Celandine's Chronicle (celandineb) wrote in cels_fic_haven, @ 2007-08-08 20:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | hp fic better than revenge, hp fic draco/harry |
HP fic: Better Than Revenge, ch. 19: At the University of Aberdeen [Harry/Draco, general]
Title: Better Than Revenge
chapter 19, "At the University of Aberdeen"
Author: celandineb
Fandom: HP
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: general
Summary: While they discuss Horcruxes, Draco suggests an identity for the mysterious R.A.B. The boys also talk about Dark Magic in general, and the ramifications of an Unbreakable Vow.
The hostel had no twin rooms free that night, but Harry had the idea – a bright one, if he did say so himself – of trying the university. As it turned out had no trouble booking a place for them at King's Halls. A bit more expensive to stay at the university, of course, and Harry knew Draco was concerned about money. When the other boy suggested that Harry could actually summon Kreacher to Aberdeen, and have the house-elf fetch the Galleons Draco had left at Hogwarts, therefore, Harry felt obliged to go along with the plan.
Kreacher was as horrible as ever. Harry and Draco had agreed to pretend that Draco was in charge. Harry hoped that would lessen the chance that Kreacher might reveal what they were up to by complaining, ostensibly to himself, back at Hogwarts. After ordering Kreacher to bring his money-chest, Draco told him to fetch Dobby along when he returned, too. Harry planned to ask Dobby to keep a watch over Kreacher. If Kreacher went off to tell anything to Narcissa Malfoy or Bellatrix Lestrange, Harry wanted to hear about it.
While they waited for the house-elves, they talked about what approach to take in trying to Transfigure the Dark Mark on Draco's arm. It was obvious that Draco was worried about it. To reassure him, Harry said, "We won't try anything if you don't want to, Draco. I'd be afraid too." Hardly thinking about it, he picked up Draco's hand in his own and interlaced their fingers.
Draco denied being afraid at first. No surprise in that. As Harry waited, though, Draco admitted that he was scared, a little, but would try the Transfiguration anyway.
They had thought of two ways to make the attempt: Transfiguring Draco's entire arm to something else and then back, or working on the Mark itself directly. Harry favored the first, Draco the second. Since it was Draco who would be going through with it, Harry deferred to his choice.
For either option the difficulty was in knowing whether it would work at all – this was not an application of Transfiguration that Professor McGonagall had spent much time on, being advanced-level N.E.W.T. work, but waiting until next spring was not exactly an option. Harry suggested that if Draco had some other tattoo, that would be ideal for practice.
"I haven't any tattoos," said Draco. "Getting an ear pierced got me in enough trouble."
"But it looks good on you," Harry said, wondering why Draco had done it if his parents had forbidden it, and even more why the Malfoys would have objected to such a common thing. Perhaps because it was common, and too Muggle-like? He saw that Draco had turned red; realizing that he had complimented Draco's appearance, Harry flushed too. But he meant it. Whether it was the silver skull that Hermione had insisted he take, or the simple ring he had worn before, the flash of metal at Draco's ear made him look somehow harder, more serious.
Draco asked if Harry had any tattoos himself. No proper ones, but... Harry realized that the mark Dudley's biro had left on his hand when he was eight probably qualified as a tattoo, technically anyhow, and he offered it up to Draco as a test to see if their ideas about Transfiguring an ink mark in the skin would work.
Next they had to decide what the proper word would be to cast the spell. They were still arguing about that when first Kreacher and then Dobby appeared with a pair of loud cracks. Draco drew Kreacher's attention to him, allowing Harry to speak with Dobby unheard by the other house-elf.
"What is Harry Potter doing here with him?" Dobby asked, his face crinkling with disgust as he nodded his head toward Draco. "Is Harry Potter in trouble? Can Dobby help?"
"Sh, don't let Kreacher overhear you," Harry muttered. "No, I'm not in trouble, or at any rate no more than usual. Draco's the one who needs help now, and I promised I would, for Dumbledore's sake. Will you help me to do that, Dobby? I can order Kreacher what to do, but I don't like it and neither does he; he'll evade my commands if he can. I'm worried that he'll go off and tell Bellatrix Lestrange or Narcissa Malfoy where Draco is and that I'm helping him, and they mustn't know. Could you follow Kreacher for me and make sure he doesn't talk? If he does anything suspicious, in fact, you'd do me a great service if you came to let me know what he was up to."
