BAD DREAMS: A Snape/Draco Romance

Draco was having his detention with Filch, who had him on his hands and knees, scrubbing a flagstone floor not only without magic, but with a hand brush. Draco knew perfectly well that, just as Filch had forbidden magic only out of spite, so too had Filch denied him a long handled brush, and the ability to stand upright, only with the intention of causing him humiliation and physical discomfort. It was really outrageous that such a no-account Squib believed that he could abuse a Malfoy with impunity. Draco was burning with rage, and knew that he would never again feel comfortable until he'd gotten revenge in some way that would cure Filch of that particular misapprehension. Meanwhile, Draco knew something about cruelty himself, which meant that he knew that at this time, the most effective way he could cause discomfort to Filch would be to show no sign of anger or pain, and remain his usual calm and confident self. It was working: Filch was pacing with a heavier step than usual, muttering to himself in an angrier tone than usual, and clutching tightly at the riding crop that he had lately taken to carrying around with him to threaten students. Draco decided not to conceal his smile at seeing FilchÂ’s frustration: if Filch saw him smiling instead of suffering, surely that would irritate him even more.

"You donÂ’t know how lucky you are, boy!" Filch said loudly, shrilly, too fast. Draco thought of Pansy's little dog yap-yap-yapping, and smiled some more. "In my day, scullions would be manacled and chained to their work, so no one would have to waste time watching to make sure they didnÂ’t run away."

Draco saw an opportunity. "What kind of manacles do you like?" he asked in the tone of making polite small talk. Filch goggled. Draco continued with a little more enthusiasm in his voice: "You wouldnÂ’t want to use fanged manacles if you really want the work to get done."

Filch managed to ask: "What are fanged manacles?" Draco was glad to explain: "Oh, you know, the ones lined with sharp spikes so that any movement by the prisoner leaves his wrists torn and bleeding. Of course, they come in all styles, from the ones with very short spikes that donÂ’t do permanent damage, that are used to teach children to sit still without fidgeting." Good. Filch looked like heÂ’d picked up the implication that that was DracoÂ’s childhood experience, so scrubbing floors would be trivial in comparison. Now to scare him. "And the other extreme would be the ones lined with razor blades, closely fitted to be sure of slicing a vein. ItÂ’s quite amusing to watch a prisoner trying desperately to keep still, knowing that his own motion is killing him."

"Tall tales!" blustered Filch. "Where would a child like you have ever seen such a thing?"

"I’m a Malfoy, Mr. Filch." Good. That was sufficient explanation. Now to add a threat. "Malfoys always repay a service — or a disservice."

Filch gibbered and hit Draco with the riding crop. Draco smiled in real delight. This was an unexpected bonus. Now he had two options for vengeance on Filch: either plot out a punishment that he could deliver personally, or simply tell Dumbledore that Filch had struck him. Then Dumbledore would give Filch one of his more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger speeches, about corporal punishment being forbidden, and maybe even dock his pay. DumbledoreÂ’s more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger speeches were enough to make even Draco want to shrivel up and die, so that would be an excellent punishment. The only problem was: Malfoys donÂ’t run to outsiders for help. Anyway, the stinging pain across his back and the muscle effort to keep a tear out of his eye were an excellent distraction from his sore back and shoulders. "No, thank you, Mr. Filch," Draco said in his usual drawl, "IÂ’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, but I have only a technical interest in torture, not an erotic interest in S&M."

In this manner, DracoÂ’s detention was more unpleasant for Filch than for Draco, but Filch kept him the entire time anyway. Finally released, Draco returned to the Slytherin common room, where Pansy was pretending to study but really waiting for him. She rushed up with questions, but he shushed her with a calm: "Later, beautiful. That goddamned filthy worm had me scrubbing a floor on my hands and knees, and I believe my back has never hurt this badly before, not even hiking with a sixty-pound pack. IÂ’m going to take a hot shower."

"Then come back here, and IÂ’ll rub your back?" Pansy offered.

"Yeah," he smiled his deliberately annoying smile at her. "IÂ’m glad I taught you how to do that." Pansy, as usual, responded by kissing him a quick peck on the lips, rather than by getting annoyed. Draco, as usual, noticed how lucky he was to have a girlfriend who shared his sense of humor, as well as being pretty Â… and horny Â… and approved by his family.

Later, Draco lay on his belly on the common room floor, while Pansy knelt astride his arse and put all her muscle power into grinding the heels of her hands into the muscles that alternate with the ribs next to the spine. Draco allowed himself to utter little gasps and moans of mixed pleasure and pain as the muscle knots came untied, but the other Slytherins ignored the whole scene. They had gotten used to Draco and Pansy carrying on. The two of them had actually learned massage together, from a book about muscle and bone anatomy and acupuncture points and where to tap monotonously with fingertips and where to press in a thumb as almost an act of violence. If they'd spent too long looking at one of the illustrations of the man demonstrating a technique on the woman, the little pictured man would glare at them and make exaggerated gestures, pantomiming that his arms were sore. But when the woman was illustrated demonstrating on the man, she indicated her desire for a change of activity by getting all kissy with him. Draco, whose idea it had been for them to learn massage, had claimed that the illustrations were teaching that a girl who gets a backrub should reciprocate with a blowjob. Pansy had had her own ideas about that.

