A Dream Within A Dream

by vereine

Draco had wandered into Byndley almost by accident. He had been told so many different ways to get there that he had almost missed it entirely.

Title: A Dream Within A Dream
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
Author's Notes: Originally written for the Celebrate the Season fic exchange at dmhgficexhange.

Many of the recurrent themes included within the short story Byndley written by McKillip were re-used in this fic, as well as part of the plot, the name of the village and the female lead. Heh.

Summary: Draco had wandered into Byndley almost by accident. He had been told so many different ways to get there that he had almost missed it entirely. Over a meadow, north through the passageway of Avalon, underneath a museum, left at the crossroads outside the Giants' land. And so on. By twilight he had followed at least every direction twice, he thought, and had gotten absolutely nowhere.

Draco had wandered into Byndley almost by accident. He had been told so many different ways to get there that he had almost missed it entirely. Over a meadow, north through the passageway of Avalon, underneath a museum, left at the crossroads outside the Giants' land. And so on. By twilight he had followed at least every direction twice, he thought, and had gotten absolutely nowhere.

He was trudging across a murky stream when the shifting willow branches ahead was parted by the wind to reveal the thatched roof and brown chimneys of a village. This was Byndley, he was sure of it, no other village could possibly be this rundown in the 20th Century. Byndley, the sign on the old post leaning against a rotten fence confirmed. That was all. But Draco saw the mysterious haze that thinly shrouded the village, and he felt his own magic quicken and pulsed in excitement and in answer.

"You want to know what?" had been the most common answer to the question he asked everyone he met along his journey. An incredulous snort of laughter followed. Then after a shrug or tossing out every single possibility, they would say jokingly as he turned to go, "When you do find it, don't forget to tell me!"

How to get back again, how to get elsewhere, how to get there…

"But why?" they asked, time and again, "No one goes looking for it anymore. You're lured, you've been tricked, you'll never come back, and even if you do, it's not to the same world anymore. All those young men who had left in search for it have never returned. You're still young, don't go."

I went there, he thought determinedly, I went there and I came back, didn't I?

But he never explained, he suggested that perhaps, just perhaps, that he was fulfilling a rather obscure and little known death wish of the esteemed Dumbledore. Then they-the retired Ministry officials, the person on the street, those who traveled widely or had heard travelers' tales- straightened their backs and changed their expressions. Nobody said the word aloud; everyone danced around their words, they all knew what he meant; though none had ever been there. That, Draco thought, was the strangest thing of all about Alexander the Great's tomb; no one had seen, no one had been, no one ever talked about it. The only evidence that it even existed was that it had been widely hinted at in Muggle lore, that no one could explain where Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley and his wife Hermione Granger had disappeared to without a trace shortly after winning the Great War, only hinting that they had found the tomb. But everyone knew.

Finally someone said, "Byndley," and then he began to hear the word everywhere.

"Ask over in Byndley; they might know."

"Ask at Byndley. The lunatics there have an entire library full of nothing but old books dating back to Alexander's time and before, and they claim that their ancestors served under Alexander himself, so they just might know a thing or two."

"Try your luck at Byndley. It's just that way, in the direction where the Sun sets, about half-a-day's broomride from here for an able-bodied man like you. It's no use Apparating, the nutters there like their privacy so much that they have set up a large anti-Apparition wards around the village. Come to think of it, they also banned all use of magic inside their village."

And there Byndley was, exactly where they told him it would be, its hopelessly ancient windows just starting to flicker in the setting Sun's rays, and the giant oak forest behind it, Byndley's natural border, he suspected, between here and there, like a dream within a dream.

He stopped at the first inn he saw, just midway down the cobbled stone street, and asked for a room, for he was tired; the burden he carried across his shoulder weighing him down with every step he took. He wore his own plain clothes made of carefully disguised dragon skin, and boots that had walked through better days. He wore his face like his boots, strong and hardwearing, but nothing that would attract unwanted attention. For he didn't want to be recognized, to be met with distrust and stares. He wanted to be focused only on his quest, for his burden in his pack grew heavier by the day, and he now had to use his own magic to lift it, and even then, with difficulty. The sooner he returned it the better, he reminded himself every night, carefully polishing its golden surface till it shone.

