Disclaimer: Characters and settings belong to JK Rowling and Warner. Still. Sigh.

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Chapter 91

"… And because of Travers and his bloody eye-patch I didn't really want to be anywhere exposed, so I thought the bridge…"

"… Where you could hide and leap out like a troll as soon as Simon and I came trip-trapping across it."

"Trolls don't hide under bridges."

Telling Draco about the Three Billy Goats Gruff could wait for another day.

"So how did you get past the guards on your tree?" Draco asked.

Harry shrugged. "Only illusions and the tree itself." Funny – he'd have thought Voldemort could have spared at least a handful of Dementors…

Draco looked miffed. "There were meant to be some there, from what I heard."

"Well, maybe they were off having a cuppa and a smoke."

"Huh. I battled Death Eaters." Draco lifted his empty wand hand, miming out the spells. "I zoomed down, I cast a little hex here, I cast a little curse there; I dodged, I dived, I –"

Harry shot him a sideways look. "You blinded them with smoke. That Elmsworthy gave you."

Draco's hand fell to his knee and he raked Harry with a scornful glare. "Same thing, just sneakier. The clever people – meaning everyone who isn't a Gryffindor – don't stand up with swords saying 'ha ha ha here I am now come and meet your doom', because that's usually followed up by 'argh argh argh you sneaky bugger your minion stabbed me in the back'," Draco informed him with apparent sincerity in his annoyance at Harry's dogmatically Gryffindorish nature.

But for once Harry didn't rise to the jibe of Gryffindor inferiority. "Speaking of clever, do you feel like your brain's only working at half speed?"

Draco lifted an eyebrow. "Come to think of it, yeah. I'd forgotten, but I was badly knocked the first time I went through the barrier. I might have, um, panicked at bit at one stage back then… but in my defence I was startled by Weasleys…"

"Fred and George? They can be a bit startling."

"Hmm. Well, I think they've forgiven me for startling George's nose and Fred's knee that time. But it's even worse this time. Maybe it was the Obliviate we got last night, because…. Um. Yeah." His face took on a particularly haughty look as his voice trailed off.

Harry was familiar with this look; it meant Draco had done something stupid and was feeling like a prat but would die rather than admit to it. "Okay, what happened?"

"Well, I could have put that Anti-Voldie potion on the Dark Lord when I had the chance. Or given it to Tonks. But I kind of… didn't think of it at the time."

Harry nodded. "Yeah. It's like your good ideas scatter into the winds."

Draco appeared relieved. "Exactly." He smirked, perking up despite the shadowed eyes and pale complexion.

"So was it this bad last time?"

"Ummm… no, I don't think it was, actually. Do you think You-know-who put some extra spell on the barrier to, uh, make anyone going through it extra stupid?"

"I don't think so. I think it was the Obliviate. Hope Ron and Hermione are okay…"

"Granger could stand to lose a few score IQ points. Nobody would notice Weasley getting stupid…er."

Harry shook his head, mildly annoyed on Ron's behalf. Ron wasn't half as stupid as people tended to think he was, but if he said anything like that to Draco, the response would be something along the lines of: Yeah, maybe, but that doesn't mean he's not two-thirds as stupid as people think he is, which still leaves him a bit of a moron, Potter. "He'll be fine. Besides, I didn't feel stupid until after I'd gone through the barrier."

Draco hesitated, then gave a grudging nod. "Yeah, that's true. So. Speaking of stupid, while we wait for the Aurors what was your good idea you didn't follow through on?"

Harry rolled his eyes, but Arrogant Draco was easier to deal with than Defensive Draco. "Nothing major. I forgot to use the password before confirming meeting at the bridge –"

"Nothing major? I nearly had a heart-attack!"

"– And I keep getting distracted by things. Like birds. And shadows."

Draco muttered something that sounded like 'werewolves… family… Tonks… cubs…'

"What?"

"Hm? Oh. Er. Nothing important. Not compared to hhhowww ooouuur brainssss aaaare dyyyyying." Draco pulled his hood up to shade his face and waved his arms in his best Dementor impression. Simon gave him a puzzled look and then went back to attacking a particularly crisp dandelion.