Dobby seemed about to ask a question when they were interrupted.
"Potter." It sounded strange to hear Draco calling him by his surname again. "Tell Kreacher to do as I command."
Harry seconded Draco's orders, trying his best to act as if he were only doing what Draco wanted. He did stipulate that Kreacher was only allowed to act on specific orders from Draco, not anticipate or guess what he might want done. Kreacher looked resentful, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. Dobby, however, seemed positively gleeful as he promised to follow his fellow elf and report anything untoward to Harry.
The chest that Kreacher had brought to Draco was larger than Harry had expected, and filled with wizarding gold as it was, would be both cumbersome and conspicuous if they carried it. Since Draco seemed to have no immediate ideas for how to conceal it, Harry somewhat reluctantly suggested using his Invisibility Cloak. "We can drape it over the chest and use a levitation charm to float the whole thing along," he said. He felt funny about using the cloak. He had been carrying it around, stuffed into the bottom of his rucksack, but the last time he had worn it was the night that Dumbledore had died.
It was still hours until they could go to King's Halls, though, so after some lunch Harry agreed to let Draco try to Transfigure the mark on his hand, joking that after Professor Lockhart's removing all the bones in his arm, nothing Draco did could possibly be worse. And indeed Harry felt no more than a slight tickling sensation as he watched the blue dot shape itself into a finely-drawn letter P. P for Potter, of course. It was faint, hard to see really, but Harry decided he rather liked it – better a reminder of Draco than one of Dudley – and refused when Draco offered to change it back.
But when Harry was about to attempt the same spell on the Dark Mark, Draco stopped him.
"What if an attempt at Transfiguring the Mark acts like You-Know-Who's summons, when he touches it? We could be surrounded by Death Eaters in minutes."
Harry wondered if Draco was just too scared to be willing to try. On the other hand, Draco had certainly sounded sincere earlier when he had said he would do it, and the thought that Transfiguration might summon the Death Eaters was a reasonable possibility. Neither of them knew how Voldemort used the Dark Mark to make that contact. Harry speculated that Hermione might, since she had studied the Mark when working out the D.A. Galleons.
"We could use your Galleon to ask her to come here today, rather than wait till Wednesday," Draco said, sounding unhappy.
The thought of seeing Hermione so soon after last night made Harry uncomfortable. Hermione had deduced that Harry and Draco had been snogging, before. What if she figured out this time that things had gone so much further? But how else... Hedwig, that was it.
"Charm the Galleon to say ‘Send Hedwig to Aberdeen'," Harry told Draco. "I'll write out a note she can take back to Hermione. Then Hermione can either answer by note or decide if it's worth Apparating here, and if she has to look anything up, she'll be where she can do that first."
Hedwig was fast, but she could hardly reach Aberdeen before sometime that night, even if Hermione or Ron saw the message right away. So Harry leaned back against the now-invisible trunk and tried to relax. Really, there was nothing much else they could do for the rest of the afternoon. Draco had his money, Dobby was willing to follow Kreacher as needed, they had decided that Transfiguring the Dark Mark was too risky to attempt without more information. Draco came and sprawled out next to Harry, resting his head on Harry's legs and smiling up at him from under sleek fair hair. The sunlight caught the bones of his face and threw them into sharp relief.
Harry drew one finger across Draco's cheek and along his jawline, ending at his mouth, but when Draco's lips parted Harry snatched his hand away.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to... not here," he said. Not in public. It wasn't as if he had not snogged Ginny in the Gryffindor common room, or out by the lake, but they had had no choice, nowhere to go for privacy really, whereas tonight Draco and he would have a room together, alone. Harry had always been embarrassed by Ron and Lavender's carrying on in front of everyone; he didn't fancy putting himself in the same circumstances, not when he could avoid it.
It seemed that Draco did not share his feelings. A scowl, almost the old Malfoy sneer, twisted Draco's mouth. "What about your fine words last night? I didn't think you'd be ashamed to own up that you like... this."
"I'm not ashamed," said Harry, stung. "I'd just rather be in private, that's all. It's not that I'd mind someone knowing, but not watching."
