DEATHLY HALLOWS IS COMING OUT ON JULY 21!!!!!!!! I'M SO EXCITED! I'M PREORDERING IT ON AMAZON!!!! YAY FOR JK ROWLING!!!!

Alright, now that my adrenaline level has receded a bit: guess what? Two weeks ago, I sat down and actually wrote out the whole plot for the rest of this novel. I'd had it mostly planned out before, but with some ambiguities, and sometimes when I'd come up with a really good idea I'd forget about it 'cause I didn't write it down. So finally, I know where I'm going instead of wandering aimlessly back and forth and never getting anywhere, I have structure in what I'm writing rather than letting it all flop about like a useless pile of Jello, and the end is in sight! So now that I actually know what's supposed to happen next, I'm going to try to put up one or two chapters a week. That's not a promise, mind you, but I'll try…

Anyway, this one's for Jocelyn because I was reading Pride and Prejudice last night, and Jocelyn is exactly like Jane, and it made me happy. So here it is… chapter 23!

"Ron," Harry said as his best friend's head appeared in the fire the next evening, "I need to talk to Malfoy."

Ron nodded. "I knew that was coming. I take it you've finished your training, then?"

"Yes. I have to know where Snape is."

"Foul git," Ron said cheerily, his head disappearing. "He'll be right there!" His voice sounded muffled and distant, echoing around the fireplace. Harry sat on the ground and put his chin in his hand.

No one had really known what to do with Malfoy after he had gone with Harry, Ron, and Hermione to rescue Bill. They had taken him to Grimauld Place, and there he had remained for five long weeks. They couldn't turn him loose for fear he'd get himself killed or go back to the Death Eaters, but every moment he stayed at the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, he learned more about what they were doing. Slowly, he had been mostly forgotten.

With a whoosh and a flash of emerald light, Malfoy stepped into the room, brushing ashes off his robes. "What?" he asked dryly.

"You didn't have to come all the way over here," Harry said irritably, standing up. " I only have to talk to you, not dance with you."

"I hate kneeling in front of the fire," he said unconcernedly, leaning against the mantel. "It's painful, and it'll ruin your robes very fast. What do you want?"

"I need information."

"I might have it."

"Will you divulge it?"

He shrugged. "Maybe."

"I need to know where Snape is."

"Send him an owl and ask him to tell you. I'm sure he'll comply."

Harry scowled. "I don't want to listen to your sarcasm, Malfoy. Please, just tell me. I have to know where he is."

"Why?"

"He knows the counter curse to whatever they got Hermione with."

"How're you so sure?"

"I'm sure," Harry said firmly, hoping it was true.

"How are you going to make him tell you?"

"I can make him."

Malfoy smiled humorlessly. "Still cocky, I see." He turned slowly and gazed into the fire. "Look, Potter, Severus Snape is a very powerful wizard. He'll kill you."

"I'm more prepared than you think."

"So?" Malfoy asked softly. "You are nowhere near Snape's level."

"Maybe I am."

"You cannot be, Potter, because Snape has an advantage that you, in your years of good upbringing, have been deprived."

"And what is that?"

Malfoy looked up. The flickering fire cast eerie shadows over his pale face. "Dark magic."

Harry felt a convulsive shudder. He turned away from Malfoy and drew a deep breath. "Then what would you suggest?" he asked harshly. "Snape is the only way I can think of to bring her back, and I can't just sit here and do nothing when there is any hope of saving her. What do you want me to do?"

"Let me come."

"You came last time."

"You'll need me."

"No, I won't."

"Someday, Potter, your arrogance will get you into a fix that you won't be able to get out of. Perhaps it'll be this one. I tell you, Snape will kill you the first moment he sees you."

"Then he'll kill you in the second moment."

"No, because the moment in which he kills you will leave an opening for me to kill him. He will be far more cautious against two wizards than against one. But," Malfoy said, his smile broadening, "we have the advantage."

"What advantage?"

"We're seventeen. We're teenagers. Snape's flaw, if he has one, is a tendency to underestimate his enemies. We are more powerful than he knows."

"But he does know us," Harry pointed out bitterly. "He taught us for six years, watched us as our teacher. He knows our strengths and our weaknesses."

"No," Malfoy said softly, "he thinks he does. He knows what used to be our strengths and weaknesses. But, unless I am very much mistaken, Potter, we have both grown far beyond what he could possibly imagine."

"How do you know?" Harry demanded.

Malfoy laughed disdainfully. "What you asked that woman—Tonks—to do is not a secret around the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix."

"Oh," Harry said. It hadn't occurred to him that anyone but he and Ron knew.

"Yes, Potter, you are far more advanced in magic than Severus Snape could possibly fathom. Not as far as he, no, but much farther than he expects from you. And I—I was guarded from him last year. I learned more, grew more than he knew. I didn't want him to take the fame that I was going to get, killing your precious Dumbledore, so I stayed far away from him. He has no idea how far into the Dark Arts I got."

Harry looked at him slowly, long and hard. "You're right," he said softly. "We're not so different, are we?"

Slowly, Malfoy shook his head.

"If I let you come," Harry whispered, "will you tell me?"

"I will."

"And you swear to tell the truth?"

"Why would I lie?"

"Do you swear?"

"I swear." He stuck out his hand.

Harry took it. "Where is he?"