Draco wanted to tell Pansy all about how he had annoyed Filch, and Pansy wanted to ask Draco why Snape had given him a detention with Filch, instead of one working in the Potions dungeon as usual. He didn't let her get a word in edgewise, but she couldnÂ’t help laughing at his tale of teasing Filch, even though she knew it only encouraged him. She resigned herself to having to wait her turn. Finally, she got her chance to ask him.

He decided to tell her the (suitably edited) truth: Yes, she had noticed that Snape was sickly lately. Yes, she thought it might be serious; he might die. No, she didn’t care — Hogwarts would get a new Potions master, and maybe Professor Sinistra would be the new Head of Slytherin. Yes, she knew that Snape used to hang out with Draco’s parents’ friends (and she knew that that meant Death Eating, but that was not to be spoken of), and that Draco had seen those friends over Christmas break.

"So Mrs. Nott told me a lot of personal information about him in those days, and when we came back from holiday, I told him about it. I was trying to persuade him to let me do something to help him, I donÂ’t know, pay for expensive medicine or get a big-shot specialist to take his caseÂ…. Anyway, what really happened is he was furious at me. And furious at Mrs. Nott for gossiping about him, but Mrs. Nott wasnÂ’t there, and I was."

"Oh, dragon-man," Pansy was laughing at him, and he didnÂ’t think it was funny. He scowled but she continued: "What would you do if someone told you that they knew a whole bunch of personal stuff about you?".

Draco found that when he thought about it that way, he couldn’t keep his scowl. Twitches of lower lip and left eyelid turned into helpless laughter. Not quite helpless — he tickled Pansy’s secret ticklish spot, on the side of her waist, until she was laughing as hard as he was, until they were both worn out from laughing.

That was fun, but it didnÂ’t solve the major problem. At least it solved the minor problem: Draco now felt that he had scored some kind of victory over Filch, and no longer craved revenge. Pansy, while outraged for DracoÂ’s sake that Filch had been so uppity as to strike a Malfoy, felt that telling Dumbledore was sufficient retaliation, and she didn't have any ancestral law against tattling.

Severus was asleep in his bed in his bedroom, dreaming that he was asleep in his bed in his bedroom. Dream-Severus wondered briefly how, if he was asleep, he knew where it was that he was sleeping, but he was more just glad that it wasnÂ’t another nightmare.

Maybe not asleep. Dream-Severus opened his eyes and, even though he knew the room was far too dark to be able to see anything, he saw dream-Draco standing beside his bed. Dream-Draco was wearing black silk pajamas with a pattern of little silver embroidered dragons, reflecting the silver of his eyes and of his hair. His feet were bare. Dream-Draco said: "ItÂ’s cold out here. ArenÂ’t you going to offer to share your warm blankets?"

Apparently this was the kind of dream where the dreamer can do many things at once, spinning like a kaleidoscope. Dream-Severus was telling dream-Draco that it had been his own choice not to wear his slippers and dressing-gown. Dream-Severus was telling dream-Draco: "It isn’t enough for you to intrude uninvited into my bedroom, you try to intrude uninvited into my bed as well." Dream-Severus was grabbing for his wand and turning dream-Draco into an albino ferret — actually quite a cute albino ferret.

No, dream-Severus was sighing in resignation, moving to the side to make room in the bed, and even pulling back the blankets. Draco got into bed and pulled up the blankets. The dark room was still dimly lit: Severus realized that it was not some radiance glowing from Draco, but simply dream-light, that ability for the dreamer to see anything that the dream needs for him to see.

Draco was cuddling up to Severus in a way he really should not have known how to do. He should have completely forgotten it upon leaving childhood and not learned again until adulthood. Having arranged himself into a comfortable (for him) position, with his head resting on SeverusÂ’s shoulder, he said: "My pajamas are nicer than yours."

Even in a dream, Severus noticed that that was a fairly useless thing for Draco to say. He replied: "You were expecting an audience. I wasnÂ’t. By the way, how did you get into my dream?"

"Sourdamours Porte-dÂ’Ivoire Potion."

"That does not appear to be an entirely complete explanation."

Draco sighed, but explained. "Last year, that analytic biography of Rosemary Foxglove you lent me, the author mentioned Foxglove documents that she had found in various archives of the papers of Foxglove and her associates. Some of the archives were in the Museum of Magic, and I thought it would be interesting to see them for myself. So my father got me a pass — this was during the holiday, last year — and I only had one day to spend there, but I hit the jackpot." It was a bit distracting to listen to the chat while feeling slimly muscular flesh beneath silk pressing against his body. His own flannel was useless as a shield.

"Â’Hit the jackpotÂ’ is not a particularly scholarly phrase."

