think we’re inside your parents’ house, Potter?”

            “It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Potter was turning slow circles, a yearning expression on his face, as if he wanted to observe all the details of the place and escape at the same time. “The place where they died, the place that drew you—“

            “I didn’t say anything about that!”

            Potter gave him a pitying look. “Why else would my parents communicate with you? They wanted to communicate with me, but I suppose I don’t have enough sensitivity to the dead to manage it. So they pulled you here, and me with you, and—“ He drew a deep breath. “They must have some purpose for bringing us here. I just don’t know what it is.”

            Draco shivered, because the kitchen was intensely cold and not because Potter had uncovered so much of what he wanted to conceal with a casual guess. “I didn’t say anything about that,” he repeated it.

            “You could hear the voices,” Potter said softly. “I couldn’t. And if we want to escape this place, then I suppose we’ll need to work together. You’re the one who can tell me what the dead are doing and what they want. I’m the one who can guard you.”

            “I don’t need your protection,” Draco said, turning towards the far wall where he knew a door must lie from the kitchen to the other parts of the house, given what his visions had told him. “If we’re in the house, we can just walk out.”

            He took a step towards the door, and a wall of mist rose immediately in front of him. It swirled and then became a transparent, shimmering shape. Potter choked.

            “Mum?” he whispered.

            Draco stared. It still wasn’t a ghost; there were different kinds of dead, and an essential feature of ghosts was that they needed to be able to talk and interact with living wizards. It was why the Ministry had offices in place for them. But people who died left traces of themselves behind. Draco knew this must be another of them.

            The shape was indeed Lily Potter, locked in a falling posture, as if towards a floor she would never reach. Her face was twisted with a mixture of triumph and horror. Draco suspected this was how she had looked in the moment of her death. She had foiled Voldemort as she died to spare her son’s life, but no one could be happy about that, or not solely.

            “Mum?” Potter repeated. He had one hand out as if he would touch the falling body. “It’s me, Harry. If you summoned me back so you can rest, then you should know it’s all right. Your sacrifice defeated him. He’s gone.” He was talking quickly now, eagerly, the words tumbling over each other in what Draco would have thought to be fear except that Potter kept drawing towards the falling woman. “I did it, I came back from the dead and did what you died to achieve, I defeated Voldemort—“

            Two voices began to scream.

            The falling woman vanished, luckily before Potter could touch her. Draco slammed his hands across his ears, and beside him dimly saw Potter doing the same thing. He can hear these, too, Draco thought, and then the voices drowned out his ability to think that coherently.

            The screams were endless, anguished, curling around and over each other. Draco knew it must be James and Lily Potter crying out like that, but they no longer sounded human. Certainly they had no sanity left. He heard Potter sobbing, but couldn’t make fun of him when his own eyes were tearing up and his body was shaking like a unicorn’s confronted with the sight of a poisoned spear. He wanted to run, but since every direction was haunted by the voices, that seemed impossible.

            Suddenly a cold hand grabbed one of his, forcing it away from his ears. Draco shied, though the barrier of his fingers hadn’t done a bloody thing to block out the voices. But the hand turned out to belong to Potter, who put his head down as if he were heading into a strong wind and dragged Draco along.

            Draco followed him, bouncing slightly and screaming back at the voices, though he couldn’t hear his own pain in the din of theirs. He felt sanity slipping away from him in turn, but Potter’s hand in his squeezed hard, and the pain cleared Draco’s head. He stepped forwards enough to feel Potter’s shoulder under his fingers and pressed down. He could stop screaming now. He could follow the solid figure to safety and sanctuary.

            He refused to let himself think that maybe those things didn’t exist in this house.

            A door opened. Draco felt himself thrown through into another room, and then the door slammed behind them. The screams cut off at once, and blessed silence swirled in; Draco had never realized one could miss quiet.

            He took a deep breath and burst out crying.

            Potter knelt next to him and put his arms around Draco. He didn’t say a word. Draco clung and went on weeping. He didn’t care that the body he was clinging to belonged to a boy he’d spent years hating. It was warm and living, and that was the only thing that mattered.

*

            Harry knew he would have drowned if Malfoy hadn’t been there.

The mixture of horror and longing he’d felt when he saw the ghost—or the memory—or the shade—of his mother had sat in his chest like a cold lump. For the first time he could remember, he thought it wouldn’t be so horrible if he died, even if his death didn’t achieve anything or save anybody. He wanted to draw near and hug his mum. He had the right to do that for once in his life, didn’t he? Everyone else got to, and the only times he did it were when he was too young to remember it.

            But then had come the screaming, and whilst Harry had nearly surrendered to that as well, the sight of Malfoy’s face screwed up in pain had reminded him they had to get out of there. If he died in that kitchen, he wouldn’t be alone. And he could ignore the screams for long enough to find a way out. He’d had practice enduring the unendurable at the Dursleys. He’d focused his eyes on the kitchen door as he used to look at the cupboard door, and told himself that it had to open, that the moment surrounding him must end, and he would fight his way free.

            And he had someone to rescue, which made it all better.

            Distantly, as he held Malfoy and rocked him, Harry remembered that there was a time he would have mocked the boy for his tears. But after they’d what just been through, how could he? He had only resisted because he was a little more used to situations like that. He could have succumbed just as Malfoy had.

            They needed to rely on each other to escape this. And Malfoy was the one who could hear the dead, the one who had the visions, the one who might have some idea what route they should take out of this house. Harry wasn’t too proud to trust him so that both of them could survive.

            Finally, Malfoy’s tears slowed and stopped. Harry felt the moment when he came back to himself. His shoulders stiffened and he held as still as a snared rabbit, probably imagining the moment when Harry would speak his name with contempt.

