A/N: And, finally, Antares wakes.
Chapter 11: Winding Down

Waking was glorious. Antares, breathing deeply, relished the strange light feeling in his head. Slowly, slowly, the memory of Tom's raw screaming came back to him, jumbled up with the translucent sheen of his black shoes and the sound of his laughter as Antares lay defeated on the toilet floor. And then everything was suddenly coming back, familiar memories mixed with unfamiliar, the smell of the dry, fragile pages of the diary mixed with the slippery feel of the blood from the first dead cockerel.

Antares sat up slowly, grimacing at the unpleasant taste in his mouth. I remember, he thought uselessly, shivering at the strange memories that were occurring to him now. It only took him a minute of remembering how it had felt to laugh himself sick while the seventh years froze around him for him to start to force the thoughts back, back.

A moment later, Antares' thoughts were clearer than they'd ever been before, and he'd barely even started trying to sort them out.

What's happened to me? he thought, rubbing at his eyes. His head felt light and clear, empty of answers, so he opened his eyes instead. They stung as he looked around him, wearily recognising the crisp sheets and dreary wall-and-cabinet of the small room in the Hospital wing.

They stopped stinging once he saw the diary at the foot of his bed, though he blinked again and rubbed them, hard. The diary was floating in a bubble, half-open; the few pages he could see were mockingly blank. The rest of Antares' mildly aching body seemed suddenly not to exist, so strong was the feeling that Tom would suddenly settle into existence before him, that smile on his face. "Blaise is dead," Antares could almost hear, in that steady, cruelly satisfied tone. "Pity you aren't, but some things just can't be helped—"

Outside the room, someone was approaching. Feeling returned to Antares' legs in a shock of cold as his bare feet thudded onto the stone floor. His tongue felt thick and useless in his mouth as he tried to summon his wand, and his fingers stiffened with the effort of flexing them after what he suddenly knew was not in the room. As the door opened, Antares turned round, barely noting the warmth of the sheets as he attacked them for something, anything he could use to defend himself.

"Mr. Black!" Madam Pomfrey's shock was palpable as always, and loud, her angry steps seeming to fill the room with sound. "What on earth are you doing? Get back in bed this instant!" Antares, half-frozen, could not find it in himself to turn around. Pomfrey's voice and presence sounded real enough, but what was that, considering how Tom had probably had access to every memory Antares had had of the woman scolding him? "Did you hear me, Mr. Black?"

"He's awake," Bella whispered, behind him. "Thank Merlin." It was all Antares could do to keep himself from turning around at the sound of that. He dropped the fistful of sheets he'd only been half-aware of holding and tried to make himself believe that Tom could not fake Bella's voice so convincingly.

Bella's hug decided him. It was too tight, and worsened by the scratchy robes she wore, giving Antares very clear notice that he needed to put something on. Somehow, the command got lost between his backside and his tired brain, and minutes later he found himself crumpled in Bella's arms, his legs having failed him.

"He needs to get back into bed," Pomfrey said firmly, but not as firmly as usual. Antares barely had time to glance at her strangely unworried expression before he was being bundled into the messy little bed and tucked very firmly into it. And even then, Bella was too warm and scratchy and silent to be ignored.

"I need to check him over," Pomfrey said, her tone somehow careful. She was on the other side of the bed, holding a darkened vial of something Antares was sure would be unpleasant going down. "He must drink this at the very least, to help with the exhaustion." That, together with the familiar look of the bright, frothing liquid Pomfrey began to pour very gently into a cup confirmed Antares' dread. The slightly acid smell of the potion was familiar— Reviving potion, his brain told him, though he didn't know if he'd smelled it last time. He couldn't remember.

Antares froze. If— if he couldn't remember that, what else had he forgotten? His thoughts felt light still, light and empty. They worsened his fear, and though he dimly felt Madame Pomfrey nudging at him to accept the potion, he didn't react. Bella silently accepted it instead, then set it aside. Pomfrey left soon after, muttering something about finding Antares clothes and acting strangely undisturbed by how Bella hadn't agreed with any of her probably important suggestions about tests and the rest of it. As the door closed behind her, Bella took up the cup and wrapped Antares' hand slowly around it; somehow, that made it easier to ignore the burn as he drank it down. Within minutes, he was starting to shift in her partial embrace, despite his dread of what she would say when she finally spoke.

"I love you," she said, just when Antares had begun to think he would have to look at her to get her to say anything. "But you keep…doing this." Antares held his breath, fiercely berating himself for being surprised. As his mother's arms dropped from around him, he tried not to move. It was desperately hard, and the negligent way Bella's hand settled briefly on his shoulder made it even worse. "I need to know why."

Antares didn't know what was more painful— the fact that she was waiting so patiently for an answer to such a strange, empty question, or the fact that he didn't know what to say. A minute crawled by as he searched for something he could say without making him look like the idiot he'd been to trust Tom despite the signs. Several more went by as he tried to think of how to say how…safe talking to Tom had felt. How knowing— how thinking he knew where the danger lurked with the older boy had made him feel almost justified in extracting all he could from him.

"I wrote in it," Antares heard himself saying, thickly. "I do that. I write in all my books."

"But it wasn't your book," Bella pointed out, her words frighteningly still. "Was it?"

"It was in the book I bought," Antares said hesitantly, trying not to let the fear drag his words back into the sea of uncertainty that that thought was stirring. "I just assumed no one else wanted it."

Bella's laugh was so bitter it made him cringe. "I thought about it," Antares insisted uselessly, because there wasn't anything else he could think to say. "I thought about that, even if I didn't think of anything else. I did."

"Ssh," Bella said, stroking his hair, the bitterness on her face disappearing into a look so steady Antares thought he could drown in it. He looked down at his hands, twisted in the slightly dampening sheets, and only realised he was crying when Bella's hands began wiping the warm tears off his cheeks. It was hard to breathe for a moment, between the desperate need to bury his stupidity and the easy warmth of Bella's deft hands dabbing lightly at his chin, but the latter won by default, because Antares couldn't move away from her, not now, not when he needed to convince her— "Ssh. I know."

You don't, Antares wanted to protest. He sniffed instead, childishly, and leaned against Bella as she shifted closer to him on the bed, ignoring the awkwardness of the position. "I'm sorry."

"Don't give me that," was the strained, impatient answer. "Don't. You can't be sorry for something that isn't quite your fault." A soft silence settled upon them both, making Antares wish he could close his eyes against the new energy of the potion in him and drift off in Bella's arms. Then she spoke again, her sharp tone dispelling it all. "You'd have been better off as someone else's son," she said lowly, stroking his hair again. "But you know me. Stubborn. Foolish." Her voice was shaky now, with anger and fear and a hundred other things Antares did not understand. "Lucius has always known how to see one's weaknesses."

"Lucius?" Antares said, feeling some part of him go cold. "Lucius Malfoy?"

It was a moment before Bella answered. "His name," she said slowly, distinctly, "is on the last page of that diary." The look she directed at it frightened Antares. "He's forgot, though— I can't blame him." Then, in a lower tone, she added, "I'd forgot, myself."

"Forgot what?" Antares asked tentatively.

"Forgot my ancestors," was the simple answer. "Your ancestors. Mine and his, and their sort of vengeance." The look in Bella's eyes was not pleasant, though it softened when she looked down at him. "Do you remember the Dancing Curse?"

Antares nodded slowly, uneasily remembering the fake stories he'd brought home to show her, which centred the curse on red shoes and other strange things, and only ever seemed to involve vain or greedy girls. The real curse had been something of an epidemic in Denmark, where the tale originated— permanent and deadly, the Dancing Curse was named for its last stages, when nothing but music would lure the feverish victim out of their doomed sleep and into a dance so perfect that they could reduce the contents of a room to dust within the requisite circle or square that their dance required. The thought of Lucius Malfoy or, better, Draco held in the grip of that curse both pleased and horrified Antares, enough that he only began to hear the rest of Bella's low, angry murmuring when it grew too loud for him to ignore.

