(A/N-- I'm sorry I had to post this revised edition of chapter 18... i forgot that Arle has Draco's wand so that means Draco doesn't... Yeah, sorry about that confusion... ;) Anyways, thanks to all the reviewers and readers... I appreciate your reviews!!)
CHAPTER 18: PYR-PSYCHIC
He could hear voices echoing through the room. The first voice was male and gentle, the second an oddly familiar female voice, raised with undeniable passion.
He couldn't hear what she was saying at first, but she sounded distressed.
Gradually, he could understand more of their words. But when he tried to open his eyes, the pain stopped him. His burns flared back to life from their previous casual dormancy, and the burns brought with them the reality of what had happened. But how had he gotten here...
"--Burning," she muttered, her throat closed with emotions. "They could have died if I had let it get away with me."
"Arlé," The male voice said, and Harry recognized the voice of Dumbledore.
"Professor, it's Erif. I want no more association with that name."
"Arlé," he continued, taking no heed to her interruption, "You were able to control it. You saved their lives."
"I could have killed him," she insisted. "And I love him too much to stand myself if it did happen..."
Harry felt a surge of--something he had never truly felt before. She loved him that much?
"Such is love," Dumbledore sighed softly.
"I can't... I just can't!" She moved to sit on the bed beside Harry, her warm fingers sliding into his own cold ones. He could feel her soft breath on his fingers as she drew his hand to her face.
"I love you," she whispered tenderly in a voice that Harry had to strain to hear, and kissed his cheek. Harry felt tears drop onto his fingers, warming them where they touched his skin. She laid his hand back down on the bed, and after a long moment stood and backed away. In a louder voice, she said, "I'll be packing my things now..." The door opened and shut, and she was gone... forever?
No.
Harry struggled up, trying not to groan as the pain lanced through his skull. Apparently the last shards had struck rather hard, leaving him with a concussion. Professor Dumbledore was at his side in an instant, holding him steady until the room stopped spinning. "And where did you think you were going?"
"She can't leave; so much depends on her! She's the only one that can read that prophecy, the only 'Fire' that will fulfill the prophecy! And I need her! Why is she leaving?" He cast an accusing stare at Dumbledore that was harsher than he intended it to be. He dropped the stare after a moment or two, looking down at his hands.
"She can explain it better than I."
"But will she want to? Will she even speak to me?" Harry shook his head angrily and was satisfied to see that the world only swayed a little and remained in perfect focus. He swung his feet over the edge of the bed, casting a cursory glance over his clothes. He was in pajamas, but they would have to do.
"Madame Pomphrey will hate me for interfering with her ministrations, but you and I are of the same mind, and I will not hand Voldemort part of the prophecy for him to destroy as he will." Dumbledore pointed his wand at Harry and murmured something, and Harry's aches and pains dissipated to be replaced by a dull throbbing. "That spell will only last for a few hours, so I would ask you to hurry back as quickly as possible."
"Thank you, Professor," Harry said hurriedly as he moved around the curtain surrounding his hospital bed.
As he did so, he met two sets of eyes belonging to none other than Snape and Bailey, who were positioned on a couch that had been a recent addition to the hospital wing. Bailey's eyes were sad and oddly strained, almost crossed-eyed, but she managed a small smile for Harry. She was leaning up against Snape as if she had very little strength of her own left, and Snape, too, was showing signs of strain, albeit none as severe as Summer's. Snape glanced at Harry and then down at Summer, his eyes betraying a worry that seemed very out of place in his features.
Behind them, the faded evening sky floated in the window, stars winking in and out as if undecided on whether they wanted to stay here or wander one in search of a more hospitable place. A gentle reddish glow reflected off the stone walls of the castle from the Greenhouse, which was now reduced to a pile of embers and shards.
He glanced at the other curtain and was relieved to see a shock of red hair peeking from beyond it. Ginny was fine and in good hands.
It was a long lonely walk back to the Common Room, but when he stepped inside, it was deserted. He wondered why that was, but didn't have much time to wonder for he heard a soft noise emanating from the girls' dormitory.
