A bedroom at night. The air is full of smoke. Flames, some orange, some green, lick at the walls. Bodies lie motionless on the floor. An infant in a crib whimpers unattended.

A man, robed in black, stands frozen at the scene. A hand claws away the mask that covers his features, lets it clatter to the floor beside the dead woman.

"They're all dead."

One ponderous step brings him forward, allowing his dark eyes to fall upon the face of the child.

"They died... because of you."

He raises his wand and points it at the baby. A sneer twists his face as he begins to cast.

---

"We need a place to hide stuff," Hermione spoke aloud, trying to focus her mind on the description that Harry had given her. Was there really only one cosmic junk pile that the Room of Requirement could link to? She hoped she didn't end up in the stacks of the British Library or something...

"Come on!" Ginny yanked the door open. "Let's get this over with..."

Her voice trailed off as she took in the room beyond. It was a massive, cavernous space - a cavern whose stalagmites were teetering piles of old books, broken desks, melted cauldrons, and twisted, half-transfigured objects. Far overhead, dark shapes clustered near the ceiling, too distant to make out. Perhaps they were objects that had been lost while subject to Levitation Charms, or perhaps the room's own space had simply warped a few unwanted piles to the ceiling to make more room. A one-winged snitch lurched brokenly among the shadows.

"Wow," Ginny said at last. She nudged an old robe with her foot, flipping it up to display a lone sock and a pair of rhinestone earrings. "I never thought I'd see somewhere more cluttered than Dad's shed. Half of me wants to try and organise it all, and the rest wants to just dive in and search for buried treasure."

"Once we've found what we're looking for, you can dig around in here all you like," Hermione said absently. Harry's instructions, which had seemed so clear before, were much less helpful when faced with such a jumble. An object that stuck out to his eyes might easily pass unnoticed by hers with so many things to look at. She stepped forward cautiously. Stuffed troll, yes, turn right, a few steps more... hrm. A pile of freshly-splintered wood, half buried under other collapsed items. "Does this look like the remains of a Vanishing Cabinet to you?"

Ginny pondered it. "Looks like. I guess they smashed it to be sure no one else got in this way. Probably faster than tracking down the other half."

"Okay." Hermione turned left and scanned all the cupboards she could see, finally spotting one that had an ugly mockery of a shop mannequin's head, complete with tiara, atop it. "Bingo!"

"What's bingo?"

"It just means I've had good luck," Hermione explained as she pulled open the door. Ignoring the caged skeleton, she reached in and pulled out the book. "And here it is."

They both stared for a moment at the copy of Advanced Potion-Making, its charmed-new cover hiding such dangerous information within.

"Well." Hermione said. "I guess I'd better go and start looking through this. Are you coming back yet, or do you want to stay here a while?"

Ginny picked up the old tiara and tried to clean it with a sleeve of her robe. "Well... I don't really want to be here by myself, but I'd feel awful if I just left without having a little look around. I'll come and see you in a while, okay? And I promise to show you anything interesting I find."

Hermione nodded. She turned and walked out of the room, holding the book - not clutched to her chest like a precious object, but cautiously, like a live ferret that might try to squirm away.

---

Draco was bored.

Without his friends or his belongings, he found it hard to amuse himself. He still had his mother, but she only wanted to talk about his new hairstyles and the details of his future wedding to Pansy Parkinson. How he was supposed to get married while they were in hiding, he didn't know. Narcissa tended to avoid any questions about their exile, carrying on as if she were quite certain they would eventually return in triumph.

It made him wonder why Snape was so insistent that he help keep up his mother's morale. She didn't need any help! She was already the most cheerful one in the house.

Wormtail was alternately angry and cringing. He was treated with contempt by Snape and the Malfoys, but didn't seem to dare to raise a hand against them. It was, after all, a bit like having that ungrateful Dobby back again. Mildly amusing, but not someone you could talk to, and not someone you could trust. If that House Elf had taught him anything, it was that even the weak could try to turn on you when the situation was right.