"…stood with me in the same room, watching people leak blood from everywhere possible, and somehow thought I'd forget it all, didn't he? People who use such curses in peacetime are highly desperate, I'll grant him that, but he seems to think them few." Bella let out a long hiss of a sigh, the ugly look on her face becoming worse with every passing minute. "He seems," she began again, through gritted teeth, "to think them all far away from him, and himself out of their reach."

Antares grabbed her hand and squeezed it, hard, wishing he could shake that look from her face. "Mum. Please…?" Her hand felt cool and almost limp in his, as if all of the warmth had retreated up into her face, concentrating in her burning eyes. "Mum," he whispered, shaking her hand.

Bella looked down for a long moment, and when her eyes met his again, the look was hidden. "He's half-right, at least," she said, softly. "Half." A disturbingly wistful smile surfaced on her face, freezing Antares momentarily. But when she looked at him, smiling properly, he couldn't help but smile back. "I need you to be calm," she said, her hand turning over in his grasp. "There's to be a trial held for you." As shock and confusion filtered rapidly through Antares, he felt his mother's hand squeeze his. "We have evidence, Antares. Lucius signed his name himself— he must explain that to them, at least." She touched his face, gently. "They won't blame you for anything."

For a long moment, Antares could not make himself say a thing. "Why?"

Bella smiled, bitterly. "You called him Tom," she said, slowly. "You never asked his last name, did you?"

"Didn't care," Antares said, staring at her. "Why does it matter?"

"The Dark Lord had a last name, once," was Bella's strange, stilted answer. "Not that it would have helped, knowing. He'd have lied to you. You must remember that."

"Why are you saying that?" Antares asked, though he could guess. "You're not serious. I— I didn't. I didn't." Bella's silence seemed to mock him, just as Tom had at the end. No, not Tom, insisted some wild, stupid voice in Antares' head. Call him by his real name. "No." The low, useless denial was swallowed up by the fierceness of Bella's hug, and Antares let it disappear, let it be muffled in her shoulder.

It didn't mean anything, anyway. The damage was already done.

Though Antares didn't want to let himself believe that Tom could be— could have been Voldemort, he had to. By the time Professor Dumbledore had ushered in Madam Pomfrey and Ms. Fawcett, a distressingly well-groomed witch the old man introduced as Antares' barrister, Antares found himself believing every bit of it. How else would it be possible that the Headmaster of Hogwarts would open and close the door what seemed like a thousand times, make everyone tea or coffee, check the time, conjure three more armchairs like the one Bella had dragged near to Antares' bed and still somehow find time to skewer Antares with those shrewd, shuttered eyes?

"Now," Professor Dumbledore said, sounding firm and even a little solemn as he finally dropped into his own chair, positioned on the other side of Antares' bed, "now, we can begin." Despite how…examined Antares had felt in the last few minutes, it felt miles better than being the centre of the Headmaster's attention. "If you would begin, Mr. Black, with how you found the diary."

Antares nodded nervously, trying not to look at where it had been moments before. The absence of it somehow irritated and relieved him at the same time. On one hand, he couldn't stand the sight of it anymore. On the other hand, however… "It's not under my bed, is it?" Antares felt his face heat at the stupidity of asking such a thing, but couldn't help himself. "It isn't, is it?"

"Certainly not," Dumbledore said, smiling calmly. "We must have shuffled it out without you quite seeing— a mistake, now that I think of it. The diary is—"

"I don't need to know where it is," Antares said, backtracking desperately. "I just…don't want it nearby."

Though it lasted only a short moment, Dumbledore's pause was heavy with meaning. "I understand. Now, as to where you actually found it for the first time…"

"In my new Transfig book." Antares tried to stop his hands from twisting at the sheets in his lap, but they didn't seem to be listening. " Transfigurations, I mean. I found it in there on the train here."

Ms. Fawcett cleared her throat. "And do you make a habit of only opening your school books on the train, Mr. Black?"

Bella shifted, her cold gaze sweeping down onto the now slightly twitchy Ms. Fawcett. "Are you implying something?"

"I doubt it," Professor Dumbledore said, glancing evenly at both of them. "It is likely something the governors will wish to know, however."

"Wait," Antares said, something horrible suddenly occurring to him. "Isn't Lucius Malfoy one of them? One of them governors?"

"I think you'll find it will work out to our advantage if he's present at your trial," Bella said reassuringly, though her eyes were not on him as she spoke. They were fixed on Ms. Fawcett, and moved to fix on the Headmaster seconds after Antares noticed her line of sight. "Go on, dear."

"First time I wrote in it was when I found it," Antares said hesitantly. "It was— I think— I needed to write something down, so I wouldn't forget it." The words stung at him even as they dropped off his tongue, heavy as the thought that not having parchment on him might have led to something so impossible. "It was cool," he said, in as small a voice as he could manage. "Watching the words disappear, I mean. I didn't think— I showed it to my friends, and they just thought it was cool, so I stuck it in my pocket and forgot it for a bit."

Dumbledore's eyes pierced Antares, so that he could almost feel the short nod the old man gave. "Go on."

"He remembered me," Antares said, slowly. "When I wrote in it again, he remembered me. It was weird, but nice, sort of. I wasn't very…happy, at the time, and he said he knew my great-aunt. Walburga Black," he added, in case Ms. Fawcett didn't know, or Madam Pomfrey, but since neither of them looked very confused, Antares decided to go on. "He was interesting to listen to— to read, I mean. I liked knowing things other people didn't, really. It helped."

"Helped with what?" Ms. Fawcett asked carefully, glancing at Bella. When Antares did not say anything, Fawcett gave him a horribly kind look. "If you can't—"

"I can say," Antares mumbled, finding he had to look away from Bella to do so. She's going to think its her fault, though it's not, he couldn't help thinking, as he opened his mouth. But by the time he found the strength to look at the guilt on his mother's face, the words were already coming out. "From about the moment term started, everyone hated me. I was— there were these seventh years." Antares tried to force out the words to describe what they had done, but found nothing but the wild laughter that had been watching them be Petrified by that awful snake. "They…"

"You can just say their names," Fawcett said quietly. "If that helps."

It did, to Antares' shame. "Rookwood," he said anyway, despite the bite of it, "Robert and Rachel Rookwood. Willa Avery, and Ed Yaxley."

"Had they bullied you before?"

Antares somehow held back a laugh. "I don't think they knew who I was, before. I really don't know." Fawcett looked at him expectantly, as if waiting for him to say more. "Once they started in, everyone else sort of joined in. It was horrible."

"It was more than horrible, thank you," Pomfrey said sharply, giving Antares the first pitying look he could remember receiving from her. "I'm sorry to say that I wasn't very sorry to see them Petrified. I saw Mr. Black in here almost every morning, Ms. Fawcett, literally battered and bloody. And even that description doesn't cover what was done to him last Saturday."

Fawcett nodded slowly. "And you'll be happy to supply memories of any of these incidents?"

Pomfrey nodded sharply, angrily. "The least I could do," she muttered, not seeming to care that Antares was staring at her in grateful shock. "Wouldn't be at all charitable to leave those little fiends in stasis, would it?"

"Is that why you pranked them, Mr. Black?" Fawcett asked, not seeming to hear the last of what Pomfrey had said. "Get your own back, so to speak?"

