DISCLAIMER: The characters aren't mine. I'm borrowing them from the esteemed Joss Whedon and J.K. Rawling.

SPOILERS/BACKGROUND: Everything from BtVS Season 1 to Season 6, AtS Seasons 1 to 3, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Reviews always welcome!

CHAPTER 42:

STORMING THE MANOR

In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness.

Or hang uselessly in midair in the middle of a cell underneath her teenage crush's palace, Buffy grimaced wryly.

The dementors were beginning to have an effect on her again. She was doing a lot better fighting them than she had the first time around, but she could feel them, gradually, insistently working their way back into her mind again. Their effects multiplied the more of them there were, and Voldemort had brought in more after Lucius' little indiscretion.

The loss of her sight had sharpened her other senses. She was able to feel a change in the air and hear the faint rustle of robes as someone entered. The hackles on the back of her neck raised; her sixth sense told her who it was before he spoke or did anything else to identify himself.

"I'm surprised he let you down here again so soon," she said. "It's been … what … five days now?" She had begun to lose track of time again, but she still had a general idea.

"Four," Lucius corrected tightly. "Out," he said. Buffy's eyes widened behind the blindfold. The dementors were filing out.

"What do you want?" she demanded coldly. Her voice was as smooth and cold as a glacier.

She heard the quick step of boots on stone as Lucius approached. Her mind raced. He was moving far more quickly than he usually did. Something was bothering him.

Suddenly, before she could react, she felt the lip of a vial or bottle of some kind pressed against her lips, and a cold liquid was being poured down her throat; she swallowed reflexively before she even had a chance to spit it out. Her mind quickly began to go numb and dark.

.

Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy streaked through the halls of Hogwarts side by side on their brooms, the irony of which was not lost on either of them, or on any of the people they passed. They reached the great stairwell and flashed skyward. Harry pulled out his wand as they neared the skylight at the very apex.

"Alohamora!" he shouted. The skylight opened and he and Draco sailed through. The stormfront that signaled Willow's passing was already many miles south of them.

"Binoculate," Draco chanted, casting his gaze southward.

Harry was not in the mood for reconnaissance. He turned his Firebolt southward and began flying as fast as he could after Willow. A moment later, he turned his head back over his shoulder, wondering why Draco wasn't catching up on his faster broom, and saw that Draco had immediately veered to the west and was flying out over the lake.

What the heck is he doing? Harry wondered. Willow had only been in the air for a minute, but she already had a large lead on them and was moving incredibly fast for someone supposedly riding a Cloud Nine. He muttered a curse and swung back.

"Sonorous," he chanted. "What are you doing?!" he shouted to the Slytherin prefect, his voice echoing across the still surface of the lake.

He waited while Draco mimicked the Herald's Voice. A moment later, the Slytherin prefect turned around and called, "Hogsmeade!"

"Hogsmeade?!" Harry called back. "Didn't your father say he'd closed the Floo network to your house?" Not that he trusted the word of Lucius Malfoy as relayed through his son, but Willow would almost certainly have taken the Floo had it been an option.

"He did," Draco answered. "But we aren't taking the Floo."

Their brooms were moving so quickly that they had already reached the village by time Draco had finished saying this, and true to his word, he did not aim for the Hogsmeade Station where the public Floo was.

He aimed for the Three Broomsticks.

"Malfoy, we don't exactly have time for a drink," Harry grated as Draco landed beside the quiet little tavern.

Draco grinned. "I doubt you'd ever drink here again if you knew my family owned this place."

"What?!"

"Sixty percent of it, anyway," the prince of Slytherin continued. "But we aren't here for butterbeer." He darted in the back door, past a surprised bartender, and up the stairs to the living quarters on the rear of the second floor. He darted into what looked to be a guest bedroom and began rummaging around under the bed.

"Then what are we looking for?" Harry demanded impatiently.

Draco's eyes lit up, and there was a shuffling sound as he pulled an object about the size of a dinner tray out from under the bed. It was covered by a black velvet cloth with an ornate silver "M" embroidered on it.

Draco threw back the cover. It was an intricately carved chessboard. "This," he said.

"All right," Harry said. "I'm listening."

Draco took a deep breath. "Potter, these are all Portkeys."

Harry's eyes widened. "And you're saying that one of these …"

"Two, actually," Draco said, speaking as quickly as he could. "One goes straight into the manor. One goes to our hunting lodge in the woods outside our town."