"I looked in a cabinet of Foxglove papers, folders of the ones that someone had already sorted, and boxes of the ones that hadnÂ’t been sorted yet. I poked around a little and realized that it would take a year to do anything useful; I would have to start reading at one end and read every paper in the cabinet. I didnÂ’t have a year, so I checked another cabinet, the Sandor Skyeman archive. Same deal, folders of sorted papers and boxes of unsorted papers. I just looked in one box and, the third paper from the top, there was a letter from Rosemary Foxglove. There was quite a bit of good stuff in that letter, including a potion sheÂ’d invented for two people to share one dream. SheÂ’d named it Sourdamours Porte-dÂ’Ivoire, after a character in a Chretien de Troyes poem, and the Gate of Ivory from which true dreams issue in the Greek myth of Morpheus."

"None of that was in your essay."

"The essay was good enough without it (you gave me an A, remember?), and I thought the information might be more useful to me if I didnÂ’t shout to the world that I knew it."

Severus became aware that he was feeling angry. Good. Better anger than lust. An amateur brewing an unpublished potion: even if it were brewed according to the instructions and even if the instructions were correct, nothing was known of the side-effects or safety issues, and Draco was trying it out on him, had slipped it secretly into his after-dinner coffee. He suppressed his anger and said: "In what way is this intrusion of use to you?"

Oh, this was one of those dreams in which the characters know something about what the other characters are thinking. Draco was thinking, in a rather defensive tone, "Pansy and I tried it out before I used it on you." And the thought "Pansy and I" was very experientially sexualÂ… Draco had been appreciative of PansyÂ’s imagination for acts not anatomically possible in real lifeÂ…

Draco asked, in a concerned tone: "Are you dying of deterioration of the liver due to alcoholism?" That was a question totally unlike anything that Severus might have thought that Draco would ask him. Draco continued: "ThatÂ’s what PansyÂ’s mum died of, and she says her mum spent her last year wasting away and turning awful colors, just as you areÂ…"

Severus laughed, briefly but sincerely. That ridiculous question just emphasized the ridiculousness of the whole situation. "Draco, if you canÂ’t tell the difference between PansyÂ’s mum and me, itÂ’s no longer surprising that you canÂ’t tell the difference between asking after a personÂ’s health and propositioning him."

Draco was replying to SeverusÂ’s thoughts rather than to his words: "I didnÂ’t think you were a secret drinker, but Pansy said her mum managed to keep it secret from everyone except her and her dad." His thought: Pansy doesnÂ’t care what you do to your own health, but she knows that I do. She told me that ever since first-year, IÂ’ve followed you around the way little kids follow their favorite Quidditch player. "If itÂ’s not your liver and you really have no disease but nightmares, then you had damn well better do something about the nightmares."

Draco continued replying to SeverusÂ’s thoughts: "What makes it my business is that I care about you. YouÂ’re clearly having troubles, and I want to help you if I can, or else nag you into seeking help from someone who can help."

Dream-Draco was absolutely reeking with sincerity, but dream-Severus reminded himself that dreams are famous for being illusions. Morpheus sends far more dreams out the Gate of Horn than out the Gate of Ivory. Or, if dream-Draco were at all truthful, this dream was sent by Malfoy rather than by Morpheus, and indicated that Mad-Eye Moody was quite right to refuse to drink from anything but his own hip-flask.

"Okay, itÂ’s an illusion," said dream-Draco, "A fantasy from the Gate of Horn, un reve pour les betes cornues. Relax and enjoy it," and dream-Draco kissed dream-Severus on the mouth.

Another kaleidoscope of many actions at once. Dream-Severus pushed dream-Draco away from him angrily, and slapped him for presumption: "YouÂ’re just a child! You arenÂ’t allowed to decide anything! I decide who kisses who!", and then dream-Severus kissed dream-Draco with even more intensity. Dream-Severus told himself: "This is against all the rules. No, it isnÂ’t. They havenÂ’t made rules yet about what I am allowed to dream." Dream-Severus pushed dream-Draco away wearily, announced: "I am going back to sleep," and did so. Dream-Severus pushed dream-Draco away wearily, while wishing to have been swept away by a torrent of passion, rather than left, even in a dream, with the responsibility of making his own decisions.

No, dream-Severus allowed his body to respond to dream-DracoÂ’s kiss, allowed his lips to press, his heart to pound, his arms to encircle Draco.

In the morning, Severus awoke smiling, but found that he was alone. He reached out his hand beside him, and when it found no one, even opened his eyes to look. He was wearing his pajamas and lying under his bedclothes, and, last thing he remembered, they'd been all over the floorÂ… the clothing because Draco was well-practiced at a little charm to whisk off two people's garments, and the bedclothes because they'd been accidentally pushed off the bed. The lovers had fallen asleep together (happy, tired, comfortable, sleepy, relaxed) in the same position that had been so uncomfortable at the beginning: Draco cuddled up to Severus, head pillowed on shoulder. They kept each other warm so effectively that no one remembered about blankets.

