Insomniac

Chapter Six

They've gone, I think," Pansy said to Draco after nearly an hour had passed and she had heard nothing for ten minutes. Draco was lying on the middle of his bedroom floor looking up at his hands. He didn't answer.

"Draco," she said sharply, and he lifted his head. "I think the Aurors have gone."

"They took my Muggle stuff," he complained. Pansy wrinkled her nose; there were so many other things that took precedence, but it was true that this was a loss. A part of her had wanted to try this stuff at some point before her parents returned from France. She wondered whether Harold Dingle would be in Knockturn Alley tomorrow.

"They did," she agreed sympathetically. "Now come on, let's see if we can find out what that was all about."

"I told you what it was all about," Draco said, still looking up at his hands. His arms were stretched out straight in front of him. Pansy was kneeling by the door.

"What?"

"I told you. Potter. We have until Thursday with him." Draco's voice, in contrast to earlier, was neither high nor fast. He sounded weary.

"Draco, don't be ridiculous," Pansy said, shaking her head.

There was a silence. She turned around to see him still staring at his fingers. "Draco," she said.

"Come on," he said at length. He stood abruptly, so fast he had to steady himself, and walked past her out of the room.

In the kitchen Bellatrix and Narcissa were at the table drinking tea while Kreacher lurked near the drawing room doorway. They were talking in low voices, and Pansy could not make out their words, but Draco made enough noise to drown them out anyway.

"Everything sorted out with the Ministry, Mum?" he asked. He opened a cupboard and began looking through it for some biscuits.

"Everything's fine, Draco," Narcissa replied, and Bellatrix gave them a smile that made Pansy look away - she hadn't done or said anything, really, but Pansy was left with an ever-growing feeling of unease whenever Bellatrix was in the room. She wondered where Bellatrix had been during the raid, and how the Aurors had missed her - she remembered that Draco had told her, several years ago now, that his family had a secret chamber under their drawing room floor that was accessible only by Portkey. She wondered if Bellatrix had used it tonight.

Bellatrix herself seemed to be in unusually good spirits considering what might have happened if Mad-Eye Moody had found her. She was humming and stirring her tea, her knees drawn up to her chest. Pansy sank into the chair beside Narcissa, who looked less relaxed than Bellatrix but still vaguely triumphant.

It quickly became apparent that they - at least, Pansy felt, she - had interrupted a conversation, because the room took on a kind of superficial quiet she was accustomed to. It was the same kind of quiet that settled over her dormitory whenever Daphne Greengrass entered and the gossip had to stop for the sake of an insincere camaraderie. Draco had poured himself a cup of tea - he was still unsteady, and Pansy wondered how much of that powder he had snorted. He managed to hoist himself onto the counter, and just as he opened his mouth to make another remark he was hastily silenced by a look from Bellatrix. He closed his mouth just as quickly and took a long sip of tea.

"Did they take anything?" he asked after a long silence broken only by the sound of tea being drunk and Kreacher muttering from the doorway.

"No," Narcissa replied, a distracted smile playing around her lips. Pansy looked up at Draco. He was looking at his mother, the same smile broadening across his pale, narrow face. He sniffed, loudly, and then put a hand to his upper lip.

"Draco," Pansy said, standing, "you're bleeding again."

"Again?" Narcissa said.

"Powdered Dragon Claw, that'll do it," Bellatrix remarked, half to herself, but Narcissa didn't hear. She passed Draco a handkerchief.

"I'm fine, Mum," he said, watching her as she stared at the handkerchief, which was quickly staining a bright, dark red.

There was another pause as Narcissa continued to look at him.

"Mum," Draco said again.

"I - I think I'm going to go to bed early," Pansy said, crossing her arms across her chest.

"Dear, make sure you go through your things and check to see that the Aurors didn't take anything," Narcissa advised as Pansy pushed her chair in. She nodded absently.

"Night," Draco called, his voice nasal behind the handkerchief.

"Goodnight," Pansy called, but she was already on the stairs.

:::

Pansy could tell by the time she reached the top of the stairs that the conversation she'd interrupted had picked up again. She heard Bellatrix's laugh, loud and unfeminine, and Narcissa's softer voice. Outside her bedroom door she pushed her hands through her hair.

"You know, you could do with a trim," remarked a nearby portrait of a haughty-looking young blond woman.