"Which one goes to the manor?" Harry asked eagerly, his impatience getting the better of him.

"Now hang on, Potter!" Draco shouted. "Listen, don't you think the manor will be guarded?"

Harry was about to issue a sharp retort, but images of Sirius suddenly sprang into his head. Don't you have a … a saving people thing? He had been incredibly lucky to have escaped from the Department of Mysteries and would never have been able to do it without Dumbledore's intervention. That might or might not happen again, but it wasn't something to bet on.

"So we go to the lodge," Harry said through gritted teeth.

Draco nodded. "You go on ahead. Just fly above the woods, you can't miss the manor."

Harry's eyes narrowed. "And just what are you going to do?"

Draco's eyes were ice. He sat down at the vanity against one wall of the room and withdrew a quill, a parchment, and a small ornate athame. "I'm going to write dear Father a letter." .

Lucius Malfoy strode up the corridor from the vault where his master's greatest prize had been kept as quickly as he dared. The sleeping form of the girl floated behind him, but he had painfully learned the lesson that she was not to be touched. He was not about to assume that he was alone just because there was nobody else around.

He reached the fireplace of the Arcanum Malfi and quickly brought the captive Slayer through into the library. Bellatrix was waiting on the other side.

"Hurry, Lucius," she said. "We need to get her out of here. The Rosenberg girl will be here any minute."

"I'm well aware of the situation, Bellatrix," Lucius replied tightly. The Levitation Charm was a simple spell, but Slayers were naturally resistant to magic and the basilisk-hide bindings that the Dark Lord kept the Slayer bound with were even more so. It was taking an inordinate amount of concentration to maintain the spell, and he could not move her anywhere near as quickly as he had believed. Nonetheless, the Rosenberg girl had only taken off from Hogwarts minutes earlier. The Slayer would be long gone by the time she got here.

"I'm glad to hear that," Bellatrix replied haughtily. "But if you would, allow me to assist anyway." She quickly chanted her own Levitation Charm. Lucius' mouth compressed; it was easier to move the sleeping girl with Bellatrix' help, but he was not about to admit that.

"Come on," Bellatrix ordered sharply, and they moved on towards the Hall of Wisdom. Lucius felt a sharp tinge of vindication at seeing Bellatrix' mouth compress with effort as they moved; this was not as easy for her as she was trying to make it look, either.

They reached the Hall of Wisdom and moved the sleeping girl towards the chessboard in the alcove. Lucius cast a glance upward; Voldemort was outside on the balcony opening out over the main entrance to the manor. The Dark Lord's back was to them, but he made no mistake that Voldemort was paying close attention to him.

"Goodbye, sweet Slayer," Lucius intoned with mock-sympathy as they approached the row of Portkeys. "I hope you like the weather in Kyrgyzstan."

Suddenly, a sense of magic being activated nearby reached his senses, and he cast about weakly for the source. Bellatrix felt it, too, and cast a quick, sharp look around, but both of their powers were concentrated on maintaining the spell on the Slayer.

They were thus unable to react when a letter suddenly appeared on the chessboard.

Lucius' eyes barely had time to widen. It had appeared touching the kingside white rook, which meant that it was from the Hogsmeade safehouse. It was red, which meant it was a Howler. And it was stamped, crudely but unmistakably, with the ornate "M" seal of Malfoy House, written in a deep maroon—a sign of potent mystical power even when it was not written in the blood of an heir of the line.

The letter burst open a split-second later, and the voice of the true Heir of Malfoy echoed in the chamber.

"REDUCTO!" Draco's voice thundered.

"NO!" Bellatrix screamed as the chessboard and all the Portkeys on it were pulverized into dust.

.

Harry immediately whipped his wand out the moment the inside of the Malfoy hunting lodge came into view. He had only half-trusted Draco when he said that this would take him anywhere near Malfoy manor, but he had been completely out of options. Draco had been right; there would have been no chance to catch Willow by flying. She had been moving too fast. That didn't necessarily mean he trusted his old nemesis. On the other hand, Dumbledore had apparently believed that Draco was serious, and Fawkes, who had always been a good judge of character, hadn't reacted badly to the presence of the Slytherin prefect.

Well, it certainly looked like a hunting lodge. There was no one in sight. In addition, there was a kind of feel on the air, like the pressure in the air just before the impact of a storm, that made him feel that this was indeed the right place. Nonetheless, he was on his own in the middle of unfamiliar territory. Malfoy territory.