            Harry went on holding him, and said in as calm and normal a tone as he could manage, “I think we’re in the drawing room now. The room that overlooks the garden, isn’t it?”

            Malfoy sat back with a quick shake of his head and a surge of motion that didn’t tear him out of Harry’s embrace. Harry let him retreat, though, so that Malfoy no longer crouched on his lap, and kept his eyes politely averted from the other boy’s tear-streaked face. They needed some respect and privacy between them, now.

“Not according to the visions,” Malfoy whispered hoarsely. “This is a secondary bedroom.” He scanned the darkness around them for a moment, evidently identifying the heap of crumbling, rotted furniture and blankets in one corner as the remains of a bed; Harry had only called them “disgusting” in his mind and let it go at that. “And to get out of this place,” Malfoy added, “we’ll need to cross the kitchen again.”

Harry only nodded. “What was that thing in the kitchen?” he asked. “My mother died in the—the bedroom near the top of the house, the part that was blown apart. Besides, I’ve seen her shade before, and it didn’t look anything like that.”

            Malfoy turned slowly to stare at him. “You’ve seen her shade before? In nightmares?”

            Harry swallowed. He didn’t want to share either of the experiences he would have to mention now with Malfoy. But if it would help them survive, he couldn’t be too proud to do this, either.

            “When Voldemort was resurrected,” he said, feeling Malfoy’s convulsive shiver travel into his arms, “I dueled with him. But our wands were brothers, which was why I couldn’t use my wand to defeat him. They locked in Priori Incantatem, and the shades of his last victims came forth, because the last spell his wand had cast was the Killing Curse. I saw my parents then. And the second time was walking through the Forbidden Forest on my way to—die—from his Killing Curse, and I had the Resurrection Stone. I summoned the ghosts of my parents and Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, so they could walk with me. But I got rid of the Stone afterwards.”

            He looked away uncomfortably when he saw the expression in Malfoy’s eyes. No doubt he was thinking Harry was an idiot for throwing the Resurrection Stone away, or else he wanted to scoff at Harry’s weakness in being affected by mere words. But circumstances only demanded that Harry work with Malfoy to get out of this mess, not that they like each other.

*

            Draco only knew one thing for certain.

            Potter hadn’t made fun of him.

            Draco had spent long moments awaiting the first teasing word, the one that would unleash the tide, and it never came. Potter explained some of his own deepest secrets instead, and appealed to him as if he actually believed Draco knew the way out. Which was sensible, but Gryffindors weren’t known for sense.

            As much as he would have liked to pounce on the confessions Potter had given him, Draco was sensible, too. He couldn’t afford to lose his only ally here. And if he felt another of those irritating flickers of sympathy again, so what? It wasn’t as if he had to let it manifest.

            “There are different kinds of impressions left after death, Potter,” he said quietly. “Ghosts. The shades you saw, which can be summoned by powerful magic. But it’s different at the site of a violent death. Even if the people killed there are at rest, their memories remain. They tell the same story over and over again. They repeat the darkness in the hope that one of the repetitions will sink into the brain of someone else and they’ll be remembered.”

            “Still,” Potter said, “this seems a pretty violent remembrance.”

            “It is,” Draco said. He rubbed his forehead, only then noticing that a dull, throbbing band of pain was bound about it like a crown. He swallowed and shuddered as he once again remembered the screams that had echoed around them.

            Potter waited, gazing at him with patient eyes, as though he knew Draco hadn’t said everything he had to say yet.

            “There’s only one thing I could think of that might make the memories this violent,” Draco admitted reluctantly. His father’s voice gibbered in the back of his head, demanding to know what he was doing, when the bloodline weapon hidden here could make him great, could perhaps even resurrect the fortunes of the Malfoys. His mother’s voice recommended caution, waiting; maybe they would find some other way to escape and he needn’t reveal his secrets to Potter after all. Professor Snape’s voice hissed that neither Potters nor Gryffindors were to be trusted, and one who was both, as well as the arrogant hero who had defeated the Dark Lord, would run out laughing and spill all Draco’s secrets as soon as he could.

            But neither his parents nor Professor Snape were in this particular situation. Draco had to decide on his own to do what was best.

            No matter how terrifying it is.

            “The visions showed that your parents hid something here,” Draco said. “The object I couldn’t glimpse in the vision I had in the Weasleys’ house. I saw it better in the vision near the statue. It had blades and the colors of Slytherin House. Sirius Black gave it to them and evidently told your father that he could use spells of some sort to bind it to the Potter line.”

            “Why would he want to?” Potter sounded bewildered.

            Draco curled his lip automatically, then reminded himself that bewilderment was better than Potter accusing him of lying because he’d omitted the weapon from his other visions. “A bloodline artifact is a powerful defense,” he said. “They were hiding under the Fidelius Charm then, because they had you, and they were snappish, like I told you earlier. Maybe your father hoped that one weapon would protect them against the Dark Lord where nothing else would.”

            “And in the end, it was a friend who undid them,” said Potter, and his eyes shut. He heaved a deep breath, then said, “So you think this bloodline artifact might still be here?”

            “Yes,” Draco said. “It’s a powerful Dark thing. If it was still bound to the Black line, then it would stir up pain and resentment and amplify the violent memories as much as possible, its only means of revenge on the people who took it from its home. If your father bound it to the Potter line, then it might still stir them up because it’s looking for a master to serve, and it doesn’t have anyone else but the ghosts of your parents.”

            “Had no one else,” Potter corrected, his voice suddenly hollow. “Malfoy, what if I’ve given it what it wants by coming here?”

