'That was Ron and Ginny you saw,' said Harry, and there was amusement in his voice. 'Sorry.'
Draco let his eyes flick from Ron to Ginny. They both nodded.
'Damn,' he said, with feeling.
'Still, the spell thing was pretty cool,' said Ginny. 'And you looked very scary and all, at least before you shrieked and fell over and fainted.'
'I think you're mixing up 'shriek' with 'howl of murderous rage','
Draco said, and squinted at her. 'Are you two all right?'
'The Patronus spell is supposed to protect you against threats,' said Harry. 'Ron and Ginny aren't a threat, so your Patronus just sort of…vanished.'
'And I didn't even get to see it,' said Draco mournfully. 'Was it cool?'
'It was.' Harry's tired, dirt-streaked face broke into a smile. 'You did it, Malfoy,' he said. 'Whatever your happy memory was, it worked.'
Draco was too tired to smile back at him, but he said, 'You know, Potter, it really doesn't involve Hermione, a pair of luminous shorts, and — '
'I know,' Harry cut him off. Ron and Ginny were now looking extremely curious. 'I know when you're trying to wind me up, Malfoy. Okay,' he added quickly, looking as if he were remembering the destruction of Lupin's office. 'Most of the time.'
Ginny was gazing at Draco anxiously. 'You're shaking,' she said.
'The shaking is a side effect of the terror,' said Draco. 'Don't worry about it.'
Harry looked over at Ron. 'Did you find anything?' he asked quietly.
Ron shook his head. 'Nothing,' he said. 'Nobody around for miles.
No towns, no houses. We came back because it was getting dark.' He and Harry exchanged an anxious glance. 'I was thinking,' Ron went on in a low voice, 'maybe we could make some kind of stretcher or something. Hang it between the broomsticks. We can't stay here, and we've got to do something.'
'It makes me nervous when you carry on about me like I'm not here,' said Draco waspishly.
'An easily solved problem,' said Ron. He grabbed Harry by the back of his shirt and dragged him a few feet away, where they commenced talking in hushed whispers.
Draco raised himself up on his elbows and looked at Ginny. She looked back at him with an indifferent expression. 'Weasley — ' he began, but she cut him off.
'It was a dragon,' she said.
'It was what?' said Draco, startled.
'Your Patronus,' she said, dispassionately. 'It was a dragon. It was silver. I thought you should know.'
Draco opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by a hoarse shout from Ron, and another shout of surprise from Harry.
Ignoring the searing bolt of pain that shot through his leg, he twisted around to see what was going on. He saw Ron and Harry standing with their wands out, and beyond them the dark shape of a tall man. A stranger had Apparated into the clearing.
Lupin turned uneasily in the center of the moonlit grove, his ears pricked, alert for noises. He had not been in the Forbidden Forest for many years, but it had changed surprisingly little, and he had had no trouble following Sirius' directions. Of course, he and Sirius had crisscrossed these paths, four-footed, enough times as children that it was not surprising they were burned into his brain.
The Forest, being a wild place, spoke not just to his human senses but also to his wolf-sense. Through the narrow corridors of trees, he glimpsed the movements of tiny animals — the skitter of their feet, the pale green jewel-like flash of eyes. He breathed in cold night air and the attendant forest smells of mold and moss and animals, of things growing and things dying. He knew this forest was home not just to deer and dormice, but to giant spiders, vampires, hippogriffs, centaurs and unicorns, all manner of things magical, none of which he would have had cause to fear in his lycanthropic form.
As a man, though — but of course, he was never quite a man, never quite only a human man. So it was not entirely surprising that he heard the centaur approaching long before it became visible, breaking from the cover of the trees and cantering towards him. It was a male centaur, young-looking (although that meant nothing), with pale blond hair and a palomino coat. A satchel was slung over his back and his eyes as he approached Lupin were flinty and suspicious.
'You summoned me,' he said. 'But you are not Sirius Black.'
'Sirius Black sent me,' said Lupin quickly. 'He said you owed him a favor. I am his friend. He sent me to collect the favor in his name.'
The centaur's nostrils flared. 'Your kind and my kind are old enemies, werewolf,' he said. 'You should count it as a favor that I do not trample you to death. If there were more of us here — '
'Yes,' said Lupin, 'Where are the rest of you? Sirius told me to ask for Ronin, and Bane — '
'Gone,' said the centaur, with a hoarse laugh. 'Fled in terror, all of them.'
'In terror of what?'
'In terror of He who Rises,' said the centaur simply. He looked narrowly at Lupin's blank expression. 'Surely you know who he is.
Surely you know that he made your kind, as assuredly as he made the vampires and the veela, a thousand years ago.'
Lupin felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. 'Salazar Slytherin,' he breathed. 'So he has come back.'
'He is weak now,' said the centaur. 'He has only just risen. He does not yet possess his old powers. But that will come. We have seen it in the movements of the planets, have read it in the ancient books.'