He stepped cautiously into the doorway and looked at her for a moment. She sat on the bed, trunk open beside her, a pile of clothes on the faded coverlet. Her face was hidden from his view by both her hands and the fact that she was angled away from the door, but he could still tell that she was crying.
He was so amazed at the sight of the proud woman he once knew broken that he accidentally scuffed the floor with his bare foot. "Arlé..." He began.
Her head came up and around, her eyes dark despite the tears. "How can you even talk to me?" she demanded, her normally smooth voice quaking. "After what I almost did to you..." She looked away, her hair hanging limply from her head as if it too had no life left.
"I don't care about what you've done in your past, if that's what you worry about. I care for you because of who you are to me." He stepped further into the room, feeling a bit as if he had invaded a place he should never have entered.
"You don't really know me," she stalled, but her eyes dared him to deny that fact.
"I don't know you because you've never let me past your outer wall. I want to know you," he ceded, putting just the right amount of guilt into his statement as to make her squirm a bit under the pressure.
He walked slowly towards her until he was five feet away from her, close enough that he could see the warring emotions flash across her face without understanding which emotions they were.
She stared hard at him a moment, torn by indecision, and Harry strode over to her, gently turned her around, and wrapped his arms around her, and to his surprise she leaned into the embrace. She closed her eyes, resting her forehead against his shoulder, tears soaking into the fabric of his clothes.
To Harry's surprise, his shoulder tingled as if some power flowed into it, and the dull ache within the bones of his arm receded entirely.
He led her out into the Common Room, where they sat together on the couch. Once her tears had abated, he tilted her head up to look into her eyes. She pulled him to her and they kissed once more.
"Tell me," he whispered, and she did not look away this time.
"I'm a pyr-psychic," she stated, offering her left hand to him as a tight fist. He took it with a bit of confusion, and looked at her imploringly. She opened her hand and little flames danced across her palm, yet her hand did not burn. He watched the flames for a moment and reached down to touch them, and to his surprise his finger did not burn or feel anything except a bit of heat.
"I can conjure and control fire. This is only part of the 'Reed Talent'--my father was a pyr-psychic as were my two younger brothers. And Eric," she added, her tone suddenly cold.
"Is that why Dumbledore wants to protect you?"
"It's only part of the reason; an untrained pyr-psychic can set fire to anything accidentally... they're a danger to others." She looked down at her hands, pursing her lips slightly. "That's why I must leave."
"No!" Harry said, a bit harsher than he had intended. "I can help you control it..." He trailed off at her downcast look, her green eyes not meeting his own. "I don't want you to leave. What about the prophesy?"
"The prophesy may be wrong."
"You're the only pyr-psychic around here," Harry pointed out, pulling her into his embrace as if in doing this he could protect her from all that would harm her.
"No," she murmured, glancing up at him before continuing, "There's Summer too."
"Bailey's a pyr-psychic?" At her mute nod, he looked into the dying embers of flame in the hearth, feeling a tightness between his eyes that would later emerge into a throbbing headache. "That explains a lot..."
"But you're not satisfied with my answers yet, are you?" She asked softly, tucking her feet beneath her slender body and clutching at his arms for a moment while she rebalanced herself. "What more do you want to know?"
He smiled down at her, and she responded in kind. "You know me well," he said.
"Too well." Her smile faded a little, her gaze leaving his own. "I know that you want me to stay... but I can't."
"Why not?" He asked, taking her hands and feeling the slight tremors as she shuddered at the contact.
"For all those reasons I just mentioned."
"Can I add another reason to my list of why you should stay?"
She cocked one eyebrow as if to ask if this reason was that large that it would change her mind. "Go ahead."
"I love you." He watched as all of her carefully built walls broke down in a matter of a few seconds. She gazed into his eyes for a moment, and he could see within their depths a need for the words he had just spoken.
"I love you too..." And a silence spread between them, a silence that warmed instead of froze. Harry pulled her into his arms, unaware of when exactly she had pulled out of them, and somewhen between seven that night and eight the next morning, Harry decided, they had fallen asleep.
