Draco was not allowed to leave the infirmary. This was from Madame Pomfrey because she absolutely got a triage scan on Draco when all the skin of his body had been burned almost two centimeters down, and the magic of his clan and coven had kept him alive. She understood that he absolutely could not be fine. This was from House Master Snape, his godfather, who had poured his most powerful healing potion into Draco's mouth while chanting spells in a face that was pale with sweat as he prepared himself to watch his godson die, and didn't.

Magic had limits and worst of all, magic had costs. Draco had broken both of them because he refused to let Luna be consumed by the Diadem of Ravenclaw, and the justice she finally brought to her tower. Draco had sworn to himself he would pay any cost, but in his heart of hearts, he never expected to live to face them.

"Wingardium Leviousa" Draco remembered, he would always now remember when he cast that spell. He had weathered a strong bombarda from a fourth year that collapsed his shield, and faced some eye creature with eyes on tentacles like a crown on top. Beholder the Ravenclaws had called it. All Draco knew is that each of the eyes on tentacles on top had cast a different spell, and it would be several seconds before Draco could raise another shield powerful enough to block any of them. The Sword of Gryffindor parried in second, shattering the binding, and in a fencer's reflex he riposted, feeling the blade slide home in something he dared not look at. Something soft and wet, that clamped around his blade as a sound like a startled cough sounded and his wrist took the shock.

"Wingardium Leviousa" Draco had said, and with a flick, spun the third year girl he had disarmed, the one transformed into an ogress, into the path of the five spells coming from the Beholder. She came apart, and Draco was sprayed in bits of her, but the larger chunks knocked those trying to grab him away. He exploded into a fleche, feigning a lunge to make the beast close its central eye, then slashing above in passing.

"Wingardium Leviousa" Draco chanted, flicking the enraged and half blinded Beholder into the students behind him. There were screams, but he didn't look. He heard though.

Draco had prided himself on the Malfoy noble heritage, his father had made him train in fencing to be a duelist with blade equal to his father, it was expected of a gentleman. Of a Malfoy it was expected to not only be better, but be casually better than any who he might have to humble with the blade. He learned the dances of the court of the nobility of a society the wizarding world had turned away from centuries ago, even as he learned the music and arts of a noblemen. Others forgot, others were not Malfoy.

"The way of the blade like the way of the wand is the path of the noble Draco. Never forget Draco, they are beneath us. Everyone. There is only the truth of the sword, the power of the wand. You will teach the world with the edge of your blade and the fury of your spell that they exist only for your amusement, only for their use. They are nothing Draco. You are Malfoy. Never forget that, and if the lesser do forget, with sword or wand you will remind them." Lucius had drilled into him, and Draco had smiled back at him in worship.

Draco rolled from his bed and puked up all the remnants of the potions he had consumed until he could not puke anymore.

He remembered the feeling, the look in the girls eyes, he thanked Merlin or the fairy or whatever magic had warped her into something he could not recognize, because he could not bear if he had memories of her alive to go with the feeling of his blade lunging into her diaphragm, casually punching the deadly triangle where the wings of the ribs draw close to the heart. He had punched in and out before he could process, his other hand and wand flashing through a complex wand movement for a Protego Maximus.

He lunged, and watched as a girl trapped in a nightmare of magic she would never live to understand became a corpse and fell off his blade, and Draco became a murderer. He would always and forever see her twisted inhuman face, but at least he wouldn't know her. He was spared that. He would not cry.

He was Malfoy.

Merlin damn him. Now he knew what it was, and the truth burned on his tongue like the bile that was all he had left to throw up. He knew the cost of the blade, of the wand. He knew what he had done, and he knew that if anyone threatened Luna, he would do it again. Draco felt he would go mad, felt a better man would kill himself rather than face what he had become. He was not, thankfully, a better man.

