The Kindly Ones by A.J. Hall

I felt like a leper and a traitor too
To everything we once knew was true
You avoided my eye and I knew that you knew
And something in my heart screamed no

Tom Robinson: The Wedding

The two glasses were balanced on one of the yacht's two great primary winches.  Precariously balanced, one might have said; but that June night in Frikes harbour the sea was so calm it looked more like oil than water, the crew were off somewhere ashore (and had been given strict instructions not to return any time soon) and the two naked figures in the cockpit were so still that any observer - had one been able to breach the warding charms about the anchored yacht - might have suspected that they had been the victims of a Petrifying Jinx.

Eventually, with a sigh of deep satisfaction Draco stretched, extricated his arm from beneath Neville's body, and started to haul on a thin rope which had been looped around the winch and which disappeared over the side into the depths of the water.

"Another glass?" he asked, flourishing the champagne bottle that had emerged from the depths and gripping it tightly between his thighs while he removed the foil and wire.

Neville grinned lazily back at him.  His joints felt so thoroughly loosened that he was liquid honey puddling on the teak-inlaid cockpit seats, radiating the stored heat of the sun back into the night. "And why not?"

With a deft twist of his wrist and quick upward pressure with his thumbs Draco popped the cork.  It went back over his shoulder and hit the water with a faint "plop".  A liberated froth of bubbles foamed up and over the bottle's neck, surging uncontrollably back across Draco's stomach to the dark hollow of his navel, the feathery delicacy of the line of hairs leading up to it surprised by the moonlight as the conquering tide of bubbles thickened and redefined them as threads of tarnished silver.

"Well," Draco commented as they were lying back, propping themselves against the cockpit coaming once more, glasses in hand, "this one's a first."

"Mm?"

He shrugged.  "Score one for Ithaca.  Today must be the first day of the entire holiday you haven't been fretting about finding a networked fire, so you could pester someone back at the Manor about how the estate's managing to cope in your absence.  I should think by now you could recite the state of health of every last pig on the place."

Neville felt himself flushing.

He was acutely aware that this was a holiday that they had not planned for.  And, in one sense, that it was All His Fault they were taking it in the first place.

A persistent cold - neglected during the 16 hour days he'd had to put in to comply with a sudden slew of idiotic new regulations imposed by the International Council on Magical Plant Exports - had edged imperceptibly into pneumonia, which only Gran, on one of her rare, unheralded visits, had managed to spot.

Her response had been thorough and almost panicky (weak chests, it was said, ran in the Longbottom line).  She had banished the dogs from the bedroom  - alleging they "carried germs" - and would have banished Draco if he hadn't proved that his will was as strong as hers when things came down to the wire.   She'd done the next best thing, though; drowning him fathoms-deep in guilt for not spotting his illness earlier.  Since Draco manifested guilt by alternate fits of sulks or violent argument it hardly made for a restful atmosphere. 

Neville had found himself deeply grateful to Narcissa, who had confined her nursing duties to sitting on the end of his bed, nibbling at the Valrhona-dipped crystallized ginger she had brought him as a present, and enlightening him at delicious, inconsequential length about the sexual foibles of three generations of Ministerial bureaucrats, the Hogwarts faculty, the staff of the Daily Prophet and all of their respective friends, family, pets and acquaintances, completely avoiding the clouds of recrimination which had enveloped the rest of the household.

Nevertheless, it had been an inconceivable relief when the Healer Draco had dragged in at wand-point had prescribed a prolonged Mediterranean cruise by way of convalescence. 

And now here they were.

He coughed.  Draco eyed him sharply, as if to see whether the indiscretion would be repeated.

"I - well - I worry.  Someone has to."

Draco snorted. 

"Such as, say, Mrs. P.  Our very competent estate manager.  His hand-picked staff.  At a pinch, Lupin - "

"Hardly tonight."  Neville gestured explanatorily at the large yellow disk of the moon, which had now cleared the further headland.  Across the moon-path which laid a track across the dark water the black-finned outlines of two dolphins rose and fell and left swirls of phosphorescence in the water as they played in the darkness.

Draco grinned.

"True. Or even I couldn't complain you were worrying unnecessarily about the livestock."

"Draco!"

His lover grinned.  "Anyway, as I said.  Score one for Ithaca.  It's only since we got here that you've started properly to relax - you don't find it easy getting your head round this "gentleman of leisure" concept, do you?"

"No," Neville mumbled. "You could call it a Protestant work-ethic, provided you substituted Gran for God."  He allowed himself, reluctantly, to smile.  "Probably God does. If he exists, that is. But it is lovely here, isn't it?"  His smile deepened, and became slyer.  "Though I've got to say, when the man said When you set out for Ithaca, pray that the journey may be long I bet what he didn't have in mind was taking one look at the chart and muttering, Ooh, I don't like the look of those overfalls off Cape Sounion - let's tell the crew to take it through the bumpy bit without us, and we'll Apparate cross-country via Hydra and Spetses, and the two wildest house-parties we can blag our way into -"

Draco's grin broadened to match his.  "Max and Pietro are fun, aren't they?"

Neville shrugged, and then nodded.  "Mm.  Well.  Thank god your mother's illegitimate half-brothers are better company than your father's, that's all I can say."

He downed a hefty swig from his glass.  "Party animal," he added.

Draco raised an eyebrow.  "And who was it insisted on trailing me through every bar in Hydra Town in the vague hope that we might by pure random chance bump into some depressed middle-aged Muggle singer with a Canadian accent?"

"Well - it was worth it on the off-chance.  As we were there."  Draco was still looking sceptical. Neville sighed.

"It's a folk club thing.  You wouldn't get it.  Anyway, ok.  You win.  We're on holiday, and I'm going to unwind and let the estate look after itself for the next fortnight." He paused.  "Unless there actually is an emergency, of course."

"Deal.  Emergencies excepted.  So, where to next?  We can't stay here - the man at the taverna said there's two flotillas due in tomorrow.  The place will be overrun with seasick Muggles. And I'm hardly going to be heading in that direction."

He nodded towards the west.  Cephalonia was hidden behind the nearer headland, and a mile or so of strait separated the two islands, but in the calm night noises carried - especially to war-sensitised wizarding ears.  A burst of raucous house music broke upon the thyme-scented night air, as the late bars of Fiskardo opened for business.

Neville - expecting the question - reached into the open-fronted recess in the cockpit wall, pulled out a chart, plonking it in front of Draco.  Draco moved the champagne bottle up behind Neville to make room for it.

One stubby finger stabbed down.

"Here.  Paxos. No airport - the whole island isn't more than six miles long at the outside.  Only three villages on the whole place.  And we won't go to the main one - this harbour at the north end - Lakka Bay - will be perfect for us to anchor up."

Draco looked, shrugged, and nodded.  "Sounds fair enough.  What's that - sixty miles?"

"Give or take.  Less than eight hours, even if we take it steadily.  Be there for afternoon tea."

An elegant nose wrinkled.

"Or cocktails."

"That a hint you want a refill?" 

Without waiting for a response, Neville swept his arm back to collect the bottle.  Over-impulsively, of course, as ever, fuck it.  His belated rescue grab failed - the bottle tipped inexorably over, spilling its contents across his chest. 

"Oh, shit!  And that was the last of the vintage your mother gave us, too.  Oh, god, I don't know why I'm just so fucking clumsy -"

Draco's eyes glittered in the moonlight.  His tongue flicked out, sweeping across his lips in a lazy, defining arc.

"Well," he drawled, "now you've done it, it would be a crying shame to waste it.  Especially since it was a present."

He bent his head, and, with the concentrated precision of a Burmese cat applying itself to a pool of spilled cream, began lapping at the champagne trail that led down Neville's body.

Each nerve Neville possessed began to quiver.  Separately.

Eleanor looked across the room, mentally inventorying the packed suitcases sitting by the hotel bedroom door.  She would have liked to risk a quick look at her watch, but was unsure whether the movement of her arm would awaken her sleeping husband.

 A complicated business, this double bed one, and one which was going to take more getting used to than she had expected.  So many extra limbs to manage - and there didn't seem to be a way of arranging them which avoided awkwardness  - also, she'd not anticipated just how much heat an extra person added, and she'd found it difficult getting comfortable, even without the added, embarrassing difficulty of dodging round the damp patch - she knew now what the girls at work had meant by their sly comments about such matters, which they conspicuously cut short if they saw she could hear them, assuming - quite wrongly, of course - that she'd be shocked.  Mummy had always emphasized that just because other people led their lives according to different standards that was no reason to look down on them, or to make a parade of one's own values.  And both she and Reverend Mother had insisted that one day she would find someone who shared her principles, and wouldn't pressure her to change them, not like -

As ever, her mind shied away from the forbidden topic. 

That was all over.  Had been for years.

And anyway, Mummy and Reverend Mother had, after all, been quite right: the proof of that was right here besides her.

This time she did move her arm - after all, missing the flight would be a disastrous start to the honeymoon, and she really ought to check the time -

Still only 3.10 am. And - it seemed she hadn't been careful enough moving her arm. The body next to hers stirred.  An amused voice spoke out of the darkness.

"Honestly, Ellie, I'm not going to miss the plane.  I have caught them before, you know."

Unlike you hung unspoken on the air between them.  She gave a small, embarrassed giggle.

"Sorry.   But it is so exciting."

Roddy's voice had a husky edge to it.

"It is.  And you've no idea what it means to me, being the one to show you it all.  I only wished I could have gone on with my original plan and kept the destination a complete surprise until we got to the airport -"

But then I'd have missed all the fun of reading up in advance and going over in my head what I was going to see first, and buying the right books and clothes -

Dutifully, she said, "Well, that was a shame for you.  And I do love surprises -"

Which was, by and large, true, so no need for her to cross her fingers there.  But it seemed it wasn't just double beds which made marriage complicated, and no-one explained that sort of thing to you in advance.

Roddy sighed.

