McGonagall's office was empty when they returned, save for the Headmaster herself.

"Where'd everyone go?" Tonks asked curiously, helping herself to a handful of lemon drops from the little tin can on McGonagall's desk, which she had not removed after Albus' death and never seemed to go empty.

"I believe our esteemed Auror Ademeus has commandeered a group of Aurors on an investigative trip to 'Merlin's Dance', which Ms. Granger and Mr. Weasley so cleverly identified," McGonagall informed them, the corner if her lips twitching.

"Fat lot of good it'll do him, without the rest of the riddle," Ron muttered under his breath, a disgusted frown on his face.

McGonagall continued as if she had not heard, "The rest of the Aurors have chosen to follow various other leads from the riddle. I have also asked Kingsley Shacklebolt and Arthur Weasley to organize defensive and offensive teams in preparation for Voldemort's assault. They have asked that Ms. Tonks and Mr. Weasley joined them as soon as they return."

Tonks and Ron glanced at each other. "I'll go," Tonks volunteered reluctantly after a moment of silence. "Ron, why don't you stay and see what else you can figure out? I think we can do without you for a while. We'll probably have to spend at least an hour or two listening to the Grand Meermupple's ideas on the proper defense of the Hogwarts towers."

The relief was evident in Ron's smile. "Thanks, Tonks. I owe you one."

"Just make sure you tell me everything—and I mean everything!" Tonks admonished before she stepped into the fireplace and disappeared in a flash of violet Floo powder.

McGonagall conjured chairs for them with a wave of her wand. A fat, squat table filled with steaming dishes plopped itself down into the center of their circle. She smiled. "Lemon drops are best enjoyed on a full stomach, or so the Headmaster always said."

"Brilliant! I'm starved!" Ron grinned.

"But you had lunch only three hours ago," Hermione protested.

"Shove over, Weasley." Draco smoothly accio'ed the plate from Ron's hand. "Potter and I get first dibs."

Ron glared at Draco and handed Harry a plate. "Prat," he muttered under his breath.

The Headmaster listened patiently as they took turns briefly relating their findings while the rest partook enthusiastically of the food. Her expression was attentive, but her eyes seemed to grow vaguer, more distant as they continued the tale. That vagueness remained even when Harry touched upon their findings in Severus' library and their suspicions regarding Voldemort's objective.

Hermione took up the thread of the story when they reached the Department of Mysteries and the Harp. At the end of it all eyes turned expectantly to him.

Harry cleared his throat and slowly lifted his eyes to McGonagall's face. She looked gravely back at him, waiting. He said, "The Headmaster once told me that in the legends the Lios Alfar left behind two gifts, just as the Svart Alfar left two curses. One of them was the thirty-six harpstrings strung in the harp that first belonged to Taliesin. It was created to choose its bearer, and to change its shape to suit that person. I think that the second gift was created to do the same. And I think that it's here, at Hogwarts."

"Well, what is it?" Draco demanded impatiently when Harry paused, wondering if he could truly be right in this, when he had only intuition and one strange, half-fanciful dream to go on.

"Godric Gryffindor's sword," Harry replied slowly.

His friends glanced at each other. "Well, it could be," Hermione said thoughtfully. "It's not mentioned even once in Hogwarts: a History, which seems rather odd." She looked at McGonagall questioningly. "Professor McGonagall?"

She nodded and briefly disappeared from the office. She returned with Godric Gryffindor's sword in her hands.

Harry accepted the sword from McGonagall and sat staring at its long, slender blade, whirling with orange flame from the reflection of the fire stirring gently within the fireplace. The rubies, scattered across the sword's hilt like a fistful of scarlet stars, glinted warmly in their silver settings. He touched them lightly, one by one, and admitted, "I have no idea what to do now."

"Harry." McGonagall's voice was no louder usual, but held that tone of steely command that could not be denied. "No artifact of such power should be awakened without an understanding that great power will extract an equal price. Would you be prepared to pay such a price?"

"That's not fair!" Ron burst out before Harry could respond. "Why is it Harry who always has to pay the price? Hasn't he given enough already?"