"Yeah," Antares said, dread creeping up his spine at the sheer thought of what he was about to admit. "I thought— at first, I was just going to steal their things. Wasn't hard to get hold of the password for the girls' dorms, not with…the cloak." He glanced quickly at Dumbledore, hoping uselessly that he'd somehow guess what cloak he was talking about, but the Headmaster's face simply showed the same confusion as everyone else's.

"What cloak?" Fawcett asked, tentatively. "Could you—"

"An Invisibility cloak," Antares forced out, before his nerve failed him. The disbelieving silence that followed the admission made it hard to keep on, but he managed it somehow. "Got it last Christmas, in the post." He looked at his mother, willing her to remember, to understand. "Don't you remember? I lied about it. You knew."

"Knew?" Bella repeated, incredulously. "If I'd known…you brought it here, didn't you? With Quirrell here? Were you mad?"

Antares' voice almost failed him at the look on her face. "Yeah," he said, in a very small voice. "I— I learned some Occlumency."

"From a book you bought in Diagon Alley," Bella said, her tone hard and mocking. Looking at Antares' frozen-feeling face, she laughed bitterly. "We learned that from those friends of yours. At this rate, I can only feel grateful that putting that memory charm on them was their idea. Who taught you that, anyway?"

It hurt to say it, but Antares managed to anyhow. "It was in the same book."

Bella smiled, bitterly. "Priceless."

Somehow, the reproving look Dumbledore sent her way gave Antares no satisfaction. "Perhaps we should stick to more pertinent questions for now, Ms. Black," Dumbledore said, quietly. His eyes pierced Antares again. "You said you received the cloak at Christmas?"

"I know I shouldn't have kept it," Antares said desperately, hoping that no one would look too closely at that half-lie. "But— it wasn't like there was a return address or anything. All there was was some weird letter!"

Dumbledore nodded slowly, his face so frozen in thought that it was hard to watch for long. Antares couldn't help flinching a little as he began to speak again. "Did you keep the letter?"

"Yes," Antares said quickly, hoping he'd brought it to school with him. Just now, he couldn't quite remember if he had— maddening, since he couldn't decide if that was Tom's fault or if it was his for being in such a stupid daze earlier on about Bella and Professor Snape and their irritating relationship. "I don't— I can't remember if I actually brought it with me."

"No matter," Dumbledore said, not seeming to care. "We'll check your trunk once we're done, and if it's not there, I'm sure your mother can check your room for you," he went on, his tone too absent to be really reassuring. "So. Somehow— and stop me if I am incorrect— you seem to have gone from planning to steal some possessions from your bullies to dousing their rooms in chicken blood." The look he now gave Antares as he flinched again was strangely kind, though firm. "I'd like you to tell me how."

Hours seemed to pass while Antares spoke, and kept on speaking. Madame Pomfrey left the room twice, but didn't come back the second time. She'd spoken to Dumbledore before she left, too quietly for Antares to understand what she said, and the Headmaster's face had gone startlingly blank for a moment, so blank that Antares had stopped speaking.

"Go on, Mr. Black," Dumbledore was saying now, as he'd said then. "We're almost done."

They were, despite the way they'd all kept silent as Antares rambled uncontrollably about Tom and the things he'd said, the way they'd mostly made sense. The way everything had suddenly come apart. There'd been times Antares hadn't been able to keep his voice from shaking. One of the worst of those was just past, and yet—

The warmth of Bella's arms coming slowly around him steadied him yet again, making it easier to continue. Not easy enough that his voice stopped shaking, but then, none of this was easy.

"I didn't know what to do," Antares said lamely. "I just went limp against the door; thought I could keep it shut. He didn't really care about pulling me away, I think. Told me it'd be easy once I was dead." He swallowed, shoving down the anger and fear that rose up in him at the thought of that. "Not much you can say to that."

"Indeed," Dumbledore said, nodding slowly. "And after that…?"

"Dunno what he did next, but it felt like I was dying. Thought I was bleeding and everything. But Blaise came in and started shaking me, and I'd heard this scream…" The thought of it made him shiver. "Guess that must've been him." Silence settled in the room again, disturbed only by the sound of the slowly opening door.

"Albus?" It was Madame Pomfrey, sounding perplexed. "We've found the letter, but—"

"Splendid," Dumbledore said, though his tone sounded anything but. "I'll be with you in a moment, then." Pomfrey nodded and was gone again, and the silence returned briefly, only to be broken by Fawcett's tentative voice.

"I think that's about all we need, Mr. Black," she said quietly, glancing quickly at Dumbledore before she did so. "We're looking to set the trial date to tomorrow, as it would be to our benefit to get this over with before the papers can get their hands on it and twist it all out of proportion. An easy thing to do, with a lot of your story." She glanced at Dumbledore again. "Which is why I thought it would be best that your memories testify for you instead."

"With him in court?" Bella snapped, leaning forward. "Reliving them?"

"He'd be reliving them in his spoken testimony," Fawcett countered, her tone only a little unsteady as Bella scowled at her. "And besides, pensieve evidence will feel far more immediate, especially when submitted as testimony. I think it would serve his case far more for them to see that diary in action rather than to merely hear him speak of it."

"In action?"

"Ms. Black, every memory your son gives will be given only at his consent," Fawcett said firmly, giving Antares a sort of hopeful look. "I wouldn't ask such a thing if it wouldn't help." Bella stayed silent at that, but her arms tightened about him as Fawcett continued to speak. "Now, Mr. Black, I know how hard—"

"I'll do it," Antares said, inwardly thanking Merlin his voice didn't shake. "Anything you need," he added, before his voice could fail him. "Now, or…?"

"In a moment," said Ms. Fawcett, looking not a little surprised. "I…" She licked her lips. "About that snake."

This time, it was Dumbledore that interrupted her. "Actually, Ms. Fawcett, I do have plans for it." Pausing, Dumbledore rose slowly to his feet, his gaze seeming to burn into Antares. "You are a Parselmouth, are you not?"

"Excuse me?" Bella snapped, unwinding her arms from about Antares. "Don't answer that," she ordered him, rising quickly to her feet, her wand appearing in her hand so quickly it nearly poked Antares in the eye. Before she could do anything, Dumbledore had already begun to speak, and was even turning towards the door.

"From what Antares has told us, the snake is hidden behind at least one barrier that cannot be opened without a hissed command," Dumbledore said, making calmly for the door. "He will need to make the first part of the journey with us, at the very least, if we are to succeed. Now if you'll excuse me for a moment…"

The sound of the door shutting was followed by a taut silence. Bella stared at the door, so many emotions passing over her face that Antares stopped trying to make them out. Fawcett cleared her throat and eyed him briefly before turning her cautious gaze to Bella's rigid form. "You know—"

"Don't give me that nonsense about it being beneficial for his trial," Bella spat, giving her a poisonous look. "Don't you dare."

"Oh, so you do recognise that it might be," Fawcett said, her tone sharper than Antares had expected. "What on earth are you so worried about? He'll be with the Headmaster, and probably with his Head of House while he opens whatever doors they need to get at that— that thing—"

"Oh, he'll be with the Headmaster," Bella said, her words heavy with sarcasm. "And with his Head of House. The same men who, if I recall correctly, did absolutely nothing to stop him being beaten to a pulp by those stupid little demons out in that ward?" She snorted bitterly, putting away her wand with stiff, angry movements. "Please. What kind of fool do you take me for?" Not waiting for an answer, she sat down beside Antares, dragging a shaking hand through her hair.

Moments passed, heavy with tension. Antares ignored Fawcett's beseeching stare, looking up at what he could see of Bella's face through her hair. When she finally looked at him, her eyes were too bright. "Only if I come with you," she said tightly, blinking hard. "Understood?"

