Notes:

This story has been brewing in the cauldron for a long time, and now it's finally coming to life, excruciating chapter by excruciating chapter. So far 4 chapters are complete, and I will be posting them as soon as they are ready. After that, I do not know how often I would post, I will do my best. The characters have already escaped my attempts at a pre-determined plot and are running rampant through the storyline, so who knows...

This fic is my answer to the deplorable lack of HP/Labyrinth crossfics in fandom, and the pairing and plot was so obvious I was amazed it hasn't been realised yet (or maybe it is, and I have not found it?). Be that as it may, my major focus is character development and not original settings. In fact my purpose was to take much loved and time-approved situations, place those characters in them and see what happens.

Lastly, I'd like to dedicate this work to the remorseless H/D slash queens of old, Rhysenn and Cinnamon, who got me into this [mess] a very long time ago.

Enjoy and please do not forget to make my day and review! This work is in progress, so suggestions and constructive criticism will be duly noted and very much appreciated!

Chapter 1

Utter boredom has a way of wrapping its tentacles around you when you're not looking, and then it simply refuses to let go, for days at an end. At least that was what one Draco Malfoy was experiencing, in these gloomy weeks that barely dragged themselves in an early November Hogwarts. Classes have started and settled, the novelty of being back at Hogwarts for his final year and even the bossing around of everyone younger than him, which was his right as a last-year (and in Draco's mind, has been his right since he first set foot in Hogwarts, but somehow others have refused to acknowledge it) had quickly exhausted its charms, turning into a habit instead as he tried to cope with day-to-day school life.

It was not that schoolwork was anything less than demanding. Draco glided through Advanced Potions and 7th year Transfiguration in the way he pretty much glided through life – with the air of "it hardly deserves my time, but I'm feeling generous". He excelled in his studies with the easy shrug of someone who just cannot be bothered with such measly excuses for time-fillers.

Maybe that is why he ended up in the library on that gray late afternoon – not researching anything in particular, but letting the drowsy library air wash over him. He liked the library – as opposed to the rest of the castle, it didn't have the air that Something Very Important is Happening; the library wore its own boringness as a badge of pride, because after all, libraries are supposed to be utterly boring. And they drive people in their depths for other reasons entirely – out of sheer necessity, gloating at their victims' inability to leave until they have finished their work and enveloping them in warm waves of nothing-ever-happens. Hogwarts' library was no exception.

So, on a whim in that late November afternoon, Draco took his boredom along in the library, just for the sake of finding it some company. Maybe it would leave him alone for a change.

Had he just known that something was already in motion. Had he bothered to look at the big grandfather's clock at the far end above Madam Pince the librarian's head, he would not have been the least bit surprised to notice that the clock-face had suddenly (or not so suddenly) acquired an extra number – the number "13" squeezed awkwardly together with number "12", but unmistakably there all the same.

I say he would have been bored to notice. This was Hogwarts, and things like that happened all the time.

But he would have been wrong to be bored. He should have been very much intrigued, indeed.

Harry Potter was one of those obnoxious persons who bashed in Hogwarts' air of Something Very Important is Happening Here as if he's been born into it. In fact, he took to his daily tasks with a vigor and energy that would give every self-respecting Slytherin a headache that would not go away with so much as a simple Headache Potion. A true Gryffindor he was, through and through.

Harry Potter never took a day for granted. A lifelong of "something always happens to me, and little of it is good" had taught him to accept every day as a gift, in the best tradition of inspirational quotes everywhere, even where gloomy early-November afternoons were concerned.

So when Harry took his leave of an approving Hermione and a grumbling Ron at his announcement that he still needed to do some research on his Herbology essay on the seven uses of Mandrake, Harry entered the library with a bounce in his step that few students associated with the prospect of spending several hours in its gloomy abodes.

"Ron, the fact that you prefer to wait until your homework is overdue in order to even start thinking about it does not make it evident that others should be doing the same!"

Hermione's exasperated voice reached his ears from the far end of the corridor. What Ron grumbled in response he did not hear, but he had a number of pretty good guesses, each of which would do nicely.

Harry smiled to himself. These two have been arguing like an old married couple since first year. It was only a matter of time until they made it official, out of habit if not for anything else.

With a contented sigh, Harry chose a secluded table at the far end of the reading section and placed his choice of books around him, seemingly unaware of a shock of silver-blond hair across the hall, where a certain somebody was looking at some very unlikely shelves.

"FAERY LORE"

Draco stared at the fancy golden inscription above his head. He did not have the first idea how he had wondered off in this section of the library, where almost nobody ever went.

