Updated: 7-28-04

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Author's Note: I know, I know, I say it every time, but really, I'm sorry it always takes me so long to update. I'd offer excuses, but all the ones I can think of sound lame. Again, thank you thank you to those that have reviewed. It does me good to know that others are still reading the story. Anyway, hope you like this chapter, though I apologize for the slow-moving plot.

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Chapter 46: DESOLATION - a shutting away

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"Hold still."

"I am holding still."

"Not still enough, you're not."

"What's still enough if you can't keep your hand steady. It's never gonna work. I'll just say I tripped and fell down the stairs."

"Draco Malfoy admitting to tripping." Ron snorted. "No one would believe it. Then they'd REALLY wonder what happened." Ron gripped Draco's chin firmly. "Now quit talking. It makes your head move." Ron pointed his wand carefully at Draco's cheek. "Valitudine Erroris. Damnit, Malfoy! You blinked."

"What, so now I'm not allowed to blink?" Draco shook his face out of Ron's grasp.

"Not when it makes me lose my concentration, you're not." Ron waved his wand again. "Finite Incantatem. At least it was only the one eye this time."

"Oh, yes," Draco sneered. "Because one green eye is SO much less noticeable than two. And since when does my blinking affect your concentration?"

"Since this is a bloody slippery spell," Ron growled. "Now come here. I almost had it that time." He grabbed Malfoy's chin again and carefully aimed his wand. For his part, Draco did his best not to blink. "Valitudine Erroris." Ron lifted his wand away and inspected his work critically. "There, I think I got it that time."

"Well it's about bloody time." Draco moved his head away and made to get up. "I thought we were gonna be in here the rest of the afternoon."

"Not yet, you've still got a split in your lip." Ron grabbed for Draco's chin once more and Draco resisted the urge to punch him again. "Besides," Ron continued, "If you didn't have such shifty eye-color we could have just cast a general glamour and been done with it."

Draco just pouted, declining to comment on that. "I thought you already got the lip."

"Valitudine Erroris. I did, but it went away when I was messing with your cheek." Ron put his wand down, surveying Draco's face. "I think that's it. If you can stop grimacing every time you swallow, I don't think anyone will notice anything."

"And what about you?" Draco stood up carefully from the couch, gritting his teeth against the sharp pain in his side. "You're still lisping around that cut in your lip."

"Well, what do you suggest I do?" Ron stood as well. He looked a little wobbly at first, but then managed to steady himself well enough. "My lip's about twice it's normal size, and my depth perception's for shit with this eye," he muttered.

"Just tell yourself it doesn't hurt." Draco did his best to sound brisk and confident, ignoring the reference to Ron's black eye, but he couldn't keep himself from hissing in pain as he bent to retrieve his wand from the couch. Stupid, bloody ribs. Ron looked slightly concerned at this but said nothing. Just as well. Merlin knew, the last thing Draco wanted was to have someone hovering over him. What a mess they both were. "Well, it's probably easier to decide now. Are we meeting in the library after dinner again tonight? I've got another note from Snape with permission to stay late. I think a couple of the books looked promising. Deserve another look at least."

"Can't after dinner." Ron grimaced, this time in distaste. "This week's an observing night in Astronomy. Don't think we're supposed to be done before 10:30."

Draco quirked an eyebrow. "But it's quarter moon already, and it won't even set until midnight. What does she expect you to observe?"

Ron shrugged in resignation. "Beats me. Something about easier to pick out the first magnitude stars. Bullocks if you ask me. I think she's predicting it'll frost tonight and just wants to torture us all with numb hands. At least we stopped observing the planets for Trelawny. She used to make us stay up all night because she said sleep deprivation helped open the doors to prophesy. Only doors it seemed to open for her were being accident prone. Almost pitched herself right off the Astronomy tower one time ranting about Harry and some alignment between Saturn and Jupiter that was supposed to happen sometime."

Draco's lips quirked at the image, and he was just about to suggest that maybe next time someone ought to help her over the edge, when Professor Snape strode into the room, looking thunderous. "If I EVER catch you using a silencing spell in here again, rest assured you will both be scrubbing out every cauldron in this school, FIFTY times if need be. You are NEVER to remove yourselves thus from my supervision again. Is that clear?" A bit shocked by the sudden, angry onslaught, both boys nodded mutely. "Now, remove the spell immediately and be on your ways."

Draco hastened to do as Snape asked. "We just didn't want to disturb you, Professor," he said quickly as soon as the spell was banished.

Snape looked piercingly at Draco. "I do not care what you intended, or say you intended, Mr. Malfoy. It is my duty to insure that nothing untoward happens to either of you while you are here. Do you understand?"

Draco lifted his head hautily and looked his professor squarely in the eye. "You don't trust me, Professor?"

"It is not my place to trust, or distrust, either of you." Briefly, Snape's gaze shifted over to Ron, and he was momentarily disconcerted to see the Weasley looking back at him just as boldly as was Draco. "Now get to your classes, before this foolishness makes you late for a second time."

Draco's lips were pressed into a cold line, his back Malfoy straight as he strode swiftly from the room, followed closely by Ron. His eyes flashed dangerously when Ron put a hand to his arm to stop him once they reached the hall. "He knows what your father did to my uncle."