Reaching into his belt pouch he pulled out the little piano. Mother had insisted he bring it. Mother had insisted on his treating the music lessons and dancing as seriously as the sword or wand, when really, music was something you paid servants for, and dancing was something done to impress others. What need did Draco have to impress anyone. He was Malfoy, was that not enough.

Draco took up his wand, fingers shaking, and tapped the piano three times. It grew to full size, a grand piano pushing out the screens around his bed. Turning he reached out his fingers and began to play. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata fell from his fingers, the slow somber tones dripping from the piano like blood from his blade.

Draco remembered as he played. He did what he had to. He chose Luna, and that meant he chose the cost. He played and he wept, and he accepted it. He was Malfoy. His hands were never to be clean. Somewhere in the music, there was a piece of something. Something that he needed, something that made it no less terrible, but maybe just a little bearable. He would let none of them see it, not Harry who killed without thinking, not Neville who could bare his weakness without shame, not Milicent who laughed through a mask made of bone and screams and yet somehow smiled. He was not strong enough to be any of them. He played, and the music went from soft to rising, as if somewhere in the sea of pain and shit it was somehow still okay.

Luna was his. She would never see the price he paid. Draco played, and if he didn't heal, at least he stopped screaming. Somewhere beyond the screen, Luna lived, and when he pushed past the screen to see her, Draco would have his mask again. She was too gentle to see the evils in this world, that left her the only one left who would look at him. He would protect her. Luna was his, and he was Malfoy.

Several beds over, Luna lay and stared at Noodle. Her eyes were locked with his, and Noodle wandered the maze of light and wonder that was the mind of the dreamer, and despaired. Noodle mastered the mind arts the way no two legged mammal ever could, and he could weave their minds back together if there were even two bleeding cells able to communicate, but he was lost.

The one they called Luna was a dreamer, one who could see beyond the veil between the real and the unreal. A true dreamer saw what was, what is, what could be, what might have been, what must not be, all moving in an ever changing sea in which their mind drifted. The more powerful they were, the deeper into dream they moved, and the harder it was to interact with those who only saw the one frozen moment of the now, one now, not the hundred or thousand nows that the dreamer dreamed, all as real to the dreamer because she lived them all if she looked too close. She could always retreat from the now that hurt to find a better, kinder now. So many dreamers fled from the now they could not face into nows that were brighter, and turned away from the world full of people who may as well be portraits, for they only existed in a single dimension in her world of endless shapes, and in their blindness and ignorance mocked her for the truth of a world that was, but they, in their little frames and endless flat existence, simply could not see.

The Dreamer had been traumatized, brutalized, and worse, had become the brutalizer. She had reached into the dream with the magic of fairy, the power of the diadem and the rage of a Dark Lord and she had woken the children of Ravenclaw to their own truths.

For one shining and terrible moment, the Dreamer did not accept the mockery of the flat little portraits on the walls, but torn them from their frames, and cast them into the dream to face themselves, and become what Luna always saw in them.

The Dreamer knew few of those that hurt her thought themselves wicked or cruel, petty or vile, and she was content to let them sleep in their ignorance, for their petty cruelties could be survived, as waking them to the truth could not.

When crowned with the corrupted diadem on the night of endless darkness, on the night of Yule where the light was nothing but a memory and tomorrow a heaven only the dead could reach, Luna had reached out and woken Ravenclaw from their sleep, and dragged them into the dream.

Her inner court shone like stars, beautiful souls who dove into the dream and made wonders, following the endless and mysterious seas of magic and might have been's into a sea of knowledge that they drank until drunk and danced in the joy of it.

The outer court was a circle of hell. Torn from the mask of flesh, their souls laid bare before their own magic, the power of the Unreal filled their flesh until it was no more than clay, and the magic of each witch and wizard wrote on their flesh the truths they hid from, the lies they told themselves could not touch their magic.

