Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!
This chapter begins the next arc of action, and you know what that means, don't you? Right. CLIFFHANGER WARNING. Also, GORE WARNING.
Chapter Fifty-Eight: Capto HorriferOn the tenth day of January, 1996, Albus Dumbledore broke free of his Still-Beetle confinement.
Rufus grinned. To most people who knew him, it would have been a frightening expression, but Percy Weasley knew him just that little bit better than the rest. Rufus wasn't surprised when Percy grinned back at him.
"Who is it today, sir?" he asked, with fierce eagerness.
Rufus glanced back at the list of names in front of him. "His name's Hector Dawlish," he said. "Brother of our own Auror Dawlish. We investigated him casually when his brother's name came up, but we didn't find any incriminating evidence on him. With Hestia Jones singing so sweetly, of course, we know that he's a member of the Order of the Phoenix, however much he doesn't look like it. He'll have to come when the summons arrives." Rufus clamped his teeth together, well-aware of the glow in his own eyes. This was the reason that he found paperwork so exciting. The other Aurors had always thought only a chase through the field could be this grand, but Rufus had long ago become accustomed to letting his mind do the chasing, since he had a bad leg. "And if he doesn't have anything to hide, if he's innocent, why wouldn't he show up to help the Ministry with its inquiries?"
Percy laughed, his teeth flashing. "Brilliant, sir."
Rufus grinned again. The young man was turning out excellently—a prime Auror candidate. He still spent most of his time acting as an assistant to Rufus, despite the training he was undergoing. Amelia had to admit that she could think of few better trainers in procedure, paperwork, and the rule of law than Rufus, since he'd been Head of the Office. And it helped that Percy was intelligent and didn't need much conviction on whether it was right to treat criminals just like other people. Those were the Gryffindor sensibilities shining through. What Rufus had to work on was getting him to accept that, sometimes, it was all right to bend the rules. Percy currently admired the way Rufus did it, but didn't seem able to do it himself.
Ah, well. We'll use that wand when its core is formed, as Grandmother Leonora liked to say. Rufus looked across his office at the portrait of his Muggleborn grandmother, who was looking at Percy. She tipped him a wink when she noticed him staring. Rufus nodded in satisfaction. They'd train him yet.
A knock on the door announced the arrival of Hector Dawlish. Rufus sat up. "Send him in, Tonks!" he called.
The door opened, but it wasn't Hector Dawlish who came in. A flood of darkness traveled inward, rippling, a cloud of ink that might have escaped from the Department of Mysteries and the Unspeakables' bloody experiments. Rufus opened his mouth to shout, and then it engulfed him.
He found himself kneeling in mud, blinking away rain as it fell into his eyes. He glanced down, and realized his hands were younger—about sixteen years younger. Fear clawed up his throat in metallic bitterness.
"No," he whispered, just as he had the first time this day happened, but nothing and no one heard him.
He had to stand, had to scramble up, had to turn. And then he could see. He was back on the mud-churned battlefield of the wizarding village of Valerian, in northern Scotland.
Correction. What had been the wizarding village of Valerian. Voldemort had utterly destroyed it, in the single most devastating strike of the war so far, killing not only the several hundred villagers but the twenty Aurors sent to protect them. Rufus had been among the second detachment, and he had arrived to find people who Apparated a few moments before him already dying.
And Valerian was hell.
Voldemort had turned the very rain into a weapon, with a spell that Rufus didn't know and sincerely hoped he would never see again. When the water struck his fellow Aurors, it turned into silvery knives, and began flaying off their skins. Next to him was Georgina Catawampus, already a mindless thing screaming in so much pain that Rufus wanted to cut his ears off. The skin was gone from her chest and cheeks, revealing muscle slick and gleaming, threaded through bone, and breasts that dangled like sacks of rotten meat, and a skin slowly peeling down her sides like the wrapping of a Christmas present. Georgina was begging for death with those words that Rufus could still understand.
He'd Apparated in just the right place to avoid the spell, or else it was faltering thanks to the extra-strong waterproofing spells on his clothes, which Grandmother Leonora had made him. Either way, he had to venture further on foot into that place of mud and blood and rain and knives, and figure out some way to stop the Death Eaters, whom he could hear laughing like rats from a short distance away.
But he was afraid.
He forced himself a step forward.
Then a Death Eater appeared before him. Logically, Rufus knew he must have Apparated, and he just hadn't heard the crack amid the screaming, but he shuddered all over anyway. It really did look as if the Death Eater had sprouted out of the chaos around them, with robes of flayed flesh and a mask of bone.