"My name is-" Here Draco hesitated for a while, undecided whether or not to reveal his true name, for knowledge is power. "-Draco." He finished, deciding on the truth, as he wanted the people to be honest with him. "I need a room for a night or two, or-" He stopped mid-sentence, aware or a loud commotion as his pack hit the floor with a loud thud. The huge man standing beside him, half-naked and sweating heavily, his faced flushed, rubbed one sanded foot and snorted. "Did I drop my pack on you?" Draco asked, horrified, remembering too late the anti-magic wards, "I'm very sorry."

"It's been stepped on by worse," the man beside him admitted, his chest heaving from the effort. "What have you got in there, stranger? A sack of coals?" He bent down before Draco could answer, and lifted the pack easily off the floor. Draco, unprepared, staggered under the unexpected weight.

The man's dark, enigmatic eyes met his under a drift of shaggy black hair as Draco struggled to bear the weight. Then the man turned to face the inn-keeper, rubbed his sore foot one last time and thumped down onto the oaken bar with his palm.

"Ale," he demanded, "One for the stranger too."

"That's very kind of you." Draco sat down gingerly beside the unknown man.

"You'll need it," the man said, "against the fleas." He grinned as the inn-keeper choked and flushed mid-step.

"There are no fleas," the inn-keeper protested, "in my establishment." He glared at Draco's companion. "Don't listen to Tanith, he's a joker," He told Draco fiercely. "I don't see anything parasitic in nature in my inn," he stressed on the last few words, still glaring at his companion. "Say," the inn-keeper paused, staring intently at Draco, with the look of one deep in thought. "You wouldn't be the last Malfoy heir, would you?"

Tanith turned around to look at him. "There is a resemblance, come to think of it. And those grey eyes…"

Draco was silent for a few moments. "Does it matter?"

"Not at all," the inn-keeper responded, returning to his work. He left it at that. He poured ale into two mugs and placed them in front of Draco and Tanith. The three of them sat motionless, watching the foam subside and the quiet fizz.

The fire crackled. Then Draco, listening to the silence and getting frustrated, broke it finally. "Then what made you ask?" He queried.

Tanith gave an astonished grunt, the inn-keeper smiled slowly. His oval face with its high creased brow and its shock of graying brown hair, achieved a sudden, endearing dignity.

"I know a little magic," He admitted, "Living so close" - he waved one wizened hand towards the dark oak wood through the glass window - "you learn to know these things."

"Magic? But I thought there were anti-magic wards around here!" Draco exclaimed. "My pack…"

"Ah… Yes, yes, everyone who comes to Byndley-" ("Which are few, by the way," Here Tanith interjected) "-are surprised by this detail. Living so close to the wood, our ancestors learnt how to cultivate and harness the magic that the wood gives us. We call this magic lux, I believe your professors call it wandless magic."

Draco gave an inarticulate choke and sputtered unintelligently.

The inn-keeper smiled at him over the tops of the mugs. He continued with his tale. "Whereas those who live in the modernized Wizardring World are far too influenced on their own magical discoveries, and gradually had to rely on conduits to channel their magic. That's what sets us apart. We keep apart from the rest of civilization so that we won't be tainted by their achievements," he concluded. "My name is Selwyn. On slow nights I open an odd book or two that had come my way and never left. Sometimes I think I can make things happen, if I think hard enough."

"Bah!" Tanith exclaimed, slapping the oaken counter. "What are thoughts, but mere flight of fancies? Thoughts can't help one to achieve anything, save for hope and self-satisfaction. What use are thoughts, when there is work to be done? I am the blacksmith, by the way," He told Draco. "so I don't believe that kind of nonsense; to make things happen, one has to work for them."