Antares nodded jerkily, not trusting his voice. Bella's arm came slowly around him then, warming him as Fawcett shifted uneasily in her chair, no doubt wanting to know his answer.

"So?" she asked quietly, looking from him to Bella and back again. "It won't be dangerous at all, as you can see."

Bella snorted. "As if that would make any difference to him." She shook her head. "Charged a troll once, last year. A troll." She put her other arm around him. "And he won."

"Did he?" Fawcett said, seemingly in spite of herself, for she shook her head and gave Antares a long, hard look. "Well?"

"Yes," Antares said, not daring to look up at his mother. "I'll do it."

The rest of the afternoon plodded by. Fawcett left the room almost immediately after Antares gave his shaky answer, and did not return for a long time. Neither did Dumbledore. Pomfrey came in almost an hour after Fawcett left, followed by floating lunch trays for both Antares and Bella, and she didn't leave until she'd checked Antares with several uncomfortable spells and made several cryptic comments about how little the note that had come with the Cloak had helped.

"They're probably still arguing over it in my office right now," Pomfrey had said when asked about Dumbledore and Snape. Fawcett, on the other hand, was at lunch in the Great Hall. "Likely be here any moment, ready to get your memories down," Pomfrey had added, while pouring out a disconcertingly large amount of Reviving potion into a bottle. When she'd handed the full bottle to Bella, Antares hadn't been able to keep from grimacing. The bottle was nowhere to be seen now, but Antares remembered just how much had seemed to be in it— at least four times as much of the blasted potion in the bottle as he'd drunk in the last few days.

"Might need that tonight, all things considered," Pomfrey had said, not seeming to notice how still Antares had gone, almost able to feel how raw his throat would feel after drinking all of the horrible potion down. "Keep your eyes open, and you'll know when."

Bella had been slow to accept the bottle, weighing it in her hand with the same panicked look Antares now imagined had been on his own face. "You can't be serious— surely he won't need eight doses in one night?"

"He might need a dose tomorrow, and a dose or two the next few days after that," Pomfrey had said, giving his mother a meaningful look. After that, another bottle had been filled with a foul-smelling yellow potion, and Antares had had to force himself to ignore the long sheet of instructions that had been handed over to Bella along with the second bottle. Thankfully, Fawcett had popped in just then, weighed down by a large stone bowl and a small trunk.

The bowl had been easy to identify as the pensieve she would use to collect his memories. The trunk was harder. It floated in the air beside the pensieve, its polished brown top swung open to reveal rows and rows of small, empty bottles with blank labels attached to them by worn black thread. When Fawcett saw Antares eyeing them, she'd taken the time to explain that she'd need to separate his memories and edit them specially so that she'd be able to control what order they would display in during the trial. She'd also said something about them fitting into some sort of pensieve box; that, Antares hadn't quite understood. Maybe I'll ask Bella, when she gets—

"I really hope you're not sitting up. Because if you are…," Bella's strident tone trailed off as she entered the room and spotted Antares curled around his pillow, and very much laid out in his bed as she'd left him. "Well, good," she said, shutting the door behind her with an impatient wave of her hand. "The last thing I want to do is force that Reviving potion down your throat while that snake is stalking us."

Antares shuddered at the thought, and tried not to think too hard of how easy it was to brush it aside. "I still can't believe that lawyer's coming with us."

"Us, yes; you, no," Bella said firmly, coming to his side. "As long as you understand that you won't be crossing the first barrier with us once it's open, I'm perfectly willing for you to hiss at it all night."

Antares rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I'm the one always going into danger, of course—"

"Be quiet; you know it doesn't compare in the least."

"Why not? The snake petrified those seventh years just by looking at them!"

"You know, I think I know more about deflecting unwanted sight than four cowardly seventh years," Bella said, her tone only lightly sarcastic. "Besides, it'll look good to say I helped. If there was anyone I'd want on our side for now, it would be the school board. All the rest of Britain can call us scum if they like; Morgana knows they won't be in charge of writing your reference if you're forced out of Hogwarts."

"Can that still happen?" Antares asked, hoping he didn't sound as small as he felt. "Even if the trial goes all right?"

Bella sighed. "Yes, unfortunately." She sank into the armchair on his left, a very tired look crossing her face. "But if the trial does go well, I can demand a reference from Dumbledore even if they expel you, and you can be sure he'll give you a bloody good one."

Antares nodded silently. The pensieve box or, for that matter, the whole trial didn't seem half as important in the face of being made to leave Hogwarts regardless of whether the school board believed his story or not. Antares shifted onto his back and stared at the ceiling, trying to get his mind around the idea.

Bella didn't help. "France first," she said, musingly. "I've got that job at Gladrags already— they have a branch in Paris, and I'm sure I could arrange for a transfer of some sort." She reached out, taking Antares' hand in hers and squeezing it. "We'll be fine, whatever happens."

Antares couldn't bring himself to nod again. My friends are here, he thought. I'm on the house team. I didn't even get to play one stinking match.

"What?" When Bella leant closer, some of her hair brushed his face. "Did you say something?"

Antares hesitated for a moment, not sure whether to say yes or no. "It's not eight yet, is it?"

"It wasn't six thirty when I left, Antares. You cast the spell yourself," Bella pointed out. "If there's something you want to do—"

"I was wondering if I could see my friends," Antares said, the words rushing out half before he even realised he'd opened his mouth. Bella frowned and drew back a little, her silence heavy with disapproval. "Look, I know you don't like them—"

"It's not about them, Antares, they're perfectly normal children," Bella said, stiffly. Then, a horrible little pause later, "Well, apart from whatever fiendish desire they have to drag you into all sorts of trouble—"

"Mum—"

"—and they ask you to meddle with their memories, and you say yes," Bella finished, ignoring him. "Useless sort of friend, asking you to endanger yourself for nothing— to put it mildly."

"If they'd known what was wrong, they'd have told someone! If I'd known what was wrong, I'd have told someone! It was my fault just as much as theirs, for fuck's sake."

"And who's on trial now?" Bella half-shouted. "I'll not have you become their shield charm, Antares. No one is worth that. Not me, and certainly not them."

"Ten minutes, Mum. Please." When his mother made no answer, Antares sighed. "They're my only friends, I can't just disappear and not— and not say anything to them. Please."

Bella remained silent, and Antares' nerve left him. The other things he'd meant to say didn't come, despite how all he could think of now was how Blaise had always bullied him up here when he needed it, and how Tracey had always saved him a seat. Bella's voice tore through those memories, hard and flat. "Fifteen minutes. Fifteen and no more, understood?"

Antares nodded fervently. Bella gave him a bitter smile then rose jerkily from the armchair, heading for the door. "Thanks, Mum," he said, quietly. "I—"

"The only reason I'm bothering is because they brought you here when you needed it," she snapped, ignoring him. "Fifteen minutes, and no more."

By the time Blaise and Tracey, looking supremely awkward, had been shepherded into his room by his tight-lipped mother, Antares was cursing himself for bothering at all. Somehow, it had taken all of forty minutes for her to have them found and brought up to his room in the hospital wing. Antares knew it was forty minutes because he'd checked the time every five minutes, biting his lip as he watched the ghostly figures move that much closer to eight o'clock.

Antares swallowed down his nervousness as best as he could, trying to smile at his friends. They didn't quite smile back, looking without looking at Bella's taut form by the door as they walked up to his bed and hovered near the foot of it.

"Fifteen minutes," Bella said— no, ordered, as she withdrew from the room. Antares suppressed a flinch as the door slammed shut after her; obviously, she was a good deal more angry at his request than he'd thought. Looking at Tracey's clenching, nervous hands, he wondered why he'd bothered.