"Yes.  Well.  It was my own fault.  I made some stupid joke to your father about whisking you off to Las Vegas, and he got so agitated I had to come clean about where we were really going."

She giggled.

"Oh, golly.  Poor Daddy!  Not only abroad, but American abroad.  With neon lights and gambling dens! No wonder the poor pet got fretful."

Roddy's voice was rueful.  "And the rest.  He cross-examined me for hours.  I practically ended up having to give him my formal oath that we weren't going anywhere - what's that word he's so keen on? - oh, tripperish, yes - that there wasn't even an airport on the island itself, and no night-clubs or anything.  I could understand it if I'd been planning to take you to Majorca or the Costa Brava, or somewhere else that the oiks have colonised, but a villa in the Ionian?  I mean, given you can hardly move in their house without tripping over some book or other written in Latin or Ancient Greek, I'd have thought you'd have been off to Epidavros or Mycaenae or somewhere every summer."

She paused to select the right words, conscious of the shifting balance of proper loyalties - another thing no-one prepared you for, that.

 "Well, Daddy was just too young to go before the Colonels got in.  And then, I think when they toppled them, Daddy was planning to visit, but somehow he didn't get around to it before he married Mummy, and I came along, and by the time I was old enough to get anything out of it, he thought it'd have all been spoiled by package tours and cheap tourist hotels and people who were just going for a tan and who didn't care about the culture, and he couldn't bring himself to face it."

Her husband snorted.  "He might just as well have come clean, and admitted he doesn't like foreign food.  Like my father."

Justice impelled her to speak. "Oh, but he does!  He loves foreign food. Mummy remembers when she was little, and he'd just started as Grandfather's research assistant - that was back when, Mummy says, spaghetti came in long blue packets, and you only got olive oil in little bottles at the chemist, and you used it for earache and to oil your recorder - and he cooked everyone genuine Tuscan food out of Elizabeth David for the Department's New Year party, and no-one knew what they were eating."

"I'll bet."  She stiffened up, conscious of his scepticism.  His tone changed to banter.

"Well, speaking of foreign food, I hope you aren't planning to overdo it.  You were absolutely stunning today, in that dress, and when I remember what a little podge you looked at that Rugby club dinner, the first time I ever saw you -"

His hand, unfamiliar in its possessiveness, stroked up under her nightdress, over the smooth skin of her belly.  She tried to suppress her instinctive response to suck in.  He pinched, very gently, the soft flesh just below her navel.

"Mind you, there's still some work to do.  After we get back, I'll have you down to the gym, and that should soon shift those last pounds."

Despite herself, she made a small, reproachful noise at the back of her throat.  His tone changed again.

"Come on, Ellie, lighten up.  After all, if a man can't tease his own wife on his wedding day, who can he tease?"

She made an effort to match his tone.  "It isn't the wedding day any more.  Not for three and a half hours it hasn't been.  We're quite an old married couple."

He turned over, away from her, composing himself back to sleep again.  "Yes.  And one whose alarm clock is set for 6.15.  So stop chattering and let me have the rest of the night out."

The bedroom was quiet.  Despite herself, she found herself stealing another glance towards the suitcases standing by the bedroom door, and suppressed a gasp of almost unbearable anticipation.

Just eight hours to go - and then -

She shook her head, in a determined attempt at self discipline.

There's no point in trying to plan in advance for what it's going to be like.  After all, it's bound to be completely different to how you could possibly imagine it.

The tiller extension had tangled itself up with the mainsheet.  Again.  Fortunately, hardly any breeze crept into the little horse-shoe shaped bay, given the protective jaws of the headlands, the westerly one graced with a formidable lighthouse whose origins doubtless dated back to the days when the Doges ruled these waters. 

Eleanor disentangled herself, this time without incident.  The cats paws rippling across the glassy surface of the bay warned her in time that there was more breeze coming, and she braced her bare feet under the toe-straps of the hired dinghy and leant outboard to keep the boat from heeling too much as the sail filled. 

The little gust carried her towards the large blue-hulled yacht that lay at anchor under the sheltering cliffs on the western side of the bay.  She had come in at dusk the previous evening, managing to ghost in under sail notwithstanding that the wind had dropped away almost to nothing as the sun set.  What had struck Eleanor, as they watched from their table at the little waterfront taverna, had been the silent efficiency of the yacht's approach to her anchorage.  No throb of engine or panicked yelling of commands had been allowed to mar the stillness of the evening.  One moment the yacht had been sailing; on an instant she had rounded up into the wind; her sails had been let fly and - she had been at anchor, canvas already down and in the process of being given a harbour stow by the crew.

Calm efficiency was not something Eleanor readily associated with boat handling.

Yesterday, watching the slick precision of the yacht's arrival had reminded her by sheer contrast of long-ago family trips on the Broads, where Daddy had always managed to make an intense drama out of performing even the simplest manoeuvre.  Mummy would start to flounder and panic under his rapid sequence of confusing and contradictory orders; any attempt by Eleanor to assist would only earn her an earful to the effect that her father now knew why sailors had traditionally regarded women on board as the worst of bad luck and anyway why couldn't she just put that rope down and start doing something useful, hey? and it would all turn into a frantic melange of useless belated fenderings, panic, flogging sails, nipped fingers and hurt feelings.

Seeing that yacht arrive had brought all sorts of memories flooding up in a rush, and she'd tried to convey the sense of loving, protective chaos that had been her childhood by describing it all to Roddy on the spot, but it seemed  she hadn't done it right; he'd changed the subject almost immediately.

He was, she thought, still rather stiff around her parents.  Though, of course, Daddy's crusty academic guise must be really quite daunting if you didn't realise what a softie he was underneath.  Roddy would soon find that out.  And also, it seemed, boats weren't one of his things; he'd been almost annoyed when they got to their villa and discovered a note from her parents to say that once they'd found out the resort they'd booked them a couple of Toppers from the local sailing school as a surprise extra present.  He hadn't really been all that keen on her taking one of them out this morning (and had looked almost comically appalled at the suggestion he might accompany her)  but she'd argued that Daddy would be inordinately disappointed about the failure of his present if she didn't come back with at least some photos taken from the water.  And given everything Daddy had paid for already - the reception, her dress, and an extraordinarily generous cheque to set them off, as he'd said, housekeeping on both the right feet - that would look most dreadfully ungrateful.  An argument that in the end Roddy had accepted.

She sneaked a guilty look at her watch.  She was outstaying her furlough; Roddy might well have made it down from the villa already.  Perhaps he was already waiting for her back at one of the tavernas in the main square.  It would never do to be late on top of their - not quarrel, of course, because Roddy never quarrelled - it was one of those points of fascinating difference about him she'd been drawn to from the first, after her volatile childhood (his parents hadn't either, not in thirty-five years, he'd told her) - but, anyway, lack of harmony that morning.

She twitched mentally: perhaps she was, after all, at fault for being selfish - Reverend Mother, probably, would have said she was, come to think of it, because in her heart of hearts she had known  - or at least suspected - that Roddy didn't care for sailing before mentioning the dinghies, and by assuming that they'd be using them, perhaps she'd made it difficult for him to say no without feeling guilty, which was manipulation, and so of course wrong -

The wind freshened again as she neared the mouth of the bay, and she shivered a little; she was not yet dry from the last capsize, and even with the sun beating down the sharp breeze raised goose-pimples on her bare, still pale arms.  However, the little spurt of speed it had given to the dinghy had brought her, at last, under the stern of the anchored yacht.

Alecto ran in a fantastic, gold cursive script across the transom. In more prosaic capitals underneath was its port of registration:  PIRAEUS.  She raised her little disposable camera, hanging by its protective strap to her wrist, to her face so as to snap its glory as it lay at anchor.

The swimming step dangled down into the water, and the tender still swung from its davits; it seemed the yacht's crew was still aboard, though there was no-one on deck.  She wondered what could keep anyone below on so beautiful a morning.  She was, however, conscious of sneaking relief that no-one was there to watch her unashamed gawping at the beautiful lines of the vessel and the bleached sumptuousness of its teak-inlaid decks.

The high sides of the anchored boat abruptly blanketed her wind.  The sail drooped, and her frantic waggling of the tiller to propel the boat forwards only succeeded in sending her into the yacht's hull with a subdued but undignified thump.  Her head shot up, expecting to have to brave the wrath of an indignant owner leaping protectively to the defence of his gel-coat, but no-one stirred aboard.  Guiltily, she fended off with the palms of her hand, caressing as she did so the sun-warmed smoothness of the yacht's hull, its dark gloss silky against her skin.

The fending did the trick - the recoil from her pushing propelled the dinghy along the hull and then out past the yacht's bows.  Once out of its shadow the freshening wind caught her, unexpectedly, and in a rush she tried to dump the mainsail to control the little dinghy's heeling.

The mainsail block jammed, trapping the sheet before she could release it.  The dinghy, its sails too tight for the angle of the ever-increasing breeze, went up on its ear.  Below Eleanor's stretching toes water slopped in over the leeward gunwale.  She hiked her weight out over the windward side as far as she could to balance the boat, but the wind freshened and the dinghy accelerated out of control.  Panic vied with exhilaration within her, as she ripped unstoppably across the little white-capped waves, her fingers still - mindful of age-old instruction - curled around rather than gripping the tiller extension, caution left behind in her sword-straight wake. The sun blazed down on the laughing ripples ahead of her.  Words of an old song soared to her lips.  Absurdly, she yelled them aloud in her joy and terror.

Cancel my subscription to the - Resurrection -

The dinghy screamed across the bay towards the village nestled against the farther shore.

There was a sudden, sickening crash.  The shock juddered all through her body; the noise of ripping nylon seemed to go on forever.  The dinghy came to a dead stop.  She catapulted out, and forward. She had a fleeting impression of a horrid tangle of rigging and detached spars before the salty water closed above her head.