            Draco tightened his fingers on his knees, but he reckoned it was his turn to play the hero. As evenly as he could, he said, “We don’t know enough about it to say, Potter. We might well have brought it the only person who could destroy it. And if it’s still bound to the Black line, I’m in danger, instead, because it could sense me and try to make me take it.”

            Potter shivered. “Is there any way of finding out?”

            “No,” Draco said, and then paused. “Yes,” he amended. He’d had nothing else to do during some of the weeks that the Dark Lord occupied the Manor—at least, nothing else to do that wasn’t alternately terrifying and boring—so he’d escaped to his family’s library and read some of the books his father had always said he should study. One of those had described the process of destroying a bloodline artifact, though Draco had been more interested in the descriptions of the destruction they could cause.

            “Well?” Potter leaned forwards, the light of his wand glinting off his glasses. “Tell me!”

            “It’s Dark magic,” Draco warned him. “I know you’ve used the Unforgivables—“ that had been in all the papers after the Dark Lord’s defeat, as if it were something laudable “—but that doesn’t mean you want to casually use evil spells all the time.”

            “Tell me,” Potter repeated.

            Draco looked hard at him, and met only an expression of implacable determination. He pretended to sigh and grumble, but he had to admit there were worse people he could have been stuck in a haunted house with.

            “It’s worse than that,” he said, suffering a brief stab of resentment that Potter had forced him to give up a secret, good companion or not. “You have to trust me and let me into your magical core in order to accomplish it.”

            “Why do I have to let you into my magical core? Why not the other way around?” Potter reared his head back, looking offended.

            “Because I trust my own commitment to this kind of magic,” Draco said steadily. “I don’t trust yours. And whoever made up this spell did it because he fantasized about power and domination, all right? Or else he really liked bloodline weapons.” Potter snorted, though Draco failed to understand what he’d said that was funny. “He made it so that the wizard who casts the spell has to use someone else’s magic to do it. Of course the wizard speaking the spell has to be willing to wield Dark magic, but the other person has to be willing to let his magic be used that way.”

*

            Harry shivered. Malfoy spoke so casually of Dark magic, as if it were a weapon like any other, rather than the festering sore on his own soul Harry had felt since he’d cast the Cruciatus and Imperius Curses.

            Didn’t Voldemort say something like that? There’s no evil or good, only power?

            And this is the point at which Hermione would advise me to reconsider what I’m about to do.

            But Hermione wasn’t here. Malfoy was. And he sat with his face even and cold and calm, staring at Harry as if the decision to be made was no more important than what they should have for breakfast in the morning.

            He wasn’t quite emotionless, though. His eyes gleamed now and then, with a bit of hope. Here was someone who needed Harry to save him, or at least work together with him so they could both save themselves.

            Harry responded to that call as he hadn’t been able to respond to much in the past few years—not the expectations for the work the Auror training program had hoped to get out of him, not the temptation to repeat his past victories again and again to the Prophet’s reporters, and not the perfect love he had always assumed he would find in Ginny. Here was a person who needed him. Here was a person he could work with and for.

            Harry had not realized how much he missed that part of being a hero.

            “All right,” he said.

            Malfoy blinked at him, and Harry had to swallow a smile at the absolute stunned shock he saw crossing the other boy’s face. He gulped and shook his head, then said, “No complicated inner moral debate, Potter? I thought you would keep me waiting for an hour at least.”

            “As you remarked on more than one occasion,” Harry said dryly, “Gryffindors don’t have sensibilities that keen. I had a moral debate, but it was very simple.”

            Malfoy laughed, and then clapped a hand over his mouth, eyes widening. Harry grinned at him. It felt good to smile, though he didn’t dare laugh in case Malfoy thought Harry was indulging in a joke at his expense. And it was interesting that he could make his rival laugh at his jokes. It occurred to Harry, the revelation drifting gently into his mind like the mist that had risen in the garden, that making him laugh might be an even better way to win a contest than pinning him to the ground and punching him in the mouth.

            Although pinning him to the ground sounds interesting, too.

            Harry shook his head to clear it of distractions and then said, “All right, where do you suggest we go to look for the bloodline artifact?”

            Malfoy forced his way to his feet. “One vision showed it in the flower garden, and the second had your mother telling your father to take it out of the house. The garden is the best choice.”

            Harry nodded gravely. “Even I can see how that makes sense,” he said, and startled another little laugh out of Malfoy. He stood in turn and regarded the door that led back to the kitchen for long moments, his hand tightening on his wand. A plan had begun to stir in the back of his mind, but he wasn’t sure that Malfoy would go along with it.

            “Do you trust me?” he asked.

            Malfoy looked at him rather snidely. “Of course, Potter. I’m going to be putting my hands inside your magical core, after all.”

            “No, that involves me trusting you,” Harry said. “I want to know if you trust me to do something silly that might let us cross the kitchen with our sanity intact.”

            “It’s still a better chance than we have right now,” said Malfoy, in the tone of someone who refuses to debate with himself. “Go ahead.”

            Harry nodded. “Then keep behind me, and keep moving, no matter what you see happen out of the corner of your eye.” He opened the door of the kitchen and darted into the other room before Malfoy had the chance to speak more than his last name in a tone of suspicion.

*

            Draco followed, because he didn’t have much choice.

            The moment they stepped into the kitchen, the screams started again, but they were at a higher volume and pitch this time, and Draco knew it would take much less time before he would join them. Eyes streaming with tears, ears running with blood, he lowered his head and plowed on. Of course, his feet would barely rise and fall. The air was thick with Dark magic, humming with currents of it. The bloodline artifact wasn’t very far away, and it controlled every magical occurrence in this house.

