Chapter 10: The Tunnel

As soon as we lift off, I pull the broom's nose up into a steep climb, making for the cover of the lowest edges of cloud. Wisps of fog reach down and enshroud us, dimming the dawn and shutting out all but glimpses of the land: spread below us like a patchwork quilt, more vivid than anything Molly Weasley could make.

"S'brilliant! Don't you like it?" Harry balances on the very end of the broomstick, his hair and shirt streaming in the wind as though he's been conjured out of the cloud.

Do I? I spent my second year chasing the Snitch, as the Slytherin Team played Quidditch around me. I remember, once, that elusive, shining weight of victory was almost in my grasp. Then Avery tackled me just before my hand could close on the Snitch, ending the game (and, in that case, losing it). I roared "Lemme go!" and spun, lashing Avery in the face with my hair. I'd grown it long over summer, and my newly-invented Sectum charm had turned it into a concealed razorwire whip. Avery's goggles saved his sight, but he still had to spend a night in the Hospital Wing with a faceful of dittany, and serve the bastard right! Those lazy, bludger-beaten sods deserved to lose, for letting Potter and his thugs get so many quaffles through the hoop.

Lucius was watching from the Quidditch stands; and later, in the Three Broomsticks, he laughed at Avery, as the Slytherin captain (still sporting healing cuts on his face) pointed at me and cried "You are off the team!"

"Now, Avery, I told you I'd find you someone who can catch the Snitch. If you care that much about playing team sports, perhaps you should've Sorted into Hufflepuff."

I loved Lucius fiercely for saying that. I never gave a damn about trivia like the team or the score; how could I when there was flying to be done? How the hell could they expect me to slow down and just let the Snitch go? The game of Quidditch itself was always as dull as ditchwater to me. Flight was the only thing that mattered: the intoxication of speed, the tingle of the slipstream battering my body, the dizzying wrench of momentum trying to pull me off my broom. And above all, the thrill of the hunt. Outflying the Snitch was a challenge that absorbed me completely, until nothing else existed – no audience, no teammates, no opponents or bludgers – nothing but me and my quarry. Like an invisible thread connecting us, my sheer need to reach it drove my broom ever faster. Joy such as that, feral and fearless, the falcon must feel when it stoops upon its prey.

How carefree that boy was. It's hard to believe he was me.

But now… everything has changed, and none of it for the better. Without warming charms, or even particularly warm clothes, I'm starting to shiver, and my hands already burn with cold. The slipstream scours my unshielded eyes, and this broom isn't mine. I am old, a husk empty of all my magic, and this lamed, limping flight just makes me ache all the more for the fierce, falcon's joy that I will never know again.

A crosswind buffets the broom and I clutch at it; my hands are already numb enough that I'm uncertain of my grip. I have no magic left, and there will be no cushioning charms between me and the ground.

Harry must've sensed my fear. "I know my broom. It won't let you fall."

"I hope you're right. Where to now?"

Harry shakes his head. "I don't remember!"

"Focus!" I hiss against the wind. "After all, you've already made this trip once!"

I have my coat, but I wish I'd taken something to shield my face when I walked out of my flat and my life with nothing but the absolute necessities: the broom, and Harry. The wind stings my eyes into watering, so much that I'm nearly blind. I try to remember that sight and hearing can only interfere, chaining me to the Muggle map of reality. Right now I have to convince myself that the impossible can happen, that Harry can lead me straight to Hogwarts.

"Easy for you to say. Ron drove! I was just watching the clouds."

"Then watch the clouds!"

"Fine." Harry, hovering in front of me, abruptly hops back on the broomstick. "This way, I think."

"Could you be more specific?"

He gestures. "Right."

I turn and let the broom pick up speed, my eyes slitted against the needle-like sting of the icy wind.

'Second to the right, and straight on till morning,' Peter Pan claimed was the road to Neverland. Harry is just as cryptic. For years I've felt that this is all Hogwarts will ever be, a fairytale for the next generation of children. But not if we find it, and we will. We have no other choice.

I surrender then and close my watering eyes completely. I have to trust Harry to lead me there. Hogwarts had always kept its doors open to those who believed, and no one believes in it more than Harry.

Flying for hours with my eyes more-or-less closed, on this rocking, swaying broomstick, through this thin, high-altitude air, is making me drowsy, lethargic. I find my grip on the present slipping; it's better than losing my grip on the broomstick.

When I was very small, I made a kite once with Dad, and we took it out to the riverbank on a blustery day. The wind swept it up into the air and I doled out the string, letting it farther and farther out, till it was all the way over the other side of the river. Then the wind snapped the string and it sagged in my hand, dead. Freed, the kite leapt in the sky, soaring higher and higher until it was a dot, a mote, a pinprick as tiny as a daytime star. Until it was lost to sight.

At times it feels as though a similarly fraying thread connects Harry and I, and that soon I will be left behind on the ground, watching him soar higher and higher, loving him for his freedom, even as it takes him away from me forever.

"I'm lost again," Harry yells, snapping me out of my half-frozen reverie.

But we are close, we have to be. Either that, or he's been leading me in circles for hours and I've been freezing up here for nothing, and I don't even want to think about that. "Does anything look familiar?" I rise up higher, taking a wide, sweeping turn through a bank of clouds.

"No. S'all the same, forest, valleys."

"What about the train tracks?" He claimed he saw them a while back and that they looked familiar: that was what prompted us to sweep the area looking for other signs. Though I'm beginning to think that we're no better than the Muggles who rush past the Leaky Cauldron without even knowing it exists.

