Granger, you're still blushing! What an adorable squirm you have. Come now, it wasn't so bad. Kind of inevitable when you think about it. There we were, two teenagers who'd just survived an adrenaline-packed explosion and ended up wrapped around each other. Of course something was going to happen. As usual, I was— am compelled to take notice of you, don't ask me why, and there you were, having not got rid of the hickey I'd given you. What else was a red-blooded bloke to do?

I wish you could see yourself. Your face is a blazing, hotrod red. I really must make these soul-bearing, excruciatingly embarrassing confessions more often. If it makes you feel any better, I would've gone a mortifyingly lot further if you'd let me. But naturally, your prudish lesser half chose that moment to kick start.

"No!" You wrenched your mouth away and planted your palms over my shoulders and shoved. "Get off!"

I fell heavily on my side and narrowly missed dinging my head on the stairs. "The hell!" I snarled.

"What— we can't!" You swiped at the space between us, panting. "This is wrong."

Longing seeped into chilly anger. "Is that right? It would've behooved you to protest a little sooner!"

Your mouth fell open. "What?"

"But no, you decided it would be fun acting like a cocktease—"

"How dare you—"

"I've had enough of this shit," I snapped, jostling to my feet. My words came out harsher than I meant, hiding the jaggedness in me your rejection carved. "Let's just get this fucking job over with and get out of here."

Did it matter that you weren't anything close to a cocktease? No, not while I was still two beats from pitching headfirst into familiar self-loathing at having succumbed to something I'd cursed and stomped on and twisted into an emotion that just barely, only remotely resembled hate.

"Believe me, on this we can agree." Your voice seared with conviction. "There is nothing I want more than to never see you again."

"Good. Great." I stalked back to the blasted shelf that had started this whole heartrending business and knelt to pick up my discarded wand, half-empty bottle and mangled watch. The cat's eye was in all of a million pieces and the metal casing was warped beyond repair. I threw it at the shelf in a fit of temper and the watch bounced harmlessly off the book you'd tried to remove before I stopped you and quite possibly saved us both from being splattered against the walls.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" The row of books on the top shelf pitched into the air and you pointed your wand to one of the workbenches, piling the lot of them on its surface. "I'll be over here. Reading."

"And I'll be over here not giving a shit," I responded. "Accio chair!"

The lone hardback chair scraped across the dirt floor, narrowly missed scoring you in the thigh and halted by my knee. I fell heavily atop it and pulled out a book at random. The entire thing was in Latin. I gave it a perfunctory thumb-through and tossed it over my shoulder. I heard you muttering about mistreatment of books and the next one over my shoulder landed even farther. We probably passed three or four hours in that terse, moody silence – not that I can give you an exact time seeing as how you sacrificed my wristwatch at the altar of diving headfirst into the only library in existence you hadn't already smeared your fingerprints all over.

I was finally beginning to settle into the silence when my reverie was broken by a sharp intake of breath. "Oh, my God," you said, voice muffled behind the leather-bound tome you clutched, arms outstretched, as if you wanted desperately to let go but didn't dare.

"What?" I asked sharply.

You gave me a horrified glance, tinged with the remembrance of a long-ago terror. "It's a Horcrux. He made that ring a Horcrux."

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

White-faced, you babbled, "That's what Voldemort used to stay alive! He had a piece of his soul in that diary your father gave Ginny. That's what opened the Chamber of Secrets. And his snake . . . that was another one! He had seven of them. That's why it was so hard to kill him, why it had to be Harry."

I flinched at the ease in which the Dark Lord's name dropped from your lips. "But what is it?"

"It's an object—anything really—that you put a piece of your soul in," you struggled to keep your voice even, "and you've got to murder someone to make it. That's what splinters your soul so you can stuff a fragment of it in . . . a locket or something. Remember that diadem we were searching for in the Room of Requirement? That was one, too."

The lingering taste of ash and serrated screams as Crabbe melted in flames he'd so proudly unleashed pounded in my head. I quashed the memory ruthlessly. "And that's what Morel did?" I asked tightly.

"I don't know. But it can't be a coincidence he's got the how-to manual right here. There isn't anything more— this is as Dark as it gets." You slid off the workbench and carefully set the offending tome down on the stack of books you'd already discarded. "We need to ask Warren if anyone died at the same time Morel disappeared."

"If that ring's like the Dark Lord's relics, then why hasn't it already taken possession of Lucretia or anyone else? Why now?"

"I don't know." You bit your lip, eyes hooded and wary. "As soon as I realized what the book was, I stopped reading. Nothing good can come of it. There are some things no one should ever know."