* * *
He staggered to his feet, yanking off his invisibility cloak and sighing, the dark night cloaking his thin body in shadow. He had lost a lot of weight, he decided, running a hand through his bedraggled hair. Not as handsome as I used to be... As his hand ran down his face, he felt a warm gouge through his chin and when he pulled his hand away it came away bloody. A recent wound he could not remember accumulating...
He was glad to be free, however temporarily, from the numerous curses his father had placed on him. He wasn't quite sure exactly how he had escaped them, but all of a sudden he had full control of his body, and the freedom was enough.
Draco looked around at the grounds of Hogwarts and noticed that one Greenhouse was burnt to the ground. He felt a swell of anger and resentment, which ceded quickly to guilt. Had he burnt it to the ground? Hopefully no wizard or witch was within...
He glanced around again, feeling some strange power swelling within, and shook his head to clear it. That strange swell had come and gone during his imprisonment, he recalled, and he had assembled the notion that it was the reason for his freedom...
He should find someone and ask for their help... but who? Definitely not Snape... he was on the Dark Lord's side for sure. Dumbledore did not trust him, and while Dumbledore was a trusting man, his trust only went so far, and Draco had passed those boundaries long ago.
Perhaps it had something to do with his defined hatred of Harry Potter? His father had cultured him in all the dark prophecies that warned He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named against allowing the Potter child too much freedom. The exact words from one of the prophecies were, "The boy who lived should not have; he will rise against the Darkness, and only through his friends will he defeat Darkness. When the boy who lived rises, it is a single friend that will determine his survival in light... or his death in shadow." The Dark Lord was indeed hell-bent on destroying Potter's friends one by one.
Draco shook those thoughts out of his mind... the more he thought of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the more he felt that dark presence looming nearer, attempting to take him back...
Could he tell Bailey? She had a great many secrets, but apparently she was able to keep them...
He had no one better to approach; might as well, what harm could it do? She could bring this to Dumbledore if she thinks it is needed.
He crept into the castle after throwing the invisibility cloak back about his shoulders, inwardly laughing at the irony of keeping the front doors unlocked.
His mind awakened slowly as he stepped through the doors, and he remembered his father's hurried words, spoken in a hushed tone...
"I'm sorry, son, I had no choice... Imperio!"
He shook that and other images off hastily and focused his mind on finding Bailey, a harsh task learned from his father. This skill was all will-power, the art of throwing his entire essence into locating someone... He rotated three-hundred-and-sixty degrees and then reached out as if to grasp something at eye level. His eyes snapped open and he knew where he was going...
He stopped just outside the door to the Infirmary, listening for a moment, but the door was shut firmly and he knew better than to go in there with the cloak on. A door opening of its own volition would be mighty suspicious to those inside, and he wasn't sure who was beyond the door.
He backed up out of the way as the door slid open, watched numbly as Erif stormed past, her clothing and her step distraught and ragged. Her footfalls echoed through the hall and as she walked past he got a whiff of the fragrance that always surrounded her. It was not a flowery smell as many would associate with women; it was more of a burning wood odor, hard and snappy.
He turned back to the door, realizing that it was still shut; she had closed it behind her. He watched just as mutely as Harry stormed past, noting that he had left the door open slightly. Moments after Harry had left, Dumbledore opened the door and walked down the corridor in the other direction from the way the two Gryffindors had gone. He paused before reaching back and closing the door, and left it open; easily enough room for Draco to slip through. A slight smile touched the elderly Headmaster's features as he walked away, and Draco had the sinking feeling that Dumbledore knew he was there, waiting.
He pulled the cloak off and slid on through, pressed by the feeling that his hourglass of freedom was going to turn at any instant...
He glanced around and saw that Bailey and Snape were both asleep on a recently added couch; they looked so peaceful that he just stared at them for a moment, wondering...
Summer's eyes snapped open, her body tensing visibly as she glanced blearily around the room. Her intense golden eyes caught and held his own for a moment, and then they narrowed suspiciously.
"What..." She began, and then rose to her feet without disrupting Snape's sleep.