"You will die," said the Death Eater in a confident, smooth voice, the voice that Rufus knew he would hear again a year later, when Lucius Malfoy widened his eyes and denied being in control of his own will for as long as he'd been a Death Eater. It was one reason Rufus was never going to trust the bastard. Imperius Curse or not, he'd stood on a battlefield with that screaming going on around him, and still been able to concentrate on fighting an enemy.
Rufus managed a shaky version of the correct head-bow that began a duel. Malfoy laughed, and then moved forward with his cloak boiling behind him. No fool, he tried a Killing Curse first, and Rufus barely managed to dodge it, limping thanks to his bad leg; he still wasn't completely used to the wound then, and how it slowed him in battle. He still saw it in his dreams, sometimes, how close that green fire had swooped to him.
And then their duel began, the most fearsome hour of Rufus's life. Even knowing he had survived it once, that he must be caught in a memory, did not keep him from shaking in fear.
And then his leg went out from beneath him, and he looked down the end of Lucius Malfoy's wand, and he realized there was no guarantee that this memory would end like the real thing, not at all.
Lily lifted her head slowly when the darkness came hunting down the corridors of Tullianum. She thought it might be Harry, come to free her, but cloaked in night. Perhaps this was his last act before he completely became a feral Dark Lord, she thought: freeing the mother who had tried to keep him from becoming one, letting her walk in the sunlight one more time. And then she would help to lead the force opposing him.
So strong was the fantasy that she at first didn't realize her surroundings had changed. When she did, she sat up and looked around, hopeful. Had Harry simply Apparated her out of her cell and into freedom? That would be best. Then she wouldn't have to face him until the end, when she could look into his eyes and hear him say his last words before Albus cut him down.
Then she recognized her surroundings, and long dread and slow terror clutched at her gut like tapeworms. She was in the kitchen of Godric's Hollow, and behind her was the glow of Christmas lights. There was soft music playing. She'd been levitating the dishes to clean them, just a moment ago. This was the Christmas when she had lost her magic. But what had brought her back here? How could she have come back here, when she knew that that time was more than two year ago?
"Mother."
And the voice behind her was the one she feared so much that she still woke shaking from dreams of it. It was Harry's voice, but stripped of all the compassion she had taught him. It was a simple, blank thing full of childish glee. That she had never heard it like that didn't matter to Lily. What mattered was that someday, she could hear it like that.
And now she was.
She tried to back a step away from him, but she knew even as she moved that her magic was gone, that aching hollow feeling that she'd only got used to with a year's passage. She could do nothing to oppose her son. She was utterly helpless.
And Harry stepped forward with his magic visible around him as a darkening of the air, full of crows and gibbering faces and impossible things, his mouth twisted in a sneer.
"I've already drunk Connor's magic," he whispered. "And James's, and Sirius's, and Remus's. Why do you think I was hiding from your notice all these months? To prepare myself, Mother. To learn things that you would never have let me learn. Dark Arts are the least of what I can do." He smiled, and the smile made Lily sink to the ground, arms over her head, screaming.
"Let me show you what I can do," Harry continued, and he moved one arm down and to the side.
Lily jerked as he yanked her spine free of her body. She had never imagined pain like that. It spread through her, touching every nerve, making her shriek and shriek and shriek as the middle of her back went missing and the spine danced in front of her eyes, a long strip of bone ornamented with gore.
"You might be wondering why you're still alive." Harry's eyes were merciless. "Because we're just getting started, you see. And I've enacted spells that will make you survive much worse tortures than this. Connor, too. Would you like to see him raped by a werewolf? I think I can manage that, since Remus's going to be turning soon."
Lily knew this wasn't how the memory had gone, but it didn't seem to matter. If someone could find a way of altering the past, then Harry would. The fear ate her alive, and as Harry called for his brother, she let it. It seemed so much better than remaining sane through what was to come.
James woke to light of a kind he hadn't seen in months. He blinked, and shook his head, and stumbled to his feet. He'd been dreaming a moment ago. He didn't know what had awakened him. But if it made him stand in a street like this, with sunlight pouring over him—even if the street did seem to be in a pretty shabby part of London—he wasn't about to object. Perhaps the Aurors had been transporting him and lost control of the Apparition in such a way that he landed alive and out of their custody. James had heard that that sometimes happened with Muggles and Squibs.
