The Prophecy of Valeo

Back in the hotel room, Bella, Harry and Ron watched as Draco slammed the door open against the wall, Hermione trailing.

"What did we bring?" he asked, running his fingers through his silver-blonde hair.

"Just your bag of stuff," Bella said, showing him the green sack of objects his mother had given to him. "We've already got it here.

"I think we'd better hurry," Harry said to no one in particular. He wondered if the Weasleys had already gotten home to see what was left of Ginny. It ripped him up inside.

"Well no shit, Sherlock," Draco said. "Do we have the books, too?"

"There wasn't anything good in them," Ron said, walking over to Hermione and standing beside her in the doorway. Draco hoped to God they wouldn't kiss.

Not because I'm in love with her, he reassured Harry, who was staring at him suspiciously, as he'd been reading his mind. Because she'd be doing it out of spite. AND STOP READING MY MIND!

He rolled his eyes, grabbing Bella by the arm as they joined the rest in the door.

Everyone grabbed hands and stood in the middle of the hall in a line, Draco and Harry on the ends.

"We'll get a running start first," Draco told them. "And then Potter and I'll Apparate us back home. Ready?" he asked.

Once everyone had agreed, they jogged as quickly as possible.

"When...can...we...go?" Ron puffed beside Hermione, who had her eyes squinted shut tightly.

"Wait," Harry said. "Something doesn't feel right...," but they'd already taken off.

A few horrid things took place at once, but it wouldn't prepare them for what was coming. They stopped somewhere over the ocean again, hanging in midair as if suspended on strings.

Draco and Harry's powers had drained out of them, like someone had pulled out a cork in their bodies, leaving them wrung and weak.

And Bella screamed, which didn't fit her at all. When she screamed in pain or agony, or terror as she was doing now, it was the worst thing in the world to a man. They wanted to roll up in a ball and cry like small children.

But no one had the time, because Harry Potter's invisible string seemed to snap, and his body flailed towards the water below. He, however, was too shocked to scream.

(A/N- alright, now I should probably leave you in suspense, but I'm afraid of some psycho finding out where I live and belting me in the head with a frying pan, so I'll be a nice little author and keep going before you mess yourself.)

No one could do anything. They could only watch as the wind flapped through is hair, his blank face unchanging and cold as a stone. It grew further away every second.

Is this how the boy who lived goes? Draco asked himself. Is this how it all ends?

Ron forced Hermione's head to turn as his body hit the water with a sickening splash so far down. She cried hysterically into his shoulder.

"It's alright, baby," he cooed, tears streaking his own face. "Let it go. Let it all go."

And suddenly, as if it had just hit her, Bella ripped off her tank top and shorts and crazily jumped off of the bed of air, her body in jackknife position.

"Ferre ponere," Ron said, pointing his wand down and swiping at the tears on his cheeks. They were silent except for Hermione's continuing sobs as they floated soundlessly downward, Bella slowing and hitting the water gently.

"I don't want to see him," she breathed between cries.

"You don't have to," Draco said in as much of a soothing voice as he could muster out of himself.

As they neared the beautiful girl in the center of the Atlantic, they saw a frail, broken-looking body in her arms with bright green, unclosed eyes that stared through them all, and sopping, jet black hair.

Over closer examination, Draco could see dark bruises underneath his soaked cloths. He had the look of a man that had gone with dignity, but in death turned pitiful and helpless.

Once they were close enough, he grabbed Bella's hand, and her hand grasped Harry's dead one. She flung her arm around his neck, Ron grabbing Harry by the armpits and yanking him up onto himself. Hermione had stopped crying. And temporarily stopped breathing, too.

She took in a gasp and fell quiet again. Bella sat on Draco's knee like a small girl, resting her head on his chest. He handed her her cloths to drape around herself.

They didn't talk for a long time. And finally when Ron spoke up, it was a simple, powerful question.

"So what do we do now?"

More, longer silence.

"I don't know," Draco said a few minutes later. "I don't know."

Meanwhile, a deadly couple laughed over a cauldron, rejoicing that their plan had worked.

She saw him swimming through the waves of souls, horrified, and knew that he had gone as well. She didn't know whether to be ecstatic or grieving, all she knew that somehow she was moving toward him.

