Expecto Patronum, or

Would Give His Eyes For Just One Glance At Our White Hawthorn Tree

Chapter 30

"Can they get through all the snow?" Dita asked.

"Of course they can! It'll slow them down, but only by moments!"

"Well, do something!"

"Me do something? I don't have a wand!"

"Your mother said you could do wandless spells!"

"My mother? She thinks I can walk on water! I've never done anything wandlessly except make a glass of wine come to me!"

"Then make some rocks come to you! It's that or nothing!"

"Why don't you do something?"

"Because I'm a Muggle!" she bellowed at him.

Already pale, Draco's face went white. "What—?"

"There's no time to discuss it! Can you—do you know how to Apparate?"

"Yes—but—" He was still staring at her.

"Then Apparate us out of here!"

"I—I haven't been able to Apparate recently. Whenever I think of a place, it's always either Malfoy Manor—with him there—or Azkaban. I—I saw it once, in my aunt's mind." His face was so white the fire made it look blue. Dita could hear the voices outside much nearer. They were already trying to get through the wall of snow.

"Then you're a Legilimens!"

"A little. She taught me that, too."

"Then look in my mind and find the place I'm thinking of and take us there!"

"I don't know if that's ever been done!"

"It's that or fight off a horde of vampires with rocks and pretty blue fire!"

"Alright, I'll try!"

"Don't try! Do it! Wait!" For a moment she rushed about the cave and shoved things into the bag Narcissa had given her. It was a very remarkable bag.

"What are you doing?"

"If we end up in some other remote corner of Romania, we're going to need these things, or we'll freeze to death."

He scrambled to help her. They could hear the sounds of spells just on the other side of the snow. "Dita, come now!"

She hurried to him by the fire. His grey eyes stared intently into hers, and he murmured, "Legilimens." She thought as hard as possible of the village where she had hired the Romanians. She also brought up as many cheerful memories as she could, to try to counteract the depression dampening his abilities. Last Christmas with Lucia, laughing like silly things over the crackers Miss Precipa had brought them… She could almost reach out and touch her daughter, it was that real. But she forced herself to visualize the village again and was walking about its streets until suddenly it faded away.

Draco had broken away from her, wild-eyed.

"Did you get it?"

"I—I—"

"Did you get it?"

Then the wall of snow was down, and she had the impression of dark figures swooping in like a flock of crows with pale human faces. Draco bent down and scooped up blue fire, shouted something, and the fire flew from his hands, blue fiery birds swooping all around them, darting in the faces of the vampires, bringing down the walls of the cave around them. He grabbed Dita and spun, and the next thing she was aware of was white snow and small buildings. She and Draco clutched each other for a moment, panting.

"You did it! Well done, Draco!"

"Why was it so important we come here?" He looked around the tiny village with disdain.

"I haven't paid the men who helped me yet."

"What? Of all the—" He started laughing, to her surprise, and didn't stop for some minutes. Shakily she joined in. People were staring at them.

"Draco," she gasped at last, "what was that, what you did?"

"Well, you said to fight them with rocks and blue fire, so I did," he choked, which set them both off again. Finally he was able to say more soberly, "Actually, it was Expecto patronum…using fire. I don't know why that worked, but it was the first thing that came to me. I've never been able to do it before."

"That doesn't surprise me."

"It was—it was you who did it, really. It was your memories it was built on. I don't have memories like that."

She put her hand on his arm. "What were the birds?"

"Crows, I think."

"My daughter's been working on Expecto patronum. She says it's very hard. Her friend insists that she will end up with a baby bunny, but she's hoping for a unicorn."

"Why a unicorn?"

"Her wand core is unicorn hair."

"Oh. So was mine." He kicked at the snow.

"I know. Come on."

She paid the kind wizards, who were glad to see her safe and forced them to eat a hot meal before leaving, and then they sent an owl to Lucia and took what Draco called the Floo Network to Oradea, a small Romanian city. Yet another unpleasant method of wizard travel, she reflected.

"From now on we take the train," she said firmly.

"The Muggle train?"

"Yes, the Muggle train. It's about time you experienced the cleverness of people who live without magic. We still have two weeks before the Hogwarts Christmas holidays. I'm going to show you Europe."

"I've been to Europe a thousand times."

"Ah, but you've only seen a small part of what makes it Europe. The mundane magic side. I'm going to show you the real Europe, where people work with their hands and brains instead of magic. We'll go north. I think you've never been to Scandinavia?"

"No…"

"I think you'll like it. At least you'll fit in, physically. Did your people come from Sweden or something?"

They had their own compartment on the train. Draco sat back in his seat and stared at her.

"I'll have my diary back now."

"Your—"

"You forget I was inside your head. It's amazing how much you can see in the space of a couple seconds. Your thoughts are all connected together. One could get lost."

Dita rummaged in her bag. Everything was jumbled. "I kind of expected you to have to touch me, like a Vulcan mind meld."

"A what?"

"No Star Trek in your world either? You poor thing. Such a deprived childhood." She smirked at him and finally found his diary.

He took it and ran his hands over it for a moment before opening it. When he saw the lines of dancing men, he looked up at her in surprise.

"You expected it to be translated by some spell? No such luck. I had to translate every last little dancing man."

"How do you know about the dancing men?" Draco demanded.

"Please. I'm a Muggle! That book isn't exactly obscure. Anyway, I happen to have an extremely famous detective for an ancestor."

He leaned forward, his mouth open.

"Oh, yes. He's my great-grandfather."

He settled back slowly and crossed his arms, the diary clutched against him. "No wonder you found me."

Dita smiled. That was probably the closest he would ever come to expressing admiration for a Muggle. "I hope someday you'll forgive me for reading your diary."

Draco's eyes dropped, and he shrugged. "I don't…mind," he muttered. "No one ever…understood." He raised his eyes again, and there was grey fire in them. "Your daughter is my sister."

"Yes," she said softly.

"She's almost my age. My whole life I had a sister, and you hid her from me."

"Can you blame me?"

His eyes went distant. She wondered if he was seeing that vibrant Lucia-face and imagining its owner growing up as he had.

"No. No, I don't blame you."

"Don't let this make you hate your father."

He gave a short laugh. "I saw him in your mind, behind her. He was rather pathetic then. He is rather pathetic now. He has always been rather pathetic, and I never saw it."

"Of course not. No child sees his father as pathetic."

"Maybe that was why he was so cruel to Muggles. He couldn't bear the thought of having exposed his weakness to you."

Dita's eyebrows went up. "Maybe so. I never thought of that." She smiled at him. Oh, yes, there was hope for Draco Malfoy.