A minute later, he tried to begin to say so. "Look—"

"Shut up, you," Blaise said rudely, his voice shaky. "We haven't even apologised yet."

"And we're going to," Tracey said meaningfully, glancing unhappily at the door. "Really."

Antares stared at them both. "There isn't really…" he began, but Tracey cut him off.

"Don't be stupid," she said, her hands twisting at each other. "I just thought you should know it was me. The Occlumency." She bit her lip. "Dunno what the use of it was, if I couldn't keep my mind shut—"

"Against Dumbledore," Antares said quickly, reaching out in spite of himself to try and calm her fingers. "Stop that, for fuck's sake. How will you write?"

"She said you might be expelled, you idiot," Blaise snapped. "Does that even— do you even know?"

"Because of us," Tracey said, jerking her hands back from his.

"Because of Tom," Antares said loudly, hoping to wipe the guilty looks off their faces. He found it hard, nevertheless, to look Blaise in the eye as he spoke. "You were right about that diary."

"And still threatened you into memory charming the both of us," was the disgusted answer. "Cancelled that bit of common sense right out, didn't it?"

"The Dark Lord was in that diary," Antares found himself saying desperately. In the silence that that created, he laughed. "See? It's not your fault. It's not."

The silence stretched for a moment. "You mean…you can't." Tracey said. "He's…" Her face went white, alarmingly so. "That's not funny."

"The chicken blood was his idea," Antares said slowly. "Even that seemed funny at the time."

Realisation swept across both their faces. Antares looked down at the bedspread, picking at it with a shaking hand. "Most of what he said seemed funny at the time. You know, I used to wonder why people bothered with him, apart from the power. Knowing sucks."

It was hard not to flinch at the feel of a shaking hand on his shoulder, but the fear soon left Antares as Tracey hugged him, her curly hair tickling his ear. A moment later, another hand was squeezing his shoulder, and he felt Blaise sit down beside him.

"He's dead, as you might have guessed," Antares said quickly, mindful of the time that was surely slipping past. Fear gripped him as he thought of the madness he was about to commit down in that cursed toilet. As safe as everyone had been trying to make it seem, how were they to know if that monstrous snake wouldn't be waiting for them when he opened the barrier? It might even still be out, muttering of hunger. He could just see it stuffed inside one of the clean stalls, emerging from beneath the door, ready to strike—

"How?" Tracey drew back from him, curiosity and fear in her eyes. "I mean— how did— how could You-know-who have got in there? And how did you—"

"Still don't know," Antares said, shrugging heavily. "No one's told me anything, though I'm starting to think I'm just lucky. Crazy lucky." He bit his lip. "I do know the diary was Lucius Malfoy's, though."

"But you had it when term started," Blaise said, confused. "How—"

"Don't remember that stupid article about me and my mum? You know, how the Prophet started everyone beating me to shreds."

"Antares—"

"If you apologise for that, I'll hit you," Antares said, glaring at both of them. "Wasn't your fault. Wasn't my fault. He must've stuck it in my new Transfig book while we were in the bookshop. Morgana knows he had the time." Tracey began to speak, but he shook his head, silencing her. "I've probably only got a minute left," he said bitterly. "Leave me your Floo grate numbers, and I'll try to talk to you after the trial."

Tracey, who had already started to rummage in her pockets for quill and parchment, stopped and stared. "You're coming back after the trial," she said, not sounding very hopeful. "Aren't you?"

Antares tried to stitch together something that could convey everything that could go wrong before or during the trial, and found he couldn't. Shaking his head, he gave Blaise a pointed look. "Grate numbers, come on. My Mum'll be here any minute…"

The door opened almost as soon as he said that, but it was Pomfrey who stuck her head round it. "It's eight, Mr. Black. Your mother is waiting for you."

"You can't be going already," Tracey whispered, snatching looks at Antares as she scribbled down her number just under Blaise's in a scrawl that Antares hoped wasn't as unreadable as it looked. "I mean—"

"Not just yet," Antares agreed, but he didn't bother telling them why. No point in worrying them any further. "Blaise, my shoes are…yeah, there. Thanks," he said to both of them, accepting the folded, tatty parchment and his dirty boots at the same time. "I'll write, okay? If I can't Floo-oomph!" Breathing became hard for a moment as Tracey attacked him again. "Better send me pictures," he said, trying not to get any of Tracey's hair in his mouth. His voice sounded muffled to his ears in comparison to Blaise's flat, too-loud answer.

"Pictures of what?" he repeated. Tracey, letting go of Antares already, stopped to listen.

"Of whatever you end up doing to Draco," Antares said, trying to be quiet. Pomfrey hadn't closed the door, and for all he knew, she could be standing right outside. "Seriously, send some." Blaise and Tracey said nothing, exchanging a meaningful look. "Don't do anything too bad," Antares said, whispering on purpose. When they looked at him, surprised, he smiled. "Leave that to me."

Blaise nodded; Tracey matched his smile. On her, it looked nastier than anything Antares thought he himself could muster, and it somehow made him grin as they needlessly helped him up from the bed, Tracey hugging him yet again.

The grin dropped off his face as soon as they left the little room, almost bumping into Bella's stiff frame on their way out. A few awkward minutes followed, ending with Antares' hand in Bella's viselike grip, and Blaise and Tracey hurrying nervously out of the hospital wing, not even pausing to stare at what Pomfrey was doing to Rachel Rookwood. The matron looked up as Bella shut the door, pausing the flow of pink, watery potion she was guiding in an arc from a bowl into Rookwood's stained, slightly open mouth.

"We're ten minutes late," Bella said coolly, sweeping a too-long cloak around Antares and knotting it with a charm. "I thought I told you you had fifteen, and only fifteen."

"You took your time finding them," Antares said, wriggling out of her grasp.

"Can you blame me? I haven't walked these halls in twenty years, you know."

"You went to find them? But—"

"Professor Snape is busy shoring up the castle defences, as are the other Heads of House," Bella said sarcastically. "A precaution and nothing more— that was what the Headmaster said, eh Pomfrey?" Madame Pomfrey nodded grimly, waving the half-empty bowl away to a shelf at the other end of the room. "If I'd a Portkey, I'd pack you away as soon as you were done with that stupid barrier."

"Barriers," Antares found himself saying, not wanting to think why he felt so certain there were two. When Bella stared at him, he swallowed. "There are two. Didn't I say…?"

Bella inhaled sharply. "No," she said, through gritted teeth. "No, you did not."

"What about that dream I had?" Antares pointed out. "There were two then."

"Possession dreams are neither here or there as proof," Pomfrey said, her tone almost soothing. Antares strongly suspected she wasn't really talking to him, and the way Bella's grip on his hand eased confirmed it. "We should probably be off."

Antares blinked. "You're coming too?"

"This little jaunt's already dangerous enough," Bella snapped, tugging at his hand. "Last thing we need is badly cast medical spells, if anything happens. Come on, Antares." Antares followed, feeling both cross and subdued at the way she was treating him. You'd think he'd come out and begged to be let in on sorting the snake, instead of merely sat there and unavoidably been the most convenient Parselmouth to hand. His crossness all but disappeared as they stepped out and waited as Pomfrey locked the door to the hospital wing— as irritating as the cloak he'd been given was, he was quite grateful for it in the corridor, which was surprisingly cold.

"Tempus— Merlin be damned, eight fifteen," Bella muttered. Pomfrey started off down the corridor, and Antares found himself being pulled after her by his mother, who hadn't even bothered to wave away the solid-looking letters now floating uselessly behind her. He glanced at them over his shoulder, wondering how much she'd put into that spell to make them so, and began to shiver uncontrollably. Suddenly, it was all too much. Antares couldn't seem to stop himself from slowing down, couldn't seem to stop thinking about how easy it was to shove aside the dark, fearful thoughts trying to cling to him.