"Left 'em behind. Look, I'm not even sure they were train tracks, much less the right ones. What's the use in following them?"

"Can you find them again?"

"Maybe. Y'know, it was so much easier the last time: we fell right on top of the Whomping Willow," his hand swoops through the air, "WHAM! – and that was it!"

There's one disadvantage in flying blind. I have to rely on a reckless imp who's absolutely horrible at directions.

"That's weird," Harry mutters, "I know I saw 'em! Somewhere 'round here." Below the land spreads like a map: simple and two-dimensional, uncomplicatedly Muggle. After a minute of his futile search, I decide to try something new. In response to some unspoken instinct I shut my eyes, and leave us at the mercy of the air currents, allowing the broom to follow their subtle lead. Throughout the flight I can't help feeling that what I see below us seems quite different from what Harry describes, as if we're travelling through two different worlds. Perhaps it is so. Either way, Harry is more likely to notice something than I. Whatever he sees, at least his eyes are untouched by the slipstream, and his mind unaffected by cold, thin air.

"Something's there!" he points emphatically. "Right below. Look!"

I crane my neck and peer downward, following the line of his arm, and I can just make out a narrow line snaking through the meadows.

Lower and lower, we descend as the updraft from the ground catches us, warming my hands and face. The trees expand again, growing more distinct as they rise out of the lumpy green carpet they'd resembled from the heights. Their branches reach up toward us, then spread above us, and the twisting narrow path unfolds into a two track road.

"You said this was a railroad!" It couldn't have possibly been. This is just a footpath weaving amid the hills and into the grassy meadows.

We are almost to the ground when Harry points again, "Told you it is. See the railway?"

I squint at the path with surprise but then I do see the subtle lines in the dirt. Harry was right about the train track, though it can't possibly be the line that the Hogwarts Express used. No train can have passed here for decades. Mud and grasses have turned this route into a hiking trail rather than a railway. Yet something about this path feels like a new beginning.

"Close enough. We should continue on foot from now on."

"But," Harry protests, sliding off onto the path. "We'll cover more ground on the broom!"

"Let's try walking instead. Perhaps we'll see more if we're closer to the ground."

We walk down the winding path, but the abandoned rail line continues as well, blending with mud and grass. It looks more like a two-track cycle path than something that trains once used. It's not uncommon for abandoned railways to become footpaths in rural areas. Perhaps that's what this is as well: built in the era of Victorian enterprise by wishful thinkers who thought it would remain here forever. Yet now, it's been left to return to nature after the last train disappeared from the rails.

Where are we now? The hills to either side are dotted by a few crumbling buildings amid trees, but the road doesn't dwindle further. Ever so slowly the cycle path becomes a rail line again. Forward and backward, the rusty rails mark the path we follow. Hills stretch to the left, occasionally a wooden fence snakes to the right of us.

"Great, innit?" Harry hops from one rusted railway track to the other. "Wandering about, looking for things. I was always jealous of all those explorers who got to sail looking for new places."

Gryffindor. I can't help smiling as I watch him, so exuberant, so alive in this sunlight and fresh air. "Can't quite picture you as a sailor."

He chuckles and closes one eye with his palm, glaring up at me. "'Arrr, 'ow long now till 'ogwarts, Cap'n?' How's that?"

"Abysmal." I roll my eyes, but I know I haven't managed to hide my grin. "And as for 'how long'," I add, "it'll take as long as it takes. Hours, minutes, days." Time is relative.

We pass under a bridge, wood supported by rusted iron. The massive red brick pylons still hold, but their mortar is cracked by time and the roots of ivy, creeping like a green shroud. I can't help but notice that this road is different from any road I've walked before. It changes as we move further down it, like a serpent shedding its skin, as if we're travelling not in space but in time. Perhaps it's just its nature, but maybe it's the wards. Perhaps in time gone by, both Muggle trains and the Hogwarts Express passed underneath this bridge, their beat echoing in timber and brick, but now it's all silent, forgotten. Haunted by the past.

Harry catches up and the place doesn't seem haunted by strangers any longer. It's time to move on, so we do, into the rising heat and sunlight and the distant, summer song of insects and birds: as hurried and alive as the earth itself, catching its breath in the humid air.

He frowns. "What d'you mean, minutes or days?"

"If the wards won't let us in, we could walk for weeks and all we'd ever see is this road."

"Yeah. Better hope the road likes us then." he grins, ever the picture of 'friendly'. Brat. "Maybe Hogsmeade's just 'round the corner?" he continues, glancing around, as if expecting the tracks at our feet to hear him. "Maybe we're already in the Wizarding world and haven't even realised it."

I glance around. This turn around the hill is shadier than the rest. Trees block the view on both sides, their branches hanging low over the tracks. Ivy covers the rusted metal. No train has passed here in years, yet the tracks remain. I wonder what Muggles would see if they ever came to this place: an overgrown cycle path or the uncovered tracks. "I think we would have noticed something." But perhaps we are close to the Wizarding World: on the outskirts, looking in. I wonder if anyone had seen the tracks to Hogsmeade after the Hogwarts Express stopped running, or if we will be the first since the day when so much came to an end.

Harry peers ahead. "Maybe we're missing it. We should look around. What's over there?"

"Don't go too far," I warn him.

"Why not?"

"If the correct railway is near, it'll have perimeter wards. I for one don't want to end up in the middle of the forest remembering an urgent appointment I never set up." Or worse.

"Oh. Right." Harry kicks at a pebble. It doesn't move, of course, but he doesn't seem to mind. "I like London streets better. At least there're signs there."