I stared at the threadbare book, cover discolored and the leather peeling. Was it possible such an unassuming thing could hold the secrets to immortality? I didn't realize I was moving towards it until I felt you yank hard on my elbow. "Don't!" you implored.

"Why not?" I jeered, slamming away from you. "Knowledge is amoral, isn't it? I thought you of all people would condemn censorship. Knowing how doesn't mean I'm going to make one."

Digging in your heels, you stood bodily in my way. "Maybe not. But this isn't something controversial or unpopular. It's evil. There's no way around that, Malfoy!"

"And what if the answer for how to stop Morel is in that book?" I challenged. "What then? We plug our ears and go our merry way while he's loose wreaking all manner of unspeakable evils on the unsuspecting public?"

"Oh please, don't act like you give a damn about the unsuspecting public. I can read it all over your face; you just want the first stab at it!"

"And what's wrong with that? I'll admit it, I'm curious. And maybe that's all I am. What makes you think you know shit all about me?" My furious strides ate up the distance between us. "Maybe I want some closure on the Dark Fuckwit's reign of terror on my family. Maybe I want to know what the point of our fucked-up war was. Why these Horcruxes were so bleeding important."

"The point?" you repeated. "Are you serious? The point was that your side decided one day armchair racism wasn't doing it for you, and that you needed to force your prejudice down everyone else's throat. Oh, and there was also that whole trying for genocide thing, if that slipped your mind!"

"You know what the problem is with you, Granger? Your side can only see things in black and white. You paint us all with the same brush. Well, guess what? Not everyone wanted to commit mass murder. Not everyone was peachy keen with torturing people—"

"Don't even try pretending you had nothing to do with—"

"Stop ramming words in my mouth! I never said my hands were clean. I did things— and I wish I could take them back, but I can't. I can't. No prison sentence, no amount of shame heaped on my family, nothing can make me sorrier than I already am. So if you're done shrieking, I've got it. I'm a despicable human being. And you lot are saints. I got it," I spat.

You shrank back against the workbench, expression suddenly weary, and I yearned to nail each lashing word and my every cutting feeling onto your skin. "Whatever you're looking for, whatever closure you think you'll find, it won't be in here," you said, voice wavering. "I can't let you take this back to Britain. I have t-to burn it, see if I won't!"

I gave a bark of laughter, jagged with venom. "All that'll accomplish is to cripple us with ignorance. You say a Horcrux makes someone immortal. Well, have you even given a thought as to how we're supposed to capture someone who can't be hurt?"

"There are ways. There have to be. If we destroy the ring, it'll destroy him, too."

"You want to bet our lives on that?"

"I can't believe this," you said, shaking your head. "A day ago, you thought this was just a house-elf setting off a security spell! And now you're toying with my fears just to get what you want! Is there no depth you won't stoop to?"

"No." My words were frostbitten and sharp. "And the sooner you realize that, the better."

You gritted your teeth and clasped the book to your chest. "Fine. That's fine. Then I'll turn these books over to the Aurors. They can decide how to handle this."

I made a scornful noise. "I don't even know why you bother. It's not as though Potter and Weasley have got enough bollocks between them to deny you a flipping thing."

"I don't know where you get this absurd idea that because we've become celebrities we have any real power—"

"It's only absurd because there isn't a Knut's worth of business sense between the three of you. If I had anywhere near the—"

"Yes, yes, you'd be halfway to ruling Great Britain," you cut in, bolstered by this return to familiar jibes and less weighty enmities. "We all got that memo when you decided slicked-back Napoleon hair and a peacock strut were a good look on you."

A nasty smile curved my lips. "I could say a thing or two about buck teeth and rat's nest hair, but I think I'll just savor the mental image. After all, it's not like much has changed."

"No," you snapped, penetrating gaze traveling up and down, flaying me to the bone. "Not much has."

Clutching the verboten book, you pushed past, clipping my arm with your shoulder. I watched you charge back up the stairs and disappear into the sunlight, silently cursing that for every step forward, I invariably chucked us twelve back.

Warren was waiting for us by the doorstep, clutching a frayed picnic basket nearly half his size. "Lunch," he pronounced, tone solemn.

"Thank you," you said, taken aback. "But we really should be go—"

"For crying out loud," I said impatiently. "Are you really going to make him lug it back and toss out the lot like rubbish?"

You tried to skewer me with a dirty look, but the house-elf's stiff silence must've wrought a miracle on your prickly mood because you slowly sat down on the creaky sun-bleached doorstep and blessed him with a radiant smile. "What are we having?" you asked.

