My arm sears hot, a bolt of fire up from my wrist to my shoulder and I hiss in surprise. Granger spins around and whatever she sees on my face isn't reassuring.

She ducks us behind another sculpted hedge and grabs for my arm. In the darkness, she leans close to see it. "Your arm is burning up," she murmurs. "The Mark is writhing on your skin."

"It's getting better," I tell her, and it is. But the burn is being replaced by a numbness I don't care for, a tingling in my fingers and palm. I don't use a wand left-handed but it's distracting. I don't want it to affect my focus.

Granger doesn't believe me, anyway. There's another crack of Apparition nearby, then a second, but she grips my arm when I try to move back and check our surroundings.

"I don't like this. Your arm is scalding hot but pale, like it's bloodless. Can you feel this?" She taps her fingers on mine and I shake my head. She shakes my hand lightly back and forth and looks at me questioningly. Nothing but vague tingles.

She drops my arm and starts rummaging around in her bag, the tiny one with the extension charm on it. This surprises me so much I forget about the Apparating arrivals. "What are you doing?"

"I think it's killing your arm. Refusing the call, I mean. I think the Mark is going to kill off the flesh. It'll be left useless, just hanging there. Eventually you'd have to amputate it or risk gangrene." She yanks out a tube of alba pellis. "Did you ever try this on your Mark?"

"I was afraid to. What if he could tell I was tampering with it somehow?"

"Well, if he doesn't know you're betraying him by now, he will soon. You haven't answered the summons. I don't think it'll be any worse to try it now." She squeezes some lotion onto her fingers and smacks it down on the upper swirl of the Mark, rubbing it in violently.

The pain is instantaneous and I choke back a scream. I still make a fair bit of noise, too much for staying hidden in the dark, and Granger silences me at once. This helps, since I don't have to fight the urge to scream, and she slathers on more.

I can't even tell what it's doing, visually. I hear more cracks of Apparition and know the fight is about to truly begin. That's why we're here, not this, and I try to get her attention.

She glances up with irritation on her face, and rapidly casts a series of spells. Disillusionment, another shield charm, muffliato. "Just a second. Let me work."

More lotion on my arm and the pain is incredible. Is this same thing happening to my father? To Severus?

But my father might have answered the call. No, he wouldn't have. Not anymore. He's cast his lot - he wouldn't have sent me here if he thought the Dark Lord was going to survive this. He definitely wouldn't come knowing I'd be fighting for the other side. And what about Severus? They both have access to more alba pellis, but will they even think to try it?

"Is it doing anything?" I cough out, forgetting she can't hear me through my excruciating pain. I try to remain still as she squirts out another huge dollop, rubbing it into my skin furiously with both thumbs. Fucking hell, this hurts.

Granger starts pushing the heel of her palm into my skin, twisting it, grinding the lotion in and I see black spots in front of my vision.

I sit down heavily on the pebbled path, small round rocks digging in beneath me. The only possible ray of light here is that she wouldn't still be doing it if she couldn't see it making a difference.

And if anything, this hurts worse than when I had the bloody thing tattooed on, so maybe that's a good thing now. Maybe that's what it takes to restore the skin cells. It hurts too badly for me to tell if the tingling is still there.

Another wave of agonising pain sweeps through, accompanied by a rush of nausea. I put my face in my right hand, closing my eyes.

"Hang on," Granger tells me. "Just another minute."

She's not being particularly comforting or gentle, for that matter, but I'd rather she did it fast. This doesn't feel fast, but I know by the urgent way her hands are moving that she's trying to be.

Dimly through the roaring in my ears, I hear more Apparition and shouts, now. The hide-and-seek is ending. I tug on Granger's sleeve. We need to go.

One look at her tells me she knows it's true. She eyes my arm with a reluctant satisfaction. Taking out her wand, she casts a cooling charm on it and I feel the immediate relief. She lifts the silencing charm and, after a quick glance around, our Disillusionment as well.

She stands and offers me her hand. I didn't really think I'd need it, but she has to pull hard to get me up, this tiny witch heaving backwards to get me onto my feet. I lean back into the hedge, waiting for my head to stop spinning.