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"You want me to ride that thing?"

"How else do you propose we get there?" Harry asked irritably, watching as three beasts walked forward out of the trees. They looked like sickly horses with black, leathery skin, enormous wings, and milky eyes. They were fighting over a strip of drying meat that Harry had stolen from behind Hagrid's cabin. "If you don't want to ride it, you don't have to come," Harry reminded him.

After a long debate over how they were to get to their destination, Harry had thought of the thestrals. Apparition wouldn't work because they had never seen the place. Brooms were useless, too—they didn't know where it was. But the thestrals would get them there quickly, and wouldn't get lost on the way.

"Where do you hold on?" Malfoy asked, grimacing. "They're disgusting, filthy-looking things…"

The nearest one looked up at him with a scary glint in its eye. Malfoy backed away hurriedly. He'd had a very painful experience with an animal that didn't like to be insulted.

Harry pulled himself up onto a big one that had finished chewing its strip of meat, and Malfoy followed suit, looking very disgruntled.

Harry, though he didn't want to admit it, was not exactly happy being in the Forbidden Forest at nearly ten o' clock at night. It was pitch black, and Harry knew that the things he had encountered in previous excursions into this place—namely, murderous centaurs, enormous spiders, and a runty giant named Grawp—were only a fraction of the horrors that lay among these trees. The sooner they were off, the better.

"Erm…" Harry said to his, "could you take us to the Pyramids of Furmat, please?"

With a sickening lurch, the thestral took off, quickly clearing the tops of the trees and soaring into the night sky. Harry immediately wished he had worn a thicker cloak—he was freezing in the November wind. He squinted against the whipping wind.

Malfoy had shrugged when Harry had asked why Snape was at the Pyramids of Furmat, deep in the heart of Egypt. "There's something there that the Dark Lord wants guarded, and since Snape had to blow his cover at the end of last year, that's about his most useful station."

"What sort of thing?"

Malfoy's eyes glinted. "You know the thing that they wanted in return for Weasley?"

"A map?" Harry asked, intrigued.

"I think it's there. They've been making excursions into the biggest pyramid for months now, and when they come out—if they do come out—they're empty-handed. When they kidnapped Weasley, I think they must have decided that perhaps the Order of the Phoenix had gotten there first. Though I doubt they believe that's still the case."

"What is this map? What makes it so important?"

Malfoy shrugged. "How are we going to get there?"

Which was why they were currently riding two thestrals south at an alarming speed. Harry couldn't watch because of the force of the wind, but he knew that England and France and the Mediterranean were passing below him.

It took hours. Harry gradually felt the November air growing warmer, and he knew they were nearer to Egypt. Throughout the journey, he constantly muttered a spell that kept hot air hovering around his fingers, nose, and ears to avoid frostbite from the cold. He felt bad for Malfoy, who, he was sure, couldn't do the wandless magic that he himself had mastered only a week previously. He was too stiff to turn around and make sure Malfoy was behind him.

And then they descended. Harry felt it grow distinctly warmer as they neared the ground. Nearby stood several sprawling webs of lights, but they landed in a large, dark expanse. Harry stiffly got off his thestral as Malfoy's landed beside him.

Malfoy himself looked frozen, but apparently not enough so to keep him from cursing the thestral and the ride up and down and muttering ineffective curses. He practically tumbled off, straightening himself angrily and stomping over to Harry. "We are not," he said through gritted teeth, "riding those things back. We can Apparate to Hogsmeade."

"Shh," Harry hissed. "We don't know if there are people around here." He didn't know how to communicate to the thestrals that they were no longer needed and could go back to Hogwarts, but they seemed disinclined to stay anyway; without a sound, they took off and disappeared into the black night sky.

"Which one's the biggest?" Harry whispered as he turned to Malfoy.

Malfoy shot him a scathing glance. "How should I know? You can tell as well as I which is the biggest."

There were seven impressively enormous structures spread out before them, forming the tips of a six-pointed star, with one in the very center, which was outlined by large hills and rows of crumbling statues. Harry had seen a picture of them from above once, in a History of Magic textbook, and in it he could see the star in the hills. Now, on the ground, he could make out no more pattern than natural rolling hills would have formed.

He tried to recall that History of Magic lesson. Despite the drab, monotone voice of Professor Binns, which was usually completely incapable of staying in Harry's head—going in one ear and out the other—he seemed to remember. "The middle's the biggest," he said slowly. It made sense.

"Okay," Malfoy said. "Any great ideas?"

"We go in and bash Snape's skull."

"I meant ideas that wouldn't get us killed."

Harry thought for a moment. "I have an idea," he said softly, "but it's going to take some work."

A/N: Does this chapter seem at all realistic? It seems to me it's a more romantic (not that romanticism is bad, but this is going too far) idea of things, hopping on thestrals and flying down to Egypt. Not… real. Like Huck and Jim floating down the raft on the Mississippi in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—it's not reality. I try not to do that, but sometimes I just don't know how to get it to happen how I want without making some not-so-great-sounding decisions. So, I apologize for this chapter and any others that come along that make you think, "Psh, yeah right."

Sorry to end it here, by the way; I'm strongly anti-cliffhanger when it comes to reading—it drives me nuts when I don't know what's going to happen—but I love doing it in my own writing. I know, it's hypocritical, but I just can't help it.