Warren snapped his fingers and a tea service appeared on the unkempt lawn. Then he doled out the offerings in the basket and spread out a picnic of cream crackers, beans on toast, pickles and tiny cuts of egg and cress sandwiches. A tray of lemon custards sat on the bottom. When I sat down on the lowest step, you shot me a wary glance and pointedly placed the dusty book on your other side.

Ignoring my sardonic snort, you asked, "Warren, do you know if anyone else disappeared at the same time Mr. Morel did?"

The house-elf raised his head wearily. "No, miss."

I took a bite of the sandwich. "Are you sure? No one at all?"

"No, sir."

"Well, there goes your fear-mongering Horcrux theory."

"Not necessarily," you argued. "Warren, after Mr. Morel disappeared, did he or anyone ask you to owl something to your mistress?"

He blinked once. "Yes. Warren always does his duty, miss."

"What do you mean?" I asked sharply.

"There is a note, sir. It tells Warren to wrap up the ring and owl it to Mistress. A gift, it was."

"And you sent it?" you said in a rush of pent-up breath.

The house-elf straightened painstakingly to his full height. "Of course, miss," he said, chin tilted proudly. "When there are being packages on this doorstep, Warren is sending them to the post."

Fiddling with a cream cracker, you bit your lip, troubled. "You never saw him again after you sent that ring?"

"No, miss."

"Then there's no choice. We have to let the Aurors know what we've found as soon as we take the Floo back to the Ministry."

"Warren is sorry, miss," said the house-elf with difficulty. "But there is no more Floo powder. No one is coming or staying here for ten years."

"Oh . . . well . . . then I guess we'll Apparate."

He bowed. "Warren is bringing sir and miss brooms."

"Er, what?" you asked.

"Because of the Anti-Apparition ward. Only family can come in. Sir and miss must cross one of the two rivers," said Warren, indicating the fields in the distance with a knobby finger.

You paled. "But I-I don't like flying."

"In old days, there is being a barge to cross rivers. No more," he said, ears drooping as though this was a personal failing.

"It isn't your fault, Warren. Brooms sound great," you said faintly.

When the house-elf snapped out of existence and you fought not to glower at the placid river in the distance, I laughed. "A pity there isn't a N.E.W.T in flying. I would've paid cold, hard gold to see one Troll in your tower of Outstandings."

"Har har," you muttered. "I'll have you know flying is a pointless, dangerous activity for adrenaline junkies and—"

"Relax," I drawled. "I'll fly you across."

"What? No!"

"All right. Then you can subsist on egg and cress sandwiches until you rot and I'll leave with the book."

You trained a death glare on me, tempering flaring your narrow shoulders rigid. "Don't you dare even think of—"

I chuckled. "Isn't it embarrassing how easy it is to wind you up?"

"Yeah, I find it uproarious," you said, scowling. Then your tone turned sober. "I'm serious, Malfoy. This could be much bigger than one house-elf."

"And I'm serious that we should read that book and see how Morel made himself a Horcrux without killing anyone. Unless he did it somewhere else."

At the mention of the book, you hunched a little into yourself, slumping tiredly from an invisible weight. "I may . . . have read more than I let on," you admitted at last.

Since I'd been expecting something of the sort, it was a supremely unsurprising revelation. Indignation and protests had never yet failed to persuade me that festering beneath all the layers of pretty posturing were always, always lies. I smoothed my voice into nonchalance. "And?"

"There is a way to make a Horcrux without killing anyone. I mean, it still comes down to using murder to splinter your soul, but instead of doing it before you create the Horcrux, you make the kill afterwards."

"How does that even make sense?"

"I don't know exactly. But it's— when you hate so deeply, when you're so intent on killing someone that you're willing to suicide and fragment your own soul. Then you become the weapon that kills whoever your target is."

"He . . . became the ring?" I asked, arching a skeptical brow.

"Yes. No. I don't know!" you said. "It's a fact the ring does something. It's a fact we've got a how-to for making Horcruxes. It's a fact Gaston Morel disappeared after the ring was sent to the Zabinis. But how these things are somehow connected to a house-elf wandering into a vault and getting blown up when she's forced to account for herself is beyond me."

I tilted back to lie on the top rickety plank of the doorstep, resting my head only a hand-span apart from you. Above, the sky was painfully blue and unblemished by white wisps or avian specks. It was the sort of blasphemously beautiful day one hated to waste indoors. A crack lacerated the bright silence and two broomsticks, coarse and outdated, tumbled in a twiggy heap on the grass before us.

