But they couldn?t hear her. She saw Ginny speak, and then a deep flash of light came from the center of the Orb, the color of gold, followed by a pulse of dark green. Draco stepped back, his eyes widening, and then he caught at Ginny and pulled her back too as the Orb began to shake and tremble. Inside the globe, the animate flame flickered. Hermione heard her own caught breath achingly loud in the silence. The flame shook again. Then, abruptly, it went out. A sharp, crackling noise broke, and the crystal sides of the Orb split and fissured and rained down like shattered bits of eggshell. A plume of greenish smoke rose from the shattered remains of the Orb, and floated into the air, where it hovered for a moment. Then, like a falling arrow, it plunged towards Slytherin and drove into his chest.
Slytherin howled, as if he had been pierced through with a dagger, and arched his back as the green smoke arrowed into him. His whole body seemed to glow brightly for a moment with a luminous emerald halo. Then it vanished.
He straightened up then, and began to smile.
'What the hell?' Hermione vaguely heard Dracos voice as if from a long way away. He sounded flabbergasted. She didn?t blame him.
'How did that work — ?'
Ginny looked as if she were about to answer him, raising her head -
then she gasped, and looked straight at Hermione and Harry.
Hermione had one split second to realize that now Ginny could see them, when Slytherin raised his hand. He pointed it at Ginny, and lovingly intoned, 'Wingardium everriculum!' and Ginny screamed as her feet left the floor and she flew across the room with lightning swiftness, slamming into the pole that stood next to Harrys. The same ropes leaped up and fastened around her, whipping swiftly around her arms and legs, binding her tightly.
Draco spun around. 'Ginny-?'
He broke off, and stared. It was obvious he could now see them all as well. His eyes went to Harry and then to Hermione, and lastly to Slytherin, where they rested with loathing… and fear. Hermione had rarely seen Draco afraid. Angry, yes, whiny certainly, obnoxious often; but he was rarely afraid.
He looked afraid now.
It was perhaps that Slytherin seemed so different now; it was as if he had grown many feet in stature. He radiated power, a bleak and shimmering power. She had thought in the Burrow, when he was drawing on Fleurs magic, that he had seemed far more powerful than she remembered, but that was nothing to this. An ominously tinted light poured from his eyes, and a halo of intense and pulsing energy seemed to surround him. He stood tall, arrow-straight and terrifying, and his eyes were black as suns in his arsenic-white face.
He held out his hand to Draco. 'Come here,' he said. 'Give me that sword.'
Draco shook his head, but it was Ginny who spoke. 'No.'
Slytherin lifted his hand and touched it to the base of Harrys throat, sliding it down gently to rest just over his heart. Harry shuddered, but didn?t say a word. Hermione watched with a horror that nearly took her out of her body. From the expressions on Draco and Ginnys faces, they were feeling much the same thing. 'Do as I tell you,' he said.
'You won?t kill Harry,' said Ginny finally, in a shaking voice. 'You need him.'
'I don?t need all of him,' said Slytherin, his voice very calm. He bent to pick up Harry's scabbard, which lay at his feet, and pulled the sword from it. Harry and Draco both started — it was again in one piece — but they didn't have time to think about why or how before Slytherin brandished the sword at Harry. 'I can begin by slicing off his fingers, one by one. I?ll make sure he doesn?t bleed to death, not right away at least.' Then he smiled and dropped the sword back onto the floor. 'Or not. I need no such Muggle methods now, to make him scream.' He turned his head, and looked at Harry. 'You have felt the Cruciatus Curse before,' he said. 'But never with such power behind it as I possess now.'
'No!' Hermione screamed, and jerked against her bonds so hard that they cut into her wrists, bringing blood. She didn?t look at Harry, couldn?t see him past Slytherins back, looked instead over at Draco, who was deathly white, although his eyes were nearly black. He raised the sword in his hand, and threw it hard at the ground. It hit the flagstones with an echoing sound. Then he put his foot on it, and kicked it across the room towards Slytherin.
It skittered across the flagstones, sending up brilliant sparks.
Dracos eyes were bleak with hate. 'Take it, then,' he said.
'You were not worthy of it,' said Slytherin, and, taking his hand from Harrys throat, turned and held it out. The sword leaped into his grasp and he smiled down at it, lovingly. Then he turned to Draco, and held out his left hand. 'Come here,' he said, and Draco did.
* * * * *
Draco felt his feet move against his own volition, carrying him forward like a piece of driftwood caught in a powerful tide. He fought it, bit down on his lip, tasted blood in his mouth. But it was useless. The Orb had opened, and so Slytherin had his powers back, and with them, the powers afforded him by his bargain with Hell.
Draco felt himself driven forward, and then he stumbled and fell to his knees before the Snake Lord.
He looked up. Harry, Hermione and Ginny stared down at him from their prisons of rope. Ginny looked desperately furious, Hermione despairing and panicked, Harrys face was white, set and unreadable. And Draco saw that he was struggling, with as little evident effort as possible, to free his left hand from the ropes that bound it to his side. Draco couldn?t imagine why he was bothering -
Harrys left hand was as useless when it came to doing magic as his own right hand was to him. But he felt Harry reach out towards him, and his voice whispered softly at the back of Dracos mind: Distract him.
Dracos eyes flicked to Slytherin, who was gazing down at him with a sort of furious appetite. 'We have come to the end now,' he said, and his voice was low and even and resigned. 'At the end of things, I meet them all again, and you, who were created for me. I planned you, a thousand years ago.' He reached down and with a gesture that could almost have been called gentle, slid his hand under Dracos chin and tilted it upward. His eyes scanned the boys face, and somehow, Draco knew what he was seeing: the clean even planes of cheek and chin and jaw, the long gray-silver eyes with their slightly tilted edges, the white-blond hair, too fine to tangle, and that he was recognizing it all as he might recognize a drawing he had done, years ago. There was no love in that look and no hate, but something much colder and more removed even than that. His thumb ran under Dracos chin to his collarbone, and it took all of Dracos reserves of control not to pull away, retching with nausea.
He kept his eyes fixed above Slytherins shoulder — kept them fixed, in fact, on Harry, who had managed to free his wrist from one coil of rope, and was working on the second.
