BAD DREAMS: A Snape/Draco Romance

* * *

Pansy had finished half her breakfast when Draco arrived and took his place beside her. Compared to his usual self, he looked like something the cat dragged in. It wasn't too surprising that he would be feeling under the weather this morning, but it was a surprise that he'd let himself be seen in public looking that way. After all, he had quite a lot of Charms and Potions to keep his skin clear and eyes bright ("and nose cold and dry", she always said to tease him) regardless of how he felt. She supposed that whatever the Bloody Baron had wanted with him last night had put good grooming completely out of his mind. After all, she'd never hear of any previous incident in which the Bloody Baron had appeared in the sixth year Slytherin boys' dorm and bellowed: "Draco Malfoy! Send that girl away! It is you to whom I wish to speak!" She'd squealed, Draco had said "Yes, sir!" and rolled off her, and she'd dashed out of the room, not taking time to put her robe back on until she was on the other side of the door. She'd managed to creep to her own dorm and the girls' shower without attracting attention as she crossed the common room — she supposed the Bloody Baron wouldn't want Draco's roommates thinking they were free to go back into their room any more than she wanted any girls to ask her why Draco had kicked her out.

"Darling dragon-man," she greeted him. "You look like you have the great grand-dad of all hangovers. Usually I wouldn't think that Mr. 'My family motto is Watch Your Back, not Make Yourself Vulnerable' might have drunk to excess, but I guess last night it wouldn't have been the only unusual thing to happen."

"Don't bug me, Pansy," said Draco. "There's no alcohol involved, but I'm just as tempted to bite your head off as if I did have that hangover you mentioned."

Pansy still wanted to know what business the Bloody Baron had had with Draco, but now she had his warning against questioning him as well as her own discretion against talking about it, whatever 'it' was, in the Great Hall full of fellow students. "Forehead massage?" she offered. "Pain-Numbing Potion?"

"No," said Draco. He glared with hostility at his barely touched plate of breakfast and stood up. "I'm going to hospital wing."

Vinnie and Greg rose to follow him. "No. Finish your breakfasts," he told them. Their confusion between the instinct to obey Draco and the instinct to always remain within earshot of his commands was settled by the tempting smell of food.

* * *

Draco came late to History of Magic, and he didn't bother to enter unobtrusively. Vinnie and Greg were visibly relieved to once again be in his presence, but Professor Binns seemed not at all pleased that his droning had been interrupted.

"So, young Mr. Milton arrives fashionably late, " Binns scolded. "Was Mr. Marlowe delayed by important business, or was he expecting an audience to applaud his grand entrance? Well, Mr. Mountjoy?"

Draco glared haughtily at Binns and said, in a magnificently insincere voice, "I'm sorry, sir. Should I not have come to class at all?"

Binns snorted back to his lecture, and Pansy and Draco began writing notes to each other on Pansy's parchment.

Pansy wrote: What did Mme Pomfrey give you?

Draco wrote: She didn't give me anything. I didn't ask her to. I'm fine. I went to check on Prof Snape.

Pansy: What about Snape?

Draco: He collapsed in his lab last night. Pomfrey thinks it's exhaustion & all he needs is a good rest. But Dumbo sent for Dr. Simon Branford, the Dark Arts specialist. B hasn't come yet. P says she doesn't know when he will come, says S is out cold & needs his rest & don't disturb him. She'd also said: "Run along, you're late for Professor Binns' lecture," but Draco didn't feel any need to tell Pansy that.

Pansy: Is that what the BB wanted you for?

Draco: Yes.

Pansy: Why?

Draco: So that I could be tempted to tell Binns that there are too many ghosts ordering me around.

Pansy sighed. Draco had been keeping secrets from her since he'd returned from Christmas holiday, and it kind of hurt her feelings that he didn't trust her. He'd never kept anything secret from her before, except what present he was giving her for Christmas or birthday, or which girls he was fucking on the side (as if she didn't know!). She wished he would let her help in whatever it was he was doing. Maybe it was Death Eater business and he'd been ordered to keep it secret. When they were married, would he at least tell her: "Sorry, dear, it's DE business so I can't talk about it"?

But even though Draco was clever and talented and knowledgeable as well as handsome and charming, Pansy had difficulty thinking of what DE secret mission would be assigned to a kid in school. It must be some task that could only be done by someone who was already at Hogwarts, inside the wards and protections around the school. And it must be a task that had to be done over quite a period of time, or else one of the parents could have done it on a visit. One of her guesses had been that he was searching through all Hogwarts's protective spells looking for weak spots, but when? If he was creeping out at night, all the boys in his dorm would know about it, and his days were fully busy.