Bella didn't slap him when he stopped, though he half expected her to. For a moment, she looked very much like she wanted to, staring wordlessly down at him, anger thick in the air between them. Then a warm, strange look spread across her face, and when she tugged on his hand this time, she did it gently.

"Come on," she said, and Antares found that he could.

They reached the girl's toilet all too soon. Antares' last stop, longer than both the ones that had followed it, hadn't seemed to slow them down at all. He barely got himself through the door, the sight of Professor Flitwick, Professor Snape, Professor Sprout and Professor McGonagall clustered silently around it not helping in the least. Antares fancied he could feel their eyes burning through the door as it closed behind him, Bella and Pomfrey, and was so deep in that fancy that he heard Dumbledore speak his name five times before he realised he was being spoken to.

And then he was led to a sink with a roughly carved snake on it, trying not to resist Bella's firm guidance as he drew nearer to it. The sudden familiarity of it almost rooted him to the spot.

"Mr. Black," Dumbledore said, kindly. Firmly. "If you would—"

"Open," Antares hissed, instinctively. A strange detachment fell on him as he watched the sink become a dark, frightening hole, and the warmth of Bella's hand tugging on his shoulder startled him. He stepped back, stifling the panic that arose as he realised how close he was to the hole, to the snake, to— to—

"…think it best that I go first," Dumbledore was saying. The look he gave Antares was strange, and even stranger was how he set a hand on his shoulder before stepping between him and the gaping hole. "I'll send for you if there is indeed a second barrier, but otherwise…"

Bella drew Antares to her. The feel of her hand stroking his hair made it easier to watch as the Headmaster stepped into the hole and seemed to float down, disappearing in minutes. Antares heard himself speaking, and cringed at how shaky and strange he sounded. "That wasn't how I went down."

Pomfrey gave a short laugh, the sound at odds with their dim, wandlit surroundings and utterly alien to the dark hole she was very carefully not looking at. "He likes to show off at moments like these," she explained wryly, giving Antares a half-smile. "He once told me no one would take him seriously if he didn't waste magic like that during a crisis. Can you imagine?" Antares couldn't, and couldn't understand why his mother was nodding slowly, an almost-smile on her face. "Although I don't expect he'll need very much, even against a magic snake."

"It's huge," Antares said quietly, feeling frustrated with her almost light tone. "Really, it is."

"Even so," Pomfrey said, shrugging slightly. "And besides—"

But Antares wasn't listening any longer. He was itching all over, and the air smelled sharp and thick enough to choke on. He looked up at Bella and wasn't comforted by the way she was staring at the hole. She was so still—

Boom. The area around the hole rippled disquietingly, though the stone was still under their feet and looked perfectly normal away from where the snake-marked sink had been.

"Localisation boundary in effect," Pomfrey said reassuringly. "Smart thing to do, really— wherever that snake lives must be near the foundations." She gave Antares a kind look. "It upset me dreadfully the first time I saw one—"

"Look out!" Bella said, cutting her off. Antares flinched hard, simultaneously spotting the glowing hole at the same time as Bella drew her wand. The next moment, he was shoved behind her, but even that couldn't stop him seeing the yellow light of whatever it was that was coming out of the hole. His mother lowered her wand, and a deep fear held him fast in place as she slowly turned to him.

Then he saw the phoenix, and understood. "Isn't that—"

"Yes," Pomfrey said, cautiously. "I expect the Headmaster's found another barrier down below."

Bella made no answer. She was too busy glaring hatefully at the phoenix, which had perched at the lip of the hole and was looking pointedly at Antares. It was a long, stiff moment before she looked at Antares again. "I'm going first." Her tone brooked no argument, so Antares hung back, nervously watching as Bella stepped into the hole, ignoring the phoenix now hovering just above her. She slid away so fast that it took his breath away, and he didn't think he would have made for the hole if Pomfrey hadn't nudged him then, looking calm.

"On with you, then," Pomfrey said, grudgingly. She made for the door and opened it as he climbed in gingerly, no doubt meaning to tell the professors standing outside what was happening, so was not there to see how the phoenix suddenly began to claw him as he began to slide down. Fear beat at him, mingling with the pain from his scratched arm, and he let go quicker than he'd have liked. The sensation of sliding away into the slimy darkness only made it worse, and though he knew it was useless, Antares found himself scrabbling for purchase. He grabbed the first solid thing he felt, and found himself holding on to the feathery, slippery tail of the phoenix.

It trilled at him crossly, flapping its wings, and squawked when he started to lessen his grip on its tail. Antares, irritated and afraid, would have cursed but for the strange, light feeling spreading through him. His slide down the pipe slowed, but he found he didn't mind; the phoenix had begun to sing, and that seemed to settle the restless layers of his mind into place. Towards the end, he even began to glance down the pipes branching off from the one he was in. Though it all looked alarmingly familiar, none of it had been in his first dream about the snake. And since the thing about there being a second barrier had proved right, it was disturbing to think that this bit had been left out. It would be just like Tom to deny him the memory of a dangerous obstacle here on purpose, just in case he got ideas about trying to go down on his own.

The thought chilled him, making him shiver as the pipe seemed to level out. Antares looked up at the phoenix, which was now silent, wondering how on earth and why on earth it had done this for him. Moments later, his legs were in the open, and he had to endeavour to keep from banging his head on the pipe as he slowly slid out the end. He ended up twisting horribly at the phoenix's tail as he slid out, and hastily let go once he realised what he was doing. His weight seemed to press in on him in a rush, depositing him on his arse on the slimy floor. Somehow, the hand he'd held on to the phoenix with was free of tail feathers, and only a little scratched.

"I see Fawkes made himself useful," Dumbledore said, sounding a little rueful. Before Antares could say anything, hands were lifting him to his feet in the darkness of the tunnel. Even better, he heard Bella whisper the familiar words for her favourite cleaning spell. A moment later, Fawkes was perched on Dumbledore's shoulder and staring down at Antares and Bella as they followed him into the tunnel, hand in hand.

Bones crunched under their feet— well, under Bella's feet, and under the Headmaster's. Antares stepped over them, navigating the bone-strewn floor with dull familiarity. No one spoke. Bella's only reaction to the huge snakeskin they encountered was nothing more than a sharp intake of breath; Professor Dumbledore barely seemed to notice it, except to clamber over it with the agility of a much younger man. Antares began to shiver then, feeling the stiff, slippery coils beneath his feet. He didn't stop shivering until they reached the wall and stood before the serpents, their jewelled eyes flickering slightly in the light that seemed to pour from Fawkes.

Bella squeezed Antares' shoulder. "Go on," she whispered. "The sooner this is done…"

Antares took a deep breath and, trying to blink away the odd feeling that the serpents' entwined bodies should have been lower on the wall, hissed. "Open up."

The wall cracked apart, the silent movement of its two halves giving way to a thunderous hiss. "The heir is DEAD!" something spat, from somewhere beyond the doors. Antares felt himself shoved behind Bella before he knew what was going on, and the world darkened abruptly around them as Dumbledore brought his wand down in a sharp, final wave. Even the light of the phoenix was gone.

Not that it matters, Antares found himself thinking. It'll sniff us out, I know it will—

Something was moving towards them, sliding heavily across the floor. It was coming from the chamber ahead, the chamber Antares could see in his mind's eye, though it was black here, invisible in the darkness. In his mind, it was green; Green to match the snake, green for Slytherin. Green for death.

And death was certainly on the snake's mind, for it was still hissing, rage and determination weighting every syllable of its words. "I shall not be bound," it hissed, becoming louder as it got closer. "I SHALL NOT!"

