They Do Things Differently There 2/2

[cleodoxa]

“There’s been another outbreak,” said Draco at break time. “Mother’s just discovered that the grounds are full of them.”

“There’s always one that gets missed,” said Harry.

“At least,” said Draco.

This was time-passing pleasantry in which Harry was more interested than Draco. Malfoy Manor almost always was full of Horcruxes. Harry took a quasi-professional interest as, if he became a Horcrux Hunter on leaving school, which he very likely would, he would spend a good bit of time at Malfoy Manor. His parents were keener on the Auror Department; being Aurors themselves they thought it would be nice to hand it on, as well as arguing that when all was said and done, a Horcrux Hunter was a glorified Niffler. Harry didn’t quite like to say that the idea of going to work with his parents was a little unappealing. When he was little, he had thought that surely by the time he was grown up someone would have thought of a way to get rid of all Horcruxes, for good, and there would be no need for people to keep rounding them up. Now there was less than a year to go, it didn’t seem that was going to happen. Perhaps when he was a Horcrux Hunter he would learn things about them and he would be that person.

There was a faint sense of an unspoken question about Draco, as there often was - “How come you’re here? Where are Ron and Hermione?” Harry had learned that his friendship with Ron and Hermione on the one hand and with Draco on the other could coexist well enough as long as he hardened himself to ignore these touches of tension when they came from Draco or Ron. Protesting that of course you wanted to spend time with someone who was in fact pissing you off at the minute was not much fun. In some ways, though, Harry thought he almost liked having a friendship that no one else especially approved of. It lent their time together a kind of just-between-us quality.

“Hermione’s showing Ron where to find the books he needs for his Astronomy essay,” said Harry.

“Mother wrote back about something I asked, as well as about that,” said Draco.

“Oh?”

“You could come and stay over Easter if you wanted,” said Draco.

“Oh!” exclaimed Harry. It was a surprised Oh, but a pleased one. Visits during the holidays had never really been considered, for one reason and another. The Malfoys had been Voldemort supporters, and, thanks to Voldemort actually being at Malfoy Manor when he finally created one Horcrux too many and splintered all over the place, the site had more Horcruxes than any other in the country. Not a place the Potters (or many other people) would want to send their child, and this was understood. Harry had been prepared to fight for Draco to be invited to his own house, but Draco had felt it would be awkward to come and stay with people he knew disapproved of his family. Also, the Malfoys were probably all for the idea, and Draco probably thought that in going to stay with Harry he might come too close to doing
what his parents wanted him to do and everyone thought he was doing: schmoozing up to the Potters.

Things were different now. Harry was seventeen, and his parents couldn’t stop him going where he wanted if they had been so inclined. As it was, he could quite sensibly make the visit sound like a good idea; if he was going to become a Horcrux Hunter in a few months it would be as well to see how he got on in a place where a Horcrux might pop up at you anywhere, anytime.

“That’s great,” said Harry. “I’ve heard so much about it; it’ll be good to finally see it.”

Draco smiled. Home must be a little depressing for him, Harry thought sometimes. So often full of people. All those broken nights when a cascade of diary-Horcruxes fell on his head. Parents always complaining about their poverty and inability to sell the Manor.

It would be good to see Draco at home, too, thought Harry. He liked it when he got to see Draco in a new light. He’d been highly amused when Draco had become a bit of a pin-up among some of the girls, for instance. His tendency to occasional sullenness was now apparently attractive brooding. Draco had only stopped obnoxiously playing up to it when Harry could see him when Harry’d started trying not to laugh instead of laughing, because it would bring on a defensive inquisition into why Harry hadn’t ever tried to get a girlfriend. Apparently politely restrained mirth was more embarrassing than outright laughter, knowledge which Harry applied more deliberately in the future.

*

As he’d expected, his plans for the Easter holidays did not meet with resistance. He hadn’t expected to feel as grateful for this. Harry’s parents were the only ones who did actually make Harry feel uneasy sometimes about his friendship with a Death Eater’s son, and, unlike Ron and his godfather, for instance, they never actively tried to dissuade the friendship. Though Sirius’s problem seemed to be mostly with Draco the son of his cousin Narcissa Black rather than Draco the son of Lucius the Death Eater. They all could have died, Harry and his parents, if the Order of the Phoenix had not realised that one of his parents’ friends was a spy. Lucius Malfoy had probably been privy to that plan, and Harry did feel strange when he remembered that.

He remembered his dad taking as much pleasure as anyone else in the poetic justice meted out to the Malfoys before Harry went to Hogwarts. One minute you were, presumably, feeling yourself honoured among Death Eaters, playing host to the Dark Lord, and the next the Dark Lord’s soul was in thousands of further splintering, multiplying, diminishing pieces, much of it occupying everything in your house. All those heirlooms that had to be destroyed. It was more than they deserved that that great snake hadn’t been in residence.

That had happened when he and Draco were four. Draco claimed to have been too young to remember the Dark Lord. Harry wasn’t sure he believed him. Draco didn’t like to admit to feeling less than happy and secure, even as a four-year-old.

*

When he first came face to face to Mr and Mrs Malfoy on the platform, Harry’s first reaction was one of some dismay. Such eager, toothy smiles and handshakes and “So pleased to meet you”s and Lucius elaborately letting him go through a door first. What if he really didn’t like Draco’s parents and he couldn’t hide it? Draco would be hurt. Thankfully, by the time they were having a drink in The Leaky Couldron before Floo’ing home, the Malfoys had remembered that they were experienced adults capable of keeping calm and being subtly charming and urbane. Harry didn’t have to care what they were really like as long as he could get through a conversation with them without obviously gritting his teeth.

Malfoy Manor still looked very nice, though he knew all the furniture they had now was imitation.