Unless the time he spent playing lab assistant in Snape's own research lab (the extra credit project he had somehow ended up with when he went asking to write an x-c essay on nightmares) was just a ruse: she'd been amused at the thought of Draco leaving Snape's lab by Floo while Vinnie and Greggie stayed waiting in the corridor outside the closed door. But Snape was a very skillful wizard, despite his fondness for assigning punishments, and would surely be the leader of any mission in which he was involved, so Draco would be only an assistant. It occurred to Pansy that there might be one explanation for all these different mysteries: maybe Draco and Snape and the Bloody Baron were all in on something, and the something had blown up on Snape. That would be a more sensible reason for Draco's concern about Snape than his ridiculous fondness for a wizard with neither looks nor charm.

Well, there were more important things than politics to think about. Such as her Astronomy essay, about extrasolar giant planets ridiculously close to their suns, and why they hadn't burned up. The reason was that they were going to burn up eventually and just hadn't gotten around to it yet, but she had to state it as a mathematical equation, and she wanted to figure it out herself rather than looking it up. Soon she was doodling planetary orbits on her parchment instead of notes to Draco.

* * *

Draco put his head on his folded arms on his desk. He wouldn't have been so blatant in any other class, but Binns would never notice one student who had gone to sleep intentionally among all the students who had fallen asleep from boredom. But the sleep he needed refused to come, as his thoughts uselessly but endlessly chased each other around and around and around his mind like weary recruits running the track under the sergeant's whip. He was on the verge of admitting to himself that he felt like a little kid, wishing he could run to the grown-ups and they'd make it all better. He wished he could ask Severus's advice, advice which would be pretty useless, just urging him to join the Light Side, but the embrace would be comforting. (The other afternoon in the lab, he had gotten so exasperated at Severus that he'd shouted at him: "Damn you, you stubborn cocksucker, come back where you belong!" and Severus had reacted with that twisted little smile that he could manage in waking life, saying "In your dreams". They'd both broken into laughter, but that didn't solve anything.) But Severus's unavailability for questions was sort of the whole problem right there.

"Who can you trust?" That was a song lyric, along with "How can I tell you that I love you when I know that the walls have ears?" The song no longer seemed very funny, while the questions raced: Is it a Dark curse? Dumbledore seems to think so. Can Branford cure it? The chances are better the more information he has. Was Branford a secret follower of the Dark Lord, who would tell them all if he discovered that Severus was a traitor and a danger to them — or, worse yet, eliminate the traitor himself, under color of medical care? Or was Branford some Ministry prig who'd report to the Ministry or the Malfoys that Severus was breaking the rule about student-teacher sex? Those weren't exactly the kind of questions he could ask his parents! What would Lucius Malfoy say if he learned that his son was boinking a professor, one of the male variety at that? Mock his taste in lovers? Assume that he was trading his arse for good marks rather than having earned them? Worse, what would Lucius Malfoy do if he learned that his son was boinking a traitor — and trying to keep to keep the treason secret? Kill the traitor, of course. Draco rather despised himself for being so sentimental that he shuddered at the thought of further harm to Severus. Probably painfully and publicly, as a warning to anyone else who might get ideas, not by a curse from a distance. And kill the traitor's accomplice? Well, that wouldn't be as bad as being forced to prove his loyalty by torturing Severus to death himself. Here I am risking my life to save a Muggle-lover, traitor to his own blood, Draco mocked himself, I must have gone mad.

Nor could Draco ask Pansy's advice, even though there had been times when Draco had found it a great comfort to unburden his worries to Pansy, a great comfort when Pansy hugged him like a nanny, and, to his surprise, when she'd found tears leaking from his eyes, rather than mocking him, she had acted all the more in love with him.

He could ask the Bloody Baron, if the Baron chose to appear, but there was no reason to expect the Baron's advice to be of any use.

When the Bloody Baron had chased Pansy away last night, Draco had sat up in bed and swung his legs over so that his feet were on the floor — it seemed somehow disrespectful to converse with a ghost while lounging in bed. The Baron had glared at him and announced: "Your lover is in a bad way."

Not even the Baron's fearsome face could make Draco resist that straight line: "Which one? That's hardly a unique description."

