DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter, its characters, and related indicia belong to JK Rowling and possibly Warner Bros. No copyright infringement is intended. No money is being made. I also have no claim on the chunks of text from Mervyn Peake's Titus Alone quoted heavily in the first section of this instalment: it happens to be one of my very, very favourite delirious monologues evar and it applies neatly to this situation. Finally: thank everyone who has reviewed and urged me to carry on with this. I'm going to.

I also don't know why it won't let me keep doublespaces around the horizontal lines. Sorry if it's hard to read. It apparently doesn't like the idea of spaces. Yes, I have tried using the source code. No, it does not do a damned thing. It would be nice if this were fixable.

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"Can you hear me….O can you hear me…Can you…?"

"Is that my son? Where are you….child?"

"Where are you, mother?"

"Where I always am."

"At your high window, mother, a-swarm with birds?"

"Where else?"

"Can no one tell me…?"

"Tell you what?"

"Where in the world I am…"

"Not easily…..not easily."

"You were never easy with your sums, young man. Never."

He was curled in on himself somewhere, a long way away from anything close to home. Curled tightly enough to make the clawing agony in his chest mute and fade itself to dim unhappiness: curled tightly enough to press his face against his knees, a wall to stop his head from bursting.

"Why did you…"

"Why….why….?"

"Listen…..listen…."

"The birds are perched upon her head like leaves."

"And the cats like a white tide?"

"The cats are loyal in a traitors' world."

He had long ago given up on surfacing from this dark lake. Like the maimed Grendel he had sunk and sunk and sunk below black waters and could not now even see the flickering spiderweb of light filtering from the surface. All was dark, all quiet. Except for the voices still crying in his head, no longer raking their claws and shrieking: almost mournful.

"He saved my life. He saved it many times.

"Cut out the woman in you with a jack-knife. God save the sweetness of your iron heart."

He floated on the face of the waters. Dimly, a very long way away, he was conscious of pain and of urgency, people somewhere fighting for something he didn't understand, didn't care to. It was not his problem, any more.

And then a new voice, in the darkness.

"Draco," it said. And it was not crying out, not moaning or shrieking or whimpering: it was a man's voice, calm and warm and strong. "Draco. Listen to me, son. You must come back to her. She needs you; you are all of me she has left. Do not leave her as I did. I had no choice, and you do."

He made a wordless little sound of negation, and curled tighter into himself, aware that he was a hypercube, that he was a nautilus curled into itself in sixteen dimensions, that imaginary numbers were real and were the only way to describe the cosmos, that Markant's Constant was true, that the quantum thaumic dances of the microstrings were the only basis for the universe.

"Draco," said the voice implacably. "Draco."

"What?" he snapped. "What do you want? Go away. I'm in the Desmarais cloud, I'm seeing numbers. Go away."

"You're not, you know. You're dying."

That roused him a little. "No I'm not. I'd know."

"You're dying. She has the local thaumedician in and he is too frightened to try and move you to a hospital, my son. You're dying. Don't do it."

"I'mnot dying." Draco uncurled a little further and waved away the neutron clouds. All around him topological wonders rippled and inverted. "I'm not."

"That's the spirit, boy." He knew the voice. He did. He'd heard it before, in the Oak Chamber, in a nightmare.

"……Father?"

"Took you long enough. Now. Listen, Draco. Listen well. There are things you must do, with this knowledge. I know it tortures you. I know it well. You must take it and make it into deed, and you must stop him, Draco, no matter what the cost. He has taken too many lives already, and I will not have him steal yours as well."

That brought him up short. "'ve just got, got a cold or something. Not dying."

"Shut up," said his dead father, "or I will give you a thumping your astral eye won't forget in a hurry. Now see me. See me very well."

And Draco did. Out of the darkness of the intricate web of numbers he found himself hurtling through interstellar space, black, empty, cold, void, and just as suddenly face to face with Julius Malfoy. Just as in the Oak Chamber he could recognize that face. Anywhere.

"…Father, what…?"

"There's no time. I can give you a little strength to heal. A little. But you must find the rest yourself, Draco, and I know you can do that. You have always survived despite all the odds. You will not fail now. Heed me."