Now the pajamas and bedclothes were in their places. But they were quite disgustingly filthy. Draco had been right about the wisdom of bringing a towel to bed. Severus stood up and threw all those filthy things on the floor so that the House Elves would be sure to notice that they needed washing. Even so, he couldn't seem to wipe that smile off his face. Habit led him through washing and dressing, as his mind was filled only with a jumble of pleasant memories.

Some of the jumbled memories seemed like they should be quite minor, but gleamed with importance in his mind. Looking up at Draco bending down to kiss him. After lips had met and eyes had closed, he'd yielded to the temptation to reach up, behind Draco's head, and untie the cord holding back his long hair. Freed, that platinum hair had streamed down like a waterfall, flowing over his skin. He had been so afraid that Draco would laugh at him, say that he had a hair fetish, but Draco had played along, holding his head low to pull his hair over Severus's shoulder, chest, and more. He didn't know words to describe how good it felt.

Just then, that dreamy know-each-other's-thoughts thing had shown him himself through Draco's eyes. Eyes level with Severus's olive skin, and thinking: "Oh, God, what a beautiful earthy color. Exotic, organic, Tuscan wine harvest. Not fish-belly dead white like some kind of maggot that never sees the sunÂ… And those coarse black hairs," (so unlike his own) "like boar's bristlesÂ… wild boar strong, wild boar ferociousÂ…" Severus had been shocked to his back teeth: the most shocking thing of the whole shocking night was that someone (someone as beautiful as Draco, at that) could possibly think him beautiful.

And then his face feeling the warmth and humidity of their mingled breaths while kissing, and his mind fuzzily thinking: soul meets soul on lovers' lips. That's Shakespeare. But the breath is the soul. That's etymology. But it's all linguistics: a pun. The tiny fraction of his mind still verbal enough to feel incidental pleasure at the pun also knew that any detached observer would have described them as trying to crawl down each other's throats. But that seemed an apt enough description of two (souls? bodies?) desperate to become one, as in Plato's parable.

Severus shook his head, trying to pull his mind away from his pleasant memories and feel properly ashamed of himself. He should be ashamed of himself, dreaming of all those perversions. Hair fetishism was the least of it — if only it were a grown woman's hair. And vanity — dreaming that someone had complimented his ugly looks! Obviously wish-fulfillment fantasy, and quite a childish wish, too. But his words failed to make any impression on him. His good mood remained while he scolded himself for getting aroused at things any decent person would find disgusting, such as putting his mouth on what someone else urinates through. Not disgusting. Ecstatic, spiritually or aesthetically. Like some survival of megalith worship. Damn, it had felt good when it was his megalith being worshipped. He even tried calling himself a 'vile little catamite', but that only made him laugh. No one at Hogwarts would possibly believe what he'd done last night. He laughed at their imagined reaction. "They all think I'm a nasty bugger, but they'd never guess I was a buggee. They like to say I shafted them, reamed them out, and they could never imagine me begging to be screwed…"

Another memory claimed his attention: they'd been taking a break, and Draco was sitting up in bed, brushing his silken silvery long hair with a brush that he had effortlessly summoned. Severus watched him as if he were a masterpiece of sculpture, and muttered: "Alkibiades".

"What?"

"Just saying that you remind me of Alkibiades."

Draco smiled. He recognized the reference to Plato's Symposium, and didn't mind being compared to the handsomest man in Classical history. "Then you must be Socrates. My Socrates."

Severus shook his head. "Can't be. I haven't asked you any hard questions."

Draco let go the brush, flopped down, put his arms around Severus, and whispered in his ear: "Close enough: you're ugly, stubborn, obnoxious, and a genius." Then he kissed Severus, starting with that convenient ear, and distracted him from wondering what he was supposed to think of a statement like that.

Breakfast at the Head Table. Severus was glad to find a place at the end of the table, where he could sit alone and be anti-social. That way, it'd be less likely for anyone to notice and comment on his unusually good mood. He didn't want to catch Draco's eye, but he had to keep an eye on the Slytherin table in case trouble broke out among them. And Draco caught his eye, and winked at him — Severus felt his heart in his throat — or maybe it was still in his chest but fluttering like a trapped bird — so it wasn't just a dream. What if someone found out, saw the wink and got suspicious? Draco followed up with a smile, affectionate rather than malicious, which Severus had seen for the first time last night, and turned his attention back to breakfast. Dear God, that smile was almost worth everything.

Sixth-year Slytherin-Gryffindor Double Potions was first class of the day. Being in class with Draco and an audience for three hours was something to worry about. Students ambled into class and took their seats, Draco not among them. Finally, Draco and his usual dishonor guard strolled in, less than thirty seconds before the bell. Draco took his place beside Pansy in the front row, flashing that smile at Severus as he sat down, then turning to Pansy and giving her the same smile. Then he sat alertly, with quill, parchment, and textbook before him, looking like nothing except a good, careful student.