Oh, the Baron's previous statement hadn't been a glare. This one was. "Your dear Severus," he enunciated, with a trace of mockery in his tone. "Your favorite horny goat."

Anxiety chased out any impulse to joke. "What happened to Severus?"

"He has collapsed in his laboratory. He is being taken to hospital wing."

"What's wrong — I mean, why did he collapse?"

The Baron shrugged. "I'm a ghost, not a mediwizard."

The shrug sent a ripple through the silver blood flowing from the Baron's spear wound, but Draco was accustomed to the Baron and his blood. "Then I'll have to go to hospital wing and find out."

"Which route do you plan to traverse?"

Draco looked at his wristwatch. The hour was surprisingly early. The common room would be quite full of people. Crabbe and Goyle would be less than no help when trying to sneak around the castle. "Out through the secret exit."

The secret exit was up the hall, the opposite direction from Draco's dorm than the common room, and it was hidden behind piles of bed linens and mounds of cleaning supplies at the back of a linen closet on a stair landing. Draco had found it second year, when he was stealing some Mrs. Skower's Super Stain Remover, which would remove skin just as well as stains, to improve a water bomb intended for Potter. That had been early in the year, before the Chamber of Secrets was opened.

"Very good," the Baron nodded. "You might want to put some clothes on first."

Draco looked at the hint of a smile on the ghost's ravaged face and suddenly was surprised that he had never noticed the resemblance before. "Are you a Snape?"

"I hight Arsenius Malfoy. One of your ancestors, boy. But my beloved was a Snape. Candida, professor of Defense at HogwartsÂ… For her sake, I've taken the pair of you under my protection. Don't make the same mistakes I made. Before you strive with all your might and cunning to achieve your goal, first be sure that it is the goal you truly want."

* * *

Pansy was shaking him awake, telling him that the lecture was over. "Come on, you don't want to miss lunch, considering that you missed breakfast."

Actually, he did want to miss lunch. He wanted to rush straight to hospital wing and demand to see Severus. As if when he saw Severus, he would suddenly see that the problem wasn't so bad; as if when he saw Severus, he would just see exactly how to save him. He recognized that he was being hysterical, and that hysteria wouldn't make a very good impression on Pomfrey — and, right now, making a good impression on Pomfrey was important, so that she would allow him to see Severus. As if seeing Severus… Maybe eating lunch would help his thoughts escape from the roundabout they seemed to be trapped in. Maybe he should get Pansy talking about the connections between Astronomy and Arithmancy. That would smooth her ruffled feathers while saving him the effort of talking.

* * *

After lunch, Draco went to hospital wing again, where Madam Pomfrey told him again that Dr. Branford hadn't arrived yet and she didn't know when he would, that Mr. Snape still needed his rest and shouldn't be disturbed, and that Draco had better run to Quidditch practice or he'd be late. Pomfrey looked appraisingly at him and Draco tried very hard to arrange his face into some combination of big puppy-dog eyes and Godfrey Goodwork (the ridiculously straight-arrow Hit Wizard in those Martin Miggs the Mad Muggle comics that everyone had read as little kids). It must have worked: Pomfrey told him that he could come back after his Quidditch practice, if he brought his textbooks so he could do his homework while sitting with Severus: "Mr. Snape is out like a light, so he's not likely to be much interested in your conversation".

* * *

Draco sat with Severus and ignored his homework. Having checked that there was no one around to see him acting like a sentimental goofball, he was holding the hand of his unconscious beloved. Unconscious, but his breathing and pulse seemed okay. At least that was an improvement. Draco silently worried at him: "Why hasn't that Branford gotten here yet? He'd damn well better be better at diagnosing curses than I am. I tried, but we both have so much Dark Magic scattered over us that I can't tell if there's anything new. I need to know whether it's my fault. If the Dark Lord learned that you were the traitor. If my father found out about us… who ever knows what he'll do when his own sick motives are involved? If Pansy found out about us and got jealous — I hate to even put it into words, I really hope it's just nonsense. If your idiotic conscience led you to off yourself…."

At a sound of people approaching, Draco hastily put back the hand and grabbed a random textbook. Pomfrey led Dumbledore and a stranger into the room. The stranger was saying something about having come as soon as the Emergency Room found a relief for him. Draco bounced to his feet and extended his hand: "You must be Dr. Branford."

Draco was minding his manners despite having taken an instant dislike to the man. He looked like a scrawny nerd who hadn't noticed getting fat, in fact a blond and older Harry Potter, with a short haircut that was shaggy due to carelessness rather than design.