Draco's face remained cold and impassive. "I imagine he does. Can't imagine why he wouldn't if he knows about the rest of it." He turned to continue down the hall but Ron stopped him again.

"No. I mean he saw him, your father, right after. I think it scared him. He might not remember it, but..."

Still, no crack appeared in the mask of Draco's expression, and he didn't bother to ask how Ron knew this. "I am not my father."

"I know, but..."

"I am not my father." With that, Draco turned and continued on down the hall, only the slightest hitch in his step hinting at the bruising in his ribs. Ron sighed, rubbing a hand over his eyes, before heading off for Gryffindor Tower. A cold feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. If he wasn't mistaken, he had an essay due in Transfiguration in an hour and he hadn't even started it.

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"Bloody...!" Ron tripped on his way through the portrait hole and with a loud thump landed sprawled out in the Gryffindor common room. He groaned. That did not feel good.

"Ron! Are you ok?"

Ron half propped himself up and turned to look warily over at Hermione. Did she stand with Harry on the whole Draco-as-a-monster theory? Squinting his good eye a bit, he noticed that her concerned eyes flashed a bit with green. "And who have you been spying on, Hermione?" he asked, groaning again before working to pick himself up off the floor.

Hermione flushed, looking at the floor and biting her lip. "Zabini. I just wanted to make sure he was going to be ok," she added quickly. "He's down off the wall at least. And before that..." she hesitated. "I saw Malfoy hit you. You mustn't let him bully you, Ron. Just because you've got to, well..., it doesn't mean he's the boss of you. You should stand up for what is right."

Ron closed his eyes, praying for patience and a slower heart-beat. This was not his day. "And what else did you see, Hermione?"

"I, well..." She looked down at the floor. "Filch was coming, and I figured Snape would take care of it..." She sounded guilty at having, as she thought, abandoned him to the mercy of Draco Malfoy. Ron was just glad she hadn't seen more than the fight. That, at least, looked normal, whatever normal was these days.

"Yeah, well, don't worry, Hermione. I socked him a good one back." He tried to make his tone light, but clearly it wasn't enough to calm her. She frowned.

"You be careful, Ron. I don't want you getting hurt. And tell us, won't you?, if anything is going on." She stepped forward and put a hand to his shoulder. "We're your friends..."

"Malfoy didn't do it, Hermione," Ron interrupted her, saying it as firmly as he could. In this, if nothing else, he wanted to make his stance perfectly clear. If that was all she was going to talk about, then he had nothing more to say to her. "I've got to go do homework," he said quickly, shrugging out from under her hand, before she could add anything more, then hurried up to the boys' dormitory. All he wanted right now was to write his essay and try to forget that any of the rest of this was happening. It was a vain hope. Even as he opened the door to the dorm images of that night flickered over the wood, every stroke of the knife retelling its bloody tale in his mind.

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"Did you do it?" Harry stepped out from under his invisibility cloak, making Hermione jump slightly.

"Yes, well, I think it should do. We still don't know how well it will work. Without a full isolation period..."

"It'll be fine, Hermione. We just need to find out if his mind is his own, that's all." Harry sounded firm and determined. His eyes had that faraway look they used to get all the time when he would be thinking about what to do about Voldemort. "If he's still himself and just really doesn't know, then maybe we can still reason with him." Hermione was less certain. She stood, fidgeting slightly, one hand twisting a strand of hair mercilessly around her fingers as she worried her lip.

"I don't like this, Harry. We shouldn't be doing it. What if he finds out? Then he'll never trust us again."

"We do what we have to do, like always." Harry looked over at her, his eyes hard. "Cast the rest of the spell, Hermione."

Hermione seemed to crumble a little bit at this, but she moved over to the couch where a dusty looking book lay open on one of the cushions. She continued to speak, but her words no longer held any conviction. "Just be glad I even found this spell," she half grumbled. "The book was horribly misshelved. It's pure coincidence, really, that I was able to locate it, and that it had anything remotely valuable...But the full spell is much more powerful, this part of it can only give us a shadow of what might be going on...." She trailed off, muttering the incantation to herself to learn it before casting it.

Harry didn't bother to answer her. She had said that the spell would detect any magic aimed at affecting a person's mind. That was all he cared about. The thought of magic, dark and insidious, wrapping itself around his friend's mind was almost more than he could bear, but he pushed thoughts of it from him. This was battle, and until it was confirmed, it was no use worrying about what might be, only about what might be done.

Hermione came up silently behind him. Harry turned to see that her expression had settled into one of hardened resolve. "It's done. The link established should now alert me to any strong surges of magical influence." She sighed and her shoulders dropped just a bit. "Of course, if he won't talk to us about it, and I highly doubt that he's going to talk to us at all, then we can't really be sure. The connection's weak, static-y almost. Without direct confrontation of the issue, I don't think I could say for sure one way or the other."

"Then we'll just have to figure out some other way to make him confront it." Harry grabbed his books and headed out the portrait hole. Hermione followed and they quickly made their way toward the Transfiguration classroom. They were almost there when they ran into Ginny coming the other way.