At the sight of their chipped handles, I winced. "I'll be damned if these aren't the same Cleansweep Fives we rode the last time I was here. House-elf's got a memory like an elephant."

You eyed them with distaste. "You know, I've never understood that expression," you mumbled, a sour bent to your mouth. "What have elephants got to do with remembering?"

"Does it matter? That's why these associations stick." I turned to stare at the sky, light prickling my irises until the world became moist. "They sound absurd."

I felt your gaze scour over me, searching for some answer or key or clue that I would be only too happy to share if you'd just tell me what you wanted. But that would be too easy, wouldn't it? This time, I really did feel a harbinger tingling down my spine; my bones turned to lead beneath your scrutiny and I knew beyond reason or facts or logic that this moment mattered. "They mean nothing. And they're absurd," I repeated slowly. "But they stick. They stick because people repeat it, dress it up with new and old meanings and implications, until you can't not knowwhat they mean."

"What are you on about?"

"That's how words work, you know. They're not just bits of a mental lexicon you can try out and discard like an every-flavor bean. Words stick. It's always been so easy for you to define everything: This is good, this is evil, the line is here. You're always so sure. But it's the same, don't you realize . . . it's the same for us."

Shifting on the creaky stair, you leaned back on one arm and bent over me, long brown strands dangling loose, a veritable mess I would've called unkempt a year ago, disgusting two years ago, and somehow just fine today. "What are you on about?" you repeated.

That was my cue to drop it. There was never any point in trying to share my perspective with you, because if I had a choice, if I could choose, I'd never want you to be smeared with my taint. Maybe a less selfish man would've chosen what was best for you and left it alone, but I'd always been fiercely selfish and I have never, ever been able to leave you alone.

I angled the back of my hand over my eyes, resting my elbow on your leg, and when you didn't shove me off, I forced myself to relax and speak over the knot in my throat. "It wasn't like they put us through Death Eater camp and drafted us into a cult. In one form or another, we all volunteered. Our way of life, of everything, is dying, Granger. Nobody gives a damn about bloodlines or how deep your pockets have always been, just how deep they are. Can't you see how tempting it might be to cling to each other for any justification of superiority? No," I sighed, "I suppose you can't."

"Of course I can," you said savagely. "You think racism is a uniquely wizarding condition? It's a human condition, and Muggles are just as susceptible."

My voice came out hoarse. "Then why . . . when you've forgiven Blaise and Nott and Pansy and Goyle— why can't you forgive me?"

I felt you jerk above me, suddenly tense, swaying as though whatever you'd been expecting, that hadn't been it, and holding a caught breath for so long my ribs began to ache in sympathy. When you finally spoke, I nearly pressed my hand over your mouth to stop you, because whatever had taken that long to think, to phrase, to pour into politely shaped words – I didn't want to hear it. There was the tiniest flutter of your fingers dancing on my collarbone, touching ruined skin, that small preview of Potter's hideous tribute and my rancid desperation.

"It's hard for me," you said. "If I seem headstrong or so certain, it's because I'm terrified. When I got here, into this world you live in and move through as though it were nothing, it was the scariest thing I'd ever seen. All the rules and logic I'd taken for granted, I found out they were only illusions and if I were just willing to look, there was an entire universe where everything I'd ever yearned for or dreamed about was real. And I wanted to belong; I wanted so badly to fit in. No one had ever wanted me out there and for the first time, I could point to a reason and say to myself, it was magic— that's why those other girls didn't like me. They could tell I was too good for them."

"Granger—"

"No, you don't get to interrupt me. You wanted an answer, here it is. I came to Hogwarts all alone, and the girls there didn't want me, either. I cared so much, burned to be good enough for this new place where I was supposed to belong, damn it, and still, no one wanted me. Then Ron and Harry came along and that's when it began to feel like home. Home, Malfoy. But around every corner, sneering in every classroom was you. Challenging me to be better, hoping to chuck me out if I ever slipped up, and I couldn't afford to, not while you and the professors and my parents were watching. The reason I can't think of you the same way I think of Zabini or Parkinson is because I've never been able to. You have always meant something more— even when I didn't want you to."

"I'd say I was sorry for being a relentless bastard, but I wasn't," I said, clenching my hand draped over my eyes into a fist, trying not to give in and look at you. "I liked being a bully; it reinforced the hierarchy I'd spent my lifetime building. Without it, I was only a sack of gold and a surname I'd done nothing to earn. Which is to say, completely worthless."

