A/N: it's been forever, I know, and I feel like crap about it :( However, I'm SO happy to finally update! Remember, I don't abandon stories, I just... take effing forever. Sorry. More importantly, special thanks to phlox and Dayang Lucilla, two outrageously talented dramione writers who archive at Hawthorn & Vine. They helped me unstick a few wickets in this chapter, and I can't recommend their work highly enough.


Chapter 11: For Water in a Sieve

He opened the hatch, and a cloud of vapour spread out so thick it blocked his vision. Holding the broom steady, he waved his free hand in front of his face until it partially dispersed. He'd expected darkness, but instead there were scattered white lights that appeared to dart around of their own accord behind what remained of the cloud. He pushed through cautiously, and the lights were darting: the dungeons were so packed with ghosts that they may as well have been lit by a hundred wayward moons. He stopped cold and took in the scene as the weight of it overtook his body. The broom sank until his feet were flat on the floor. He'd never felt so heavy in his life.

"A baby," said the one voice he could hear, somewhere between a whisper and a whine. "There's a baby crying somewhere."

For a time they sat like stone, on a broom that may very well have belonged to the man who locked the cell door on that child for the last time. Draco's vision sharpened slowly, and the ghosts drifted in and out of focus. Each had different marks of torture—some were burned, tiny wand-tip burns scattered like constellations. Some were animal-scratched and sharp-teeth bitten, others sliced and pierced so deeply that silver echoes of blood dripped from their torn clothing onto the stone floor; all of their bellies were distended beneath ribs he could count. None, he knew, had died from their injuries. Every one of them had been left with cruel murky water troughs to starve; without hydration, they would have been spared precious days or even weeks of pain. He couldn't see the baby Granger heard, though. He hoped that he never would.

"Malfoy," she said, close to his ear. She exhaled against his neck, and his shoulders twitched violently. "Sorry," she added, probably for startling him. He shrugged, and then he felt her small warm hand on the middle of his back. Her fingers pressed against his spine, and his head tipped forward until his chin was on his chest.

He was sorry, too. Much, much sorrier than she could ever be—so profoundly sorry that the word became a mockery of itself in his mind. Sorry, he thought. It sounded almost quaint. Sorry: two musical syllables that went up at the end, climbing toward hope. Sorry was for people who might one day be forgiven, for people who could point to exactly the place where they'd gone wrong. Granger could have her sorry. Draco was so awful far gone that some long-dormant god would wake and strike him down if he dared speak it aloud.

Aimlessly the ghosts wandered, some moving their mouths to speak or just to scream and scream. Still, he could not move.

"Malfoy," Granger said again, with compassion. Her hand moved on his back, brushed the back of his neck through his clothes. "Malfoy—"

"Draco," he corrected, when he found his voice. It would only be a slight improvement, but better than nothing. "Don't call me that anymore. Don't call me that ever again."

"All right," she said, her voice so soothing. "Draco, don't forget that these ghosts are very old."

"Some of them," he said. "Not all." It was impossible to tell which were which, since they all wore the same dirty grey rags.

"Either way, you didn't kill them." It was true. No one killed them, technically speaking. They had been left to die; left with water, the most painful torture device in any sadist's arsenal. He had known of this trick for years but never saw the evidence, and now he'd never think of water the same way again.

Little by little, the ghosts began to take notice of their visitors. Two young women approached them, holding hands—sisters, by the look of them, with deep rope burns crisscrossing their exposed flesh in small, even diamonds. They lingered before him, staring, and then one spoke.

"Yes," Granger answered, "but he's protecting me."

The ghost spoke again, then cocked her head this way and that, confused.

"Because he isn't like the other ones. He—"

The second ghost interrupted, and her sister smiled. Whatever she'd said must have been a joke.

"They already have," Granger said, but she wasn't laughing.

This was the opposite of what he'd expected from the dungeons: Granger was the one having one-sided chats with the restless dead, and he was the one paralyzed in post-traumatic quicksand. The two ghosts stepped closer, gawking at Draco like they'd never seen anything like him before. One of them addressed him directly.

"She wants to know why we can see her now," Granger translated.

He had to think for a moment, since he hadn't the faintest clue. "The house is broken," he said at last. "You've been here all along, then? Invisible?"

The ghost answered him at length, gesturing to the walls and to her sister, growing visibly angry as she spoke.

"I'm so sorry," Granger said—that word again—but she squeezed Draco's shoulder as if she were apologising to him.

"Do I want to know what she said?" he asked quietly.