"Damn, the boy is as good an actor as — as I am," thought Severus with a quick memory of his spy days, and was immensely relieved that Draco seemed to want to protect his secret. Suddenly Severus could concentrate on teaching the day's lesson, and reveal nothing unusual except many fewer vicious outbursts and much less anger behind the sarcasm than the students had become accustomed to of late.

Pansy hadn't been surprised that she hadn't seen Draco at breakfast. She knew he kept what she considered wildly irregular hours, half the time sleeping much later than she did, but often enough getting up at a totally ridiculous hour. Sometimes he said: "I've found that 5 a.m. is the best time to use the library without interference." Sometimes he sneaked out for a dawn broomstick flight: he loved to be in the sky while it changed from dark to light, and look down on the edge of sunlight creeping over the land.

She became surprised as she sat in the Potions dungeon before class started, and he kept not showing up. Pansy would never want to let anyone see her waiting anxiously for a boy, so she put some effort into her nonchalance. She continued the conversation that had begun at breakfast, by egging Regina Nott and Morag MacDougal to continue arguing over Hamlet's line: " there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so".

Regina and Morag never did touch on what Pansy considered to be Hamlet's real meaning in that statement, which was that even if absolutely everything is going right in a person's life, the person can still be miserably unhappy because of melancholia (which Muggles, too stupid to call things by their right names, call "major depression"). That was also the point, she reflected, of the poem "Richard Corey", not some trite moralism about "money can't buy happiness." Of course money can buy happiness, in the form of Cheering Charms and Pacifying Potion. She whistled a few notes of the version she knew from one of her favorite musical performers, Carolee Nightingale, a wizarding singer-songwriter with a guitar, who sang harmony with herself, live on stage (which is known to Muggles as the Simon and Garfunkle version): "But I, I work in his factory'.

As it was entirely unusual for anyone to whistle in the Potions dungeon, everyone stared at her. Her father had long ago taught her ways to regain control of such embarrassing moments: she stood up, took a bow, and said: "No applause, please, just throw money."

"Miss Parkinson! My classroom is not a cabaret! Please sit down and pretend to be a lady."

Saved by Snape, she thought mockingly as she and everyone else hurried to sit up straight in their chairs and look like good students. Snape glared at them all, and especially at Draco's empty seat. Pansy wondered whether Draco had overslept something awful or was out executing some scheme.

Draco swaggered in and took his place during the last possible moment, favoring all and sundry with a dazzling smile. It became obvious to Pansy that he was in a self-congratulatory mood: he was smiling a trace wider and wearing his shoulders a bit broader than usual, had a hint of a certain look in his eyes, and was theatrically acting the role of perfectly attentive student.

When class let out, Draco waited lazily to accompany Pansy. As the pair went out the door, he put an arm around her. She noted appreciatively that the deliberate casualness of the gesture, as if he'd done it simply out of habit, was a much better announcement of ownership than if he had clutched at her possessively. She suspected that he didn't realise that a public announcement that he owned her was also a public announcement that she owned him.

"Handsome dragon-man," she purred, carefully keeping her tone humorous, "what great thing did you accomplish this morning?"

"Me?" Draco blinked in what Pansy was certain was a faked show of surprise. "Nothing. I was in the library reading the latest WIZARDING EUROPE QUARTERLY and got caught up in a profile of a wizard who works for Boris BerezhovskyÂ…. He's made so much money that he has fifteen beautiful Muggle slave girls, and if any of them ever irritates him, he just sells her to the Mafia and buys another."

Pansy laughed in sincere amusement. She didn't believe a word of his explanation, but he had delivered it so well, warning her off with just the right amount of not-quite-concealed threat, that she simply delighted in his skill and had to show her delight with either laughter or kisses.

Draco pulled her closer to him and kissed her a peck on the lips, then spoke close to her ear: "Hey, flower-face, we're very near our special alcove. Let's pay it a visit and work up a big appetite for lunch?"

Pansy laughed again, saying: "I will follow where you lead." Where he led was around a corner into a corridor that was lined with tapestries, all illustrating erotic subjects like Adam and Eve in Eden and the Judgment of Paris, so that all the people depicted felt sympathetic to illicit lovers and not inclined to tattle, at least not as long as they got the occasional smooch and cuddle on the side. About half way down that corridor was a tapestry of Leda and the Swan. Draco pulled aside the edge of that tapestry and gestured gracefully to Pansy that she, as lady, precede him in. The alcove hidden behind the tapestry was completely filled by a large, fluffy sofa with which they had become very familiar over the years.

Enough years for Crabbe and Goyle to have been well-trained. They had been tagging along protectively with Draco and Pansy, but when they saw the couple heading to their private spot, they stepped back and split up, one of them taking a place at each end of the corridor, prepared to discourage any prefect who might come along and hear suspiciously slurpy or giggly sounds.