"I know that now, even if I didn't back then. Malfoy, you mattered back then— you've always mattered. Sometimes, when you look at me, it's a little like falling off a cliff and I can't do a thing to save myself. Then other times, you look at me and spew so much hate, and it feels like you're running me through with a hot poker because so much of what you say is true. Even if— especially when you're being cruel."

"That," I said softly, "I can be sorry for. Just like I can be sorry for being too much of a fucking coward to say no, I won't let a bunch of murderers hack away at schoolchildren. No, I won't torture snotty-nosed first years for detention. No, I won't kill Dumbledore. No, Aunt Bella, I don't recognize this girl. No, I won't lead Crabbe on with delusions of grandeur until he'd swallowed my half-truths as gospel and got himself dead. But it's too late, you see. I can be sorry until I'm on my deathbed and not a bit of it will do any good."

"That's not true. It'll do me good. It— I mean, you shouldn't make me say it again," you ventured, voice gentle, "that I'm not indifferent to you— it's kind of mortifying. But I'm not, so there you are. And I want to hear it. Tell me you don't still think I've got dirty blood, that I've no right to breathe the same air. Tell me."

I rolled on my side and rested my head on the curve of my arm, peering up into your wide-open face, vulnerable as all get out, waiting for devastation or hope or maybe both. "Bar none, you're the most extraordinary witch I've ever met. You can do things with breathtaking ease I couldn't master given an eternity. When I called you Mu— that slur before, it was never about you. It was jealousy eating me alive and helplessness because you were so strong, and I knew of no other way to hurt you."

You closed your eyes, lips quivering. "That's not good enough. Tell me you don't believe any of it anymore."

"I . . . can't," I gritted. "I would be lying. I can't just undo— wipe clean things I've believed since I could walk. But I'm trying. Don't look at me like that, Granger. I'm trying, damn you. I can't accept that Muggles are just as good as we are. How can anyone without magic be the same as us? But Muggle-borns? They're not any less. You're not any less."

"Okay," you breathed, eyes wide and dark with want. "Okay, that's a start. Just one more thing."

I'd already been vivisected and set aflame; what more could there be? I murmured, "What?"

"Why do you need me to forgive you?"

Sorrow and amusement wrung my mouth into a smile. "Still haven't figured that out?"

"I wouldn't be asking if I knew."

"All right." I sat up and caught the hand you were idly trailing over my scar. You startled at our sudden proximity and tried to move back, but I held firm and wrestled you closer, a breath away. "How about now?"

I kissed you. At first, it was only two mouths rubbing together, uncoordinated and blundering. Then you kissed me back and I forgot what 'uncoordinated' and 'blundering' meant. The instant you gave in, acknowledged wanting me, that confirmed everything I'd so desperately wanted to be untrue, exposed my self-lies for the concealment spell they were. All that hate I'd shaved and filed into something that snagged and made others bled had always been more, a desire that swelled until it was unrecognizable even to me, and I'd known in my lumbering, idiotic youth that I couldn't afford to recognize it. So I'd chosen not to.

Why? Because it was the beginning of what Pansy had spent long, chilled years trying to pry from me.

You tasted of cream and something elusively tangy. It wasn't perfect. I didn't repent of all my sins in the fold of your arms; the way you curved into me wasn't a blazing rightness; it was hesitant and untutored. You ran inquisitive fingers along the nape of my neck and clutched at the collar of my shirt in marvel. Despite the soft velvet of your lips, and penetrating heat that felt like a chest wound but was something infinitely better, I didn't quite lose my mind. What I glimpsed was a precipice ahead and the knowledge that I could jump, that I should jump, and that if I did, it would be the most terrifying freefall I'd ever known. That choice was mine.

I jumped.

Granger, say what you will, but you'd have to be half-dead not to have felt it. We were closer in that moment than I'd ever been with anyone else – including during you know. Oh, don't glare. You wanted total honesty from me, right? Then you've got to take your lumps and bruising truths come what they may. I don't think we even budged until it was almost sunset, trailing languidly along the river shoreline talking about a blurring number of things, probably more sappy confessions from me—I can't tell if it's the alcohol or maudlin memories wreaking havoc on my gag reflex—and more devastating questions from you.

Stop fleeing, you told me then.

Not that syrupy sentiment could keep you out of the count for long. I think it was my quiet admiration of the descending sun that jolted you back to reality. "Malfoy!" you said, grasping my wrist in a panic. "We're still in France."

"Yes. And this is news because?"

You hefted the book that was the bane of all our troubles in my face. "We've got to report this to the Ministry and hand it over to the Aurors."

"All work and no play?" I gave you an exasperated look. "Fine. If we must, we must. Accio broom!"

