The Trick Step
Part Three

Pansy did not notice that Loony was gone until she saw the expression on Draco's face. His brows were furrowed, and his small mouth somehow looked even smaller as it hung slightly agape like a door on an old hinge. The change had been sudden; she would have sworn, only a second before, that he had been laughing at Loony alongside her. (Or rather, she alongside him. After she had discovered that none of her friends, those with whom she had always tormented others, those with whom she had always jeered and laughed, had not noticed her absence, the idea of constantly poking fun at Loony had become dull and unappealing, even tired. Loony was convinced that there was some sort of spell at work, preventing anyone from noticing two missing students, but a part of Pansy simply wouldn't believe her.)

She reached out tentatively, and brushed his sleeve with two fingers. Draco barely acknowledged her touch, and to her tremulous queries, he only replied, "She's gone."

Fear gripped her—fear, she thought, that was not entirely for herself. She was so very tired of being afraid.

"She can't have gone through, can she?" she asked. "We'd see her, wouldn't we?"

Draco stared at her. "I don't know," he snapped, suddenly sounding cross. "Stop asking stupid questions. It's not helping anything!"

He looked so badly shaken that she almost forgave him for being angry with her. But Draco was never angry with her or at her, never cruel. They had never before been immersed in a situation that had stretched them both so thin, that had tried their patience so wholly, and set their every nerve on end; but Pansy had never thought for one moment that there was anything in the world—or any other world, for that matter—that would cause him to speak to her in such a way. Her lip quivered, and she looked away from him. If there was any remorse in his face, she didn't care to see it.

"Pansy—"

"Don't," she told him flatly, still not looking at him. Heart thumping painfully, as if it were made of lead, she marched into the maze.

As if she had just Apparated out of nowhere, or had removed a particularly efficient Cloaking Spell, Loony was abruptly quite visible. She stood only a few feet away, but had to have walked a while, because there was already one of the ridiculously tiny stick walls between her and Pansy. Pansy wanted to hug her with relief, but thought better of it immediately.

And after all, if she reached her arms over the wall, she would probably be impaled by rapidly-growing tree-things.

"Hello, Pansy," Loony said. "Did you know, I couldn't see you at all once I'd crossed into the maze. It's nice you decided to come in. It's so quiet, have you noticed?"

Pansy hadn't, and said as much, but now that Loony mentioned it, she realized that it was true. When she spoke, it was as if she were breaking something, doing something unnatural. The air did not feel heavy against her ears, though, pressing into them as some silences did. She did not want to call it comfortable, because it wasn't, but neither was it uncomfortable. Nevertheless, it made her shiver.

"Draco thinks you've gone," she announced, trying to shake the feeling of the silence and the aftereffects of Draco's rudeness like water from her ear. Speaking didn't help much, but she didn't care. At least she hadn't started crying. That would have been unbearable—especially as Loony wouldn't have made fun of her for it. It was bad enough that Loony had walked back through the maze and was reaching out to touch Pansy's arm. Pansy allowed herself to enjoy it for a very short moment before shrugging away.

"I think I should tell him I haven't," Loony resolved. "I don't want him to worry."

Pansy couldn't help it. "He's not worried about you," she snapped.

Loony didn't look hurt, and Pansy was almost glad of it. "No," she said. "But he is worried."

Pansy was alone for what felt like hours. Alone, and silent. It was as if she were a child again, small enough to slip below the waterline of the bath and stare up at the rippling world above her, everything so quiet except the sound of her own heartbeat. She knew she should be trying to accomplish something, but all she could do was float. Venturing ahead—the only direction there was in a maze like this, especially one she had not yet begun—would have been a helpful way to spend this idle time. She could pick her way through the maze, and when Draco and Loony appeared again—she had to believe they would—she would be able to direct them to her, to the way out, and no time would be lost, and maybe, even, they would be almost home. Instead, she was afraid again. She hated being alone, and thought she'd had done with the experience when Loony had turned up. What if she surged forward alone, and she reached some sort of invisible barrier like the gateway into the maze? What if she disappeared, and she could never find her way back, just as Draco and Loony would never find their way back to her? What if Draco looked for her, and became even more lost? What if he was separated from Loony?