In no way related to their studies, except the occasional "Mythical creatures" reference and the deluded first-year schoolgirl with her head in the clouds and still enamored with faery tales, the FAERY LORE section was mostly left to itself.

Pale lights illuminated shelves upon shelves of, in Draco's opinion, the most useless collection of books that Hogwarts' library possessed.

"It must have been a donation by some "Save the faeries!" idiot organization or another", Draco thought wryly.

Those were getting popular lately, aided by "The Quibbler" which never refused to print yet another ludicrous story of how faeries not only existed, but were in grave danger of [insert here].

Still, as he had no particular purpose, and plenty of time on his hands, he strolled along the shelves in lazy strides.

Some of the inscriptions grazing the books' covers made him raise him eyebrows ("Good faeries, bad faeries – and how to tell", by Milliburn Mawley), whereas others made him snort outright, which in turn raised eyebrows followed by a disapproving sniff by an all-hearing Madam Pince. ("The naked moon-dance and its implications for the faery ring: a study", by Celena Celestine).

Draco absent-mindedly brushed his fingertips over the covers of books further down the dark shelves, relishing the feel of old leather and books so rarely taken out that they seemed to have blended into each other, seemingly glued together. His fingers went over "The Lia Fail and its whereabouts", by Balthazar Vince, and then took an unexpected plunge instead of continuing on to "Mystical to mundane: how to charm Leprechauns into doing your housework", by Belinda Moore.

Draco looked down at where his fingers seemed to have missed a book, and for a second it seemed to him that the space in-between was empty – until his eyes caught a glimpse of faded red leather further inside the shelf.

He reached in, and took hold of a book that was so small next to the others one could easily miss it entirely. A little bugger than the size of his palm, the small book bore a single inscription in bold, black lettering on the cover, in elongated gothic script that was nothing if not elegant –

"Labyrinth".

Draco frowned at the plain cover. There was no author in sight, and the small book looked almost untouched, but somehow ancient at the same time. On impulse, he strolled over to a reading table neighboring the "Faery lore" section, took a seat and opened the book, and immediately rolled his eyes: the little book was in rhymes.

He almost abandoned it then, having been taught from a very early age that all poetry was utter foolish nonsense. ("Way to go, father, of course one cannot waste time with useless wordsmithing when one can be exploring the various ways of cursing somebody into oblivion", Draco mused, with the wry mirthless humor reserved where his father was concerned, ever since their falling out two years ago).

But there was something about the little book – maybe it was the feel of its parchment-like pages, and the pleasing rustling sound they made as they turned, or the fact that the initial gothic script was preserved throughout the book, in dark red ink to match the leather cover – but he did not let go of it, even if it was guilty of containing rhymed verses.

Instead, he absent-mindedly flipped through the pages, letting the soothing murmur of students' muffled talk wash over him as his boredom was laid momentarily to the side, forgotten for once.

The little book's plot was rather thin, but what it lacked in content it almost made up for in elegance of rhyme. Draco could not help admire it. Before he knew it the verses drew him in, to a point where he neither noticed nor payed attention to his immediate surrounding anymore.

The story was a classic faery tale, but with a certain malicious twist, which made it worthwhile for Draco: the figure of the Goblin King.

It was basically the story of this Goblin King who apparently occupied his eternal life by taking mortals from the muggle world who have been wished away to him.

In this particular case it was a young girl, an utterly boring and foolish creature as far as Draco was concerned, who in a moment of anger wished her baby brother away for the goblins to take.

Draco rolled his eyes at the way the stupid girl shouted her request and was promptly astonished when it got granted, and then tried to back off.

If anything, that was what magic is constructed around, and anyone who've ever taken first-year Charms was aware of it: Magic drew its power from the intent in the conjurer's words, and it acted accordingly, both taking a life of its own and bending to the caster's wishes, but not all the way, and never entirely.

Draco chuckled at the way this Goblin King figure reacted to the foolish girl's statement of "not meaning it": he couldn't have dismissed her better himself, and he had the training of a lifetime of dismissing people to rival the most ruthless of Goblin Kings.

If Draco had stopped reading and given it a thought, he would have realized that the reason he carried on reading, putting up with the girl's foolishness along the way, ("Merlin's beard, she's annoying!", he mused), was the strange enthrallment he felt with the character of the Goblin King.

Even rhymes could not tatter the man's alluring description – tall and lithe of frame, with a shock of silver-blond hair cascading down his shoulders and sticking in all directions to enframe a pale angular face exuding an otherworldly glow, impossibly high cheekbones leading to a pair of mismatched eyes, one blue and the other green, that stared down coldly and with detached amusement at the girl's inadequate pleas.