"Shut up, Weasley," Draco commanded sharply. "This is Potter's choice."

"No, Ron's right," Hermione answered just as sharply. "Let someone else take up the burden this time, Harry. Please. You shouldn't have to pay this price, whatever it is."

Harry looked up with a heartfelt smile at his best friends. "Thank you. But I think this is one of those things that I'm meant to do."

Harry took up the sword by the hilt, tracing a thumb over the name of Godric Gryffindor. "If there is a price, I am prepared to pay whatever you ask," he whispered to it. "Show me what I need to find."

The blade flared into an arc of blue flame in his hands. Harry gasped, but held onto the hilt tightly with both hands as runes crawled down the blade like tiny snakes. The writhing shadows solidified into words for an instant. When the light finally faded, Harry closed his eyes and held the sword mutely out to Ron, already knowing what he would find. He could feel it now, strumming in the back of his mind, as if there were some part of himself that had transmuted into steel, resonating in time with the song of the sword. It was unsettling, to say the least.

"Oh!" Hermione's voice held a hint of awe.

He opened his eyes to see Draco peering over Hermione's shoulder at the new inscription upon the sword. Hermione handed the sword to Draco, who after staring at it for a few moments passed it to McGonagall. She nodded sharply and gave the sword back to Harry. He gazed down at it for a moment longer, thumb ghosting over the name newly-carved into the slender blade. It was now longer, the blade narrower, the balance perfect for his hand. He looked up and smiled a little at his friends, trying hard to hide the strain. "Its name is the Ayrgen Sword."

[[center:***]]

They decided to retreat back to the Hogwarts library to look over the riddle once more. Hermione added some notes to her copy of the riddle before announcing briskly, "Let's go over this again from the beginning."

Harry, who had been trying to pace the anxious tension out of his mind, reluctantly sat down next to Draco at their round table. He clutched the table edge white-knuckled as a long throb of hot pain rebounded through his head. His headache had started again after his awakening of the sword, and was now almost as bad as it had been before he'd taken Madame Pomfrey's potion. Draco shot him a frown, but did not comment.

Hermione continued, "The first line: 'Gift the Light bequeathed to those they left behind'. We now know that that's Godric Gryffindor's sword, which was the second gift of the Lios Alfar. The problem is that we don't really know where it's supposed to fit into the overall puzzle. It doesn't seem to answer 'how', 'what', 'where', or 'when', though it should at least partly address one of those. Next, the third and fourth lines seem to indicate a time and a place: 'Guide in darkness o'er the Merlin's Dance takes flight...Flaming Phoenix soars with Dragon in the night.' That is, namely, Stonehenge at night, with the Draco and Cygnus constellations overhead. The second line of the riddle, 'Secrets of the Snake reveal the Riddle's mind,' we have concluded is the 'what' of Voldemort's objective. So we have the 'what', the 'when', and the 'where', but we're still missing the crucial 'how'."

"But we don't really have the 'where'," Draco argued. "Stonehenge couldn't be Voldemort's stronghold. It's too well guarded and too hard to defend to be a practical stronghold; at best, it'll only lead to Voldemort's real location. A guide, as Snape said."

Ron glared at the notes-covered riddle lying at the center of the table. "And where in the name of Merlin's bloody owl would we find that real location?" he demanded.

Draco smirked. "Right here." He tapped the notes.

"Secrets of the Snake," Hermione repeated thoughtfully. "You know something about this that we don't, don't you?" she questioned Draco accusingly.

"No more than we already told you," Draco denied. "But remember what Harry found about the castle of the ancient dark wizards. Don't you think it's rather coincidental that Snape's notes were tucked into that book rather than any other?"

"Toadflax Keep..." Harry mused.

"We think," Draco agreed. "But according to the passage you read, it had an older name that no one knows." He glanced over at the Ayrgen Sword, which had not left Harry's hands. "This is something of a hunch, but what if the Sword is the 'how'? After all, both the Sword and the Keep are very old—older than we have histories written about them."