The broom that least resembled kindling shot up and dived arrow-straight for us. I snatched it out of the air and tested its solidity. "Hm, not hopeless."

Fear flickered in your eyes. "I am not riding on that. It's . . . old!"

I exhaled and mentally asked the higher powers for strength. Mounting the broomstick, I made room for you. "I'm already regretting this but . . . imagine I'm Potter," I forced out. "Ol' reliable with a built-in detector for damsels in distress and a heroic streak a continent wide."

You gaped at me, anxiety momentarily abating from the absurdity. "Imagine you're Harry—"

I grabbed you and seated you in the circle of my arms before you could finish. I slammed my feet against the ground and we took off. I enjoyed a few hundred feet of crisp, lung-dragging air before you started shrieking in my ear, gripping onto me so tightly I began to feel as though your clawed handprints had always been a part of my back. "Relax. Relax!"

"I can't!" you shouted.

The water below shimmered, a rippling canvas of someone going to town with every warm shade in existence. I considered briefly extolling the virtues of the scenery and then thought better of it. The more you imagined this was a ride in one of those auto car things the easier for you and my eardrums. I landed as gently as I could. The instant you felt solid ground beneath your feet, you tore off the broom and hauled in air like you'd spent the entire journey underwater.

"M-Malfoy!" you managed.

Anticipation arched my brows. "Yes?"

"I'm taking you driving on the M4. Tomorrow!" you promised, mouth bent in a fit of pique.

"Do your worst," I said, grinning. I yanked you against me to Disapparate.

We reappeared in the welcome chamber of the French Ministry of Magic. Since it was the end of the workday, the place was packed and we queued up to the international fireplace. You clutched the blasted book like you expected a den of thieves to be lurking amidst the genteel employees trickling home.

I tucked the broom behind me and ran a hand through my windswept hair. "You couldn't be more obvious about having something valuable on you if you painted a sign that read, 'rob me,' and plastered it across your forehead."

"I'm just being careful!"

"Scrutinizing everyone who walks within two feet of you is not being careful. It's being bloody stupid, and if this were the city, you'd be a homing beacon for every pickpocket and mugger in sight."

"Oh, just get on with it!"

I threw in a pinch of Floo powder. "British Ministry of Magic."

Two whirlwinds later, we found ourselves deposited in the maelstrom of employees streaming home. "Guess our timing's off," I commented, noting more than one Auror with his arm swung jovially around a colleague, the lot of them heading for the pub.

"Well," you hesitated, "I guess—"

"Draco!"

We turned to find Blaise weaving through the crowd towards us. He flicked a curious glance at the book you hid guiltily from view and turned to me. His tone was affable to take the sting off. "I was looking for you, but they said no one was in. What happened to keeping me updated on the case?"

"I meant to owl you when I got back to the office," I lied. I hadn't thought a moment about Blaise since I became lost in the hellfire that was you.

"How fortunate then that I should have run into the both of you. My mother's remembered more about the break-in. She's been asking urgently after you."

You bit your lip. "Can't it wait—?"

"I'm afraid not," said Blaise with an apologetic gesture. "She's not often as clearheaded as she is right now. She practically begged me to come get you."

"Well, all right, then," you relented, darting me a them's the breaks look.

Blaise gestured us graciously through the fire, a small smile of enjoying a joke we weren't privy to arching his mouth. If I hadn't been turning around to ask him why Lucretia would want to see you when the two of you'd never met, I would've missed Blaise drawing his wand the second he stepped out of the flames and pronouncing in a deep, cold voice, "Avada Kedavra!"

But because I'd been turning to do just that, I managed to shove you out of the way a bare inch shy of the jet of green light that pierced over your shoulder and punched a crater in the marble tiles of the foyer wall. "Blaise!" I yelled, dropping the broom and whipping out my wand.

He had a head start in aiming. Another Killing Curse ripped through the air and slashed the portrait of Cesare Borgia in half before I could fire back a Stunner. "What are you doing?" I roared. "Stupefy! Stupefy!"

You fell heavily when I knocked you aside, but you were already scrambling to your feet, one hand clutching at your ribs and the other fumbling for your wand. "Oh, my God. He's wearing it. Draco, he's wearing the ring!" you cried.

And indeed he was. The pinky ring I'd seen the day before, only a simple gold circlet then, was now the exact dimensions and same jewels as the Ring. I cursed my stupidity. As much of a dandy as Blaise aspired to be, I'd never yet seen him don jewelry. "Blaise, can you hear me?" I shouted as he bore down on us. "Impedimenta!"