I'm going to write dear Father a letter? What was that about?

There would be time to deal with that later. Quickly, Harry clutched his Firebolt and darted to the door of the lodge. Once clear of the building, he mounted the broom and slowly inched his way skyward, trying to get a good look out over the trees without flying into the open.

Malfoy Manor was easy enough to spot. The manor lay atop a high, terraced rise about two miles to the east, a high point before the valley widened and fell away even further east. The hunting lodge was nestled in the tapered end of the valley as it narrowed and rose into hills, and finally mountains to the west. This was the place.

He turned his attention to the northwest, in the direction from which Willow would arrive. His eyes widened. Had arrived, he corrected himself. The mountains to the north were already overcast with the shadow of the stormclouds that had formed in her wake, and were driving out across the valley as though lashed with whips. A drop of rain struck his cheek a moment later.

Willow, he thought desperately, urging his broom into the air, intent on finding her even if he had to fly through a hailstorm to do it.

A moment later, however, he felt a fierce heat on his face and an orange light streaked across his vision. There was a roar in the air, followed by a distant sound like thunder from up the valley.

A ferocious curse burst from his lips as he swerved away. A moment later, as he realized what the light had been and where it had come from, he realized that getting to the manor was going to be harder than he thought.

.

The last sliver of the sun's scarlet disk was just sliding behind the horizon to the west as Willow descended below the clouds and beheld the Malfoy fief for the first time. She was approaching from the northwest, from the rear of the palace, where the landscaping was at its most magnificent because there was no need to make concessions to the needs of engineering a roadbed. The surface of the myriad pools of the six terraces of water gardens behind Malfoy Manor shone with a burnished red-golden light, reflecting the last rays of the setting sun, and even in the waning light, the gardens, orchards, and vineyards surrounding the manor house were tranquil and serene.

Willow slowed to a stop, hovering high above the mountains. Dark wisps of the cloud that had trailed in her wake began to drift past her, and she became conscious of the wind that she had been outrunning. The storm that had gathered behind her was close on her heels.

"Binoculate," she chanted, determined to get a closer look before the clouds covered the sky.

It was impossible to tell if any of the figures near the manor below were Voldemort or not, as they were all wearing black robes, and masks covered their faces. There were at least two dozen of them, and all of them bore wands. However, none of them provoked any kind of telltale reaction within her, so she guessed that Voldemort was waiting for her inside, either hoping that his henchmen could deter her, slow her down, capture her, or kill her. Either that, or he just wanted to see how she would handle them.

Aw, what a shame, she thought contemptuously as the thunderclouds began to swirl past her and the first drops of rain began to fall into the valley below. It was such a pretty little house. She turned and held her wand aloft, building power she had not built since that fateful day on Kingman's Bluff.

"Tempestas meteora!" she screamed. The wand in her hand seemed to burn with ecstasy at the power she sent through it, and at the sound of her voice, now cold and powerful that it rang as a command to the very stars.

There was a screaming sound and a rush of heat as what looked to be a blazing trail of fire whistled out of the sky and passed by her. A few seconds later, another came, and then another, then two more, then four, larger than the others as well.

With a scream of glee, Willow leaned her broom downward and plunged down from the sky, a shower of meteorites sailing by her head and streaming out before her as her vanguard. As she neared the water gardens in the rear of the palace, she saw the Death Eaters already in disarray. One meteorite slammed into the pool at the base of one of the waterfalls, sending up a wall of water and steam that engulfed two of the Death Eaters and threw them into the trees. Others brought entire sections of the terrace walls crumbling down on the Death Eaters attempting to use them as cover. Others simply impacted on the stone walkways of the formal garden against the back wall of the manor, filling the air with a cloud of meteoric dust.

"Ready?" Willow hissed into her robes as she neared the ground. There were still a number of Death Eaters in the formal garden that hadn't broken yet, and another half-dozen reinforcements were emerging from within; Voldemort had probably kept his staunchest forces closest to the manor.

"Yesss," came the rather amused reply from within. Willow grinned mirthlessly as she withdrew her trusty garter snake from within her robes. She quickly fed him her most concentrated Giant Strength, Centaur Speed, and Arcane Resistance potions, held him out at arm's length, and chanted, "Wingardium Leviosa." She was almost at the level of the formal garden, and the spells of the Death Eaters were beginning to flash by her now; she noted with passing interest that most were Stunners or Impediments, not Killing Curses. She was moving across the line of fire, however, and was going far too fast for any of them to get a good lock on her.