Draco had been listening quietly to the exchange. "I thought so," He commented quietly on Tanith's profession. The smith, who had a broad pleasant face beneath his wild hair, grinned delightfully.

"My brain's made of steel," he confessed. "Magic bounces off it. Some of us though, like Lucille down the street - she can foresee in water and find anything that's lost. And Bettony-" He shook his head and sighed.

"Don't mind him, he's lovesick." Selwyn clucked at Tanith, shaking his head disappointedly. "Men these days are so…queer. Still…, Bettony...," the inn-keeper echoed reverently. He stopped polishing the mugs and stared at the crackling fire in a daze. He snapped out of stupor and said, "That's where you should go to find your bed."

"What?" Draco's head snapped up in alert. "But I'm here!"

"Well, you shouldn't be, a wizard such as you are. She's as poor as any of us now, but back a ways, before they started disappearing into the woods for decades on end, her family wore silk and washed in perfumed water and rode white horses to the Alexander's camp. She'll give you a finer bed than I've got and a tale or two for the asking."

"About the wood?" Draco asked.

The inn-keeper nodded and shrugged at the same time. "Who knows what to believe when talk starts revolving around the wood and when travelers like you show up oh-so-often asking about the wood?" He wiped a drop from the oak with his sleeve, then added tentatively, "You've got your own tale, I expect. The haunted look in your eyes are different from those who come searching just for Alexander's tomb. I take it you are looking for something more?"

Draco hesitated; the two tried to watch him without directly looking at him. He had to ask his way, so they would know eventually, he decided; nothing in this tiny village would be a secret for long.

"I took something," He said at last, "when I was very young, from a place I should have never entered. Now I want to return the thing I stole, but I don't know how to get back there." He looked at them helplessly. "How can you ever find your way back to that place once you have left it?"

The inn-keeper, seeing a hollowed look in his eyes, drew a slow breath through his mouth. "What's it like?" He pleaded. "Is it beautiful?"

"Most things are only beautiful in memory," Draco answered. "And memory is fleeting."

"How did you find your way there in the first place?" The blacksmith asked bewilderedly. "Can't you find the same way back?"

Once again, Draco hesitated. Selwyn refilled his empty mug and pushed it in front of the wizard. "It'll go no further," he promised, as earnestly as he had promised a bed without fleas. But Draco, feeling himself once more on the edge of the border, with his theft, had nothing left to lose.

"The first time, I entered by pure accident." Again, his eyes dazed over and filled with memories, so that the faces of the listening men seemed less real than dreams. "I was walking on the grounds of Malfoy Manor, thinking how best to cure my mother's depression from the War, when my hand accidentally brushed against the stone birdbath and the late afternoon light changed… you know how it does. The moment when you notice how the sunlight you've ignored all day lies on the yellow leaves like molten gold and how threads of gold drift through the air. Cobwebs, you think. But you see gold. That's when I saw her."

"Her," Tanith said. His voice caught.

"Granger. Oh, she was beautiful." He raised his mug and drank. He lowered it and watched her walking towards him through the gentle rain of golden, drying leaves as if it was just yesterday. "Her hair…" he whispered. "Her eyes… Her beauty, which I had watched over for four long years, seem to manifest itself a thousand fold in that enchanted place. She started at first, then she composed herself. She spoke to me then, I scarcely heard a word she said, only the lovely sound of her voice which I had longed for in anything other than an angry tone. I must have told her anything she wanted to know, and said yes to anything she asked… She drew me deep into the wood, at long last, so deep that I was lost in it, though I don't remember moving from that first spot…"

He drank again. As he lowered the mug, the wood around him faded and he saw the rough-hewn walls around him, the rafters black with smoke, the scarred tables and stools. He smelled stale ale and onions. The two faces, still, expressionless, became human once more, one balding and innocuous, one hairy and foolish, and both eager for more.

Draco drained his mug, and set it down. "That's how I found my way there the first time," he said hollowly. "I couldn't get back there when I tried again."