He looked around hopefully, and then caught sight of a house in front of him. It was familiar: Sirius's home, Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. He supposed it was Regulus Black's house now, since there was news that he'd come back from the dead, but either way, the wards were down. He could hide there. James stumbled forward, then shook himself and tried to walk confidently. He was free. He should act like it, or someone would notice and get him arrested by the Muggle authorities, even if the Ministry had lost track of him.
Heavy robes swished around his feet. James looked down, curious. He wore an Auror's uniform. And then he realized there was a wand in his pocket, and magic burning in his body.
And he knew where he was. When he was.
His eyes rose back to the house, and he whispered, "No. I—I can't."
But he knew what he would find if he opened the door: Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange hiding there. This was just after the attacks on his boys and the Longbottoms, the night that Voldemort fell. James, in blind rage, had chased the Lestranges through one safe place and finally worked out where they must be hiding. He'd gone in, and dueled Bellatrix, and done something, literally, Unforgivable to her.
Held her under Crucio, his brain whispered gleefully. Did you forget? And did you forget how good it felt?
James shuddered and buried his head in his arms. He'd had to face the Dark in himself, and he'd hated it. He'd quit the Aurors the next day and gone home to live in peace and quiet with his family—until he realized that one of his sons might carry the same Dark seed that lived within him, that same love of pain.
He could just refuse to go into the house, though. If he had this memory to live a second time, then he didn't need to do things exactly the same. He'd refuse.
And perhaps that would change everything, James thought suddenly, his heart rising like a phoenix. Perhaps he could go home to Godric's Hollow and pay attention to both Harry and Connor, and insure that they were raised the way they should be. He'd spoil Harry just as much as Connor, and then Harry would love him and never turn against him. He would never be a failure. He would never be arrested. He could remain in the Aurors and have the life he should have had.
But the moment he decided that, an outside force seemed to grip and move his body. James found himself walking steadily towards the house, his wand in his hand, his lips twisted in a sneer.
"No!" he screamed, his mouth twisting weirdly; it wouldn't move out of the sneer even while he yelled the word.
The force made him march up the steps. The force made him kick the door in. The force made him duel Rodolphus, and take him out easily, and then it puppetted him through an intense fight with Bellatrix Lestrange, in which he had to leap and dodge hexes and fire them like a much younger man. But James felt old, old, filled with dread and terror that should have weighted his limbs down, and did not.
Then Bellatrix said what she did about wanting to put Harry and Connor under Crucio.
And James snapped, and struck her with the Cruciatus Curse. This time, though, when sanity had eventually returned to him in the original memory and he had let her go—though with her mind already broken, of course—he didn't let her go. The force made him open his mouth in a laugh as he watched her writhe, and he realized that, in this new version of the past, he would torture Bellatrix Lestrange until she was dead. But that would not be for a long, long time.
This was not a dream. It was a nightmare.
And within himself, since the force that gripped him would permit no new tears to run down his cheeks, James wept.
Albus stretched his arms and stepped out of the wreckage of his cell. It had taken him nearly two months to work up the rage necessary to break free of his confinement, and to overcome his commitment to the Light so that he could reconcile himself to using Dark Arts. But now it had been done. Albus felt a great peace welling up from the center of himself. He had accepted that he was a sacrifice, that it was not his destiny to face Harry and Tom and rid the world of them. His life was given over, instead, to using this spell, a Dark Arts one so powerful that his mentor would be unable to ignore it. It would blaze across Britain like a great fire, and draw Tom's attention, certainly, but also that of his mentor. Tom would be cautious, unwilling to approach a sudden, unknown rival. The man Albus loved and revered would come, though he would hang about on the edges first and observe matters before diving in. It was his way.
He'd used Capto Horrifer.
He passed men and women writhing on the ground, or standing still with desperate faces, or screaming, as they relived their most fearsome memories. Each memory was twisted in a new way, so that they couldn't have the comfort of knowing they would live through it again. In some cases, the memory would simply form new mental scars. In others, if the spell lasted long enough and the memory was intense enough, the victim would die.
Albus knew some people would probably perish in the Ministry before the day was through—the old witches and wizards whose hearts had labored long, those whose most fearsome experiences had taken them close to death, those who lost control of their sanity in the midst of the memory and committed suicide rather than continue to face the endless creative horrors of the spell. That was all right. He accepted it. Better some sacrifices than all of them dead before Harry or Tom's will. And he regretted those of his own followers caught in the maelstrom, because they happened to be located in the Ministry, but there was no way to spare them. Capto Horrifer was limited by the walls of a building. It had to be cast on everyone in the Ministry or no one at all.