My glance strays from Harry's pebble to my feet, and I notice that the tracks are less rusted than usual. In fact, they look almost new. When that realisation hits, I suddenly feel I can almost smell the creosote and coal smoke. "Maybe there are signs here too. Just not obvious ones."

"Oi, what's that?" Harry points ahead.

I squint against the sun. "I can't see anything."

"There!"

I follow the line of his pointing arm to a clearing just off the tracks. Half hidden by the shrubbery there's a patch of stones with grass poking up between them. It doesn't look familiar. "We probably followed the wrong track," I sigh. I don't remember the road branching off, but perhaps we should retrace our steps.

Harry grins. "No, I think we're going the right way." He waves at a metal rectangle, a sign lying face down in the mud. I lean down and turn it over, wipe off the moss and the dirt from the surface and only then read what it says. Some letters are destroyed beyond recognition, but still, it's impossible not to fill them in right away.

'HO SM ADE' says the sign.

Impossible! But the impossible is yet to come. When I lift my head, it's as though I've stepped into one of Harry's dreamscapes. In the moment I looked down to read the sign, the entire surroundings have transformed. The platform of red brick has expanded until it's five times longer, and there are now two railway tracks instead of one, and a path leading off the platform to the left. The ruin of an old brick station stands among the greenery. Swallows and house martins dart out from nests under its half-missing roof; they circle and swoop in the sky over my head, calling.

Unbelievable. The place is just as I remember it: abandoned, weathered by time and the elements, but still here. Hogsmeade Railroad Station.

"Let's go!" Harry grins. "What are you waiting for?"

I follow him down the curving, narrow path around the station. At the next turn I expect ash and silence, and the white, hair-thin strands of rain, bringing with them the stench of burning bodies, but there is none of that; just as there is no spirit of Lucius, lurking among the ruins. Hogsmeade is sunny and green, almost idyllic. On both sides of the former road there are brick outlines in the grass. Only doorway arches and half-collapsed chimneys still stick up from the piles of rubble, like cemetery stones, indicating where the houses used to be. But there are also green fields covered in the tiny yellow suns of dandelion flowers and the white star-clusters of seed-heads, stretching all the way to the hill where the Shrieking Shack still stands. If ever a plant symbolised Gryffindor House, it'd be dandelions. Common weeds, they spring up anywhere, bringing colour to the darkest of places.

I look back at the forest of teetering chimneys and empty doorframes. A burial hill instead of Honeydukes; walls and chimneys like cemetery monuments, instead of Rosmerta's pub.

Past the Shack, just off the high street and across those hills, there should be a path around the lake which leads to Hogwarts. The wards on that path have to let us through. We didn't come this far just to stop now.

We're so close I can taste it.

I walk past the place where the last house on the high street used to be: where I saw Lucius for the last time. Instinctively, I reach out and touch what's left of the wall; its remains only come up to my chest. Its bricks are warm.

Like an old nightmare, I leave it behind and follow the path into a wide open valley where the hills begin.

"Wait!" Harry calls out halfway up the hill. "You're not going down there, are you?" He points at the ravine in front of us, his eyes wide.

"Yes. Is anything wrong?"

"It's just, that's where I died." He wavers, then continues. "What if I'm still there?"

"You?"

"Yeah, or whatever's left of me. I… I don't want to see that." He stops in the middle of the footpath.

This is the first time I've seen Harry afraid of anything in a very long time. With all the intensity I can project into my voice, I assure him, "You are here, with me. If anything is left down there, it isn't you any more."

By the time I make it to the top of the hill at least a dozen burrs are stuck to my legs. Wildflowers and grass are wilting and drying in the sunlit fields, filling the air with a sweet, soothing scent. As we stand on the hilltop, I can see the ravine cutting through the land, and even bereft of magic as I am, I can feel it pulsing: rich with natural magical energy, its strength radiating from it like heat. Even the warmth of the hazy sun pales in comparison to it.

That ravine is wider than I remember, as if the earth itself has cracked along the leyline. Even standing here I can see at least three types of magical plant at the rim, where the wildflowers and poppies end, and the flitterblooms begin, weaving their tentacles into the ground. If so many magical species grow out at the edges of the ravine, then a highly concentrated magical ecosystem must flourish inside the steep fissure, and presumably the explosion epicentre gouged deep inside it. Even from here I can feel the magical force spilling like a river in the depths of the canyon.

"Look," Harry points. "S'that a pixie? I thought they'd all gone!"

I'm not surprised in the least. Pixies and dragons, the largest and the smallest of magical creatures, were the most sensitive to magical energy disturbances. Yet pixie spores survive anything. They are attracted to natural flow of magic around this place, perhaps the strongest such flow left in Britain, if not the whole world. "You'll find the magical world is more resilient than you'd think." Wizards may be gone from it, but it goes on without us. But that's what concerns me.

I look further, past the ravine, at the hawthorn trees and the meadows beyond. On the other side, the road to Hogwarts ought to continue, yet it does not. Instead there is nothing, not a trace of it remaining. Instead there is a completely unfamiliar landscape: as if someone spread a patched, soothing blanket of greenery over the old valley to mask its scars, to make it look new again. To make it look different.

Flocks of birds fly lazily amid trees splotched with red berries. The meadows are still, silent. Even the wind calms. It feels as though, apart from the birds, we are… I am the only living thing for miles around.

Harry peers into the distance. "That's wrong!" he cries. "We should see the lake, and the castle by now. Where are they?"