"It's better. Your arm," she whispers, peering around the hedge. The sounds of fighting in the near distance are growing louder. "We'll need to do more but it's better. At any rate, I don't think you're going to lose the arm."

Looking down, it does look better. It looks like a tattoo that is thirty years old, or more. Faded.

My hand shakes violently when I hold my arm out straight, but the cooling charm is helping settle the nerve pain. I can only hope there isn't permanent damage, but I suppose that's the risk I ran when I got the bloody fucking thing. Not that I'd ever envisioned a day when it wouldn't be disfiguring my forearm.

And of course there would be a built-in punishment for disobeying the summons; the Dark Lord would be perfectly happy maiming worthless followers or betrayers alike. I'm concerned for both Severus and my father, but I can't dedicate any mental resources to that now. I box it up and shove it away.

I stand upright off the hedge and make sure there's no residual dizziness clouding me. Thankfully we ate dinner tonight. I think I'd have passed out if we hadn't had something to eat. But I neither lost consciousness nor vomited, and that's good enough for me.

"What's the plan?" I ask Granger, who is still peeking around the hedge.

"I can't see anyone from this angle. But it sounds like they're getting closer to where we are. I don't think they're trying to hide any longer - well, some of them could still be holding onto a good secret spot, but I think it's all about to be out in the open. Let's go have some fun, shall we?"

She looks over her shoulder at me, and I'm struck again by her Occlumency, her eyes dull and flat. She's perfectly focussed and looks… enthusiastic about the prospect, a cold smile on her mouth. I think she will consider this fun, and I remember the shredded Dolohov dummy in the field back at the Manor.

A small grin creeps across my lips. Granger didn't want to fight from the shadows, anyway. Well, more power to her. Let's go.

We both cast protego maximas as we emerge from our hidey-hole. It's still pitch black aside from the occasional moonlight crisping through the cloud cover, and it's just as cold, damp, and hazy as before. But there's a different energy to the air now.

Following the sounds of a fight, we round the corner to an open part of the eastern lawn beyond the gardens. Now we see people, and it's - tricky.

The Resistance used to be easy to identify, shooting stunners and disarming spells. No longer. Both sides are shooting vicious, potentially lethal hexes and curses. The streaming jets of light in the dark flash across my retinas, searing echoes of them behind my eyelids.

Without the hedges to one side I feel more exposed, but that's the idea.

A sharp crack comes from our left and a body flies right at Granger, who swipes it aside and into a nearby tree with her wand. She spares it a quick glance and doesn't seem to recognise it. I know I don't, but it would be hard to tell under good circumstances. No gold armband, though, even though most of the Resistance probably isn't wearing them.

"It's her! It's the mudblood!" comes a feminine yell from the left and that's semi-conclusive evidence that the body we just saw fly past was Resistance. Granger whirls and wordlessly sends a curse in the general direction of the voice.

Curses come back at her, too, and rebound off the shield charm I refresh. Alecto Carrow dodges the jet of light streaking back at her and with three more strikes from Granger, she's on the ground. Granger doesn't even stop to look before moving forward, advancing on the castle.

Amycus's curse hits the shield charm from behind a pagoda. We hadn't seen him.

He's yelling for his sister as he runs at us, and Granger cuts his leg off at the knee. His cries echo in the dark night as he hits the ground hard, and answering yells pop up here and there, difficult to pinpoint in the blackness. My eyes dart around as Granger steps up to him and calmly slices his throat.

The moon breaks through the clouds, granting us a rare glimpse of light. The timing is fortuitous. We're being moved on from all sides by smarter fighters than the Carrows.

"Alright, then," Granger breathes, almost to herself, and I move back to back with her automatically.

The yew and dragon heartstring wand serves her well. It's a dangerous wand, a wand friendly to the Darker side of magic, and Granger holds no compunctions any longer - if she ever really did, when it came down to it.