A few days later, Severus was in his office, marking homework papers. He was able to concentrate on this chore much more easily than had been usual lately. He didn't have to spend anything like as much energy fighting off distracting thoughts as he had become accustomed to. It felt more like soothingly routine rote work than like the gallery of horrors that reading student papers so often was. He was interrupted by a knock on the door. It was Draco. Severus quickly suppressed his first impulse, which was to rejoice at seeing that beautiful face. His second impulse was to shout "Go away!" or, better yet, pretend not to be there. But it would be impossible to avoid Draco very long, considering that he was going to see him at meals, classes, House meetingsÂ…

"You might as well come in." Draco entered the office with his usual graceful swagger, sat backwards in the chair as usual. At least he hadn't just barged into the office without waiting for the invitation.

"Mr. Malfoy." Severus tried to make his voice cold.

"Mr. Malfoy?" Draco spoke in a playful voice of mock reproach. "Not your dear Alkibiades any more?"

"That was a dream. This is waking life."

Draco smiled at him. "We can do the same in waking life. I could kneel under that desk and blow you now, or I know a room of abandoned furniture with a very nice bed, very privateÂ…."

"Are you trying to get me fired?"

"Actually, no. Should I be?"

"ItÂ’s really all the same to me whether you do it deliberately or accidentally."

Draco spoke in an approving tone: "I never would have suspected that was a lie if I didn't already know the truth. Which is that it would break your heart if I betrayed you deliberately. You're desperately eager to trust me."

"No. I know that you can't be trusted. You aren't remembering Alkibiades well enough. He wasn't only the handsomest man in Athens and a very talented politician and general, he also betrayed his friends and allies and even his gods, and there was no truth in him."

Draco shrugged his graceful shrug. "Plutarch said he was always loyal to Athens."

"Speaking of loyalty, where are the other two musketeers?"

"Vinnie and Greg? Why? Do you want them to fuck you, too? I think they'd be rougher than you like. At least, Pansy told me that Millicent brags that they're a couple of pile drivers."

"I was wondering how you keep secrets from your inseparable companions."

"Well… if it's secrets, I have to sneak out while they're asleep; they're sound sleepers. But if it's just sex, they understand that they have to wait out in the hall — even a chick who doesn't mind an audience would mind such an ugly audience. They've learned that they have to keep a certain distance when I'm chatting up a bird."

"And what do they think you're doing behind the closed office door?"

Draco grinned, not very maliciously. "Asking you to supervise an extra credit paper on cures for nightmares. Hopefully leading to some lab work on trying to re-create a lost Rosemary Foxglove potion recipe. Unsuccessful attempt, I think."

Severus admired how carefully Draco had planned a way that they could meet privately and share Sourdamours Porte-d'Ivoire Potion and go their separate ways and dream together and have an ongoing dream affair. He admired how carefully Draco had tried to assure him of secrecy. He was finding more and more sense in the part of his mind that said that even though it's unethical to have sex with a student, it isn't unethical to dream about having sex with a student. Still, he couldn't deny that it's unethical to encourage a student to ingest an experimental potion with unknown risks.

"Draco, aren't you concerned that you're testing an experimental potion on yourself? You have no idea what the side effects might be, or the long-term consequences — it would be poetic justice if this potion caused the same type of liver damage you were speaking of in connection with Miss Parkinson's late mother."

Draco closed his face, concealing all emotions. "The game is worth the candle. Even if the candle's burning at both ends."

Severus was asleep in his bed, dreaming that he was asleep in his bed and awakened by Draco slipping into bed beside him, putting arms around him, kissing him. Severus returned the kiss enthusiastically, but then was distracted by a thought.

"Draco, I donÂ’t understand why you went to so much effort to seduce me. It's a very good thing for me that you did, but what makes it worth the effort to you?"

"I'm accustomed to getting what I want," said Draco. "Now that I've got you, the only goal that still thwarts me is the Quidditch Cup."

"Why do you even care about Quidditch?"

Draco was shocked to hear such heresy, but responded in a calm tone: "What do you mean?"

"Why do you even want to compete in an arena where intelligence is of no value and even magical power is of no value: even a Squib can play, as the spell is already on the broomstick? People can be very successful at Quidditch despite being total imbeciles." And Severus proved his point by mentioning certain professional players.

"Well, I do care, and I am a good player, and last year I won every match I played, 150 Slytherin to 140 Gryffindor, and that Potter still walked away with the Cup, on the points his Chasers racked up against Hufflepuff, and thumbed his nose at me." Draco didn't trouble to keep the pain out of his voice.

"Just like his damnable — damned father."

Draco's mood changed to curiosity. He kissed Severus in a quick, friendly way, and teased: "Tell me the story."

"It’s not important… James Potter was an arrogant bastard. He played on his House team and had a charming smile, so everyone knelt down and worshipped him. All the girls chasing him, and all the professors favoring him… I was a cleverer student than he was, but the professors always made sure to give him enough extra credit that he'd be top of the class. And all the stuff they let him get away with… if he and his awful friends were lying in wait to jump me — oh, Gryffindors like to talk about their chivalry, but Gryffindor chivalry is, if they're four guys attacking, they don't care whether they're attacking just one guy, or three, or five. That's what they mean by chivalry. No surprise that one of them was a werewolf, and another turned out to be a mass murderer. But I was saying, if the four of them jumped me, and some of my friends came to help me out, and it turned into a rumble, lots of Gryffindors and lots of Slytherins, they'd always take fifty points from each House, never mind who started it… Oh, hell, Draco, it doesn't do any good to dwell on the past."