What if Loony got lost, too?

Pansy swallowed. She knew she could be useful if she tried, she knew she could be brazen with reinforcements, but she was alone, and that paralyzed her.

And so she waited, and did nothing.

Finally, finally, Draco and Loony emerged into view. Pansy leapt up. Surrendering all sense of decorum, she had sat herself in the dirt, arranging the odd, smooth rocks that were scattered here and there across the ground into rings that sometimes connected, and sometimes stayed apart. She did not bother to dust herself off this time—and only partly because, if she gave into her relief and embraced Draco as she wanted to, she would cover his sorry self with dirt, too.

He certainly looked as if he needed to be held. His shoulders were slumped tiredly, and his eyes were rimmed with red. His hair, so smooth and perfect on a normal day, was even more mussed than it had been when she had left him. When he swiped at his eyes once with the back of his hand, it left a streak of dirt across his face that he did not bother to rub away. Yet in spite of this, he seemed so much less defeated than he had been. His shoulders, she realized, were not slack with resignation; he had finally, simply relaxed, and there was a kind of victory in that calm. Instead of looking to be on the brink of breaking, he looked as if he had already been broken, and had begun to be put back together again, piece by piece.

Loony was holding his hand. As Pansy stared at it, Loony gave it a squeeze, and then released it, fluid and unselfconscious.

Draco stepped toward Pansy, and then stopped a few feet short of her, hesitant.

"What—?" she began, momentarily forgetting that she was angry with him. Loony had worked some sort of magic—she had to have done. What had she said?

His lips parted, unsure. "Lovegood..." He shook his head, and his eyes darted back and forth, as if he were searching for something.

"Please," Loony interrupted. "If you don't mind, I'd like it if you called me Luna." Her round eyes flicked to Pansy. "I know what you call me, you see," she continued, and Pansy looked down at her feet. Hers and Loo—una's, barely in the same field of vision, and so very different—Luna's were still bare, and so impossibly dirty that they were probably stained. Pansy's were always covered. "I don't mean to be ungrateful for a nickname, as I've never had one before, but it might get confusing, since I'm not used to it. As for my surname," she added, returning her gaze to Draco, "I'm still not quite used to people calling me that, either."

Pansy started, her own feet shifting a little as Luna's remained perfectly rooted. This was the closest to a lie she'd ever caught Luna telling—not that it was easy to tell anything about Luna, with her placid, owlish face and unwavering sense of self. For it had to be a lie, hadn't it? Luna had to mind what people called her—and she had to be accustomed to it, too. Yet there was the calm smile that always seemed to be lingering at the corners of her lips, ready to placate, ready to be released into the open like a wonderful, wild, magical thing. How much of that was fixed into place by weeks of practice? Pansy couldn't reconcile the idea with her own image of Luna, which was unwaveringly honest to a fault.

Perhaps she was simply brave. After all, she seemed to be everything that Pansy was not.

Noticing Pansy's stare, Luna blinked back at her, and slowly tucked a bit of hair behind her ear that had been tickling her face like a thin bolt of lightning. It was a brief flash of self-consciousness, and it made Pansy want to echo it. She stilled her fingers to keep them away from her hair, and they fought to flutter at her sides.

"Okay." Draco nodded. Something seemed to have stolen his words, but it hadn't left him bereft. Even with two syllables, he sounded sure of himself again. Pansy still had to struggle to remember what, precisely, he ought to be sure of at that moment, however; puzzling over Luna had distracted her completely.

With curiosity more than anything else this time, she watched as Draco offered his hand to Luna, who slipped her own lightly into his grasp in reply, and then they both turned to her. Draco hesitated a moment—he was being so careful with her now, and she wasn't sure what to think of it, whether she was pleased—before repeating the motion with his other hand, extending it toward her with a kind of pleading in his eyes—when had that got there?—that he would never reflect upon aloud. It reminded her of when they had first arrived in this place, however many days ago that had been. The memory softened her.

