them, the answer is yes. Yes, they might well be in danger.'
'We're coming home,' said Sirius. 'Right now.'
Lupin's shoulders sagged with relief. 'Thanks, Padfoot.'
'Thanks has nothing to do with it,' said Sirius, looking anxiously at Lupin. 'This is Harry we're talking about. My responsibility. And Draco. My responsibility too. I should have paid more attention to what you said last time we talked, about them being in worse trouble than we could possibly imagine.'
'I really didn't think this would happen,' said Lupin, looking defeated. 'I've got no idea what I'm going to tell Dumbledore, I don't know if even he knows what the possibilities are-'
Sirius looked like something had just occurred to him. 'Remus,' he interrupted. 'How long has it been since you've been back to the Forbidden Forest?'
'The — the Forest?' said Lupin blankly. 'God. Ages.'
'If I tell you where to go, could you — could you go there for me and meet someone I think could help us?'
'Go to the Forbidden Forest and meet someone for you?' Lupin repeated, looking bewildered.
'Would I ask you if it wasn't important?'
'Yes,' said Lupin, firmly.
'Moony…'
'All right, all right,' said Lupin. 'What do you want me to do?'
'Stop that,' said Harry irritably. 'It's extremely annoying.'
He glared over at Draco, who made a face back at him. In the two hours since Ron and Ginny had been gone, Draco had discovered that if he held out his hand, palm up, towards Slytherin's sword, it would leap off the ground and into his grasp. This had struck him as such a neat trick that he kept tossing the sword several feet away, making it jump towards him, and then repeating the process. It was giving Harry a headache.
On the other hand, Harry thought, with a twinge of guilt, the pain of having a broken leg must have been awful, and so far Draco hadn't complained.
'Malfoy,' he said.
Draco looked up. 'What?'
'When the Dementors get near you, what do you hear?'
Draco looked at him narrowly. 'A cappella singing,' he said finally.
'I hate a cappella singing.'
'Very funny. What do you really hear?'
Draco was unable to repress a very small shudder. 'Horrible things,' he said.
'Well, if you quit flinging that sword around, I'll teach you how to get rid of them.'
Draco hesitated for a moment, then laid the sword down carefully next to him. He looked over at Harry, who got up from where he was sitting, came over, and sat down next to Draco, trying to remember exactly how it was that Lupin had explained the Patronus spell to him three years ago.
'Okay,' said Harry. 'First you've got to think of a happy memory.'
Draco blinked. 'A what?'
'A happy memory. It's important. The happiest memory you can think of, and you have to really concentrate on it.'
Draco shut his eyes and thought. And thought. A happy memory.
When had he been happy? Not with his parents, certainly. Not at school. He thought of the wardrobe back at Malfoy Manor, of sitting there with Hermione, eating Chocolate Frogs and kissing. He thought of the night that he had prevented his father from killing Harry, how afterward he had lain in the grass with Harry and Sirius and Hermione sitting around him, and Hermione had told him that he had been amazing and brave. But these memories were colored now by the knowledge that she didn't, in fact, love him, and although he knew that and accepted it, probing the memories too much still set off small agonies inside him, like the pain-warnings of a broken tooth.
He opened his silver eyes and looked at Harry. 'I haven't got one,' he said.
Harry looked surprised. 'What do you mean?'
'Just what I said,' said Draco. 'I haven't got a happy memory.' He shrugged. 'Don't make a big deal about it, Potter.'
Harry was stunned. 'Surely there must be something.'
'Well, there was that time Slytherin won the House Cup my first year. Oh wait, you came along and ruined that one, didn't you? And we've never won a match against you, so that won't work either.
What can I say? You've screwed up every happy memory I might ever have had.'
Draco had shut his eyes again. The invisible presence of Hermione sat between them, unmentioned. And for the first time in his life, Harry felt a twinge of guilt for having succeeded somewhere that Draco had failed. 'Come on, Malfoy,' he said hesitantly, 'I mean, you must have won something. A contest. Anything.'
'Well, there was that time my mum entered me into the Handsomest Boy in Chipping Sodbury contest when I was seven, and I had to wear this outfit she made, and I've suddenly realized that no power on this earth is going to get me to tell you the rest of that story, so never mind. No, Potter, I haven't won any contests.' Draco shifted his back against the rough bark of the tree. 'Guess you'll have to think of some other spell.'
'There is no other spell,' said Harry, casting about in his mind for some solution. 'Malfoy…' he said slowly.