('I don't think of Granger as some warrior queen like Ginny')

She's ruthless. I can't see her face, but I wouldn't call it enjoyment so much as efficiency. In our duels at the Manor, she kept me on my toes, but she's excellent here. Her magic is strong, her reflexes fast, and I don't see her hesitate a single time.

I run defence, letting her do as she likes. Wizards and witches alike fall. Four of them, five.

Silence rests again, eerie and dark, and we turn a slow circle to check for more. We still haven't seen a single Resistance operative in the open on this side of the castle, no one to coordinate with. I wonder if the organisation I've seen is falling to the side.

"Any ideas?" I ask her, eyes darting side to side warily.

Granger shrugs, almost nonchalant. "Let's just walk. They'll find us. Or we'll see them Apparate in. I don't feel like hiding."

Sounds fine to me. The grounds are so enormous, we can hear sounds of Apparatition and various battle-like noises, duelling and yells, hexes and curses rebounding and damaging things on the periphery. But none happen close to us and we start walking. I feel a bizarre urge to take her hand like we're on a date.

"How's your arm?" she asks and I realise I haven't thought about it since the Carrow woman attacked her.

"Alright. Not bothersome," and it isn't. It's not good, per se, but it's manageable. I'm extremely glad I am not left-handed. Trying to duel with it would be a problem, to say the least.

A shadowy figure charges us from the hedge maze and Granger cuts him down without a word. Adrian Pucey, maybe, or his older brother? Hard to tell. A Pucey nose, though, no doubt about that.

"I do like this wand," she muses. "It's very… cooperative."

"It should be, if it's yours," I tease her lightly, but I think I know what she means.

I didn't come across her on the battlefield during the main part of the war, but I don't think her previous wand saw this kind of bloodshed. Or maybe it did, but it fought her a little more. I don't think so, though. If Granger had been this brutally effective in battle the first time, word would have gotten around. But I have another theory.

"I think your Occlumency is helping you, too. I think you're able to strike and attack without a second thought."

From the corner of my eye, I see Granger tilt her head, considering.

She shoots a curse at Marcus Flint, my old Quidditch captain. Flint ducks and fires back, and Granger dodges deftly. It rebounds off the shield charm anyway and I refresh that for good measure as Granger slices open his abdomen. She disarms him and snatches his wand so he can't heal himself, and eyes his meagre attempt to collect his intestines by hand with a sour look on her face.

This does seem a touch bloodthirsty and I lift an eyebrow at her. She shrugs and looks down the path, dismissing Flint as she squints against the darkness.

"Maybe he came to the park."

He most certainly had. Nearly every person I know had gone to the park at one point or another, for one reason or another. I'd never looked at Granger's book specifically to see her most-frequented visitors. To be honest, I didn't want to know. I didn't see how it could possibly be helpful. But in the absence of hard data, anyone could have been.

('I'm very, very angry about what happened to me.
I'm not alright at all')

She'd said her Occlumency helped keep it cornered, in a way, but of course she still needs to get it out. The practise dummies were one thing, but everyone we come across is another stand-in for what happened to her. Who am I to argue?

"You're favouring the slicing hexes," I note.

"I've never liked the idea of the killing curse. And why would I risk tearing my soul apart for people like this?"

"All it requires is a lack of remorse."

She brushes this off. "Eh. Not worth it. The slicing is more fun, anyway."

Well, there we go. There are plenty of ways to kill that don't involve avada kedavra.

"Also, a slicing hex can still be averted or healed if I hit the wrong person by accident. It's very dark out here. I have no remorse for these people, but I can safely say I'd regret hitting the wrong person." Ah, Granger is still in there. I love my little Slytherin but I love Gryffindor Granger, too. It's the wrong time to kiss her, but that's a shame.

We're coming up on a vivid duel, jets of light visible over the decorative stone wall in front of us. There seem to be several people firing from the right and one from the left, and we don't know who is who.

"Boost me up," Granger whispers and I don't like that idea at all.

"Levitate me up there," I counter, "and I'll pull you."

We have a silent staring stalemate until the stone just above our heads cracks and shatters, someone's hex blasting it open. Granger ducks and I throw out another instinctive protego.