"Close the doors," Dumbledore said urgently. A hand gripped Antares' shoulder and shook it, hard. "Close them!"

"I can't!" Antares tried to say back, but Dumbledore didn't seem to hear him. Only Bella held him now, muttering dark, unintelligible words in chanting rhythm. The darkness before them was shimmering, and there was a soft, deadly light shining through the doors next to them. "Dumbledore! I can't close them!"

A massive grinding set up, forcing Antares' eyes shut with fear. The snake spat once, twice, and slowed to a stop, the heavy sound of its body dangerously close. Antares shook in his mother's arms, and distantly wondered why on earth neither of them was doing anything to stop the snake. When Bella's arms fell from around him, he clutched at them in fear and shock. "What's happening? Why aren't you doing anything?"

"Breathe properly, Antares, for god's sake," Bella's hands came up to his face and paused there, shaking. "See, that's better, isn't it?" Sighing, she crushed him to her. "God above, we're lucky."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that just yet," Dumbledore said dryly. "I suppose its being safely trapped in that chamber would be too much to hope for," he continued, as if the snake wasn't less than a foot away. "Any…insight on that, Mr. Black?"

The almost light tone of that convinced Antares to open his eyes. The doors were a wall again, miraculously, and the tunnel was snake-free, and dimly lit by light from the end of Dumbledore's wand. Bella had just stepped away from Antares and was staring at the wall, her wand still levelled at the snake they could no longer see. Its angry, cheated hiss came to them almost as clearly as if it was in the tunnel with them.

"There are pipes everywhere," Antares said, voice shaking. When Dumbledore said nothing, he gave voice to the fear that now held him in its grip. "I think there might even be a space somewhere in this wall—"

"No distance is too great," the snake was spitting, sounding so sure that Antares shivered. "So long as you hunt me, I shall hunt you; you and your brood shall die."

"Mr. Black?" Dumbledore was asking, sounding concerned, his voice only just louder than the snake's deep hiss. "You are still speaking Parseltongue, I believe."

Antares looked up at him, confused. "But I—"

"Still, Mr. Black," Dumbledore said, sighing. He looked musingly at the wall, ignoring the further hissed threats of the snake. "The snake's presence is so strong— perhaps there is a binding effect?"

Bella looked at him questioningly. "If it's presence is so strong, how come you didn't sense it before?"

"I think I know," Dumbledore said, his eyes coming to rest on Antares. "Mr. Black, is the snake speaking to you? Nod once for yes, twice for no." Antares nodded once, breathing hard, and Dumbledore sighed, looking back at Bella. "This is only a guess," he said, "but it's very likely that the diary's destruction somehow triggered the collapse of the binding spells that might have been set on the snake."

"It may be magical, but it is only a snake," Bella said, shooting a dark look at the entwined pair that seemed to watch them passively from the wall. "And that diary wasn't really the Dark Lord anyway, so—"

"It was close enough," Dumbledore said, cutting her off. "Close enough to matter to the spells set on the snake, I'll wager. Unless we'd be in that chamber right now, possibly needing to have your son coax it out like he did in his dream." The Headmaster sighed forcefully. "This complicates things."

"Complicates— oh, for god's sake, the thing's trapped behind that wall!"

"Not for long, I think," Dumbledore said, sighing again. "Mr. Black, do you believe the snake could find its way out into the school?" Antares had to fight to keep himself from nodding more than once— the snake was now delivering a long and gruesome threat, and the smug rage of its tone as it settled on the other side of the wall didn't give Antares the impression that it thought it was trapped. "Well, then. I don't suppose it can hear you…?"

Antares stared at him for a long moment. He turned away when Dumbledore's strangely— no, crazily hopeful expression didn't change. Looking around them for something, anything that could somehow help this horrible situation, he realised that Fawkes was gone. "Where is it?" he asked stupidly, his voice too loud in the darkness.

"In my mouth," the snake hissed, disdainfully. Some instinct told Antares that it was laughing now. That had to be wrong; that was surely a sound more bloodthirsty than amused. Now, add that to the fact that the phoenix was definitely gone— "Come here, and you shall see."

Antares gulped and nodded once. When he snatched a look at Dumbledore, that horrible look was still on his face. "What do you expect me to do?" he said uselessly. "It hates me. It says it'll eat me—"

The snake pounded itself against the wall, sending a tremor through it. "You were not so cowardly before, with the heir by your side," it said, dredging up more of that frightening, hissy laughter. "His egg is broken; yours is cracked, and will soon break."

"You think I wanted him alive?" Antares found himself saying, suddenly realising who it was the snake was speaking of. "If he had a body, I'd be kicking it." The snake fell silent at that, and the sliding sounds on the other side of the wall stilled. "Curse that, I'd be burning it," Antares went on, the absurdity of his words falling away momentarily as he pictured Tom's still, dead face blistering in the heat, blackening. Tom's inhuman scream came back to him, melding with the strange, distorted picture of his imaginary death by fire, spreading a dense, strange satisfaction in Antares' chest. It coated his next few words, dripped from them. "He died screaming."

The snake stirred again. "Painfully, then." Next to the pleasure in that tone, Antares' small satisfaction seemed plain and simple. The snake stilled again, and now its voice was closer. "Did he hunger?"

Antares thought for a moment, remembering the way Tom had given him chances when there'd really been no point. For some incomprehensible reason, Tom had wanted him to come willing, to do as he was asked. Antares thought now that Tom would eventually have killed him regardless of whether he'd chosen to obey. But then, when he'd asked for the last time… "Yes," he decided, only half aware that he was saying it out loud. "Yes."

The snake laughed, loudly. Somehow, it didn't sound half as frightening now as it did before. "Then I am avenged," it declared, drawing the words out, as if weighing them on its monstrous tongue. "You have brought me good news, small coward; you and your brood may leave. But bring me food or do not enter here, unless you still seek your treasure in my mouth." A great slithering set up, growing louder for a brief moment, then slowly diminishing. The snake, apparently, was gone, and Antares was staring at a wall with nothing behind it, his hands extended uselessly toward it. He drew them back, embarrassed and afraid— imagine if touching the wall had done something, had opened the door again.

Dumbledore cleared his throat. "Will it follow us?"

"No," Antares said automatically, then, remembering the simple code Dumbledore had asked him to follow, nodded twice.

"Ah," was the calm answer. "What did it say?" When Antares stared at him, confused as to how to answer that with nods, Dumbledore shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Sorry— we can understand you now. If you will…?"

"It's happy that Tom's dead," Antares said slowly, trying to feel the difference. There was no difference between speaking now and before; it baffled him. "It told me to feed it if I ever come down again, else it'll eat me." He grinned weakly at Bella, who was staring at him. "It also said we could go."

Dumbledore sighed. "More complications," he muttered. "Tempus…how can it only be nine o'clock?" He sighed again. "A sign, I suppose."

"But you just said it could get out into the school," Bella pointed out, gesturing at the wall with her wand. "It could already be waiting for us at the entrance!"

"Which is why I took the precaution of obtaining a Portkey," Dumbledore said, rummaging in his robe pockets, a tired frown on his face. "Now, once I find it…"

"What about that phoenix of yours?" Bella demanded, crossing her arms across her chest. "Why on earth is it gone?" Antares gulped. Come here, and you shall see, the snake had said. It had also called the phoenix his treasure, but that was sort of neither here nor there, considering that the snake very likely had no idea who Dumbledore was. Then again—

"A planned precaution," Dumbledore said calmly, now patting down his voluminous robe sleeves. Antares blinked, then began to relax. That sounded more likely. Comforting, too; as powerful as phoenixes tended to be, he couldn't help but doubt that one would find it easy to beat that huge snake. And with that thought, Antares relaxed completely— strong as it was, that snake couldn't have swallowed a phoenix without a loud, noisy fight.