“We are going through quite a bad phase at the moment, but fortunately the room next to Draco’s is prone to nothing more alarming than duplicates of my emerald and diamond necklace,” said Narcissa. “Do remember that if you find yourself feeling irritable, or even just a little cold, look to see if there’s a necklace nearby. They usually arrive by stealth.”

Harry had encountered Horcruxes before, at Hogwarts. They were always the same diadem Horcrux, and there were only a few every year, and fewer with each year. Perhaps Hogwarts was special and had more ways of being inhospitable to the Horcruxes’ way of always leaving plenty in hiding, to reappear once the previous generation had been destroyed. At the Sorting Feast Dumbledore advised the first years to think of it as a little like a doxy infestation. He had handled a true Horcrux once, the stories said, and found it more malignant than any of them were now. Harry had picked up a diadem once, and had been unable to tell if it was his imagination that made him feel almost guilty and resented, as if he was holding the bone of someone who had hated him. He almost was, of course, but there was something more gruesome about the feeling than he’d expected. He thought it would be a kindness, really, to destroy all the Horcruxes and end whatever existence Voldemort had. His life-force must be at about the level of bacteria, Hermione had said, spread so thin. Harry didn’t like to think of it and that, really, was why he wanted to be a Horcrux Hunter and why his experience with the diadem hadn’t put him off.

When Narcissa had shown him into his room, Draco showed him the rest of the house, without saying a word about Horcruxes.

*

It was nice to be able to sit and talk with Draco without time constraints and the feeling that there was somewhere else to be and other people to be with. Hard, too. The temptation to reach out and touch was much nearer than it had been before, under a tree in the grounds out of sight of the Manor, no one else around, or in Draco’s room at night before saying goodnight, Draco lying on his stomach on his bed, chin propped on his hand. Harry spent so many conversations imagining kissing Draco, and apparently it never showed. It astonished him that such a gap between reality and appearance was possible, and Harry was hardly a master of disguise. He wanted to lie naked in bed with Draco and talk casually and look sideways on the pillow and see him smile. He thought about what came between, too, but that he didn’t feel able to disguise, and saved it for wanking sessions.

He tried extra hard to enjoy the time he spent at the Manor, because he was aware now that this was something with an end. He wasn’t going to spend years like this. He’d get sick of it and do something. Forget himself one day and kiss Draco, or make a melodramatic confession, he didn’t know what, but he was sure both that it wouldn’t be planned and that it would happen. Then it would be awkward. Draco could pull the shutters right down when he wanted, and Harry wouldn’t want to hang around for that.

*

The universe finally admitted that there was no putting all these bits of Tom Riddle back together again.

*

Draco sank onto his knees. It felt as though he himself was sinking, coming to rest at the dregs of himself, sliding past all his lost opportunities. He’d reached the end of the line and for a moment he thought he could achieve resignation, but then he was wrenched by a fresh spasm of agony at the notion. He sobbed into the flames, needing to reach out, unable to help himself in any other way.

“What happened, Draco?” asked Pansy, kneeling down to him at once in her room.

“I fucked up. I was supposed to kill a bunch of Mudbloods - they were hiding in a house and I don’t even know exactly what happened - I was by the back door and they decided to make a break for it. And if the others hadn’t seen what was happening before I got a chance to stun some of them, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But they yelled from the stairs to kill them and I paused because I don’t think I can really do that yet and I didn’t want to look stupid. And someone managed to get in a couple of AK’s over my head and it came very close to me. And a lot of them managed to get out of the back door and get on brooms and get away, and I was just standing there doing nothing, and then… There were all these Death Eaters running at me and I ran away. And the Dark Lord himself said “Get back here, boy” and I didn’t. And I came home because I didn’t really know what else to do, but now I am, Pansy, he’s seriously going to kill me. I’ve been rubbish, to be honest, Pansy, I don’t know why he would keep me around.”

“You should have come here,” Pansy said, as if she’d have solved all his problems at once if only she’d known. “Get in the Floo properly.”

“We’ll run away,” she said when he got there, her hands on his shoulders.

“Where to?”

There wasn’t anywhere, really, which was why they ended up at the Burrow, as the only way Pansy could think of to get in touch with the people fighting on the other side. Draco could not really look the full horror of his life, and Pansy’s only idea, in the face, so he was very passive. It was surprising how much you could pretend that what was happening wasn’t happening, he discovered during the encounter at the Burrow. Pansy seemed not to need to do this, buoyant on barefaced cheek. Draco supposed one of them needed to admit they were begging refuge of the Weasleys for refuge to actually be gained.

Not long after that, Draco and Pansy found themselves in a building somewhere, Muggle, Draco thought. It seemed to be a house that had been half-heartedly converted into offices, now mostly dismantled and abandoned. They were in the company of some crates of malodorous potion and some sheaves of paperwork originating from the Ministry, both of which the Order had confiscated during a scuffle. Draco had not heard of a scuffle during his so recent time as a Death Eater. Of course, it was probably hardly worth mentioning, but then again, no one told Draco anything and he seemed to have stopped making it his business to find things out.

“You can go through the paperwork, and set aside anything that seems as if it may contain anything we’d like to know about. All sorts of apparently boring details may be valuable, I’m sure you’ll be able to tell what kind of thing might be useful,” said Lupin. “And mind yourself around that potion, it’s probably volatile. I’ll see how you’re getting on in an hour or so.”

They were left alone, which rather surprised them. “They’re seeing if they can trust us while they’re not breathing down our necks,” said Pansy.

The prospect of work seemed to make the world go by at its normal rate again, rather than whizzing by in a blur of colour. Pansy felt it as well as Draco, and she hadn’t been so deliberately setting her life spinning so as not to look at it. Draco picked up some of the parchment, dispiritedly. It all seemed to relate to the finances of the Ministry - the canteen, the Floos, the cleaners.