"See?" I hiss at her under my breath. "If you had been up there -"

Granger shoots me a nasty look and levitates me without warning, faster than was strictly necessary. I'm glad no one is looking my way, as I am not at all Disillusioned. My white-blond head is popping up over this wall with comic speed, and my intention to bring Granger up next seems foolish in retrospect.

The imbalance of fighters was four on one Resistance operative, and within seconds I'm clearly visible and about to draw fire.

I send a bombarda at the cluster of four, seeming the most efficient way of dealing with a crowd, and they blast apart. Pieces fly everywhere and I can't be much bothered with the collateral spray as I lean back down to Granger.

Next problem: my left forearm won't support the strength I need to lift her. Too shaky.

"Put your back into it," Granger advises offhand, as if I'm moving a piece of furniture without a wand. Cheeky witch.

I end up levitating her, too, preferring to keep my wand in my functional dominant hand rather than use the hand to hoist Granger up. She doesn't seem to mind. It's a good thing she's paying attention as she comes over the top of the broken wall, because she deflects a hex that comes astonishingly close to my head.

"Percy!" she seethes over my shoulder. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"It's Malfoy!" Percy Weasley shoots back, too loud for the situation, in my opinion.

Granger takes a quick glance around at the scattered body parts on the lawn. "And didn't he just get you out of this?"

Percy, always an infuriating, pious rule-follower as far as I can recall, sniffs disdainfully at the destruction before him. Granger goes on the offence, stalking right up to his chest. She glares up at him with her finger in his face and he tries to lean back automatically.

"Percy Weasley, I know you know what's going on here, so don't act like you don't. I am disappointed in you, and I will be having words with your mother. Come on, Draco."

I don't have the time to fully parse through this exchange, but I wish I did. Clearly more people know about Granger-and-I than I had expected when tonight started, as evidenced by the average person's tolerance of my presence here. Percy seems to disagree, probably on Ron's account. I can't help but chuckle a little, though, as Granger drags me away by the hand.

"Oh, it was probably nothing more than a bat-bogey hex, Granger. Look at him; he still wasn't casting anything deadly when it was four against one."

"That's not the point," she huffs, and we run headlong into Avery. I physically bounce off of him coming around a blind corner and he grunts.

"I heard someone say Malfoy, what the fu -" Avery looks more confused than hostile, but Granger slices his throat and he doesn't finish his question.

We're into the shadow of the castle itself now, looming high and ominous above us. The clouds are back over the moon and the shadow makes one great blackness stretching across the landscape. The dreary haze is turning into a misty, icy sort of drizzle and I take the opportunity to re-cast warming and rain-repelling charms.

Granger and I tuck back against the wall and stare out before us.

Several duels are happening across the grounds that we can see from here, coloured jets of light streaking from left to right. It's impossible to tell who's who.

The castle itself is silent, an enormous stone tomb. It's hard to believe that nothing inside is generating sound, light. There must be fighting going on in there, but it's a mammoth structure. Who knows what is happening and where?

I feel quite as adrift as I did when we landed here, in fact. We've come across two Resistance fighters in person: Lee and Percy.

I don't think this is quite what my father had envisioned and I feel a sharp pang at the thought of my father. How is his arm? Is the flesh numb and dying? Or in excruciating pain from the lotion that could ultimately help him?

How is Severus's arm? Where is Blaise? Did he get out?

How many more of my former schoolmates and Quidditch team are laying in pieces along the grounds? Can't think about that, though. They'd cast their lots, just as I've cast mine.

I'd done a little research on Dunrobin Castle in the Manor library. Borders the watery firth, expansive sculpted gardens we've gotten a bit of a tour of, and at almost two hundred rooms, it's the largest castle in the Northern Scottish Highlands. We're on the eastern side. Well, are we still? I glance around. We'd been walking at a quick pace and we're probably cresting northeast by this point.

The western side is the formal castle entrance and we're nowhere near, but it's also likely the best defended by the Resistance. We're essentially on the opposite side, which might explain both why it's been so quiet and why they said they needed more assistance here.

