'A master craftsman made you,' said Slytherin, and his voice was remote. 'Or so I thought. But you are flawed, broken somehow, internally. There is a corruption in your blood. I see it as a blemish that will grow with time. I do not think you can be put back together again.' He cocked his head to the side. 'Tell me,' he said.
Draco heard his own voice, dry and eroded-sounding, as if it came from far away. 'Tell you what?'
'What do you see in them? Those three, that you love, in their different ways. I loved, once, as well, three such as those. Then I put that away, as I put away childish things. But you will not let it go.
What can they offer you that I, who offer you everything, cannot?'
Draco shut his eyes. Printed against the back of his lids he saw them.
Ginny, bright with spirit, Hermione, who he had loved, and Harry, who he knew better than his own self.
What can they give you that I cannot?
He raised his chin and looked at Slytherin.
'Hope,' he said.
* * * * *
Slytherins sharp intake of breath masked Harrys gasp of relief and the sound of the rope falling to the floor as he freed his left wrist. His right wrist remained shackled to the pole behind him, the cuff cutting into his skin. But he had the one hand free. Slowly he raised his hand to his mouth, and spit into it what he had been holding there since he had watched Slytherin had bound thembind Hermione. The tiny, glowing white orb.
It had been a grueling effort not to talk, and a worse one not to shout in fury when Slytherin had struck Hermione. He was still shaking with the aftereffects of the effort it had taken not to react to that. He clenched his hand around the tiny orb in his fist, and stared at the tableau in front of him. Slytherin standing over Draco, his face a mask of barely-concealed rage, and Draco kneeling on the floor. Even kneeling, there was nothing submissive about him. He reminded Harry of a thoroughbred animal gone feral, baring his teeth at the Snake Lord. Harry had barely heard the last thing Draco had said. 'Hope,' it had sounded like.
'Get up,' Slytherin barked, and Draco rose to his feet, so slowly that it bordered on insolence. Standing, he was as tall as Slytherin, yet seemed much smaller, perhaps because he was slighter, perhaps because of the aura of immense power that now seemed to hang over Slytherin like an adamantine cloak. 'You,' said Slytherin, 'my little Heir, have been grit in my shoe, a needle pricking my fingers.
An irritant. You have done nothing quite as I expected. But now, you will do exactly as I say, and you will see how small your petty rebellion truly is.
'Go to the Heir of Gryffindor. Cut his bonds and free him.'
Harry saw Dracos eyes widen, his lips parting in surprise.
Slytherin said, 'Take him to the center of the pentagram, and leave him there. The demons will know, then, that he is the offering.'
Dracos mouth turned into a bloodless line of shock, and Slytherin began to smile. 'Then return, and kill the other two. After that, I might perhaps let you live.'
Draco did not move. He stood where he was, head bowed and silver hair spilling over his face, hiding his expression. Slytherin reached out his hand then, and pointed almost lazily at his Heir. Harry saw the air between them shimmer, as if it had been displaced, and Draco lurched forward a little, losing his footing. It was the second ungraceful thing that Harry had ever seen him do. He almost fell over, but the Snake Lord caught him, and held him hard by the arms. 'I am going to send you away now,' he said in a whispered hiss into Dracos ear. 'A little punishment I devised for my followers, a thousand years ago when I could still bend Time and creation to my own whims. You will remain trapped in your own mind, Draco Malfoy, while your body stays here to serve me.
Mementorius!' Slytherin cried, and there was a pulse of green light that burst between him and Draco like a firework. Then the Snake Lord released his Heir and left him standing, blinking and dizzy-looking, in the center of the room.
It seemed to take a moment for Draco to regain his equilibrium. He moved then, moving towards Harry slowly across the room, and when he reached him and stood in front of him and raised his head, Harry saw with a sinking heart the emptiness in the gray eyes that held his. He reached out with his mind, but it was like trying to put his arm through a concrete wall. There was nothing there. Dracos body stood before him, but his mind had gone, it appeared, far away.
* * * * *
He was in a gray place, but it was not the place he had been when he died. He stood in the greyness — grey sky, grey walls — and a grey floor at his feet, with a shining Pattern running through it like the pattern of bones in a fossil. He realized somehow that it was the pattern of his own life, intertwining with the lives of everyone around him. Somewhere behind where he stood was each moment of his childhood, and before him was his future.
He took a step back. He was dimly aware that his body was somewhere else, doing something else, felt his fingers on ropes, unbinding them, but it didn?t matter because where he really was, was here.
His foot came down on the pattern. And in a flash of memory, he was in a sunlit grove, riding with his father. He was eight years old and his father had broken the neck of his pet bird, and he was in tears over it. And that was the last time he had ever cried. He moved on, shifting his feet over other memories, other scenes. Saw himself flying, in green robes; they were playing Quidditch, and he was trying to knock Harry off his broom. Not caring much if Potter died when he hit the ground. He saw himself insulting the memory of Cedric Diggory, saw himself on the train on the way home taunting Harry and his friends, but mainly Harry who he knew blamed himself for Cedrics death, watching his face as he spoke, digging the knife in, twisting it. The taste of these memories was bitter in his mouth. This was his life, laid bare like a flayed corpse, each moment of petty cruelty, each loss, each defeat, each lesser and greater evil.
He walked forward. He had come to a new part of the pattern now, where the thread of his life wound around and around another and a darker thread, and knew that this was where it intertwined with Harry's. This would be the moment he had taken the Polyjuice Potion. He saw the two lines stretching forward together, sometimes closer together and sometimes farther apart, and with many lines spiraling off from them into the distance, winding through them like threads in a tapestry, although he could not see where the lines ended, or which ended first. He took a step forward, and the voices rose again in his head, clamoring like thunder.
Hermione said, Draco, I?m so sorry. His father in the asylum cell, his voice like a whip. You were born in the image he designed, with certain qualities: Magid powers. Viciousness and charm. Lack of empathy. Competitiveness. Cruelty. Fleur smiled at him, tossing her hair. Oh, evil. There is no such thing. And Harry. I