"But there's no one to see us but Muggles. Who cares?" said Draco softly. He took Harry's hand and swept his thumb over Harry's wrist, making him shiver. "And not even any of them have come past here all day. So why not?"
"Draco..." Draco's head was still heavy on his lap, but Harry felt as if there were an enormous gulf between them. How could he explain that it did not matter who saw, Muggle or wizard, he just didn't like it? "Look, I'm not saying no to... well, to whatever. But later. When we're really alone. All right?"
Draco gazed at him unblinkingly, and nodded slowly. "That's a promise, then."
Promise? Had he made a promise? Of what? Harry hoped that Draco did not have any exotic ideas in mind. His own mind kept presenting him with all sorts of bizarre possibilities. Hastily he said, grabbing at the first topic he could think of, "Okay, so we'll wait to hear what Hermione thinks before going on with the Transfiguration plan, but I'd rather not waste all our time until then. You heard in Bath about the Horcruxes. Do you have any ideas about those? Because if I, we, anyone can find and destroy the ones remaining, then there'll at least be a chance of stopping Voldemort, and then it wouldn't matter about the Mark anymore."
"Stopping Voldemort?" There was an odd note in Draco's voice.
"Yeah." Harry's fists clenched involuntarily, pulling Draco's hair and eliciting a sound of protest. "Sorry. Stopping him. Killing him, yeah, I know that's what it will mean. Don't remind me." Just thinking about it made his stomach knot.
"Harry," Draco's voice brought him back from the black reverie, "if it helps... there's no one with a better chance than you. You survived the worst he could try when you were only a baby. You've met him face-to-face and beaten him more than once since. Who else would you trust to fight him?"
Harry shook his head. "My mother saved me once, and died to do it. That won't happen again. And you don't know... okay, yes, maybe you do know what he's like, since he gave you the Mark. I've been lucky, is what it amounts to. And I've had help nearly every time."
"Don't you think you'll have help again?" said Draco. "Weasley... Ron and Hermione, they'd do anything for you, don't you see that? And I know I'm not the person you'd've chosen to trail around with you, but I swore to help you too. You won't be alone. I'm not saying it'll be easy, but you won't be alone. We'll all do everything we can."
"I know," said Harry, "but in the end it'll still be up to me to kill him, and I don't know if I can. Never mind. Before that's even possible there's still the Horcruxes to deal with."
"Remind me what you think they are?"
"Dumbledore was fairly certain that they would be things that were associated with the four Hogwarts founders. Back when he was still called Tom Riddle, Voldemort was almost obsessed with the school and its founders, it was really his only home. Tom Riddle stole two things from an old witch called Hepzibah Smith, a locket of Slytherin's and a cup that was once Helga Hufflepuff's. We were after the Slytherin locket on... that night, but it turned out that someone had beaten us to it years ago and replaced the locket, the Horcrux, with a different locket. As for anything that once belonged to Ravenclaw or Gryffindor, I don't know what they'd be or where; even Dumbledore didn't seem to know for sure."
"What about that phony locket? Wasn't there a note in it, didn't you say that the other night in Bath?" Draco's face was sharp and intent.
"It was a note to Voldemort, taunting him really, signed R.A.B. He said he'd taken the Horcrux and was planning to destroy it, even though he expected to die soon too. D'you want to read it for yourself?"
"Yes."
Harry fished the locket out of his jeans pocket and gave it to Draco. "The note's folded up inside."
Draco looked at the scrappy piece of parchment for a long time. "You don't know who R.A.B. is?"
"Not a clue. Hermione did a bit of research in the library before the term ended, but no one she found with those initials seemed likely."
"I think I might know, but I can't see how that'll help," said Draco.
"You know R.A.B.?" Harry was on his knees, having knocked Draco off his lap onto the ground in his agitation. He hauled him up again, holding the other boy by the shoulders and shaking him. "Who? Who is he?"
"I think... he was Regulus Black. Regulus Alphard Black, my mother's cousin," Draco said.
"Of course," breathed Harry. It all fit. R.A.B. had to be someone who had once been a follower of Voldemort, it was the only way to have known where to find the Horcrux, and hadn't Lupin said that Sirius's brother had tried to leave the Death Eaters and died only a few days later? Harry couldn't believe that he had not thought of it for himself; it was even more surprising that Hermione had missed the possibility.