But where is everyone?

Thanks to the vibrant flashes of light in the darkness, I see four different duels on the grounds before us, but that's still not as many as I'd expect. The call for reinforcements was made. Had the Resistance just been this effective, striking from secrecy as people arrived?

Something's off and one look down at the uneasy expression on Granger's face tells me she feels it, too.

It comes to me, one of several things that happen quickly.

My own personal experience gives me the answer. Hadn't I found a way into a structure deemed otherwise impenetrable, using something so unorthodox and rare no one even considered it as a possibility?

The Vanishing Cabinets.

Not that I think those are here, necessarily, but the same idea is in play. They've found another way to get reinforcements into the castle itself, outside of standard Apparition. Whether it's a reaction to what's happening out here or they've had it all along, we may never know, but the battle is inside.

Angelina had said that no one else would be sent in who wasn't already prepped to be there; the mission was too intricate. But if the terms have changed, they're going to need help.

I'm leaning down to tell Granger this when a small band of people round the corner. We both raise our wands instinctively and I cast a shield charm in front of us, but Granger is lowering hers.

"Katie?" she whispers urgently, and the figure in front nods as she emerges out of the shadows.

Oh, lovely. Katie Bell. Someone I almost killed in my haphazard attempts to kill Dumbledore. It hadn't been personal, but still. Her brown eyes are quite as cold and flat as Granger's, but I don't think it's Occlumency in her case.

I feel a perverse desire to say, 'I didn't want it to happen to you. Don't you think I'd have rather the bloody necklace just kill him like it was supposed to?' and bite it back just in time.

But it hadn't; it had got the wrong person, and to Granger's point from a few moments ago, at least the action was reversible in the end. At least I don't have Katie Bell's death on my hands. Dumbledore's is bad enough and I hadn't had a choice. Every time I failed, the Dark Lord took it out on my mother.

Somehow I don't think Katie would be as understanding about those circumstances as Granger had been.

Looking past Katie to the others gathered with her, I can make out Susan Bones, from Hufflepuff and Penelope Clearwater, a Ravenclaw. There's one other witch tucked behind Clearwater and it's another Ravenclaw, Cho Chang. All had been captives in the park and I wonder how many of the mangled corpses we've passed were the work of these four.

"Katie, what's going on?" Granger asks, her head on a swivel. There are still duels happening in the distance.

"The Apparitions onto the grounds are slowing," Katie states, dusting off her robes. Blood speckles the wall beside Granger and it's not dust she's getting rid of. Granger helpfully aims a scourgify at her. "We've been mopping up, but I can't find Lee."

"Who's down there?" I gesture to the lawn, to the ongoing fighting and jets of coloured light.

Penelope answers me when Katie doesn't. "The Patil twins were together, but I don't know if they got split up. Hannah Abbott was stationed near the northern gardens and might be down there now. And -"

"- Anthony Corner and Marietta Edgecombe are somewhere around here," Cho finishes, and I desperately want to ask if Granger's permanent scarring of SNEAK is still written across Marietta's face from betraying Dumbledore's Army to Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad. Funnily enough, we have something for it now. Maybe we'll get the chance to tell her.

Almost all witches. It had to be deliberate, part of their intended placements for the attack. Maybe they let people express a preference of where they wanted to be.

Katie acts like I didn't derail her with this momentary side track. "I think we need to advance into the castle. Something isn't right. There's no reason for their reinforcements to stop arriving."

"Unless they've won," Cho says heavily, her eyes down on her left shoe. She gives it a little flick and a severed finger goes flying. She exchanges a loaded look with Katie, her eyebrows raised. Communicating something.

Penelope picks something stringy and wet off Susan's robes and Susan grimaces in disgust. Katie shakes her head at Cho, firm and stubborn. "If they'd won inside, they'd be out here to find whoever we have left. They -"

The wall to our right explodes outward, violent and tremendous in its noise. I fling a protego out, covering Granger who is closest to it, and protecting the others by default. Shouts can be heard from inside, but not close to the blast opening. A wayward bombarda, by the looks of it.