She was only submerged for a second or two, and her initial panic about getting trapped under the sail eased as she kicked her way free of the capsized dinghy to emerge, spluttering, holding on to its centre-board besides its upturned hull. Her camera was still on its wrist-strap, thank goodness, and it was waterproof, of course, so no problems there -

A worried voice, with a strong Northern English accent, said, "I'm most terribly sorry.  You are sure you are all right, aren't you?  I really am so incredibly sorry.  It was completely my fault." 

Bobbing beside her, besides the wreckage of his windsurfer - that must be what she had collided with, then - was a young man; damp brown hair plastered over his forehead, blood from a scrape trickling down his face, worried eyes regarding her with concern.

She tried to sound reassuring.

"Yes, really.  Truly.  I'm fine."

Which - absent a bruise or so (she had always bruised easily: hockey at school had left her shins looking like maps of the world done in purple and yellow, and it was, briefly, a shock to realise that the bruises which she knew were going to blossom on her hip-bones and rib-cage from the recent impact were no longer an entirely private matter) - was entirely true.  The boat, now - she shot a sidelong glance at the dinghy.  The state of the mast and boom did not look very healthy.  He caught the direction of her glance and smiled a trifle shyly at her.

"Please don't worry about it.  I'm sure it looks a lot worse than it really is.  And I can assure you I've had plenty of practice at estimating the cost of repairing disasters."

There was a hum of an outboard behind them; the safety boat from the sailing school had come out to lend a hand. The driver, a tanned Aussie with spiky blond hair, hauled her inboard with a practised hand, even though she did end up going over the RIB's side with an undignified flop-and-wriggle motion, and landing in a heap in a puddle of warm seawater in the bottom of the hull. The young man, treading water besides his windsurfer, looked up at the driver of the RIB. 

"I'll be over in a few moments, as soon as I've got dressed and got my things from the yacht.  It was entirely my fault, so if you'll let me know what the repairs are likely to come to, I'll let you have my details."

Eleanor made a shocked sound of protest.  "Certainly not!  I can't possibly let you!  It was at least as much my fault as yours - and anyway - "

What on earth would Roddy say if I were to let you do that?  I don't even know your name.

She let the rest of the sentence hanging.  The rescue-boat driver grinned cheerfully.  "Shouldn't worry, mate.  These dinghies are bloody tough.  That's why the company buys them.  Doubt there's anything you've managed to do that can't be fixed with WD40 and a bit of duck tape."

She gaped at him.

"WD40 and duck tape?" 

The driver's grin broadened.  "Engineer's creed.  World goes round on WD40 and duck tape. When it won't move and ought to you use the first, and when it does move and shouldn't you use the other.  And if neither of those can solve it, it isn't worth worrying about."

"Well, at least," the young man in the water said doggedly, "you'll allow me to buy you a drink?  Just let me get rid of this" - he indicated the windsurfer -"and I'll see you in the main square, OK?  Fifteen minutes.  Least I can do."

"Um - well - "

The driver had finished tying the dinghy to the back of the rescue boat by some insane complication of macramé, and was about to pull the start cord on the outboard again.  Eleanor thought of Roddy - thought of her parents' carefully instilled creed of politeness - realised that the strange young man would in truth be hurt if she turned his offer down - gulped and decided to wing it.

"Yes - thank you, that's very kind - only I don't have very long - I'm supposed to be meeting my husband in the main square for lunch - we're here on honeymoon, you see -"

There, she thought belatedly, if you did have an ulterior motive - 

She was simultaneously overcome by her arrogance in presuming any such thing and the appalled realisation that it had not occurred to her to think of anything of the sort earlier.

The young man in the water smiled up at her.  He had a disarming grin, made more unthreatening by his broken, peeling nose and rounded features.

"Then I'll buy you both a drink.  Least I can do, seeing as I just nearly widowed him.  See you later.  The name's Neville, by the way."

 - and then the outboard on the rescue craft roared into life, and they were heading back towards the base at a considerable rate of knots, and she was not sure he had caught her own, hurried, self-introduction over the noise of the engine.

It had taken her less time than she had feared to deal with the boatyard (who persisted, reassuringly, in their view that worse things happened at sea; and that duct tape would solve all and, if she could bear not to take the boat out that afternoon, they'd have it all sorted by tomorrow); disentangle her hair (it always tended to the bushy side when wet); slide into her cotton frock and sandals, and to head into the village square where four or five tavernas converged.

She was obscurely relieved to note that Roddy had not, in fact, made his way down from the villa yet; in fact, even her new acquaintance had not found his way to the main square by the time she got there.  Apart from quantities of the island's cats, the only person present when she arrived in the central concourse was a slight, elegant figure wearing a Panama hat, long-sleeved black silk shirt, and baggy, black linen draw-string trousers; who was tipping his chair dangerously back on two legs, putting his head and most of his body into the shade of a venerable lime tree which overhung a corner of the square, his feet on the aluminium table; a battered copy of Beasts and Superbeasts in his hands.  He made no acknowledgement whatsoever of her arrival, but merely turned another page.

She sat down a couple of tables away, and wished she'd thought to bring a book, too.  Fortunately, before the situation could become too awkward, there was a cheerful shout from the other side of the village square.

"Hi!  Sorry I kept you waiting."

Neville, now dressed in sawn-off jeans and a T-shirt, was picking his way through the maze of tables and chairs that covered the square.  His shout, it seemed, had attracted the attention of the other tourist, who sat up abruptly, allowing the front legs of his chair to return to earth with a resounding thump.  He removed his sunglasses to reveal a pair of intent eyes, set in a sharp-featured face.  Neville spotted him at about the same time.

"Oh, hello, you.  The crew told me you'd emerged at last.   I see you're opting for the Mafioso chic look today?"

The black-clad man smiled but, Eleanor thought with a sudden shiver, in a thin-lipped way that added an extra edge to the joke.

"Yes.  Indeed.  So go on.  Make me an offer I can't spell," he drawled.

Neville raised his eyebrows and pantomimed shock.

"Leaving your options wide open, aren't you? Don't tempt me.  Anyway, how long have you been on shore?"

He shrugged.  "Just long enough to have pole position on the jetty for watching that idiot girl in the dinghy try to T-bone you."

An embarrassed tide of red spread over her face and shoulders.  Neville sighed.  "Draco, do take that foot out of your mouth.  You'll be needing to make room for the other one in a minute."

He turned to her.  "I do apologise for him, really.  Eleanor (I did catch your name properly, didn't I?) meet Draco.  Draco: Eleanor.  The collision with whose dinghy I was totally to blame for, earlier.  I promised to buy her a drink as a minor apology for attempting to drown her on her honeymoon."

"Honeymoon?"  His friend's eyes glittered with interest.  "If it's your honeymoon, what on earth are you doing wasting time sailing when you could be  -"

Neville's voice was sharply reproving.

"Draco! However you were planning to end that sentence, don't."

Despite his tone, he was grinning and Draco responded to his expression not his words.  His face, also, relaxed.

"There you are, you see.  You met Neville less than half an hour ago and already he's given you a perfect illustration of what he sees as his two main aims in life.  Taking the blame for everything, and keeping me in line.  Both doomed to be eternally frustrated, of course.  That's my main aim in life."

Neville made no attempt to deny this assertion.  Instead, he pulled up a chair at Draco's table, and gestured to Eleanor to join them.  The waiter appeared at her side at this precise moment.

"Er - kally speh rah," she began carefully, conscious of Daddy's dictum that even if one only spoke a little of a language, it was far better to attempt to communicate in it, at the price of feeling a prize chump, rather than behave like an ignorant tripper, and expect everyone to speak your language.

The waiter looked at her with bafflement.

At which point Draco turned to him, and unleashed a positive torrent of fast, fluent Greek which (from the changes in the waiter's expression) was amusing, informative and distinctly scurrilous, all at the same time.  At the first pause, the waiter nodded, and started to enumerate something on his fingers, keeping up a running commentary in the same language.

When he had finished, Draco turned back to the others and smiled sweetly.  "Well, if you're planning on lunching here, he suggests that you go and inspect the fish in person.  Just landed and positively flapping, allegedly. Anyway, onto more important things. What are you having to drink?  Can't keep the chap hanging about all day."

That settled, and the waiter on his way back inside, she turned to Draco.

"Golly," she said, "I wish I was that good at languages."

"Try cheating," Neville suggested helpfully.  Draco wrinkled his nose.

"You're only jealous.  Just because I've been blessed with the gift of tongues."

Neville, who looked rather as though he had wanted to say something different, turned instead to Eleanor.

"Anyway, what are you planning on eating?"

She paused.  Having lunch with them had not formed any part of her plans.  She prevaricated.

"Well, I don't think I can really say until my husband gets here and I know what he was planning to do about lunch."

Her voice trailed off, a trifle hesitantly.  She really wasn't at all sure how Roddy was going to react if these two assumed - and they did seem to have a tremendous capacity for assuming, both of them - they would join them for lunch since Roddy had not even met them.  On the positive side, judging by their accents and manners they did plainly fall in the category Roddy liked to call "PLU".  Even as she thought it, she winced; she knew what he meant, of course, and it was hypocritical - as he'd pointed out several times - for her to complain about his actually saying it when it was true she made the same assessment every time she met someone new - everyone did -

Neville smiled at her. 

"Well, while you're waiting for him I'll go and take a look at the fish.  As we're here early, if it's as good as he claims it might make sense to earmark the cream of the catch before the mad rush happens."

He vanished into the depths of the taverna, passing the waiter who was bringing their drinks in the doorway and, she noted enviously, also managing to exchange a few brief words in Greek.  Draco leaned back again in his chair, curled his fingers round his beer, and said,

"Personally, I'm planning to go for the kalamarakia.  I do adore squid; it reminds me so of school."

Eleanor's mouth dropped open: a shade inelegantly, she reflected a moment later.

"Goodness! You must have gone to a most unusual school," she exclaimed.  His brow wrinkled.

"True enough, but what makes you say so?"

Before she could stop him, he was topping up her retsina from the bottle that - despite her insistence only on a glass - the waiter seemed to have presented them with, and raising an enquiring eyebrow.  Eleanor blushed a little.