Ginny attempted to open what she told herself was her mouth, and tried to say his name. Even if it was muffled and utterly weak, there was a buzz. A buzz of the word "Harry."

He turned toward her, and tried to smile. She'd known for days that it was impossible here.

He floated over to her, and suddenly, they weren't drowning in bloody souls anymore. They were alone, and they had their bodies back, somehow. They were in a familiar place, filled with white clouds. The place she'd killed herself and Draco. Ginny didn't care how or why, because Harry had his arms wrapped around her and was rocking back and forth.

"How?" she whispered.

"Don't ask," he said. "Just... don't ask."

* * *

Draco, Bella, Ron, Hermione, and the body of Harry Potter lay still and silent, except for Bella's quiet shivering and Hermione's small, gasping breaths. All of them had their eyes closed, hoping that when they opened them, it would all be a dream.

Draco wondered what it would be like if he suddenly woke up in his icy bed and realized that it all had never happened: none of the kisses, or his father going mad, or Ginny. He wondered what it would do to him.

And then, other thoughts haunted him.

What if it had been me that fell? Everyone stayed put for a long while. Maybe an hour, or maybe two. It didn't matter. No one had to ask if Draco had his powers. They all knew that they'd been stolen. No question who did it, either.

"How do we get home?" Ron finally whispered. Hermione gave a shuddering sigh and whipped out her wand.

"Natare domus," she choked out.

Draco hated the feeling he got but didn't dare complain. It felt like his intestines had disappeared in a fire, and felt himself shimmer away. It was probably one of the most uncomfortable things he'd ever experienced.

He could definitely see why this wasn't the travel choice chosen by most wizards. But, at least it was fast. Before he could even begin to piece together how far they'd been, they were standing in the Weasley's living room, with a drenched quarter-human and two dead bodies.

Ginny's face was white and paper-like, and even if its appearance was melancholy, they all half expected her to open her eyes. Not to mention Harry. The shock was still fresh, from both deaths. The real grief hadn't kicked in yet, because everyone was still blindly searching for a way to bring them back.

But Draco knew what he would have to do, even if he hadn't told everyone else yet.

Ron heaved Harry's body over his shoulder and laid it down as softly as he could next to his sister. She and his best friend were gone.

But it seemed unsettling, somehow, to the others. Ron wiped a fly off of Ginny's wax face, and together, the two on the couch seemed to almost be sleeping. At least, everyone wanted to believe that.

And suddenly, Hermione ran to the side of the sofa, being the most logical and being the first to have a strike of sadness, she hit the two bodies, screaming her lungs out and flailing her legs around like a three-year-old having a temper tantrum. Nobody stopped her.

"How could you?" she bellowed. "How- could- you- leave me?" she said between hitting the sofa with her fist as hard as she could. "Come back... come back!"

Trembling with fury and sadness, she took her wand from her pocket and pointed it at her friends.

"Converto abeo! Venio redeo! Tamen desero!" the spells shed bright light that hit their faces, but didn't enter their bodies. It seemed to be repelled. "Don't leave," she whispered, slipping into oblivion at the bottom of the sofa, crying softly. "Please don't go."

She doesn't deserve this, Potter, Draco thought, his life so surreal that he really expected him to answer. None of us do.

"Ginny," he murmured, kneeling next to the broken Hermione and softly touching a tendril of her fiery hair. As with Hermione, even Ron didn't hold him back from letting his feelings out on his late sister. "I love you, Ginny. Come back. Please." He knew that he sounded crazy, but in a time like this dignified was too hard.

He laid his head on her chest and closed his eyes.

"I love you," he grumbled, wiping his eyes and seeing with shock that his finger was damp with a tear. He wiped it on her cheek. "Look. I'm crying, see?" Though he could still feel the new and unusual water on his face and cheeks, his voice stayed the same.

And for the first time in his life, Draco Malfoy gently put his head on a dead, forbidden Weasley's chest and wept silently, hoping that by throwing away his hatred of love itself that he could get her to come alive again.