            Then Potter lifted his wand and touched the side of his temple. Long silver strands of memory collected about his wand, and he flung them out in front of him.

            The strands pinwheeled. Draco stared as they began to burn with silver flames; the bloodline artifact was trying to consume them and prevent whatever defense they represented, Draco knew. But the memories only grew brighter, and then they formed the image of a younger Potter calling a silver stag.

            The stag charged about the memory, then suddenly broke into the middle of the dark kitchen and filled every corner with its light. When it reared, Draco caught more of a look than he liked at the sharp tines of its antlers and the killing edges of its hooves. But what it battled was darkness, and he heard the screams die away as if in shock. A protesting shriek rose instead, which Draco thought was the voice of the bloodline artifact itself.

            The stag whirled and came back to them, then knelt and bowed its head. Potter promptly climbed onto its back, seeming not to care that his arse sat on transparency and his feet dangled a few inches above the floor. Then he turned and threw Draco both a commanding look and a reaching hand.

            “Come on, Malfoy! You said you would trust me!”

            Draco took a deep breath—the air went down his throat as cold and stale as the air from a tomb—and flung himself at Potter. Potter caught his hand and then caught him, cradling him in a half-hug, and pulled Draco to sit in front of him. The stag rose and bolted towards the far side of the kitchen, which was warping and bending around them. The bloodline artifact again, Draco knew, trying to prevent them from escaping.

            Then he lost track of things like the size of the room, in favor of the warmth of the body behind him and the tight clasp of Potter’s arm around his waist. He leaned backwards. This was better than the hold he’d had on Potter when they flew through the Fiendfyre. And the view in front of him was more interesting, bobbing silver antlers cutting the murk like the streak of a falling star through perfect night.

            The light fought the darkness, and won. The stag bolted through the last of the kitchen and then through a room that Draco recognized from his visions as a place Potter’s father had used for a study. Then the silver legs arched and bent, and they were through that room and into the drawing room.

            And then the stag began to burn with glimmering, unnatural blue flames. Draco didn’t know why he was so surprised. Everything that had happened since they arrived in Godric’s Hollow was unnatural.

            Potter’s arm curled more tightly around his waist, pulling him so close to that incredible warmth he lost his breath, and then he sprang off the stag and rolled. He was putting his body between Draco and the ground, which was generous of him. Draco went along with the motion and tried to be as little trouble as possible when he flopped on the ground. He lay with his head on Potter’s shoulder and had to ignore the temptation to bury his face in it, trusting to Potter to take care of him.

            But it was a good thing he didn’t. It occurred to him that Potter was lying too still, rather than dragging Draco up and making for the flower garden. Draco lifted his head slowly.

            Another stag stood in front of Potter, its head lowered to menace him. It was made of shadows, and the silvery stag that had carried them had entirely faded. The black stag stepped closer and closer to them, and Draco flinched as he looked at the obsidian edges of its tines. But it had a pair of brown eyes encircled by spectacles that he’d seen before, and the fur around its neck ruffled up like messy hair.

            “Dad?” Potter whispered.

            The stag reared, and Draco lost his shock at Potter’s address to the stag in the realization that it was about to stamp on them and cave their heads in, or gut them with its antlers. He grabbed his wand and reacted.

*

            Harry didn’t think he could move. He had forgotten why that was a bad thing. Here in front of him was his father, the real form of the stag Animagus that James Potter had once been, and it had his father’s eyes. They stared at him and seemed to shine with sorrow for all the years he had been without him. Harry found his head extending, even when the stag reared.

            Perhaps it was about to hurt him, but Harry couldn’t hurt him.

            But Malfoy was aiming his wand, and light flooded the room. It was the Eternal Sunshine Charm, which they had learned in Charms third year and almost never had occasion to use; Flitwick had insisted on teaching it to them anyway, across a long and weary week. Harry found himself blinking and squinting desperately, trying to see the stag through the sudden wash of light.

            The stag caught fire.

            It screamed, not the piercing screams that had swamped the kitchen but like them, and backed up, shaking its burning antlers. Harry surged to his feet and ran after it. It had lost his father’s eyes, but it was still surely the ghost of his father, and he wanted to—

            Arms seized him around the waist and dragged him towards the far door. Harry lashed back with his head, trying to butt whoever had him in the face, but the person dodged, and then Malfoy’s voice said into his ear, “Remember, Potter, your father’s dead. That’s only a violent memory of him the artifact’s summoned. I gather he was a stag Animagus?” He twisted, and Harry heard a sharp sound of cracking wood or stone. Malfoy must have forced the door into the next room open.

            “Yeah, he was,” Harry said, stunned into answering the question instead of trying to get away, and then the door crashed shut in front of him and cut off all sight of the stag, which was dwindling to a fire-edged pinpoint. He recovered and pulled sharply away from Malfoy, so sharply that he sent him staggering into the edge of what sounded like a table. Harry whirled around, his wand raised high. “You bastard!”

            Malfoy didn’t try to stand or run or fight back. He just gave Harry a distinctly unimpressed look and spoke in a slightly winded voice.

            “Nothing here is real, Potter. You said you saw your parents’ shades. They’re at rest. They want the best for you, besides. Only violence lives here, and the house probably summoned that stag to counteract the Patronus we rode.”

            Harry opened his mouth, and then looked away. He knew Malfoy was right, and he was ashamed of himself for having forgotten even for an instant. What kind of hero did he make, if Malfoy had to save him?

            Someone who has to depend on the git anyway right now, to destroy that damn artifact that’s doing this.

            He sighed and rubbed his face. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

            Malfoy stared at him for a moment, then grinned savagely and cupped a hand around his ear. “What did you say? I don’t think the ghost of Professor Snape heard that.”