Hidden. Hidden from the sight of passers-by, unless they know exactly what they are looking for. Unless they are worthy to enter through the gates. Unless they are magical beings. I point at the edge of the ravine. "What concerns me more is that I can't see the road continue on the other side."

"What good would the road do?" Harry scowls, perhaps relieved that I've reconsidered my initial plan to descend into the ravine itself.

"It led us here, for one thing." Slowly, I sit down on the grass, holding the broom in my grasp. Soft breeze ruffles my hair, stirs the grass all around us. We are so close, yet so far. We could be back in London for all the good this has done us.

"Well, can't we just go on without it?" Harry suggests, "Fly around, like we did, see if we can find Hogwarts from the air?"

I stare at the landscape, so empty of the familiar signs. "Do you remember the first time you entered Hogwarts?"

"Yeah. We took the boats our first year. I liked them, much more than the thestral carriages."

"Ah. And how far did you have to walk to the lake to get on those boats?"

"Wasn't far," he shrugs. "Just off the station."

I gesture around, demonstrating my point. "Do you see a lake now?"

His eyes search the horizon without any luck. "It was there before!"

"Yes, as were the boats. And the carriages. Do you know why?"

He looks inquiringly at me as I meet his eyes.

"Because someone from Hogwarts sent them for you. But now there is no one left to send them."

He frowns. "And that means Hogwarts is gone?"

Something I learned early on is that in the Wizarding World magic gets you everywhere: from one place to the other and back again. None of those places can be pinpointed on a map. Muggles are used to thinking linearly, but Wizarding space is anything but linear. Hogwarts itself is the best representation of that. One cannot Apparate there; to get in one has to enter through the front gates, if one can find them, or use the Floo, or a portkey.

"From our point of view, yes, that's exactly what it means. Why do you think it took Riddle so long to enter the castle? He couldn't just storm the gates. When Dumbledore raised the wards, as far as everyone outside them was concerned, the castle ceased to exist. Riddle spent months trying to break through those wards, because it was the only possible way he could get in." I learned that when I was still a firstie, my nose stuck in Hogwarts: A History.

'But if the castle's welcome you have not,
In searching waste your life! All search will err,
No magic, wit, nor might will find your road:
It is as though the castle never were.'

Harry sits down next to me, stretching his legs; his gaze is distant, still searching the far away valley.

"It was raining," he murmurs. "That day. Dumbledore led me to the gates and told me I'd have to continue on my own from there. Told me not to look back, no matter what. I looked back anyway. Couldn't see Hogwarts any more. I thought it was 'cause of all the rain; it was pouring hard. 'Cause how else could I have lost Hogwarts? But it wasn't the rain, was it?" He looks up at me. "He made the castle disappear."

"He closed the wards after you; he couldn't risk the Death Eaters getting in after you left."

"He sent me out there, knowing I wouldn't come back." Harry's expression is sombre; his voice is soft with shock at the idea that Hogwarts would ever close its doors to him.

He deliberately sent you to your death, Harry. Yes. The truth is so bitter it closes my throat. Dumbledore was such a great strategist, precisely because he had the intellect to choose his sacrifices well, and the courage – or coldness – to make sure those sacrifices were made. All I can do is nod in silence.

His expression cycles through a range of emotions. "Well, I did come back!" he declares angrily, as if in challenge to the empty fields spreading before us. "I found Hogwarts somehow, after it was all over. After I died. And we will find it again!"

This is the stubbornness that let him carry the expectations of the Wizarding World ever since he was a boy; I'm quite sure it's the determination that let him return from death itself.

"How do we make it appear again?" he asks, that same undaunted spark in his eyes. As if there's no question that it'll be possible to do.

"We have to find a place where that road continues," I tell Harry. It's our only hope: a path from one place outside the wards to another place within could still get us back to the castle, in the same way that the railroad led us back to Hogsmeade. Otherwise we could spend years combing through the entire Forbidden Forest, searching for the lake or for Hogwarts, and find nothing. We could spend forever searching and still fail, if the wards won't accept us.

"So we need a road that led into Hogwarts," Harry mumbles, looking back to where the ruins of Hogsmeade lie behind us.

"Yes."

"I've got your road," he declares suddenly, and points to the Shrieking Shack, the only building still standing, ominous in the distance. "Will a tunnel work?"

I rise to my feet; dread rises in me too, at the mere sight of that place. I crush the fear down before it can take too firm a hold on me, and croak, "Let's go."

I'm not even halfway through the wildflower-covered field, and already my instincts are telling me to run. It's hard not to listen to them, especially since my logic agrees.

A long shadow reaches out from the Shrieking Shack. I trudge on toward it, half-expecting devil's snare under all the dandelions and the heather. It's too bright for devil's snare in the open field, but the Shack's entrance is just dark enough. We must be cautious. Up the steps and through the threshold, with the door into the dark room swung wide open. Inside, the last rays of sunset stream through cracks in the boarded-up windows. A solitary dandelion stalk, pallid and stringy, pushes up through a hole in the floor. The stairway to the top floor has collapsed in the middle. Dry leaves have blown through the door, and are piled into a drift deep enough for several autumns. I step closer, and rats scatter from the pile. It must hide a rat nest.

"There's a room with a hole in the floor," Harry whispers.

I remember perfectly well, though I wish I didn't.

"M'sorry," he mutters, unexpectedly.

"What for?"

"For that Stunning spell. And for letting Sirius and Remus levitate you through the tunnel like that."

I stare at the floor. Rat footprints crisscross the dirt on the boards, and mark the gnawed, slashed wallpaper.