“I bet if they had to look through this themselves they just wouldn’t, even if they thought they ought to make sure,” said Draco. “They’re just making us do it to prove they can.”

Keeping his attention on the statistics and quibbling letters about how large a pinch of Floo powder people should take was hard. Draco wandered over to open one of the crates. There were two large jars of the potion in it, the lid of one knocked askew. It was a translucent sea green, the texture frothy. “It’s not something I recognise,” said Draco.

“It’s probably a valuable Dark potion,” said Pansy.

The same thought seemed to strike both of them. “Do you think they’d notice if we took one of the jars? We’d need some money, wouldn’t we, at some point? Or maybe it would be better to transfigure a bit of this parchment into a jar and take some of the potion out…”

The jar created, Draco began to dig some of the potion out of the jar already open. He thought he’d spilt it for a moment when it began to trickle down the sides, before realising it was boiling over of its own accord. Draco and Pansy were at least bright enough to have begun to back away as the potion frothed into the crate faster and faster. They hit the floor with the first explosion. They didn’t even have their wands out, so there was little question of taking quick-thinking magical action.

The noise was worse than the fear. Draco’s whole body hurt with it. He wanted to look to see where Pansy was, but the light was blinding when he moved his arms away from his face for a moment. He wasn’t sure when it ended. Pansy got up first, and tapped him between the shoulder blades. Her face was awed and sombre.

Looking up, Draco saw that all the objects in the room had become a sticky layer coating the floor, and a lot of the walls and ceiling were on the floor. The explosion had taken out oddly deliberate looking chunks, he noticed, like a pattern. His focus became a little clearer and he saw that the wall that was left was shaped like letters. Swivelling to read around the room, he was leadenly unsurprised to spell out LORD VOLDEMORT.

“Not what the werewolf would like to come back and find,” said Pansy.

Neither of them knew why the explosion was shaped like the Dark Lord, but they felt that if they were Lupin, they would take it as a sign, revealing Draco and Pansy’s true loyalties. Maybe that was what it did mean. Draco didn’t think he’d know what loyalty felt like anymore.

“Let’s run away,” said Draco. Perhaps you only needed to run away once for it to become a habit; perhaps otherwise they’d have stopped to weigh up their options more precisely. But they could not resist the easy relief of the moment. Leaving things behind was a good feeling, Draco thought.

*

So that was how things became so terrible.

“Everything has gone so wrong,” said Pansy, sounding gleeful.

Draco almost didn’t reply. “Didn’t that become obvious a while ago now?”

“I know, but it hasn’t got better. Everything is still so terrible, what’s going to happen to us?”

There was the thing where they didn’t have anywhere to be or anything to do or anything to live on. Having TRAITOR written across both their hands didn’t cheer them up. Draco’s Splinching wound that wouldn’t heal was a worry. Possibly worst of all was what they could only imagine was some kind of aftereffect from the potion explosion. For some hours every day they died, as far as they could make out, unable to either fully inhabit or fully leave their clammy, cooling bodies. Pansy claimed she didn’t know what went through her mind when it happened. It was entirely possible she didn’t; Draco was left with only vague impressions himself. Impressions of argument mostly, sitting down at a round table with people he knew but who were hidden in the dark, to fight his corner, defending himself against accusations or else joining in a more general quarrel about how things really went. Sometimes it seemed as if all this took place within a giant clock. He supposed it spoke of his feeling that he and Pansy were in suspension between two worlds all the time, as they were, even when not undergoing this strange curse.

“The war could end without us even knowing,” said Pansy.

They didn’t go hungry; they had all sorts of ways of stealing money and food, and they could create magical fires, and got better at cooking food on them. They were still very conscious of lacking home comforts, staying in horrid Muggle places no one seemed to care about, and always fearing that Muggles, Death Eaters or the Order of the Phoenix would come upon them.

“Maybe we should try and get a lot of money,” Draco had said at times. “So we could live somewhere.”

Pansy never seemed enthusiastic. Draco supposed she felt it would be committing herself to a particular kind of life, a ruined, inferior one. Draco wasn’t quite sure she would stay with him. After all, the situation was surely not as extreme for someone who was not a Death Eater. She seemed to have outgrown her crush on him and Draco thought that sometimes they both wondered why she was here.

Draco didn’t know why Pansy seemed to take pleasure from how perfectly awful everything was. Most of all, he thought, he wished the wound on his shoulder would heal. He had to lie flat on his back to sleep.

*

Draco had had little idea of time since they entered Limbo, so he couldn’t say how long it was after they ran away that he and Pansy were wandering disconsolately down the street, when who should bump into them but Harry Potter. They all squinted crossly at each other, the wind whipping their hair into their faces, before Draco felt his eyes widen while he saw Potter’s and Pansy’s do likewise. He was about to belt off down the street, but Pansy got a firm grasp on his coat. Potter laughed a little in astonishment, partly, Draco suspected, because of his own look of panic.

“I think we should come back with you and explain things,” said Pansy. “Do you think we’d be killed? Because if we won’t be killed then we’re coming with you.”

Potter looked at them. “I don’t think you’ll be killed. I don’t know what will happen. But I think you had better come with me.”

Even though he wanted someone to heal his Splinching wound and take the curse off him and take him somewhere warm and cook him a hot meal, it chafed to go with Potter. Now he was leaving it, he liked his position on the edge, a lonely abstainer.

*

He did get the things he wanted, though, so that was something. People weren’t really angry with them, he thought, though that seemed to be mostly because they hadn’t expected anything better. If they were kind it was in a patronising way, shaking their heads about the sorry state they’d got themselves into.