He paused, though, when he'd worked his way out of Tullianum and was standing in a hall filled with writhing and crying Ministry employees. It wasn't true that he could do nothing but wait for his mentor to arrive. After all, he'd accounted for him and for Tom, but there was one more person who would sense an explosion of Dark magic this intense and probably try to interfere. Harry.
If Albus gave him time, he'd arrive with Severus at his back, or possibly Severus and Minerva, and Albus had no doubt he'd arrive prepared. Capto Horrifer had a distinct feel to it, especially across distances and with as much power as he'd put behind it. The moment Harry described it, Severus would know what spell it was, and he could give Harry a potion that would guard his mind against it. There was a possibility that Harry might stop him before the spell could penetrate the deep walls guarding his mentor's mind and bring him back.
For that matter, Minerva, bound as she was to the wards of Hogwarts and the Founders' spirits now, might sense him.
That could not be allowed to happen.
Closing his eyes, Albus reached for bonds in the center of himself that he'd let lie for a long time. Once he'd worked the initial spell to establish that web, the best thing was to leave it alone. He'd wanted it intact, of course, and then he'd had some notion of using it as a bargaining chip when they arrested him. But the Still-Beetle confinement, and the fact that only Hestia Jones came to talk to him when he was free, didn't allow him to tell anyone.
Inside him lay a web connected with the wards of Hogwarts. He'd tied some of them to a statue deep in Hogwarts's tunnels, but Minerva could have found and destroyed that. He'd also, unknown even to Godric, looped some threads around his own magical core. If worst came to worst, he would destroy Hogwarts and the secrets and treasures inside her before he allowed Tom to take her.
Now, he didn't see the need to do that. And he couldn't use the Light portion of the spell that would have made him kill himself for the good of others anyway.
But he could and did send Dark Arts flowing down the web, poisoning it, making it collapse, and causing Hogwarts's wards to start to unravel.
There. That should give Minerva something to think about.
And as for Harry…
Albus didn't have his wand. He didn't need it. He was as competent with wandless magic as Tom or Harry, but he'd seen fit to hide that. He thought even Severus, more observant than most of them, believed that he mostly used his wand and his compulsion gift, and forgot the immense reserves of his power sleeping below. But Albus was a Lord, as strong as a Lord, stronger than Harry was. He'd never figured out quite how he matched up against Tom, but then, they'd never fought directly long enough for him to do so.
Now, he reached out, and when he spoke, his voice was strong and firm and carried all his will. "Accio Harry Potter!"
It was…strange, coming back to the world. He'd gone wandering in his own mind five decades before, rejoicing in the secrets of Light and Dark without fading into either one of them. So long as he stayed wrapped in his own preservation spells, and made both Light and Dark think they might be able to claim him as a Lord, he'd stayed alive. He was nearly six hundred years old now, and had pretended to die multiple times. Strange, that.
Everything was strange in the first moments he was back in his body, though. He stretched stiff limbs, and massaged his left arm. Then he stilled and turned his head to the south.
There was an explosion of Dark magic swarming there, and it had Albus's distinctive touch. He felt himself catch his breath. What could have happened to make Albus choose Dark Arts? His commitment to the Light had been complete—a good thing, given the compulsion gift he carried. And it had been satisfying, too, to know that a Light Lord was emerging into a world shortly to have two Dark Lords in a row. Life was about balance. So he had always claimed, and so he had deliberately retained the ability to pass between poles, never quite Declaring. He had to be able to dance in order to balance the wizarding world, in order to give it stability and the unchanging equilibrium it so badly needed after the centuries of chaos it had endured. He'd been glad to hand that task on to Albus and retreat into his own mind and the Strange Paths, but he'd known it couldn't be forever.
It had to be a sacrifice. Albus had encountered something he couldn't handle, and called on his old mentor to handle it instead.
Falco Parkinson nodded, and slipped into his sea eagle form, and rose, wings cutting the air strongly as he remembered how to fly, speeding south. It seemed that it was his duty to save magic from itself, again.
Harry frowned and bent over the book. Now that he had some leisure to study the Durmstrang problem again, he thought he was on to something. This book, which was about life debts, argued that any kind of powerful bond between strong wizards, even one of hatred, could let someone pass through a lightning ward. Harry hated Bellatrix Lestrange enough that he had to wonder if this would work after all.
Now if the book would only give him some details on how to do it, instead of just claiming it was possible!
The world around him blurred and began to swing. Harry lifted his head, startled. Then he found himself looking at the far wall of the library, as if a string were extended from it that controlled his movements.