"I need your help," he began, but her stare made him stop.
"Why would you need my help?" She demanded, her hands playing with a wand that he hadn't seen her draw.
He looked down at the floor for a moment, all too conscious of the fact that he did not have his wand with him.
She persisted, "How can you prove to me that you aren't being controlled by You-Know-Who?"
"I can't."
"I know that you've had the Dementor's Kiss--no one can survive that and be of their own free will..."
"My father was able to reverse it somehow." Draco startled himself by saying this; how had he known?
She angled her body to keep him in view and said softly, "Severus, wake up."
The Potion's Master awoke quickly and just as quickly assessed the situation. They exchanged a knowing glance and Bailey, turning back to Draco, asked, "Would you allow us to use Veritaserum on you?"
So this was how it was going to be...
"Yes."
* * *
"I told you he'd be all right..."
"Sh, don't wake them."
"Can't we wake them up and tease them a little?"
"No, Fred, not one bit."
"They look so tired... let's just let them sleep."
He heard vague footsteps as their friends crept past, and Harry could very nearly imagine the looks on their faces as they each watched he and Arlé sleeping. Hermione was probably smirking a bit, her brown eyes twinkling with a combination of happiness for his safety and wonder at what took them so long... Ron was watching them with slightly narrowed eyes, wondering why he hadn't seen something like this coming... Fred and George, controlling their laughter behind one hand...
Let them watch... all was right in Harry's world. As the sound of their footsteps fell away, Harry sneaked one eye open to look down at Arlé, who looked up at him with a smile. His friends had woken both of them, but he was in no hurry to move from his little spot of Eden. His arm was wrapped around her shoulders, her head resting against his shoulder, on foot tucked up beneath him.
"I guess this makes us a couple now," he whispered, and she smiled and hid a yawn.
"As if there were any doubt," she responded, tapping his nose affectionately, sending shivers up and down his spine.
"We won't hear the end of this from Fred and George."
"So? I like hearing that I'm 'going out with you;' it sounds all the more interesting." She curled a little tighter into his left shoulder, and he laid his head against her own, the contact reassuring both of them and lulling them back to sleep.
CHAPTER 18: PYR-PSYCHIC
He could hear voices echoing through the room. The first voice was male and gentle, the second an oddly familiar female voice, raised with undeniable passion.
He couldn't hear what she was saying at first, but she sounded distressed.
Gradually, he could understand more of their words. But when he tried to open his eyes, the pain stopped him. His burns flared back to life from their previous casual dormancy, and the burns brought with them the reality of what had happened. But how had he gotten here...
"--Burning," she muttered, her throat closed with emotions. "They could have died if I had let it get away with me."
"Arlé," The male voice said, and Harry recognized the voice of Dumbledore.
"Professor, it's Erif. I want no more association with that name."
"Arlé," he continued, taking no heed to her interruption, "You were able to control it. You saved their lives."
"I could have killed him," she insisted. "And I love him too much to stand myself if it did happen..."
Harry felt a surge of--something he had never truly felt before. She loved him that much?
"Such is love," Dumbledore sighed softly.
"I can't... I just can't!" She moved to sit on the bed beside Harry, her warm fingers sliding into his own cold ones. He could feel her soft breath on his fingers as she drew his hand to her face.
"I love you," she whispered tenderly in a voice that Harry had to strain to hear, and kissed his cheek. Harry felt tears drop onto his fingers, warming them where they touched his skin. She laid his hand back down on the bed, and after a long moment stood and backed away. In a louder voice, she said, "I'll be packing my things now..." The door opened and shut, and she was gone... forever?
No.
Harry struggled up, trying not to groan as the pain lanced through his skull. Apparently the last shards had struck rather hard, leaving him with a concussion. Professor Dumbledore was at his side in an instant, holding him steady until the room stopped spinning. "And where did you think you were going?"
"She can't leave; so much depends on her! She's the only one that can read that prophecy, the only 'Fire' that will fulfill the prophecy! And I need her! Why is she leaving?" He cast an accusing stare at Dumbledore that was harsher than he intended it to be. He dropped the stare after a moment or two, looking down at his hands.