When she was less than ten feet above the garden, she let Squiggles go, and swerved skyward again, floating him down to the ground as she did so without looking at him. As she expected, no one paid any attention to the tiny little animal dropping to the ground amid the storm of rain and meteorites, not with Willow swerving in so close and distracting the attention.

She was about a hundred feet in the air again when she banked around to get a look at Squiggles again. The closest Death Eaters were less than thirty feet from him, but they were paying him no attention.

Poor guys, she mused. You have no idea what's about to happen to you, do you?

"Engorgio!" she barked. She kept her voice level and precise, but she channeled a prodigious amount of power behind the spell. The charm streaked outward toward the tiny shadow on the flagstones, and immediately the little garter snake began to grow. And grow. And grow. Willow grinned wickedly as the cries of the nearest Death Eaters rang out, their attention suddenly distracted by a garter snake, its veins already singing with Willow's most potent potions, now nearly the size of a basilisk.

Willow flinched briefly, as casting that spell for some reason brought a sudden ache to the place where she had been wounded on her neck, and to where the dead basilisk's fang had scraped her hand in the Chamber, but she pushed it to one side of her mind. There was a battle going on.

She angled sharply to the right and down, cutting around the corner of the palace towards the front. A moment later, she came out in full view of the front of Malfoy Manor, with the high fountain on the plaza right before the main entrance, and the straight path of stairs and plazas cutting through the terraces down to the village below. Her eyes narrowed. More Death Eaters were scaling the stairs to the manor. Voldemort had to have summoned reinforcements the moment he knew she was coming, but with Malfoy Manor, like Hogwarts, warded against Apparating, they had had to appear in the village and make the trek to the manor on foot.

Tough luck for them, she thought.

She soared out above the enormous fountain that stood before the front gates of the manor, positioning herself so that she was facing straight down the broad stairs and plazas all the way to the village. There were at least another two dozen Death Eaters on the stairs, some as close as the sixth circle, others barely beginning their ascent. A few of the nearest ones stopped to aim Stunning spells, but she merely laughed and climbed higher out of range. She could probably have hit them from that range, but she wasn't aiming at small people.

She was aiming at a large fountain.

Her eyes blazed, and her voice rang like a clarion call as she aimed her wand downward. "Te invoc Neptunus, este dreptul aqua meu de a conduce!" Then, a moment later, "Iluvio!"

The fountain began to bubble and swirl. Suddenly, there was a rumble, and the earth shook. A great torrent of water blasted skyward from the fountain, ten times as powerful as the greatest natural geysers, rising into the air like a vast, shimmering tower flashing in the burning light of the meteor shower. Then the top of it cascaded over, and the tower toppled forward and down the stairs in a thunderous deluge. The Death Eaters nearest the top were swept away, while those farther down turned and sprinted back to the bottom of the stairs, trying to make it to the edge of the anti-Apparition ward. A scant few tried to fend it off with walls of stone, or to avoid it by levitating above it, but seeing what they were up against, they too quickly turned and fled once the initial fury of the flood abated.

Satisfied that she had cleared the outside of the house, Willow turned her attention on the great front doors of Malfoy Manor. She drew back her wand to loose a Reductor on them, when a crack suddenly appeared between the doors. She lowered her wand an inch or two, but she was not about to relax, as the doors of the Malfoy ancestral seat opened wide to admit her. The interior was nearly lightless; the only light was the sporadic red glare that a few of the meteorites falling nearby cast across the first few yards of what looked to be a massive chamber inside.

Well, thanks for the invitation …, she thought with a shrug as she alighted from her broom and inched forward into the darkness.

.

Harry hovered above the woods, looking at the Malfoy palace in the distance amid the barrage of torrential rain and celestial artillery. The storm showed no sign of abating, despite the fact that Willow had long since moved on to other spells. He could feel the power radiating off of her, even at this distance.

"Salazar's ballocks!" he heard a sudden shout from nearby, and turned down to see Draco rising from the small clearing in front of the hunting lodge beneath him.

"Welcome home!" Harry called back.

Draco turned around; he hadn't even noticed Harry, so focused had he been on his home in the distance. "What are you still doing here?" he asked.

Harry laughed. "Screwing up my guts to go through that."

Draco turned back and took another long look at the manor in the distance. "We're off our bloody rockers, you know that?"