Harry snorted, not wanting to laugh out loud, although Simon's munching was almost as loud as the stream burbling just downslope from them, the hollow sounds of water echoing off the bridge acting as a muffling cover for any of their noises, providing they kept their voices down and didn't get into a screaming match. "Please. That's so third year," Harry replied, not wanting to calculate the chances of a Gryffindor and a Slytherin not getting into a screaming match. "Never mind about forgetting to give Tonks the potion – we can give it to Moody when he comes to get us, and he can deal with You-know-who."

Draco dropped his hands and the Dementor act. "True." He fingered the brooch, not altogether happily even though Harry would have thought he'd be delighted at the prospect of an army of Aurors led by Moody showing up to act as body guard. "Get a bloody move on, will you?" Draco said to it.

The eye rolled in annoyance.

Harry shrugged. "Eh. So long as we stay out of sight… But I did have one good idea – when you were listening in, did you hear You-know-who mention where he was going next?"

"Er… weirdest thing. From what he said it sounded like you were down south. Watching the fireball from a great distance. With… er… Aurors guarding you?"

Harry grinned. "Hah! Brilliant! That'll teach the snake-faced git to rummage through my head."

"So what was that about?"

Harry folded his arms across his knees, not letting go of the leadrope for a second. Simon was tugging harder on it, wanting to reach grass further out of the shadow of the bridge and chestnut tree covering them. There wasn't a good selection under their tree and he was beginning to resent Harry keeping him away from the more succulent buffet of grasses and weeds out in the open. Knowing it was against good horsemanship rules, Harry wrapped the rope around his wrist. It wasn't as if it was his wand hand. "When my tree broke, I felt his pain and, Merlin, was he mad… he dug into my thoughts. So I kind of imagined I was near that stretch of railway south of Hogsmeade. You know – the old shed with that roof that sags in the middle?"

Draco's eyes gleamed under the hood with more light than the unicorn blood could account for. "I think he bought it. Hah! And that shed used to be a piggery. Hope he has fun investigating it with a magnifying spell!" He sobered. "But getting back to our cottage-cheese brains, what happens if our judgement gets really bad?"

Harry had just been wondering this. "Got a luck potion on you?"

Draco snorted. "Never heard of such a thing. Although… hmm… Let's have a look." He pushed back the hood and pulled out the potions phials one by one and placed them gently in his lap. Simon looked up at the clink of glass. Harry leaned forward and reached for one of the sparklier bottles. Draco shook his head. "Careful… I think that one's Elmsworthy's explosion pozion." He paused, ran his tongue around his teeth, and tried again. "Explosion poshun that should have been." He shook his head. "I think the Obliviate really did scramble my brain. But have a look – at the bottles, not my mind – they're actually labelled." He scowled. "Still talking about the bottles here, Potter."

"Hey, I'm not laughing…" It was taking some effort to keep a straight face, but he wasn't laughing.

"Huh. See if I show you the reading charm…"

"Sorry." Harry tried to look penitent, but being able to share a joke while waiting for the Aurors to come and tackle Voldemort for him was making him feel better than he'd felt since Luna had said goodbye with a kiss. He held the phial in the hand along with the leadrope – not so difficult now Simon had regained interest in what Harry and Draco were up to. "Go on, show me."

"No. Oh, all right. Lick your finger like this. Now… finger to thumb… got it? Almost… yeah. That's it. Now have a look at this phial…"

"Are you having me on? That's never going to w- …oh." Harry's first feeling of astonishment at the sight of the miniature label quickly shifted to disgust (via a quick detour through excitement at the potential uses of the potion in his hand). "But that's the simplest thing ever! How come we don't learn this at school?"

Draco shrugged, not interested in issues of a modern Wizarding curriculum. "That's the Invisibility Potion. Take a look at some others. Some of the names are pretty obvious, even when you've got post-barrier-stress, but some of them would be obscure to anyone other than a level eight Potions geek. Like this one – what in Merlin's name would 'small fish' refer t-. Hey!"

That last exclamation was aimed at Simon. The horse wanted to investigate by smell.

Draco lifted an eyebrow at Harry, but held the bottle steady.