"You're right, though, that doesn't help much with the Horcrux. The note says he'll destroy it, but there's no way of knowing if he did," said Harry, sinking back and sitting down again.
"Leave that one aside for now, then. We'll hope that he did destroy it, or else that some other bit of information turns up. Cup from Hufflepuff, unknowns from Ravenclaw and Gryffindor. It might be simpler to try to think where You-Know-Who would have hidden his Horcruxes and go look there and see if there's a likely item," Draco mused. "Do you have any ideas as to where?"
"The Gaunt family ring was in the old Gaunt house – that was Voldemort's mother, Merope Gaunt," Harry explained when Draco looked puzzled. "Slytherin's locket was in a cave where Tom Riddle went as a child. Tom's diary was at Hogwarts when I destroyed it, your father had had it before that, but I don't know where it was kept originally. The only connection I can see between the cave and the Gaunt house is that they were both places significant to Voldemort in some way – but who knows what other places might have been?"
"His father's house?" Draco suggested.
Harry nodded. "That seems possible, although it's obvious enough that I'd be surprised if Dumbledore hadn't searched the place pretty thoroughly, or had someone else do it." A member of the Order of the Phoenix, most likely, but he didn't think Draco knew of the existence of the Order, and didn't want to tell him about it. Not out of mistrust, since Draco could not now betray anything that could harm Harry, but Harry was not a member of the Order and it was not his secret to tell. "But maybe... his father's grave. That's where Wormtail performed the spell to bring him back." Harry ran his fingers over the scar that had marred his arm since that terrible day. "Want to go look tomorrow?"
"All right," Draco agreed. "I've been trying to think if my father ever said anything about where the Death Eaters used to meet, if there were any likely places. I don't think they had special locations where they always went, just wherever was most convenient." He pulled a face. "Sorry, I know that's not much good."
"Yeah, well, we can both keep thinking about it. I'd say Hogwarts was likely, apparently he tried to come back to be a teacher more than once, but when would he have hidden something there? And would he have placed a Horcrux there if he wasn't going to be around?" said Harry.
"He did it elsewhere," Draco pointed out. "At the Gaunt house and the cave both."
"True, but Hogwarts... there are always loads of people about during term time, and even during the holidays there's house-elves and some of the staff, anyone would be spotted who wasn't supposed to be there, wouldn't you think?" Harry said.
"Not if he had an Invisibility Cloak like yours, or was an Animagus," said Draco. "You can't Apparate in or out, but I'm sure there'd be other ways to sneak in too."
"He's not an Animagus, I'm almost sure," said Harry. "Hermione looked up the registration list once. Could be unregistered, like Rita Skeeter," and Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew, and Harry's own father, "but I think that's the sort of thing that would be part of the stories about him, if he could take an animal form. I suppose you're right though, there'd be ways into Hogwarts. So that's another place to look, even though again I expect Dumbledore thought of it and searched there – he could have missed something." Harry sighed. "I'll have to get permission, and it'll take ages to look alone."
"What do you mean, alone? I'll help you, of course." Draco sounded almost insulted.
"Not safe," said Harry. "To be in the same place, day after day? Not to mention that you weren't too keen on letting Professor McGonagall know where you are."
"You don't understand, Harry. The Unbreakable Vow – I promised to ‘do my best to help and protect you in any need.' I have to help you, if you need help, I don't have any choice," said Draco.
"I guess I don't understand, no. I thought that was only if my life was in danger or something of the sort."
"No. I didn't restrict it. Stupid of me, I suppose," although Draco did not sound all that self-condemnatory.
"You mean for the rest of my life, and yours, you'll have to help me with anything I need help on, or you'll die? That's ridiculous," Harry said.
"Only if I know about it, I think. Magic does have some limitations."
"But it wouldn't help me to know that you were putting your life at risk for me," said Harry desperately. He could not believe that Draco was sitting there talking calmly about what amounted to living in each other's pockets indefinitely. "So if you weren't here, and I went off to Hogwarts to search without you knowing I needed help, then nothing bad could happen to you on account of the Vow, right?"
"That's what I just said."