* * *

But of course, that would never happen. And the realization of what she had done with the help of Lucius hadn't sunk in yet. She stared over the cauldron, pushing her dark-sunset colored hair out of her face, an aching in her heart. But it was a good aching. Not the guilty or sad kind.

She carefully whipped her hand over the liquid in the pot, and it turned bright white, icily still.

"ego animadverto barathrum," she murmured. The potion swelled up, twisting itself as it hovered just above the rim of the bowl, shrinking and bulging in and out of itself until it finally stopped, splashing back into the cauldron with a new picture taking it over. But it wasn't what she'd expected.

What she had expected was a scarlet ocean of lost souls, swimming deeper into nowhere. But that's not what she saw. What she did see was so incredibly spectacular she didn't believe her eyes.

"Lucius, get in here!" she yelled. A few moments later, he slid into the room, staring at what was happening inside the pot with her. His eyes cringed in a glare.

"Dammit," he hissed. "She found the trigger." His stone-colored eyes scanned Harry and Ginny in the between.

"But I don't see how she could be that powerful... not only to pull herself out of the underworld, but to bring another with her? Lucius, if she can do this...,"

"If she can do this, then once the transformation is complete, we'll have not only two of the heirs' powers, we'll also have the Regina's power."

"But that's unheard of!" she said loudly. "If the power of the world isn't distributed properly, if one person controls it all who isn't the original beholder, it would rip them apart!" He took a step closer to her, so their faces were less than an inch apart.

"Are you questioning my power to rule?" he said, all too gently. "A sixteen-year-old girl- a Weasley at that- could never begin to understand what she can do with the universe. She doesn't deserve that. I do. And I was the one who killed that bitchy peacemaker Narcissa. Not you. And even if she was a witch instead of an immortal, it would have been easier."

* * *

"Kill me," Draco said, standing up and brushing dust off his cloths as if he were demanding tea at noon. Bella sat it the corner fingering the cross she'd found in his bag absently, until she realized that he was talking to her. Her violet eyes grew wide.

"Are you nutty?" she asked. "Let Ron do it."

"With pleasure," he snarled, but didn't move. Hermione said nothing, still lying crumpled and weak on the floor.

Suddenly, Bella's head cocked up, in a way that told everyone she'd just realized something important.

"The ring!" she exclaimed, rummaging through the bag next to her and bringing out the red and gold ring, and Ginny's prophecy book. She flipped through the pages quickly. "Back in New York I read a little through this book, and... Here it is! For if the heir touches their symbol, the dormant power inside of the object shall keepeth a piece of magic inside. Did Harry touch the ring, Draco? Do you remember?" she asked, exited.

"I don't-," he began, but suddenly remembered when Harry had looked through the things back at the burrow when they had begun to try and save Ginny. It seemed like such a long time ago. "He did!"

"So if I'm right," she reasoned, "that means that if we could somehow open a portal to the underworld and drop the ring through, they might have enough power to escape."

"Great," Ron said sarcastically. "That means that all we have to do is cross a boundary that no one had ever tried to do before, and pull two people from death."

And that's when it hit him.

Things seemed to fit perfectly into place- Draco knew that this had been planned, that soon he would have to tell them that their only chance was to go. So why not now?

"The manor," he said. They stared at him. "The Malfoy mansion. It's got loads of hidden books on the dark arts. And- oh god- it has a trap set that'll bring you right down into the underworld. It has a portal."

* * *

"No way are we going there," Ron said.

"If you want Potter and Ginny back, it's the only way."

"Do you have any idea what'll happen to us if we're caught?" Hermione said, wiping the last of her tears from her face.

"No," Draco said. "Because the worst thing they could do is kill us, and even if that happens it'll be over fast." Bella shook her head.

"Oh, yeah, they're gonna decapitate us like that, fast and painless," she said, snapping her fingers. "I don't know, but by the means of pure evil our deaths won't only leave your dad to destroy the world, but it will probably hurt a lot, too."

"Maybe it will," he answered, a light flickering on inside his brain. "But if they kill us all, we'll be able to pull ourselves out of the underworld, along with those two," he said, cocking his head at the stiff bodies on the couch that looked like they were sleeping. "So even if we do die, then they'll leave some of us behind."

