Disclaimer: See chapter 1

ooOOoo

Chapter 12: Lights, Camera

Black and green afterimages burst in Harry's retinas. He kept seeing bright light casting Draco and Simon into silhouette over and over again, one falling and the other growing into the green and purple sky. He reached out one hand with a Seeker's instinct and caught a rope.

Simon.

"Steady there, boy," he said, and as the misfiring nerves in his eyes calmed he became aware that the muffled irregular thumping was the sound of the horse prancing nervously at his side.

"I've got him, Harry," said Luna softly. She was standing on the ground now; she must have slipped off deliberately because she was holding the rope, too, and there were no leaves or traces of dirt on her from a fall. Simon rolled his eyes until the whites showed, darting his head around as he looked for attackers.

Harry remembered he'd been hexed in the Forest that night. It was a miracle he hadn't bolted now.

"Check Draco," Luna said.

A miracle or Luna. She'd stopped the horse from running.

Harry shook his head, trying to clear the lights that were popping in them. In front of him was a grim picture: Trudi was kneeling over a prone figure, shaking its shoulder. She looked up at Harry. Her face was drawn and pale as the moon. "He won't wake up," she said, her voice as tight as her expression.

Harry knelt next to her. "Malfoy? Draco…?" He pressed his fingers into Draco's throat behind his jaw. Was there…? Yes. "He's alive," he breathed in relief. "We need to call Madam Pomfrey…"

There was a groan.

"Malfoy?"

"Draco?" Trudi squeaked.

"Ungh…"

"Well, it's a start." Harry unclipped his cloak and shook it out over Draco. "Come on… can you hear me? Say something or I'm going to send for Pomfrey…"

"Don't. Ghastly woman hates me…"

Harry grinned. "I think he's going to be all right," he whispered to Trudi, who smiled back at him gratefully and quickly wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Harry knew he was meant to have a handkerchief for situations like these, but he was always losing his or it was dirty or wrapped around something as a tourniquet…

"Do I have to be?" moaned Draco. He rolled over.

"Careful," said Harry. He and Trudi took one arm each and helped Draco into a sitting position.

"Now you tell me to be careful… Ouch. Triple sodding ouch. Was the tree the Whomping Willow?"

"No," said Luna. She'd led Simon up. The horse leaned down and blew softly at Draco's hair, messing it only a little more. "It's invisible. But not to Mendeleev gloves. I think you triggered a backlash by touching a focal tree with a magical artefact."

"You think? God. I'm glad now they took my wand off me…"

Luna nodded happily. "If you had touched it with your wand, it would have blown you right over Hogwarts."

Trudi gave her a horrified look, which she ignored.

"You're still wearing those gloves and we've got our wands. Can we have this conversation a little further back?" Harry said.

Draco nodded. "I think I'm going to need a little help."

They dragged him back a few meters.

"So is it a tree?" asked Harry, puffing.

Luna picked up a stone. "It's all right, Simon," she said, making sure the horse was on the other side of her to the others. She took out her wand and charmed the rock so that it flickered green and red like a Christmas ornament. Then she threw it.

This time the tree didn't erupt in the same dramatic flare of light, but it was enough to outline the midnight shape of spreading branches which shook like they had a palsy as the magic crackled along branches and down into roots.

Well, it was a tree, all right. Seeing the green light arcing along the forest floor as it burrowed into the ground, wasp-angry, literally earthing itself, Harry was glad they'd done this experiment from a distance.

"It's a tree," said Trudi.

"Glad to hear it," said Draco. "Now I'm going to see if I can do this new-fangled walking nonsense all the young people today are raving about…"

His legs weren't working all that well. After a brief discussion about levitation and its potential for damaging a body which had just suffered a magical backlash compared with the potential of a horse to inflict a more mundane physical hurt by, for example, throwing someone onto the ground and stamping on him, Harry and Luna decided it was marginally better if Simon carried Draco back to the castle. Draco grudgingly allowed that they might be right just this once. After a couple of tries, they managed to lift him onto Simon's back.