His skin was cool, but hers was warm. She felt the slightest pressure against her palm, and then it was gone.

He leaned down until his face was beside hers—he wasn't much taller than she. "Sorry," he muttered, flushing. She almost couldn't hear him. But she did.

Pansy smiled, just a little. She didn't make him say it again.

The maze was easier to navigate than any of them had expected. In part, this was because they could see where they were going; each turn was lain out before them, each dead end plainly visible and simple to avoid. The maze itself, however, wasn't as challenging as it had seemed. The sheer size of it had daunted them from the very start, looming ahead of them with its seeming impossibilities. Once they had begun the actual task of traversing its paths, however, they were startled to discover that the maze was defined only by the most elementary of tricks and traps, simple enough that, if it were drawn on a piece of parchment, a child might unerringly trace from its start to its finish in just over a minute.

It was not disappointing, Pansy thought, for she had never much enjoyed challenges, preferring to occupy her time with whatever came easiest to her; if she was to be done with this maze much more quickly than she had first anticipated, then she was glad of it. If anything, the simplicity of the maze was anticlimactic. But then again, that followed the nature of everything there: the fog plains, the desert, the lands they had clambered over before Luna came—everything had been so simple, but in their simplicity, they had been dangerous. Pansy, Draco, and Luna had sloughed through them as if through a mire, when often they had been faced by nothing but a particularly long walk, when it came down to it. The seeming lack of peril had her unconsciously but periodically holding her breath, waiting for the moment when they realized that they were immersed in something from which they could not escape.

The wait did not last long.

They had walked for hours, though none of them had wearied during that time, and none had stopped for even the tiniest splash of water. It was, Pansy thought, as if the moment the idea of tiredness or thirst peeked into the corner of her mind, something chased it away once more into its hiding place. She had felt something similar before they had entered the maze, when she had tried to look behind her, but found that she could not, no matter how frequently she had thought to will herself to do so—which, admittedly, would not have been all that much, anyway. When she had asked the others about it, Draco had described an entirely different sensation, and Luna had not even thought to look behind her in the first place.

They had not spoken about much else. The silence around them felt catching; even their footfalls were deadened by the earth beneath their feet and the quiet that lingered above. Even Pansy, who was usually burdened by the need to chatter, could hardly think of more than a few sentences to express her thoughts—they seemed unnecessary. Then again, lately she hadn't felt much like chattering at all. The only comfort in the silence was the press of their hands, still locking them into a chain that, while broken up several times, always seemed to find its way back together.

Soon, they neared the wall that Draco had inadvertently raised hours before with his thrown rock. It had not grown or changed in any way since its initial transformation, which was reassuring. Though they had managed to keep any stray fingers and toes away from the walls, they still knew near nothing about how the maze functioned. For all they were aware, the outer wall they had left behind might have begun to expand in their absence, sneaking behind them in their shadows.

Not that they had any shadows. Though hours had passed, there had been no change in the light that Pansy could detect. It still seemed to be without a source; and because there was no apparent sun above them, there was no hint of darkness cast anywhere. It was as if the world lacked a dimension, as if one more crucial element of existence had been removed with the need for sound.

Out of habit, Pansy wiped her brow. With no sun beating down upon her head, and an odd coolness to the air, she had not sweat as much as she expected.

"Should we rest?" she asked suddenly, perplexed by her own question and her need to have asked it.

"We haven't yet," Draco replied with a shrug that looked as uncertain as her question had been.

"It might be nice," Luna agreed. She was swinging her and Draco's arms absently between them like a child might; all she lacked was a small bunch of wildflowers for her other hand and a carefree tune on her lips. The image had a sweet air to the edges of it, even in Pansy's mind. Each time Luna swung her arm, Draco's other shoulder moved in tandem, and Pansy swayed in response, one movement rippling into another.