Everyone knew all the Death Eaters came from Slytherin. Everyone was like no one, a word people used that meant nothing. Ravenclaws studied the rolls of the slain Death Eaters and noted that half of the Death Eaters were Slytherin, a damning number that meant they were disproportionately represented truly. The other half of course were, not Slytherin. Ravenclaws outnumbered Gryffindors, and so far outnumbered the Hufflepuffs on the rolls of Death Eater dead that you could almost give the badgers a pass. The House of Eagles was second only to the House of Serpents for its Death Eater dead, and that did not spring out of nowhere.

Ravenclaw was the House of Secrets, the house that understood knowledge was power, and power over others. Slytherin was the house that made lying to others an art. Ravenclaw was the house that made lying to yourself a survival strategy, for with enough self deception, no means were unacceptable to get the ends you wanted, or sabotage another from reaching them.

Magic is the power that binds wizards oaths, for magic is born of intent. You put your will upon the world to wield magic, so before magic there can be no lies. Magic always knew you, and your magic always understood you.

Luna blessed and damned Ravenclaw by letting them see the face magic knew was theirs. Many in the tower of Eagles took that knowledge in their souls and fell back screaming. Noodle sought to bind the Dreamer to a world she ran from because she could not unsee what she had wrought in Ravenclaw tower, and being the only true Ravenclaw, she could never deny what she had done, or why she had done it.

The Dreamer damned herself, and Noodle could not call her back to bind her to this flesh, this place, this time when she had all of unreality to run to. Noodle slithered through a forest of wonder and jungle of nightmare chasing a girl who wandered after butterflies with feet soaked in blood.

Then the music started. Piano. As a snake, Noodle felt music through his whole body in a way that humans couldn't. He felt the magic stir as the Yellow Haired Dragon bled his pain into the music, and magic stirred in answer.

The whole of the dream trembled as the slow movements of Moonlight Sonata bled Draco's shame and pain into the world, and from a thousand might have beens, and a hundred once was stepped fragments of a dreamer.

Lost in the dream, lost to the dream, but drawn by the music, the Dreamer followed the music back to the world; a world she had put her hand upon and judged. Tears on her face, blood soaking her feet, the Dreamer in thousand fragments came together, the sundered parts of her merging again and again, turning from unreality and its security for a world of blood and pain, politics and slander, malice and punishments.

Dreamer ran her hands over Noodle as she walked from the dream, down the endless lines of might have beens to the place where a dragon wept upon a keyboard. She followed Noodle to the place of consequence and price, and she smiled as she woke.

Luna Lovegood woke from her dream to hear Draco Malfoy playing piano. She had always dreamed of him playing for her, as she had dreamed of them dancing. Luna felt the tears on her face, and looked down upon her hands. They were clean, and somehow that didn't seem right. Noodle looked at her, and she smiled.

Magic had prices, and she would pay them. Her dragon had paid so much to bring her back; she would pay a thousand times for the one who cared enough to follow her into nightmare and bring her back.

She heard the Headmaster, the Minister, and the little pink toad lady shouting. Sighing, she turned away from the piano music, and rose to face a different kind of music.

Elsewhere in the Infirmary

Percy Weasley struggled to hold his girlfriend down. This was such an un-Percy activity his own squeamishness worked against him as she got free.

"Penelope, it isn't your fault. That Lovegood girl used forbidden magic on you."

Penelope was wild, her perfect control, the perfect control and emotional remoteness that actually formed the bond between them, two conflicted introverts finding solace in each other, was entirely absent from her.

She laughed, and all the pain in the world was in that laugh. Percy flinched from it like fire, and Penelope struck like the Eagle of her House. She grabbed her wand from the bedside, and it sizzled in her hand as it burned her.

Penelope held her wand up before her, and tears fell from her face as it burned her hand until she dropped it. Holding the burned hand out to Percy she screamed at him.

