Disclaimer: Characters and settings belong to JK Rowling and Warner people. Ha! I scorn money! (As a matter of fact I don't, but as I can't make money from this story I will plead the defence of sour grapes.) The smiling happy faces of my readers are my reward. (Yeah, okay, I'll just have to imagine those smiling happy faces.)

ooOOoo

Chapter 89

The wind skimmed the tops of hedges and the occasional stone wall, toying with the hood Harry kept up to shield his features from any passing enemy. It ruffled the silky mane already rippling as Simon trotted along at an even pace, to all intents and purposes unperturbed by the formerly oleaginous road, which implied that the unicorn blood on the horse's eyes was wearing off as Harry's was, because to Harry's eyes the road looked almost normal. The silver shoes would have rung out merrily in an alert to any and all interested Death Eaters in the area, but the silencing charm hadn't been affected by anything so far, not the Forest, not the barrier, not the Barricade fence they'd jumped nor the road Simon had galloped down or the Buggeroff Hex by the gate in the paddock. (Not even cow saliva, because Harry was sure he'd seen one of the cows licking Simon's hoof. But then the cows had seemed pretty ordinary, so they were probably safe on that score.) Simon had had a nice rest while Harry dealt to the barrier tree and now, refreshed, was striding out with a long, loose stride. Harry had the feeling the horse could keep it up for the better part of a day, although he didn't think his own backside could. Already his lower back was starting to ache. This was the longest stretch he'd ridden for, even counting all the breaks when he'd dismounted to wrestle with gates, shoo away cows, and climb up and down cliffs to break barrier spells (mustn't forget that bit – arms still aching from that).

He'd passed the stile. The ring on his little finger tingled unexpectedly as it sensed its point of origin. Simon, sensing his interest, had slowed. But Harry had urged him on with some regret, wishing there was some way to turn the notice-me-not spell portable. It took a while to get to the next spot of interest, but then he'd been travelling at quite a speed along that stretch of road so it was understandable if he'd neglected to notice the dark shadows under the hedgerows and next to the road where drains lay open to the sullen, ruddy sky. Simon was getting more and more skittish, and it took Harry a while to realise that it wasn't the threat of monsters that Simon was getting upset over, it was Harry's worry over the threat of monsters Simon was reacting to. By stopping himself staring into every shadow, forcing himself to relax instead and let his senses expand without a focus, letting Simon take care of the immediate road, Harry found he calmed the horse down again.

This worked well for the next few minutes, but then there was some problem with the road near the picnic table – Simon had issues about being attacked by slavering monsters, it would seem – but the area was clear of centaurs and three-headed dogs, although the long grass on the other side of the Barricade fence was trampled into odd tufts and flattened whorls until it was the lawn equivalent of Harry's hair. It gleamed. The light drizzle that came and went sporadically had left the world dampened just enough to catch the light of a sunrise weaker than the third cup of tea made from one teabag.

There were no bodies. Or blood, as far as he could see. Harry stood up in the stirrups to try and get a better view, but Simon took exception to this and spun around with every intention of galloping back along the road to his adoring crowd of cows and Harry unbalanced and nearly fell off.

"No you don't, Simon…" Not that he could blame the horse – Harry should have known better than to stare at something the horse already saw as a threat. Staring was bad. The stared-at must either be or contain monsters.

Snorting and prancing on the diagonal, Simon allowed himself to be coaxed past. Harry needed to be a bit firmer with the reins just past the picnic site, insisting Simon keep to a trot rather than a canter. But as Harry wasn't staring at potential threats any more, Simon's nervousness vanished fairly quickly and soon the horse was back in his ground-covering trot, jet-intake nostrils twitching interestedly to take in all the fascinating smells of the outside world.

Harry gave the horse a smug pat on the neck.

"I think you're enjoying your day out," he murmured. "Must get a bit boring for you – paddock to field for longeing and riding lessons and then back to paddock again."