"If it's true that there's a link between them, then the 'how' should give us a clue for the 'where'," Hermione said thoughtfully.

"When the Sword transformed, I saw words on the blade for a moment," Harry offered.

"Really?" Ron perked up. "What did it say? Anything about an ancient keep?"

"No, only—" Harry closed his eyes, trying to remember the exact words. "'By the Light of the Phoenix's song, by the Darkness in the Dragon's dreams, by the blood at the Rubies' heart is my Will bound to thine.'"

"That doesn't help much," Ron complained.

"Or maybe it does, but we don't know how yet," Hermione sighed.

"We could always exsanguinate Potter and find out," Draco suggested cheerfully.

Harry narrowed his eyes at Draco. "I'd rather we reserved that idea until we completely run out of other options," he responded dryly.

Hermione rolled her eyes at them. "Look here. The Dragon and the Phoenix are mentioned again. What does that mean?"

"That sort of makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, since that's where the Lios and Svart Alfar came from?" Harry mused.

"What? Explain that, Harry," Hermione said sharply.

Harry looked around at his circle of friends. "You mean you haven't heard this story before?"

Ron shook his head, and Draco shrugged. Harry's brows wrinkled as he recalled, "Luna told me that she heard this story on the wireless once. She said that the Dragon was a monster whom the gods chained in the sea, until it grew into the Leviathan who wrapped his body around the earth and challenged the gods' power. The gods defeated him and cast him back into the sea, then sent the Phoenix to earth to kill him. But the Phoenix fell in love with him instead, and destroyed herself rather than killing the Dragon. The gods resurrected her from her own ashes, and she gave birth to two sons—the Svart Alfar and the Lios Alfar. In the end, the gods gave both the Dragon and the Phoenix a place among the stars."

"That's one story I hope doesn't apply to this battle," Hermione said grimly, "because we won't be able to resurrect anyone from the ashes." She hesitated and added apologetically, "Even if Luna's right about the connection between the Lios Alfar and the Dragon and Phoenix, I'm afraid I don't see anything here that'll help us with the riddle."

After a pause, Hermione nudged Ron, seated to her right, who had uncharacteristically remained silent throughout the story. He was looking at a scribbled-upon copy of his own riddle upside-down, a thoughtful frown on his face.

"You can call me insane, but there is a dragon in there," he said slowly, pushing the parchment over to Hermione.

"I don't see it," Harry said blankly, leaning over to stare at Ron's notes, hand raised halfway to a temple that had started pounding with sharp lancets of pain as soon as he had moved.

"I... think...I do," Hermione said slowly, excitement leaping from her voice. She turned the scroll over for Harry and Draco. "Look here!" she pointed at the jumble of dark lines that were Ron's notes. After a moment of squinting, Harry could finally make out the words 'Ayrgen Sword.'

"Look!" Hermione insisted, fingers tapping the scroll for emphasis. "D-R-A-G-O-N! It's an anagram!"

Harry stared down blindly at the letters. "All right," Draco said after a moment from beside him. "I see the 'dragon' now. So what is this anagram telling us?"

Hermione's quill moved across the scroll. "Well, take out 'dragon'—what do you get?"

They all looked down at the letters again. "Wyser?" Harry guessed doubtfully, hands gripping the edge of the table again as his head throbbed insistently.

"Dragonwyser...dragonsywer...dragonsewyr..." Draco mumbled. His head snapped up suddenly. "Dragonsweyr!"

"'Dragonsweyr'...could that be where Voldemort is hiding?" Hermione questioned softly.

"Dragonsweyr...Stonehenge...the Leviathan and the Phoenix...Ayrgen Sword..." Harry trailed off thoughtfully.

"We might have all the answers, but it's like we have nothing at all," Ron pounded a fist on the table in frustration. "How in blazes do we know if anything we guessed is right?"

"No, we have all the answers," Hermione interjected. "Sometimes there's a point in a riddle when you have to trust yourself and trust the riddle-maker to know that you know to put the pieces together. These are the pieces Professor Snape gave us: the gift, which is the Ayrgen Sword, the Riddle's mind, which led us to Dragonsweyr, Merlin's Dance, which is Stonehenge, and the Dragon and the Phoenix rising, which led us to now. You said we needed 'what', 'where', 'when', and 'how', and now we do."