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Ron indulged himself by wincing at the pain in his knee as he made his way down to dinner. He was so tired, and thinking ahead just made him more weary. If he could only rest, if these dark thoughts would just stop slipping through his mind and he could close his eyes for a moment without being afraid of what he might dream. Transfiguration had been hard, though it had been a rest from the visions of his sister. Every time he had glimpsed Draco out of the corner of his eye he had been assaulted with images of long dark corridors and a bone chilling cold, of impassive faces and scattered bones. The whole ordeal had left him feeling drained. Only the thought of dinner kept him moving onward instead of straight up to his bed, visions or no visions.

Caught up, as he was, in focusing on looking straight ahead, of blocking out the flickery images he could see in the peripheral, he was unprepared for what came next: a pale, slender hand on his shoulder and the voice of his sister telling him they needed talk. For a moment he stood frozen. Her cold presence was like a steel pin through his heart, and quickly a blind panic was rising up within him, telling him to run. Catching his breath he lurched to the side, out from under her touch, and whirled to face her.

"I have nothing to say to you." His voice was ragged and he swallowed, willing his heart to a slower pace. The visions were rising up before his eyes and he could see his sister with her arms upraised, welcoming the dark fire, at the same time as he could see her smile, innocently cruel, and take a step toward him.

"Come on, Ron. It's your sister. Remember me? You wouldn't forget your sister." Her voice was low but full of a seductive power that left Ron floundering in his own mind. The face before him flickered and changed, now a child, bright hair ringed with daisies, now a naked stranger clothed in bloody symbols. "You'll always love me, won't you Ron?" She stepped closer and he watched again as his hands held the knife, as they pressed the black seeds into her bloody flesh. She held up a thin metal loop. It was reflected in her eyes. "You dropped this."

Of a sudden she was wrenched away from him and the sound of a loud crack filled the hallway.

The angry sound of Draco Malfoy's voice filled the ensuing silence. "You stay the fuck away from him."

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"Can you tell what she's saying?" Harry and Hermione crouched behind a turn in the corridor where they had told Ginny they would wait.

"No," Hermione whispered back. "But it's as we feared. I'm feeling surges of very strong magic." They'd told Ginny to catch Ron on his way to dinner and ask him about the incident with Zabini. She'd agreed readily enough once they had explained their suspicions and though Harry couldn't tell what exactly was being said, especially with Ginny's back to him as it was, there was only one conclusion to be drawn if Hermione was, in fact, picking up such taints of magic: Malfoy was using magic to control Ron. The thought of it made Harry burn with anger.

Just then, the object of his hatred appeared at the other end of the corridor and, to Harry's shock, strode swiftly toward the two siblings and back-handed Ginny hard across the face. She staggered back, something flying from her hand, which Malfoy promptly stepped on. The expression on Ron's face was heart-wrenchingly blank, and for a moment no one moved but for Ginny slowing putting a hand up to her burning cheek. Harry himself was frozen, and it wasn't until Malfoy spoke that he was able to regain control of his limbs.

"You stay the fuck away from him."

Anger surged through Harry's veins and he sprang to his feet, quickly rounding the corner before Hermione's cautionary hand on his shoulder could stop him. "She's his sister, Malfoy, and he's not your property." His words were a mixture incredulity and fury and they came out sounding rather choked. As soon as Ginny saw him she burst into tears and hurried off down the corridor. Ron turned white and started shaking.

Malfoy appeared unmoved. "I fail to see what bearing your words have on the situation at hand. Leave now, Potter."

Too angry to think straight, Harry sputtered for a moment and in that space of time Ron spoke up from the side. "Malfoy, I think..."

"Shh." Draco turned swiftly toward Ron, raising a finger to his lips to block his next words. Ron flinched at the contact but then closed his eyes and nodded silently.

Furious, Harry shoved Malfoy back a step towards the wall, causing the paler boy to hiss in annoyance. "Don't you silence him, Malfoy. What do you think he is? Some sort of slave? He.." Harry was stopped by Ron's hand on his arm. He turned to see Hermione standing uncertainly behind him.

"Let's go to dinner, Harry." Ron's voice was steady but his eyes were sad and Harry's anger crumbled before the combination. Fighting wasn't going to work. They would have to think of something else, and if Ron was willing to let them near, then maybe they had a chance of beating Malfoy's hold over him. Looking to Hermione, he saw her give a brief dip of her head. After a slight hesitation and a cold look back over his shoulder at Draco, Harry nodded and turned to follow the two, although he was half worried this was just some further ploy of Malfoy's.

Draco just stood, coldly silent, as the three moved off down the corridor, wrapping his mind tightly in bands of steel to keep himself from thinking about what had almost just happened. He could practically feel the bracelet burning a hole through his shoe. Harry was walking in between Hermione and Ron, keeping as close to Ron as he could without touching him. The gulf between them was greater even than he suspected though and, unknown to Harry, the words Draco had conveyed to Ron silently throbbed through the blood in Ron's lip and echoed heart-breakingly through his mind: "They'll never believe us now. She's made sure of that."