"Ouch," said Draco again, but from a different cause as he shifted on the horse's back in the futile effort to find a comfortable spot to sit. "Now I know why saddles were invented. Are all horses this bony, Lovegood?"

Luna shrugged. "I don't think so. Mainly thoroughbreds, I suppose. The little fat ponies look quite comfortable."

"Simon has more style."

"True. Hold on to his mane." Luna picked up the slack in the rope and Simon turned to follow her. He'd been quite patient all through Luna and Harry's efforts to lift the Slytherin boy onto his back. He'd only bitten Harry once, and that was after Harry elbowed the horse in the neck. Harry had considered that a fair provocation.

"Won't it – whups!" Draco grabbed a silky handful of mane as Simon started walking. "Won't it hurt him?"

"No. It's not as sensitive as ours. Trust me, he'll let you know if you hurt him."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Draco grumbled.

The silence stretched. It might have been nice if it was just him and Luna, but with the two Slytherins it gave Harry a bit of a prickly feeling between his shoulder blades. So he was glad when Draco broke it.

"Right. We've found a tree that holds the binding for the Dark Lord's barrier."

"Unless it's a tree with a completely different reason for being enchanted," Luna pointed out.

Draco frowned. "I'm not wandering around getting zapped by psychotic trees until we've found all of them. That was the one my gloves found. I hope you remember where the tree is."

"Yes," said Harry. "I left three stones there… and charmed them so that I can find the spot again."

"Oh. Good," Draco grudgingly allowed. "Er… how do we know what species it is?"

"Only oak leaves were on the ground around it. And it had the general shape of an oak," said Luna.

"It also thrums like an oak," said Trudi. "What?"

"Thrums?" asked Harry.

Trudi turned red and mumbled something about Professor Sprout.

"So it's an oak," Draco said. "So now what? We go and cut some mistletoe with a golden sickle…?"

"A golden sickle?" Harry said. "Galleons are gold, sickles are meant to be silver."

Draco raised a pale eyebrow. "What a way to prove you're not a peasant. A sickle is also a sort of curved knife you use in harvesting things. Golden sickles were used by the druids way back when. They called them the sun's halo. Well, what else would you use to cut the moon's fruit? Where were you in Potions?"

Harry shrugged. "Busy trying to make sure you didn't slip something into my cauldron and make it blow up."

Draco actually laughed. "Ah, happy times…"

Harry shook his head. He managed not to laugh, but couldn't stop the smile.

ooOOoo

Blind Draco took some getting used to. Harry felt terribly guilty about it, but part of him was enjoying this new, sightless Draco Malfoy. He'd never been someone to joke with before. Someone to prank, yes, and someone who'd prank back just as hard and twice as viciously, but laugh with?

Never.

So maybe it was this relaxed attitude that made him agree to Colin's request that evening in Gryffindor Tower after he'd talked with Hermione and told her about mistletoe and golden sickles. She had been excited, equally delighted at the way this might fit in with Helga Hufflepuff's mythical golden thingummybob as she was with the potential in the Mendeleev gloves.

Harry was relaxing in the inner glow of having done Something Right for a Change when Colin approached him about taking some photos. Harry agreed – Colin had some good arguments about horses and photos, and was experimenting with Muggle-style black and white photography. He'd already tried it out on some of the magical animals, but they blurred the film. A black horse was something Colin didn't want to pass up. They decided on Thursday.

By Thursday Hermione had dragged Draco (and Trudi and Harry, who wanted to be there if arbitration or physical restraints ended up being necessary) off to the library a few times and had several promising lines of research going, helped immensely by Draco's gloves. They'd tried asking Professor Lupin about it again, but he'd been tired after the extra Potions classes he was filling in for and told them to leave well enough alone. Padfoot, looking equally tired after another night's fruitless search for an answer, looked up at Harry sympathetically. Harry patted his godfather on the way out and decided angrily that if Lupin didn't want to be bothered it meant not bothering him with details about the tree they'd found, either.

Huh.