            “No, he never did,” Harry said sadly, recalling the man who had died before he could receive anything more from Harry than a glimpse of Lily’s eyes. “But I’ll say it again if you’d like. You were right, and I’m sorry.” He sighed and looked around the room they had just entered; it seemed colder than the others. He saw a shadow shift near the outline of what might have been a door, but as yet it didn’t try to come nearer. He tightened his grip on his wand anyway. The bloodline artifact would probably try to defend itself if it realized that they were coming to destroy it, and with stronger magic than what they had faced so far.

            “Why did you think of using light to destroy the stag?” he asked. “That was bloody clever.”

            Malfoy shrugged and looked away from him. “I was thinking of the fire that it used to burn up the stag we rode. That was obviously coldflame—one of the Dark magic spells you can use to frighten someone without doing serious damage. And I thought that perhaps ordinary fire might destroy the ghost stag in the same way.” He shifted about as though something under his back was prickling him, perhaps a splinter of old wood, and then straightened. “I’m more interested in how you thought of summoning the silver stag in the first place.”

            “That’s my Patronus—“

            “I know, I’ve been chased by the bloody thing,” Malfoy said, his unenthusiastic voice recalling to Harry clear images of a Quidditch pitch where Malfoy had dressed up as a Dementor. “But Patronuses fight Dementors. How did you think of calling one here?”

            Harry began to grin in spite of himself. “Why, Malfoy,” he said, “is that admiration I hear in your voice? How interested Professor McGonagall would be.”

            Malfoy growled and repeated, “How?”

            If Malfoy could keep from fighting, then Harry could do the same thing. “I didn’t know for certain it would work,” he admitted, and ignored the soft snort that followed his words. “But I thought the Patronus in general is a good weapon against dark things, and since the bloodline artifact is attacking us with memories, maybe the memory of a Patronus could fight it. And that worked, didn’t it?”

            “Rather well.” Malfoy held out his hand, and Harry clasped it without thought and hauled him back to his feet. Malfoy stepped nearer so that he was staring into his eyes, and Harry blinked. Their faces were so close he didn’t need the light of the Lumos charm to make out the expression Malfoy wore. It was mingled fear and determination and bloody-mindedness. Harry thought he must look the same way.

            “We’re close to the artifact now,” Malfoy whispered. “Can you feel that cold?”

            “Yes,” Harry hissed back. He had the strangest sensation they were vanishing into a world of their own. The darkness and gloom had pulled back, and he stood in a tiny circle of light with Malfoy. The air they were breathing tasted like pure stubbornness. Malfoy’s hand tightened on his until Harry winced, but even the pain seemed to travel into him and make him stronger.

            “Once I begin casting the spell that requires access to your magical core, I can’t stop,” Malfoy said. “If you hesitate or try to pull back from me, then I’ll be destroyed, and you—well, something unpleasant will happen to you. One description said you would dissolve into bloodied bits of flesh. Not a good thing.”

            “I can remember certain times of your life when you probably would have thought it was,” Harry said, barely moving his lips.

            Malfoy laughed darkly. “No. I wanted you alive to suffer, and bloody bits of flesh don’t hurt all that much after the initial pain.” His hand tightened again. “I want you to say one more time that you trust me, and you won’t pull back when I begin using your magical core, no matter how painful it is.”

            Harry narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t say anything about painful.”

            “As if I would.”

            Malfoy smirked at him, and he was perfect and arrogant and triumphant and unbearable standing there, and Harry doubted the artifact would be able to resist him any more than he could in that moment.

            He lunged forwards and smashed his nose into Malfoy’s. Malfoy yelped and nearly went over backwards, fumbling for his wand. And then Harry righted him with an arm around his shoulders and managed to target what he’d been reaching for in the first place, Malfoy’s lips.

            Malfoy yelped at him again, which only afforded him the perfect chance to lean forwards and deepen the kiss. Harry’s head spun with delight as he tasted Malfoy’s tongue, sharp and hot as a needle dropped in a fire. It swept away from Harry and then back, as if Malfoy were trying to work out the perfect position for him to issue a shout of outrage without actually touching Harry. And then it trembled and fell still. Harry could only hope the same overwhelming taste had finally caught up with Malfoy.

            Or maybe it was the memories, Harry thought hazily, clinging to Malfoy until the world rippled around them and the light expanded, becoming the brilliant fury of leaping flames. Did he remember that they’d ridden through the Fiendfyre as they rode through the darkness on the back of the silver stag? Except that Harry had been in front of Malfoy on the broom, and behind him on the stag. Both positions were good, Harry thought, and clamped his fingers down so that he would leave bruises on Malfoy’s shoulders. He wanted to leave bruises, to make Malfoy acknowledge him. Hadn’t he always wanted that? Hadn’t both of them? Malfoy wanted to make Harry think about him because Malfoy couldn’t do without the attention of the most famous person in the school, and Harry had insisted that Malfoy understand his swaggering and dastardly plots wouldn’t go unchallenged.

            They pressed closer and closer and closer, Malfoy no longer trying to escape but clawing at Harry as fiercely as he had ever clawed for the Snitch, until Harry ripped his mouth away to whisper heated words because the sensation of the kiss was no longer new enough.

            “I trust you. That should be enough proof.”

            Malfoy hissed in satisfaction. He had a faint trickle of blood emerging from one corner of his lip, Harry noticed, making its way down his chin in a dark trail. But that sight reassured Harry. Malfoy was alive, and so was he, and that would be enough to match the cold presence of the dead.