"Okay, then. Forget about going to Hogwarts any time soon." Harry sighed. "Maybe I could ask Dobby if he knows of anything belonging to one of the Founders, hidden away someplace. I bet the house-elves know loads about the castle, even more than Fred and George ever did." It was an impossible situation. If Harry left Draco and sneaked away to search at Hogwarts, Draco would doubtless guess what he was doing and follow. And if he did that, it would break Harry's promise to protect Draco too. "We'd better stick with the old Riddle house and the graveyard at Little Hangleton for the time being. They'll be much quicker to search anyhow, Hogwarts is enormous and the castle alone would take weeks."
"Whatever you think is best, Harry," said Draco.
"Best?" Harry felt a grim kind of hysterical laugh bubbling up in his chest. "What would be best would be for none of any of this to have ever happened. For Voldemort never to have existed. My parents would be alive, dozens, hundreds of other witches and wizards would be alive and unharmed. Your father wouldn't be in Azkaban. The two of us wouldn't be here, running around the countryside like fools for fear of being traced by Death Eaters. That's what would be best."
Draco curled up with his arms wrapped around his legs, his hip brushing against Harry's knee. "Harry, I'm sorry that your parents are dead, but there's nothing I can do about it. And I'm not sorry that we're here together, or didn't you know that?"
Had Draco somehow planned this? Surely that was impossible, but...
"Did you deliberately phrase the Unbreakable Vow that way?" Harry asked, making his voice as hard as he could.
"No, I didn't," said Draco, lips quirked in a rueful smile. "It may not trouble me as much as you right now, but just think, Harry, it means I'm at your beck and call. Any time you need help of any kind, if I hear about it, I'll have to be there. We're getting along all right now, but what if we fight? I'll start talking about Mudbloods or how the Dark Arts can be useful and you'll get pissed off at me and say you never want to see my face again, but if I find out you're in trouble I'll have to come help you, like it or not. Being someone else's servant, which is what that amounts to, is not something any Malfoy would be pleased about. And no, there's no way to break an Unbreakable Vow, or negate it."
Harry squinted at Draco. "Stuck with each other, then. It's not so one-sided as it seems." To be honest there would be worse people to have bound to himself like this. Draco could be a total git at times, no question of that, but he was neither a fool nor incompetent. Probably about on Harry's own level when it came to wizarding ability, in fact. "What were you saying about the Dark Arts being useful?"
Now Draco's smile became a smirk. "I knew you'd pick up on that. They are, you know. What the Ministry calls the Dark Arts are just the spells and potions and so forth that it thinks are the most dangerous, or that interfere with matters more than the Ministry wants. It's a matter of definition really."
"You're not trying to say you'd defend the Unforgivable Curses, are you?" Harry was torn between curiosity and disgust.
"No... but the Ministry would call that curse you used on me, Sectumsempra, a Dark one, don't you think? But if someone really dangerous were after you – that horrible Amycus fellow for instance – wouldn't it be reasonable to use it to defend yourself? Or look at it from another angle. Spells that are thought of as perfectly okay can be used in pretty dubious ways. Like Hermione using the Memory Charm on the bloke at the hostel in Bath to get him to change the room; it was all right for us since we would obviously agree to it, but it might've meant that someone who'd booked the room didn't get it after all, and it interfered with Muggle behavior. So labeling certain bits of magic as Dark Arts and saying that no one should ever perform them is idiotic," Draco wound up.
There seemed to be some sense in Draco's logic, but Harry was not willing to be so easily convinced that there was no line separating the two sorts of magic. "You're saying that it all depends on the circumstances, then, whether using a particular spell can be justified."
"More or less, yes."
"But who judges?" said Harry slowly, thinking it over. "I mean, what if I think I'm in danger and use Sectumsempra, maybe killing someone and at least hurting them badly, but the other person didn't actually intend me any harm, so a spell like Petrificus Totalus would have been enough to stop them? That doesn't injure the person it strikes. It seems to me that something that hurts someone ought to always be considered Dark Arts, and forbidden."
"But isn't it fair, if they'd be attacking you to injure or kill you, to strike back equally hard? And more effective to strike first? Anyway, think about it. You've been in the infirmary at Hogwarts loads of times, and you told me about Madam Pomfrey having to regrow all the bones in your arm after Professor Lockhart made them disappear."
"Yeah, she had me drink Skele-Gro."
"What was it like?" asked Draco.
"Nasty-tasting, and it hurt like the dickens when the bones were growing back." Harry saw Draco's point. "Yes, it hurt, but it wasn't a Dark potion! The hurting was incidental, the purpose was to heal me."