"Well - it's just that my husband - from everything he's said about Stoneyhurst - the last thing that would persuade him to order anything in a restaurant would be if it reminded him of school - and Daddy said the same about Rugby - I'd assumed all public schools were the same -"

Draco smiled.

"Far from it, as the Beater said when he aimed the Bludger at the opposition Seeker and took off the umpire's head."

From his tone it must be a quotation; indeed, it had a vaguely familiar sound - but infuriatingly she couldn't place it.  Though she must have made some sort of gaffe - though she was puzzled to see what it could be -

She took a large gulp of the retsina to cover her confusion, and then another.  Draco topped up her glass again before she could stop him.

Life - in the hot still noon of the village square - started to acquire an attractively blurry edge. 

Phooey, she muttered.  Yes; Roddy might object to her striking up acquaintances with other tourists - yes, other tourists, she said spunkily to Daddy, who seemed to have intruded himself in her thoughts as the other half of the conversation.  But so what?  She was grown up, and a married woman, and begged leave to choose her friends and acquaintances for herself, thank you.

From a place she had suddenly found outside of herself, she looked down at Reverend Mother, and Mummy and - yes, even Daddy and Roddy - and told them politely but firmly -

"Elli!  I'm sure that's more than enough.  For the middle of the day.  Especially as you aren't used to drinking."

Guiltily she looked up and then round.  Roddy's approach - from the opposite side of the square to the one she'd been expecting him from - had been so unobtrusive that he was leaning over the back of her chair before she had noticed his arrival.

Draco leaned back in his chair and raised an eyebrow.

"Ah.  You must be the husband, I take it."

Roddy looked first at him, and then - slowly - at her.  Eleanor repressed a shiver.  Roddy's voice was coldly polite as he responded.

"Excuse me? "The husband"?"

Draco's eyebrow went higher.

"Oh!" he said.  "I'm sorry, but it hadn't occurred to me that Eleanor was likely to be into that sort of thing.  My mistake.  A husband, then.  Of course."

Eleanor thought, for a moment, she had forgotten how to breathe.  And then, in the interminable instant before Roddy responded, she caught with relief Neville's cheerful Northern accent from the taverna doorway.

"I think you and your husband ought to seriously think about eating here, Eleanor.  They've got some swordfish that looks simply - "

He broke off, abruptly.  Roddy spun on the spot.  Through the heavy silence in the noon-baked square Neville walked onwards towards the table, his eyes fixed on her husband.  Eleanor noted that Roddy's skin had paled; his habitual tan looked like a scum on top of a profound pallor.  His muscular hand clenched into a fist below the level of the table.  Neville had a reddish flush that accentuated his recent sunburn.  Draco's eyes flickered from one to the other, his lips set in a tight line.

Neville spoke first.

"Roddy.  Good heavens.  Well, fancy meeting you here.  After all these years."

With fastidious precision Draco picked up the half-lemon - so under ripe it looked more like a lime - and squeezed juice over the florets of deep fried tentacle on his plate, as though the placement of every drop was the deployment of an infantry company in a battle that would decide the fate of empires.

Neville - drawn in by the disproportion between the effort expended and the sheer inconsequentiality of the whole proceedings - lost his nerve, and broke his self-willed silence.

"Yes?" he enquired irritably.

"Yes," his lover agreed.  Infuriatingly, Draco then paused.  He smiled. 

"So," he added after a moment's thought, "unfinished business.  I presume."

Neville gritted his teeth.

"The last bit of your unfinished business we met was, if I recall correctly, seated astride a Doomsday Missile and all set to destroy the world."

With a leisurely air, Draco contemplated one of the squidlets on his plate.  He speared it, ate it; and smiled.

"Um, yes, Pansy.   And you should have had to deal with her when the PMT was really being a problem. I agree.  Entirely. No room to talk.  No room at all."

He tipped the rest of the bottle of wine into his own glass before continuing.

"So," Draco said, his tone for once absolutely serious, as he gestured for the waiter and a refill, "when was he?  And why?"

Neville thought, rapidly.  He had - one always does - thought he had given up to his lover as much as it was discreet and proper to know about those who had gone before.  And the humiliation and sense of faint ridicule that was always stirred up on those infrequent occasions when he disturbed his ghosts scarcely demanded that he pull anything deeper out of the past.

"It was a very long time ago," he said.

"Obviously."  Draco reached across him to the olive-oil flask compressed in the cruet next to the paper napkins.  Having sprinkled the oil on his bread, he gestured expansively with the flask.

"I cannot possibly imagine," he added, "that you could ever have dreamt of taking to bed that - moppet - at any time when I was a remotely plausible alternate contingency."

Involuntarily, Neville gave vent to a choked gasp of amusement.  "Moppet" was the last word he would have chosen to describe Roddy, personally; he had bulked up considerably since he had seen him last although - being Roddy - it was all muscle without an ounce of fat.  But he had lost most of what he had once possessed by way of neck, in his studied muscularity, and Neville did not think the change had been for the better.

He pictured Roddy's likely reaction to hearing Draco describe him so, and giggled again.

"Good," Draco added dreamily, "I'm glad we share the same outlook."

Involuntarily, Neville's voice had acquired a hard, almost accusing edge.  "I was sixteen when I met Roddy the first time  - Easter holidays 1998. If you want to be so clever, tell me what - no, who - you were doing then - OK?"

Draco paused.  His voice dropped to a husky purr.

"Spring 1998?  Well let me see."  His voice changed, became less emphatic.  "Yes.   Um, yes.  Awkward times.  The Dark Lord did indeed want a little harmony among his - um - family - "

Neville saw Draco's lips curl away from the word as if it had been bathed in acid.  Nevertheless, he continued speaking.

"That would be when I was learning Dark Arts. Properly, I mean.  Not Defence, and not from a procession of doddering incompetents."

Draco's tongue flicked out, moistening his dry lips.

"From a lecherous old goat with a remarkable facility for the Imperius curse, I have to say."

"Draco!  He didn't - ?"

A chopping gesture with one elegant hand cut him short.

"Well.  Less than he might have.  Curious sense of honour among - yes, well, among what would you call them?  Oh well.  People didn't join the Death Eaters to explore their mutual interests in jam-making and swapping crochet patterns, after all. No doubt he was waiting to go further until I became fully one of the gang."

"What became of him in the end?"  Partly that was real interest; partly an attempt to deflect Draco - not that it was likely to work, such efforts never did - from continuing his own probing.  Momentarily Draco looked surprised, and then calculating; rather like someone who had suddenly hit upon a possible solution to a cryptic crossword clue and was trying it to see whether it fitted the space.

"Actually, you killed him."

That took him aback.  "I did?  When?"

Draco shrugged.  "That time we went after the Lamina Regis, remember, and we got to the small-holding a short head behind the Death Eater ambush?"

Even after so long, he flinched.  They had walked into hell that day (the bodies of the old couple who had owned it, their battered skulls loaded with clustered, satiated masses of bluebottles, lying prone amid the heartless early summer glory of the flowerbeds). Getting out had taken desperate measures, which previously he had not dreamt he was capable of.  Disarmed early, he had flung a loop of baler twine around the neck of one masked Death Eater, in a desperate attempt to deflect his wand's focus from Draco.

And then -  feeling the writhing Death Eater go suddenly limp - falling heavily forwards and away from him - realising, with an odd sense that the world was shifting away from him, and the patterns of the stars had altered, that the man was dead, and that he had strangled him personally.

"Um, yes, him." Draco gestured with a bit of bread.  "When his mask fell off as he dropped - god, those masks were about the Dark Lord's second stupidest idea ever, you had to enchant them six ways to Sunday to make yourself able to see a blind thing - and while obviously his face was pretty much changed -"

"I know - "

The suffused, bloated face of the strangled man, his black tongue lolling horribly from his collapsed jaw, had haunted his sleep for years, and during his recent illness had jeered endlessly at him through an interminable succession of fever dreams.  Draco looked up at him with quick concern, as quickly veiled.

"Well, anyway, I didn't have time to do more than think god, he looks familiar - I wonder where -  before the next wave of them hit us and we had to bolt.  I think we were halfway across the next county before I thought oh, yes, so that's who - Do you want me to do you the same favour?"

The question, so abrupt and so incongruous in the sleepy sunshine of the whitewashed village square, shocked him upright.

"What?"

Draco shrugged, but his hooded eyes had a sharply intent glitter about them. 

"Don't act all surprised at this, but I didn't care at all for - Roddy."  The slight pause before saying his name made his distaste all the more palpable.  "I didn't like the way he looked at you."

Neville vented a high, mirthless laugh.  "Hardly reason for strangling someone.  And anyway, I doubt you're right.  I'd have thought that would be the last expression that would be crossing his face, today."

Draco crunched another squidlet before responding.  "Oh, I agree.  And anyway, I've got no objection at all to people looking at you in that way.  In fact, it gives me a hell of a kick to watch other people counting my blessings."

Neville snorted.  "Well, each to their own kinks.  But I shouldn't imagine you get much fuel for that one."

Draco went pale and there was the tension about the corners of his mouth and flaring of his nostrils that betrayed that some invisible line had been crossed, and that he was now truly angry.

"Oh, try keeping your eyes open about you, why don't you?  Try working on actual facts, not lunatic beliefs about yourself for once in a while.  You are extremely fanciable, and wanting to drag you off to bed and fuck you  - repeatedly - is not a unique perversion I happen to have invented all by my little self."

He paused, and with a hand that was not entirely steady refilled his glass again, and downed the contents in one.  The wine seemed to put a brake on his intensity, because his expression changed, and he said,

"And, come to think of it, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Roddy wasn't half way to blame for that nonsense in the first place."

That jolted him.  He thought, cautiously, around the implications.  Although it had happened often enough by now, it was still a surprise to encounter Draco's flesh-curdling lack of tact accompanied by insights that others missed or, if they appreciated, did not allude to.

