AN: Another chapter that gets dark but, unlike canon, the characters are going to actually grow from it, so I promise it's worth it. Keep going!
And thanks for all the great comments and feedback. I love your speculations and suggestions. They are very inspiring, especially since I am writing this chapter by chapter as I go. Living for it! DDD
Harry Potter was asleep, dreaming.
In the dream - in someone's dream - he was examining a hand by the light of a wand held gingerly in his left hand. He knew the hand he studied was also his own, withered, almost skeletal, coloured a faint radiant blue, as if it was made of crumbling sea ice, and scarred with white lines like the contours of broken shapes and letters.
The sight and sting of it filled him with rage and fear, so much that he was lashing out with a curse from his wand, green light washing over the cowering form of blond-haired boy - or maybe a man. It was a proper curse, properly aimed, and still the boy stood in the light of it, frightened but unharmed.
That pretty idiot Malfoy's boy, besting his intellect, withstanding his magic, corrupting his body - HOW?
He wanted murder, blood, and he lunged and pushed, screaming until the boy was bleeding on the floor crawling…
...and someone was shaking him awake in his bed.
Harry woke up snarling, "Malfoy…"
"No, it's me, Harry," Ron was saying.
He was leaning into Harry's face, close enough that Harry could smell the chocolate on him. Harry pawed his night-table for his glasses as Ron babbled frantically, trying to peel Harry away from his bedsheets, jamming his hand under Harry's pillow.
"Will you get off me!" Harry called over Ron's ranting.
"Just give me the Map, Harry. I need to find her."
Harry looked at the clock. "It's not quite 6:30 am. She'll be in bed, in the dungeons. Leave her be."
Ron's face flicked from frantic to terrified, mouth gaping open, eyes wide. "In the dungeons? No, we've got to get her out. My wand - "
He was flipping his bed linens onto the floor, searching them for his wand. Harry was watching dumbfounded when the empty box of chocolate cauldrons tumbled out of Ron's bed and onto the floor.
Ron's terror was developing into fury. He was muttering, "Take my Romilda and put her in the dungeons while I sleep. Well, they've got another thing coming."
Harry sighed into his hands. That bleeding love potion. "Had a bit of chocolate for breakfast, did you Ron?"
Wand in hand, Ron spun around to face Harry. "Come with me. I might be outnumbered. We can't take any chances when it comes to her. Get up, Harry, we've got to save my Romilda!"
"Right." Harry played along, but listlessly. "To the dungeons."
He would rather go to Slughorn for a love potion antidote than to Snape, but with Ron already bent on a trip to the dungeons, he would settle for that. Snape might also be cross enough about the situation to do something about the trade of love potions in the school. Slughorn, on the other hand, was more likely to just wax nostalgic about it.
Harry sprinted after Ron, down the stairs, snagging him by the collar of his T-shirt as they landed in the Entrance Hall. "Not that stairway," he tugged him away from the Slytherin dorms, steering him toward Snape's office. "Over here."
"You're late!" a voice called out across the Entrance Hall.
Harry swore. It was Pansy Parkinson, standing up from a bench where she'd been waiting. She was dressed for flying.
"This was all your idea. It was you that said to meet here at 6 am. And look at you, still in your pajamas," she said, pacing toward them, scolding but with a bend to her lips that showed it was her way of warming up to him. "And you've brought a chaperone, have you? What're you playing at, Weasley?" As she said it, she ruffled Ron's hair.
He gasped, recoiling as if violated. "It was you. You did it. You took her and now you're taunting me."
Pansy scowled. "Took her? Who is 'her,' Ronald?"
Ron straightened out of his recoiling posture. "Don't you 'Ronald' me. Just bring back Romilda. I don't like to fight little girls, but for Romilda, I will."
"Romilda? Romilda Vane?"
"Yes, my darling girl Romilda. It's awful. Something's happened - "
"Oh, something awful's going to happen, alright - " Pansy was swearing and threatening, jumping at Ron, trying to get hold of his hair again, only with a much different spirit.