"I doubt it," Granger replied. She paused while the ghost spoke again. "Oh, his ears are charmed so he can only hear me. It's a long story." Another pause. "No, we're all right."

There had only been a few times in his life when he'd been less "all right" than he was at that moment, but it was in Granger's nature to be polite.

"Believe me, I was just as surprised as you are," she said. He stopped trying to guess what the ghost was saying, and instead took a moment to get his bearings. "Still am, really."

He closed his eyes and tried to regain his focus.

"Thank you, I'll tell him."

He could tell from the way she said it that this was the end of the conversation, and so he opened his eyes. The two ghosts nodded in unison, then walked straight forward through them both with purpose. Draco had been walked through by ghosts before, and it had never been a pleasant experience; however, this time it felt smooth and refreshing, like a frozen drink on a hot summer day. He hadn't known that ghosts could do something like that, change the way they felt to the living, but he couldn't claim to be an expert on them. He could only be thankful for the brief reprieve.

"What did she want you to tell me?" he asked. His headache was gone now, and his mood improved.

"Well, er, basically 'good luck.'" She sounded nervous, and he could tell she was lying.

"What did she really say?"

"I mean, that was the gist of it," she said evasively. He should have known better than to keep pushing, but he really felt that he had to know. Maybe he deserved to hear it, even.

"Just tell me, Granger."

He heard her sigh behind him, in the way of someone who knew better indulging a profoundly stupid whim. "If you insist. She doesn't think we're going to get out alive, but she hopes that we won't end up like her when we die."

"How encouraging."

"Well, what did you expect? I wouldn't have much optimism left, either, if I were her."

Whatever was left, he knew, had been given away when the women walked through them. The pleasantly cool energy still hummed just beneath his skin, and Granger's words gave him a new appreciation of the gift—given to a Malfoy, no less. No such gift would have been offered to his ancestors; never willingly, and so they had stolen, and all that they took had been passed down to him before the blood on it even had a chance to dry. This gift, from a tortured long-dead woman who owed him less than nothing, may have been the first time he'd ever received anything but stolen goods.

You can have it all, he thought, for he still could not bring himself to say it. Ransack this house, empty it, turn it upside-down and inside-out and leave it like that. Who needs it. Who needs it.

"Draco," Granger said, "do you think we could keep moving now? I... I'd really rather not be here." Of course she wanted to leave—she had come closer than he'd like to admit to walking among these bitter dead.

"Yeah," he said. Cautiously, he pushed the broom forward.

The ghosts stood back to give them a wide breadth, lining up on either side and watching as they moved. Some of them were talking, but Granger didn't respond. He could tell by their faces that very few were as quick to forgive a fallen Malfoy as the first two. Mercifully, Granger didn't tell him what they said. He felt her curl up behind him and press her face against his back, probably shielding her eyes, for now it was his turn to be strong. It should have been from the start, really, but he'd been weak for so long that by now it was second-nature.

He kept his gaze straight ahead, avoiding eye contact with their audience. They passed through the northernmost part of the dungeons, and he remembered a long-overdue piece of knowledge.

"We can get to the West Wing from here," he said.

"We can?" Desperate hope.

"Yes. Not East, but West. We can get the Portkey out of my bedroom."

She stirred at that, clapping both hands on his shoulders. "We will survive!" Her voice was near-tears or maybe all the way there; he couldn't tell for sure. "We aren't going to die here!"

She wasn't, actually. He still probably would, but he wasn't going to tell her that part. If he did, he knew she'd try to stop him. "That's right," he said. "We're almost out. Just hold on."

He sped up, careening around corners and past open cells. With no way out, the doors were rarely locked after the interrogation phase: what would be the point? May as well let the prisoners go for walks, let them see the other bodies rotting wherever they had fallen, at last too broken to stand back up. The bones were still there, too, although he tried not to look at them—scattered randomly like the ruins of a fragile human city. Some of them were gnawed on, for the open cell doors also offered their starving occupants one final choice that Draco couldn't bring himself to contemplate.

Almost to the entrance of the West Wing, Draco stopped short—in one of the few locked cells, a ghost stood alone, peering out through the bars, so obviously a Malfoy that they could have been brothers. He wore the same rags as all the others, but both his hands had been roughly severed at the wrists. Being a Malfoy, his touch would have set him free; taking his hands was the only way to lock him in. Directly above where his hands used to be, his forearms bore identical burned-in scars: BLOOD TRAITOR.

