large dark square beginning to appear in the far wall.
'Oh, hell.' Harry had gone white. 'Someones coming. You?ve got to get out of here.'
Ginny stood up and reached for the Time-Turner, but Ron leaped to his feet after her and seized her hand.
'No. We can?t leave Harry.'
'The Invisibility Cloak,' said Hermione, desperately. 'Ron-'
But Ron had already taken out the cloak. Hermione leaped to her feet as Ron backed against the wall. She and Ginny huddled close to him and he swept it around the three of them just as the dark space in the far wall opened to its fullest extension and Slytherin came in, dressed in the robes of green and black that she remembered from their first meeting. And after him came two guards, wrapped in gray robes.
And after them, Draco.
Several hours had gone by, and Lupin was bored. He had eaten all his chocolate, and played several games of noughts-and-crosses with himself by scribbling on the empty candy wrappers. And meanwhile, Sirius was getting nowhere with his shovel. Being Sirius, of course, he wouldn?t admit it.
Finally, Lupin threw aside the stick he had been using to draw rude and amusing pictures in the dirt, and stood up. 'Sirius!' he yelled.
'This is getting ridiculous. Would you let me help?'
Sirius dropped the shovel irritably crossed his arms over his chest.
'Fine. Go ahead.'
Lupin got to his feet. With grave deliberation he unfastened the gray travelling cloak he was wearing, laid it on the ground, walked over to the tree, and braced his hands against the sides of the trunk.
And pushed.
Rrrri p.
The tree tore out of the ground as easily as if it had been a turnip Lupin was uprooting. Breathing hard, he pushed it sideways, and it fell to the ground with a loud whooshing noise, its trunk coming to rest on top of the wall. The roots of the tree poked up like reaching hands, and the dark space beneath was revealed.
Lupin turned around, dusting off his hands, to see Sirius glaring, and muttering under his breath. Lupin, with his sensitive hearing, was able to distinguish several words clearly: showoff, git, and superhuman werewolf strength my -
'Ahem,' he interrupted. 'Aren?t we short on time?' He grinned. 'Or just short on temper?'
Sirius returned the grin, then knelt down. The hollow space under the tree had obviously been engineered by men: it was shallow and lined with stone to keep out the damp. As Lupin approached, he caught the sharp glint of light off the side of something metal inside the hollow. It was a long casket of some sort, which Sirius picked up and held up to the light. Too transparent to be adamantine, Lupin suspected it was made of some kind of adamant derivative. An anxious expression flicked across Sirius? face as he turned the box over, running his thumb across the smooth material, and stopped with his thumb on a dark, irregularly shaped keyhole. Reaching into his pocket, Sirius drew out the silver key set with red stones, and slid the end of the key into the lock.
The box clicked open as readily as if it had been locked only yesterday. Setting it down, Sirius ratcheted back the lid, and lifted out the object that lay inside. It was long, as long as his arm, and made of silver. The scabbard to a sword, engraved all over with brilliant designs of flowers and animals and leaves that flowed together intricately to form the word Gryffindor.
Draco looked the same, and not the same.
His clothes were different, although that wasn?t it, not exactly. He wore black as usual: black shirt and trousers, black boots, black cloak, although the cloak was lined in white-silver, and held across the chest by crossed chains of bronze in the shape of serpents. The white of the cloak lining contrasted with the black clothes and combined to make him look unreal, like a chess piece rather than a person. In fact, he looked as if he had been refined down to his most essential elements, as if everything unnecessary had been burned away. White skin, black eyes, silver hair, and the gold chain of the Epicyclical Charm glittering at his throat.
He stood shoulder to shoulder with the Snake Lord, and in his boots, they were nearly the same height. Slytherin reached out put his hand on Dracos shoulder, and Hermione, who remembered suffering that agonizing touch, wanted to cry out to him, but didn?t.
'Draco,' he said. 'I will leave this to you. You know what to do.'
Draco inclined his head and started forward, crossing the room to Harry. The guards trailed him as silently as ghosts. Harry raised his head as Draco approached, looking at him steadily, and did not change expression as Draco got gracefully down on his knees in front of him, so that their gazes were level. His face was pale and set, but his eyes were alive; they met and held Harrys: green eyes and silver, the Snake Lords colors.
'Well, Potter,' he said at last, and the drawling tone of his voice sent arrows of cold fire shooting through Hermiones veins. 'It looks like you?ve gotten yourself into a fine fix here.'
'I didn?t get myself into this, Malfoy,' said Harry evenly. 'You did.'
'You shouldn?t have killed that basilisk back in second year,' said Draco, in the same conversational tone, as if Harry hadn?t spoken.
'You really hacked old Slythie off. If you hadn?t done that, maybe he?d let you live, but now…' Draco grinned as Harry made an involuntary movement towards him, and the adamant cuffs rattled.
'Lets just say I wouldn?t want to be in your chains.'
'Yesterday you were in my chains,' said Harry evenly. 'But I guess you figured a way out, didn?t you, Malfoy? You backstabbing bastard,' he added, without expression, as if he had just said, 'Good morning.'
'Don't tell me you're feeling betrayed, Potter,' Draco grinned.
'That's adorable.'
Harry rolled his eyes. 'Look, could we skip the obligatory taunting and just cut swiftly to the point of this little