"But what did you steal?" Tanith asked breathlessly. "how did you get free? You can't just end it-"

The inn-keeper waved him to be silent. "Leave him be, he's paid for his ale and more already." He took Draco's mug and assiduously polished the place on the worn oak where it had stood. "You might want to come back tomorrow evening. By then, the whole village will know what you're looking for, and anyone with advice will drop by to give it to you."

Draco nodded. His shoulder had begun to ache under the weight of his pack without his magic aiding him. "Thank you," he said tiredly. "If you won't give me a bed here, I'll just take myself to Bettony's."

"You won't be sorry," Selwyn said. "Keep going down the road to the end of the village and you'll see the old hall just at the edge of the wood. You can't miss it. Tell Bettony I sent you." He raised a hand as the wizard turned. "Tomorrow, then."

Draco found the hall easily, though the sun had set by then and near the wood an ancient dark spilled out from the silent trees. Slivery dusk lingered over the rest of Byndley. The hall was small, with tinted-yellow glass windows set in the walls, none of them matching. Its stone walls, mostly patched in places and with moss growing on them, looked very old. The main door, a huge slab of weathered elder wood, stood open. As he neared, Draco heard an axe slam cleanly through wood, and then and clatter of broken kindly. He rounded the hall towards the sound and came upon a sturdy young woman steadying a second piece of wood on her block.

She let go of the wood on the block and swung the axe to spilt in neatly into two. Then she straightened, wiped her brow with her stained apron, and turned with a start to the stranger.

He said quickly, "Selwyn sent me."

She was laughing long before he finished, at her sweat, her dirty hands, her long brown hair sliding loosely out of its clasp. "He picked his moment, didn't he?" She balanced the axe blade in the chopping block with a blow, and tossed pieces of kindling into her apron. "You are?" She queried.

"My name is Draco. Selwyn told me to find someone called Bettony and ask her for a bed."

"You've found her. I'm Bettony." she said. Her eyes were as bright and curious as a pigeon; in the twilight their colour was indeterminate. "Draco," she repeated. "The Malfoy heir?"

"Yes."

"Passing through?"

"No."

"Ah then," she said softly, "You came because of the wood." She turned. "If you can bear carrying anything else, bring some kindling with you."

Draco blinked, surprised, and gathered an armload of the wood and followed her.

"I'm my own housekeeper," Bettony informed Draco as she piled the kindling onto the great, blackened stone hearth inside the house, and Draco let his pack down onto the flagstones with a relieved sigh. "Though I have a boy who takes care of the cows." She flicked him a glance. "That heavy, is it? Shouldn't you be able to lighten your load a bit?"

"That's why I came here," Draco said grimly, and she was silent. She lit a taper from a lamp, and stooped to hold it to the kindling. He watched her coax a flame out of the wood. Light washed over her face. It looked more young than old, both strong and sweet, very tranquil. Under the teasing flame, he still couldn't see the colour of her eyes.

She gave him bread seasoned with rosemary, a deep bowl filled with savory stew, and wine. While he ate, she sat across from him on a hearth bench and talked about the wood. "my family wandered in and out of it for centuries," she told him. "Their tales became family folklore. Some were written, others were told by mouth much like the Ancient Greek storytellers. Even if the tales weren't true, truth would never stand a chance against them."

"Have you ever been-"

"To His tomb? No. Nor would I swear, not even on a turnip, that any of my ancestors had. But I've seen the odd thing here and there; I've heard and not quite heard…enough that I believe that what you seek is there, in that ancient wood, if you can find your way." He nodded, his eyes on the fire, seeing and not quite seeing, and heard her voice again. "You've been there and back."

"Yes," he said softly.

"That weight in your pack," she stated. "That's what brings you here."

"Yes."

"What- Never mind." She smiled, waving away the unspoken question. "It's none of my business. I've just been trying to imagine what it must be that you want so badly to go there."

"Return," he amended.

"Return." She drew in a quick breath, her eyes widening, and he saw their colour then: a hazel brown, somehow pale and warm at the same time, that made him feel uneasy and yet comforted. "You stole it?"