Simon's ears flicked back at his words, then resumed their normal position. They weren't moving in agitation and they weren't aimed at anything in particular. Simon's head wasn't being carried high and his neck wasn't arched. His stride wasn't choppy or uneven (if it was a little like being on a ship at sea for his rider) and showed no sign of tiring. In short, Simon was giving every sign of enjoying the outing. Harry smiled despite the gloomy day.

It was a good fifteen minutes before they reached the bridge. A pair of starlings and several thrushes chased each other in the petty way of long-term-on-bad-terms neighbours, flying with deft stokes of their wings through the branches of the half-dozen large trees fluttering their leaves in the breeze either side of the stream. And Draco was nowhere in sight. Despite his determined efforts to stay calm and not alarm Simon, Harry's tension was beginning to seep through and Simon was taking exception to shadows and birds, of which there were an increasing number. The horse flared its nostrils at the bridge and balked when it looked like Harry wanted to ride over it.

"Down here."

Simon shied so violently at the sudden voice that Harry lost his balance. He slid out of the saddle and would have hit the road on his back if he hadn't flung his arms around the horse's neck; his legs clung to Simon's shoulders, one ankle hooked over the withers. Simon danced a moment, then realised who'd startled him and that he wasn't under attack.

Draco climbed up the bank from where he'd been hiding under the bridge. "Well. This is a new method. Not in any book I've ever read on horse riding."

From where he was hanging under Simon's neck Harry swore at him. The chattering birds flew off to bicker on the other side of the stream.

"You're only saying that because he can't bite you right now," Draco pointed out smugly. He rested his broom on the ground.

Harry didn't bother pointing out that if anyone was going to get bitten it was Draco for having frightened Simon. "Simon… put your head up, boy…"

Simon did not. He stretched his neck down further and shifted his forefeet to try and compensate for the odd weightshift of having his rider in this new position.

Harry sighed. Well, at least he hadn't taken a tumble and broken something. He unhooked his ankle and dropped less than gracefully to the ground.

Simon lifted his head at the strange antics of his rider.

"Oh, now you put your head up…" Harry got to his feet and wiped off his backside. The road was wet and a little sticky. He wrinkled his nose. There was a faint odour of cows and sheep. Best not to look too carefully at what he'd been sitting in, he decided. "Get your tree?" he asked Draco.

Draco jerked his head at the grassy slope leading down to the stream. "We can't get him under the bridge but we can get him in the shadow under the trees. They're horse chestnuts. Appropriate, don't you think?"

"Mm." Nice thick leafy trees. Harry didn't care what species they were, but getting Simon under cover, now that made sense. Draco seemed even twitchier than usual as Harry led Simon down the hill; probably glad not to be waiting on his own anymore, although it wouldn't reassure him if Harry pointed out that being in the company of the Boy Who Lived automatically turned him into a target. The horse appeared happy to have a break in all the roadwork, and immediately put his head down to graze on whatever grass sprouted up in the shade of the trees, snorting without rancour as the stems of dandelions tickled his nose. Simon considered his options and then tucked into the leafiest of the dandelions, apparently relishing the lush dark greens. "Is that going to be poisonous?" Harry asked, wondering if he should pull Simon's head up.

"Nah. Although Luna says that if he eats too much of a different thing he might get colic. A few dandelion plants won't hurt him. Hey! What happened to his tail?"

"Cows."

"Because cows are always the reason for a bad hair day…"

"You've been running into a few cows of your own, have you?" Up close, Draco looked terrible. There were dark shadows around his eyes and his hair stuck up in tufts. Harry felt much the same way, and expected his hair was even worse.

"In a sense. You look terrible. Did you fall off Simon again?"

Harry looked down at himself. His knuckles were skinned and his jeans, cloak and top were as filthy down the front as they felt to be down the back. There were dull pains under his jeans in the knee and shin regions – while the denim wasn't ripped, his skin mightn't have fared so well underneath. "No – well, that is to say I didn't fall off Simon…" He gave Draco the condensed version of his adventures in rock climbing. Draco frowned over the cows, nodded in quick satisfaction over the tree, and even winced and pulled a face when Harry told him about falling on the body.