"Unicorn hair, nine and a half inches, a wand made for loyalty, one that rewards purity of focus and purpose with unmatched control and efficiency in charms. My own wand rejects me Percy. Think about it for one second Percy, you are not as stupid as your brothers. Do you think Luna Lovegood had the magic to transform a hundred students at once?

Flitwick couldn't do that. Dumbledore couldn't do that. Luna used whatever magic she tapped with Ravenclaw's diadem to open us to our own magic, and let it reshape us."

Penelope was wild now, her magic stirring about her in a storm, her hair rising like Medusa's snakes.

"My own magic judged me spineless Percy. My own magic. I knew about Luna being bullied. I was her Prefect. I simply judged the greatest good for the greatest number. I knew my duty to stop what was being done to her, and I simply decided MY LIFE would be easier if I let Luna be bullied, rather than confront a large number of my juniors over bullying they would then spend the next years trying to do around my best efforts. I judged protecting her a waste of my time, AS HER PREFECT.

My magic judged me as spineless, and made me spineless. I got to see how my own magic viewed me, a monster I would banish without a second thought. Now I reach out for my wand, and the unicorn hair in its heart rejects me.

What did Luna do to me Percy? She woke me up, and showed me a mirror, and I am a Ravenclaw Percy, I can't unknow it."

Percy flinched, he wanted to shout at her, but how many times as a Prefect had he followed that same thought into punishing his own just to curry favour with outsiders, never daring to inquire about the merits of a case, lest it force him to act against authority instead of as its agent.

Percy turned away from Penelope and stormed out of the hospital wing. He was a Gryffindor, he felt that brave part of him daring him to look into the mirror of his own magic and see what he saw looking back. Percy forced that thought down, like he had so many times before. He had a future. He would be somebody, somebody important. He didn't have time or magic to waste on silly morality games. His own magic tugged at his hair, painful poltergeist he brutally suppressed. He had turned away from Penelope, he would turn away from his magic's judgement too. He felt the wash of shame, and fought it down too. He would not be a noble failure like his father. He would not.

At the doors of the Infirmary

Delores Umbridge stood with two Aurors at her back. "Stand aside professor, I have come to arrest the criminal Lovegood, and take possession of the weapon used in the attack."

Delores Umbridge tried to hide the glee and greed on her face, without much success, but she had the power as Inquisitor that Dumbledore had left vague, and Crouch had left vague. She knew the ways of men of power. She was their deniability. She was the subordinate who would do what needed to be done without the noble gentlemen every having to give orders to do the dirty necessary thing. If she guessed right and it worked, she would rise on their coat-tails to power her own meagre magical skills and less than stellar birth and academic achievement would allow. If she guessed wrong, she would be disavowed by superiors piously insisting she had exceeded her authority.

So far, Delores Umbridge had never guessed wrong, and far better witches and wizards had been turned into stepping stones on her rise to power. Now her authority, since neither Dumbledore nor Crouch would define its limits, was whatever she said it was. Now her authority would allow her to take charge of one of the most powerful magical items in history.

Delores Umbridge would take charge of Ravenclaw's Diadem, and with it, she could make the Potter brat and his mudblood and blood traitor scum hangers on DO WHAT THEY WERE TOLD. The Boy Who Lived belonged to the Ministry. That Harry Potter happened to be that boy did not give him a voice or right to choose otherwise, it gave him a duty to be the tool the Ministry needed to keep the public content.

Delores would make that happen. The Yule ball was tomorrow, and the press that had been clamoring over what the mirrors had shown would need to be told something. With Ravenclaw's diadem on her head, she would MAKE the little brutes say what she needed.

Lovegood would go to Azkaban and feed her freakish dreams to the Dementors. Malfoy would heel like a good dog on a very short leash, or he would shortly do the same. This time the Malfoy would be the Minister's dog, not the other way around. Delores Umbridge would make this happen. Minister Crouch would owe everything to her, and she would be the power behind the throne.

All that stood in her way was this little subhuman. This half goblin scum, lower even than his legal definition of half blood because his other half was lower than even a muggle.