They were coming to a slow stop, still enjoying the sensation of their own motions, when they first smelled it. At first, Pansy thought it was the sweet scent in her thoughts manifesting themselves in reality, for there was a particular, familiar smell drifting to them. Soon, however, the smell changed; it became harsher, more defined. In the beginning, it was closer to the smell of woodsmoke burning miles away, carried across hills and fields by gentle gusts of wind. Now, Pansy could not shake the feeling that something else was burning, and close—something living, something writhing. It smelled as if all of Hogwarts was aflame with everyone trapped inside.

None of them moved—their line was utterly rigid, all ripples ceasing at once.

In their stillness, something emerged from behind the wall.

When Luna screamed, the sound made Pansy's head spin even more. Already, she could hardly process what she saw.

The creature looked like a horse, but bigger—so much bigger; its head fell just short of the top of the wall. Something was off about it, something that made its skeletal shape different from that of other horses aside from its size, but she couldn't see what it was, for the entirety of its body was covered in flames that seemed to bellow their wrath from the center of its being. Its eyes, when it lowered its head to regard them, were the dull grey of ash. For a brief moment, Pansy wondered if it was blind, but the fixedness of its gaze proved otherwise. Unless it had an exceptional sense of smell that could pinpoint their collective size and stance precisely.

Luna was still screaming.

"Stop it!" Pansy screamed, herself. "Stop it! Stop it!" Draco's hand was gripping hers painfully, but she could barely feel it. The longer she looked at the creature, the more wildly her thoughts raced, the more her eyes traced the movement of the flames that wracked its blackened coat. She felt as if she were going mad. She wanted to scream and laugh and cry and destroy something, anything.

She wrenched her eyes away. "Do something!" she shrieked at Draco, who was as transfixed as she had been only a second before. "Take out your wand! You have to do something, you have to, she can't, you're the only one—"

"But you can't! It's a Heliopath!" Luna shrieked, startling Pansy again. Luna's voice had never strayed from its usual even tone—not that Pansy had ever heard. That she was screaming and utterly losing control of herself almost frightened Pansy more than the creature—until, of course, she looked at it again, and was sucked once more into its deep abyss.

No one moved until the Heliopath snorted, spraying sparks that singed their clothes and Luna's bare legs. Then, they ran.

For each of their five steps, the Heliopath took one, following behind them at a leisurely pace that would have been comical in contrast to their own frantic running, had they not been the ones being pursued. The wall had seemed so short before when they had seen it from afar, but running parallel to it, it seemed never-ending. Once they passed it, they might be able to see an escape, but it was as if the wall were elongating itself in a direct mockery of their terror. They were blind—blind as the creature most certainly was not. The further they went, the greater the heat at their backs became, until Pansy could feel the threads of her clothing singeing, bubbling, fraying. She ran faster. In her panic, it was as if she was alone; Draco no longer held her hand.

Suddenly, the wall ended. The change came so quickly that Draco, who was ahead, slammed into one of the invisible walls across from them. Luna and Pansy were just able to pull him back before the short sticks in the ground exploded past them. While his dazed weight sagged against them both, Pansy finally saw what the growth of the second wall had done: it had outlined a new, short passage. Beyond it, Pansy could see something dark and moving, something that seemed to wend and tumble through the ground like a river. It was not inside the maze.

It was the way out.

Half-dragging Draco, who was sluggishly beginning to recover, Pansy and Luna moved toward the exit as quickly as they could. The Heliopath gave a shriek behind them that sounded partly like the crack of a burning tree after a lightning strike, partly like an avalanche, and partly like the shriek of a hippogriff. At the cry, Draco regained himself, and they ran faster.

Pansy had hoped, in an irrational sort of way, that the Heliopath would not be able to cross the exit of the maze, trapped inside it as its savage guardian; but that hope was dashed as the Heliopath gave another screech and set one fiery hoof out of the maze after them. Its pace was still slow; it knew they could not outrun it.