Draco, already holding Severus in his arms, held him more snugly and kissed him comfortingly. Severus returned the kiss, this time careful to avoid thoughts.

Severus and Draco, having both spent a great deal of energy, fell asleep in each other's arms, and remained clinging together as they slept. Draco, dreaming that he was rubbing up against a sexy body and getting aroused, woke to find that he indeed was rubbing up against his sleeping lover and indeed was aroused. It seemed reasonable to wake Sleeping Beauty with a kiss on the lips — but he didn't wake up, and those warm lips' lack of response was annoying. Draco was tempted to shake Severus and shout "wake up!" but knew that that would not get good results. Instead, he fondled more vigorously.

Severus awoke with a sense that he was being poked and prodded, a sleep-fogged brain, eyelids trying so hard to close that he wasn't sure his willpower was enough to keep them open, and eyes that hurt to be open. Noticing that it was Draco grabbing at him, he muttered: "Let me go back to sleep."

"No, wake up. I want to improve the shining hour and gather my roses while I may. Make hay while the sun shines, and make love while it doesn't."

"That's okay for you and the energy of youth. I'm an old man and I need my sleep."

"Oh, come on, you know you want it."

"You really are a horny goat, you know."

Draco stroked Severus's face. "No, you're a horny goat." He tugged — very gently! — on Severus's beard, conveniently of the style known as goatee.

"Then you're a sex-crazed mink. Vicious little buggers, minks."

Draco made a face. "Better a mink than a ferret."

Severus realised that he was incurably awake and might as well make good use of the time. "You were a very cute ferret," he told Draco, thinking of outrageous puns about ferrets who penetrate into rat holes and intrude into prairie dog holes, and kissed him.

Draco's body was in the History of Magic classroom, but his mind was lost in happy daydreams. He still liked girls just fine, but his dear Severus — wow! He was idly wondering, with examples, what made Mr. Last Night so particularly enjoyable: unexpected muscular strength backing up his embraces? That coarse black hair with its hint of jungle wildness, moustache and beard to tickle his face during kisses, hair on his chest to quietly announce: "This is a man"? Or simply that Severus made no secret that he utterly adored him? It's nice to be appreciated. Draco's mind flew ahead with the expectation of many future romps, flew ahead to the thought of leaving school in not much longer than one year — felt with a sudden, unexpected shock of loss that he wouldn't be able to bear to leave Severus behind with his childhood. "Maybe we could get married, then I could take him away with me, have him forever, and freak my parents out completely and utterly," Draco thought with happy wickedness.

Then his mind was called back to the present by hearing Pansy yawning hugely beside him. "Oh, God, Pansy. I had definitely better not let her find out what I was just thinking! Oh, hell, how could I possibly be thinking about marrying anyone but Pansy, even as a joke? No more Sourdamours Porte d'Ivoire Potion for her, I don't want her reading these thoughts!" He reached beside him to take Pansy's hand, smiled at her when she turned to see what he wanted.

Another night of shared dreams, after enough nights for them to feel comfortable with each other and not enough for them to get bored with each other. Aphrodite's son Eros was no longer whipping them on so vigorously that they couldn't take time along the way, so now they were lying still, peacefully cuddling, Severus stroking Draco's hair — he just could never get over that hair — and thinking it was a pity that they couldn't publish a paper stating that the cure for nightmares is to have a passionate affair with a person whom one, ten times over, should not be involved with. He became aware of Draco's thoughts beside his own thoughts, wanting to know more about those nightmares. Nightmares, like Hamlet said: "O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."

He fought down his reflex to push Draco out, no prying into a painful subject. It seemed some mental version of conscious relaxation, deliberately taking a deep breath and removing tension from his jaw muscles one by one. The boy had a marvelously gentle touch on his mind, although feeling any touch on his mind gave Severus the awful feelings of violation he had been surprised not to feel the first time that it was his body being entered. Suddenly a wave of terror and disgust crashed over him and he recoiled, roughly pushing Draco out of his mind and his arms, barely resisting the urge to curl into fetal position.

Draco was very intensely muttering something about "Asmodeus's burning poker up his arse and out his mouth and hang him on the gate to dry in the wind." He pulled out of his own thoughts into the shared dream that passed very realistically for the real world, and looked at Severus with some distress: "My fatherÂ… Why did he do that to you?"

"Do what?"