Merlin.
Somewhere far to the south, Dark magic was burning. A greasy film slid along his skin. Harry shivered in fear and disgust. This wasn't quite like the Unforgivable Curses, but nearly as bad. He shoved his chair back, ignoring Madam Pince's squawk, and began to run. He had to find someone who could tell him what that spell was. Acies or Snape would be the best choice.
It had to be Voldemort who was using that much Dark magic, and that meant he'd made a major strike. Harry felt his mouth thin. He still hadn't managed to sever his mental connection with Draco completely, but he'd come close in their last practice session; just as Draco could feel the boundaries of his mind and Harry's body, Harry could feel the boundaries of their separate selves. If he collected only the bits of himself that were himself on the next jump into Voldemort's mind, he should go alone. And then he could learn when the fuck Tom was planning things like this.
He came out of the library and paused, for a moment, his mind glittering like the crystal it had become on his way to the battle on the beach. Where would Acies be? No telling, since she didn't have a class right now. Where would Snape be? Teaching one of the fourth-year Potions classes. Harry nodded and turned. The dungeons were fairly far away, but it was better to seek someone whose location he knew than waste time in fruitless hunting. Time was already wasting.
He got exactly three strides down the hall, and then Hogwarts's wards gave a little sigh and melted.
Harry froze, his heart hammering. He's here.
Voldemort must have coordinated simultaneous strikes on whatever target in the south he'd chosen—the Ministry, most likely—and the school. Somehow, he'd undone the wards, and now he could come into Hogwarts and hurt defenseless children, if he chose to. And of course he would choose to.
Harry's mind became extraordinarily clear. He was ready to die, if that was what it took. He turned to find a window, so he could see how many Death Eaters Voldemort had come with, or if it was only the Dark Lord himself, hoping to get inside the school before anyone could notice him. Harry had noticed him, though.
He began to call up his magic as he had only called it up once before, the night that he battled the Tom Riddle of the diary, possessing him in his head.
And a great, Portkey-like pulling hooked into his navel and jerked him away. Harry had the feeling of trees and countryside and villages skimming past, and then he landed in a corridor thick with the greasy feeling of the Dark spell. He barely caught himself with his hand before he went spinning into a wall.
Good plan, Tom, you bastard, Harry thought in cold admiration as he balanced. Don't know how you did it, but moving me to the site where you've already got followers and away from Hogwarts itself was a wonderful idea. Too bad it won't work, since I'm just going to Apparate back, and to hell with all the Ministry wards I'll tear along the way.
He was tensing to do so when darkness ate him alive.
Harry blinked and tried to stand up. Then he realized he couldn't. He was flat on his back on a reddish-black block of stone, and Voldemort stood before him, laughing, and Bellatrix Lestrange was approaching with a knife, and overhead hung the looming dusk and living warmth of Midsummer.
And he had two hands.
Some kind of memory spell, Harry thought, forcing his brain to think, to move, wielding Lily's training like thorns to sting himself into flight. That's all it is. What happens to me here isn't real. And I know what's going to happen, don't I? I relived this on New Year's night, though not, I have to admit, in this position. I survived it once, so I can survive it again.
His first indication that something was wrong came when Bellatrix knelt and roughly grabbed his right hand instead of his left. She gave him a grotesque smile, and whispered, "Wonder, baby, what you'll look like with both your hands and both your feet gone? So cute. So cute."
Harry heard himself scream, a cry that seemed to empty his brain and his lungs both at once. Voldemort moved in front of him and cast the Crucio, and then his scar began to burn, and Bellatrix's knife was descending on his right wrist, and Harry was panting and thrashing and screaming hoarsely, and he wanted to die or disappear or run or lose his mind or—
Albus shook his head sadly as he watched Harry writhe. He knew exactly what memory the boy would be reliving, and he was sorry for it. But Harry would survive this. He was too young and too strong to commit suicide or have his heart give out under the fear. Albus would do his part in weakening him, though, so that Falco could have an easier task of it when he returned.
Harry's magic, bucking fiercely, nearly shook off the Capto Horrifer. Albus clucked his tongue and pressed down with his stronger power. That wouldn't do, if the boy woke up before Albus was ready or Falco was here. Then he would probably strike back at the author of his torments without pausing to see who it was. That wasn't part of the plan.
Albus paused when he'd contained Harry in the memory again. Someone else could still come after Harry, couldn't they? They might not know he was missing yet, but they could find out, and possibly cast spells that would tell them where he'd gone. He had to prevent that, too.
