He paused and stared at it. Its gold face, the black numbers, the watch his father had worn until the day he died, and Sirius had taken it off his dead wrist, and then Hermione had made it work again, for him. He knew by heart what was engraved on the base. For Harry, from Hermione, your best friend.

Hermione. An arrow of dismay shot through him. What have I done? He stopped dead in his tracks and turned to go back to the castle, but his foot caught in a bent tree root, and he fell forward into the snow.

The map led Draco to an old stone wall at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, in the center of a deserted clearing. A tree had grown up through the center of the wall, splitting the stones apart with its roots. Draco leaned back against its trunk in the shadow of its bare leafless branches, and looked out over the frozen landscape.

The sky had darkened to cobalt, marked here and there with the thumbprint of a black cloud. Everywhere the snow stretched white and cold and sparkling, coated with shimmering ice. The lake was an iced-over diamond, softened to a muted blue by the gathering darkness. And in the distance the castle rose, dark and shadowy and ancient, looking as it must have looked a thousand years ago when Salazar Slytherin and Godric Gryffindor had lived there as children.

Sometimes, looking out at the castle, memories of that other life came to him, as easily as the memory of a dream. They had been present here together for the building of the castle, the two young men, still almost children, riding horses side by side through the dry blue waters of the cornflower fields in summer. Just by touching his hands to the old stone wall, he could hear their boys´ voices echo in his head.

Come down off the wall, Salazar, why break your neck?

Why not?

You know why not.

Do you love me so much as all that, Godric?

I love you well enough.

Draco opened his eyes. He wondered if Rowena were still alive, would she cry to know what had become of Slytherin, her first love, forever trapped in Hell? He wondered briefly what Hell was like. A burning place, as it was usually depicted? Or a frozen land of ice and snow, warmed by no fires, lit by no light at all?