"Planned precaution?" Bella was asking, sharply. "Against what?"

"Not quite a precaution, Bellatrix," Dumbledore corrected hastily. "Just…a sort of signal, really, in case I didn't have time to get a good look at the snake."

Bella sighed impatiently. "And?"

"More bad news, I'm afraid, but that can wait till we're out." Dumbledore, said, giving Antares a sideways look. "Which is why accepting the snake's gracious favour is a good idea. Aha— there." He held forth an unremarkable little quill, waiting patiently until Bella and Antares grasped the other end. "Right, then," Dumbledore muttered, as soon as they had taken hold. "Gibberish." Some long, nauseous moments later, Antares was being helped to his feet by a silent, nervous-looking Bella, and they were all being stared at by Snape, McGonagall, Pomfrey, Sprout, Flitwick and— not surprisingly— Ms. Fawcett, standing slightly apart from the others. As Dumbledore slipped away the Portkey into a pocket, Antares found himself distantly glad that they weren't in the toilet, which would have been uncomfortably crowded with all of them inside it.

"It seems," Dumbledore began quietly, his strangely formal tone drawing all their eyes to him, "that we are possessed of a basilisk." Almost everyone gasped; Bella's grip became painful, and though she remained silent, she had gone quite pale. "From the testimony of Mr. Black, I surmise that the basilisk was placed within the school by our own founder, Slytherin." Dumbledore's tone became louder and less formal. "It granted us the grace to leave; I decided its grace should not be tested, so here we are." An awkward silence settled on them as the professors engaged shocked, frantic looks and stared at Antares, obviously wondering if he'd been somehow instrumental in getting that grace.

Fawcett cleared her throat, looking nervously around, and everyone's eyes fell upon her. "I was going to apologise for being late," she said slowly, looking wonderingly at Antares. "I find I cannot." Her fearful gaze turned to Dumbledore. "A basilisk?"

"I made arrangements for a crude warning of sorts, knowing a basilisk to be the only snake with such a dangerous gaze," Dumbledore said calmly. "My phoenix accompanied us, and left as agreed as soon as he sensed the basilisk as it began to approach us." He sighed. "And, considering the size, colour and markings of the shed snakeskin we passed underground…" He rummaged again in his pockets, and was soon handing a small jar filled with slivers of vivid, scaly green skin to a very still Professor Snape. "For testing, Professor."

The way Snape was staring at the jar of skin said clearly that he didn't think it needed any, but he nodded jerkily all the same, holding the jar away from him by its tightly closed lid and giving it short, careful looks.

Dumbledore was speaking again. "…won't be easy, dealing with it. We'll await Professor Snape's results before revealing the snake to the Ministry, I think. For now, we'll have to settle for containing it."

"Here at Hogwarts?" Fawcett said, aghast. "Here in the school?"

"Removing it from its chamber without injury to it or ourselves will probably be impossible," Dumbledore said, his eyes landing firmly on her. "Doubly impossible, perhaps, considering that we have no idea what binding spells on it have been broken and which ones are intact. Unbreakable curses were widely used to secure property at that time; considering the many legends surrounding Salazar Slytherin's departure from Hogwarts, an Unbreakable tied to the murder of the snake is almost assured. Luck and phoenix tears— which we would have in abundance— are no substitute for planning for such a situation." He paused, looking round at each of the professors. His gaze ended up on Bella, and he began to speak again. "While my heads of house discuss plans for containment amongst themselves, I'd be happy to give you my memory of the event, Ms. Fawcett."

"What? Why? Surely—"

"It is through Antares' effort that we were allowed to leave the basilisk's lair, Ms. Fawcett," Dumbledore said, his eyes still on Bella, whose colour was slowly returning. "After all, I am not, and have never been a Parselmouth. We are lucky to have had one so close to hand, and willing to help us."

Bella straightened, and her grip on Antares lessened, but not quite for the reason Antares expected. "A pretty speech, Headmaster, but I'm afraid Antares' willingness to help," she drew out the words sarcastically "is at an end." In the silence that met her words, Bella looked down at Antares. "You're going to bed," she said quietly, "if I have to drag you every step of the way there."

"And leave us without a Parselmouth?" Sprout snapped, giving Bella a look of disbelief. "How exactly do you think we'll contain anything without his help? We'll need him down there—"

"Over my dead body," Bella said smoothly, pulling gently at Antares' frozen arm. "Come, dear."

"I won't argue that the boy needs rest," Flitwick said stiffly, moving discreetly to block their way towards the stairs. "However—"

The look that Bella gave him stopped his tongue. "When," she said slowly, "he has had some sleep. And when his trial is over, and when he has been pardoned, and has in his possession any references he needs to continue the life you have not paid attention to when he needed it—"

Pomfrey moved to Antares' side and took his other arm, giving Flitwick a steady look. He stepped aside.

"—then," Bella finished, her tone frigidly polite, "then, we may speak of containing basilisks." She glared at the other three professors, and gave Dumbledore a hard look. "Good night."

Silence swallowed Antares' steps. Bella's were too loud and angry to fade in the dark of the corridors, and Pomfrey's were too firm. Neither of them spoke as they headed for the hospital wing. Antares, on the other hand, found it extremely hard not to fill the close silence with nervous questions until they entered the ward. The stiff figures lined up on one side of the room ate every word he had, so that he stayed silent when Bella, tucking him into bed, asked if he was all right.

She answered his question for him, after a moment. "You're not," she said, quietly. "I know— I know how that feels. But," she pressed a kiss to his cheek, "I also know it will pass, in time. I want you to think of that, as you sleep. Hold that, and you will be all right."

One look into her eyes brought all the questions back. "But there's so much I don't know," Antares said, trying not to think of how choked he sounded. It was stupid, really, how just not knowing hurt and bewildered him right now, but he couldn't stop thinking about it. So much had changed, and it was barely a month into his second year here. Here that he liked. Here that he was on the Quidditch team, had been respected just a little, had had friends. To think that it all could go, just like that…really, really hurt. "I just want to know," he managed to say. "I just want to. Please."

Bella brushed his hair back from his face, her hand shaking slightly. When she began her reply, her hand fell still. "I'll tell you," she said, voice low. "Not just yet, though. Not tonight."

"But you will tell me?" Antares pressed, unable to help himself. "Tomorrow?"

Bella's slow nod made him sigh, made it easy to close his eyes and eventually fall asleep. But tomorrow spread into his dreams, hooking wicked little claws into every fragment, making everyone talk in Ts and Ms and scrawling the word on the floor in blood. By the time Antares woke, he was wild with the idea of tomorrow, and what it might bring. Bella smiled over him when he reached out and woke her, worrying only a little about how stiff she'd get if she had to sleep in that armchair by him any longer, and, of course, about what she'd promised.

"You'll tell me?" he asked, as soon as he was sure he would be understood. "Tomorrow…?"

Bella's smile widened. "Today," she said, stretching sleepily, and somehow, that was enough.

A/N: Good god on a stick. Firstly, I'm sorry I've led you all such a merry chase till now. I think the only thing I can blame now is this damn story, having already blamed myself. It just won't let me set it aside, somehow. Hopefully, some of this was worth the wait. If I don't finish the next chapter, I think I'll blame my computer chair next, just to be safe. Then I can blame it if I give up again and return and finish another chapter again.

Anyway, I liked writing that. I suppose that's really all that matters. This chapter produced courtesy my evil story, plus a well-timed (or ill-timed, depending on how you look at it) nudge from chattypandagurl on the very frigging post in which I pronounced all as lost.