"There are two mentions of the Dragon and the Phoenix in the riddle. Somehow they tie together with the story Luna told me and the inscription the Sword," Harry said slowly.

"How?" Ron demanded, still frustrated.

"Magic items can be keyed to a certain location, with a spell or incantation to turn them into portkeys when needed," Hermione suggested. "That message Harry saw on the blade—maybe that's the incantation."

"But Harry's already said that while holding the Sword, and it hasn't taken him anywhere," Ron protested.

"Maybe that's where Stonehenge comes in," Draco guessed. "A portal to Dragonsweyr." Then he paused and added slyly, "We also haven't tried exsanguination yet."

They looked at each other silently.

"But if we're wrong..." Harry began softly.

"If we're wrong, we'll keep looking," Hermione reassured him. "But I think this is the best shot we have right now."

The four of them went up to McGonagall's study to impart their findings and their conclusions. Her face grew graver with each word they spoke. Finally, when they finished, she nodded sharply. "I will need to confer with the Ministry and the rest of the Order. Thank you, all of you, for your outstanding work. I suspect that this may be the battle that will determine the course of this long war. Please get some rest for now."

Ron, Hermione, and Draco left McGonagall's study, already in deep debate about how best to defend the castle and its grounds. "You want to ask Grawp and the centaurs to protect the castle from Death Eaters approaching it from the Dark Forest?" Hermione was asking Ron incredulously as they stepped out of earshot. Harry had lagged behind. He stopped by the door and turned as McGonagall drew a handful of Floo powder from what looked like a miniature dented cauldron seated on the mantel.

Harry drew a deep breath. "Professor McGonagall..."

She paused and looked back at him. "Mr. Potter?"

"Professor, will you...can you tell me why he trusted Professor Snape so much? Why you're willing to put your faith in the words of the man who killed him?"

"Potter..." She sighed, her shoulders sagging tiredly and looking, for a moment, so alone there beside the phoenix-less fireplace that his heart ached for her. "You never do ask the easy questions, do you?"

"Please—" Harry replied desperately. "Please, I need to know."

Her hand opened to let the Floo powder fall back into the cauldron and turned to face him fully. "Very well," she said, looking over at a slumbering Albus in his portrait, then straightening as if settling the mantle of responsibility once more on her shoulders. "As to your first question—I never knew the answer. You must know that Professor Snape is a very private man, Potter, and the Headmaster kept his confidence. He never volunteered the information, and nor did I ask. As to your second question...I taught him once, you know, when he was a student here at Hogwarts... And unlike some of the other boys, he never tried to make himself seem more than he was, or blame others for mistakes he made himself. He saw the world in a particular way, of course, and believed himself to be more right than wrong, but he never tried to shade what he saw reality to be. And so he has remained to this day." She sighed and shook her head. "Now that tells me nothing of whether I should trust his message. But—I think...Dumbledore somehow knew what was about to happen, and he left his Will trusting that we would understand his message. So even if I cannot trust my own intuitions, I have faith in him."

Faith. Could he trust his friends' lives to that alone, when he was as guilty as the Headmaster had ever been in keeping knowledge from them?

McGonagall had moved to her desk and opened one of the drawers. She withdrew something from it and turned to hold it out to him. It was a roll of parchment, tied with a bright red ribbon.

He took it from her. "This is...?"

"Dumbledore, some weeks before that Christmas, entrusted to me a letter that he had written to you. He said that I would know when to give it to you."

Harry pulled loose the ribbon and broke the seal beneath. He uncurled the heavy parchment with suddenly unsteady hands.

My dear Harry, he read,

Once again I must ask your forgiveness. I know that this time has been hard for you, and made harder by our need for secrecy. I hope that after reading this you will understand why.