"Already scheduled one," she replied, rolling her eyes. The woman shrugged. Pansy closed the door behind her and sat down on the bed.

Potter, Draco had said. They're here for Potter, we have until Thursday.

Clearly, Draco had reached the point where his grip on reality was beginning to slide, and this Muggle whatever-it-was that he was snorting was beginning to affect his thinking. He was obsessed. All this talk at the end of the year - everything that had happened since they took their last O.W.L.s.

She sat for a moment indulging a series of why questions: Why was Draco so obsessed with Harry Potter? What was it about Potter that was so important to Draco? It wasn't as though Potter ever really went out of his way to talk to Draco or do anything other than beat him in Quidditch and have his friends hex him whenever they got a chance. Pansy thought Harry was arrogant, to be sure - a true Gryffindor hero among his Gryffindor groupies and admirers, Dumbledore among them, and of course Harry had earned all the Slytherins' disdain and aversion - but her dislike, considerable as it was, was dwarfed in comparison to Draco's all-consuming, fanatical hatred.

The whys continued: Why had the Aurors come here tonight? Why tonight? They'd said they were searching the homes of all known Death Eaters, but what was that Draco had said about someone being stunned? Why had Draco said it was because of Potter, why had that Auror looked at him that way, and why in the first place was Bellatrix Lestrange here at all?

He's in our attic, Draco had said. Pansy's eyes slid up to the ceiling.

:::

It appeared that the attic was empty when Pansy opened the door; feeble lights came on automatically, illuminating a small and dusty chamber that looked as though it belonged in a long-forgotten wing of Hogwarts. The first thing she did was sneeze, and then whirl around in fear of someone coming up the stairs behind her. As far as she knew, Bellatrix, Narcissa and Draco were all still in the kitchen talking about the raid. She had paused at the top of the stairs and listened a moment - she caught the name Dumbledore before moving on. She didn't know when else she would have the opportunity to sneak into the attic, and her suspicions overwhelmed her right now. If someone spotted her - Kreacher, maybe - she could feign looking for a fresh towel.

She had expected the attic to be larger, that was sure, if only because the house itself was so huge. Instead, the attic (at least, she hoped this was the right room) was dim and cramped and stacked with boxes and papers and old toys and trunks. She turned in a slow circle, looking around. It hadn't been easy to find the room in the first place, but she remembered again Draco's shouting the night before, and followed her memory of the sound. She hoped the Malfoys didn't have more than one attic.

She began to move through the room, peering through the dim light. As she came into the center of the room a gas lamp at the far end flared on and she jumped.

"Who's there?" she whispered, but there was no answer. The lamp sat on a small table under a darkened window. Her heart pounding so fast she thought she might faint, Pansy continued to move.

The room was full, it seemed, of Draco's and Narcissa's old things. There were trunks of old clothes and old, broken toys, and furniture stacked around the perimeter of the room. In the dim light she could see footprints on the dusty floor.

When she moved into the far corner another lamp flared on, and the one under the window extinguished itself. Pansy swallowed. It didn't appear, so far, that anyone was up here with her. She peered behind boxes and opened trunks, but there was no Potter here as far as she could see. She sighed and dropped to her knees.

Perhaps they had moved him, she thought, and then immediately Or perhaps he's not here at all.

She looked around the room again. The dim lights were flickering, and shadows stretched long across the floor. She wondered vaguely if any of the week's bizarre events would ever be explained.

And yet there were footprints up here. She looked around at the parts of the floor that she could see - the center of the room had a large open space - and there were definitely footprints. Some of them looked to be men's - the Auror's, perhaps - but there were others. She looked at them for a moment and then turned to the box in front of her.

It was identical to dozens of other boxes in the room - some of the boxes were sealed shut, but many were open, and this one held stacks of photographs. On the top was a picture - Pansy had seen a copy in the study downstairs - of Draco in what looked to be the year before starting Hogwarts. He was short and wiry, the way she remembered him looking at eleven, and while he looked from head to toe like a Malfoy, he didn't have that strange and now scary obsession behind those stone-colored eyes. She looked at the photograph for a long time. The Draco in the picture was looking at her, then around the frame, then yawning, then making faces.