Something made them all continue on, regardless. Something pressed them forward, urging them instead of driving them from behind.

The river. Pansy could see at once that that was what it was. Stones, the same as the smooth black ones they had encountered throughout the maze, the same as the one Draco had thrown, seemed to fall over each other in rushing waves, all traveling in the same direction, stretching in a winding line as far as Pansy could see. There were larger boulders that were positioned in a line across the broadest part, and each time a particularly powerful stone wave struck one, some of the stones broke apart into pebbles that crashed into the sky, and then fell back down again into the river to rejoin their fellows in the unending current. Pansy regarded it for only a moment. The ground had begun to shake at the Heliopath's continuous approach, and she watched it, frozen.

Vaguely, she heard Draco searching for something, rooting around in his robes. When he spoke, his voice was dry and cracked, as if the Heliopath's flames had parched his throat beyond repair. "Circle," he croaked. It took too many seconds for Pansy to comprehend, but by the time she did, Luna had already linked her arm around Pansy's, and Draco had his wand out, this time pointing at Pansy, whose back she had turned to the stone river at Luna's touch.

Draco's fingers shook. "Depulso," he whispered, and then tried again when nothing happened, this time bellowing, "DEPULSO!"

Nothing.

Nothing.

"Nothing," Pansy squeaked.

"The river," Luna said quietly. Pansy's wild eyes could barely focus upon her. Luna's voice was less hysterical than it had been before, but nowhere near its usual calm. "I think it might be a barrier—"

"We'd be safe," Draco agreed. After a breathless pause, he added, "If you're right, that is."

Draco's newfound acceptance of Luna seemed to extend only so far. Luna's eyes were wider than usual, round and wet and unreadable.

"Just go!" Pansy shrieked. "We'll be dead either way if we don't move!" She was already leaping for one of the boulders, the nearest one to her and the first in the line of seven grotesque stepping stones. Pansy Parkinson had never had a prouder moment than the one in which she grasped that boulder and clambered up to stand on its crest—the moment in which she did not, in fact, fall to her death in the black stone river. She focused on the next one, and leapt. The boulders were rough, unlike their counterparts in the river, and they were not flat. They were like tiny mountaintops, or the spines on a dragon's back. They were easy to cling onto, but difficult to stand on to make for the next one. Pansy kept leaping, until she heard Luna scream again. Pansy whirled around, almost losing her balance in her haste and carelessness.

Luna was hunched over the top of one of the boulders. At first, Pansy could not see what was wrong, because Luna's long hair fell to Luna's feet like a waterfall, obscuring anything amiss from Pansy's sight—the heat from the Heliopath must have incinerated the elastic. And then Luna shifted, and Pansy saw. There was blood on the boulder, already dripping from its edge like red ink. Luna's bare feet had not been a hinderance to her for their entire journey—not until now, when she needed them most to flee.

Pansy looked at Draco, who looked past her to the shore which was only a few boulders away. She could nearly see it reflecting in his eyes, the madness of its closeness, the nearness of possible safety and escape beckoning to him.

"Draco Malfoy, don't you dare!" Pansy screeched. "Just this once, don't you dare!"

He didn't dare. He went back for Luna.

Somehow. Pansy would never remember.

Somehow. Luna was smaller than both of them, lighter than both of them, like a willow branch.

Somehow, Draco helped her to her feet, and sent her ahead of him to Pansy, who caught Luna as she began to fall, who felt Luna for a moment press against her, soft and warm and shaking, as Pansy pulled her to safety, and even kept that stupid shoulder-bag from being lost forever.

Somehow, Luna limping, Draco breathing hard, Pansy screaming uncontrollably at the top of her lungs, they made it across.

Somehow.

"DO IT NOW!" Pansy bellowed.

Draco's Banishing Charm was sending the three of them away before Pansy had even finished her last syllable, and the Heliopath faded away as if into nothingness as they soared.