You knew, of course, that Severus had been instrumental in our hunt for the horcruxes, and it was only with his help that we were able to destroy all but two of them—or so we thought. But I underestimated Voldemort's power, and that was my great mistake. I trust that you have encountered in your studies by now what is known as "Blood Wizardry"—and perhaps, of the even darker magicks that I shall not name here. It is a term that has been banned by the Ministry for many years, and though I have disagreed with that policy, I must also admit to a certain distaste—and what is worse, disdain—for the subject. It has been a weakness, and we have paid dearly for it.

For you see, what we have since learned is that not only has Voldemort placed pieces of his soul in the seven horcruxes, he also grafted smaller pieces into the Dark Marks through which he bound each of his followers, allowing him to draw on their powers and control them with his will. He could then use the link to draw himself into another body, to feed upon it like a parasite, as he did with Quirrell, and later with Peter Pettigrew—

Harry shivered, wanting to cast away the parchment, now, before having to read what came next, but his eyes automatically found the words.

—This meant, then, that in addition to destroying the horcruxes, we would also have had to destroy every one of Voldemort's Death Eaters in order to destroy the Dark Lord himself. For if we allowed even one of them to live, Tom would have the opportunity to escape and begin again. I am, in all likelihood, simply a very foolish old man for not being able to make that sacrifice.

Harry lifted his head to stare at the whorled gold grain of the doorway with wide, shock-blank eyes. But after a moment he looked down again and continued to read.

But I had promised him sanctuary, Harry, and to go back on that promise was more than I could bear. And there are others—others for whom joining Voldemort was not a choice, but an accident of birth or circumstance. I could not find it in me to condemn them all to death based on one man's crimes.

But there are magicks that go even deeper and farther back than Blood Wizardry, and it is my hope that they will yield the answer to Riddle's defeat without the cost of all that he has touched with his Mark.

The burden falls to you now, Harry, and I know that I place more on your young shoulders than anyone should have to bear. But I place my trust in the power within you which the Dark Lord knows not, which can never be taken from you by magic, no matter how strong.

Harry let the parchment slip from his fingers, and it vanished before it touched the ground. His throat closed upon a scream or a whisper or a name—he could not tell. He stood there and trembled for a long time, until a firm hand touched his shoulder.

"Potter? Potter, what is it?"

The concern in McGonagall's voice shook him out of his daze. "I...Professor McGonagall, what is the purpose of Soul Wizardry?"

A year ago she might have been shocked at the question. But her in brief tenure as the Headmaster of Hogwarts she had already seen things and done things which perhaps no other Headmaster ever had. Now she didn't even seem surprised.

She bowed her head for a moment, and then looked towards the pedestal where the Pensieve usually stood. "There is a point in every witch or wizard's life when they come to a crossroads, and the choice they make there determine the path they will walk for the rest of their lives. Many make that choice without even realizing it, and rarely is there ever a turning from that road. Voldemort chose the path that he thought would lead him to eternal life and power which no other wizard has known. At the end of that path is Soul Wizardry. The Soul Wizard is he who would tether his soul to this earth to that he is able to live without human constraints. He becomes a being of pure magic, able to channel far great energies than any mortal being. But like all magic, there is a price..."

"What price?" Harry demanded tightly.

But McGonagall shook her head. "Albus never left me that memory," she replied.

Harry left her then, walking away from the Headmaster's study in a daze, not even noticing where his footsteps were taking him until someone's hand on his shoulder stopped him in his tracks. He looked up in surprise to see Draco and Hermione in the corridor, waiting for him. "Harry, where are you going?" Hermione asked. "We're attacking Dragonsweyr in three hours. Ron's gone to alert Tonks and his father and the other Aurors. You've been up since before dawn. You need to rest—we all do."

"Hermione," Harry replied slowly, willing himself to come up with words for the relentless, growing dread gnawing at him. It was a feeling, he realized, that had hovered in the back of his mind since he had first laid his eyes on Severus' message. "Look Hermione, I just...I don't know if we have three hours."

"What do you mean?" Draco asked sharply.

Harry clutched at his head, fighting to think past the throbbing pain that dogged his every step. "I don't know! I just feel...I just..."