Rats explain the collapsed stairway. The claw gouges on the floor are years old, but the rat tracks are fresh, this summer's at least. Good. I'll take rats over werewolves any day. The tracks lead into the next room through a doorway with its door fallen right off its rusted hinges; it looks like some adventurous rats have already explored the way. It reassures me slightly, as I enter a much darker room, full of dust and rotten wood. The hole leading down into the earth is still there, gaping like a freshly-dug grave.

I grip Harry's broom tighter; it's the only thing I have that even vaguely resembles a weapon. The tunnel is too narrow and curving to fly through, though I'm temped to try anyway, just so I won't have to walk into the unknown. I could've brought a Muggle torch, but the batteries wouldn't have worked outside the Muggle world anyway, and my matches won't last long; I'll need them later for the fireplaces. I check my pockets anyway – keys, a passcard to the London Underground – all useless now. There's nothing that would help, and I know that I'm just delaying the inevitable.

"Are you afraid?"

No. I am… "Worried," I admit, taking a deep breath. I thought I was over my fears, but this is my oldest recurring nightmare, slowly becoming real. Already my breathing and heart rate has picked up. I really should calm myself. For my own good.

Harry grins and sits down next to me, surprisingly patient. He goes through his pockets as well, matching my fumbling actions.

"Y'know, I never thought ghosts'd have anything in their pockets," he informs me in a curiously calm, even tone. "Turns out I do. I carried loads of stuff back then, and now everything's still here."

He takes out a handful and opens his hand, showing me its contents, laying them down on the ground one by one. A transparent owl treat on a string, a broken quill, and a couple of Bertie Botts Beans. He checks his other pocket. A sweet wrapper, a pocket knife, a note, "Oi, not a cheat sheet! S'for Arithmancy, so I wouldn't forget the assignment," he explains after glancing at it and shoving it back: "Don't look." An owl feather twined with a long curly hair flutters out and completes his display.

I smile, looking at his hoard of bits and bobs. "Quite a collection."

"Yeah. Too bad it's all like I am. No one else can use or even hold them. Worthless, really."

My breathing is back to normal. "You're worth more than you think," I murmur. He is worth the world to me.

"We should watch out for the Whomping Willow, outside," he reminds me, "When we get there." 'When', not 'If', I notice. For once I'm glad of his Gryffindor optimism, even though I can't share it. "It'd be horrible to come all this way just for the Whomping Willow to knock you out. And you'll need to keep away from locked doors and such; who knows what spells they'll have. We should probably try to get into Hogwarts through one of the side doors rather than the main gates, just to be on the safe side."

"We'll have time to assess the situation when we reach the castle."

He nods, scooping up all his ghostly coins and knickknacks, tucking them safely back in his pockets. "Ready?" He leans down over the entrance. "S'dark. Like looking into a tomb. Brrr!"

"Let's just hope it doesn't become a tomb."

"Could be worse; s' not like there'll be any werewolves this time around." He throws up his hands, laughingly defensive, "Oi, relax, m'joking! C'mon, let's go. Don't worry, I can see in the dark."

I rise and, after taking one last deep breath of fresh air, I follow him underground.

As the light of dusk dims over my head, I see that Harry glows like a faint phosphorus solution. He lights the floor and the walls enough to see the mossy stones an arm's length away. His presence helps. I try to follow him as close as possible, as if he still is capable of reaching out and pulling me away from my nightmares just by taking my hand. He cannot save me from my fears so easily now, but the memory grants me a precious measure of calm.

He can't pull me out of here, because this time it's not just a dream. I remind myself that Remus Lupin is back in London, perhaps returning from the shops with Nymphadora 'I kept my maiden name but might as well be Mrs. Lupin' Tonks. He hasn't transformed in years.

When's the full moon? I asked myself that question for no other reason but to calm my insecurities. But I can't remember. I should! I came too close to being torn apart by a werewolf to forget something like that.

Nonsense. What does it matter?

Perhaps it does. The tunnel is exactly as it has always appeared in my nightmares: night after horrific night, until the terror I felt of the monster has permeated every twist and turn of this place. I cannot help but loathe it: each hanging root, reaching damply to knot in my hair and slow me down; every mossy brick lining the floor, slimy and treacherous. My footsteps echo hollowly, before and behind me. The walls close in, leaving that black and gaping unknown all around me. It's getting harder to breathe again. I lean against the wall. "Wait."

"What is it?" Harry spins round, worried.

I shake my head. "Nothing."

"You don't look good. You're pale."

"So are you." I should say something to him: it'd be the lesser of two evils, since it's obvious he won't let it go without some sort of explanation. "It's not every day you get to revisit your nightmares in person."

He gives an understanding nod. "It's okay to be scared."

Not in this case. "It's irrational to be afraid of something that doesn't exist any longer."

"This place is real enough."

He might be right. I nod, letting him win this argument.

He turns the corner once again, completely unafraid. Being a ghost has only enhanced his impetuous Gryffindor recklessness, and why not? What does a ghost have to fear from the world of the living? I hurry to follow him, unwilling to be left without any light – without seeing him – for even a second. I grip the broom to my chest. Strangely it reminds me of the reality of this place. Not a dream, though dreams do come true after all, it turns out, just not the right ones.

"Almost there," Harry assures me, "That's it. That's the way out."

The tunnel narrows and curves up. I have to get on my hands and knees in order to go any further, because the ceiling is so low to the ground, it isn't high enough for a house elf much less a human. A final turn and instead of the earthy slope my hand finds a wall with no exit in sight. The tunnel must've caved in before the entrance. I push up hoping to break through the layers of dirt above me but they do not move. Of course, just my luck! We are so close and yet so far, but I won't be stopped today. This stale, musty air just makes me all the more desperate for the open air, the air of Hogwarts, that must be just above us.