Filius Flitwick had been having a rough night Seven dead Ravenclaws. Twelve in St Mungo's for long term mind healing, including his male prefect. Miss Clearwater looked to be in slightly better shape, but it was a matter of degrees. Now this pink ministry toady, who actually looked like a toad, had come for another one of his wounded eagle chicks.

Flitwick's wand dropped into his hand as effortlessly as his father's sword had dropped into his, and his magic rose to his command with the same dark potency of his mother's. Filius Flitwick looked into his soul where his fucks were grown and found that field was barren.

Filius Flitwick chose violence.

"No" Flitwick said, and blasted the Hogwarts Inquisitor through her Aurors and into the wall behind.

Two Aurors drew their wands, and looked down at the tiny little clownishly dressed man.

A goblin grin, sharp teeth and blazing blue eyes smiled back, as the five time European dueling champion (retired undefeated) stared down his wand, and made a little motion with his other hand, palm up, fingers curling inward, like coaxing a dog to come closer, or an enemy to please, oh please please please, please, pretty please on a blood soaked platter, please try to attack me.

The first Auror licked his lips. "Inquisitor Umbridge has ordered her arrested for the crimes of murder and assault, and the weapon used to be taken into her custody."

Flitwick smiled. "The entirety of wizarding Europe saw what happened through the mirrors, Luna Lovegood did not kill anyone, the only person she struck was Mr Malfoy who both survived and refuses to press charges. As witnessed by everyone and verified by myself, deputy Headmistress McGonagall and Mediwitch Pomfrey, the diadem was cursed and turned into a Horcrux, or soul vessel by the Dark Lord Voldemort, and all the violence that resulted was caused by that soul fragment, a fragment which all of Wizarding Europe got to watch destroyed.

Miss Lovegood bears no magical or legal responsibility. The Dark Lord Voldemort is already under a Ministerial death sentence, which is unenforceable as long as he has more of these Horcrux. Ravenclaw's diadem belongs to House Ravenclaw and Hogwarts."

Flitwick made a small flicking gesture with his free hand, his wand pointing at the second Auror's nose tip unerringly as he dismissed the words of the first one.

"Inquisitor Umbridge is not in the DMLE, nor is she Minister of Magic. She cannot arrest even her own momentum, let alone my student. Amelia Bones, head of the DMLE has already ruled the deaths "by magical calamity" and thus not subject to prosecution. So again. No."

Umbridge had collected herself and stormed between her Aurors, "I forbid you to say Horcrux. The Minister has declared they do not exist. I am Hogwarts High Inquisitor, by the authority granted me by Headmaster Dumbledore, I demand you had over Luna Lovegood and the Ravenclaw diadem to my custody."

Filius Flitwick gave an odd hook shaped motion almost too fast to see, and Delores Umbridge was hanging upside down in mid air, robes around her ears. With a rather louder than necessary chant, Flitwick cast "SILENCIO!" to end her screams.

Striding to the fallen purse, he pulled out her wand, and left it some three feet below her extended right hand.

"Miss Umbridge, when you failed your Charms Owl, I told you that learning to summon your wand wordlessly and of course windlessly, was the minimum standard I would expect of any Hogwarts graduate. Here is your wand. Should you wish to regain your dignity, your contact with the ground, or any semblance of freedom of action, all you have to do is complete your fifth year homework.

And again I say to thee toad, no.

Do not ask for what you cannot take."

Facing the two Aurors he smiled. "You may note the maximum length of detention in Hogwarts under our charter is two hours. In precisely two hours, the charm will end, and your pet Inquistor will fall a short but survivable distance to the ground. This is the medbay, so I do not perceive any serious risk. You may place a pillowing charm beneath her, but if you attempt to end the charm early, you will find yourself suspended beside her."