"But it's the same thing," said Draco. "If you used Sectumsempra, the purpose would be to keep the other person from attacking you; causing injury would not be the reason why you did it."
Harry threw up his hands in defeat. "I wish Hermione were here to debate it with you, because I can't explain why I think you're wrong, but something tells me you are. I think I'd rather snog in public than argue about it any more, though." He managed a weak laugh.
"I wouldn't enjoy it if you didn't, Harry," said Draco, and again he stretched out on the grass next to Harry and rested his head on Harry's legs. "Don't be mad at me for talking about the Dark Arts though. I thought you should hear another point of view about them. What gets taught as Hogwarts is fine so far as it goes, but it's awfully limited and one-sided. I guess I'm used to looking at things from a different perspective than most people."
That could be taken more ways than one, Harry thought, looking down at Draco and this time refraining from touching him, even though his fingers itched to feel that soft/rough skin of his cheek again. Was Draco implying that there was some kind of similarity between accepting the Dark Arts as legitimate magic – some of them anyhow – and being queer? That did not make a lot of sense to Harry, but it did remind him of something that he was curious about, and he had no one else to ask but Draco.
"Okay," his voice squeaked and Harry cleared his throat before continuing. "Different perspective and all that. Er. You've known for ages that you liked blokes, right, that's all very well, but... what made you think I did? I mean, you came asking for help, what if I'd freaked out when you said you fancied me?"
Draco's face was pink. "I didn't know for sure that you did. That night in Godric's Hollow I was so upset I hardly knew what I was saying... and you made me tell you what I was thinking, as I remember, and you were the one who told me to kiss you."
Which was true enough, although it embarrassed Harry a little to remember it.
"If you're wondering if there was something you said or did at Hogwarts... no, there wasn't," Draco continued. "All the gossip had you keen on Cho Chang for ages, and then Ginny Weasley. Right now I only know of," he paused, and Harry could see his lips move as he counted, "seven blokes at school who are queer, and that's counting both of us. No wait, one was a seventh-year, so then it's six now."
Who were they all? And how did Draco know? Harry was too curious not to ask.
"Word of mouth," said Draco. "You know. Gossip... but mostly reliable. As to who, well, mostly they're like me, don't necessarily want it talked about – would you, if you didn't know who was saying what about you? I'll give you some hints, though. The other four still in school that I know about, one's a Slytherin, and there's two Ravenclaws and a Hufflepuff. The one who left school was a Gryffindor. And I'll say, too, that one's in our year, one in the year below, and two were only fourth-years last term. Precocious little buggers So put your thinking cap on and you might figure it out."
Harry's head was spinning. Who had the other Gryffindor been? And who else in their year could be queer? He had never noticed anything, never heard any gossip... but he was quite certain that Draco had said as much as he was going to. Harry hoped, a little forlornly, that Draco knowing about five other boys did not mean he had actually shagged them all. Then he wondered why he cared. It was plain that Harry was not Draco's first, so what did it matter how many more there had been?
Draco was watching him. "Harry?"
"Yeah?"
"Come on, let's go find this King's Halls place and stash away our gear."
The girl who gave them a room key said that the takeaway down the street had decent pizzas, so they went there and brought some back to their room. Harry thought it was quite good, although Draco grumbled that the tomato sauce was too sweet. The Slytherin also sniffed a bit at the room, wondering aloud how Muggle university students could bear such accommodations, so much less comfortable than the students' dormitories at Hogwarts, but he cheered up when they opened one of the remaining bottles of wine.
ch. 1 / ch. 2 / ch. 3 / ch. 4 / ch. 5 / ch. 6 / ch. 7 / ch. 8 / ch. 9 / ch. 10 / ch. 11 / ch. 12 / ch. 13 / ch. 14 / ch. 15 / ch. 16 / ch. 17 / ch. 18 / ch. 19 / ch. 20 / ch. 21 / ch. 22 / ch. 23 / ch. 24 / ch. 25 / ch. 26 / ch. 27 / ch. 28 / ch. 29 / ch. 30 / ch. 31 / ch. 32 / ch. 33 / ch. 34 / ch. 35 / ch. 36 / ch. 37 / ch. 38 / ch. 39 / ch. 40