"I didn't find any dead bodies, just a couple of Death Eaters…"

"How'd you get past them? Anyone I know?"

"Funny you should ask…"

ooOOoo

Draco didn't look back at Harry and Simon down by the stile as he headed up into the clouds. There was the potential for lightning, of course, but he hadn't seen any so far and it was less likely than being hexed. Possibly less fatal, too.

He didn't bother ducking out to check for landmarks on the way – he was trusting in the pebble Elmsworthy had made, and he kept one eye on the golden speck as he zipped through the clouds. The visibility was virtually nil – it was like walking through the thickest pea souper, except for the bit where he was travelling at close to fifty miles an hour. He slitted his eyes when they began to dry – he wasn't used to travelling in straight directions for so long (metaphorically speaking, it was a matter of Slytherin pride rather than the more literal considerations of Snitch-catching). Blinking faster and harder helped, too. He kept his focus on the stone.

It was easier than thinking of what else was around this morning.

Hello, Father. Fancy meeting you here. Cursed tree? Really? You don't say. Me? Oh, I'm just… on my way to kill that red-eyed Halfblood hypocrite you've been bowing and scraping to – same old, same old, really. How's Mother?

Come to think of it, that 'hypocrite' sentence wouldn't be the smartest to say to Lucius. Or even think about. Voldemort was meant to be an expert Legilimens. He already knew Potter was through the barrier – he'd be getting all his abilities limbered up. Mobilising evil allies, et cetera. Maybe he had some spy things flying around in the clouds. Maybe –

Draco realised at this point he was getting paranoid.

"You're getting paranoid, Malfoy. Any second now you'll start talking to yourself."

Four or five hard blinks later, he added:

"See?"

He might have started an argument at this point (right now with his pulse high and the adrenaline not so much flowing as ripping into his bloodstream in sudden spurts, he was edgy enough to argue with himself), but the little light in the stone shifted suddenly to the right and Draco swerved to follow it.

Left – right – left… And why isn't this crazy stone giving me the straightest path? Right again. And then the stone grew heavier for a brief second and then the spot was pointing behind him.

"What the –?"

The stone was broken. The stone was broken and he was lost and they were all going to die.

Hang on a minute…

Draco aimed his broom up and into a vertical loop, rolling at the top so that he was now flying back the way he'd come.

Yes.

He'd flown over the tree. Draco's heartrate slowed from frantic to racing.

By a little judicious circling, holding the stone at an angle when it got heavier so the golden speck was pointing straight down, he came to hover in what he judged was the area above the tree. It took a bit of jockeying because the wind was blowing quite strongly now, making it seem like he was flying through the clouds, but he managed to hold his position relative to what the stone was telling him was the southern barrier tree.

Very, very slowly, he descended.

The wind was up. Clouds whispered past him in damp fronds, touching him with damp and leaving speckles of dew on his skin and cloak. And then there was a gap in the clouds and Draco was exposed and right below him was: nothing.

Absolutely nothing, unless you counted a big plantless circle in the middle of a lightly forested area on top of a hill as something. Negative nothing, then. The ground itself rippled softly when Draco squinted hard, trying to make out something. He shivered with the vestigial fear of being thumped senseless by the same magic, and made sure he didn't get any lower. Who knew how high the tree reached? He really, really, really didn't want to get every last bone in his body powdered by another barrier tree in a snit.

Oh, and it'd be kind of convenient if he didn't get those aforementioned bones ground into powder by Death Eaters. Like the two currently lurking in a half-hearted way by some bushes. Huh. They might be hidden from the ground, but they were totally exposed to the grey eyes-in-the-sky. One was smoking, his mask lifted into his hood, the lit end of his fag a glowing beacon in the fog. From this height Draco couldn't quite make out the features, but the big rounded shoulders and heavy stance were definitely those of a Crabbe or a Goyle. Probably one of the fathers, although the mothers were also Death Eaters as far as Draco knew.