Harry inserted himself between them, a hand on Ron's chest, pushing him backward, shouting over Pansy. "There's been an accident, Parkinson. Ron ran into a love potion intended for someone else, and he's out of his mind."
It just seemed to make her angrier. "Another potion, is it? How convenient. First it was Felix Felicis with Lavender Brown, and now this?"
"It's my fault, Parkinson," Harry was saying. "It was meant for me, and I knew it but I had a bad night and didn't - "
Ron had swerved around the pair of them and was sprinting toward the dungeons.
Harry called after him, hollering his name, Ron ignoring him. Desperate, he yelled, "I found Romilda! Ron, she's not in the dungeons. I was wrong about that. She's upstairs with Slughorn."
Ron skidded to a stop in his house slippers, pivoted back toward the marble staircase, running past Pansy without so much as a glance.
"We're off to get the antidote," Harry said to her, running backward after Ron. "Come find him later. He'll be fine by then, I swear."
Pansy stood, eyes smarting, watching the boys disappear up the stairs - up to Slughorn's office, and whatever waited there.
Hermione lay in bed, blinking in the dawning sunlight. She was going over the situation with Draco, Snape, and the Death Eaters, trying to think of a way to organize it into a coherent story she could explain to Harry without sending him off in a ferocious rage. She had promised to explain it all to him this morning, before classes began.
She dressed herself and sat in the common room, waiting, lifting her head from her book every time a boy came down the dormitory steps. Finally, Seamus appeared.
"They're not upstairs no more. Haven't seen them since they woke up early, shouting and running out in their nightclothes with their wands drawn. Sorry, Hermione. I've learned by now it's usually best just to leave them to it."
She sat for a moment more, lips pursed, foot tapping, deliberating whether it would be better to wait for them to come back, or to chase through the castle after them. With a frustrated sigh, she stood up and went down to breakfast.
The boys weren't in the Great Hall. Hermione thought about asking Pansy if she'd seen them but she wasn't there either.
Without eating much, she stepped outside the dining hall, to where Draco was waiting to snag her sleeve and pull her behind one of the massive doors. He kissed her quickly, asking, "You look annoyed. How did it go, explaining everything to Potter?"
"It didn't," she said. "He and Ron are both missing. It's beginning to alarm me."
She was looking up into Draco's face, her expression darkening, brows drawing toward each other. "Your - people," she began. "They wouldn't have - done anything - to Harry - would they?"
Draco frowned back at her. "No one had any plans as far as I know. And like you saw, the cabinet is still broken. But…"
He could promise her nothing. The Death Eaters and everyone anywhere near them were completely mad, unpredictable.
Draco nodded. "We'd better find them."
"No," she said. "I'll find them. You just stay out of their way. If something's happened they might be - volatile. Lay low, be safe, and come find me if you see them."
They parted with another quick kiss before Draco slunk out from behind the door, Hermione waiting until he was out of sight to emerge herself.
"Hermione!"
It was Parvati Patil, trotting across the Entrance Hall toward her. "Is he alright? I just heard. It's so horrifying. Who do you think is responsible?"
Hermione shook her head, unable to make sense of any of it.
"Don't tell me you don't know?" Parvati raved, her mouth spread in something between an incredulous gape and a grin. "Ron Weasley's been poisoned, this morning in the potion master's study."
Hermione's face blanched white.
"He didn't die," Parvati rushed to say. "Harry found a bezoar and saved him. Slughorn was bloody useless from the sounds of it."
"Hospital wing?" was all Hermione said.
Pavarti shrugged. "I reckon so."
Hermione bounded down the corridor, toward the hospital wing. Ron must have just been brought in while the rest of the school was having breakfast. Curtains were drawn around Ron's bed, and Hermione could see three pairs of shoes pacing back and forth behind it.
Harry was standing outside the curtain, still in his pajamas. Hermione flew at him, grabbing at his arms, frantic for an explanation. He told her about the love potion from Romilda Vane.
"Thanks to your warning, I didn't drink it myself," Harry said. "And though I wouldn't call a love potion harmless, it was nothing compared to the second poison Ron drank this morning."
He told her about the deadly oak-matured mead in Slughorn's office, adding, in his humble way, the bit about the bezoar he found just before it would have been too late to save Ron's life.