Under that photograph, the pictures became much older. There were a few from Draco's early childhood (he'd been chubby, which she hadn't really expected) and below, pictures that made her nearly forget why she'd come up here even if they should have brought the point home sharply. There were pictures at least fifteen and twenty years old - Narcissa with big, layered hair, Narcissa pregnant, Lucius in a Hogwarts uniform, Lucius looking younger and more like Draco than Pansy had really thought he would. There was one picture - the back said Christmas 1979 - with a group of people in the Malfoys' drawing room. She recognized a pregnant Narcissa, seated beside a regal and young Lucius. Beside him were people she couldn't identify, though the back of the photo labeled them Avery and Rosier. Standing beside Narcissa was Bellatrix, statuesque, holding her wand aloft, and a spindly man at least six inches taller than her labeled Rodolphus. There were drinks on the table in front of Narcissa and Lucius, and Narcissa looked down at her belly. The last person in the photograph was seated on the floor on the other side of Rosier, and Pansy recognized him immediately - it was Professor Snape, looking barely older than herself and very interested in the drink in his hand. No one in the photograph appeared to be aware that their images had been captured on film. They carried on their conversations, and endlessly sipped their drinks, and were completely unaware that Pansy was watching them.

She remembered the history Professor Binns hadn't taught them. The first war ended in 1981, she thought, everyone knew that. So this must be - less than two years before He was destroyed. Christmas 1979. When was Potter's birthday? Had he even been born yet? Did any of the people in this photograph have any idea what was going to happen?

She looked at Snape for a long time. He looked very young, and as if to compensate, menacing and very angry. She didn't know very much about him apart from what the rumors had told her, but here was proof positive. She wondered what Dumbledore knew - she didn't like Dumbledore, but she knew he was working against Him. Pansy closed her eyes and opened them. She'd so hoped Snape wasn't involved in the War the way Lucius Malfoy and Dumbledore were, though upon seeing the photograph she found she wasn't surprised. She pocketed it and stood.

Turning in a circle, Pansy could see the entire room. He's not here, she thought, with a feeling of vague relief mixed with apprehension - did that mean, then, that Draco was mad? Toward the door was a crate of what looked like toys, and Pansy went to it, curious as to what Draco might have played with eight and ten years ago.

By chance she picked up the first toy she saw, a toy broomstick, because it had the words Cleansweep Four etched in silver, and a Cleansweep Four was the broom she'd learned on. The moment she touched it, though, she felt a tug at her navel, and the room around her jerked and swirled and went dark, and before she could scream she thought It's a Portkey! and then her feet found a cool floor beneath them and she was struggling to regain her balance. To her right gleamed one small candle at eye level.

For a moment she caught her breath, trying vainly to quell the furious thumping of her heart in her chest. She swallowed and looked around. A Portkey, she thought, and her mind went to that room Draco had told her about such a long time ago. He'd been bragging then, and Millicent and Blaise hadn't believed him, and Pansy had been a little skeptical, but now there was no doubt.

She wondered for a moment how all of this was happening. She was still clutching the tiny Cleansweep Four in her hand.

Terrified to move, Pansy allowed her eyes to explore the room in what little light the candle afforded. It was small, and walled in stone, and floored in stone, and empty. Shelves lined the walls, and Pansy thought This is where the Dark Arts stuff must have been - she remembered Draco's indignation at his family having to sell their valuables during those Ministry raids second year.

How am I to get out? she wondered next. The room had no doors or windows. She looked at the little broom, and carefully she knelt and placed it on the floor beside her. She was about to straighten up when she saw something out of place toward the corner of the otherwise empty room.

It appeared to be a foot. A boy's foot, wearing a trainer. Pansy stared. No, she thought. Please, no, no, no, no -

Before she could think further she was crouching by the foot, sick with dread, and lifting an Invisibility Cloak off a pair of legs clad in Muggle jeans. She could tell he wasn't waking up - please don't be dead - he wasn't dead - It's all true. Everything. Everything Draco had said - everything made sense. They had Potter. They had Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, and they were going to feed him to Him.

:::

She was angry when she took the Portkey back to the attic, and she threw the broomstick back into its crate with a loud crash. She hardly noticed. Potter was in that secret room - Draco knew about it, he knew - and Bellatrix was here - and now she, Pansy, was in the middle of it all. More than anything - more than she wished Harry had never been taken, Pansy wished she hadn't found him. That's the last time, she thought - That's where your curiosity's gotten you. Happy?