"She can explain it better than I."
"But will she want to? Will she even speak to me?" Harry shook his head angrily and was satisfied to see that the world only swayed a little and remained in perfect focus. He swung his feet over the edge of the bed, casting a cursory glance over his clothes. He was in pajamas, but they would have to do.
"Madame Pomphrey will hate me for interfering with her ministrations, but you and I are of the same mind, and I will not hand Voldemort part of the prophecy for him to destroy as he will." Dumbledore pointed his wand at Harry and murmured something, and Harry's aches and pains dissipated to be replaced by a dull throbbing. "That spell will only last for a few hours, so I would ask you to hurry back as quickly as possible."
"Thank you, Professor," Harry said hurriedly as he moved around the curtain surrounding his hospital bed.
As he did so, he met two sets of eyes belonging to none other than Snape and Bailey, who were positioned on a couch that had been a recent addition to the hospital wing. Bailey's eyes were sad and oddly strained, almost crossed-eyed, but she managed a small smile for Harry. She was leaning up against Snape as if she had very little strength of her own left, and Snape, too, was showing signs of strain, albeit none as severe as Summer's. Snape glanced at Harry and then down at Summer, his eyes betraying a worry that seemed very out of place in his features.
Behind them, the faded evening sky floated in the window, stars winking in and out as if undecided on whether they wanted to stay here or wander one in search of a more hospitable place. A gentle reddish glow reflected off the stone walls of the castle from the Greenhouse, which was now reduced to a pile of embers and shards.
He glanced at the other curtain and was relieved to see a shock of red hair peeking from beyond it. Ginny was fine and in good hands.
It was a long lonely walk back to the Common Room, but when he stepped inside, it was deserted. He wondered why that was, but didn't have much time to wonder for he heard a soft noise emanating from the girls' dormitory.
He stepped cautiously into the doorway and looked at her for a moment. She sat on the bed, trunk open beside her, a pile of clothes on the faded coverlet. Her face was hidden from his view by both her hands and the fact that she was angled away from the door, but he could still tell that she was crying.
He was so amazed at the sight of the proud woman he once knew broken that he accidentally scuffed the floor with his bare foot. "Arlé..." He began.
Her head came up and around, her eyes dark despite the tears. "How can you even talk to me?" she demanded, her normally smooth voice quaking. "After what I almost did to you..." She looked away, her hair hanging limply from her head as if it too had no life left.
"I don't care about what you've done in your past, if that's what you worry about. I care for you because of who you are to me." He stepped further into the room, feeling a bit as if he had invaded a place he should never have entered.
"You don't really know me," she stalled, but her eyes dared him to deny that fact.
"I don't know you because you've never let me past your outer wall. I want to know you," he ceded, putting just the right amount of guilt into his statement as to make her squirm a bit under the pressure.
He walked slowly towards her until he was five feet away from her, close enough that he could see the warring emotions flash across her face without understanding which emotions they were.
She stared hard at him a moment, torn by indecision, and Harry strode over to her, gently turned her around, and wrapped his arms around her, and to his surprise she leaned into the embrace. She closed her eyes, resting her forehead against his shoulder, tears soaking into the fabric of his clothes.
To Harry's surprise, his shoulder tingled as if some power flowed into it, and the dull ache within the bones of his arm receded entirely.
He led her out into the Common Room, where they sat together on the couch. Once her tears had abated, he tilted her head up to look into her eyes. She pulled him to her and they kissed once more.
"Tell me," he whispered, and she did not look away this time.
"I'm a pyr-psychic," she stated, offering her left hand to him as a tight fist. He took it with a bit of confusion, and looked at her imploringly. She opened her hand and little flames danced across her palm, yet her hand did not burn. He watched the flames for a moment and reached down to touch them, and to his surprise his finger did not burn or feel anything except a bit of heat.
"I can conjure and control fire. This is only part of the 'Reed Talent'--my father was a pyr-psychic as were my two younger brothers. And Eric," she added, her tone suddenly cold.