The newcomer was dressed in all the pompous regalia of a physician (the title used for an academically trained mediwizard). He was wearing the sparkling white robe embroidered with gold caducei; the matching pointy hat was in his hand. There was the stole draped around his shoulders, sky blue with a pattern of white and red plus signs, and edged with four purple stripes to show his high rank in the profession. There was the silver headband that held a disk over his Third Eye. The disk was marked in gold with an ankh, the symbol of his specialty, Anti-Dark. He looked like he had quite a high opinion of himself.

Branford unenthusiastically shook the offered hand as Dumbledore (had he winked at Draco?) explained: "This is Draco Malfoy, one of the Slytherin prefects. Professor Snape is Head of Slytherin House."

"Very good," Branford said meaninglessly. "Surely you have some homework or something to do?" Draco having failed to obediently leave the room, Branford sighed theatrically and proclaimed: "It is not appropriate to have a schoolboy hanging around while a physician examines his patient."

Draco glared at him. "You're from Asclepius College, aren't you?" he asked. "My father has to attend their Graduation Ball every year, because of being a Benefactor, and I remember hearing him tell my mother that he had to buy some cheap and vulgar dress robes, because proper evening wear stands out among physicians like a sore thumb."

Branford glared back. Apparently he wasn't impressed by the reference to Lucius Malfoy, or maybe he hadn't understood it. "Did you inherit your lack of manners from him?"

Draco's glare got even colder. He opened his mouth to reply, but Dumbledore, with no sign of hurrying, spoke before he did.

"Mr. Malfoy is very much attached to Professor Snape, and I fear he is showing his emotional distress about the situation," Dumbledore serenely told Branford, but Branford read the message in his eyes.

Draco picked up his cue. He put on his big puppy-dog eyes statement and said: "I'm sorry, Dr. Branford. I'm just so worried about Se-Snapey that I don't know what I'm saying." He was surprised that he had almost called Severus by name in public, and even more surprised that he suddenly felt like crying. He just wanted Severus to be well, and all his friends to be well, and all his people to be on the same side. Was that so much to ask?

Branford rather awkwardly patted Draco on the shoulder. "There, there, we all want to help Mr. Snape. Why don't you just move your chair a few feet back and you can watch me take a look at him."

Which was actually rather interesting to watch. Branford started his examination in the familiar way, holding Severus's wrist to check his pulse, touching his forehead to check his temperature, waving his wand over the patient and watching it glow various colors, floating a beaded cord over Severus, stretched from his head to his feet, and saying a charm so that the cord would tangle into shapes that would demonstrate any blockages in the chakras. They were all very ordinary blockages, more likely resulting from his condition than causing it.

Then Branford used his wand to draw a hemisphere of light enclosing Severus. He tapped it sharply with his wand and suddenly it was full of lightning, lightning flashes of various shades of purple. From where Draco sat, he was viewing Branford's back, which looked like the physician was watching the lightning flashes attentively. Then Branford stuck his wand into the hemisphere. It was in the midst of purple lightning when Branford jerked his arm and wand back suddenly as if he had been bitten. Bright green blobs appeared where the wand had been. The blobs increased in number, started piling up to fill the hemisphere, and there was no lightning where there were piles of blobs. But each lone blob hit by lightning turned into a greasy black liquid that trickled down. Draco strained unsuccessfully to see whether that nasty looking stuff was landing on Severus.

"Interesting," Branford murmured, apparently speaking to himself. A wave of his wand caused the hemisphere to vanish. No more lightning, green blobs, nor black grease. He fumbled a bit in his traditional black bag, pulling out some little thing that he put on Severus's forehead, some other little thing he put over Severus's heart, and something that looked more like a gray brick than like anything else. When Branford placed the brick in mid-air over the patient, all Draco's muscles tensed, as if he could leap over and catch the brick before it fell on Severus. But it didn't fall; it rested in its place in mid-air as Branford drew complicated patterns with his wand, from which sparks of various colors carelessly fell. Once Draco had recovered from his relief that Severus had not been hit by a brick, this medimagical technique was rather boring to watch.

Eventually Branford had done enough of this dull stuff. One flick of his wand removed all the sparks. He pulled a white cloth and a red quill out of his little black bag, picked up the brick from its place in mid-air, wrapped it in the cloth, wrote on the cloth with the quill, tapped on it with his wand, and put this package down on the bedside table while he removed the objects from Severus's forehead and chest and put them and the red quill back in the little black bag. With wand waves, he caused a chair, a writing table, a notebook, and an ordinary spotted feather quill to appear. He sat in the chair, using the table and the quill to write in the notebook. Draco wondered why it had taken him so long to remember that he hated physicians because of all these little games of one-up-man-ship they played on the patients and family members.