She threw her arms around his neck. "Oh, Harry. The Chosen One, indeed. Thank the stars for you."
He didn't return her hug, standing cold and stiff between her arms.
Harry's voice was level and cool as he said, "Where did Slughorn get poisoned mead, Hermione? Why was it in a bottle he was supposed to give to Dumbledore as a Christmas gift?"
She stepped back, releasing him, wiping her eyes.
"Well, where did Slughorn say he got it?" she asked. "Shouldn't we start there? I mean, it wouldn't be much of an investigation if we just sat in here speculating and never went back to the source to ask him. If this was a mystery novel, that'd be a bit of plot-hole, wouldn't it?"
Harry shrugged. "Maybe. But do we have to bother Slughorn when most everything about this attack is already so familiar?"
Hermione frowned. He was being unreasonable, jumping to conclusions, getting that hard, mad look on his face that came over him when he was about to link a crime to Draco. She braced herself, knowing that Harry's paranoia about Draco had a much greater basis in fact than she'd ever imagined before yesterday.
He went on. "You know what it reminds me of, don't you? The bottle of wine is like the hexed necklace Katie carried back from Hogsmeade. Deceptively attractive but creepy contraband contaminated with something deadly, brought into the castle and set loose, nudged in Dumbledore's direction but so carelessly it takes out an innocent student instead."
Hermione swallowed through a dry throat. No one had managed to pin the necklace attack on the Malfoys. But no one had exonerated them either. In Harry's mind, they had always been guilty. And Hermione could not deny it.
"The similarities are too great for it to be an accident," Harry said. "Our best friend almost died this morning, thanks to all of this. What do you have to say about it, Hermione? I'm still waiting. What can you possibly say to defend him now?"
The curtains around Ron's bed were flung open with a flourish that could only be that of Professor Snape. He, Dumbledore, and Madam Pomfrey appeared standing around Ron's bed. Ron himself was tucked tightly beneath a sheet, sleeping.
"Harry, Miss Granger," Dumbledore greeted them. "Oh, and here comes Miss Weasley too. Harrowing morning for Mr. Weasley, to be sure. But thanks to Harry's quick thinking and decisive action, he should be quite alright after a few days' rest and curative potions. Isn't that right, Professor Snape?"
"Indeed."
"No," Harry hissed. "I won't have Snape laying a hand on Ron."
Ginny took his arm, whispering his own name into his ear. "It's alright, Harry."
"Yes, never fear, Harry," Dumbledore said, one hand on Snape's elbow as he stood between Harry and the headmaster, rolling his eyes. "Mr. and Mrs. Weasley have been consulted and they have enthusiastically consented to Ron's treatment by our Hogwarts staff including Professor Snape. They are on their way here, as we speak. You needn't be bothered by it."
"I am bothered by it," Harry said, backing away even though it meant Ginny had to let go of his arm.
"Harry, we need to talk," Hermione called after him as he turned and stormed out of the room. "Harry, wait."
She was loud enough that Ron stirred in his bed. "Hermione?"
Dumbledore swept his arm toward her, inviting her to come sit by the bed. "Come along girls, do sit down. Mr. Weasley is in need of company and comfort."
Ginny linked arms with Hermione. "Just for a bit," she said. "Pansy should get wind of it and come flying in soon. Might be the only peace we have with him for a while."
Hermione shot one more glance at the door through which Harry had disappeared, sighed, and sat on the edge of Ron's bed.
The moment Draco heard that potions class was canceled due to the unfortunate poisoning of Ron Weasley in the potion master's chambers that morning, he bolted to his dormitory, to the locked chest under his bed where he kept the enchanted coin he had used in the Fall to communicate with his mother's accomplice in Hogsmeade.
He hadn't touched the coin in months, not since Katie Bell was hexed. But the poisoning accident was so similar to the necklace attack, he couldn't shake a sickening feeling that his mother - his desperate, deranged, now drugged mother - might have activated her accomplice to try to help him once again.