They made eye contact, Draco and the ghost, studying each other in silence. After a moment, the ghost gave a slow nod of respect, then raised his right stump to his forehead and offered a grotesque solute. Despite the bile climbing his throat, Draco forced himself to return it. It was the least he could do.

"Are we there?" Granger asked. She must have still been hiding her face. "Is something wrong?" His back was wet now where his robes were soaked through with her tears.

"Everything's going to be fine," he said, lying through his teeth, before pushing the broom back up to speed. At the end of the last corridor, he found the hatch. "I'm opening the door now."

She exhaled deeply as he pressed his hand into the centre of the hatch. The internal mechanism unlocked, and the round metal door swung forward. He felt Granger pick her head up as soon as it closed behind them, leaving them in darkness. He wasn't afraid, though, since he knew why.

"Where are we?" she asked. He lit his wand to reveal a deep but narrow closet with sturdy shelves along the walls.

"Broom storage loft," he said. He would have laughed at the bitter absurdity if his sense of humour hadn't long since sunk to the bottom of some frozen black lake: his ancestors never would have put an entrance to the dungeons in plain view. How tasteless it would have been, how utterly tacky. The hatch was even charmed to disappear into the wall when not in use; someone had to know where it was to find it, which was why Draco had nearly forgotten it existed.

"Oh," she said. "Should we trade this one in for a newer model?"

"Not much point," he said. "It flies all right, since we aren't going very fast or far. It'd be different if we were playing Quidditch or something—" He cut himself off, struck by another memory that may have been funny in another universe: Quidditch had started this whole thing. It wasn't so long ago that Draco's biggest priority had been to make sure his favourite team lost a match. "No," he continued after a tense silence. "This one will do just fine. In fact, we don't really need to be riding it in here."

He glanced at Granger over his shoulder, and she nodded. Her eyes were wide and red-rimmed but dry, and she leaned heavily on his shoulder as she stepped off. Only one of her feet made it to the floor before her legs gave way. His light swung around and then went out when he dropped his wand to catch her. In the darkness again, he could only hear her ragged breathing as his fingers dug into her arm just below the shoulder. Trembling head-to-toe, she lifted her other leg over the broom, then immediately collapsed. Draco let the broom fall and caught her with both hands before she hit the ground. Dead weight like a doll, she fell against his chest and all at once erupted into great, heaving sobs.

He felt dizzy and nauseous and every single kind of sick, every last damned way to be lost, as he held her. The darkness was their only blessing.

"I'm sorry," she rasped between terrible gasps. "God, I'm sorry—I can't—I can't—"

Don't say that, he wanted to beg, but it would have been more selfish than he could bear.

"Just let it out, I reckon," he said awkwardly instead, although opening his mouth was tempting fate when he was already this close to vomiting. He swallowed again and again, waiting it out, until finally Granger went quiet and still. They remained in the darkness for much too long after, and Draco knew he'd have to be the one to move things along; something, anything so she'd be willing to face him again. He could only imagine how much she must have hated to let him see her in such a state, because she didn't know that he would have been sobbing right along with her if he weren't so godforsaken numb. That no-handed salute kept playing in his head.

"I'm just as embarrassed as you are," he managed.

At first he thought she'd started crying again, but no—it was a jolt of laughter. "I doubt it," she said.

"Sure, you do—you've always got to be in first place." Oh, bleakest humour, keep us sane.

She laughed again, and her body slowly unfroze. She hugged him back briefly, then pushed herself away. He breathed easier.

He picked up the broom off the floor while she Accio'd his wand, which relit once she'd placed it back in his hand. He shrank the broom and dropped it into the pocket of his robes, then lead the way out of the closet.

The familiarity of his own dimly lit wing brought unexpected relief, except that it wasn't entirely as he remembered—the wallpaper pattern, which had always looked like spiders, had taken its illusion to the next level. It bulged and writhed against the surface of the walls, as though nothing but a thin, transparent veneer were keeping a billion tiny spiders from swarming out and filling the whole wing.

Granger made a disgusted noise, and he inwardly agreed, but they pressed onward. It was nice, at least, to have all the amenities of civilization back at their fingertips. He planned to take a break here after he sent her on her way, especially since he also had a stash of snack food in his room. He was hungry and badly in need of a shower.

They reached his bedroom, which had also changed since the last time they'd seen it—the magical storage compartment under the bed was emitting thick black smoke as though it were on fire. After he cast a charm to contain it, his bed appeared to sit atop a glass case full of coal-burning stoves. Granger stood by, searching the room anxiously, probably trying to figure out which trinket was their ticket out.