"A more tactful inn-keeper would have assumed that it was given to me," he commented.

"Yes. But if you wanted half-truths I could give you family lore by the bushel. I'm perceptive. Selwyn thinks it's some kind of magic; I know better. It's not, really. It simply comes of fending for myself."

"Oh, there's some magic in you. I sense it. I think that if we picked apart your family tree, we would unravel many threads of truth in the tangle. That would take time, though. As you so quickly observed, what I carry is becoming justifiably heavy."

"Take it into the wood," she suggested. "Set it down and walk away from it. Don't look back."

"That doesn't work," Draco sighed. "I've lost count of the number of times and all the places I've walked away from without looking back. It always finds me. I have to return it to the place where it will stay."

She watched him, silent again, her eyes wide and full of questions. Is it terrible? He heard in her reluctant silence. Is it beautiful? Did you take it out of love or hate? Will you miss it, once you give it back?

"I stole it," he said abruptly, for Bettony gave him a sense of security, the kind which he had not felt for fifteen years, and he looked into her hazel eyes and suddenly felt that he could confide his deepest secrets in her. "From Her- Granger. It was something she loved; her husband had found it deep in the ruins of Alexander's tomb, that's what she said. I took it partly to hurt her, because she stole me out of my very own house and made me love her but she did not love me. And partly because it is very beautiful, and had enchanted me from the very start that I knew I simply must have it, and partly because so that I could show it to others as proof that I've been to Alexander's tomb and back. I took it out of anger and jealousy, wounded pride and arrogance. And out of love, most certainly out of love."

"All that," Bettony said wonderingly.

"I was that young," he sighed. "Such things are so complex then."

"Do you still love her?" Bettony asked.

"That young man that I was will always love her," he answered, smiling ruefully. "That, I can't return to her."

"But how did you get away from Alexander's Tomb? The legends say that there were wards to prevent any unwanted people from getting out of the tomb to prevent theft. And how can you be certain that this time you'll be able to find your way out of it again?"

"It wasn't easy," he murmured, remembering. "Potter and Weasley came after me…" He shrugged away her second question. "One problem at a time. All I know is that I must return. I can't live with what I stole from her." He set his plate aside. "If there's anyway you can help me-"

"I'll tell you what tales came down to me," she promised. "And I can show you things my ancestors wrote, describing what stream they followed, which pathway they took. They were always obsessed with searching for His tomb. It all sounds like dreams to me, wishes out of a winecup. But who am I to say? You've been there after all." She rose, lit a pair of tapers, and handed him one. "Come with me. I keep all these old writings in a chest upstairs, along with other odds and ends. Souvenirs they are said to be, but none so burdensome as yours."

She told him family folklore, and showed him fragile parchment stained with wine, half-coherent descriptions of improbable adventures, and rambling musings about the nature of magic, all infused with a bittersweet longing and loss that Draco felt again in his own heart, as though no time had passed in his memories. The writers had brought back tokens with them, as he had. Theirs were dead roses that never crumbled and still retained the faintest smell of summer, dried leaves that in the Underworld had been buttons and gold coins, a tarnished ring, a rusty key that unlocked a door…

"Such things," Bettony said, half-laughing, half-sighing over her eccentric family. "Maybe, maybe not, they all seem to say. But then again, maybe."

"Yes," Draco said softly. He looked out of a window, seeing through the black of night the faint, haunting shapes of ancient trees. "I'm very grateful that Selwyn sent me to you. This must be the place that I've been searching for, the path that leads to the tomb. Thank you for your help. I'll gladly repay you with anything you might need, be it money or items."

"There's magic in a tale," she said simply. "I'd like to hear the whole of yours when you come back out."

He smiled again, touched. "That's kind of you. Come to Selwyn's tavern tomorrow evening and I'll tell you as much as I know so far. That's the debt I owe to Selwyn."

She closed the chest and stood up, dusting centuries from her hands. "I wouldn't miss it. Nor will the rest of Byndley," she added lightly. "So be warned."