            “It is,” he said, and this time he was the one to yank Harry close. Harry expected another kiss, but Malfoy bit his neck instead, slightly above the collarbone. Harry jerked in pain and desire, hands rising to thread through Malfoy’s hair and keep him still, but Malfoy had already moved away. He licked his mouth carefully instead of wiping it.

            “We’re both mad,” he said.

            “I think only madmen could survive here,” Harry said, and took the lead as they headed for the far door and the shadow guarding it.

            The shadow reared up and turned to them, more silvery and solider than the phantom of his mother they had confronted in the kitchen.

            Its face was infinitely more familiar than his mother’s, a fact Harry loathed about his life but had learned to accept long ago. He gripped his wand and gave it a smile. He had defeated it before and would defeat it again.

            “Hello, Voldemort,” he said.

*

            Draco felt his legs locking whilst his body shook as if he were a dog confronting a werewolf. He wanted to vomit, to bolt, to curl up and shrivel in on himself. That would only delay death by a few minutes, but he didn’t care. He had never known how to face or refuse the Dark Lord in the past. How could he do it now?

            But Potter spoke fearlessly and lifted his wand. Draco, shakily, lifted his, too, because they had to confront the bloodline artifact together, and he wouldn’t allow Potter to say that he’d been outdone by a Gryffindor.

            The silvery figure swept towards them with the grace of a snake. In fact, Draco didn’t think it had legs. It opened its mouth wide, jaw unhinging, and Draco knew it would try to swallow them. He flinched desperately back from it, a wail rising from his lips.

            But his wand remained steady all the time, as if his hand knew something his brain didn’t.

            Potter drew a deep breath, and Draco knew what spell he was going to say, inevitably, because he’d been there when Potter defeated the Dark Lord. And he dug deep down and found the courage that had sustained him during that terrible year he was battling for his family’s lives, and he used it.

            “Expelliarmus!” he and Potter cried together, and their voices rang sweet and strong, the cries of the living in a place of the dead.

            The figure wavered and tore apart, one silvery half flying towards Potter and one towards Draco. He braced his feet and leaned his side against Potter, a line of burning warmth. He lifted his head, trembling, and understood that it was possible to know when you were doing the bravest thing you’d ever done in your life.

            The silvery magic slammed into and clawed at him, but Draco reminded himself again and again that Voldemort was dead, and that even the remnants left here had little power to affect the living. They were not his ghosts. And they weren’t Potter’s, either. Potter had survived and moved on. Both of them had emerged alive from the war, an experience more scarring than any this artifact could create.

            They were alive.

            Draco opened his mouth and breathed in the ghost’s eyes, and the wisps clinging to him blew apart. He turned triumphantly to look at Potter, who promptly moved close to him and raised a hand to cup his cheek.

            The expression on his face was pure awe and hero-worship.

            And a wound that had been festering in Draco’s soul for nine years, since that morning on the Hogwarts Express when the famous Harry Potter had insulted his family, ceased to ache.

*

            They stepped into the garden.

            Harry saw it at once. A deeper blackness than the night that had covered them from the time they ventured into the house beamed from a hole at the base of the crumbled stone wall. The ivy near it had died, and the dirt was scuffed as though an animal had dug up the object and then fled. Harry could smell lightning and dead roses, poison and heartache.

            He lifted his head and looked above them. The sky was starless.

            He stopped Malfoy with a hand on his shoulder and turned him in the right direction; he’d been pointing his wand at a dead rosebush. He put his mouth close to his ear. Maybe it was a silly precaution, but Malfoy hadn’t said the artifact couldn’t hear them. “What do you have to do to cast the spell?”

            “Access your magical core first,” Malfoy breathed back. “And you have to drop anything you have representing another magical conduit that could interfere with the process.”

            “What?”

            Malfoy rolled his eyes, then gave Harry a single challenging stare. “Drop your wand, Potter.”

            Harry took a few deep breaths, and did so, keeping in his mind the memory of what Malfoy had looked like when they banished Voldemort’s ghost together. Malfoy moved closer to him, a soft smile gracing his lips for a moment. He gave Harry a kiss as brief and cold as the touch of a belladonna leaf, then said, “Down on your knees and face the artifact.”

            Harry knelt, and shivered anew. A metallic energy was beating up through the earth, making the dirt as comforting to kneel in as moondust. Malfoy took up a position behind him, hands resting on his shoulders.

            “Think about what it’s done,” Malfoy whispered to him, his breath a welcome tease against the side of Harry’s neck. “Focus on your hatred for it and how much you trust me.”

            Harry stared at the bloodline artifact and imagined it trapping memories of his parents here for eighteen years. Even if they weren’t the “real” memories of his parents, even if Lily and James Potter had been at peace all that time, the artifact had something of them. It could force those images to go through existence, to keep repeating their stories, to never fade away.

            His whole body went warm with his hatred. Hadn’t his parents suffered enough? They’d died so young, and for a future they would never see, for a son they would never see grow up. They had fought in a war and endured months living under the Fidelius Charm, their lives in constant danger and their marriage under strain. Wasn’t that enough?

            At the same time, he remembered standing beside Malfoy as they defeated Voldemort, and how he had burned the ghost stag, and how, when Harry and Hermione and Ron were captured and dragged to Malfoy Manor, he hadn’t given them away. Malfoy’s hawthorn wand was warm and friendly in his hand. His lips were soft and parted beneath Harry’s.

            He felt as though the skin of his back had parted, warm and wet, and Malfoy reached a hand through the gap and closed it into a fist around his heart.

            No, it was something more intimate than a heart. Harry came to startled attention. Malfoy cradled and surrounded all that he was, a center of energy and power Harry had never known about before. When Malfoy moved, Harry could feel him twanging the cords of Harry’s soul. His memories swirled, concentrated down to a single point. His magic swung and coiled, but couldn’t find an escape from Malfoy’s encircling hand.