Finally, Branford checked his wristwatch and Summoned the wrapped brick to him and unwrapped it. Draco barely resisted making a noise of surprise, because it wasn't a brick anymore: it had turned into a book. Branford leafed through its pages. He got up from his chair and walked toward the door to show something in the book to Dumbledore — who was in the room now, although Draco could have sworn that he had left even before the purple lightning appeared. The two wizards exchanged some quiet words — and they must have had an anti-eavesdropping Charm or amulet, because Draco couldn't make out any of the conversation.

Dumbledore must have told Branford to speak with Draco, because Branford looked quite reluctant as he walked over to Draco with the open book. "Mr. Malfoy, this is a diagnostic of the energy flows and magic levels in Mr. Snape's aura. As you see, there are two abnormal masses of magic that appear to be in conflict."

Draco didn't see anything of the sort. One of the pages Branford was holding in front of him looked like a horoscope for a world that had thirty planets orbiting in three dimensions and making very peculiar angles with each other, but the other diagrams made even less sense. Draco planted his top teeth in his lower lip. Research before a mirror had found that that was the token of deep thought that looked most attractive on his face, and practice had made it a habit. But this was a real dilemma: there was no way for him to check for himself whether Branford was telling him the truth. Best to remember everything he said and try to check it out afterwards. After all, this guy was supposed to be the best. If he was so good, why had he mentioned only two masses of abnormal magic? Had he not found the others, or merely determined that they weren't causing the problem? "I'll have to take your word for that, Doctor. Does two abnormal masses of magic mean that someone Cursed him?"

"Well, the technical meaning of the word Curse is not entirely the same as the colloquial usage of that wordÂ… see, on this page," (Branford turned to a page which looked like a list of ten years' worth of winning lottery numbers) "one of the masses appears to be a spell which was placed on Mr. Snape quite a few years ago, and it appears to have many characteristics in common with Memory Charms."

Draco wished the physician would stop beating around the bush and just call a Memory Charm a Memory Charm. Of course it's old — it must be a Charm Lucius had cast on Severus some twenty years ago, to cover up that sadistic nastiness that Severus so strongly insisted had never happened. Draco had long ago found himself nauseated by even the idea of mixing sex and torture, but still he understood why Lucius had found it funny to see the look on young Severus's face when he discovered that what he thought was a desperately desired erotic episode was actually a little trip through hell —- except that it was Severus, which made it not funny at all.

"Does that mean it is a Memory Charm?"

Branford looked indignant at being asked for a direct answer, but appeared to stop himself from whatever he was first inclined to say. "It might well be a Memory Charm." Draco looked directly at Branford. Branford broke eye contact first, and sighed. "I estimate — it is probably a Memory Charm."

"Shit!" said Draco, who had found himself unable to imagine telling this sanctimonious ass that his father, the head of the respected Malfoy family, had indulged in disgusting perversions and used an illegal Memory Charm to cover up. Not even for the sake of saying 'I told you so' to Severus when the charm was removed and Severus admitted that Draco had been right about what really happened. Branford looked slightly shocked. He'd look more shocked if Draco told him of father and son having the same lover. "Tell me what the other magic is. This is important!"

Branford looked even more displeased. Dumbledore must have told him something very persuasive, because he answered: "I don't know for sure, as it's something I've never seen before. It seems to be located in both Dream and Memory, and to be actively fighting with the apparent Memory Charm. I can tell you that, in my professional judgment, the cause of Mr. Snape's ailment is that the two spells are consuming all his energies for their conflict with each other."

"So you lift the Memory Charm, then there is nothing conflicting with the other spell, that solves the problem?"

"I wish it were that simple. To remove an old and powerful Memory Charm without causing further harm to the patient is at best a very delicate and time-consuming process, and I am not confident that Mr. Snape is now strong enough for that. To further complicate the problem, this appears to be a Dark Memory Charm, which might well contain additional booby traps to go off if anyone but the original caster tries to remove the Charm."

Shit. The other spell was located in both Dream and Memory, so it was pretty obviously the shared-dream potion, which Draco didn't really want to confess. Well, that was better than a lot of other options. It didn't involve Lucius Malfoy; it didn't involve the Death Eaters. Maybe he could tell enough without mentioning sex for this physician to cure Severus. Maybe Severus would still love him, even without the potionÂ….