Simon curled back his upper lip and sniffed carefully, ears twitching back and forth as the equine brain deciphered chemical mysteries and passed judgement.

"I didn't realise they were all that stinky," said Draco, eyeing Simon's still-curled lip. "Although… hang on… what do you think of this one, Simon?" He picked out one phial and held it up to the horse's nose.

Simon subjected it to a careful sniff.

The head jerked back. There was an explosive noise. Harry and Draco jumped, less from the noise as from the accompanying spray of snot.

"Ow…" said Harry, who had hit his head against the stones.

"Disgusting!" Draco muttered, wiping his face with his sleeve.

Harry followed suit. His head hurt from where he'd whacked it, a different kind of throb to the one in his scar, which seemed to be more or less permanent on this side of the barrier. When he rubbed at his hair his hand came away sticky. He sniffed at it carefully, but it wasn't blood. "Merlin… that's straight into the bath with me when I get home. Er, to Hogwarts, I mean." Hopefully Draco hadn't noticed his slip – the last thing he wanted was pity from a Malfoy. "You've been saving that snort up for a while now, haven't you, Simon?" He took off his glasses, huffing on them and buffing them clean on his T-shirt. He held them up – a few faint smears, but nothing to impair vision.

Simon gave Draco a wounded glare.

"Sorry, boy," said Draco. "But could you please not snort quite so loudly? Most of the Death Eaters have gone south for the battle season, but there might be the odd one in earshot. Ah… Potter…" he began warningly.

But Harry, who was sitting closer to Simon, had already seen the danger. Simon was wrinkling his nostrils into tight corrugations again, ears tilted back as the horse decided what to do about the lingering scent of potion in his sinuses. Harry shoved the long nose away just in time.

This time there was a series of snorts, all, thankfully, directed away from the boys, as Simon cleared his nose of what must have been a particularly offensive smell.

"What the hell is in that?" Harry snatched the phial from Draco. He gave it a careful sniff. There was the faint hint of something unpleasant, but nothing that should have warranted such a reaction from Simon, who had backed off and was now scratching his muzzle against a foreleg. "I didn't realise horses had such sensitive noses." He curled forefinger to thumb and read the label. "Twenty-two-p worse BSM?"

"I think twenty-two-p refers to batch number. What's BSM?"

"Merlin knows."

Draco lifted one corner of his mouth. "Probably not even him."

"Mind if I keep it?"

"Not at all. You want the Big Big Boom one?"

"Er… should I?"

"Rather your pocket than mine…"

"I don't want something like that near Simon."

"Oh, fair enough. I wouldn't want you scaring my horse…"

Harry did not hit Draco. Calmly, he said, "I'll keep the BSM one. That sounds scary without the noise. How about the small fish?"

Draco shrugged. "Okay. Let me know what it does."

"If Simon and I disappear, have Elmsworthy come and unchange us from small fish."

"I'll try and fit you into my busy schedule," Draco promised loftily.

They examined the bottles as they waited for the Aurors. The sun was probably over the horizon by now, but somewhere between the sky and the ground the light had been mugged, throttled, and had its body of photons thrown in the sea of clouds. The clouds themselves were still so low they were flowing down the sides of the hills and the occasional foggy wisp trailed under the bridge like a stolen secret. It was as if the two trees had been holding them at bay and now the clouds had free roam across the land.

"That third tree should have been nullified by now," Draco said eventually. His attention had drifted from the bottles to Simon and the occasional bird hopping around the bank and through the branches of the tree.

"Yeah."

Draco tapped his foot. He pressed a finger against the cameo. Not even the eye moved to show there was any magic present. "Nothing. What if they've forgotten us?"

"They won't have."

"Well, they won't have forgotten the Gryffindor. But I might have slipped their minds. Or whatever passes for their minds."

"I doubt it."

"Huh. You weren't the one left in a barn, blind and helpless for the monsters to come and harass."

"Simon harassed that Vrikolaki quite effectively on your behalf."