            Harry had never pushed away a fear so pervasive as he did in that moment. Malfoy could destroy him if he wished, and Harry couldn’t do anything to stop it. He only had to close his hand, and he would crush Harry out of existence.

            But Harry trusted him. He repeated the memories to himself and focused on the artifact, glittering with Dark magic, ahead of him. That was the thing he hated. That was the enemy here. He thought about it, and thought about it, and his hatred sharpened into a shining weapon in Malfoy’s hand.

            When Malfoy began to speak the spell, each word went through Harry like an earthquake.

*

            Draco had not known such temptation existed.

            When he touched Harry Potter’s magic, he swelled to more than twice the size he had been before. Potter outmatched him in power. And it could be his if he pulled the right direction—the direction that was in his head like a Floo address suddenly remembered. He could have it forever, and command Potter’s body as a living puppet. No one would suspect; the most sophisticated spells would not detect this special form of possession.

            He could use Potter’s magic to control and contain, instead of destroy, the bloodline artifact. And then he would have the might that he had come to Godric’s Hollow hoping to possess. He would do the great things he had dreamed of. He would have purpose and direction aplenty. He had only to lean on the artifact and Potter, and he would be the next Dark Lord in five years. Or the Minister, if that was what he wanted. Or he could leave Britain and live on a decadent hidden estate with his Muggle slaves.

            The artifact, which indeed had remained a tool of the Black family, hailed and welcomed him, and yearned only to be used against Draco’s enemies.

            Draco knew he might have fallen then, gazing into the abyss and seeing the bottom not so far away, had Potter not looked at him with awe after they defeated Voldemort.

            If he destroyed Potter’s soul, he would never see that look again. If he kept that body without Potter animating it, he wouldn’t hear the little grunts and cries of pain forced between clenched teeth the first time Draco pushed inside him, and he wouldn’t see the mad look he would wear the first time he made love to Draco. (Ginny Weasley notwithstanding, Draco was sure Potter was a virgin).

            Potter had to be the one to give him those things, rather than Draco taking them. And he would have them. He would make sure of that.

            Compared to the absolute lure of power over Harry, the power over the world the artifact offered him was a weak and paltry thing.

            Draco laughed, and then he dug deep and began to chant the spell, wielding the magic in Potter’s core as he would wield a wand. He saw his hands folded before him, small shining spots in an endless void, backlit by the power they cupped. And then the golden power began to climb his arms, and the darkness screamed and fell back, sliced as if with many swords.

            Draco lifted his head and focused on the artifact crouching in its hole before them. He could sense the chill tinge of worry to its aura, the sudden wavering in the black glow it shed. The glow bent away from them, and then faded. The artifact was trying to make itself look harmless, so they would go away and leave it alone. It was utterly bewildered that someone of the Black bloodline was attacking rather than using it.

            Draco laughed again and built the chant, repeating it. The golden ropes of light had climbed to his shoulders and turned to face the weapon. They had manifested as golden serpents, though Draco couldn’t be sure if that was in response to his imagination or Potter’s. The serpents had brilliant scarlet tongues and eyes now a rich green, now a pale gray. They hissed and flicked their tongues, and then they lunged from his shoulders, growing longer like vines, straight at the half-open box that contained the artifact.

            Their jaws unhinged as they flew like the jaws of the Dark Lord’s ghost, and they each covered half of the box, dragging it up and swallowing it. The artifact spilled to the ground, unprotected now and throbbing frantically. Draco could sense its magic building, and knew it would probably use some last grand strike to defend itself.

            “Try,” he breathed, and repeated the spell for the third and last time, his voice pure and firm and unmoving. His hands had sunk more deeply into Potter’s magic. He luxuriated in the feeling. Potter trusted no other person alive in the world like this.

            And Draco was confident of his superiority to the dead in every respect.

            The artifact grew a long blade and chopped at him. Draco watched the strike falling without fear. The spell was dancing through his veins now, leaving golden sparks that broke through his chest and fell over the kneeling Potter, illuminating his face. He wore an expression of exaltation, without pain or fear.

            The golden serpents reared like cobras dancing to the magic of the charmer and fell themselves, coiling around the artifact and sinking in their glowing fangs again and again and again. The light fighting the darkness, Draco thought as he watched them. And if they have the shape of snakes, let it never be said that Slytherins can’t fight on the side of good.

            Another wound in his soul that had endured since the final battle and the utter ineffectiveness of his part in it vanished.

            The falling sword crumbled apart into strips of darkness that tasted like iron when they fell on Draco’s tongue. The artifact screamed again and again, making Draco’s heart beat faster as his Black blood responded to the call. But he had destroyed it of his own free will, and he stood there with his arms around what he most wanted whilst the weapon vibrated and splintered and was swallowed.

            The golden serpents rose when the artifact was gone, swaying back and forth. Draco had expected them to return to Potter’s core at once, but instead they entwined their necks and rolled across the ground. When they came up again, their flickering tongues touched, and he choked to see that one had gray eyes, one green.

            Then they turned into formless streaks of light, streaking back home past Draco’s hands, and Draco took a deep breath and removed himself from Potter’s core.

            The world around them began to spin as if they’d been standing on the wrong side of a trick bookcase. Draco blinked and tightened his hold on Potter’s shoulders, wondering if he should make him stand up, but the spinning motion faded and they were back in the garden behind the house, in the daylit summer world of Godric’s Hollow. The sun was in the west, Draco noted absently, and streaks of red and orange radiance struck past him and blinded him momentarily as they glinted off a harmless heap of silver and steel and emeralds in a half-dug hole.