All five of them ready their wands and Penelope looks at Susan, then flicks to Cho and Katie in turn. "Remember the deal."

Three witches chant it back in unison and scatter to take cover behind various debris to scout our unexpected entrance.

Granger's jaw is set as she watches them and she sees my puzzled look. Sparing half a second, she says, "They must have an arrangement, if Voldemort wins again. They won't go back."

Katie leads their charge, moving forward at some agreed-upon signal. She climbs nimbly up the stone wreckage at our feet, dodging a green jet of light that may or may not have been a killing curse. Penelope aims a return shot beneath Katie's arm and the four witches advance in a well-rehearsed formation.

Granger begins to move right behind them, following their momentum and I back up to the destroyed wall to cover us. There are two figures moving towards us from the grounds, but at a distance I can't tell whose side they're on.

As Granger crawls up and over the wreckage, she moves towards the left, not wanting to disrupt whatever rhythm the band of witches moving right has in their teamwork. I'm perfectly happy to run defence to Granger's offence, but now she's no longer the only one around who needs an extra set of eyes on her.

The scene before me much better resembles the sort of battle to which I'm accustomed: full mayhem.

The wall blasting open was obviously a misaimed curse because the fighting is further back into the hall, but there are a variety of duels happening.

Once again, it's nearly impossible to tell who is who by the curses being thrown. Both sides are fighting lethally. Our group arrival is unnoticed by most, by all but a few, and those are the ones I concern myself with.

Granger seems to be taking a moment to identify as many duellers as she can, scanning the scene before us. This presents a momentary lapse in offensive magic and those hostile to us fill in the gap.

In turn, this has the benefit of identifying the other side. I send a confringo at a pair advancing on Katie's group from the shadows. I might have to escalate to bombarbas, but I'd rather not bring the castle down on our heads. Confringos first.

This confringo works just fine for now, the duo obliterating into a bloody mush against the pillar behind them. Katie glances my way and spares me a nod.

My heart stops momentarily when Granger isn't where I left her. She's been capitalising on her own, to our left, and I finally see her hair poking out from behind another pillar near two bodies bleeding out on the floor.

The confusion mounts, though, as I can see gold armbands among the fighters now. Knowing what we do about the scene outside, there will not be two of anyone on this battlefield; the guard was not 'neutralised' for the Polyjuiced Resistance operative to replace them. The guard was killed.

But even so, recognising obvious Death Eaters at first glance and having to check for an armband is extremely disorienting to me. I'm sure it is to Granger, as well.

For the Resistance fighters who have been in on the plan all along, knowing intimately which guards would be replaced - Rookwood, Yaxley, Rosier, Goyle, et cetera - their correct identification of people must be much quicker than mine and Granger's.

My position here is especially perilous, I realise. Not because of my armband, which matches the others I see, but because there will almost certainly be accidental friendly fire here.

Not to mention I have to be overly cautious, almost paranoid, about not causing any myself. My father's intent in sending me is to give me a defensible position at trial when all this ends. If I kill Resistance fighters here, that's over.

'Yaxley' over there could be Harry Potter, for all we know, and I wonder where Potter actually is. Where were the Dark Lord's chambers in this massive castle?

A curse strikes the stone wall above Granger with a terrific crash and I deflect the rubble as it flies down. Granger spins towards it. "Oppugno," she hisses, and points her wand at an advancing enemy, sending the falling wreckage towards him and burying him in broken stone.

"No slicing for him?" I query, looking around the other side of our pillar.

"Might as well use what they give us," Granger shrugs, twisting her hair into a violent knot at the base of her neck to keep it out of the way. "I'm going to walk out there and draw fire."

She says this as if I'll have no opposition to it.

"...No."

"Yes. It's too hard to strike proactively from here. I can't be sure who is who. I'll draw their fire and react to who comes for me. You do the same."

This makes sense and I know it. I still can't let her just walk calmly into the middle of an active battlefield. "Together, then."