In his room, he waved his wand to unlock the chest, blew out a long breath to steel himself, and opened the lid. The coin lay on the green velvet bottom of the box. It was warm to his touch, and when he turned it over in his fingers, there was an unread message on it.
"Goods delivered. Slughorn for Dumbledore."
He swore, re-locking the coin inside the box, kicking it under the bed. His mother and her accomplice had almost killed Ron Weasley today, Hermione's best friend. And if anyone ever discovered the source of the poisoned mead, he would almost surely be implicated in it.
What was he supposed to do now?
Hermione would be in the hospital wing with Weasley. Potter would be there too. Just as he'd done after Katie Bell's hexing, Draco's best chance was to act like all of it had nothing to do with him. He had to be normal, and that meant calming down, neutralizing his too-expressive face, and reporting for his next class.
He left the dormitory, setting off down the corridor through his gossiping classmates, moving too quickly to catch more than snatches of their speculations on the crime. But all the conversations seemed the same.
"It was meant for Potter, of course. As if the chosen one would fall for that…"
"It was a Weasleys Wizard Wheezes love potion that had gone off. So dangerous, the way that shop will swap its potions' labels just to outwit Filch. Honestly, that store is a menace…"
"Love potion? That explains why he was snogging Pansy Parkinson yesterday, out of nowhere. Looks like that blew up in her face…"
"Maybe it was a potion from someone trying to win Weasley back from Parkinson. Didn't he and Granger used to…"
"No, isn't she running around with that Death Eater trash, as if no one can tell..."
"How could she be, after all this…"
"You don't think HE could have…"
Malfoy was sweating, tugging at his tie, loosening his collar. There was pressure in his throat, something rising from his gut. He was going to be sick. He swore. This was why it was better for him not to eat. If he had to be sick, it wouldn't do for him to do it in a bathroom where everyone could hear him, stoking gossip about him being caught up in today's disaster.
He fled his classmates, climbing higher, to the deserted, dilapidated bathroom on the sixth floor.
Harry had left the hospital wing to hunt for Malfoy. Map in hand, he hurried down the stairs from Gryffindor Tower, to the sixth floor, to the bathroom where the dots of Malfoy and Moaning Myrtle had just appeared. From the doorway, he heard her wheedling voice, begging Malfoy to confide in her.
"You can't help me," Malfoy was saying, sobbing, leaning over the skin, clenching its edge with both his hands. His face was a grayish green, as if he'd just been sick.
With his head bowed over the sink, he didn't see Harry standing behind him in the cracked mirror. Harry tucked the Map into his robes, and drew his wand. He stood silently, waiting to be noticed. And as he did, last night's dream settled over him again. He was the mind he had dreamed - hurt, violated, enraged. The heart he'd had in the dream returned as well, with all its poison desires. He wanted Malfoy to fall and crawl - to bleed.
"I know you did it, Malfoy."
He wheeled around to face Harry, tears still smeared across his face, his expression drawn into a snarl like a frightened animal. His eyes widened at the sight of Harry's wand fixed at his chest. He straightened up, drawing his own wand, his chest heaving, his blood still pulsing with the rush of adrenaline from his spell of vomiting.
Harry took a step closer, and as he did Draco panicked, firing a hex from his wand. Whether it was meant to miss and smash against the wall over Harry's shoulder, Harry couldn't tell.
Soon, it hardly mattered. Pandemonium was descending over the bathroom. Myrtle was screaming and pleading as Harry and Draco exchanged curses, their fear and rage building, the porcelain and glass of the bathroom shattering and crashing, cold water spraying from broken pipes and basins, flowing lazily toward the drains, pooling over their feet.
Frustrated and furious, Harry finally lashed out with a spell he'd just discovered and which he'd been waiting to try for days.
"Sectumsempra!"
The curse left his body with something more than the satisfaction of curiosity indulged. It flared through his flesh, from the scar at the top of his head, to the soles of his feet, with a feeling he had never known before. It was bloodlust, pounding in his heart and ears, filling him with wicked pleasure that a dark part of him savoured while the rest of him shrunk back, revolted.
Myrtle screamed, the water sprayed, and Malfoy lay choking, his body carved open, bleeding to death.