            “Thank you.”

            Draco jerked his head up with a gasp. Potter was standing in seconds, his arm around Draco’s waist. “What is it?” he whispered into his ear.

            Draco could only shake his head. Floating towards him was a pair of glittering figures, hand in hand: James and Lily Potter as he had seen them in the visions, clad in the robes they had worn in the memory where little Harry flew on the broom. There was an aura of serenity around them that made Draco’s eyes run with tears. He leaned on Harry for support and said, “Why am I seeing you?”

            “We’re free now,” Lily Potter said, and looked fondly at her husband for a moment. “That horrid artifact which James thought he could tame—“

            “Oi!” Potter glared back at his wife.

            “—Kept a portion of us here,” said Lily, and looked at Draco. He shivered. Seeing Harry’s intense green eyes in another face was an experience nothing could have prepared him for. “Our souls were partially split, too, on the night when the Killing Curse backfired and turned Voldemort into a spirit. Most of us went to rest; most of us was dead. But some parts of us lingered here, and the artifact enslaved us.” She sighed, as though she were only speaking about a cracked vase and not torment that had lasted for eighteen years. “We wanted to call for help, but at first we didn’t want to distract our son whilst he battled Voldemort, and then we found out he has no sensitivity to the dead at all.”

            “He possessed the Resurrection Stone,” Draco muttered, feeling absurdly as if he were defending Potter.

            “That gives access to the dead for a time, and makes one Master of Death.” Lily Potter shook her head and looked at her son with eyes so hungry Draco would have faded away and given them a moment alone if that were possible. “It cannot convey the ability to hear us. You have that, Draco Malfoy.”

            “But why reach out to me to contact him?” Draco asked. “You could have found someone else, a necromancer or—“

            “You have always been able to attract Harry’s attention,” said James Potter, who looked as if he didn’t know whether to approve of that or not. “We knew you’d go to him and get him involved somehow.” He paused, then added, with the air of someone giving a great compliment, “That part of the plan was foolproof.”

            “Then you didn’t know that we’d manage to defeat the bloodline artifact?” Draco looked askance at the broken pieces of the weapon.

            “Not for certain,” Lily said. “Being dead gives one a few great certainties, but it tends to take away the others.”

            Draco shook his head and decided he wouldn’t pursue that line of conversation when it could only end in shouting. Besides, he could feel Harry shifting restlessly beside him. “Well, what should I tell Harry?”

            “The truth,” Lily said. “That we love him and miss him, but he did the best thing for us he possibly could have.”

            “Yes,” said James. “Tell him to keep up the legacy of the Marauders, and of Prongs.” He grinned fiercely. Draco thought he could see the glitter of stag’s antlers above his head, and he nodded, no longer curious about where the “Prongs” nickname originated from. “Tell him to find some nice girl to make him happy.”

            The way he stressed girl and glared at Draco left no doubt of what he was thinking on that score. Draco lifted his chin and looked haughtily back. His grip on Harry tightened, and James’s eyes flashed. Well, let him think what he liked. He was dead and had no right to an opinion.

            “You might consider using your gift for hearing the dead to raise yourself to great heights,” Lily added suddenly, “since the bloodline artifact didn’t serve.”

            “How did you know I was thinking that?”

            “As I said,” and she smiled at him, “being dead gives one a few great certainties.” She glanced down at the arm Harry had around Draco. “And there’s another of them.” Her husband opened his mouth as if to protest. She elbowed him in the ribs. “Go in peace and love, Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter.”

            Draco rolled his eyes as they faded. Such a Gryffindor thing to say. He shouldn’t have been surprised.

            Mind you, there might be something in her words about using his gift to hear the dead. Magical powers shouldn’t sit around and gather dust.

            “What did they say?” Harry demanded.

            Draco turned to face him. Harry looked back at him, face set in as stubborn and fierce an expression as his parents had looked at each other with. Draco felt his own eyes widening. Maybe her last words hadn’t been so daft after all.

            “Well?” Harry poked him in the chest.

            Draco reached out and caught the back of his head, drawing him near. Harry was the one who gasped this time as Draco gave him a kiss, rubbing his tongue back and forth along the sides of Harry’s mouth and his palate. But he yielded much more easily than Draco had, letting his eyes flutter shut and breathy little moans escape through his nose. He looked thoroughly dazed when Draco pulled away, which satisfied Draco.

            And so did the ideas growing in his mind, another burst of sheer brilliance, and so did the fact he could do something Harry Potter couldn’t and would never be able to best him at.

            “I could set up a shop,” he said dreamily. “No, a mysterious dark tower that only people who were really worth my time would approach. And I could demand a good portion of the Galleons in their vaults for talking to their dead.”

            “What?”

            “Plans,” Draco said. “Ambitions. You know, the sort of thing foreign to you.” He watched happily as Potter’s face contorted. “And anyway, you’ll find out soon enough, because I’ll need your magic to set it up.”

            “What makes you think I’ll help you?”

            “I know what your parents told me,” Draco said in a high, singsong voice. “And besides…” He licked his lips. “Refuse me and there’s no more kisses.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “You’re a tease.”

            “I object to that designation,” Draco said, and leaned forwards to speak with his lips just brushing Harry’s. “I fulfill my promises. Eventually.”

            And then he showed how he could and began to kiss Harry again, whilst his mind plotted and whirled busily.

            Maybe I can get him to tell me where he dropped the Resurrection Stone. It’s not as though he wants it, anyway.

            And I will definitely have to get him to do that thing with his tongue again.

            The End.
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Between the Rising and the Setting of the Sun