"Is that why Dumbledore wants to protect you?"
"It's only part of the reason; an untrained pyr-psychic can set fire to anything accidentally... they're a danger to others." She looked down at her hands, pursing her lips slightly. "That's why I must leave."
"No!" Harry said, a bit harsher than he had intended. "I can help you control it..." He trailed off at her downcast look, her green eyes not meeting his own. "I don't want you to leave. What about the prophesy?"
"The prophesy may be wrong."
"You're the only pyr-psychic around here," Harry pointed out, pulling her into his embrace as if in doing this he could protect her from all that would harm her.
"No," she murmured, glancing up at him before continuing, "There's Summer too."
"Bailey's a pyr-psychic?" At her mute nod, he looked into the dying embers of flame in the hearth, feeling a tightness between his eyes that would later emerge into a throbbing headache. "That explains a lot..."
"But you're not satisfied with my answers yet, are you?" She asked softly, tucking her feet beneath her slender body and clutching at his arms for a moment while she rebalanced herself. "What more do you want to know?"
He smiled down at her, and she responded in kind. "You know me well," he said.
"Too well." Her smile faded a little, her gaze leaving his own. "I know that you want me to stay... but I can't."
"Why not?" He asked, taking her hands and feeling the slight tremors as she shuddered at the contact.
"For all those reasons I just mentioned."
"Can I add another reason to my list of why you should stay?"
She cocked one eyebrow as if to ask if this reason was that large that it would change her mind. "Go ahead."
"I love you." He watched as all of her carefully built walls broke down in a matter of a few seconds. She gazed into his eyes for a moment, and he could see within their depths a need for the words he had just spoken.
"I love you too..." And a silence spread between them, a silence that warmed instead of froze. Harry pulled her into his arms, unaware of when exactly she had pulled out of them, and somewhen between seven that night and eight the next morning, Harry decided, they had fallen asleep.
* * *
He staggered to his feet, yanking off his invisibility cloak and sighing, the dark night cloaking his thin body in shadow. He had lost a lot of weight, he decided, running a hand through his bedraggled hair. Not as handsome as I used to be... As his hand ran down his face, he felt a warm gouge through his chin and when he pulled his hand away it came away bloody. A recent wound he could not remember accumulating...
He was glad to be free, however temporarily, from the numerous curses his father had placed on him. He wasn't quite sure exactly how he had escaped them, but all of a sudden he had full control of his body, and the freedom was enough.
Draco looked around at the grounds of Hogwarts and noticed that one Greenhouse was burnt to the ground. He felt a swell of anger and resentment, which ceded quickly to guilt. Had he burnt it to the ground? Hopefully no wizard or witch was within...
He glanced around again, feeling some strange power swelling within, and shook his head to clear it. That strange swell had come and gone during his imprisonment, he recalled, and he had assembled the notion that it was the reason for his freedom...
He should find someone and ask for their help... but who? Definitely not Snape... he was on the Dark Lord's side for sure. Dumbledore did not trust him, and while Dumbledore was a trusting man, his trust only went so far, and Draco had passed those boundaries long ago.
Perhaps it had something to do with his defined hatred of Harry Potter? His father had cultured him in all the dark prophecies that warned He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named against allowing the Potter child too much freedom. The exact words from one of the prophecies were, "The boy who lived should not have; he will rise against the Darkness, and only through his friends will he defeat Darkness. When the boy who lived rises, it is a single friend that will determine his survival in light... or his death in shadow." The Dark Lord was indeed hell-bent on destroying Potter's friends one by one.
Draco shook those thoughts out of his mind... the more he thought of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the more he felt that dark presence looming nearer, attempting to take him back...
Could he tell Bailey? She had a great many secrets, but apparently she was able to keep them...
He had no one better to approach; might as well, what harm could it do? She could bring this to Dumbledore if she thinks it is needed.
He crept into the castle after throwing the invisibility cloak back about his shoulders, inwardly laughing at the irony of keeping the front doors unlocked.