"No," he said carefully.  "I think I was doing it to myself well before he came on the scene.  But come to think about it - if you were to say encouraging it rather than causing it - I wouldn't say that you were wrong."

Draco's exhalation had a faint note of triumph about it. 

"Could a human be part-Dementor, do you think?" Without waiting for an answer - and, indeed, Neville could hardly have found one if asked - he added,

"Why is he scared of you?"

"Scared?"

Draco nodded.  "That was how he was looking at you.  Scared, and as though he hated you, a little.  Or something about you."

He snorted, cynically.  "Afraid I might let something slip to - whatserface - Eleanor, no doubt."

"He won't have said?"

"Roddy?"  He snorted again.  "So far into the closet his post gets sorted in Narnia."  He could tell Draco had missed the reference, so he amplified. "Deliberately tell her about something like that?  When he's gone out and got himself a nice innocent girl so he can play nice normal happy families for the rest of his life?"

 His face told its own story, it seemed.  Draco nodded, gravely, acceptingly.  "I see.  One of those."

Neville nodded.

"As you say.  Not really gay because blowjobs aren't really sex.  And it's all just a phase, anyway.  Just teenage hormones - though he was 22, actually, come to think of it.  Anyway.  You know."

Draco raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Was it you who ditched him, or vice versa?"

"Me."  His mouth was dry.  Draco, his eyes narrowed in thought, nodded.

"Mm.  A first, I suspect.  Very unfinished business - for him.  And abysmally timed, your reappearance. His problem, though.  So.  Your call.  Do I tell the crew to up anchor and push off to Preveza or somewhere?  Or hammer it up the coast for a couple of days, and go and drop in on ma's island?  She told us to bob by if we got a chance."

In the square it was suddenly very quiet; it seemed as though more ears than Draco's were hanging on his response.  And the temptation was, for the moment, overwhelming; they had a boat, no fixed plans, no pressing reason to stay in one harbour rather than another.  It would be a diplomatic withdrawal, in everyone's interests: a kindness, in fact.

He shaped his mouth to assent to the proposition, but the words stuck in his throat. 

I was born of the hills and the hills endure.  Let others retreat.

"No," he said hoarsely. "We stay."

Draco looked up from his demolished squid, started to say something, and then appeared to change his mind.

"Your choice," he said, and then his face became lit by a sudden, malicious amusement.  "Perhaps it'll turn out to be fun.  Anyway, it's been a long morning.  Can I suggest that we'd both benefit from a siesta?  Back on board?"

And the invitation was naked in his expression.

"No, Eleanor," Roddy snapped irritably.  "I do not think I'm overreacting."

"Well," she snapped back, "how can I possibly be supposed to tell if you don't let me know anything?"

His expression was so appalled that she felt an instant urge to apologise (though, the small rebellious part of her brain muttered, knowing what she was apologising for would still be nice).

"I mean," she persisted, "I gather you know Neville - "

"I knew him," Roddy corrected.  His pace quickened, so she almost had to run to keep up with him.  As they double-timed it up the white pebbled track through the olive groves towards the villa the sun was hot on the back of Eleanor's bare neck; she thought regretfully of the shade of the lime tree in the village square, and the cool of a glass of chilled retsina in her hand.

"It was," he added quellingly, "a very long time ago.  When I was doing a work placement, after I'd finished at Cirencester, up in the Ribble Valley.  And we haven't seen each other since, and I, for one, would have preferred it if we hadn't again, either."

"Oh, Roddy, why?  He seemed perfectly nice - and his friend -"

"His friend?"  Roddy's face twisted in distaste.  "Honestly, Eleanor, I do wish you'd grow up a bit.  They were hardly acting just as friends.  In fact, that blond p - " he bit off what he was going to say and substituted, instead, " that way he was just ogling him - just so completely slithering all over him - it looked as though in half a minute he'd have been stripping those shorts right off him - oh, it made me feel ill to watch it.  Even you ought to have noticed."

"Golly! Do you really think that's true?"  She got the impression, from Roddy's furious glance, that her response was not all he had expected of her.  Nevertheless, her inner honesty had to admit that her principal feeling was disappointment, tinged with faint self-reproach that she must have let major clues wash straight over her head - of course, Reverend Mother had always claimed that she was undoubtedly the most unobservant pupil that she'd taught, and doubtless would say that this only proved it - it was a pity, in a way, because although there were of course people like that around the University - for instance, Daddy's research assistant, a couple of years ago, who hadn't really worked out (not a truly scholarly brain) - she'd never, somehow, really had a chance to talk to them.

 And though, of course, it would be far too cringe-makingly embarrassing to actually ask them anything really personal (she blushed a fiery red at the very thought of it) but it would be - interesting - to find out what they actually thought about things. Did they accept it was Sin, but do it anyway, or was it sorted out in their own minds, somehow, so it wasn't?  And how did they think of couples like her and Roddy - just too unbelievably boring and conventional for words; or did they feel resentful about their serene unquestionable acceptability?  And if they did think it was Sin, what would it be like to - presumably - love someone so much that one carried on regardless, despite its being Sin, and hang the consequences?  Awful, of course, but somehow rather magnificently romantic all the same  - All for love and the world well lost -

"Ellie!  You have got to be the single scattiest person I've ever come across.  You clearly haven't heard a single word I've said for the last five minutes."

They were at the door of the villa, and she felt a sudden moment of rebellion at the approaching dark fustiness of its interior, and a surge of regret for the dappled sun and shadow of the village square.

"Well?" she said jutting her chin defiantly.  "It just seems silly to bear a grudge all this time.  And on your honeymoon, too.  You ought to make it up, whatever it was all about."  A thought struck her.   It was her honeymoon; and there was a certain power she possessed here, traditionally.  A borrowed power, it was true, but, nonetheless, an archaic and very real one.  She decided to push her luck.

"Please?  For my sake?  After all, it is our honeymoon.  And in all charity, and for the grace of God, we ought - "

His very expression froze her before she could continue.

"Ellie."  His voice was clinical, dismissive.  "I really don't think you can possibly have a clue what we quarrelled about."

Belatedly, embarrassingly, insight came upon her.

"Oh, gosh! Oh dear! You don't mean - um - did he make a pass at you or something?  Was that what you fell out about?"

Her husband's brow darkened ominously. 

"NO!  Of course not!"

He looked at her, and then added,  "Nothing like that at all.  Don't be absurd.  Anyway, it was a long time ago and I'm not going into it. I think it's disgusting for you to think about that sort of thing."

He looked back out over the terrace, and said,

"I hope we don't keep tripping over them. After all, it's not a big village and we don't know how long they're going to be here for.  Did they happen to tell you which villa they were staying at?"

She did conscientiously try not to trade on her superior information; but it was difficult not to sound a trifle smug, notwithstanding.

"Oh they aren't in a villa.  They're on a yacht.  That one."  She nodded through the tiny window (they had now drifted to the pine-furnished, barely equipped kitchen of the villa, which nonetheless boasted a view over the bay and the two encompassing lobster-claws of its defining headlands which an emperor might have killed for).  There was, this evening, only one boat to which she could possibly have been referring.

"Oh!" There was a new note in Roddy's voice. It changed, and became slow, considering.

"Goodness!  When I knew Neville in Lancashire, I certainly wouldn't have thought of him as the luxury yacht type."  He paused.  "Though they did say his grandmother was very well off.  Not that she looked it.  If you ever went round there, she'd be wearing a coat that looked as though it had been made in the 1940s, and as for her hat -!"

He paused again.

"I suppose - she was very old - she might have died.  Or perhaps - that friend looks the flashy sort  - did he happen to tell you what he did for a living?"

Eleanor was abruptly conscious of a faint chill below her diaphragm.  Anxious as she had been to avoid a nonsensical row, based on ancient history, it somehow hurt, physically, even to suspect that her husband might be prepared to compromise his principles because of a yacht.  Even one which - her baser instincts acknowledged - she would have given her eye teeth to be taken over and shown below.  She was aware her voice sounded dismissive as she said,

"I expect it's only chartered. It's Greek registered, you know."

Roddy, she saw with some exasperation, didn't seem to have heard. He was staring out to sea, his face abstracted and remote.  After a prolonged pause, however, he turned to her.

"I'm sorry, Eleanor.  You are quite right.  It's not as if we can really do anything except spoil our stay by being standoffish.  Not that I suggest we should push it; just if you get a chance, see if you can talk to them.  Try to find out what their plans are.  They seem to like you.  And if they are staying around, one night soon we ought to have dinner.  Tonight, if they're free. Let's let bygones be bygones, ok?"

She nodded, dumbly.  He smiled. 

"What a good job I had the foresight to opt to get the villa stocked in advance.  We've still got plenty left of the cheese, and half a lettuce and the cucumber and tomatoes.  Why don't you make us a nice cheese salad for lunch?"

"She what?"

Neville shrugged.  "You heard me.  She came up to me when I was having a coffee and asked if we were free to join them at that taverna overlooking the harbour for dinner tonight."

Draco gaped at him (it was faintly amusing to see how near-perfect bone-structure could convert an expression that on anyone else would merely convey "gormless" into "effortlessly, elegantly, intriguingly gormless").  Nonetheless, Neville was steadied by his air of consternation; for one thing, it gave him a reassuring sense of being taken seriously. 

"So - what did you tell her?"

"I accepted, of course." He shrugged again.  "What else could I tell her?"

Which was, of course, was the fundamental, irritating fact about the whole business, grinding away like a small pebble trapped inside one's walking-boot.  And more irritating, too, to know that Roddy still had the power, after all these years, to force him to do what Roddy wanted, against his own wishes, against his better judgment, or else feel he'd been exposed to the world in all his uncouth incompetence.

Draco looked at him.  "Well, you could have told her that actually, sorry, but you'd got a hot date with your lover, two pairs of leather hand-cuffs, a kit-bag full of assorted sex toys and a tub of taramasalata."