“We thought the potion you blew up was designed to convert people into following Voldemort,” Granger said, as it occurred to her that perhaps no one had bothered to tell them about it. “It’s a mind-control tool worse than Imperius, even. It carves out all the pieces of the soul Voldemort cannot use. The state of the room was like a physical representation of what it does to a person, a metaphor. I suppose what you experienced is some kind of strange, incomplete effect due to inhaling it or having it spattered on you or whatever it was you did.”

“So it’s as if the force of the potion, not being able to harm our actual souls, just tried to force them out of our bodies?” said Pansy.

“Maybe what happened while we were hovering was part of it too,” said Draco. That arguing, as if he was the subject being hammered out, perhaps that was him fighting in some way for his soul? On the one hand, he liked the grandness of this idea, on the other, he didn’t actually like thinking about souls much. The memory of those strange dreams stayed with him, though, clearer now that his mind was less fogged with discomfort and hopelessness. There were so many ways for things to go, he remembered someone, perhaps even himself saying. Could one narrow course of events reveal all the world that lay within just one soul? Of course not. And someone else had said that the one narrow course of events was a test and either you passed it or you failed. Some of these ideas were tools to dig further, to another layer of dreams, where there were other narrow courses of events.

“I did this before, you know,” Draco announced. He turned to Potter, who was moodily scribbling something on a piece of parchment, unable to restrain his pride at discovering the uncharted territories of his own mind. “Defected to your side, I mean, and did it better. I learnt a bit about Defence, from Moody and Lupin and you, no one’s bothered about it here, and I got all inspired and everything.”

“Sorry?”

“This happened before. Somewhere. This isn’t the only way things happened. I can remember a little bit of it, right at the bottom of my mind.”

“That’s the potion speaking, Malfoy. Come on, you’re better now, you should be able to spot when you’re talking rubbish. Impossible rubbish, I mean,” said Potter.

Draco shook his head. “It’s not rubbish,” he said quietly. Potter looked at him for a moment and went back to his parchment. Draco wondered if they’d ever been friends. Maybe, he thought. Something about Potter’s body, its lines and gestures, like the bowed head; he thought it could have been fondly familiar once, known and recognised in that particular way. Maybe he was imagining it.

*

“Is Pansy,” Harry lowered his voice, “sleeping with Hermione?”

“We haven’t talked about it,” said Draco. “But I think she might be. Granger can be a bit transparent.”

“Can’t she just,” said Harry grimly. There had been something knowing and flirtatiously adversarial between Pansy and Granger. It might have been dismissed as Pansy just messing with her, but there was something about some of Granger’s pink responses. “It’s hardly the time,” Harry said.

Draco shrugged. “I guess they have to have something else to think about sometimes. It’s definitely doing good things for Pansy’s interest in the cause.”

“I thought she was mad about you, anyway?”

“Not so much these days. I hadn’t even thought about that, actually. It’d be pretty funny, all that when we were younger, if Pansy’s a lesbian. Seeing as I’m gay too.”

“Oh. Oh right. Ron’s… not very happy,” said Harry.

Draco thought Ron and Hermione had actually been rather a nice couple, though he couldn’t remember now where or when he might have thought so. Still, he thought Pansy and Hermione might be good for each other too. There was a taut, lively energy between them.

It was strange to find himself looking at things that way - that someone might be with one person or another, and either way was okay because the other way got their chance. It occurred to him that he’d stopped his mental digging prematurely. So things happened more than once. Was that really a matter of simple, if disputed fact, or did things only begin there? Was there one true way he ought to be helping them all towards? Were they all bumbling about until they got things right? Were they time travelling or something? Instead of feeling clever for working things out, he felt as if he’d only just realised he was lost in a maze.

“I still know what I said I knew,” said Draco. “And it’s not impossible rubbish.”

Harry sighed. “I guess it’s only fair that I should be in this position. Usually it’s me trying to convince everyone to believe me about something bizarre.”

“So you should try and take me seriously. Just ask yourself what if or think maybe.”

“Are you thinking of something like reincarnation? Though I thought the point of that was to get better, and we don’t seem to have got very far, by the sound of it.”

“I don’t know. Maybe we are supposed to be trying to get better, and we’re just not. Maybe we have to realise what’s happening to know what we’re supposed to do.”

“The thing is, even if it wasn’t just you, with various reasons for being a bit unstable, saying this weird thing, I wouldn’t really want to get into it. I can’t have another massive thing to worry about. Even if it was true. I just don’t think I could.” He looked away from Draco.

There was something of quiet panic about him, as if he thought he could feel his burden slipping from his grasp whether he willed it or no. Draco had wanted to ask, “But what if it’s part of the thing you’re already worrying about, and you have to?” but now was not the time to add to the burden. He wanted to lift the burden from Harry, but on the other hand, there was something he liked about Harry sitting there under it. That was a weird thing to think, partly because not long ago he’d thought he hated him, and partly because perhaps it was wrong to like him better for being miserable.

“Do you want to do a bit of Defence, then?” Harry asked.

*

Damn it. Just as he was making some headway.

*

Harry stayed to see it done, so Ron and Hermione did too. They stood uphill, some distance away, both of them gripping his arm. Kingsley Shacklebolt stood a little further down, watching Nathan Whittaker, the only werewolf contact Remus had managed to make, tear into the body Arthur Weasley had found. They had all agreed that the body sufficiently resembled Harry - not enough that one could have been mistaken for another alive, but dead and mangled, certainly. The scar had been scored into his forehead. Nathan claimed that for the first few moments of his transformation he retained enough sense of his human self to carry out its errands, and in case this was not true Kingsley had magically flip-flopped the corpse about to make it appear tempting prey.