He wove wards around the Ministry, his own, Dark defensive spell piled on Dark defensive spell. Many of them were wards the Death Eaters had once used to protect their own homes from Auror raids. Albus was sure they could appreciate the irony, if they ever noticed it.
Then he sat back and watched Harry scream, and was content.
Draco slipped into the library. Harry thought he didn't know that he'd been studying ways to get rid of the lightning ward again. Harry was wrong, and, sometimes, dense. Draco knew, and he planned to surprise him in the library and haul Harry outside to get some fresh air. The Slytherin-Ravenclaw Quidditch match wasn't that far away. Draco wanted to see Harry flying and laughing and practicing his Seeker skills.
All right, maybe I just want to see him laughing. Besides, it's a nice distraction from Father's latest letter.
He found Madam Pince screeching over a book at the table Harry usually studied at, and frowned. Normally, he would have beat a hasty retreat so the librarian wouldn't accost him, but she was near Harry's table. "Madam Pince?" he ventured.
Madam Pince spun around, and apparently found him a convenient audience to rant at. "You tell your friend Harry that he's not allowed in here again, never! Not if he's going to fling books down and dash out of the room! Not if he won't treat my babies with the care they deserve!" She wrapped her arms around the book as if it really were a baby and rocked it. Draco couldn't see much of the title, but he did make out Bonds.
He swallowed. That didn't sound good. If Harry had found something useful in the book and dashed away, he might be on his way to Durmstrang right now to see if he could break through the lightning ward.
"I'll tell him, Madam Pince," he said, and then ran out of the library, touching the golden bracelet that had been Harry's Christmas present to him with his left hand. "How is he?" he whispered.
Into his head spoke a cool voice that sounded disconcertingly like Hermione Granger's. Suffering. Tortured. In intense mental and physical pain.
"Fuck!" Draco didn't realize he'd said that aloud until a Hufflepuff prefect, passing him in the hall, gave him a scandalized look. Draco sneered at her and curved his right hand back to touch the bracelet. "Take me to him."
He felt a deep surge of magic that seemed to rise from beneath his feet, as if a fountain would spring up and carry him there. For a moment, the world turned into blurs of color and motion, and then stopped. Draco blinked at nothing. He wondered why the bracelet could possibly have failed.
Then Harry's words came back to him: the bracelet couldn't take him to Harry's side through powerful wards. And, of course, if he'd gone to Durmstrang and made a mistake that got him Crucio'd under Bellatrix Lestrange's wand, the lightning ward was probably still up.
Draco's mind galloped in circles for a moment. Then he headed for the Slytherin dungeons, so fast that he knew several professors would yell at him for running in the halls. He didn't give a damn. There was one more thing that might work, and even that was chancy.
And if it didn't work—
He just wasn't going to think about that, was all. He was more frantic than he'd been in the graveyard when he had to possess Yaxley. Then, he'd been able to see Harry right in front of him, and know what had to be done. This time, he had no idea what was happening, and no idea what he should do when he got where he was going. He only knew he had to go.
He flung himself through the door of the Slytherin common room, lunged up the stairs, sent the door of their bedroom banging off the wall and into himself with the push he gave it, and suppressed a furious howl as he fell to his knees beside his trunk and began to dig through it. Ceremonial dagger, dragon carving, Potions book, no no no—
There it was. Draco's hands shook as he uncovered the coin that his mother had given to him for Christmas. It looked like a Sickle, if a Sickle had the Black crest on one side and Cousin Arcturus's head on the other. His mother had pressed it into his hand when he gave her a questioning look, and explained the use of it—that it would grant him one wish and one wish only, if it came down on the side he'd called while it was in flight. Draco had been awed, and promised to keep it safe and only use it when he had true need.
Now, he did.
Trying not to think of what would happen if the coin didn't come down on the side he called, he tossed it into the air. For a moment, his mind blanked on what side he should call, but then he remembered what Narcissa said had come up when his mother had taken Aunt Bella's hand, and he shouted, "Heads!"
The coin came down. Roll, roll, roll—and it collapsed, showing his cousin's head uppermost. Draco wanted to shut his eyes in relief, but he kept them open long enough to see the black sparkle that told him the coin was ready.
Draco nodded. "Send me to Harry's side," he commanded, "and let me be prepared to help him when I get there."
Black forks of lightning struck from the coin, grabbed him, and shot towards the opposite wall. Draco felt his substance sucked and pulled out of him as if he were a spider and the lightning a wasp, and then he was sent.