There was a pause.  For Draco, presumably, it was occupied by picturing the probable effect of such a statement on Eleanor, or, conceivably, working out how much effort it would take to put into effect the scene he'd postulated.  In fact, given his increasingly glazed expression to say nothing of other indications, it seemed more than a little probable that -

"Draco!"

His lover returned to consciousness with a start, and regarded him with an expression of slyly speculative amusement.  Neville started to feel better.  And after all, if one had experienced getting on for seven years of a relationship with Draco - god, how had it got to be so long? - one had to have learnt some survival skills. Dead-pan, factual accuracy.  No reaction at all.  That was the ticket.

"Well, I could have.  But I didn't.  Sorry.  So that's it.  We're going.  At seven.  Sorry."

There was the sound of a deeply irritated "huff".  And then, as he had by this time half-expected, an immediately following yawn; warm, encompassing, and heart-easingly accepting.

"Oh, fuck!  So you expect me to be bored stupid all evening by some Muggle arsehole, just to bandage your ego? From some time last century, for god's sake?"

"Yes," he said simply.  "That's what couples are for."

Draco wrinkled his elegant nose. "Oh, well.  If you must."  His expression became intent; almost exalted. "One thing, though."

"Yes?"  Watching him, Neville felt his stomach detach into free-fall.

"Well," Draco said with the logical inevitability of someone who sets out a scientific proposition, with all its accompanying proofs on the table, "oughtn't we to invite them to cocktails?  On board?  Before dinner?  After all, my mother always told me: 'Never, if you can help it, allow your enemy to meet you at the start of a crucial engagement, on neutral ground, or, worse yet, his own.' "

He gaped feebly across at him.  "But Roddy isn't exactly my enemy - "

"No?"  Draco's eyes were wide and pale; Neville was reminded, disconcertingly, that while usually Draco's strong resemblance to his mother dominated his features, on occasions like the present a haunting reminder that he was indeed his father's son would surface.

Smoothly, Draco continued.

"Maybe not yours, but I can assure you, he most definitely happens to be mine."

Those eyes held a hypnotic compulsion all their own.  Without wanting to, he found himself asking, "Why?"

His eyes widened yet further.  "Because he makes you unhappy."

Neville gaped at him.  Draco smiled.

  "Good," he said gently. "I'm glad you understand. I told the crew to be ready to ferry them over a little after six."

"You - " Words failed him.  "You invited them already?  And they accepted?"

A small inclination of the head was all he was vouchsafed in reply.  After a moment's silent and unprofitable steaming he recovered the use of language.

"And suppose I'd told you I'd rather lick every inch of the decks clean personally with my tongue than let him set a foot aboard?"

Draco's eyes were watchful, but his tone did not differ an iota from before. 

"Then I'd send the engineer - he's big enough and dim enough - with our apologies and to explain that we'd unexpectedly succumbed to leprosy since lunchtime."  The silence hung charged between them, before Neville - as he had always known he would - blinked.

"OK," he muttered.  "If you really think we should."

Draco smiled.

"Of course," he added delicately, "there is still quite a bit of time left until six.  Especially given the illegal Time-turner I've got stashed in the false bottom to the navigator's seat.  And there's definitely some taramasalata left in the galley cool-box, and I could improvise the hand-cuffs from a bunch of sail-ties -"

"Duck-tape," Neville murmured reminiscently.  "Duck tape and WD40."

Draco wrinkled his nose.  "Well, if you insist - sounds wildly masochistic to me."

Neville grinned at him.  "Perhaps we'll stick with the sail-ties."

The dinner was really not going well.  All things considered.

Eleanor looked rather uneasily across the table at her husband.  Draco, with many excitable hand gestures, and occasional excursions into Greek and, once or twice, French, was being febrile and witty; some of his remarks struck her as rather random and disconnected, and she wondered if he was not, perhaps, rather drunk.  Neville, while much less extrovert, made an effort to keep the conversation to the point, and what little he said seemed interesting, and very sensible.  Roddy was ill at ease and seemed, from his short snapped responses to conversational overtures and pre-occupied silences between times, to be in a bad mood.  Of course, there was some justification for that.

First, the cocktail party on board Alecto had stretched out unexpectedly, due to the extravagant generosity of the refreshments (she had never had Dom Perignon before, and was slightly conscious now that she had made up for the omission rather thoroughly).

Further delay occurred when her hosts had insisted, on catching the briefest of longing glances from her towards the companion-way, on taking her on a stem to stern guided tour of the yacht, above and below (and the layout below had turned out to be even more opulent and better equipped than she'd expected - there were instruments on the navigation station that were so sophisticated that she didn't have the faintest clue what their purpose was).  Miraculously, they'd somehow managed to show the yacht to her without making her feel the least bit pushy or toadying for asking, either.

When, eventually, Roddy's throat-clearings and pointed looking at his watch had driven them to consider leaving the yacht they were running a little late for their table (though, as Draco had pointed out, it was hardly as though, by Greek time, turning up at quarter-to-eight for a meal planned for seven was anything other than neurotically early; nor, indeed had the taverna owner taken any notice whatsoever of her attempt, earlier, at Roddy's insistence, on booking a table for a set time).

And at that point - Eleanor still wasn't sure quite what had happened.  Draco had gone first down into the dinghy, in order to guide her foot to the thwart as she followed him down the collapsible ladder.  Not that it had been needed, actually, but it was a nice gesture.  Roddy had followed her - waved her assisting hand away - and then somehow the tethered dinghy had swung, on the end of its painter, away from the side of the parent yacht just at the moment when Roddy was caught with a foot on each.

The resulting ducking was inevitable.

As, it appeared, when Roddy's head broke the surface of the water, were the recriminations.

Draco (keeping a straight face with evident difficulty, the more so when Roddy, in the teeth of his blandness, had started to go ballistic) had blamed a sudden gust of wind, but then she hadn't felt anything - but then she was equally sure despite Roddy's spluttered allegations that neither of them had touched the yacht hull, or done anything to shift the dinghy - and as for Neville, he'd been waiting on deck with polite blamelessness, and been nowhere near the scene of the crime -

Anyway, they'd fished Roddy out and towelled him down and found him some spare clothes of Neville's - not nearly as smart as the rugby club blazer and cream cavalry twill slacks he'd started the evening in, admittedly, and certainly they were a little big for him, but hardly so ill-fitting or out of place as to justify his apparent determination to look uncomfortable in them: really, she would never have suspected Roddy of finding minor inconveniences and trials so discombobulating - what a good job they hadn't walked into the same concatenation of honeymoon mess-ups  as Peter and Harriet had-

 At the thought of Roddy covered in soot and groping blindly around a living room enveloped in an old curtain her self-control failed, and a small giggle escaped her.  The others, who seemed to be now discussing Greek weather, looked at her with some surprise.

"I'm sorry?"  Neville said.  Roddy made an impatient gesture. 

"Oh, don't mind Ellie. She lives in a world of her own, half the time.  I doubt even she would be able to tell you what she found so funny."

That needled her, and she had blurted, "Actually, I was thinking about a bit in a detective story -" before realising that going on to explain the analogy would hardly be tactful, all things considered.  Roddy, already, was tapping his forehead and mouthing, "What did I tell you?" with exaggerated bonhomie at the other two.

Draco looked animated.  "Oh, really?"  He smiled, faintly maliciously.  "Now you mention it, I think I might know the one, too.  But I love detective stories.  I keep getting lost in the hidden back rooms of second-hand bookshops trying to hunt up the really old ones, you know, with mysterious Chinamen and poisons which defy medical analysis, and the sinister stranger who comes back out of the past with the deep dark secret, and the Evil Mastermind's Conspiracy To Destroy Europe With a Death Ray; then Neville gets into a major panic - you'll know all about that tendency, of course, Roddy - that I've been sucked out of the space-time continuum altogether and tries to get Hermione to tell him where to find me.  She's got an uncanny instinct for bookshops, Hermione.  Even the antiquarian sort with the secret chambers that don't appear on the plans. Doesn't let them see she's afraid."

"Hermione?"  Roddy raised his eyebrows.  "Who's she?"

Draco looked faintly surprised to be asked, almost as though he thought one ought to be able to follow his conversation by instinct, without being given any context whatsoever.

"Our local vicar's wife." 

"Oh."  Roddy reached for the bread basket.  "Jumble sales and home-made jam.  I see."

Draco and Neville exchanged a complex, amused glance.  "A potentially fatal underestimation, I assure you.  But perhaps they breed vicars - and their wives - differently in your neck of the woods."

Almost as an afterthought, Draco added,

"By the way, where is it you hang out?"

Roddy looked rather offended - possibly, Eleanor thought, at being accused of hanging out anywhere.  "Gloucestershire," he muttered.  Draco smiled brightly. 

"How nice.  We're practically neighbours.  Wiltshire.  Where are you near to?"

"Stroud," he said, somewhat to Eleanor's surprise; she hadn't measured it, but she'd always assumed they were nearer Tetbury.  But possibly he was being deliberately vague, almost, she thought, as if he had some absurd fear that these two might one day turn up, unheralded, on their doorstep, despite that no-one you met on holiday got beyond a Christmas card, and not usually that, however much well-meaning exchanging of addresses had gone on.

Draco reached across for the bottle of the richly astringent red that had arrived to accompany the spit-roasted, rosemary-scented lamb.  Somehow, at the outset of the meal, the menu seemed to have been waved away as a pallid myth bearing no resemblance to the realities of what the kitchen could produce.

The food they were now eating, it seemed, was something quite other; brought into being under the influence of Draco's fluent Greek and his deployment of self-evidently outrageous charm against the black-gowned be-aproned crone (apparently the proprietor's mother) who had emerged from the kitchen first to spit fury and then to capitulate into amused, maternal compliance with his eloquently expressed wishes.  After which a succession of intriguing, lovingly-prepared dishes had emerged at a leisurely, regular, digestive pace over the course of the evening.