Cannier than his companion, the other Death Eater tilted his head back to check the sky.

Draco quickly zoomed back into cloud cover. The clouds were reddening but not bright enough to give him away, although he wouldn't like to risk it in another half hour, certainly not if the clouds lifted any higher into the sky; it was a stroke of luck that the tree was on top of this hill where the clouds flowed around the top in streams of mist that coalesced into fleeces thick enough to conceal him only a score of yards higher. He counted to twenty before he lost some altitude again. It was dangerous coming down so low, but he needed to be sure of those between him and the tree. One Death Eater was not the same as another Death Eater.

Yes, the two Death Eaters were still there. They didn't seem upset, although they might just be good actors.

Nah.

That big chap was definitely Mr Crabbe. The hood shielded the mask and the mask was, of course, something to screen the face, but only Mr Crabbe scratched his backside in public like that. It drove Lucius mad.

The other man was slender with rangy shoulders, the midnight folds of his cloak draping a figure that looked wiry even from above. His energy was apparent in the way he kept looking around, his wand ready in his hand, feet shifting on the bare ground with the toes of his boots scratching at the earth, flicking at the wards. Draco squinted, trying to make out the type of magic there. It looked from the twisting ribbons of olive and bronze like some sort of tracer spell, but he'd never seen one that could spread out over the ground like a net, lapping around a bare patch of rock and burrowing into the grass and heather. It didn't seem as aggressively hostile as Lucius' floating binding ribbons, but a tattle-tail didn't have to knife you in the back to be your enemy. The thin Death Eater kicked at the spell again, and hissed something at Crabbe, who put out his cigarette.

The slender figure looked up again and Draco caught his breath in surprise, shocked to see someone he not only recognised but held some respect for.

Draco ascended back into the clouds. He needed to think.

That had been weird. He was sure the Death Eater hadn't seen him, but the unicorn blood had a few new tricks for him to learn – for example, the ability to see through masks. In that moment before he'd hidden in the clouds Draco had seen through that mask as if it was rippling glass over the familiar features of Mr Nott. Theo's father.

God – did this mean he might have to duel Theo's dad?

What if he killed him? How would he explain that to Theo?

Or, worse, what if Theo's dad killed him? No explaining necessary on Draco's part – that was a bonus – but the downside was being dead.

Draco would just have to lie, he decided, giving a firm nod to the indifferent clouds sifting around him. He could do that with a straight face well enough, although his father and Snape (and probably Dumbledore, although Draco hadn't had enough contact with the Headmaster to have tested out his skills in counter-deception) had never been fooled. But he could fool most of the students without too much difficulty (he didn't count Crabbe or Goyle – deceiving them was like hexing Crups in a kennel).

But the trouble was that not only was he averse to hurting someone who came over for dinner occasionally (and had never talked down to or sucked up to the young Malfoy, thus proving a welcome rarity in his circles), he didn't want to lie to Comrade Theo.

Not wanting to kill someone is fair enough. But now I don't want to lie to someone? What's wrong with me?

Draco had the horrible thought that he was getting a conscience – the shock of it nearly knocked him off his broom. But then he reasoned he'd just been hanging around Gryffindors too long. One could pick up all sorts of bad habits from them, like Looking without Leaping, and Fighting by Queensbury Rules. He wasn't getting something so inconvenient as a sense of fair play after all – it was just the Gryffindors, just the Gryffindors….

Whew. That'd been a nasty four seconds.

Reinvigorated by the sense of being Slytherin (and thus a winner in the Game of Life) and a Malfoy (a winner with style and cultural distinction which included a well-stocked wine cellar and a couple of Picassos as well as a Renoir and scores of works by other, albeit lesser, masters of the Wizarding art world gracing the walls), Draco proceeded to scheme.