Julius reached out insubstantial hands and took Draco's face between them. His father's touch was so cold it shocked him entirely into being, into real awareness. He knew he hurt. He knew somewhere in another world ice was being packed around him, needles shoved into his veins. More than that, though: through the touch of his father's hands he knew exactly what it was he was to do, and how to do it, and how Lucius would react.

Despite the chill and the echoing pain from wherever reality currently located itself he found himself grinning. Lucius would have recognized that grin. It meant I am about to do something entirely, entirely unforgivable.

Waking up was like waking to a burial alive. Draco arched spasmodically on the bed and tore in a long, deep, shrieking gasp of air that set his chest on fire; his throat closed, red-hot bands around his ribs tightened unmercifully, he choked as if the fresh air of the bedroom was vulcanic smoke. Hands came out of the ether and supported him, someone had an arm around his shoulders, someone held him steady, held his head, as he hacked desperately for breath and tasted hot copper. It seemed to go on forever; he wasn't sure how many years had gone by when the spasms of choking let him go, and he collapsed back into the someone's arms and listened to the high thin whistle of his own breathing.

They were talking. People were talking. Someone wiped his face with a cold cloth and it felt so wonderful that he turned his head to follow the touch, blindly groping for that coldness: and then there was a trickle of water-clear absolution in his mouth, and ice chips, and he sucked greedily and found that despite everything his throat would let him swallow.

More distant talking. And the cold touch moved down to his burning chest, and oh, that made everything hurt less; and he found himself drifting like a loosed balloon, up, out, away.

When he found himself back in the prison of his body again he opened his eyes and grunted at the pain of light spearing into his skull. Someone close by shifted, and there was a rustle of heavy cloth, and the light cut off abruptly.

"Back with us," said a voice.

"..Mother?" He told his eyes sternly that they were to obey him, and focus. Narcissa drifted out of greyness, haggard and yellow, her hair loose in a waterfall of platinum over her shoulders. She looked ten years older. Had he really been away so long?

"Hush," she said. And smiled a little, and about six of those years fell away. "Hush, love. You've been very ill, but you're on the mend now. Do you think you could drink something cold, for me? It's bitter but it will help you."

His throat felt like the inside of a chimney. "Please?"

Narcissa nodded, and turned out of his limited field of blurry vision; and came back again with a glass sweating with cold. Her thin hand—was his mother always so warm to the touch?—slipped behind his shoulders, and she lifted him and held the glass while he drank greedily. It was bitter, bitter as aloes, as ashes, but he didn't care: it was wet.

"There's my brave son." Narcissa let him lie back. "You've been ill for almost a week, dearling. Your…father…is unavoidably detained, but he will be home as soon as he can."

Perhaps only she and he understood what that tone of desperate concern meant. Certainly he felt himself flicking automatically into calculating options and potential risks and benefits. Narcissa must have seen some of that in his eyes: she stroked his damp hair away from his face with a slightly-shaking hand.

"Please," she said. "Draco. Don't worry about anything at all but getting better. That's all, love. We just want you well and strong."

Too late by half, he thought sourly; but merely nodded with a drowsy blink. "'s…he coming back before time…? The Dark Lord won't be happy."

"I don't know," Narcissa told him. "That's between him and the Dark Lord, Draco. Not my business to ask."

He had to laugh at that, and laughing caught like broken glass in his chest and he curled up and black and scarlet flowers bloomed in his vision. When the cough let go it was a little while before he could breathe steadily enough to try a croak.

"…want….want to, to celebrate his return. His, his promotion. Put on a celebration, Mother. Feast and banquet and singing of praises. I want to do a play."

"A play?" Narcissa parroted. "A…are you sure, Draco? You've…you're not…"

"I'll be better soon. You said. I want to do a play." It hadn't been so very long ago that Lucius had enjoyed his little tableaux: Scenes from the Life of Francois Valigny du Malfoy, for example. The Archwizard Hieronyme du Malfoi At Ease. "Please, Mother. I, I want to show him my respect."

He wondered vaguely just how long it took for liars to get used enough to lying to believe their own selves.

"Well. We'll see." He knew very well that meant "yes," but just nodded and lay back against his pillows. Narcissa dabbed at his face with a handkerchief.

"Rest, Draco. You're out of danger. Just rest."

He let himself nod, and let go of his stranglehold on consciousness, and felt it falling away from him like the surface of a dark lake. He did have time before he hit the bottom to think that if Lucius decided to kill him after all he might very well take it as a kindness.