"Yeah, but how is he against a mob of Dementors? None too hot, as I recall. His only defence is speed. Although he did kick one of them… huh. That was pretty cool." His smile vanished almost immediately. "What about Death Eaters? His Glare of Death might just get him recruited by the enemy, and then where would we be?" Draco fingered the cameo again. "But you're right: they won't have forgotten us."

"Of course not."

"So they're probably all dead."

Harry put his head in his hands. There was a definite headache emanating from his scar. "They're not all d-! – They're not all dead, all right?" he said, needing to catch his temper back. Simon looked up in concern. "Come here, boy." Harry reeled in the leadrope so he could pat Simon's knee. But Draco had a point. They couldn't stay here all day in hopes that Voldemort would overlook them. Bloody Voldemort. What the hell gave Voldemort the right to think he could chase Harry all around the damn place? Harry glared around at the trees and dark water and the stupid wisps of fog streaming under the stones of the bridge, leaving it dripping with moisture. Voldemort could damn well go and stick his wand up his –

There was a shot of pain through his scar and Draco was blathering on about something. Probably something irrelevant, knowing Malfoy. But Harry blinked, squinted, rubbed his scar until the pain faded, and forced himself to concentrate on the Slytherin's words. Slytherin. Like Voldemort. Harry shivered. Best not to even think about Voldemort right now. He had a way of insinuating himself into Harry's thoughts that was uncanny. Harry suspected he'd just been trying now, but Harry had been distracted just in time. He hoped.

"You okay?" Draco asked, possibly not for the first time. "You looked a bit… funny there for a moment."

Harry took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with his free hand, remembering too late about the unicorn blood. But when he put his glasses back on again Draco's eyes still had vestiges of the unsettling silvery glow to them, so he hadn't removed the unicorn's blessing completely, and it had been wearing off anyway. Simon tugged at the leadrope wrapped around the other wrist, wanting to investigate a promising grassy area just a little further down towards the water. "Yeah. Just tired. Simon – don't go down there. Don't want you falling over the bank, boy."

Simon ignored him, ripping up the grass in enthusiastic mouthfuls. Harry's stomach growled at the sight. It felt like a long time since he'd eaten, although it was only a few hours.

"I don't think he's dumb enough to jump into the water," Draco pointed out.

Harry put his glasses back on. His head, tired and with grainy eyes, felt very much his own. He thought about how good it would be to have the Aurors looking out for him for a change. It would give Simon a break from bodyguard duty. He titled his head, considering the horse which was grazing very close to the edge of the bank now. "What if something startles him?"

Draco snatched the leadrope from Harry with a scowl and yanked on it. "Come back up here, Simon."

Simon obeyed sulkily.

"Where are those stupid Aurors," Draco grumbled. He held the leadrope in both hands, twisting it between them as if he were slowly wringing out water. "I mean, how long have we been waiting now?"

Harry didn't have a watch, so he couldn't really comment. He didn't want to guess.

Draco's foot was jiggling with nervous energy. "We've been here a long time."

We've been here ten minutes maximum," Harry countered, although subjectively it felt like it had been much longer.

Draco's lip curled, but not in a sneer. Harry frowned. The Slytherin was getting really worked up.

"They'll come for us soon. We just have to wait."

Draco's foot didn't stop jiggling. His eyes fastened on Simon and a line drew between them. "Two of us on this broom could travel far and fast," Draco said seriously.

"I'm not leaving Simon." Harry hunched over, resting his arms over his knees and his shoulder against the damp stone of the bridge. It wasn't like his cloak couldn't get any dirtier. And what the hell was wrong with Malfoy, suggesting they leave Simon behind? "We're a team."

Draco glared at him. "I'm not suggesting we're not. But Simon wouldn't be a target by himself. Only if he was with a wizard."

"Or a Muggle. Or by himself in the middle of a field, simply because someone wants target practice."

Draco inclined his head. "We could leave him in one of these fields with the sheep. No alpacas."

It wasn't really the time to be discussing these things, but Harry was nervous, probably because Malfoy's twitchiness was contagious. "You know, maybe we could put some of that Invisibility Potion on Simon, ride out of here and hide him with Luna's uncle. I'm amazed I never asked her for his name."

