Draco staggered and nearly fell. He knew that it would be terrible to lose his place in the chant, that it might mean they couldn't help Henry, and that Mother and Aunt Andromeda and Tonks were counting on him. But he still did nearly lose it, at the feel of the dragging drain on his soul.
It was Henry. Draco knew it was. He didn't know how it could be, since Henry had fallen unconscious from the pain several minutes ago, but he knew it was.
And he remembered what he had said to Henry a few days ago, when they were lying next to each other in Henry's bedroom.
Twins share magic. Twins share a soul.
Draco kept up the chant, but he also reached out to the pull, as if he was clasping the hand of someone he couldn't see, but someone he knew was Henry. And he fed magic into that pull, pushing and pushing, and ignoring the way that his knees weakened beneath him. He sank to kneel at the edge of the circle. There was nothing that said he couldn't do that, that he had to be standing to lend his voice to the chant.
At least, nothing that Mother or Father or Aunt Andromeda had bothered to explain about the ritual.
Take it, Henry, he thought, but couldn't say, while his mouth kept moving in the words that powered the ritual. Everything I have is yours, too.
Bellatrix heard the voice calling, a voice she had never heard, but young. A child of the House of Black, someone new and vulnerable and not able to fight his own battles yet.
Help me!
Bella still crouched at the edge of the field of stars. Bella was still the young girl whose mother had conjured the Astronomy Room and the field of stars for her. Bella was still the girl who had been Cissy and Andromeda's sister.
And she knew, without knowing how she knew, that this child was connected to her through one of her sisters. Her niece or nephew. She had been barely aware of the young son Narcissa had had before she went to prison, but perhaps it was him. Draco.
Named for the stars. A proper name for a son of her House.
Bellatrix gasped a little as something occurred to her. Narcissa had had another son who was stolen. Perhaps they were using this ritual to call on the magic of the stars and find him? It seemed possible.
She reached up and scratched her wrists with her nails, spilling her blood on the floor of the cell. The floor was still there, but her awareness of it receded and passed into her awareness of the stars.
"Take it," she whispered, voice nearly a croon. "Take it, child. What I bleed is yours."
Help me!
There should have been no one to listen or hear. But there was someone, although he wasn't hearing with ears. He reached out and found some strength, and flung it out like a rope, aiming at someone who wasn't a brother or a son or a father, but was someone of the House of Black.
Narcissa felt as though her soul was being ripped open by Henry's silent shout. She didn't know if he even knew what he was doing. But he was in trouble, not simply unconscious, and he required their aid.
Still chanting, she knelt and reached out to grasp Henry's hand. She noticed for the first time that Draco was kneeling, too, and that the delicate silver chains encircling Henry's wrists had broken. She breathed out. She didn't know the implications of that, given that it was supposed to be impossible.
So was her son calling for help.
But Henry often did the impossible. He had survived confronting a man possessed by the shade of the Dark Lord. He had survived hosting a Horcrux. He had survived years with the Muggles.
He had come back to them.
Narcissa caught Henry's hand and fed strength into him without stopping the chant, without looking away from her younger son's pale still form. She could feel Lucius's strength at her back, cold and anchoring, but not able to join hers in this instance, not when it was Black family magic.
But that did not matter. He would provide a place for them to come back, a place to stand.
Narcissa flung herself into the stars.
....
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