He needed three things in the next ten minutes or so:

1. To get past two Death Eaters, preferably without killing and definitely without being killed.

2. To hit the tree with the dart.

3. To make his exit without getting caught.

One was problematic: although Draco was pretty sure he could hex both of them using the advantage of surprise, having Nott stay hexed might be an issue as he was a tricky bastard rumoured to be able to free himself from certain undisclosed binding spells using raw magic rather than his wand. Crabbe might survive having an anvil dropped on his head, but it would annoy him and he could cast a mean Cruciatus.

As for two, Draco really needed to get up and close without getting so close the tree decapitated him. That wouldn't be fun.

Number three was the most important bit. He –

Someone was speaking. Crabbe. Complaining in his dull way. Draco dropped down to listen more closely.

"Mulciber's late."

Nott ignored him.

"He's late."

"I heard you."

There was a pause in the scintillating conversation when a sharp gust of wind buffeted the long black robes and tried to rip the hoods away. Draco jockeyed his broom back into position – the wind had nearly swept him away. It also made it hard to hear and if any thin patches of cloud blew past Draco could be exposed to view, plus there was the added danger of flying into an invisible tree with an anger management problem. But Crabbe's complaints weren't voiced quietly. It wasn't a problem to stay high enough to keep out of sight and still hear the bulk of the conversation. But it could be extremely unfortunate if there was a break in the clouds when someone was looking up. Despite his joking with Potter about claiming to be under the Imperius curse, Draco knew that if he got caught with an anti-Voldemort potion as well as the barrier-breaking potion things would get very, very nasty.

He didn't want to think about that right now. Much easier to think about getting back to the castle, because it had been a long time since dinner, and –

Draco shook his head. Was he just tired, or had the barrier scrambled his brain? He was so distractable now. Had it been as bad the first time he came through the barrier –?

He forced himself to concentrate.

He sighed. If only Death Eater conversation wasn't so banal… He was going to fall asleep in a moment.

Crabbe was still grumbling. "He's late. I'm hungry."

"Shut up, will you?"

There was a pause. Then: "Got any food?"

"Wasn't smoking the last of my fags enough for you? Shut up before the Dark Lord comes back. No – on second thought, tell him you're hungry and want a bacon sarnie."

There was a break in the clouds that allowed Draco to see that Crabbe hunched his shoulders in that way his son did when Vince was sure someone had just taken the piss and he wasn't allowed to thump them for it.

It might have been funny, but all the hairs down Draco's neck prickled. Voldemort had been here. And maybe he was coming back. Soon.

He retreated into his clouds. They seemed to be lowering. Or thickening. The mistiness was seeping through his cloak, too, leaving his skin clammy. Or maybe that was just the fear. Needing a distraction, he reached for the darts. And his fingers found some other things he'd forgotten about what with all the kerfuffle of getting through the barrier and being chased by hell-hounds – Elmsworthy's little bottles of distilled tricks.

Draco took one out and sighed. Fat lot of good they were – Elmsworthy had shoved them at Draco as if he expected some sort of Slytherin solidarity in the form of telepathy between comrades and Draco would know what they contained. Huh. As if anyone could work out what Elmsworthy was on about even when he used words of less than four syllables. Draco studied the bottles in case he'd missed something. The type of phial could often tell a lot about its contents. This one, for example, was all glass. It had a twist-lid with a special channel carved into it to allow the potion to come out in drops when you turned it twenty degrees, but other than that there wasn't much clue as to whether it should be applied to your own skin or an enemy's voodoo figurine, only that you shouldn't apply it to rubber or metal.

Huh. Stupid unlabelled things…

Or maybe not. There seemed to be something stamped into the lid.

Draco squinted.

Suddenly seized with unexpected hope, he licked the tips of his right forefinger and thumb and touched them together to make a circle. It was a crude scry-spell Lucius had taught him for reading the fine print on goblin contracts, but perhaps Elmsworthy liked the old and simple spells of their ancestors as much as he enjoyed frolicking through the intellectualism of modern potions, because when seen through the ring of finger and thumb the top of the bottle sprouted little letters like mushrooms. They read:

18gInvisibility

Draco's pulse thrummed with a burst of hope. Was it the same as the short-term potion he'd given Trudi? The bottle had the same applicator type.