"May I?" Draco enquired, his hand hovering above Eleanor's tumbler.  Mindful of the morning's fiasco, she cocked an eye in Roddy's direction before responding, only to note, embarrassedly, that Draco had also looked pointedly in the same direction before asking the question.

Roddy snorted.

"Make your own mind up," he said ungraciously.  "You don't listen to anything I say.  And if you want to make an idiot of yourself -"

"Oh, I'm sure there's no risk of that," Draco interposed.  "After all, it's not as if Eleanor has to negotiate a dinghy and a swimming ladder in order to get herself safely back home after having a drink or so."

Silence fell across the whole table.  Roddy glared back at him.

"Just what are you insinuating?"

Draco smiled.  "Only that you two have an easier trip home, all things considered, than we have.  Only a white winding road through the olive groves to stumble along, and for that matter, no doubt the ditches round here are dry and soft, and the night is warm - why, what did you think I meant?"

Roddy paused.

"The stuff you've been coming out with, this evening, I don't know what the hell you mean by this time."

Draco raised an eyebrow pointedly.

"Really?  You surprise me."

Roddy swallowed; it was clear, Eleanor thought apprehensively, that he was now truly angry. 

"Whatever you say, I can drink you under the table, any time you care to challenge me."

The solitary eyebrow lifted higher with effortless insolence.

"I assure you, that whatever you might think - or want - to the contrary, I haven't the slightest desire to be under this table - or any other - in your company.  So I think I'll decline the offer.  Anyway, Eleanor?  Your glass is still empty."

"Thank you," she muttered, through dry lips.  It might be a mistake, but recapturing some of that fuzziness of lunchtime looked like heaven from this perspective.

Roddy continued to look truculent - with a sinking feeling she realised that, after all, her husband was indeed more than a little drunk and that she had no experience whatsoever with how one dealt with this particular social situation.  From the end of the table, in the vague light of the bare bulbs hanging from the vine leaf-canopy above their heads, each with its corona of dancing, transfixed, doomed insects, she caught sight of Neville smiling encouragingly at her with his fingers spread in front of him above the table in a gesture which she had little difficulty in interpreting as "Don't intervene.  Let them get it out of their systems."  She smiled helplessly back. 

"Anyway," - with a start, she noticed that some part of the preceding conversation had been missed by her - "if you'd ever been a member of a rugby club - which, of course, isn't likely in your case, is it? - you'd be enough of a gentleman to understand the concept of Tour Rules."

"It's true, I'm not a rugby player," Draco admitted.

As she saw her husband's sardonic eye passing dismissively over his thin, short frame, Eleanor (who had stood on freezing North-Eastern touch-lines ever since she had been old enough to graduate from sitting in push-chairs in the same place) with a cold chill suddenly pictured a slight, energetic, shrimp-like son (Mummy was no more than 5' tall, and bird-like with it, and Roddy's mother hardly more bulky) who would be no more likely to make the First XV than she was; and an infinity of negotiating his relationship with his father as a result.

"Roddy - " she began.

"Thought not," Roddy snorted.

Draco smiled.  "But I have heard of "Tour Rules."   Actually, something similar does apply in my own sport.  Which, I confess, I continue to play as the rankest amateur.  Though, fortunately - " he looked very directly at Neville as he spoke -"they aren't something I've thought to rely on personally.  But if I understand the theory correctly, it's that nothing - or no-one - one does when away from home or sufficiently drunk should ever be mentioned by one's tour mates to anyone back home.  Have I got it right?"

He turned, his eyes wide and bland, his pose open, towards Roddy.

Her husband parted his lips to speak -

And was forestalled by Draco adding, thoughtfully,

"But, I have to confess, I'm in difficulties about their relevance at this precise moment.  Could you enlighten me further?"

There was a pause.  Broken, as it happened, by the waiter, saying in heavily accented English,

"Coffee?  Baklava? Metaxa?"

The old Greek Orthodox priest, who had been sitting at the next table all evening, alternating little cups of strong sweet coffee with sips of ouzo, rose to go.  He looked at all of them, and it seemed to Eleanor that his look was pitying.

"Good night, to all of you," he said in English, adding something in Greek after it, something which resounded with a peculiar emphasis that somehow brought back the high solemnity of services on Good Friday to her ears.

"What did he say?" Eleanor asked urgently. "That last thing?"

Roddy shrugged. "Why does it matter?  Honestly, Ellie, you can be such an idiot sometimes."

But it was Neville who translated for her benefit.

"Ee Aghia Trias evloghisai kai thiaphylaxai imas . "

He paused, thinking it out slowly.

" May the Holy Trinity bless you and protect you.  Should I ask for the bill along with the coffee and liqueurs?  I think it would make sense."

"Yes indeed."

The bill had been paid - they were standing up to go - when someone (Eleanor thought, vaguely, later it might have been Roddy) - had suggested a final nightcap in a dark little bar in a side alley. 

And they'd accepted - she'd had a Kahlua Cream, made, disconcertingly, with condensed milk - and the other three had had brandies and whiskies according to inclination and temperament  - and it was when they had all got up to go that something had happened - there must have been something spilled on the bar floor - Roddy had twisted, slipped, completely out of control (Draco had, unfortunately, chosen to be sardonic about it) and his wild floundering progress had ended up in the lap of an ample, beaded personage, who turned out be to the Lady Mayoress of Heckmondwike, and a trifle inclined to stand on her municipal dignity -

The dinner had not gone well.  All things considered.

Dawn found Roddy standing at the kitchen window, looking down at the bay, which was still in the shadow of the eastern headland, as the sun lifted itself above the mountains on the mainland: brooding violet presences at this time of the day, barely-seen ghosts shimmering through the heat-haze at all other times.

His stomach was churning within him, as it had all night - ridiculous to eat so late, especially greasy coarse food, probably prepared in the most primitive conditions - absurd to have so much to drink with it - rough wine accompanied by (judging from the guffaws) even rougher jokes from the waiter, responded to in - evidently - equally ribald vein by Draco (oh, it was so obvious he knew everything, the smooth bastard, and was milking the situation for what it was worth) - and then folly upon folly to drink small cups of thick coffee (hot as hell, sweet as love, black as a woman's heart as the old proverb put it) and fierce raw brandy together with it - and then cocktails -

No wonder he had barely slept all night.

But even as he rationalised his disquiet, he lied, and knew in his heart he lied.

There was another reason he hadn't slept.

It's only a matter of time before one of them tells Ellie - or she guesses -

Of course he had always understood, intellectually, that Neville might reappear - might say something - in the hearing of his parents or, worse yet, his Rugby Club cronies - about their few fumbled evenings together in the back of the Caving Club headquarters - in fact, the possibility of meeting him again some day had been something which had occupied more than a few of his sleepless nights over the years - but he had always assumed that he would be more than capable of shutting Neville up if he ever re-entered his life before too much damage could be done.

It had never occurred to him that when Neville reappeared it would be as the acknowledged partner of someone like -

His brain hit its mental image of Draco again, and recoiled in a shower of blazing sparks.  God!  That hair, and that skin - that way he walked as though the earth he trod on ought to be paying in gold for the privilege -

Oh, shit!  And what the fuck, what the fuck could someone like that possibly see in Neville of all people?

Damn it!  And when Neville had actually had the nerve to walk out on him - for no bloody good reason, the ungrateful bastard.

And in all justice he ought to have come - as over the years he'd brought himself to believe he had - to a bad or, at least, an undistinguished end.  Scrabbling in sweaty, noisy clubs for a few hours uneasy ease, or perhaps caught on CCTV in a stinking alleyway behind an ill-thought-out sixties block, his pants around his ankles and some middle-management cock in his mouth as the flashlight trapped them both -

Happiness ought to have been a foreign currency for him, and one where the exchange rate was set too high for him to acquire more than the barest pittance.

Instead - to turn up as half of an assured, cosmopolitan couple (seven years together, he'd found out last night) - happy, rich, secure in what he was and what he had become -

Hanging like the sword of Damocles over his own security.

It was only a miracle that Ellie hadn't cottoned on already.  And the humiliation of acknowledging the past to her was, literally, unbearable.  Inside his head a voice said, with a cold finality:

This cannot be.

His eye was caught by a sudden, jerky series of movements down on the bay, like a water-beetle skimming across the smooth surface of a summer's pond.  Someone was going ashore from the anchored yacht.  He cast a quick glance at his watch.  Someone who was a very early riser indeed.  Someone, perhaps, who wanted to indulge a preference for long country walks as a settler for a troubled mind, and to do so before the sun was high.

It might be the barest intuition, but somehow Roddy had no doubt at all as to who that someone had to be.  He paused.  The sound of his wife's even, rhythmical breathing was still coming from the bedroom.  He debated for a moment whether or not to bother and then scribbled a note, brief and uninformative:

Gone out for walk. Back later.

He weighted it down on the kitchen table with the pepper pot, and then let himself out of the villa's back door with elaborate care to avoid waking her. 

He was jogging before he was out of the villa's grounds, and openly running as soon as he reached the main road down into the village.

Fate had chosen to deprive him of justice, had it?  Well, he had seized the moment.  And he would show fate who was the master here.

He caught up with Neville when he was passing the little church.  The detached part of his brain that for some reason this morning was recording everything with meticulous clarity noted that the flowers were wilting on the fresh-turned earth of the newest grave, and that an oil lamp placed on the grave's head still gave out a pallid flicker in the strengthening sunlight.

"Hello!" he said.

Neville turned.  "Oh," he said.  "It's you."  His pose, as he stood on the road a little further up the slope was closed, wary.  Roddy tried the effect of a smile, advancing towards him with his hands extended a little in front of him, palms upwards.

"We need to talk," he said.

Neville shrugged.  "Do we?  Why change the habit of a lifetime?"

"Come on!" He approached closer; his shadow fell over Neville's face.  "That's hardly fair."

"Isn't it?"

He had been prepared for bitterness; that, after all, was a sort of acknowledgment that he mattered.  That the underlying tone was genuinely indifferent stung, though.