Hermione put an arm around him and caught at his hands. "Harry," she said in a low, steady, strong voice. "Think through this one step at a time. Trust in yourself. Trust in your instincts. Tell us what's bothering you."

He moved to an open window, staring blindly out into the evening shadows creeping up on a frozen heatless sun, and tried to collect his thoughts. "Albus...left me a letter. He said that...that Voldemort didn't just place his soul into the horcruxes. That he ...used Soul Wizardry to bind himself to the Death Eaters, so that he could resurrect himself through them even if his physical body were destroyed."

There was a small, strangled sound from behind him. "But he also said that there are ancient magicks which will allow us to destroy the Dark Marks..."

"The Sword, Harry!" Hermione exclaimed. "That must be what he meant!"

But Harry wasn't listening. He was hurtling down the pathways of his memories to a point were they all converged, to that moment when he stood waiting, yearning and silent, wondering if Severus could hear the question that his heart had asked—and then the irrevocable next moment, when Severus' face had twisted with so much grief and pain that it had stunned him with the power of Petrificus...

How could I have forgotten, he wondered. Despite all that came afterwards, how could he have... And then he whispered, "No. Oh no. He couldn't have. He..."

"Harry? What is it?" Hermione's voice was urgent and worried.

"I thought that he would trust me with the truth, but...even now..." Harry whispered. "He asked me...to forgive him. But I thought..."

"Dammit, Potter, stop muttering like a lunatic and make some sense!" Draco voice snapped out at him.

Harry turned to look at them, eyes blinded with a twisting, hurting thought. "Why...Why do you think Professor Snape gave us such a convoluted puzzle to solve—a chess game, a riddle, meanings within meanings—if the message was already ciphrascripted? Why not just tell us?"

"Because he was afraid that the spell would be broken?" Draco suggested.

"...or because he knew that it would be broken," Harry replied slowly, and knew from the stunning, icy horror lancing into his heart that he was right. Beyond logic, beyond anything but cold, merciless certainty, the pieces finally clicked in his mind, and Harry suddenly knew why Severus had sent the message he had.

"Is that possible?" Draco was asking Hermione.

"It's difficult, but it's not impossible," Hermione replied thoughtfully. "Like all Muggle cryptology or wizarding ciphrascriptology, it would take luck or a great deal of power, but it can be done."

"Think about it," Harry whispered. "The chess game...told us exactly which moves we're making. The siege against the Black King—that's Voldemort's decoy. He'll hit us here with everything he's got, while he moves like the White Pawn into power. A transformation from a Pawn to whatever he wants—think of how much power that must mean. And then the riddle—he made sure the choice was ours. Who else could have solved it? Who else could have known about the Gift, the Chamber of Secrets, even Riddle's name? And then the Ayrgen Sword, Dragonsweyr—those clues telling us exactly how to attack Voldemort in his own castle. Maybe even how to kill him completely. But who do you think the Black Bishop is? Who were those pieces sacrificed in the Endgame?"

He turned. He saw his own horror growing like a dementor's poisoned trail in Draco's eyes. "No..." he breathed.

The same look was echoed on Hermione's face as her quick mind began to follow along Harry's thoughts. "Soul Wizardry...Blood Wizardry. They're connected. They both need a sacrifice. In the darkest form of Blood Wizardry, the power is in the death of the victim. In the darkest form of Soul Wizardry, it's in...it's in the death...of...of the...?" She held her hand to her mouth as she began to cry soundlessly.

Draco said numbly, "Voldemort would probably not look further than the chess game. He'll think that Snape is warning us about the attack. And the Ministry—they'll always be one step behind. That's brilliant. That's...bloody..." Harry felt frozen, completely cold, a total blockage of emotion erected around his mind like a tourniquet around a wound that he knew would otherwise bleed him to death. Draco suddenly turned and threw his fist into the wall. "The bastard," he cried, his voice raw, "what the fuck is he doing?"

"Acting as...our decoy," Harry heard himself reply distantly. "Voldemort will think that we'll be preparing for an attack at Hogwarts, which means he won't expect us to be searching for his castle. Meanwhile he'll be conducting the...ceremony, in which he'll be exhausting a good chunk of his powers. Snape is giving us the exact window during which Voldemort will be vulnerable and not expecting an attack."