"No," said the imposter. "He can't. The boy is asleep."

All the blood drained from my face at this euphemism for death. "What do you mean?" I snarled.

"Ah, how touching, this concern. But not to worry. The boy is not dead. I still have much . . . need for his body," crooned the false man. "He is only resting. He resisted long and hard when he realized he couldn't remove a ring he'd never seen, you see."

"Then he was still himself yesterday," I croaked, shaking from a crest of rage threatening to boil over. In another place, in another time, I would've sunk into despair at lamenting the loss of yet another friend to evil Dark fuckwits, but not here, and not today, not while you were still in the line of fire. If only to give you a chance to escape and sound the alarm, I needed to keep him talking. "Who are you?" I forced through gritted teeth.

"Haven't you guessed? I'm Gaston Morel," drawled the man who'd tried to murder Lucretia Zabini.

"Bullshit," I hissed. We circled each other, alert to the slightest movement. The killing glint in Blaise— no, Morel's eyes was vicious and empty of mercy. My perception of time and all my senses—of the current in the air, the twitch of his face, your silent steps in getting within Stunning range—slit razor sharp as I honed in on my prey, and I slowly began to understand the thrall of a true wizard's duel. Only one of us was walking off this killing field; the other was leaving in a body bag.

"I was such a silly boy once. Too soft-hearted to take a life," his smile widened like a gash, "so I took my own. And for what? To revenge myself on that useless bitch? It all seems so pointless now."

Look at me, I thought, trying to trap his focus, that's right, keep looking at me. "You failed because she never put on the ring."

Morel nodded, amusedly cordial expression melting into a mocking taunt. "Oh yes, who would have believed it? The vainest creature that ever lived, sentimental enough to treasure my little gift. Wonders never cease."

"And the house-elf?"

"Ah, now that was a stroke of fortune. Dear, absentminded Lucretia often asked her little Zita to put away her jewels. It was ever so much easier to tempt a non-human mind, compel her to slip on the ring."

My jaw clenched at the silken relish in his voice. "Then when Blaise opened the vault, you made her put the ring on him."

"Précisément."

"And you tampered with his memory," I gritted.

"But of course. If only that woman hadn't gone into hysterics, I might have taken over then and there," he said scornfully. "But your Blaise is yet another soft-hearted fool for that woman and I had to . . . keep the house-elf quiet."

Fear swooped in and clawed at my chest. "Where's Lucretia?"

Morel hummed with pleasure. "Her, I will deal with last. I have waited so . . . very . . . long, you see."

"And you're going to what? Kill me, kill her, kill everyone here? The Aurors'll crash down on you like a mountain before our bodies even cool."

"But why should they? When the real killer will already be dead." He struck, lightning fast, hissing, "Avada Kedavra."

I dove out of the way, another narrow escape, but the teeth-rattling fall thrashed the wand out of my grip. Morel summoned it to him and tossed it aside, far out of reach, chuckling at the tormented helplessness in my eyes. He was moving to mow me down when I heard you shout behind me, "Confringo!"

Morel deflected the streak of blue and smashed it into the floor, blasting a smoking hole the size of a body. "I almost forgot about you, Mudblood," he said, laughing. "Do you know, I had the most edifying morning reading all about the two of you?"

Unfazed, you slashed another spell at him. "Reducto!"

The bolt singed the sleeve of his robes and blew apart the portrait of Lucrezia Borgia over his shoulder. "To think that one of the Malfoy clan, greater pureblood fanatics you won't find this side of the Channel, would be consorting with a Mudblood. These are new times, indeed."

He jerked his wand at the doorway behind you and a sofa sailed out of the parlor, crashing into you and knocking you flat to the ground. Your wand clattered out of reach. "Draco," you whispered, breathing shallowly from the pain.

I read the intentions in his face a second before he raised his wand. He was going to make me a spectator to your death, and it would be neither painless nor quick. Desperate, I made myself laugh, as wintry and barren as any I'd heard from this monster masquerading as my friend. "You don't really think I give a damn about some Mudblood girl, do you?"

Morel looked briefly away from you, arching an amused glance at me. "No? Then you won't mind if I take off her pretty little head?"

"To think that all these years my mother was lying about the courageous exploits of the older generation. Butchering an unarmed Mudblood? Really?" I mocked, wresting boredom into my voice.

"Actually," he tilted his head back to you, a perverse smile curving the edges of his mouth, "while I was still . . . corporeal, I'd fantasized about hunting Mudbloods. It's fitting that on the eve of my rebirth, I should finally make that fantasy a reality."