The two Aurors had been outstanding Charms students of course, as expected from future Aurors. They had been among his better students. As some of his better students, they had spent the years after Hogwarts slowly growing into an understanding of just how powerful and versatile Filius Flitwick had always been. Never had they stopped to really think about facing an angry Filius Flitwick. Now that the thought crossed their mind, they decided they didn't like it much.

Muttering under his breath, not because he couldn't cast it silently, but because the Charms Master's wand was still pointed at a particular nose hair in his left nostril that had somehow offended the Charms Master, the lead Auror cast a cushioning charm on the stone beneath the Inquisitors head, and quietly slipped from the med bay.

In Dumbldore's office an argument was going on, and not going well.

"I am Headmaster, and I reserve the right to claim the Sword of Gryffindor." Dumbledore insisted.

"I sang 'Holding out for a Hero' not a Headmaster. So no." The Sorting Hat said.

"I was the Head of House Gryffindor, I have a right to that sword." Dumbledore argued.

"I sat on the Head of Godrick Gryffindor, and no you don't." The Sorting Hat said,

"Malfoy isn't even in Gryffindor, it isn't right he holds Gryffindor's Sword." Dumbledore shouted.

"Godrick wasn't in Gryffindor either. I was his hat, but it took all four of them to enchant me. Not one of them ever asked me if they belonged in the House they founded. I will tell you Helga Hufflepuff was never more than two drinks from Gryffindor and Rowena Ravenclaw could have ruled Slytherin House if she ever chose to.

Salazar was a sneaky git, but he bled so much loyalty it should have turned into little badgers when it fell. Not one of the founders was exactly sane or proportional in response to protecting their own, and none of them ever asked me if they belonged in their own houses."

Dumbledore took up the elder wand and snarled at the hat. "I can take it if I choose. I am the most powerful wizard in Hogwarts, the most powerful in Britain."

The hat frowned, it curled into itself, seeming to tremble in some sort of powerful emotion, then a fart so loud and thunderous that it should have come from no lesser bum than Hagrid's shook the Headmasters office, and the Sorting Hat blasted right off its stand. The Phoenix squawked in horror at the smell, and chose to die rather than inhale again.

Dumbledore choked, covering his own mouth. The Sorting Hat roared from its new spot on Dumbledore's desk.

"THAT IS THE MOST POWERFUL IN ALL BRITAIN!" The Sorting Hat laughed, as Dumbledore blew out his own windows rather than opening them, and cast a powerful enough wind spell that half his necessary budget paperwork soared out the windows as well. Glaring at the sorting hat in mute rage at the blatant disrespect, his own oaths and magic being bound to Hogwarts, Dumbledore could not actually strike out at the Sorting Hat.

Chuckling the hat mused to himself. "Awfully glad I don't have trousers after that one. Honestly Godrick, what did you eat? Nine hundred years of fermenting can't help of course, but still that was pretty rank, haw haw haw!" The Sorting Hat laughed as the Headmaster tried to remember breathing was worth the cost of that lingering smell.

"Hands off the Sword of Gryffindor, Headmaster." The Sorting Hat said seriously.

"Godrick wasn't the greatest wizard Hogwarts ever held, but he never made a mistake with a sword. Never came close to making a mistake with that one. Gryffindor wants that sword right where it is."

Dumbledore looked at the ugly old hat, the foolish foppish, ridiculous hat that sang such terrible songs every sorting year, and realized it wore the same clownish mask he had crafted for himself. For the first time, Dumbledore realized he shared an office with a monster older than he was, and no less terrible.

He sat down and stared at the hat and began to think.

"Looks like sleet soon. Scotland in December, ruddy always looks like sleet soon. Still, weren't those the papers for the budget meeting after Yule with the Board of Governors? You know, the ones you banished out the window?" The Sorting Hat asked kindly, then hopped back to his post while the Headmaster frantically tried to sort his necessary parchment from all the scraps of parchment littering the grounds of Hogwarts somewhere roughly "that way" as the wind blew.