"Hang on," Harry says. "Maybe I can find out where it's thinnest."

Before I can stop him, he disappears into the soil, leaving me in complete darkness. Staring, blind, the darkness heavy in my chest as I inhale it, I edge all the way up to the highest part of the end of the tunnel. It reminds me that there is a way out of this place. I won't be buried alive here. I won't.

Something squeaks far away, back the way we came.

"Harry?" I shout; the earth around me muffles all noise.

I might've heard a faint "Just a minute," somewhere aboveground. What is he doing out there? Abandoning me? But now, I can definitely hear something else. In the other direction. Down the tunnel. There's definitely a scrabbling sound, and then the sound of feet, far away – closer now – breaking into a run.

I know that sound.

"HURRY!"

No answer.

I claw at the soil, then hurl myself with all my strength against the hard-packed earth knotted with slimy roots, but nothing moves. Is Harry still up there? Frantic, I yell for him again, then listen.

Silence. There's no sound of running feet any more either. It wasn't real; it couldn't have been. It was just my ruined nerves acting up. I closed my eyes somewhere in my senseless panic. I open them, even though I can't see a thing. This narrow space is stifling, I have to crawl back down for just for a second and take in a deep breath.

A fetid gust of breath hits my face and a hungry growl sounds an inch from my nose.

My heart lurches and I swing at the beast with the broom handle, then lunge up into the narrow space, clawing at the soil, digging through it with the broom handle, hoping against hope it'll either provide a way out or collapse altogether, burying my attacker with it. Lupin wasn't the only monster in the world. Something else is about to eat me alive and even Harry can't help me now. Fuck! I never thought I'd die like this! Nightmares do come true and the ground still doesn't move! It never will, I know that already. Another second and then those jaws will tear into me and the agony will start.

"Stop it! Severus!"

Past my frantic breathing, and the attack about to happen, someone yells. It's not me. Harry?

"Riddikulus!"

That spell, futile on Harry's lips, snaps me out of my panic. Or perhaps it's Harry, as he charges straight through me, his glow revealing the snarl of a ravening werewolf.

*Crack!* I see no monster anymore, just a copy of myself, stepping out of the shadows, gaunt and tall and indifferent.

"Foolish ghost, this addiction of yours must come to an end, even you must see that."

Is that how my voice sounds to others? That cold and contemptuous drone?

"Don't say that." Harry's eyes are huge and stunned, and he folds in on himself, small and frail and unexpectedly trembling. "You aren't real."

Stunned, half buried under the dirt, I watch myself emerge from the shadows, looming over Harry like a Dementor. "Neither are you." it drawls, disinterested.

"You aren't my Severus!"

"How could I ever be your Severus? I don't love you."

"That's a lie!" Harry's desperate cry resonates from the tunnel walls. "Riddikulus!"

Is that what Harry's afraid of? Me?

I sneer at the Boggart's version of myself. "Is that the best you can do? Pathetic! That'll never happen, and Harry knows it!" He does, doesn't he? I look at Harry. Relief floods his face.

Somehow that gives me a new burst of strength and I stab upward with the broom one last time, pushing and shoving. Something breaks in a burst of white pain and a groan of shearing fibres: a bone? No, the broom: it fractures into two, its shards sharp in my hands. It doesn't matter just then, because when I pull the shards back, a ray of light follows them: as fine as the line between life and death. I keep on digging, one half of the broomstick in each hand, shoving chunks of dirt aside as they fall all around me, spitting up dust, but not caring at all because just there, above me there's fresh air and a field and no Boggart can overcome the sheer wild joy born at the sight of it. In the silence, I hear Harry's sudden, frantic laughter. For the very first time it sounds deliberate and forced. And then I laugh too, because no Boggart can withstand that. I laugh hoarsely, and just as desperately as Harry; because I have no strength to weep for the ruin of the Firebolt, I laugh in relief that I am alive; and I laugh in irony, because I have come all this way, only to almost give in to a blasted Boggart. But most of all, I laugh to dispel Harry's worst fear. I don't love you. The one thing I'll never say. Harry must know that.

At last I struggle out from under the layers of dirt and tangled roots, just like a vampire digging his way out of the grave for the first time. In an irony that a lifetime's interest in the Dark Arts has left me supremely suited to appreciate, I note that I'm holding a sharp wooden stake in each fist: the remains of the broomstick.

The Boggart hasn't dared to follow.

"Um," Harry says tentatively. "I found out why the tunnel collapsed. The Willow…" he shrugs, "…look!"

I turn, ready to dive for cover if needed from the deadly branches, but my embarrassingly belated care is useless. Next to us lies a carcass of a tree, a trunk toppled and dry, its hollow limbs rotting on the ground. In the mud caked around the gnarled roots, the rat tracks continue on and disappear into the grass. Looks like one rat has dug out an escape path, and so have we.

The waning moon breaks out of the clouds; its light glistens on lake, and I can make out the dark line of the Forbidden Forest stretching ahead of us, and in its gloom, the outline of Hagrid's hut is just visible.

Harry gasps. I turn, and there, past the dried Whomping Willow …

… lies nothing but ruins, in the place where Hogwarts used to be.

"NO!" Harry screams, piercing and loud. "That wasn't there!" He runs a short way on into the field before his momentum fails him and he crumples to his knees.