He wished he could talk to Sirius, but there never seemed to be the time. Dumbledore had the Animagus almost constantly scouting the rim of the barrier in search of intrusions (and potential exits), and as the barrier – now accepted by the majority of Hogwarts as the physical manifestation of Voldemort's wards isolating Hogwarts from the world – ran through the Forbidden Forest as well as through the rather less threatening moorland and hills on the other side of the castle, it meant that Sirius needed all his attention for his work.

Harry didn't want to bother him with something that might not turn out to be important. If it was important, well, he and Hermione and Ron would deal with it like usual.

Harry and Draco were much more confident with the horse. Harry had even tried riding it a few times, but felt like a sack of potatoes if the horse tried anything faster than a walk. Draco seemed to be managing better – Luna had led him around at a trot until he told her to slow down because he was getting sea-sick. Madam Hooch had finally agreed to let them work with Simon without supervision, providing there were two or more at any one time in case of accidents.

Harry hadn't considered Colin in terms of causing an accident. This was a free double-period for himself and Colin, and since Draco was blind and his classes were restricted (and he was bored enough to wander around the grounds trusting in his gloves) Harry and Colin had flown their brooms (low to keep from being spotted by the Death Eaters the teachers worried might hex the brooms out of the sky) to the paddock where they found the Slytherin already sitting on the fence while Simon grazed nearby. With the smaller and more modern camera, Colin took a few pictures of the two students and the horse, Simon snorting suspiciously at the camera. Harry and Draco decided on the spot to try Simon without Luna's supervision just to prove (to each other) that they could. Colin said it would probably be an excellent photo op. They saddled and bridled the horse and led it down to the meadow near the castle where Luna had given them their handful of riding lessons.

Harry watched Draco carefully ride Simon in a circle around a small rock Harry charmed to beep as a beacon for Draco to get a fix on, and wondered for the umpteenth time how Simon had got through the wards while Colin chirped away happily next to him. He'd thought Colin was just wanting to tag along in his usual hero-worshipful way and take a couple of photos if the moment was right, all of which seemed perfectly harmless, until he saw Colin lifting a second camera as Draco and Simon came towards them – the larger camera with the incredibly incandescent flash – and saw how this accident was going to –

"That looks good…"

"Colin, no!!!"

Pooff!

When the smoke cleared the horse was already disappearing around the side of the castle. Simon had moved so fast Harry thought he had Disapparated. Draco's robes flowed out behind him as the blond leaned forward with his arms wrapped around the black neck.

Harry leaped on his broom and sped after them.

He had almost caught up when Simon veered off to the right and – Harry groaned – up the stairs and into the Entrance Hall.

There were rules against flying in the castle. Harry conveniently forgot all of them.

Draco had both hands wrapped in the mane and his expression, from the brief glimpses Harry could see, was rigid with terror.

There were screams as a group of second-year Hufflepuffs came up out of the stairs leading into the Dungeons. Remus must have finished class early, Harry hoped; he didn't dare consider what would happen in two minutes when the classes finished and students would be everywhere.

Simon, who had bounded over the stone floor away from the dark, looming doors of the Great Hall and toward the stairwell down to the Dungeons, shied away from the screaming students, swinging towards a corridor.

"Oh, no…" breathed Harry, and urged his broom between Simon and the long corridor leading down to the main classrooms. Simon snorted and half-reared, eyes rolling and hooves sliding in front of a trail of sparks on the stone, and – to Harry's horror – charged up the nearest staircase.

"Simon, whoa!" The horse didn't slow, but kept determinedly leaping up the stairs, steel shoes skidding and ringing out on the steps. It sounded like thunder. "Hold on, Draco!"

"What do you think I'm doing, you moron!" Draco snapped back as loudly as he could with his teeth gritted together.

Simon was rapidly reaching the top of the staircase, which lazily began its movement from one landing to another. There was nowhere for Simon to go. He would stop now…

… surely he would stop now…

"SIMON! STOP!!!" Harry pulled out his wand but even if he had known a spell to say, he wasn't sure he could have said it.

The horse reached the top stair, staggering as one hoof skidded before regaining his balance in the next instant.

He snorted, flicking his tail, and Harry saw all the muscles along the back, ribs, and hindquarters bunch up.

Three floors up, Simon leaped into space.

ooOOoo