Trying to make haste without making waste, Draco tucked it back in his pocket and pulled out four more glass tubes.

32u.?Smokescreen12m.diam

22pWorseBSM

12d.batch2SmallFish

What the hell? thought Draco, turning the latter cylinder around. The label here wasn't on the lid, which had an eyedropper built into it, but on the side. Small Fish? Why not Big Fish? Probably Geekspeak for something obscure.

He turned his attention to the next, a thin phial sealed with wax. One-time only use.

6jTreeBoom

Draco smirked. Excellent!

There was a similar phial, this one even thinner and more delicate. When he scried it a little skull and crossbones popped up along with the writing:

16rBigBigBoom

And he gave me this because he's helping me? Draco went cold as the realisation of how dangerous simply falling off Simon could have been.

But that smokescreen one could be good, especially if that '12mdiam' thing meant it had a twelve meter diameter. A meter was about the same length as a yard, wasn't it? That was a good size area. Shame there weren't any instructions, but the wax seal implied the smokescreen was a one-time-use potion. So what about Invisibility? Draco tried to remember what had happened with Trudi and the short-term Invisibility Potion… oh, that's right – three drops to the back of the hand. Luckily the little bottle of Invisibility Potion seemed to be the same as the one he'd seen Elmsworthy using, and it was far from empty.

Better and better. Despite the threat of Voldemort's return, Draco took his time to examine the rest of Elmsworthy's potions. Finally he selected one, and sank back down through the clouds.

Weird how he'd seen through the Death Eater masks, he mused. It must be the unicorn blood. Speaking of which, would it let him see through a smokescreen?

He crept slower and slower down through the billowing damp, getting a nasty shock when the wind suddenly opened up a great big pocket around him and left him in plain sight of anyone looking up from the ground. Not that anyone was – Crabbe was watching Nott, who was gripping his forearm, hunching over in pain. The Dark Mark – it wasn't a stretch of the imagination to know the Dark Lord was contacting Nott.

Nott straightened with a thinly exhaled breath of relief at the end of communication.

"He's coming," he said to Crabbe.

"So do I get my sandwich?"

There was a muffled bark of laughter from Nott. "Thick as a brick sandwich, aren't we."

Crabbe senior didn't take offence. Probably didn't understand he'd just been insulted.

Voldemort was coming. And coming soon.

Draco panicked.

He threw the Smokescreen Potion – it made a lovely silent explosion of inky darkness that swallowed up not only all the light but the noises of dismay from Nott and Crabbe.

Draco dove like a falcon and landed lightly on a patch of bare rock.

Amazing.

He could see in the darkness but not beyond. Everything inside the black cloud was threaded through with silver strands that glowed to his eyes. Crabbe and Nott as they lumbered about waving their wands, Nott telling Crabbe to calm down when it was obvious he was just as panicked as his comrade, they both glowed. The grasses and the ferns and the gorse and the moss and even the rocks sparkled with life force; the spell spread across the ground coruscated.

There was a hole to his left. A tall, wide-branching hole.

The tree.

It was a darkness within the darkness, finally made visible by the life that was smothered inside it. Branches, leaves, twigs and trunk, they all stood crisply midnight against the sparkling cosmos unveiled by unicorn blood.

It seemed to be reaching towards him, the very ground at his feet sucking and sticking to his shoes. Draco cringed back automatically, then had to dodge Crabbe, who'd been worked into a panic by Nott's exhortations that they had to stay calm at all costs…

Hell. Even Draco knew better than to run around shouting 'don't panic!' in the tones of some End of the World mystic. Crabbe was getting as scared as Simon would have been. (Draco wrinkled his nose at putting Simon and a Crabbe in mental proximity.)

He only realised he'd stepped off the rock when he felt the tickle of magic around his ankles. Definitely a tracer spell, he thought, almost dizzy with the relief of not being eviscerated. The spell only curled around his feet in a curious way, teasing at the laces of his boots.