Draco spent the next day roaming through the great wood, hoping that his heart, if not his eye, would recognize the tree that was a door, the stream that was a silver path. But at the end of the day, the wood was just a wood, and the only other place he found his way back to was Byndley. He went to Selwyn's tavern, sat down wearily and asked for supper. The pack on the floor at his feet weighed so heavily in his thoughts that he scarcely noticed the comings and goings behind him as he ate his mutton and drank his ale were all comings: sandaled feet that entered but did not leave. When he turned finally to ask for more ale, he found what looked like an entire village behind him, gazing at him respectfully and waiting.

Even Bettony was there, sitting in a place of honour on a chair besides the fire. She nodded cheerfully to him. So did the blacksmith Tanith behind her. He picked up the ale Selwyn had already poured off the counter; the mug made its way from hand to hand until it reached the wizard.

"Where did we leave off?" Tanith asked briskly.

There were protests all around him from villagers clustered in the shadowy corners, sitting on tables as well as benches and stools, and even on the floor. He must begin again; not everyone had heard; they wanted the entire tale, beginning to end, and they would pay to keep the wizard's glass full for as long as he needed.

The inn-keeper shook his head. "The tale will pay for itself," he said, and propped himself against the bar to listen.

Draco stared at the silent crowd before him, cleared his throat and began again.

By mid-tale there was not a sound in the place. No one had bothered to replenish the fire; the faces leaning towards Draco were vague, shadowy. As he begun to describe what he had stolen, he scarcely heard them breathe. Deep into his tale, he saw little beyond his own memories, and the rise and fall of ale in his cup that in the frail light seemed the hue of fairy gold.

"I stole what stood on a table besides Granger's bed. To prove that I've been in that bed, and that I was once among those that she had loved. Her husband had given it to her, she told me. It was a lovely thing. It was fashioned from fairy gold or a magic far more intricate than I've ever seen, and it was undoubtedly important to her. Which may be why they pursued me so relentlessly when I fled with it.

"It was like a tiny living world within the glass surface. The elder wood grew within it. Gold light filled it every morning; trees began to fade to lavender and smoke towards the end of the day. At night-their night, ours, who can say? I was never certain I was there if time passed at all within the fairy wood-the globe was filled with the tiny jewels of constellations in a black that was infinitely deep, yet somehow so beautiful that it seemed the only true colour of the sky. I watched the night brighten into day in that tiny wood, and then deepen once again into the rich mysterious dark. She loved to watch it too. And in spite of her tender laughter and her sweet words, I knew that every time she looked at it, she thought of her husband, who had given it to her.

"So I stole it, so that she would look for it and think of me. And because I knew that though she had stolen my heart from me, this was as close as I would get to stealing hers."

He heard a small sound, a sigh, in the silent room, a half-coherent word. His vision cleared a little, enough to show him the still, intent faces crowding around him. Even Selwyn was motionless behind his bar; no one remembered to ask for ale.

"Show it to us," someone breathed.

"No, go on," Tanith pleaded. "I want to hear how he escaped."

"No, show-"

"He can show it later if he chooses. He's been carrying it around all these years; it's not going to go anywhere else until he ends it. Go on," he appealed to Draco. "How did you get away from them?"

"I don't think I ever did," Draco said hollowly, and again the room was soundless. "Oh, I did what any other wizard would have done, pursued by the 'Chosen One' and his sidekick. I fought with fire and thought; camouflaged myself with all the cunning of Salazar Slytherin himself; changed shape; hid myself. I knew that I only had to toss that little globe in their path, and they would probably stop chasing me. But I refused to give it up. I wanted it more than reason. Maybe more than life. Eventually they lost sight of me, confused by my the different forms I had taken. But the mirror came from Alexander's tomb, and it's magic was easily traced. They may not have seen me, but they never lost sight of the globe, no matter how carefully I had disguised it. I wore it as my own eye, another time I changed it into the mouse dangling from the talon of the peregrine falcon… They never failed to see it. Finally, tired and couldn't seem to find a way out of that eternal wood, I performed an act of utter desperation.