"It had occurred to me," Harry admitted.

"She's going around front," Draco suddenly called. "Get to the rear balcony. Now or never!"

Harry steeled himself. Suddenly, his nerves subsided. This was suddenly just another slightly different game of Quidditch, no different than what he had done against the Hungarian Horntail. Heck, he even had Draco here to fly against. The only difference now was that the bludgers were red. And hotter. And larger. And faster. And everywhere. And …

Oh, hell with it! he grated as he lunged his broom forward. Draco was right beside him.

A meteorite flashed only inches from his head. He blinked quickly and flew on. Beside him, Draco rolled as another falling rock flashed through where his chest had been a moment earlier; he was upright again a moment later, the Skyfire evening the flying edge between them the same way the Nimbus 2001 had done when Harry had still been flying his first broom. Harry dove into a roll, doing a forward somersault, feeling the presence of another coming up behind him the way he had always been able to sense incoming bludgers. Draco knocked another one that was getting too close off course with an Impediment.

They reached the terraces, then the formal garden, the landscape beneath them blurring because of the rain and because of their speed.

"Hey, Squiggles!" Harry said as he and Draco darted past above the enormous snake.

"Good evening," Willow's pet responded, casually lashing one of the last Death Eaters that had stayed to fight with his enormous tail. The masked wizard sailed up and over the side of the terrace, landing in a pool in the water garden below with a splash that was largely drowned out by the blitz of wind, water, fire, and stone.

Then they were on the balcony. Draco was dodging a meteorite as they reached it, and had to roll through the curtains and into the interior. Harry hit the ground running, not bothering to catch his broom and letting it skip in past the curtains ahead of him.

They were through the curtains a moment later. The crash of the storm and stones outside was suddenly much quieter; the curtains had to be enchanted. In fact, it was all too quiet; the house seemed empty.

"Will this place hold?" Harry asked, his voice small in the deafening silence. He cast a nervous glance towards the ceiling as he retrieved his broom.

"Held for six weeks against a hundred giants pounding it with rocks from the mountains above," Draco answered, equally softly. "Should hold for … well, I don't know, another hour or two."

"Right," Harry answered.

"Right," Draco answered. He pointed down a stairwell a short distance to their right. "Down there and to the front is the main hall, Willow will come in there. I'll find Buffy."

Harry nodded and headed for the stairwell.

"And Potter," Draco called behind him. "Watch yourself. He keeps dementors around him now."

"Got it," Harry acknowledged darkly as he darted down the stairs.

Harry had a good sense of direction and the house was laid out in a fairly straightforward manner, so it wasn't hard to find the way towards the front of the house. The stairwell led down into a moderate-sized formal dining room. The east door from there led into a smaller, private dining room. His eyes widened as he entered that; the east door of this room led into the great hall, and he could see all the way down the hall to the great double doors beginning to open. The rest of the Hall of Wisdom was dark, which left the figure illumined in the widening portal illuminated in stark relief, and Harry could not mistake that silhouette. It had occupied his dreams and daydreams every day and night for nearly the past three months.

"W …" he began to shout, when suddenly he felt power being drawn behind him.

"Terrandicto!" a cold, and all-too-familiar, woman's voice chanted. A wall of earth burst from the ground and sealed the entrance to the great hall beyond, cutting him off from Willow. Harry could have broken it down in a minute, but that was suddenly the last thing on his mind. A cold flame flared in his belly.

"Protego!" he chanted, fending off the next spell, which he knew would be heading his direction a second later. Sure enough, his words blended with the sound of the cold voice calling, "Crucio!" but his shield held.

Bellatrix Lestrange stepped back from the doorway back into the larger dining room. "Well done, Potter," she said. "Now … where were we the last time?"

Her mouth was twisted in a cold grin, but Harry suddenly realized that his own was even colder. She was here. She had walled off the door to the great hall, and they both knew there was no way he could turn away from her to break it down. She intended to fight him.

He intended to oblige.

"You were buried under a statue," he returned coldly. "Reducto!" A large, ornately carved stone at the top of the arch separating the formal and private dining rooms blasted free and sailed at Bellatrix' head. She reacted quickly and deflected it aside into the floor.

"Sort of like that," he emphasized.

"Aww, ickle bitty Potter, are you still … angry … about Sirius?" she mocked, backing away into the dining room to let him out where there would be more space for dueling.