She wasn't. She was fighting back tears by the time she got back to her bedroom, but it was too late to slam doors, so instead she seized her pillow and hurled it to the floor. It was hardly satisfying. She flung herself onto her bed and lay there, staring up at the darkened ceiling and hating the fact that now she had to think about what to do next.

Hogwarts was the obvious answer, but Pansy didn't like Dumbledore. Snape would have been her first route, of course - she pulled the photograph out of her pocket and unfolded it. Her professor continued glaring at his drink, then around the room, then at Avery, then at his drink. She closed her eyes and sighed. He was out of the question now - and he'd been here this week too. He knew, he had to know -

Shut your mind off, she thought. Shut your mind off. Shut your mind off. She would have paid any number of Galleons for a hit of that stuff the Auror had taken from Draco, or even for some Firewhiskey - anything to allow her to imagine, even for a while, that these things were all in her mind.

She took the picture of Draco's parents and Professor Snape and stuffed it to the bottom of her suitcase. Then she stood and took a deep breath. She thought of Draco.

She pushed his door open to see that his room was dark and he was sleeping. The clock his mother had re-charmed read ten past twelve. It was Wednesday now. Draco had said We have until Thursday. Pansy felt sick.

She knew she couldn't tell him what she knew, and it broke her heart. Not because she hadn't kept secrets from him before - she'd kept many - but because she knew she was leaving him behind. He would be swallowed up. Soundlessly she lay down beside him; he sighed.

:::

Remus left Gryffindor tower almost immediately, after the first assault of smells and memories hit him; he didn't even walk into the room. The Fat Lady called, "Well that was almost worth waking me for, wasn't it?" after him in a huffy voice, and he waved a hand at her over his shoulder as he made his way back to the library.

He found, though, that when he got there it wasn't empty. He heard swearing over the sound of a familiar squealing cackle.

"Say please," Peeves was saying sanctimoniously. Ten feet below him (and the book he was hugging) was Snape, glaring up at him with arms folded.

"Bugger off, Peeves," said Remus, shaking his head. Peeves blew a loud raspberry and, having found a new target, dropped the book; Snape took a step backwards and watched it land on the stone floor directly where he'd been standing.

"Loony Loopy Lupin, Loony Loopy Lupin," Peeves singsonged, as Remus smirked up at him. He'd learned quite some time ago that Peeves loved attention, and that a good way to get him to go away was to ignore him, so he picked up the book Peeves had been holding (the C-Ch volume of the Encyclopedia of Domestic Charms) and, after a glance at the title, handed it to Snape.

"Here," he said, "you're up late." He had to speak a little loudly to drown out the sound of Peeves singing.

Snape glared at him. "I needed something to put me to sleep," he said by way of explanation.

"And... Charms usually does it, I see," Remus observed. Snape gave him a withering look and was about to reply when a small pile of quills landed on their heads to the sound of Peeves laughing.

"Damn it, Peeves, can't you find anything better to do?" he demanded.

"Where's Filch?" Remus wondered aloud. "Oy, Peeves, go bother Filch."

"He's probably sleeping," Snape said, but not in a voice that necessarily meant he didn't approve of this idea.

"Even better," said Remus with a laugh. "Off you go, Peeves. Go and bother Filch. He loves you, Peeves. You know he does. Go."

Peeves, who by the sound of his cackle agreed with Remus, zoomed off in the direction of Filch's basement office. The library was quiet again as they both continued looking in the direction he'd gone as though expecting him to return.

"I think that's done it," said Remus, with a hint of triumph, after a few moments of relative quiet.

"Good," said Snape. He brushed past Remus to a table near the Restricted Section and opened the book at the beginning. Remus watched him with a faint feeling of dread - was he not going to leave?

"Well, I'll just take my book then," Remus said, attempting Cheery, after swallowing. He could see the shape of his sad little couch-bed just beyond the Muggle Lit section only a dozen feet behind Snape's table.

"All right," said Snape without looking up. "Is that your pathetic little nest behind me, by the way?"

Remus stopped on his way to the Muggle Lit shelf. "What?" he said.

Snape turned around in his chair. "Is that where you're sleeping?" he asked, pointing. Remus turned around and looked at the couch; he saw that the house-elves had made it up and fluffed the pillow, and that a small plate of oatmeal raisin cookies was sitting on the table beside it.