His mind awakened slowly as he stepped through the doors, and he remembered his father's hurried words, spoken in a hushed tone...
"I'm sorry, son, I had no choice... Imperio!"
He shook that and other images off hastily and focused his mind on finding Bailey, a harsh task learned from his father. This skill was all will-power, the art of throwing his entire essence into locating someone... He rotated three-hundred-and-sixty degrees and then reached out as if to grasp something at eye level. His eyes snapped open and he knew where he was going...
He stopped just outside the door to the Infirmary, listening for a moment, but the door was shut firmly and he knew better than to go in there with the cloak on. A door opening of its own volition would be mighty suspicious to those inside, and he wasn't sure who was beyond the door.
He backed up out of the way as the door slid open, watched numbly as Erif stormed past, her clothing and her step distraught and ragged. Her footfalls echoed through the hall and as she walked past he got a whiff of the fragrance that always surrounded her. It was not a flowery smell as many would associate with women; it was more of a burning wood odor, hard and snappy.
He turned back to the door, realizing that it was still shut; she had closed it behind her. He watched just as mutely as Harry stormed past, noting that he had left the door open slightly. Moments after Harry had left, Dumbledore opened the door and walked down the corridor in the other direction from the way the two Gryffindors had gone. He paused before reaching back and closing the door, and left it open; easily enough room for Draco to slip through. A slight smile touched the elderly Headmaster's features as he walked away, and Draco had the sinking feeling that Dumbledore knew he was there, waiting.
He pulled the cloak off and slid on through, pressed by the feeling that his hourglass of freedom was going to turn at any instant...
He glanced around and saw that Bailey and Snape were both asleep on a recently added couch; they looked so peaceful that he just stared at them for a moment, wondering...
Summer's eyes snapped open, her body tensing visibly as she glanced blearily around the room. Her intense golden eyes caught and held his own for a moment, and then they narrowed suspiciously.
"What..." She began, and then rose to her feet without disrupting Snape's sleep.
"I need your help," he began, but her stare made him stop.
"Why would you need my help?" She demanded, her hands playing with a wand that he hadn't seen her draw.
He looked down at the floor for a moment, all too conscious of the fact that he did not have his wand with him.
She persisted, "How can you prove to me that you aren't being controlled by You-Know-Who?"
"I can't."
"I know that you've had the Dementor's Kiss--no one can survive that and be of their own free will..."
"My father was able to reverse it somehow." Draco startled himself by saying this; how had he known?
She angled her body to keep him in view and said softly, "Severus, wake up."
The Potion's Master awoke quickly and just as quickly assessed the situation. They exchanged a knowing glance and Bailey, turning back to Draco, asked, "Would you allow us to use Veritaserum on you?"
So this was how it was going to be...
"Yes."
* * *
"I told you he'd be all right..."
"Sh, don't wake them."
"Can't we wake them up and tease them a little?"
"No, Fred, not one bit."
"They look so tired... let's just let them sleep."
He heard vague footsteps as their friends crept past, and Harry could very nearly imagine the looks on their faces as they each watched he and Arlé sleeping. Hermione was probably smirking a bit, her brown eyes twinkling with a combination of happiness for his safety and wonder at what took them so long... Ron was watching them with slightly narrowed eyes, wondering why he hadn't seen something like this coming... Fred and George, controlling their laughter behind one hand...
Let them watch... all was right in Harry's world. As the sound of their footsteps fell away, Harry sneaked one eye open to look down at Arlé, who looked up at him with a smile. His friends had woken both of them, but he was in no hurry to move from his little spot of Eden. His arm was wrapped around her shoulders, her head resting against his shoulder, on foot tucked up beneath him.
"I guess this makes us a couple now," he whispered, and she smiled and hid a yawn.
"As if there were any doubt," she responded, tapping his nose affectionately, sending shivers up and down his spine.
"We won't hear the end of this from Fred and George."
"So? I like hearing that I'm 'going out with you;' it sounds all the more interesting." She curled a little tighter into his left shoulder, and he laid his head against her own, the contact reassuring both of them and lulling them back to sleep.