For boundless excruciating moments, I'd been slowly inching back towards the fireplace. The instant he retrained his attention on you, I shouted, "You know what else they are? Bloody good distractions!"

"What?" Morel whirled to face me as I took to the air on my discarded broomstick and barreled straight for him at the speed of wind.

I was an impossibly fast target and his spells, controlled bursts of death, only just missed. A split second before we collided, I swooped to pick up your wand and jammed it into his leg, shouting, "Expelliarmus!"

We smashed into hard marble and the force of impact knocked me off him. Scrambling for purchase, I pulled on his robes and jabbed your wand in his neck. "Stupefy!"

A jolt of red flared. The nascent groans of an enraged Dark wizard about to call down all manner of hell and damnation abruptly ceased and he slumped to the floor. I crawled over to his arm and covered my hand with a wad of robes. Then I yanked the ring off. It spun on the marble tile, sparkling in the light, the ruby a malevolent crimson tint. On my hands and knees, ignoring the charring ache of my undoubtedly broken wrist, I dragged myself over to where you were sprawled, pinned beneath the sofa.

"Deprimo," I panted, desperate for you to lift your head and look at me.

My spell blew the damned sofa clear off you, but when you finally did meet my eyes, it wasn't with the gratitude I expected or even the smallest shred of warmth. Instead you focused on the ring and said flatly, "Fiendfyre or something equally corrosive."

"What?" My voice broke in disbelief.

"What's the matter?" you said with derision. "Danger's passed. No more need for Mudblood distractions."

Now is that fair, I ask you? There I was, all brave and heroic, Homeric even, while you slew me with brown eyes as hard and unforgiving as quartz. All right, so I may have made some hasty promises about never using that word again during our rapturous walk by the river, but this was the heat of battle, and I only said it to save both our arses. How have you somehow managed to miss that part of the bigger picture?

Blaise is alive. Lucretia is alive. We're alive, damn it! And did I mention how I saved the freaking day? The highlight, of course, being Potter's nowhere-in-sightedness. It's a bloody miracle is what it is. No, I will not stop sulking. I've had the worst forty-eight hours, possibly in the history of ever. So how's about before the next Dark wizard pops in and shuffles me off this mortal coil, you let me know if this is another night I'm going to wish had passed me by.

Look at me. I thought you lot had cornered the market on unflinching truths. Lay it on me. It's not like this day could get any worse. You made me fall for you, my friend turned into a psycho murderer, and we both escaped our untimely deaths by the skin of our teeth. Maybe that's just a stroll and picnic for you war hero and wunderkind types, but I'm still a bit fresh to this lifesaving, Dark wizard-stopping business, thanks. There you go: I knew you were capable of more facial expressions than mad and glare. What are you waiting for? Tarry off back to Weasley already. No, I don't care that you're not actually seeing him. Stop raining on my rant with facts.

Still not gone? Okay, I'll tell you what—save you the trouble of letting me down easy—I'm tired, Granger. I need somewhere new to begin. I can't keep wandering around waiting for everyone I know to discard me like so much rubbish just so I'll be free; that's nothing but a husk of living. Look, we had a jolly good time, I'll admit it. We wandered across an empty land, and maybe that was part of the illusion—just you and me and the earth beneath our feet—and we even sat by a bleeding river and for a mesmerizing second, I felt complete. No. Wait. That didn't come out right. You do not make me complete. At all.

Do not give me that dewy-eyed look. I can only tolerate it on newborn puppies and the occasional squalling baby. Very. Occasional. I don't even know why you're here, Granger. You couldn't have acted more like I was the next Dark nutbar if I were the next Dark nutbar. You flung me at the Aurors and then fled like hellhounds were yapping at your heels. They, of course, dutifully packed me off to St. Mungo's where—wait for it—you were nowhere to be found. No, I will not sober up. I've been pints past shitfaced since hours before you tripped over me in the stairwell yammering on about, totally irresponsible and how dare you check yourself out.

The bottom line is I slipped up and you're back to hating me again. Great. Fine. Well, I'm telling you this is the end. Of everything. Last stop, throw away your tickets, time to disembark for a new town, new destination. I'm sick of all the places I've been, all the watering holes that are second homes to drunken losers. I gave it my best, tried to let you in and for all your forbearing smiles, I know it wasn't enough. What? Speak up, Granger. I can't hear you over this crowd of gibbering drunks. Must be Thursday. Listen tosspot, that's my hand, not a drink coaster. Bugger off!

There, that's better. Now what in God's name were you saying?

"If you have a minute, why don't we go talk about it somewhere only we know?"

Fin.