Sometimes it was fun being a hat at Hogwarts.

12 Grimmauld Place, Sirius Black dodged the tea cup flying at his head, and the stinging hex aimed at his ass.

"This is all your fault Sirius!" Narcissa shouted

"How is this my fault? I barely said fifty words to Draco when we finally talked." Sirius insisted, watching as Kreacher handed Narcissa a saucer, which he admitted worked like a shuriken in cissy's hands.

"They were clearly the wrong fifty words Sirius, STOP DODGING AND TAKE IT LIKE A BLACK!" Narcissa shouted, waving her wand and banishing twenty cups and saucers at Sirius who shielded against them, only to catch a nasty curse that lit his chest hair on fire under his clothes, because of course the cups and saucers were just to trick Sirius into trusting a shield to defend him.

Sirius pulled the fire to his wand, and shot it at Kreacher.

"Stop helping Narcissa you traitor!" Sirius shouted, dodging a grave boat that wobbled enough to be tough to dodge and caught him in the shoulder.

"Kreacher aids the noble Lady Black in correcting the Lord Black's heroic insanity." Insisted Kreacher with a smile, showing how deciding this was for Sirius own good allowed Kreacher to assist Narcissa's hunting him with expensive china.

"Remus help me!" Sirius shouted. Remus sat back in his easy chair and sipped tea.

"You are doing splendidly Sirius. Keep it up. Go Gryffindor, rah rah!" Remus said helpfully, waving his old Gryffindor Quidditch flag helpfully.

Narcissa held four teacups suspended in mid air, and banished one with each word at her cousin and lord.

"This. Is. Your. Fault." Narcissa pronounced.

Spread his arms and took the impacts, staring into Narcissa's angry eyes with his own rising ire, his power gathering about him in a dark and dangerous pool

"Explain yourself Narcissa." Lord Black commanded.

"I had to watch my baby charge into certain death, knowing it was certain death. I watched him burn Sirius. I watched my baby burn, and he still kept fighting. I had to watch him burn Sirius and I couldn't even raise a wand to help him AND IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT" Narcissa shrieked and threw her wand at Sirius who took her in his arms and held her awkwardly.

Sirius tried to defend himself. "He did all that fancy fencing that Lucius got all poncy about in his tight white fencing uniforms, like some sort of Muggle who forgot they invented guns, I don't know like five centuries ago? That is totally Malfoy, not my influence at all."

Narcissa slapped him.

"Lucius trained Draco to use his sword to humiliate and kill inferior opponents, the same way he used his wand in carefully controlled and instigated duels that were closer to assassinations than anything else. Lucius Malfoy neither knowingly entered a fair fight in his life, nor trained Draco to. THAT WAS SOME HEROIC GRYFFINDORISH BULLSHIT AND YOU ARE TO BLAME!" Narcissa shouted.

Sirius chuckled. "Yeah. I give you that. Draco got his balls from the Black side of the family. That was some glorious Gryffindorish bullshit. Charged the tower, sword and wand, conquered Ravenclaw and claimed his princess, tiara and everything."

Narcissa dug clawed hands into Sirus arms. "He is all I have Sirus. All that I have left in this entire world, and I had to watch him go to his death on a MORGANA BE DAMNED MIRROR."

Sirius thought about Harry, and his heart clogged on the pain and despair that Azkaban had written in his bones. The helplessness tasted too familiar. He gripped Narcissa, pulling her in and holding her until the sobbing stopped.

"I will talk to him Narcissa. What he did was amazing. There weren't a dozen of the old crew of Aurors in the last war that could have equalled it, you should be proud of him. I will talk to the boy, teach him how to handle those Black balls of his now that they finally dropped, without getting himself killed. No sense winning the princess if you don't get to enjoy your happily ever after." Sirius smiled as he looked down at Narcissa and smiled.