Then there was Snape himself, who seemed positively obsessed with his potions laboratory. He had allowed Draco to assist in the novice work - chopping, sifting, grinding, stirring - but never actually combining any of the ingredients. And then, at last, he had turned Draco out and locked the doors. Draco had occasionally tried to eavesdrop - when he could avoid Wormtail, who was clearly doing the same thing - and heard Snape's voice inside, raised in anger, but too indistinct to make out the words. He seemed to be talking too much for just swearing at a spill or an explosion... What was he doing in there?

At least he wasn't bothering Draco's mother. Narcissa's estimation appeared to be correct - he had no interest in her as a woman. Or else he was only exercising his marital rights late at night, behind sound-warded doors... Draco didn't want to think about that too much.

The silence, the idleness, was choking the life out of him. Not so many days ago, he had been too tense to sleep at night, caught up in plans and preparations for the coming invasion, waiting for just the right moment to spring his trap. Then that terrible night, which had ended so quickly - dragged away by Snape, not even knowing who among his classmates might be dead or alive, presented blind to the gathering of Death Eaters, and then discarded. Cast aside, thrown to Snape as some kind of reward. And since then, nothing. What had happened that night? What had happened since? Were the papers shrieking for the fall of the house of Malfoy? Had the wizarding public rallied behind Harry Potter, or scattered in fear before the might of the Dark Lord?

It was tempting to demand that the Dark Lord give him some assignment, some new chance to prove himself, just to have something to do.

Draco smirked to himself. Looking for a foolish cause to rush into bravely? How... Gryffindor.

---

It was too bad, Hermione thought, that the covers had been swapped. She would liked to have had a closer look at the way "Half-Blood Prince" was written in the back. A triumphant flourish? A secret scribble that only close scrutiny could unravel?

Flipping quickly through the pages, she had to admit that it wasn't simple laziness that had kept Harry from finding all of the book's secrets. The text was absolutely packed with scribbling, and all in such small lettering, running on top of the official language, that it was very difficult to skim through and get any general idea of what was contained in a passage.

But first, to make sure that ALL the text was visible...

She drew out her wand, wondering briefly if this counted as illegal underage magic, then rolling her eyes. She was seventeen, and school was over. They weren't kids anymore.

Three taps on the cover. "Apparecium!"

Then, of course, she had to restrain herself from grabbing the book and flipping all the pages again just to see if something new had jumped out. If new text was visible, she would find it when she got to it.

Where to begin?

Well, they used this textbook in class, but they didn't go through it in order - instead, they looked up the day's potion and worked from there. So there could be places anywhere inside the book that Harry hadn't seen yet. It would make more sense to start at the beginning.

She skimmed through the "Introduction to Advanced Potions" (free of notes except for a sarcastic "Blah, blah, rubbish!" scribbled on the title) and began reading through the ingredients for Whisker-Blunting Cream.

Hermione blinked.

There were TWO sets of handwriting.

Were these Eileen Prince's notes suddenly resurfacing next to her son's?

No... the notes were alternating. One person was writing for a minute, then another would pick up, then back to the first. The two authors had obviously worked on the potion together.

Snape's long-ago class partner, maybe? But Whisker-Blunting Cream wasn't on the sixth-year curriculum, and it seemed too simple for the seventh. Maybe it was all those years ago? She flipped ahead to the Draught of the Living Death, the second potion in the book. The added notes looked just like she remembered from class. Comments about the crushing of the beans, "white or yellow equal" next to the asphodel root, but nothing in the mysterious second handwriting.

No. There were numbers scribbled, checked off, and crossed through, running along the bottoms of the pages. They could have been written in either hand, but Hermione thought they looked slightly more like the second. What they meant, she wasn't sure.

Hermione turned ahead to the end of the potion, the final instructions that none of them had had time to reach in class. The numbers continued, leading at last to the written word "Success!" Definitely the second handwriting.

And next to that, two little doodles. A flower - asphodel? - and a crown.

---

Author's Note: The Draco and Hermione segments are not exactly concurrent. Remember, with Draco we picked up right after the night Dumbledore died, whereas with Hermione and Ginny we started after the funeral. So we need a little jumping ahead and suggestion of how things at Snape's safehouse have been going these past few weeks to get them in line with each other. It's a house full of restless tension, with nobody talking honestly to anybody else.

Happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate it!