"Stand still, Crabbe!" shouted Nott. "Lumos! Nox dispersium! Uh – Nox evanesco!"

The Lumos was swallowed. None of his counter-spells were going to work against a potion.

But Draco didn't have time to be smug. He pulled out the darts, hurried as close as he dared, and crouched down to get a better shot at the tree trunk. The ground here was so sticky it must have some extra detection spells on it other than the twinkly one now tapping at his knees and calves where he knelt on it, suggesting the roots of the tree were so thickly compromised with magic it was rising up out of the ground from them; some of those branches were growing unnaturally low – the Dark Lord must have been combining Bonsai spells with his defensive charms. Amazing. Draco had to admit that as Dark Lords went, Voldemort was imaginative. If a Ginsu Slicing Charm was incorporated that could make the tree branches lethal and lethally fast. Hopefully Potter and Weasley would take that into account when they threw their darts, because the branches shivered with barely contained energy.

Draco had hoped to hit a thick branch with a dart but from the trembling darkness it was obvious the barrier spell was designed to protect itself in much the same way that the Whomping Willow did.

He needed to get a good, solid hit to the trunk.

Draco squinted at the lattice of anti-light, took aim at what he guessed to be a gap in the branches, and threw.

It was almost anti-climactic. The dart flew between the branches and hit the trunk. The entire tree seemed to groan and twist on itself, and there was a soft rippling pop as the spells all lifted from the base down through the roots and up through the branches, evaporating with a sigh.

It was replaced by a slowly growing lacework of silver light shot through with red, a deep crimson that woke into a sullen life and sent out waves of heat.

The tree was back in the world.

Draco didn't stop to pat himself on the back. He ran back to the bare rock he'd landed on (didn't need those detection spells telling anyone he'd arrived by air!), leaped on his broom and sped up into the safety of the damp, reddish, unmagical clouds above.

Not a second to spare. Down below he heard a hiss and a roar and he looked down just in time to glimpse the tree burning itself into charcoal, and as he climbed through the air there was the distinctive pop-pop-pop of Apparating wizards.

A moment after that there was a scream of rage and his blood ran cold – Voldemort? No – the scream had been female.

"You stupid fucking morons!" There was a ferocious sniff, like a killer hedgehog out looking for revenge. "Look what you did to my beautiful tree!" she screeched, her reedy voice almost piercing Draco's eardrums. "Wait until our Lord finds out! But until then… Crucio! Crucio, Crucio, Crucio!"

A livid female. A very, very, very livid female, and one not shy of expressing herself. There were screams, screams that could only belong to Crabbe and Nott as the witch expressed her displeasure.

Draco urged his broom faster.

He was above the clouds, taking great breaths of the cold air and squinting into the unhampered sunrise when he thought:

I could find out where they're going next.

Yes. All he had to do was sink back down through the clouds and cast an Audiear Charm. What a brilliant idea!

What a fucking stupid idea! When did I turn suicidal? I should fly out of here as fast as I can.

…So why am I flying back down again?

I've been around Gryffindors too long. There really is no hope for me.

Wonder if Father will show?

ooOOoo

"So did he?"

"My story, my pace, okay?"

"Yeah, whatever… Comrade Gryffindor…"

"Shut up, Potter, you arse. No – Simon – whoa – don't bite… he was the one who called me a Gryffindor…"

"Simon's a Gryffindor horse. He's defending his honour."

"You want the rest of this story or not?"

"You going to finish it this year?"

"Maybe… What's the rush, by the way? See any Aurors on the horizon?"

"When were they meant to be arriving? Nice brooch, by the way. Fashion statement?"

"What would you know about fashion, Potter? And for your information this is a genuine dragon horn cameo brooch. Uh, look, my cloak's getting soggy. Can we get down out of the rain?"

"Simon won't fit under the bridge."

"So long as we do, that's the main thing. Don't want Travers seeing us."

"Who?"

"One-eyed maniac Death Eater. Don't want to meet up with him."

"Or your father?"

"…Yeah…"

ooOOoo