Not a dozen of the old crew. Closer to half a dozen if he was honest. James Potter, killed in action. Frank and Alice Longbottom, worse than killed. The Prewit Twins, also killed in action. Mad Eye Moody, still alive but hardly a poster boy for mental health, and Sirius Black who made Mad Eye look like he was coping well.

He would do his duty. Draco was not goblin raised like Harry. What he had done would not be easy to process, not be easy to cope with. Dumbledore's second chance bullshit was toxic, was poison. Tell children that killing is always wrong and then send them out to fight your wars.

How many of the old crew drank themselves to death, took a "wrong potion", or ate their bloody wand because an old man told them that anyone who killed was evil, and then sent them out to do it for him.

Morgana's tasty left nipple. Sirius Black might be the closest to sane of any of the survivors of the last war who can teach Draco and the other kids how to live with what they were going to have to do to survive. Now Sirius felt the old Azkaban shakes break through his control, as Kreacher was left to watch a shaking Lord Sirius Black hold a weeping Narcissa Black and the half sane house elf smiled.

House Black would survive, whatever the cost.

Rita Skeeter sat with Hermione Granger and her quill danced upon the page as she endured a Hermione Infodump with the fierce intelligence and predatory instincts that had clawed her way to prominence in a profession sharks would be afraid to enter.

Periodically she would stop, and stare mutely at Neville Longbottom who would dumb Hermione speak down to a level a reasonably talented witch or wizard could at least grasp the outline of.

What she was hearing was terrifying. Voldemort was not dead, in fact could not be dead while these Horcrux still existed. There were several. Voldemort was coming back, imminently. The whole Tri-Wizards tournament was a trap designed to put Harry Potter where Voldemort could harvest him like a potion ingredient to make a new Dark Lord body to do Dark Lord things to a wizarding Britain succeeding Ministers of Magic and Albus Bloody Dumbledore had turned into helpless and unprepared sheeple rather than admit that really, the good guys choosing violence while the bad guys were not ready to murder them all was a good idea.

She could not print this. She knew people that had disappeared, and she did not mean into Azkaban or running overseas, but disappeared, from trying to print things like this.

Turning to Harry, she asked him, "What do you expect me to do with this?"

Harry grinned. "Come to Yule for yet another scandal of the year, got to get one more in right, only a week and a bit left. I promise you that the first dance will sell more papers than the second task did."

Rita blinked, but Milicent chimed in.

"What Hermione told you, you need to know. When the Third Task ends in nightmare, you will have one chance, and one chance to get the truth out before Voldemort and the Ministry go to war. When the dust settles, all Wizarding Britain is going to remember is the one voice that told them what was coming." Milicent said, as the implications of that began to sink in.

Harry grinned and punched Rita lightly in the arm.

"So get the story ready, when baldy-valdy comes back from the not all the way dead ready to kill everyone with a better nose than him, we need you ready to get the story out before the Ministry can even figure out what stupid thing they want to believe." Harry quipped bitterly.

He turned serious then. "And don't die Rita. Seriously. If you die you will miss the good part. I promise you Rita, if you live, there will be a good part."

Rita saw something in Harry's eyes then. There was a smile on his face, but his eyes were old, so very old, and so very tired. There was a very long night before the dawn, and Harry would have to drag them the whole of the dark night if anyone wanted to live to see that distant dawn.

Suddenly, Rita felt the cold sink into her. The false smile, the mask she created and lived so long cracked, and the witch behind it looked into Harry Potter's eyes. Not Rita Skeeter and the Boy Who Lived, but a witch and wizard standing at the end of the world, and pledging to see each other on the other side.

She nodded, packed her quill away, and returned to Hogsmeade. She would buy a potion of dreamless sleep she thought. What her dreams would be tonight is something she was too honest with herself to want to know.

One chance to be the voice remembered in History. The one voice that shouted the truth when it still might matter. Now all she had to do is not die, and her words would live forever.