"Yeah, and torture us just until we're on the brink of death, and then start it all over again!" Ron bellowed. "That'd be good fun! Like playing a jolly game of water-polo in the sunshine!" Draco ignored him as he went on.

"But they have almost all of Potter's and my powers, so that will be a handicap. Let's see, I can control the weather and manipulate minds, Potter had psychokinetic powers to move objects and electric charges in his body. But they can't get Ginny's because she's gone. That's good," he reasoned. "All we have to do is make sure that we still have a bit of the magic left in us and we may be able to fight it. I may be immune."

"Wow, that's incredible!" Hermione exclaimed. "Oh, yeah. Except for one thing. WHAT ABOUT THE BLOODY REST OF US?!"

Draco grabbed her by the cheekbone, and Ron had to restrain himself from jumping on him and ripping him to shreds.

"Hermione, I know you're in there somewhere. You're the best witch at Hogwarts! You're smarter than the teachers!" the brilliant teen couldn't help but blush a little. Draco turned to Bella in the corner, who was still fingering the cross. "And, if I'm not mistaken, unless you're really religious, that cross is your symbol. You must be like me." She smiled.

"Helga Hufflepuff was a vampire slayer. Vampires can't defend themselves against the cross. It makes sense," she said.

Draco walked swiftly beside her and kissed her quickly on the lips.

"I knew you were here for something," he said, and turned away, grabbing the bag to the left of her arm, rummaging through what was left. The ring, the pen, and the four necklaces. One, the red and gold one, was Harry's, which was for sure. They would have to take that, along with the ring; the green and silver one obviously belongs to him, so he held it tightly in his hand, throwing the yellow and black chain to Bella.

"That's yours, too," he said, clasping his own chain around his pale neck, Bella mimicking him as she did the same. "Bring the book, the cross, the ring, and the other chain," he said, taking the large golden ring in his fingers and stringing it through Harry's necklace, throwing that to her as well. She put it around her neck with her own, to keep it safe.

"So where's the heir of Ravenclaw?" Ron asked, noticing that that was the only house that was missing. Draco shrugged.

"We'll find her, I guess. We'll have to."

Hermione quietly casted a feather-light spell on Harry and Ginny as they prepared to leave for the one thing Draco Malfoy had promised his mother he wouldn't do.

They were going back.

***

Ginny could tell that this was real. This was happening, and it wasn't just her partially-there mind trying to save her by the use of delusional figures. What she was seeing was either a premonition or, somehow, she was seeing what was going on at that exact moment in the real world.

The between must have let you pick things up from where your body was, because currently she was lying on the couch in her living room, watching Draco, Ron, Hermione, and a very pretty girl she didn't know preparing to leave for somewhere.

Where's Harry? she thought. Emotion swept over her as she suddenly remembered him curled up beside her. He had died.

"How did you go?" she asked him. She spoke. It felt so unreal, and so welcome; it was like being alive again. She had spent so long in the underworld and had never really expected to feel the ordinary things she took for granted, but now that she could, she never wanted to waste them.

He couldn't bear to look at her.

"I don't know," he said quietly. "One second we were hanging in a mid-apparition over the ocean, and the next... it was like my powers were sucked out of me, Gin. And I fell and drowned. Well, I don't know if I drowned or if I was gone before that. But now that you're here, I never want to go back."

Ginny couldn't help it. What he'd said had touched her so deeply; it had driven her to the point of ecstasy to hear his voice again. She leaned in, forgetting about Draco, and kissed her boyfriend.

No, it wasn't a kiss. It was more than that. Before, they'd liked each other. You could even say love, of course. But in that kiss, she had handed her soul to him on a welcome mat. She'd given herself over, and they were no long Harry and Ginny. They were one.

* * *

Draco carried Ginny's light body outside, Ron carrying Harry, Bella and Hermione trailing. She'd said that the vanishing spell worked better outdoors.

He pushed her hair out of her eyes, and felt this heart slow and almost stop as he looked at her pale, dead face.

If we get her back, who will she run to? She'll act out of instinct, so who will she choose?

He cursed himself for being so selfish, and kept a steady pace towards the door, but was stopped abruptly by the sound of Hermione gasping and a clicking as the garage door came open, the Weasley parents coming through it.