It was too dark to see much, though of course the moon helped. Just the shape of a wolf worrying something on the ground.

“I think he’s getting bored of it,” Hermione whispered. Harry waited a moment longer, but the wolf’s movements were indeed becoming desultory. They Disapparated.

It felt so solemn, like a ritual to denote the end of something. It was strange to remember that this was only the means to keep going. If Harry was supposed dead, and those who opposed Voldemort pretended to be, or really were without hope, then, the theory was, the feeling that they were a breath away from defeat would remain, secretly, still a breath away. Harry, Ron and Hermione would continue looking for the Horcruxes, and Voldemort would surely stop tearing the country to pieces looking for them.

They were still killing hope for a lot of people. It was a bad night.

*

They could not allow themselves to have any contact with the Order, so they had no idea whether the body was found and identified as intended, or whether any werewolves had been punished for usurping Voldemort’s privilege.

“At least he isn’t going to be exactly satisfied by the news,” said Harry. “That would be a little too much for me to think about.”

“No one’s fighting against him now,” said Ron. “Just trying to keep safe.”

“Voldemort will be more in power than he ever has been,” said Hermione. “In a while, we must get some Muggle newspapers. He’s never been in quite this position before.”

Something about this phase disturbed Harry. He felt almost as if he ought to be remembering something connected to what positions Voldemort had been in before. Going to sleep was particularly maddening. Every time his mind began to drift the more awake parts of his mind would wake up even more and point and say “Pay attention! See if you know what you don’t know you know!” But then there was no dreaminess to pay attention to. When he finally did fall asleep, he dreamt he was watching the clock in the Entrance Hall at Hogwarts like a cat watching a mousehole.

They made themselves stay in the woods for a long time, not willing to enter even Muggle civilisation. When they did, walking up a Muggle high street feeling very wide-eyed and resisting the urge to run away or Disapparate at unexpected noises, they saw Draco Malfoy walking down the street towards them. He was not looking at them, but around him, as wide-eyed and nervous-looking as them.

“Shit,” whispered Hermione.

They wobbled about on the pavement. There was no time to get themselves out of there and be sure he wouldn’t see them.

“We’ll have to take him,” said Harry, and the others nodded.

He thought there might be a fight, right there, in front of the Muggles, but it was easy. Draco practically walked right into their arms before he saw them, and then it was too late. Harry almost laughed at the look on his face.

So there was Draco, bound in their tent, and all Harry, Ron and Hermione could do was stare down at him, puzzled.

“We haven’t kidnapped him before, have we?” asked Hermione.

“You’re feeling like that too?” asked Draco, suddenly enthusiastic. “I’ve been feeling like that ever since I ran away! Like I’d done it before. I’m sure I’ve met up with you lot before, too. It just doesn’t make sense, though. I can remember my life, all the way back, and there’s none of this stuff in it.”

Hermione sat down on her bed. “Someone’s done something to us, like I did to my parents,” she said.

Harry and Ron, still standing threateningly over Draco, wands at the ready, felt a little wrong-footed by the sudden change of topic.

“You ran away?” asked Harry, groping his way back to pertinent questions about the present.

“Yes. I don’t think anyone likes it now, you know. Even a lot of the people on our side don’t. It doesn’t feel like real, everyday life. It’s… stale, and there’s more fear for everyone. I think a lot of people didn’t quite realise that when you support the Dark Lord being in power, that’s what you get. He’s in power, no one else,” said Draco. He sounded thoughtful. His hostage status seemed a little incongruous. “I just didn’t have the patience to go on pretending.”

“So what was the big plan?” asked Harry.

“You overestimate me; I didn’t have one of those. I thought everything was bound to end badly for me sooner rather than later, so it would be nice to see if I could get a bit of peace first. But - but maybe it won’t end badly. If we don’t know what’s true. Maybe the worst things aren’t true,” said Draco, obviously finding this thought cheering.

“I think we have ended up spending time with you before,” said Ron. “But are you horrible or not? I can’t remember.”

Draco laughed. “I’m sure it’s a matter of opinion.”

“But what do we do?” asked Harry, feeling the panic rising. “Why are we talking like we’ve solved something? We don’t know anything!”

“I don’t suppose you saw Groundhog Day, did you, Harry?” asked Hermione. “But maybe we’re stuck repeating the same bit of time over and over again and there’s something we have to do - maybe it’s you!” she said to Draco. “Maybe you have to learn to be a better person!”

“God, I hope it isn’t Voldemort,” said Harry.

“Oh dear. We would certainly be here a long time.”

“Are we sure about this? Maybe we’re just making ourselves think this because we’re all pissed off with the way things are,” said Ron.

“It would make sense,” Hermione admitted. “We’re all under a lot of stress. Still, it is unlikely that it would begin to manifest the same way in all of us. Obviously we haven’t seen Draco for ages, and it’s not like we’ve talked about these thoughts between ourselves, is it?”

“And you’re not dead, Harry! I did feel… puzzled, when I heard you were.” Draco obviously felt he’d sounded a little too exultant.

“I’ll untie you, shall I?” said Harry. He more than half expected it to be a big mistake - maybe Draco had been trying a bizarre and rather clever way of taking them off-guard. But it seemed to be alright. Draco made no sudden movements.

The rest of the day passed surprisingly quickly, considering they mostly just asked “But what should we do?” Draco seemed less bothered than the rest of them by this question.

“We should be intuitive,” he said. “Do whatever comes to us.” Harry thought Draco quite liked the idea of a world that was constantly running away from the consequences.

Funnily enough, something did come to Harry in his sleep.

“There are Horcruxes like diadems at Hogwarts,” he said, before he’d even opened his eyes, in case the knowledge slipped away. “Or one, at least.”