"Vivisection, I guessÂ… I'm pretty good at snooping around, and I found out maybe more than I want to know about what he does with his expensive supermodel girlfriends. He takes them apart, I mean layer by layer, and then he puts them back together again. And keeps them conscious, so it hurts like hell. And in public he puts on this big act of gallantry and generosity, putting diamonds around a girl's neck while he kisses her hand, and all the time he knows that she knows what he did to her, and he's going to do it again; he knows she's full of rage and fear while she's acting so affectionateÂ… I think he's a really sick son of a bitch." Draco took a deep breath, tried to keep control of his voice. "Still, the bimbos keep coming back for more, because he pays them. It's an entirely different thing to, urm, spring it on a victim by surprise."

"Draco." Severus reached out for him, to give him a comforting hug. "What kind of lousy world we do live in. You shouldn't have to know about horrible things like that; it's not fair to you."

"Forget me. I just know about it; you suffered through it."

"No, I didn't. Nothing like that ever happened to me. You're confused because I had a nightmare sort of like that one time last semester, but usually I have nightmares about horrible things that I did, that I really did, not horrible things being done to me, that weren't really done to me."

"Maybe I can't tell a memory from a dream in someone else's mind, but I recognized that room. I recognized that knife. I recognized those spells. What did you do, drink that potion for recalling unpleasant memories?"

Severus was fighting with his reflexes, which wanted to protect him from such a painful subject by rolling up in armor like an armadillo and defensively firing venomous quills at his attacker like a magical porcupine. To drive Draco away with angry attacks, after having given up all his ethics to have Draco as his lover, would be such an utterly stupid thing to do, it would be right up there with murdering people just to please Lucius and joining the Death Eaters by accident.

Maybe just as stupid as thinking even on the edges of such intense memories while having that know-each-other's-thoughts thing with the lover in his arms. He noticed that Draco was stroking his shoulder blade comfortingly and feeling deep concern for him. Draco was wishing to do something that would make it all better for him.

Severus shook his head and tried to remember how to speak very, very gently. "Draco, nothing can ever make it all better, so just don't you worry about it, okay?"

Draco shook his head, rejecting that thought with what seemed the solidity of a wall of white marble. "The way it isÂ… about my peopleÂ… I want my people to be loyal to me, but I just as much want them to be safe under my protection. Of course, you are one of my people. I want to keep you safe. It just burns a hole in me that I can't fix everything for you."

Severus was astounded at the emotions and values he now perceived in Draco's mind. Along with perfectly reasonable desires like vengeance and perfectly reasonable beliefs like entitlement, there were strange, unbelievable notions about stuff like duty and loyalty and ownership. Ownership of people. He saw that Draco and the young Crabbe and Goyle had all been raised to believe that Draco would be the boys' liege lord when they all had grown up, just as Lucius was their fathers' master. "Draco, how can you possibly believe that feudal nonsense?"

"How can you possibly think it's nonsense?"

If that had been set as an examination question for Severus, he would have written about the Protestant Reformation and each human creature's unmediated relation to his Creator, the Industrial Revolution and the fungibility of units of labor, globalism and the mobility of capital, all points along a trend line in the increasing war of all against all, as demonstrated by the internal experiences of the characters of the novels of each period. He didn't need to try telling that stuff to Draco to know that he would drawl a dismissive reply that that was all Muggle nonsense and had no bearing on wizarding folk. He didn't need to dismiss the intellectual contributions made by Muggles to know that capitalism and novels had nothing to do with his own overburdened conscience torturing him, and the impossibility of lifting that burden off his conscience by laying it onto an oath of obedience. It was not an intellectual theory, but simply a fact, that when he had once given his obedience, his awareness of right and wrong had not mercifully left him.

Draco suddenly sat upright, very distressed. "You did what? You took back your oath to the Dark Lord just because my father abused you? Some priggish intolerance of letting other people get their fun by killing a few meaningless Muggles? I thought you were on our side!"

One part of Severus's mind reflected in passing that Draco was the only person who could ever make him feel at a loss for words. This time, the effort of finding words felt like swimming up from the very bottom of the sea, "No. I took back my oath to the Dark Lord because I was disgusted with useless, pointless evil." He wanted to say: "Draco, I have been praying that you hadn't committed to their side yet." Something that one can't say when prayer is nowt but words.

"You mean youÂ’re really on DumbledoreÂ’s side?" Draco sounded rather like a weeping child. Severus would have been pleased to finally have an occasion when he kept his cool and Draco lost his, if he hadn't felt so desperate to win Draco back from the Enemy.

"ItÂ’s not a matter of being on DumbledoreÂ’s side. It is that he and I are both on the side of Life and Light against Death and Darkness."

"Are you a traitor?"

Searching through a dangerous jungle for words, Severus found one: "Yes."

Draco, looking more alarmed than ever, clutched suddenly at Severus. "But when the Dark Lord returns to power, heÂ’ll want vengeance on all traitors. When he rules all, thereÂ’ll be no place safe for you."

"All the more reason to prevent his return to power."

"But you could come back. Everyone thinks youÂ’re still loyal, that all this is just a camouflage for safety, like we do. Come back, and the Dark Lord will make you powerful instead of killing you."

Severus shook his head. "That isnÂ’t power, Draco, being his marionette and letting him pull the strings."