"Here it is," he said, indicating a faceted crystal paper weight on his bedside table. He picked it up and held it out. "Are you ready?"

She narrowed her eyes. "Why are you smiling?"

"What?" To tell the truth, he'd neglected to keep track of what his face was doing; it must have reverted to the usual mask he wore when telling big, fat lies. He forced his lips back down. "I'm relieved to be getting out," he amended.

She stepped closer, tilting her head, and folded her hands deliberately behind her back. "Is that so?"

He stretched his arm out toward her until the crystal nearly touched her chest. "Is it that hard to believe that I'm glad to be staying alive?"

Even as exhausted as she clearly was, she didn't buy it for a second. "What about your mother?" she countered. "Are you sure she's safe?"

The problem was that he was just as beaten-down as Granger, and keeping a straight face took more energy than he could spare. "I'll find her later," he said, gritting his teeth.

Granger studied him for a moment, and then her features softened into an expression of sorrow and disbelief. Even with the dirt on her cheeks, he had to admit that it was beautiful. "Draco," she said, "this is a very noble thing that you're trying to do, but I can help you."

"I'm not trying to do anything."

She cast him another look, and he couldn't meet her eyes any longer. "I'm just as committed as you are," she said. "You wouldn't be in this mess if it weren't for me."

"Just take the Portkey," he said, staring at the floor. "I'm too tired to talk to you right now."

"I'm not touching that thing, because I know there's no way you're really going with me." Her voice rose steadily in frustration. "You can't do this alone, and I don't know why you'd even want to! I'm already here. I want to stay."

"Granger, take it." He nudged her with the crystal just below the collarbone, once gently and then again harder, and she wobbled on her uncertain legs. "Look at you—you're useless now anyway. You're just a crying, stumbling mess." It wasn't hard to be mean, since he was so worn down anyway. It came naturally, like weakness.

"No, that won't work this time." She lifted her chin and licked her dry, cracked lips. "Nothing you say could make me take that Portkey."

"Fine," he said. He allowed his hand to drop and took a breath, gathering whatever pathetic stores remained of his strength. When he was ready, he looked up and launched himself at her. She cried out in pain and surprise, and he turned her around and pinned her to the bed, keeping her hands behind her back. "Then we'll do this the hard way."

Her hands were clenched into tight fists, and it took a fair bit of effort to pry her fingers apart. "Stop it," she spat, with her cheek pressed hard against his blankets. "Draco! Let me go, you need me!"

"I'll be fine," he growled, as he tugged at her tiny fists. She kicked backward at his shins, and he had to use his whole body just to keep her still. "And I'll be damned if I let you die here."

She screamed in frustration, fighting him as hard as she could with every muscle she could move. "You'll die without me!"

"I don't care!" He didn't want to hurt her, but every cell in his body was fixed on getting her out, whether she wanted to stay or not.

There was no way in heaven or earth that he could live with himself if any more harm came to her from his home. He readied the crystal in his right hand, pinning her with his torso, and struck the back of her head with the flat of his left palm—not hard enough to hurt, but enough to surprise. Her hands opened reflexively for a fraction of a second, just long enough for him to wedge the crystal inside. He wrapped his hand around hers, keeping it tight, and he realised she was crying again. Her body went limp. He felt like a monster, but it was nothing new; he'd felt like a monster all day.

"Please," she whispered. "Don't do this."

"I have to," he said. He relaxed until his body was flat against hers, with his cheek resting on the back of her head. "I can't even believe you're fighting me. You know you don't deserve to stay here."

With her face sideways under his, she smiled. "Funny phrasing," she said. "You could have said the same words and meant the exact opposite a week ago."

Any second now, he would have to activate the Portkey and resign himself to finishing this alone. Weak as he was, he was putting it off. Also, after hitting her and pinning her to his bed, he owed her a proper goodbye: this was simply no way to treat a lady.

"I just want you to know," he began. His voice cracked on every other word, but he kept going anyway. "You're just as brave and good and clever as anybody ever said. Even more. You're even better than you get credit for, and that's saying something."

More tears slid down her cheeks onto his blanket; he was surprised she had any left. "Thanks," she whispered. He could feel that she'd given up, and impulsively he pressed a soft kiss against her temple.

"Peacock," he said, a moment-ruining non sequitur if there ever was one. The crystal activated, and he began to count in his head: five, four, three, two

At the last possible second, he let go of her hand.