"What can I say," he said with a small shrug. "Better room service."

He took the book and charmed a lamp on by the couch. For a long time they read in silence; the sky was a lightening gray by the time Remus fell asleep sitting up and Snape left the library for the dungeons, leaving the huge book open to the beginning of Ce.

:::

Pansy woke very early after only a few hours' sleep. Beside her Draco was stretched on his back, mouth open. She stared up at the ceiling for a minute before the events of the day before hit her again and she closed her eyes.

She opened her eyes again to see that Draco's clock read five after six in the morning. She'd spent a long time during the interminable night thinking about what she needed to do today, and any thought of doing nothing had dissolved. She wasn't particularly fond of Dumbledore, but the things she'd heard about the Dark Lord made her skin crawl, so as devoted as her host family was to Him, she found somewhat to her surprise that she didn't share their fidelity.

Her heart felt heavy, but she sat up and blinked. Draco didn't wake. She slid out of bed and went to her room to dress - she was still wearing the same pink robes she'd had on yesterday. She thought of Harry Potter downstairs below the drawing room and hated him for involving her in this.

Downstairs Kreacher gave her cold cereal for breakfast; she ate slowly, and she had a hard time forcing the tea around the lump in her throat while Kreacher muttered in the corner about how she was a picky eater and oh, how he hated little picky eaters like her. Pansy glared at him but he pointedly avoided her eye.

After she finished eating she put her bowl in the sink and found a sheet of blank parchment and a quill. Gone to the Patils to see Violet, she wrote. When her parents had announced a trip to France, they had allowed Pansy to choose where to stay, but her younger sister Violet had been shipped off to the Patils'. Growing up Pansy had been coerced into getting along with Parvati and Padma, but now that she was sixteen she could say with some credibility that she didn't know either of them well enough to be with them for a week's time. She found them both inherently unlikable - Parvati was annoying, and Padma dull - and she had wanted to stay with Draco and look where that got you.

She Flooed into London first; it was far too early to go to the Patils', so she walked through the quiet Leaky Cauldron and wandered Diagon Alley with her arms crossed. Pansy did not underestimate the Malfoys, and she figured that if she told them she was visiting with Violet, she must do that so as not to have to lie to them upon her return.

The early sunlight filtered in weak and silvery through the steep roofs and glinted off the darkened windows. In Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes she could see the outline of a burly young man stocking shelves - Fred or George, she'd never bothered to distinguish between them in her mind. She paused for a moment, watching, and then walked on. She'd see Violet later, she thought: Now was as good a time as any to do what had to be done, and she didn't want to lose her resolve.

The Leaky Cauldron was beginning to fill up with a small crowd of breakfast regulars, and she was inconspicuous as she stepped onto the hearth with a handful of sparkling green powder. She said Hogwarts and in an instant found herself shunted into a cold, little-used fireplace in what looked to be another of the great castle's empty classrooms.

Coming into the corridor she found herself close to the Transfiguration wing. The castle was silent, still dark, and she could hear wind billowing through a nearby stairwell. She didn't know where to begin looking for someone to help, so she went toward the Great Hall.

Pansy hated Dumbledore, she really did - hated his smiles, his cheerfulness, his "Everyone pick your favorite tune!", his overt fixation on all things Gryffindor behind a insincere show of parity. She'd heard since first year the prefects complaining that the Gryffindor prefects had better privileges than they, and now that she was one herself she saw that it was true; Granger and Weasley, and the sixth-year prefects (whatever their names were) seemed to have all of Dumbledore's rapt attention in meetings even when Granger was buzzing around like a hummingbird on Draco's drugs and Weasley was staring out the window. None of the Head Boys or Girls in her time at Hogwarts had been from Slytherin, either. But that didn't really matter at this point: Slytherin knew where it stood with its headmaster, and for several years now had ceased to hold him in any esteem. The House Cup was a joke; prefecture was a joke; Head Boys and Girls were a joke. Draco had loved taking points when under Umbridge, and Pansy had appreciated her attention - Umbridge wasn't nice, but she was a welcome change. At least she gave the Gryffindors their due.

The Great Hall was huge and hollow; no one was in there when she arrived except two house-elves. Pansy looked at her watch: seven-thirty. She wondered whether anyone was even awake at this point. She sat down on the marble steps with her chin in her hands and watched the sunlight begin to move across the floor.

52