"Can I just walk with you a little way?"

"If you want.  I'm going up to the lighthouse."

Neville turned, and started up the steep path through the olive groves above the church at a brisk pace.  Roddy had forgotten: he had assumed, carelessly, casually that his own superior fitness would tell in any challenge of this nature.  But Neville had always been good on the hills, and, infuriatingly, it took all his efforts to keep up.  Conversation was curtailed; there was no way he was volunteering to betray his breathlessness.  It was not until they reached the summit of the headland that he tried to speak again.

"We need to talk," he found himself repeating, meaninglessly, to Neville's broad back as he set off along the path around the headland at the same pace he had set coming up it.  Neville stopped; he swung round.

"Why?  Is it my silence you're after?  You've got it.  Satisfied?"

He made his lips smile, his posture easy.  "I never doubted it.  For a moment.  I trusted you completely, Nev. Your friend though, last night, had me worried -"

Neville looked rather flustered.  "Yes.  Well.  Yes.  Perhaps you didn't catch him in the best of moods.  He's very protective.  But I'm sure he'll stop teasing, if I ask him.  He likes Eleanor, I think.  I don't think he'd keep on if I pointed out that the only likely result is that he'd hurt her."

A cold, raw, bitter-tasting anger filled him.  For his safety to depend on the goodwill engendered by that empty-headed nincompoop!  He averted his face, so that his fury would not show in his expression and betray him.  And then the exhilaration of justice and of fate answering to his avenging hand sang in his blood.

His voice was very calm: oh, he could afford to be calm, conciliatory even.  Now.  He nodded.

"Thanks for that.  You've no idea how much I appreciate it.  And - I'm sorry."

Something in Neville's face lightened.  He had always hated conflict, Roddy realised, wondering why it had taken him so long to grasp that that, too, was a weapon ready for his hand.  But everything was, this perfect morning.   The rough, friable soil beneath their feet and the deep blue sea pounding into the rocks far below them.  Their perfect solitude, alone awake in a sleeping world.

"Don't mention it," Neville mumbled.  He set off, again; much less frenetic this time, allowing Roddy to come up to walk alongside him.  The path was slightly too narrow for two to walk abreast, though.  It had to have been.  It was fated.  Everything was turning out right at last.

He saw the perfect place coming a few yards ahead.  He dropped back a little, murmuring something about a shoe-lace - bent and feigned fiddling with it - quickened his pace to rejoin Neville, whom he had waved ahead of him - uttered a sudden, pained squeak - as a man might who turns his ankle on a rough cliff path - saw Neville begin to turn - uttered a louder, panicked yell, dropping to his knees and rolling, feeling the earth beginning to slip beneath him, aware of the solider rock ledge he had earmarked from the curve of the path above, now hidden from sight -

His outstretching toes found solid stone, and braced.  Neville, his face a foot or so from his own - good God, how had he ever found him attractive? - was white, panicked, mouthing something, leaning idiotically far over the edge, holding out a hand -

And when it comes down to it, what is rugby after all but an exercise in how to apply one's force to another's body to bring him crashing to the ground? And he had been practising that three times a week since he was ten years old.  And somehow, all the time in the world to do it now.  It was easy.  It was right.  And Neville was still mouthing reassuring platitudes, the fool, even as his hands gripped him below the elbow.

Until he realised, and the platitudes turned into a scream, which echoed on and on as Neville's body fell, unnaturally slowly it seemed, twisting over and over, before the merciful blue water far below brought an end to his falling. 

Roddy clung to the edge of the cliff for quite some minutes, looking down.  But nothing broke the surface of the waters.  And then, tortuously and with infinite care, he pulled himself back to the path, and lay prone, gasping, until he was ready to cast his face into the appropriate lines of shock and horror, and stagger back into the village to raise the alarm.

Draco's dazed slumber was shattered by a pounding rhythm reverberating through the yacht's hull. 

He dragged himself to wakefulness, fighting off the cobwebby tendrils of the sleeping potion that he vaguely recollected someone - probably the engineer - forcing him to take some time during the chaotic hours since Roddy's distraught return with his news.

The  pitiless blows continued on. Had it not been so improbable that the boat would have chosen to wreck itself in perfect three/four time, he would have assumed that the boat had dragged its anchor and was driving itself against the rocks.

Grabbing - as something of an afterthought - a towel to hitch round his hips, he scrambled up on deck, yelling for someone to come and see to the bloody boat.

No-one responded - so where the fuck were the crew, anyway?

Queasily, it occurred to him that the most probable explanation was that they were still out looking for the body.  Or - perhaps - finding excuses not to be in his vicinity when the sleeping draught wore off.

Especially if they haven't found -

He staggered along the starboard side, towards the source of the racket.  Above the apparent point of impact, he leaned out over the guardrails to find a dolphin ramming its beak dementedly - but with an undeniable natural rhythm - into the hull.

"You fucking imbecilic animal!" he raged down at the dark smooth shape in the water.  At his voice the dolphin flipped itself backwards onto its tail fin, standing five feet out of the water and spitting brine at Draco's face.

It emitted a fast, high-pitched sequence of clicks and squeaks, flipping its fins towards the dying lights of Lakka in a way, Draco thought, that seemed to combine the maximum of precious expression with the minimum of communication.

"So; what?"

The dolphin jerked its head towards the stem of the boat, while prudently keeping the hull of the yacht between it and the lights of the village. Its small eyes were knowing: its expression full of intelligence. Suddenly wholly compelled, Draco thrust himself close to the guardrails.

"Yes?" he demanded.  "What do you know?"

The sequence of clicks and hisses became yet more plaintive and imperative.  And equally incomprehensible.  Nevertheless, the gestures of the huge bottle-nosed head were hardly impossible to decode.  And self-evidently the dolphin did not seem to have any enthusiasm for their business being known to those still awake on the island.

Abruptly, Draco made up his mind.  He let the towel fall to the deck.

"OK," he muttered, easing himself over the toe-rail and under the lower of the guard rails.  "I'm on.  Whatever you want to show me, show me."

He dropped into the dark, choppy waters.

The dolphin greeted him with almost excessive enthusiasm, cavorting around him in a series of extravagant leaps and arcs before it finally swerved close enough to allow him to catch at its dorsal fin.

Once sure he was attached the dolphin swirled around and shot off out of the bay.

The speed of their passage through the waves, and the turbulence of the spray flung into his face made clinging on and breathing the two most urgent priorities. Survival blissfully prevented thought.  He felt a stab of emotion that was more like pain, though, when they passed beneath the lighthouse.  Then they were out into the open sea, diving recklessly southwards along the barren rocky western shore of the island.

They had gone, Draco judged, about a couple of miles when the dolphin slewed in towards the shore.  In these steep-sided, iron-bound waters they were within feet of the shore before it shallowed enough for him to stand up, and then it was so abrupt that he stubbed his toes on the rocky bottom as the dolphin shrugged him loose, effortlessly, and left him sprawled in the breaking waves on the rocky shore at the cliff's foot.

The dolphin, prudently staying afloat in the deeper water, emitted a series of clicks and hisses, which, Draco thought dimly, had something of a scolding quality about them.  Somehow he felt convinced that this particular dolphin had to be female.

It delivered itself of a particularly scathing sounding snort through its blow-hole.  Draco got the impression that it was gesturing - with head and flipper - towards a dark crack in the cliffs.  Cursing the sharp fragments of rock under his bare feet, he made his way towards it.

The darkness inside the cave reminded him - as the chill breeze raising goose pimples on his bare flesh had not - of how exposed he was here: without his wand, even without clothes.  He could not summon a spell to part the shadows before him, or defend himself with anything other than his bare hands if the shades proved hostile.  The merest first year Gryffindor would have been less reckless.

Or merely less despairing?

There was movement ahead; he sensed a darker patch moving against blackness, heard a stone chink on another stone. With a tremendous effort he achieved an approximation of a level tone.

"Who's there?"

There was a shuddering exhalation - not quite a gasp - from ahead of him.  And a broken voice - the one voice he had told himself all day he would never hear again, and had believed, nonetheless, that he must - that it was impossible he could have lost irrevocably  - the only voice he ever wanted to hear, could listen to forever, said disbelievingly,

"Draco?  Draco?" 

And oblivious of the sharp stones under his soles he stumbled forwards the last two paces and into the arms he had never truly accepted would never enfold him again this side of the grave. 

Time hung suspended in the cave.  Outside it might have continued its predestined linear route from the moment before to the moment after, but in the dark, in the frantic giving and receiving of kisses and caresses, there was only an eternal present.  That present, however, was one that had forever lost its innocence; it was now tainted not merely with the Might Have Been but the This Surely Must.  The cold voice of experience sounded in their ears, and could, no longer, be wholly shut out by the barricades of their arrogant youth.  One day it whispered.  One day. 

For that is inherent in any love which has the quality of permanence about it, for in the ordinary way of things one will be inevitably be taken and the other left: a choice made without sense, without meaning, without compassion; and the pain which has been for a brief time held back behind the barricade will crash through, and in its wild torrential plunge to the valley below sweep away all joy, and laughter, and hope in its path.

The dolphin, infuriatingly, had not decided to wait around for them.  A painful, hesitant stumble over the rocks on the edge of the waves demonstrated as clearly as need be that walking home along the beach was not an option, even if there were not - as Neville strongly suspected there were - stretches of cliffs which dropped sheer into the sea at several points between them and their destination.

Neville sat down on a rock, rested his chin on his knees, and looked in the general direction of the lighthouse, which flashed on and off with its monotonous, metronymic rhythm. 

"Bugger it,"  he said, with an effort at a conversational tone.  "Looks like a long swim home.  Especially since I lost my wand when I - fell."

Involuntarily, Draco flinched.  His voice sounded deadly flat.

"Yes.  I know." He swallowed.  "They - found it.  Half-way down.  That was when I - started to believe what they were telling me might be true."

Neville placed his hand over Draco's and squeezed, quickly.  "Only then?"