"I'm telling you Arthur, if the Ministry keeps up like this..." but Molly would never finish her sentence. At least, not for awhile.

"Duco congelo," Hermione said, her wand pointed directly in front of Arthur and his wife. They seemed utterly shocked and frozen for awhile, until Draco realized what she'd done.

She literally froze them! Their bodies stood stiff, stuck in the same shocked face for eternity.

"I can't believe you did that!" Ron hissed. She shrugged.

"It won't kill them or anything," she said. Ron stared at her, utterly horrified, and for quite awhile he was held stiff like his parents.

"Let's just go," Bella said exasperatedly. "Honestly, when you two aren't madly snogging, you're biting each other's heads off."

"My broom's upstairs in the attic," Draco muttered, gently dropping Ginny by the banister and climbing the dusty steps slowly, quickening his pace as he thought of her alive again.

It's going to work. It has to.

By the time he reached the last flight of stairs into his once- partial room, he was panting a little. And when his foot met the wood of the attic, he was suddenly overcome with some new and unusual feeling.

He was standing in the room where everything had happened. All of it. Where he'd painted all over the walls with everlasting lipstick, where they'd spent the entire day trying to clean it, where they had kissed in the middle of a tornado... where he'd fallen in love with her.

The memories and thoughts of her fogged his mind, keeping him from going back downstairs. The pictures played in front of his eyes like a television series where you were saying goodbye to a main character, and all of the previous episodes they had been in played in a clip show at the end.

Her eyes gleamed as she healed him in the hallway, and when she'd nearly killed him with the swipe of her hand. The storm blowing her hair back as she stood in front of the window with him. Eating her sundae as she chatted with him in Diagon alley. Her hair sparkled as it lay sprawled out all over his bed just after they'd kissed. And the silver fog surrounding them as they died in perfect harmony.

He dropped to his knees, the thoughts too much for him. He didn't want to get up or collect his Malfoy dignity. He only wanted her back.

Minutes passed. It seemed like more before Hermione's voice lifted him up.

"What's taking you so long?" she called.

"I'll be right down," he said as calmly as he could, grabbing the Firebolt in the corner and power-walking back down to his vaguely- called friends. But before he reached the last flight of stairs, he closed his eyes and willed the mist to come back. He began to feel dizzy and barely even realized the fact his legs gave way, bringing him tumbling to Ron's feet.

He could see her in the mist.

* * *

She couldn't believe it. Draco was standing twenty or so feet away from them- but it wasn't really him. He was transparent, barely colored as the fog moved lazily behind him.

Ginny, was the only word he said. Or thought. She couldn't tell. Obviously Harry didn't see or hear him, because he was staring at her, utterly baffled.

But as soon as she saw him, he was gone. He disappeared in a flash, and a strong wind blew her hair back. The air smelled like metal. Cold metal that she had tasted before. In Draco.

"He went through me," she whispered disbelievingly.

"Who?" Harry asked.

"He went through me, Harry! I felt him! He was here!"

"Who!?" he repeated.

She didn't answer, and Harry knew.

"I don't love him," she murmured.

"Bull!" he said loudly. But he didn't scream. He could bring himself to yell at her.

"I don't, Harry! I swear! I know you don't believe me when I say this, but deep down he's a good guy. I mean, sure, his father murdered his mother, he's plotting to kill you-know-who and take his place as the evil ruler of the dark world, and...Why are you looking at me like that? ...But I'm sure it doesn't run in the family. And I love you, not him." It didn't matter how long she talked. She'd quickly convinced him that her words were true. What was really important at the moment was the idea forming in his brain.

"Narcissa knew about Lucius's plan," he said. "He didn't tell her, certainly. And if she protected Malfoy... and tried to destroy Lucius... and she knew what he was trying to do... what if she isn't Draco's mother? What if she's an imposter, a spy, sort of, but good?"

"Harry, that's...," Ginny began, but stopped as she realized what he was saying. "That's completely true! It makes perfect sense! And if it took so long for him to be able to destroy Narcissa...if it took him all this time to figure out how to kill her...,"

"She might not be human!" he finished for her.