Draco's mouth curled in a grim smile beneath the shadow of his hood. There was absolutely no humour involved, and it was closer to an expression of pain. Harry didn't understand. He understood even less when Draco continued, "First of all, I don't know how that Potion would react to the shoes, especially in light of what Luna's efforts did. Remember your ride on the roof? Secondly and more importantly, her uncle's dead. I'm astonished about her uncle having a horse, for that matter. He never seemed the type."

Harry blinked and then realised his jaw had dropped. He snapped his mouth shut before demanding, "What? He's dead? When? And you know who her uncle is? Yes – you mentioned that when we were leaving Hogwarts, didn't you. Why haven't you ever said anything before? Who is he?" he finished crossly. His eyes darted around – his voice had been too loud for the last sentence. How dare bloody Malfoy know all this stuff about Luna? Did Luna trust him now she couldn't trust Harry?

There was a stabbing jolt to his scar. Harry took a deep breath and thought of all the Aurors surrounding him…

Draco shrugged. "Yes, he's dead. I have it on good authority – well, that's a bit of an oxymoron, but I trust the source of the information not to lie to me. Not on this." He scowled. "And it wasn't so hard to work out. She was always banging on about him, so I thought I'd go and have a look in the genealogy part of the Library to see if it was anyone we needed to worry about."

"And was it?" Putting aside the fact that Harry hadn't known until now that there was a genealogy section.

"No."

That was very final. Draco wasn't about to name names, not with that set expression to his jaw. And now wasn't a good time to gossip about friends' families. Not when a lot of their 'friends'' families might be out here waiting for them.

Harry took back the leadrope. "I'm not leaving Simon behind."

Draco must have sensed that this was Harry's last word on the subject. He nodded. After a few minutes sitting in silence filled only by the rustling of leaves in the wind, the liquid gurgle of the stream and the slightly-less-than-contended munching of Simon who periodically tested the leadrope to see if it hadn't suddenly grown long enough to allow him access to grass further up the bank, Draco said in a conciliatory tone, "Want me to put on some Invisibility Potion and go for a quick dekko?"

It'd shut him up, and Malfoy's twitchy foot was really getting on Harry's wick now. How much caffeine had Tonks given him? "Okay."

Draco sat on his broom, hovering under the tree next to Simon, and put three drops of the potion on his hand. He winked out with a suddenness that made Harry blink and Simon jerk his head back and sniff carefully at the space where Draco had been. The horse's eyes bulged as his forelock was ruffled by an invisible hand, then the horse relaxed again. Just another working day for Simon.

"Wow," said Harry.

"Good, isn't it?" The smirk was audible.

"Yeah. But seriously, we might have to use it on Simon as a last resort."

"Hmm. Let's hope we don't have to find out. Wish me luck."

There was a rustling of branches and a shower of droplets from the sodden leaves before Harry could open his mouth to do so, and Draco, presumably, was gone. Harry sighed to himself, wiped the water off his face, and went back to hide under the bridge, just in case someone nasty came trip-trapping across it.

A minute later Harry head a small pop followed by a louder crack. Had Draco come back and hit the bridge too hard? Simon looked up, ears twitching suspiciously, forelock shading his eyes. He didn't seem alarmed, simply suspicious; more like he'd been when Draco disappeared than when Fluffy had been lurking in the bushes. Harry got up to see if Draco had reappeared. So to speak.

Too late, he noticed Simon's eyes and ears were firmly fixed on one point. And that the sounds had been from two people Apparating. Harry took out his wand.

Tonks? Aurors? Harry's heart lifted with the dawn of relief. Finally! He backed up under the tree to get a better view of the bridge, patting Simon as he passed under the horse's neck. Simon shook his head and moved so he was uphill. Harry grinned – how would he explain to Tonks that his bodyguard wanted breakfast and –

– and Simon wasn't interested in grass. The horse's tension hadn't eased by Harry's relief at the prospect of Auror aid, instead Simon's whole stance was one of wariness. The skin on his withers shivered, shaking off invisible flies.

"Hello, Harry."

Harry's breath caught in his throat. He looked up and into the chilly madness that was Bellatrix LeStrange's eyes and his hope turned into a block of ice under his heart.

Her wand was aimed between his eyes.

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