Harry advanced into the formal dining room, squaring off across from her. "Of course not," he said casually. "I mean, you've forgotten all about the prophecy, right?"

Her eyes glittered, and Harry's grin broadened as she raised her wand. "Garde."

.

Draco Malfoy tensed as he entered the Arcanum Malfi. If he were holding a prisoner here, one that had any real talent or chance of escape, anyway, there was only one obvious place to hold her. The vaults were the most secure place in the house, and were so well warded against detection that one might take the castle but never find them if one did not know what to look for. But Draco did know what to look for, and his father knew that, and had to know he was coming because of the Howler. So where were the guards? The fireplace was vacant.

He tensed again. He was sure he had heard a sound somewhere nearby, and the same instincts that had made him the best … well, maybe occasionally second-best … Quidditch player at Hogwarts were telling him that there was something nearby.

His eyes narrowed. It was too far away, across the room, but if he moved any closer, if anyone was there, they might notice and be able to surprise him. Whoever it was was waiting until he got too close to miss or react. If he sped up, he might give himself away. But there was still one way to find out.

Without warning, he loosed his Skyfire from his grip, sending it across the room with the speed of a small rocket. There was a muffled cry, and an ottoman in the reading area in front of the fire suddenly tipped over. That was all the information Draco needed. He pointed his wand at the space on the floor just behind the ottoman, and chanted, "Finite Incantatem."

There was a faint sound like an echo of cloth being torn far in the distance. A man appeared where Draco had aimed, half-sprawled on the floor, rising to his feet, his invisibility potion neutralized.

Draco gave his most friendly, political grin, but his wand was steady in his hands. "Good evening, Father."

.

Willow stopped a short distance into the darkness. The moment she had crossed the threshold, she had known she was not alone in the room. There was a powerful presence here, dark and sinister. She thought she had seen and sensed something for a brief moment in one corner of the room, but there was no light there now, and the presence she felt was closer to the middle of the room.

"So are we going to play Mr. Dark and Ominous forever, or are you gonna turn on the lights at some point?" she quipped.

There was a brief silence as the echoes of her statement died away. Then a high, soft voice greeted her, not in English, but in a soft, almost sensuous hiss. "Welcome, Willow," the voice said.

Willow's eyes narrowed. "Thank you," she returned, in a hiss far more icy than the one that had greeted her.

The voice came again, this time in English. "I suppose the darkness does get a little dreary. Besides, we both bring so much into this hallowed hall, a suppose a little light won't make much difference." Light suddenly blossomed in the chamber, a silvery-green light that radiated from the Corinthian columns of emerald and silver marble that marched down the chamber towards the throne. More light came from the dais itself. The light was dim, even with all the surface area illuminated, but it was easily bright enough to see.

A figure rose from the throne. It was a man, or at least perhaps had been so at one time, but his features seemed to have taken on serpentine aspects, and his slitted eyes glowed a deep, baleful crimson. He carried a wand which, to all outward appearances, could have been the twin of Willow's own. Once he was standing, however, he made no motion to approach; he stood regally before the throne, waiting for her to approach, like a sovereign waiting on a supplicant.

Willow was not about to let herself be impressed by appearances, or play into his games. "You've got my friend," she grated.

Voldemort's smile was irritatingly arrogant. "Indeed," he admitted. "And you have my wand."

Willow's eyes glittered, and she raised the yew wand defiantly. "I'm not trading."

Voldemort's smile broadened. "Neither am I."

A/N: Thanks to everyone who's been so patient with me thus far! I try to get these out as quickly as possible, but … well, law school. 'Nuff said. :-( I can't thank you enough for all your support. That, and the fact that has been really frustrating in messing up the format of my stories, and I'm a big enough stickler that that actually bothers me. Hence the random "." lines when I used to do the rows of asterisks or triple-space between smaller sections.

For "action" fans (especially any that might have made the jump with me from anime to HP, since a lot of you seemed to like my battle scenes from RK), the next several chapters are pretty much nonstop action. ;-) Draco vs. Lucius, Harry vs. Bellatrix, Willow vs. Voldemort. At the very least, they've been a lot of fun to write so far.

Coming Soon: Chapter 43, "Of Fathers and Sons." Draco's finally got his chance at Lucius, and the elder Malfoy and Voldemort's dementors are all that stands between Draco and the dungeons of Malfoy Manor.

Sneak Preview:

Now, now, that would give way too much away! Patience is a virtue. ;-)