"Twelve hours since we received the message," Hermione whispered, and Harry closed his eyes, pushing back against the images supplied by his all-too-ready imagination of what Voldemort could do to a person in twelve hours.

"I'm going there," he announced abruptly.

"Harry..." Hermione whispered.

"Hermione, I have to go. I have to."

She shook her head stubbornly.

"Hermione..." He stopped and closed his eyes. "When Ron asked me if I trusted him—I lied. I didn't know if I could trust him or not. But Hermione...all I knew then...what I realized in that moment was that it didn't matter if he was lying. I would have followed him to the end of that path even if I knew that it would lead to my death. So I won't allow his soul to be destroyed. I won't. You have to help me."

She wiped away her hears with the back of one hand, the familiar determination settling over her face. "You need someone watching your back, Harry. I'm going with you."

"No, I'm going with him," Draco interrupted. "They need someone with brains here to help Weasley with the backup." Harry stared at him in surprise. "What, you think you Gryffindolts are the only ones with a sense of honor?" the other man snapped. "He was my Head-of-House, you self-righteous little bastard! I have as much a right to go as you do."

"But—the Black Rook—" Another stab of pain crashed into the space between his eyes, this time accompanied by images. "Oh Merlin—"

He should have realized it before, he railed helplessly at himself, trapped by the images that were now seeping from Voldemort's mind into his. He should have known that he could not completely block against Voldemort, not against this. He was too tied to it all. Oh, Merlin. Merlin, Merlin Merlin.

A sharp crack. A burning along his right cheek. He opened his eyes to see Hermione crouched in front of him, her face white. "Block it, Harry!" she was screaming. "Block it now!"

He did, with an effort, and leaned back against the cool stone wall behind him, panting raggedly. Then he struggled upward. "I've run out of time," he said to Draco, voice clipped with pain, anguish swept beneath a veneer of ice. "If you would follow me, you take your life into your own hands."

Draco sneered. "So sure that the Black Rook is me and not you, Potter? After all, there are two."

Ignoring him, Harry turned. "Hermione..." he said to his friend.

She nodded tightly without words, then reached down and took up Draco's hand in hers, muttering a simple Healing Charm. "Let's go," she said to both of them, and led the way back to the library.

On the way Harry murmured a quick summoning spell. If any Death Eaters were left at Voldemort's stronghold, an invisibility cloak could come in handy.

Hermione reached up around her neck, and then held out a gold necklace towards Harry. "I've set it for Stonehenge exactly three minutes from now," she told him. I'm also going to try to track you, and it'll be much easier if you have something of mine with you. That's the necklace my parents gave me when I was graduated from Hogwarts," she added, "so don't lose it."

Harry nodded, fingers curling around the thin thread of gold. "I won't," he promised.

The Sword gleamed in the firelight of the library on the table where Harry had left it. Hermione took it up in both hands, staring down at it for a moment, before turning and presenting it to Harry. "You're a great wizard, Harry," she said to him earnestly as her fingers curled strongly around his on the hilt. "And it's not because you're the Boy Who Lived, or because you inherited Voldemort's powers—you are a great wizard. Voldemort doesn't define the person you are. Just remember that. And remember that the future is not written: not for the Black Bishop, not for the Black Rooks, and not for you."

Harry leaned forward to kiss Hermione on the cheek. "Thank you, Hermione, for being a true friend," he replied. "Tell Ron that we'll be waiting for him."

She nodded tightly and stepped back, allowing Draco to take her place. "Don't you dare," he warned as Harry opened his mouth. "We've already agreed, so don't make me hex you. Because you wouldn't look impressive at all going on a suicide mission into Voldemort's castle with green tentacles sticking out of your face."

Green eyes challenged silver for a long moment before Harry's lips finally curved in a slight wry smile. He threw his invisibility cloak over the both of them, and held out his hand to Draco. Their hands clasped around the necklace as the portkey activated.