Draco silently applauded his choice of dress, the elegant simplicity of it – a white poet's shirt, with slightly ruffled edges, and a pair of black breeches leading to a pair of plain black leather boots, his hands covered by black leather gloves.

Certainly a mouth-watering image worth saving for later on, preferably when he was alone in his bed in the Slytherin dorm with curtains drawn around his bed, and a silencing charm cast around it for good measure.

Draco's enthrallment with the evilly handsome amongst males was secret to no one, ever since he came out last year. There was only one attempt at ridicule directed at him in recorded Hogwarts' history, and the story was still told in whispers behind hands in dark corridors, being debatable whether the joker carried his ears and nose in a small bag after the confrontation or found himself reliving his worst nightmares every day after lunch for a month. Either way, Draco was left to it. Too bad that in all of Hogwarts there was not one prime example of evil handsomeness to aspire to.

Now, examples of utterly annoying Gryffindor goody-goody handsomeness, on the other hand, were quite present on an everyday basis.

Harry Potter, with his unruly jet-black hair which was no longer sticking out in all directions as its owner wore it a bit longer these days, still topped a face of pale skin and sparkling emerald-green eyes, complimented by a body frame that was not lithe but slender, having grown much in height over the summer, broad of shoulders and of chest, made for a mighty pleasing sight.

Too bad Draco only needed to look twice to find himself with thoughts of manslaughter on his mind, preferably in slow, painful ways. Too bad, indeed, that he couldn't stop himself from looking all the same.

"Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered…"

Draco rolled his eyes again. Honey, if these measly excuses for obstacles I just read about can be called that, then you have no idea about anything at all, he mused.

Anyone with a wand would have found these a child's play to deal with. Draco with a wand would have actually enjoyed cursing minor creatures in a variety of creative ways. Too bad he had no pesky little brothers to wish away, he chuckled.

"You have no power over me."

Draco slowly closed the back cover of the little book and pensively placed his chin in the crook of his joined hands. He was surprised to notice that it was much later than he'd thought. Darkness had crept up on him as if dripping off the far corners of book-filled corridors and from amongst the shelves themselves, somehow bringing along an unsettling feeling that had nothing to do with gloomy everyday library darkness. The library was almost deserted now, and it was quiet, or as they say in cheap suspense thrillers, too quiet.

None of this registered with Draco however, who was still wrapped up in the after-effect of the story he'd just read and was staring absently into space. In this precise moment a shock of jet-black hair caught his attention, and brought him up short.

"That's just fantastic", Harry mused, annoyed. He'd just finished the research he needed for his Herbology essay (he hadn't known that a potion of Mandrake roots had quite THAT effect on some male parts. He'd have to put this knowledge aside for further investigation, which probably cannot be conducted in the Hogwarts' library and would most certainly need to be kept secret from Hermione), when he realized two things.

One, that it was already later than he'd thought and he'd probably missed dinner, and two, the only person seemingly left in the library besides himself was one Draco Malfoy, sitting at a lone table to his far left side.

He realized he'd need to walk right by him if he wanted to leave, which would almost certainly lead to bickering and an exchange of insults which were second nature to the blond Slytherin when it came to the subject of Harry, and of which said Harry was getting exceedingly tired.

More of an acquired habit than out of real malice, at least since last year when Draco Malfoy supplied priceless information to Dumbledore which ultimately helped them to overcome Voldemort and his Death eaters once and for all, one of them Draco's own father, Draco nevertheless had stuck to his attitude towards Gryffindors in general and Harry in particular, flipping insults his way whenever he had half the chance.

Harry, on his part, did his best not to let the blond get the better of him, but the old malice was not really there, and for him, it was a show he kept up because frankly, he had no idea how to act around Draco otherwise. He certainly did not strike one as likeable, that was for sure.

So Harry gritted his teeth, gathered his belongings and stood up, bracing himself for the inevitable confrontation that was to follow. If he'd had any idea what was to come, though, bracing himself wouldn't have been nearly enough.

A devilish grin had spread unto Draco's features as he contemplated Harry's image at the far end to his right.

"Now there is someone I'd gladly wish away in half an instant, and to certainly worse creatures that a kinkily-clad Goblin king, at that," he thought.

Still chuckling under his breath, he flipped through the early pages of the little red book until he came upon the part where the girl wished her baby brother away.

"Let's see how it goes…" He mumbled as he read fast-forward to the words that needed to be said. Then, he theatrically and with much mock-exaggeration raised one hand in front of him, his face displayed mock-seriousness and for his own personal entertainment, Draco employed an elaborately formal voice to say,

"Harry Potter, I wish that the Goblin King would come and take you away, this instant!"

The library went completely black.