Just got home from the ER with the little (apparently he has croup), where the girl in the next bed was 14, very drunk, and rather uncooperative. She and the girl she was brought in with kept launching themselves at one another violently and screaming "I LOVE YOU!" It was intense. Aaaanyway. The point is, it's technically tomorrow already, so... here ya go.

Draco POV

Draco floated in darkness.

Am I dead? he wondered. He didn't know. There was only nothing. Darkness.

He tried to move, to speak, but found he had far too little energy. He stopped trying. Floated through nothing. Darkness.

He felt something nagging at him. Something he had yet to do. But when he tried to reach for the memory, it skittered away from him. He tried again, and was rewarded with a burst of agonizing pain that lanced through him, reducing him once again to nothing. Darkness.

He didn't try again.

He floated.

Sometime later – hours? Seconds? Years? Time was meaningless in that dark place – something tugged at him.

He resisted, remembering the searing pain, but the tug was insistent.

Reluctantly, he reached for it.

And then, suddenly, the nothingness receded, light came flooding back, and sound, and movement, and everything was rushing past and it was just too much! Draco clapped his hands over his ears and screamed, trying to drown out the noise. He shut his eyes, as tightly as he could, but it wasn't enough. It would never be enough. He opened his eyes, saw Harry's lifeless face, and screamed again.

The nothingness reared up to claim him once more, but Hermione was too quick for it. Her wand waved in front of Draco's eyes, her lips formed words that his shattered brain couldn't make sense of. But the darkness receded.

Draco found his voice.

"'Mione?" he croaked. "What happened?"

To his surprise, she tackled him in a crushing embrace. "Oh, Draco, thank God! I was so worried – you just collapsed – oh, Draco, I didn't know what to do!"

Draco patted her back awkwardly.

Ginny, predictably, slapped him. "Draco!" she screeched, "what were you thinking? You can't give up – you have to save Harry!"

Draco stared at her, looked down at Harry's body, then quickly back at Ginny. "He's dead, Gin."

"Draco!" Hermione shouted, in his ear since she was still clinging to him. "Draco! The snitch! The one Dumbledore left to Harry! Oh, please tell me you have it!"

Draco fumbled in his pocket, pulled out the snitch. He could feel its wings beating feebly against his fingers; whatever stasis charm Dumbledore had put on it had broken.

Draco opened his hand, gazed down at the small golden ball. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do next.

Acting on a sudden impulse, a half-remembered remark, he reached out and gently touched the snitch to Harry's lips.

As Harry had said, a delicate script appeared, circling the snitch.

"I open at the close." Hermione wrinkled her nose. "It doesn't make any more sense now than it did when Harry first showed it to me."

Draco ignored her. He had the barest inkling of an idea, and he waited, as patiently as he could, hardly daring to breathe as the idea drifted closer, took form. As if in a dream, he raised the snitch to his own lips, pressed it to them, the way he'd done to Harry's.

Hermione fell silent; he could feel everyone in the room holding their breath, leaning in.

And then the snitch connected with his lips, and a blinding light flashed out from inside it, as cracks spread along the surface. The cracks widened, joined, fractured the snitch into a hundred pieces. A thousand. Ten thousand. Then the light, which now seemed to be holding the sphere together, winked out. The pieces fell, scattered into dust. A ring tumbled out onto Draco's palm.

Hermione drew in a sharp breath. "But… But, that's the resurrection stone! We destroyed it! At least, Dumbledore said we did…"

And Draco abruptly understood. A Horcrux. But if all the Horcruxes weren't really gone… He glanced up at the dais, where Voldemort's body lay crumpled.

And then a voice by his ear chuckled. A familiar voice. The voice of a dead man. Dumbledore.

"Not to worry, my dear," it said, far too cheerfully, in Draco's opinion, for someone who was supposed to be dead. "We did destroy the Horcrux in Godric's ring."

Hermione seemed unphased to hear the former Headmaster's voice. "But, destroying the other Horcruxes always destroyed their containers."

"Oh, it destroyed this one, too," Dumbledore said. "Or, it will, very soon. I placed a stasis spell on it. A stasis spell which young Mister Malfoy has just broken. Marvellous work, dear boy," he added, presumably to Draco, "but, now you'd best hurry. That ring won't hold together much longer, and there's someone here who wants to talk to you."

Draco looked up hopefully. "Harry?"

"No, I'm afraid not." Dumbledore chuckled at Draco's crestfallen look. "Harry's not here yet, my boy, and hopefully won't be for some time yet, if you play your cards right. Now, congratulations to you all again for your clever victory."

Dumbledore's voice faded away, to be replaced by one unfamiliar to Draco. He glanced around, but none of the others crowded around him seemed to recognize it, either.

"Draco!"it said urgently, " Draco! Can you hear me?"

"Er, yes? Who are you?"

"Cygnus Black, but, we really don't have time for introductions just now. Draco! Does Harry have some sort of stone or amulet on him?"

Draco frowned, trying to think. "I don't know."

"Well, don't just stand there gawping! Dig through his pockets, man! I can sense something, but I need to get closer to be sure…"

Draco quickly turned out Harry's pockets. There was plenty of debris, but nothing that looked like a stone or amulet. Finally, as he dumped out the last pocket, Cygnus shouted "Wait! It's in there – I can feel it!"

Draco dug through the lint and candy wrappers, finally unearthing what looked like a worry stone, small and unassuming.

"Is this it?" he held it up, dubious.

"Yes! Yes! Quick – put the ring next to the stone!"

"What is it?" asked Hermione, as Draco scrambled to comply.

The instant the stone and the ring were both in Draco's hand, he knew. Cygnus' memories of the stone flooded his mind, merging with the passages from the Black Library that he'd been searching for information on the wards, passages that he'd not even known he'd memorized.

A soft chuckle brushed through his mind. "Well, I might have helped with that, a little. But you've a fantastic memory – most of it was already there. Now, go bring your lover back, and do the Black name proud. Good luck to you, Draco!"

With a final, affectionate brush, the other mind slipped away. The ring crumbled to dust in Draco's hand. But he still had the stone. And now he knew what he had to do.

"Draco?" Hermione asked nervously, when he opened his eyes. "What is that?" She pointed to the stone lying innocently on his palm.

"The Heart's Blood Stone," he answered absently.

Hermione drew in a startled breath. "But that's – "

Draco nodded. "A life for a life, freely given," he quoted, seeing the ancient grimoire he'd read those words in, in his mind's eye. Reviewing what he had to do.

"Draco…"

He looked up at her, letting his pain show. "I have to, 'Mione. I can't live without him." He smiled faintly. "Watch my back, yeah? Don't let anyone near, 'til it's done."

She bit her lip, but nodded resolutely. Luna, Pansy, and Ginny echoed her nod.

"Good luck," added Ginny, clapping him on the back.

Then the four girls moved back, formed a protective ring around Draco. He smiled at each in turn, letting his eyes say what his words couldn't. "Thanks."

He clutched the Heart's Blood Stone tightly in one fist, whispering a spell to slice open his wrist. He coated the stone in his blood, then dipped his finger into the sticky liquid, dabbed it on Harry's chest, over his heart. On his own. He sliced open Harry's wrist to match, pressed the cuts together, and bent to capture Harry's lips with his own.

I love you, he thought fiercely, and I swore to bring you back alive. I will not let you be dead, do you hear me, Harry Potter? I. Will. Not. Let. You. Be. Dead.

With the final words, everything faded to white.