"But how are we going to contact Draco, Ron, Hermione, and...," she stopped, looking at him for support. He looked back at her, a bit of confusion covering the small amount of guilt behind it.

"Her name's Bella. She's only a third human, because she's also part veela, and angel. I know it sounds weird, but she cracks a lot of jokes about it, so we just go along with it."

"She must be pretty tempting, then," Ginny murmured, the first strike of jealousy scratching her chest. Now she knew how Harry felt every time she thought about Draco. Draco with his pepper-like smell and metal lips and crazy, romantic speeches to win her heart that already belonged to the boy-who-lived.

Draco, whose kisses seemed to reveal another part of himself, a part that Ginny couldn't deny that she could definitely find herself loving very quickly. The part where he kissed her hand ten times, and started raging, fatal storms because he saw her snogging with her boyfriend on his bed. The part that could make her laugh at the most un-laughable things. And the part that made her weep at the simplest tasks at hand.

"So... er... anyway," Harry said, realizing Ginny's mind was elsewhere and frankly not wishing to see what she was thinking about. "We really need to find a way to get to them, because knowing most of them as friends, and some as enemies, of course, they'd have probably figured out a way to get into the underworld."

"But the only problem is," Ginny said, "that we're not in the underworld. We must be somewhere... we must be in the between. Somehow we've got to tell them."

"Well," Harry said quietly. "If Draco could do it..."

"Who said it was him?!" Ginny yelled. "You always jump to conclusions like that!"

"Well who else did we have that argument over? Your brother?"

"Ugh...Alright, fine! It was him! But what makes you so blindly aware that I'm in love with him?" she asked, exasperated. Harry sighed, both relieved and angry that the truth was finally coming out.

"When you were possessed, you told me that you two kissed. Draco said that he jumped on you. He said you tried to resist him, but he couldn't help himself. Then I punched him in the eye."

Ginny's heart melted for both Harry and Draco. Harry, because he must feel terrible about being cheated on, and he obviously knew that she hadn't tried to hold Draco back. And Draco because he'd lied for her, to protect her. He'd done the unthinkable. Draco Malfoy had been selfless.

* * *

"Draco, c'mon, wake up! Please, Draco!" he heard Hermione call, lightly slapping each cheek. His eyes snapped open and he sat up abruptly, broom still in hand.

"I can't believe it!" he said.

"What?" Bella asked from his other side.

"I...I think I was with her. I think that I was in the underworld again. Only... it wasn't... I think that it was somewhere in between life and death."

"Whoa," Ron muttered. "Heavy stuff."

"Thanks for the assessment, idiot," Draco snapped. Ron backed away, his face reddening in anger that he'd been forced to hold down for so long. "Ugh... I'm all stiff and crap. What the hell did I do, fall down the bloody stairs?"

Hermione nodded slowly.

"Oh," he said, and was suddenly aware that the Weasley parents were stiff and frozen just around the corner.

"I'd cast a healing spell," she said, making Draco wish for Ginny even more, "But the Ministry is probably tracking us down right now, so I can't do anything as long as we're near this house."

"Well, then, let's get moving," he said, his voice sounding thick in his throat. They were all silent for a few seconds as Bella and Hermione lifted him to his feet (which he doubted that he really needed... but what were you supposed to do when you had two beautiful girls helping you?) and they went out of the door one by one, Draco mounting his own broom which held Ginny and Ron, who swung his leg over and made sure that Bella and Hermione were safe on his sister's broom, Harry wedged in between them. His head rolled limply. It made him feel sick.

"Malfoy," Ron yelled as they flew up into the air and began to climb acceleration to avoid the woods beneath them.

"What do you want, Weasley?" he spat. "Just because I'm working with you doesn't mean I'm not homicidal."

"Same here," Ron hissed back. "I was just going to say that if something happens to me, if they capture me or something, I... I just want you to save Ginny and Harry. Forget about me."

Draco looked at him, his face expressionless.

"Never. If one of us gets caught, all of us get caught. That's just the way it is, Weasley, and I don't want any bullshit about leaving you behind, because despite the fact that you're a moron, I've got to admit that Hermione loves you, and if she can't go on, none of us can."

"Truce, then?" Ron asked.

"For now."