“What’s a diadem?” asked Draco.

“A tiara thing,” said Hermione. “They used to pop up from time to time, didn’t they, and we used to have to take them to Dumbledore to be destroyed. Or was there just one, in a room with a lot of other things?”

Having two different impressions of events that both felt about as real was maddening.

“Anyway, let’s go!” said Harry.

“To Hogwarts? Now?” said Draco.

“Didn’t you nearly burn to death once when we went to look for this Horcrux?” asked Ron, screwing his face up. Draco recoiled. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!” Ron said. “It seems a bit stupid to worry about something you’ve already come through.”

“We’ll very likely be back in this tent before long whatever happens,” Hermione sighed.

Harry paused a moment in making sure he was ready to go. “I wonder if all four of us are crazy.”

This was ultimately irrelevant, and soon there were no excuses not to leave.

“So how do we get into Hogwarts?” asked Draco.

“We go to Hogsmeade, to the Hog’s Head. There should be a way into the school from there,” said Harry.

They walked into Hogsmeade brazenly, walking straight down the middle of the road in plain sight. It was a lovely morning, not as hot as it would be later in the day, a balmy breeze caressing their hair. People stopped and stared after them, their hands to their chests. Harry waved at them and walked on.

Aberforth Dumbledore was waiting for them at the door of the Hog’s Head. “Want to get into Hogwarts?” he asked.

“Yes, please!” said Hermione.

Aberforth was obviously perturbed, his actions, as he led them inside to the portrait of a little girl, slow.

“Yeah, we’ve done this before,” said Ron. “Apparently once wasn’t enough.”

Once they were inside Hogwarts, for a moment Harry couldn’t remember what to do next. Of course, the Room of Requirement.

“The Seventh Floor!” he shouted, and off they hurtled.

They all piled into the corridor on the left, breathless, and stopped. Almost more put out than afraid, Harry took in the sight of Lord Voldemort waiting for them.

“Reports of my death have been exaggerated,” he said, for something to say.

“I am glad of it. I was disappointed when I thought I had been deprived of the opportunity to kill you myself.”

Harry’s impatience with this self-indulgent melodrama again cleared his mind.

“Look, Tom Riddle, (it had felt good to call him Tom Riddle last time) you’re dead.”

Voldemort’s face looked more expressive than Harry had ever seen it. He looked as if he had suspected this for some time and was reaching the end of his ability to deny it.

“Avada Kedavra,” said Draco, and Voldemort dropped dead. Harry, Ron and Hermione turned round to see Draco staring at his wand in horror. “It just slipped out,” he said. “I think I was just wondering what would happen if someone did that, and then it was me.”

“I suppose you can think of it as more like throwing darts at a picture of someone,” said Harry. “I don’t know how much responsibility you can take for killing someone who already died.” There was also the “thought as bad as deed” school of thought, though it didn’t seem appropriate to mention it.

“I don’t know what you’re looking like that for,” said Ron. “You killed Voldemort, Malfoy. I’d dine out on it forever.”

Draco laughed.

“Is he really dead? We don’t have to destroy the Horcruxes?” asked Hermione.

“I think we already did,” said Harry. “Draco could kill him because he was already dead.”

“So now what?” asked Hermione. “Do you think time is running again?”

“I think I’ll have a look at the clock in the Entrance Hall. I had a dream about it,” said Harry.

From the Entrance Hall they could hear Amycus Carrow lecturing the students at breakfast about how they must take possession of the new, pure world that had been provided for them.

Hermione shuddered. “Surely that’s not reality.”

Harry looked up at the clock, which nearly reached the ceiling, feeling a little intimidated.

“Open it if you’re going to,” said Draco.

“Alohomora,” said Harry.

The case swung open. Among a lot of silver pendulums and other clock workings twitching away, there was nestled a blue glass ball. Harry picked it up with his hand wrapped in his robe. The glass was murky, but it looked as if it was divided into many different chambers, each crammed with cogs and pins and things that ticked.

“What shall we do with it?” asked Harry.

Ron jogged his hand so he dropped it, and kicked it at the wall, and ground the shattered pieces into the floor.

*

Harry sat up in bed, wildly disorientated.

“Harry?” he heard Ron say. He opened his curtains and found David Gates, one of the seventh-year boys they were sharing a dormitory with this year, lighting the torches, looking shaky.

“That was it,” he said. “We came back to Hogwarts.”

“Sorry?” said David.

“This is reality - the one true way things happened,” said Harry. He thought now that he ought to have known the difference all along. There was something hard and singular about real life that could not be counterfeited.

“What happened?” asked Ron, drawing back his curtain to reveal himself sitting cross-legged at the end of his bed. “It was like a dream but so long. We went somewhere.”

“We did. But it wasn’t real.”

“It was morning just a moment ago, I don’t want to be in bed,” said Ron. He sprang up and began to change. “I want breakfast; we didn’t eat anything before we came here.” His tone was full of displaced aggrievement.

“Did Draco Malfoy just kill Voldemort?” Harry asked incredulously.

Ron paused. “Wow, I remember that, I think he did.”

“I think I was dead just now,” said David, in a choked flat tone. He was Muggleborn, so it was more than likely.

“You should come down to the Hall and have some tea,” said Ron.

Harry wished Dumbledore was alive. They would go downstairs, and find him ready to explain everything. He wondered if Dumbledore in the alternate worlds had known what was happening.

The door flew open.

“Are you all here?” asked Hermione.

“Well, Dean and Seamus didn’t come back, remember, but everyone who should be here is,” said Harry.

“Everyone is going downstairs to the Great Hall. It’s so strange when you think we only just came up. I feel so jetlagged,” said Hermione, sitting down on the end of Neville’s bed. “I don’t know how I’ll ever feel normal again. I’ve lived whole lives in a single night.”