Moonlight spills onto the silent black lake and the Forbidden Forest: they look much the same as ever they did. But when I turn my gaze back toward Hogwarts, the castle ruins are still there, nearly flattened to the ground. Only the foundations still remain amid piles of rubble. "It's not real! It's not Hogwarts! I saw Hogwarts! Right THERE! It wasn't LIKE that!" Harry cries, looking back at me as if he expects me to bring the castle back to life, perhaps with a wave of my lost wand. In front of him, the ruined halls and towers loom: abandoned, emptied of hope.

What happened here? Did the Death Eaters reach the castle after all? Or perhaps Dumbledore sensed the danger, the beginning of the end, and took down the enchantments – all the way down, down to the foundations – sending the towers crashing down onto the end of an era, letting Hogwarts fall rather than letting it fall into the wrong hands. We'll never know for certain, but one thing is horrifyingly clear: this desolation is what Harry haunted all those years. He was so convinced that this ruin was the castle he remembered, that Hogwarts manifested itself in his dreamscapes.

I walk up to him, using the broken broomstick to prop up a body whose bones feel less solid than that shattered wood; it's surprising I have enough strength left to move at all. I try to ignore the burn slowly eating its way through my chest. Because of it, I cannot walk up the hill more than a couple of weak steps at a time.

It can't just end here. But the ruins are old, overgrown: they've been abandoned for years, just like Hogsmeade, and it's too late to do anything. All is lost. The last hope of the Wizarding World never existed, beyond the dreams of a dead man.

"I SAW it!" Harry cries, hysterical. "You've got to believe me! Hogwarts was real!"

Yes, his dreamscapes were always real enough to him. And because he believed so desperately that his home remained intact, Hogwarts became real, just for a while. Just for him.

"I didn't make it up. Do you think I did?"

The burn in my chest is stronger, and there is no use denying the truth. There is no cure waiting for me at Hogwarts. There is no Hogwarts left.

For one bright day Harry let me believe in a happy ending, and I am thankful to him for that. I'm not angry, not even disappointed. I just wish I could comfort him now. Before it's too late.

"Shh," I murmur. "I believe that you believe."

"That's… It's not enough! I saw it, all right? I know Hogwarts is real! I lived in it! I'm not crazy!"

"I never thought for a moment that you were."

He points. "That's Hagrid's grave over there, past his cabin. Mrs. Norris liked to sit there in the sun and that was the only time Fang wouldn't chase her. I can't have dreamed it all!" He's frantic. I wish I could calm him.

He pants, on the verge of tears or screaming, ripping his glasses off and dropping his head into his hands, pressing his palms over his eyes. "I… I don't want to look again. I keep thinking it'll be just like it was again, any moment now." He scrubs his eyes and sticks his glasses back on, blinking blearily. "It won't be, though, will it?"

"No," I sigh. "It won't."

He stares at the pieces of broomstick in my hands.

"I broke your Firebolt. I'm sorry."

"It's not that. How're we going to get back? Not by Floo." Disappointment rings in his voice.

About that… "I always suspected it would be a one way trip."

"What?" He blinks.

"I have something to confess. Sit down." I take a deep breath. Please, let him forgive me in time. I check the contents of my pocket. The phial is still there. I take it out.

"What's that for?"

"There's something I need you to do."

He nods. "Go on."

"Ignis Alba is used for cremation." I hurry to get the words out before he can bombard me with questions, "One day I'd like you to break this over my body."

He looks stunned. "Wait! Are you serious?"

"I've seen you move objects, Harry. It's small. You only need to lift it high enough and drop it on the ground."

Slowly, very slowly he adjusts his glasses and looks up. "You're really strange at times. Are you going to carry that phial with you for the next hundred years?" I don't answer. His face sobers up. "And will you stop talking as if you're going to die tomorrow? You're not! Who am I going to haunt if you do?"

"I haven't been entirely honest with you. Sit."

"I don't need to sit!"

"Harry, listen. I don't have much TIME!"

A completely stunned look stops me from yelling again. "Is this a test?" he asks quietly. "Or a joke? It isn't funny!"

"It isn't meant to be funny. It's the truth."

"If this is about Hogwarts, we'll find a way…"

"It's got nothing to do with Hogwarts!" I pant for a moment, continue in lower tones, "It's my scar."

He frowns, remembering. "That time you collapsed in Diagon Alley: was it the scar too?"

"It's a heart condition. It's getting worse."

"But y-you can fix this, right? There's got to be a way!"

Suddenly, even taking my next breath is a challenge. "There isn't."

Utter horror wrings his expression. As if he's facing a Boggart, only this time the Boggart is me. "Take that back," he says weakly. "You're going to be just fine! We'll fix it somehow."

"I can't." I reach out: how I wish I could hold him, just this once, in the waking world. "I'm so sorry, Harry."

I lean back against the willow's dry trunk, and look up into a sky now cleared of clouds. Twilight dies down behind the ruins.

"Y'know, when you told us in first year that you could teach us to bottle death, for a while there I really believed you," Harry says softly against my shoulder. "Even took notes. Nothing's s'posed to happen to you, not for a hundred years or more. It's not fair." He drops his head and rubs his face against his sleeve. "Don't look at me."

I look anyway, even though he doesn't want me to. "It's all right."

"No it's not. I'm like this and you're the one who should be a nervous wreck."

"I expected to die seven years ago; I'm used to the idea by now."

"Aren't you afraid?"

I shake my head.

"It's OK to be afraid sometimes," he confides, "I was, a bit."

"It's inevitable, one way or the other. I've learned not to waste time worrying about things I can't change."