"I hid myself within the wood in that very globe. And then I caused everything-globe, wood and myself to vanish."

He heard an odd, faint sound, as if somewhere in the cellar below a cork had blown out of a keg, or somewhere a globe sized bubble of ale had popped. He ignored it, standing once again in the tiny wood onside the globe, among the peaceful trees, the endless ancient light, feeling again his total astonishment.

"It was as though I had been in my own world all along, and I had mistaken all the magic in it for the old magic." He lifted his glass for a moment, drank, and set it down again. "But I could no longer linger in that illusion. It's not easy to fling yourself miles when you are both the thrower and the object being thrown. But I managed. When I emerged from the globe, I found, to my amazement, that I was in the deserted woods not far away from Malfoy Manor, and somehow managed to get back to the safety of it."

He paused, remembering the grayness and hollowness in his heart at the sight of the grimy old familiar world. He sighed. "I had the stone birdbath destroyed, and barricaded that section of the grounds with the strongest magic wards known to Man, in fear that the door could go both ways. But I had the enchanted globe, the world that I had stolen. For a long time it comforted me, so long that I began to think that it was not missed. Until it began to weigh upon me, and I realized that I had never been forgotten. That realization was cold comfort for me; it was what I had wanted-that they, or Granger in particular- should never forget me, but they began to grow merciless in their remembering. I had to return this it to her or I could never live in any sort of piece again."

He bent then, and untied his pack. The tavern was so still it might have been empty. When he lifted the little globe out of the pack, its stars spangled the shadows everywhere within the room, and he heard a sigh from all the throats of all the villagers of Byndley at once, as though a wind had gushed through them.

He gazed into the globe with love and rue, seeing her again in that enchanted night, and the foolish young man who had given her his heart. After a moment, he blinked. He was holding the globe in his palm as lightly as though it were a hen's egg. The strange, terrible heaviness had fallen away from it; in his surprise he almost looked into the open pack to see if the sloughed weight lay at the bottom.

Then he blinked again.

It took no small effort from him to tear his eyes away from the world within the globe to the silent villagers of Byndley. Their faces, shadows and stars trembling over them, seemed blurred at first, unrecognizable. Slowly he began to see them more clearly. The red-haired smith with his boyish face and the sulky smile… The tall, bespectacled black hair figure behind the bar, gazing quizzically at Draco out of his emerald green eyes… The woman beside the fire...

Draco started in shock, swallowed, haunted again. Her face was as beautiful as when he had first seen it.

She smiled, her brown eyes unexpectedly warm.

"Thank you for that look," she said. There was Bettony in that face still, he saw, mixed with Hermione's elegance and pride. There was a glint of humour in her face, and a wryness in her smile. She held out her hand, and Draco numbly placed the globe in the hands of its rightful owner.

"I've always wondered," Harry told him, when her fingers had closed around the globe, "how you had managed to escape us with all the old magic behind us."

"And I always wondered," Hermione said softly, "why you took this from me. Now I understand."

Draco looked at the redhead standing behind her, still watching him mildly; he seemed to need no explanations. Ron said, "You've told your tale and been judged. This time you may leave freely. There's the door."

Draco picked up his pack with shaking hands. He paused before he opened the door, and said without looking back, "The first time, I only thought I had escaped. I never truly found my way out of the wood."

"I know."

Draco opened the door. He pulled it behind him, but he didn't hear it close or latch. He took another step and another step, until he had crossed the bridge.

He stopped then. He did not bother looking back, for he guessed that the bridge and every sign of Byndley on the other side of the stream had vanished. He looked up instead, and saw the lovely, mysterious, star-shot night flowing everywhere around him, and the promise, in the faint silent flush at the edge of the world, of an enchanted dawn.

Fin

Three things you want your fic to include: Post-HBP, exotic locales, and a strange courtship.
Three things you do not want your fic to include: Hardcore kink, noncon, fanon.