“Less than,” said Harry. More than anything, now, the relief of being himself again was overwhelming.

Harry forgot to put on socks or shoes, and was only belatedly aware of his bare feet, chilled by the stone floors. He didn’t bother to conjure his socks; he had caught sight of the clock in the Entrance Hall.

“Alohomora!”

“There is nothing there, Mr Potter,” said Professor McGonagall, standing by the door to the Great Hall.

“I stamped on it just a while ago,” said Ron.

“You seem to have had the right idea, Mr Weasley,” said Professor McGonagall. “I can’t pretend I am better informed than the rest of us as to the events which have just taken place, but I will be addressing the students when everyone is here.”

They all looked around them as they sat down, as if expecting to find someone who had not been here the last time they were all sitting here, a survivor of the alternate worlds. Harry felt the full impact of his experience for the first time. He knew what it was like to be raised by his parents now. He had more memories of Remus and Sirius, of Fred. Why was he feeling lost and irritable and vaguely ill? He had undergone a fabulous miracle, he should be feeling blessed beyond belief.

“My God. I slept with Pansy Parkinson,” said Hermione, apparently catching sight of Pansy and unable to control herself turning sharply to Ron and spitting this out.

“Oh yeah, you did, didn’t you?” said Harry.

Ron didn’t seem to know whether he should be hurt, angry, calmly accepting or amused at Hermione’s expense.

“Ginny!” he said as she entered, glad of a distraction.

“Ginny!” said Hermione, having just encountered a disbelieving look from Pansy.

“Hello,” said Harry. “I don’t remember seeing much of you after the first go-round.”

“Well, I don’t think you took much notice of me in the world where me and Colin tried to have a torrid affair while both having a crush on you, for instance. There was something very unsatisfying about that world.” Ginny sighed. “It was very sad in some ways to come back here, but I can’t deny I like this me best.”

Harry caught sight of Draco whispering to Pansy, and was thinking that he hadn’t been so bad a lot of the time, and he would have to go and talk about stuff with him, when he remembered that he’d been friends with Draco. He’d had a crush on him. He even remembered how it had felt to fancy him. He really had been another person, hadn’t he? It was astonishing how much you could be altered.

Finally everybody seemed to be there. Some people had had to be brought out of hysterical crying fits, by the look of them.

“What we have all just experienced,” said Professor McGonagall, “Was You - Lord Voldemort’s final bid for never-ending life and power.”

Someone burst into tears.

“I do not mean that he was not, as we thought, entirely dead,” Professor McGonagall hastened to say. “At some point before his death he placed a device in the Entrance Hall, designed to alter reality, and continue altering it, until it alighted on a world in which he was successful. It is not surprising that we find ourselves here again as this kind of magic is not only Dark but deeply unreliable.”

Harry almost felt he should have expected it. Of course Voldemort would leave something nasty behind. Of course he would grasp for the lastest of last-ditch options.

Professor McGonagall went on about how she regretted that this should have happened when people were trying to recover from the previous year. She knew that it would take some time to fully comprehend their experiences. The staff would make allowances and always be ready to listen to troubled students. “It may seem as if it happened years ago, but remember how you felt earlier tonight.”

*

The next day or so was the worst for feelings of what Hermione called jetlag. It was hard to remember what was real in this world, and not to want to go back and see what happened in other times. A student ended up in the hospital wing because she kept having thoughts of killing herself to make sure this world was real - a plan she realised was fundamentally flawed.

“I wonder if it would be less weird if it was you, alone, it had happened to,” said Neville. “I think it would be easier to forget, if it wasn’t as real for everyone else as it was for you. You know things about other people that you didn’t know here, and they are real things. It’s a bit like seeing teachers in their underwear or something.”

Harry almost asked Neville what he’d been getting up to in the other timelines, but didn’t. He hadn’t been asking people about it unless they ventured something. Neville was right, there was something oddly personal about it. They all knew more about each other now, and Hermione and Pansy were hardly the only couple with astonishing memories.

One of the things that bothered Harry most was the realisation that he was more comfortable with himself as an orphan. From the perspective of reality, he found it hard to identify with himself as someone with that comfort and security. That Harry was perhaps a little like the James that Snape had seen in him.

Harry talked to Ginny. Apparently she’d had a little talk with Peregrine Cartwright. While people were trying to make allowances for things people had done in other timelines and not judge them for things they hadn’t done in this world, Perry had gone from unnoticed to notorious. Harry bet Professor McGonagall found it hard to restrain herself from hauling him up.

“We talked about Tom Riddle,” said Ginny. “I thought he might want to talk to someone who knew a bit about why he did it. I knew more in that world than I did in this; I never properly shook a certain faith in him in that world. It was very uncomfortable. I’m glad I set him on fire, though. That was a good feeling, though obviously it would have ended terribly.”

“And did he want to talk to you?”

“I think so. I think it helps you sort things out in your head to talk about what attracted you to him, and when you realised things weren’t quite right.”

“Ginny. Do you feel differently now about the things we talked about before we came here?” asked Harry. He felt it would connect him better to his real life to be with Ginny. She would be what mattered most. His worldview would have a centre and he wouldn’t have to look at the rest of it so much.

Ginny looked a little confused for a moment. “Oh, when I said I wasn’t sure I wanted to be with you? I’m even more sure about that, actually.”

“So we’re never getting back together?” asked Harry.

“I think I have to take the plunge and say it,” said Ginny. “Yes. We’re never going to be together. I don’t know what to say that’s not stereotyped. I really like you as a person. I hope we can be friends. It’s not you, it’s me - mostly at least. I’m seventeen, I don’t want to be tied down, and I think you do. And we just went through five different worlds, and in none of them did we have a romance for the ages. It’s a shame we never slept together, because I bet it would’ve been great and at least we could have said that.” She ran out of things to say and looked at Harry.