"I should've guessed sooner. Maybe then I could've done something."

"Don't blame yourself."

"I'm not. It's nobody's fault. That's why it's so terrible."

"Shh. It's not terrible."

"Course it is! I don't know what to do. I always do, and now I haven't got a fucking clue what to do next!"

"Well, first, I'm going to try and fall asleep. If that's the end, I should very much like to hold you, as long as possible." Before it's too late.

"Everything ends at Hogwarts then," Harry whispers, and this is exactly how I'd like to meet that end, with Harry's arms around me, in a brief, nearly perfect moment. If I have to die, I'd like to leave this world satisfied, because everything I wished for in life came true. Harry settles down next to me, and we sit in silence: two travellers who have finally reached the end of the world and have nowhere else to go.

"What's that one?" He points at the darkening sky and I whisper the names of the stars to him as they brighten above us: Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Polaris.

"And that?" he squints, blurry-eyed, and points low at the horizon at a winking dot in Orion's belt.

"An airplane."

He snorts, and together we watch the flickering Muggle-made star travel across the sky from Andromeda to Lyra, and finally disappear, as the rest of the stars grow dim in my sight.

I'm in what looks like Harry's dormitory bed, judging by the red curtains drawn closed around all sides. Harry's curled up in the centre of the bed, the wand beside him glowing with a faint Lumos.

I pull him to me and hold on tight, until the Lumos fades and all I hear in the darkness is his strained, uneven breathing. The weight of his head pressing into my shoulder eases, but I can feel the flicker of his eyelashes: wet and warm.

"How long left?"

I hide my face in his hair, revelling in its silky warmth. How good would it be if I never had to lift my head again. "Days. If I'm lucky." As soon as he moves, pulling away from me, I wish I hadn't said that. I don't tell him that it's a rather optimistic estimate.

"It was easier when I hated you. I can't hate you now." He sniffs and I can feel the bed move as he begins to rock slowly back and forth.

"I've got you." My arms slide around his shoulders, supporting them as they begin to hitch.

"I just found this. I don't ever want to give you up."

"Just let it go," I murmur.

"M'not going to cry! Or accept it. It's not fair!"

"Life isn't. You can't control this."

"Maybe I can! I control everything else in here. It's my dream, and I'm not going to let you go!"

I know that's not how it works, and almost certainly, so does he. But I don't tell him what he already knows: the terrible truth that dreams – tantalising and wonderful though they are – can never be real. I've had to be cruel so many times in my life, for the best of reasons, but I can't be cruel anymore, not now. Not to Harry. So instead I lean forward until my forehead's resting against his, and I husk, hoarse through a tight throat, "Then don't let go! I don't want you to." It's as if I'm breathing in his desperation with the warmth of his breath; suddenly I'm fierce with determination, to have this, to give him this. One last time. "Do whatever you want, as long as it's with me. Enthral me, taunt me, tease me…" I lean that little bit closer, breathe the last words against his lips, "Haunt me."

"Hold me." he gasps into my mouth, immediate as an echo.

I wrap my arms around him, warm and tight. My fingers glide over the rigid planes of his back and shoulders, and I knead his tense muscles. His hands slide up my sides and dig into my back. His breath is sobbing, uneven, hot against my neck.

"Harder!" he cries, in a strange, strained voice.

Any harder and I'll hurt him. I pull him as close as I can and hold on anyway. I whisper to him – things I don't even comprehend myself – and stroke his skin until he stops shaking and the tension ebbs slowly from him. Finally he rests his forehead on my shoulder and takes a deep breath, going heavy and still against me.

The worst has passed.

I inhale slow and deep, drunk on the scent and the touch and the warmth and the sheer living reality of him. "What would happen in a dream, if someone made you lose your focus? Would everything disappear?"

"Dunno." He tilts his head, leaving so much more skin for me to explore; it draws me inevitably closer. "Never tried it deliberately. I s'pose the dream would end."

"In that case," I let my hands wander teasingly underneath his shirt, across his abdomen and up his chest. "You should concentrate," I murmur against his lips, and run my hands over his chest, down the line where his collarbones meet. "I want this to last."

"Right," he gasps, "Good idea." His hands reach for my belt. His mouth finds mine.

It's not enough time – it'll never be enough – but for now, time stands still.

For first admittance into Hogwarts' wards,
A single way all travellers must take:
All must entrust themselves to waters dark,
And voyage there across the castle's lake.

These are the secret ways that run

Then once your maiden voyage is complete,
The ways to enter in will multiply:
If Hogwarts grants you leave, you then may pass
On Thestral's wings, or on a broom may fly.

More eastward than the rising sun;

If those within will light for you a hearth,
You'll reach the castle rapidly by Floo.
You may arrive more slowly via boat,
But only if that boat was sent for you.

To wizard eyes alone are shewn

Or else, if those arrangements don't appeal,
More stylish travel plans can then be hatched:
By horseless carriage you may be conveyed,
If first a carriage for you was dispatched.

More westward than the setting moon;

You need not even stay above the ground;
Avail yourself of tunnels in the earth,
To exit Hogwarts' grounds and then return,
As long as in those grounds your mine had birth.

Such paths may only wizards know

But if the castle's welcome you have not,
In searching waste your life! All search will err,
No magic, wit, nor might will find your road:
It is as though the castle never were.

Beyond all roads where Muggles go.

The tracks to Hogsmeade are inspired by an article about a road to Wharram Percy, a deserted medieval village in Yorkshire.

The poem is by the multitalented Sinick who managed to turn my early ideas into something that made much more sense.