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“Well, well,” said Dumbledore, as though Malfoy was showing him an ambitious homework project. “Very good indeed. You found a way to let them in, did you?”

“Yeah,” said Malfoy, who was panting. “Right under your nose and you never realized!”

“Ingenious,” said Dumbledore. “Yet … forgive me … where are they now? You seem unsupported.”

“They met some of your guards. They’re having a fight down below. They won’t be long. … I came on ahead. I — I’ve got a job to do.”

“Well, then, you must get on and do it, my dear boy,” said Dumbledore softly.

There was silence. Harry stood imprisoned within his own invisible, paralyzed body, staring at the two of them, his ears straining to hear sounds of the Death Eaters’ distant fight, and in front of him, Draco Malfoy did nothing but stare at Albus Dumbledore, who, incredibly, smiled.

“Draco, Draco, you are not a killer.”

“How do you know?” said Malfoy at once.

He seemed to realize how childish the words had sounded; Harry saw him flush in the Mark’s greenish light.

“You don’t know what I’m capable of,” said Malfoy more forcefully. “You don’t know what I’ve done!”

“Oh yes, I do,” said Dumbledore mildly. “You almost killed Katie Bell and Ronald Weasley. You have been trying, with increasing desperation, to kill me all year. Forgive me, Draco, but they have been feeble attempts. … So feeble, to be honest, that I wonder whether your heart has been really in it.”

“It has been in it!” said Malfoy vehemently. “I’ve been working on it all year, and tonight —”

Somewhere in the depths of the castle below Harry heard a muffled yell. Malfoy stiffened and glanced over his shoulder.

“Somebody is putting up a good fight,” said Dumbledore conversationally. “But you were saying … yes, you have managed to introduce Death Eaters into my school, which, I admit, I thought impossible. … How did you do it?”

But Malfoy said nothing: He was still listening to whatever was happening below and seemed almost as paralyzed as Harry was.

“Perhaps you ought to get on with the job alone,” suggested Dumbledore. “What if your backup has been thwarted by my guard? As you have perhaps realized, there are members of the Order of the Phoenix here tonight too. And after all, you don’t really need help. … I have no wand at the moment. … I cannot defend myself.”

Malfoy merely stared at him.

“I see,” said Dumbledore kindly, when Malfoy neither moved nor spoke. “You are afraid to act until they join you.”

“I’m not afraid!” snarled Malfoy, though he still made no move to hurt Dumbledore. “It’s you who should be scared!”

“But why? I don’t think you will kill me, Draco. Killing is not nearly as easy as the innocent believe. … So tell me, while we wait for your friends … how did you smuggle them in here? It seems to have taken you a long time to work out how to do it.”

Malfoy looked as though he was fighting down the urge to shout, or to vomit. He gulped and took several deep breaths, glaring at Dumbledore, his wand pointing directly at the latter’s heart. Then, as though he could not help himself, he said, “I had to mend that broken Vanishing Cabinet that no one’s used for years. The one Montague got lost in last year.”

“Aaaah.” Dumbledore’s sigh was half a groan. He closed his eyes for a moment. “That was clever. … There is a pair, I take it?”

“In Borgin and Burkes,” said Malfoy, “and they make a kind of passage between them. Montague told me that when he was stuck in the Hogwarts one, he was trapped in limbo but sometimes he could hear what was going on at school, and sometimes what was going on in the shop, as if the cabinet was traveling between them, but he couldn’t make anyone hear him. … In the end, he managed to Apparate out, even though he’d never passed his test. He nearly died doing it. Everyone thought it was a really good story, but I was the only one who realized what it meant — even Borgin didn’t know — I was the one who realized there could be a way into Hogwarts through the cabinets if I fixed the broken one.”

“Very good,” murmured Dumbledore.