“Yeah. Okay. I suppose it’s best to be definite about it,” said Harry. He gripped her shoulder briefly. “Of course we’ll be friends.”

*

Eventually Harry got round to another thing that had been bothering him: Draco. Hermione had had some kind of conversation with Pansy, he knew. It didn’t seem to have gone too badly, not that Hermione would tell him anything about it, and if Pansy Parkinson could be mature, so could Harry. What bothered him, really, was the world with the Horcruxes everywhere. He’d properly liked Draco there, not just learned to tolerate him in outlandish eventualities. Strangely enough, though, he thought it might be those that made him most interested in how Draco was getting on. They, and the idea of choices and measuring up, had the most relevance to the real Draco. Sometimes Draco could be the best he could be, even under pressure, and it was good enough. Since Voldemort’s death Harry had taken to dwelling on the non-evilness of most people and found it reassuring. He liked thinking about all the reasons various people - sometimes people he liked, sometimes people he didn’t - would never make another Voldemort.

“So,” said Harry, having spotted Draco across the library and wandered away from Hermione. He’d been meaning to talk to Draco for a while; he just didn’t really want other people to know he was doing it. “Last time I saw you, you’d just killed Voldemort.”

“I tell myself about that so many times a day,” Draco said, unable to stop himself grinning. “I can’t get over it. I kind of think everyone should know, but I haven’t told anyone except Pansy.”

“How’s Pansy feeling about the whole Hermione thing?”

Draco looked thoughtful. “I actually think she’s quite keen.”

“I didn’t expect that,” said Harry.

“I think she’ll be a bit crushed if she goes for Weasley after all. Apparently they’re not together at the moment -- well, you’d know that better than us.”

“I suppose it’s a little like when someone turns out not to be dead, or wakes up out of a coma, and everyone has a different life now.”

“We used to be friends,” said Draco, darting his eyes up at Harry. “That was strange to remember.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. They were both silent, trying to think of something else to say. Memories of that friendship went through his mind. There had always been something a little sharp about Draco, but it had been dear and familiar. So many of his faults were still there, just arranged in a way that seemed so much more likeable than Harry had found this Draco. “I liked you,” said Harry. “So I guess I like you.”

Draco smiled. “Maybe not go that far.” He changed the subject. “I thought it would be odd to get back to schoolwork after everything, but it’s even odder now.”

“I think a lot of people are actually glad of the distraction,” Harry said.

*

It was easy after that. He talked to Draco every now and then, as if he were anyone else. It wasn’t a big deal.

“It’s been much better for me than I thought it was going to be this year,” said Draco. “Everyone’s so distracted, they don’t remember half the time that I really was a Death Eater.”

“What are you planning to do when you leave?” asked Harry.

Draco smiled. “Oh, I plan to be a spy. No idea how you actually go about that, though. I want it to be as much as possible like the universe where I came to the Order the first time. It felt great, in the end.”

“Me and Hermione never heard anything more about you after you left the tent,” said Harry.

“I was exactly what I wanted to be.”

“I meant to tell you, Kingsley wrote me a letter a couple of weeks ago. He mentioned you’d been amazing in that world,” Harry said.

Draco tried not to show he was pleased. “The Ministry must have been even more of a shambles than Hogwarts. So many people being confused about what job they’re supposed to be doing.”

“Oh yes, Kingsley said it was awful.”

“Are you going to go into Auror training when you leave?” asked Draco.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll be a spy too. I thought I wanted life to get back to normal - not that it ever was normal, really - and be very settled. But when that went out of the window, I changed my mind a little.”

*

Harry saw Hermione kissing Pansy in a dark corner. Ron seemed philosophical.

*

As the year passed, the present took over. People looked forward to Christmas and worried about exams the same as any other year. Harry remembered his intention in coming back to Hogwarts had been to take his leave of the castle, and school, at his leisure, and paid enough attention to time and place to do this.

Also at his leisure, almost enjoying it, he considered Draco. He felt there was unfinished business there. He was glad the world when they were friends had ended when it did because it would have been mortifying to come back to the real world and know he had to face a Draco with those memories. Nevertheless, it was frustrating not to know what would have happened. In that world he hadn’t known that Draco was gay. Or was he? Did that alter from world to world? But if he had been gay, and Harry had known it, he would have felt much more confident about finally making his move. He owed it to that pining self to try and get into Draco’s pants, Harry told himself. If it all went wrong, he told himself, it was only a few weeks until the end of term, and then he’d probably never have to see Draco again. And it was only Draco anyway, he tried to tell himself.

Really, it was more simple than he admitted. He liked Draco. He’d got used to having him around. He didn’t want to leave Hogwarts and never see him again. The image he’d had of lying in bed with Draco still appealed.

“Are you always gay?” Harry asked Draco, who looked startled. “I mean, in the universe where you and Pansy came to the Order, you said you were gay.”

“Yes. I’m always gay,” said Draco.

“I was wondering specifically whether you were gay in the universe where we were friends. Because I fancied you in that universe. I thought about it a lot.”

Draco stared at him. “Seriously?” Harry nodded. He could feel his cheeks were hot. “I thought about it a lot too. It made me miserable.”

“Seriously? We should have gone for it. We could have used a bit more happiness and light relief in all that.”

They held each other’s gaze, smirking, the tension a kind they could relish.

“We should go for it now,” said Draco. Their faces were closer together now. Harry moved forwards and their lips met.

*

Harry joined the ranks of those who after the very last of Voldemort found they didn’t have what they wanted, but came to want something else instead.