"Will removing the other spell solve the problem?"

"Well, it should prevent his condition from worsening."

"I did it."

"What?"

"I did it. The other spell. It's a potion. For dreams. I know how the potion is made, but I don't know how to remove it. I've drunk it myself, and it doesn't seem to have done me any harm."

"No, it wouldn't. It's the conflict with the other spell that causes the harm. Tell me what potion it is so I can check the literature for an antidote."

" ItÂ’s an unpublished potion. I can tell you the recipe. I can brew some for you to experiment on." And I hate telling you this, was the unspoken part of Draco's thought.

* * *

After Branford had tidily banished away the things that he had conjured up, Draco led him to Severus's lab. Vinnie and Greg weren't waiting in the sick-call room, weren't waiting in the corridor, didn't join Draco's parade. Pomfrey must have found them hanging around and either put them to work or ordered them back to the Slytherin common room. They'd be angry when they learned that she'd let Draco roam alone with a stranger.

Reaching the lab, Draco put his hand on the doorknob and it flicked out a long, pink, forked tongue that brushed against the hand, then retracted. Recognizing Draco, the doorknob turned on its own and the door swung open inwards.

Branford criticised: "You have a key to your professor's lab?".

Draco tried to sound patronizing rather than defensive as he replied: "I'm his lab assistant."

Once in the lab, Draco used the Scriptorius Charm to write a copy of the recipe and instructions for Rosemary Foxglove's Sourdamours Porte d'Ivoire Potion for Branford, then brewed a batch of the potion while Branford watched him. Finally, Branford left with a sealed bottle of the potion, saying something about Magister Ward's forensic lab. Then there was nothing medimagical left to be done except wait for Branford. And worry.

Having missed dinner, Draco took his worries to the Slytherin common room. Vinnie and Greg were standing near the entrance, looking anxious, frightening some first-years just by the way they looked. They welcomed Draco with an effusiveness that reminded him of large dogs with slobbery tongues and wagging tails. Fortunately, they had saved some food from dinner for him, which he gulped down. Having basically missed three meals in a row, he didn't mind that they had turned roast and two sides into roast and mashed potato sandwiches and steamed broccoli sandwiches.

Pansy was sitting on a sofa and teaching Nail Art charms to some third-year girls. She glanced over to see what Vinnie and Greg were making a commotion about, then returned to what she was doing. Third-year girls, they probably had to have a little bottle of fingernail polish before they could charm the little brush to jump up and color their nails on its own, and they'd want to learn how to just wave their wands and charm their fingernails directly, no little bottles needed. And Pansy was the expert at that, able to put any color or pattern she could imagine onto her nails. Quite a contrast to Regina, who, despite all her skill at schoolwork, could achieve only pastel baby-pink nails that clashed horribly with her coloring. Pansy was always helping Slytherin girls who wanted to improve their appearance, but Draco recognised that the reason she hadn't jumped up to greet him with Vinnie and Greg was not that she was so absorbed in her task, but simply that he'd rebuffed her so many times already that day. He really ought to fix that.

So Draco strolled over, smiled greetings to the little girls (none of whom looked worth flirting with), and sat on the floor at Pansy's feet, and rested his head on her knees. In that position, he was nose to nose with Puppy, who was sleeping on Pansy's lap. Today the dog was colored like blue gingham, matching Pansy's blouse. She looked at Draco with some annoyance and he said: "Just keep on with what you're doing. Your voice is music to my ears no matter what you say." Draco had been using that line ever since they'd found it in a so-bad-it's-funny novel, and Pansy couldn't help chuckling at all the memories. The younger girls, who didn't know the joke, all giggled in embarrassment and one pantomimed a romantic swoon, which inspired another chorus of giggles.

When Pansy had finished with the little girls, Draco suggested to her that they could sit on the stairs for a private conversation. Sitting together, side by side, Draco put an arm around her — turned to put both arms around her — pressed his face against her shoulder — clung to her — and realised that, even though he'd thought that he wanted to talk to her, he couldn't think of anything to say. Also realised that it is possible to be too tired to want to snog: a new discovery. Pansy was stroking his shoulders and cooing sympathetically at him, which was pleasant under the circumstances.

"Dear dragon-man, you really need to get some sleep, donÂ’t you? You are so stressed-out. I suppose you're all worried about Snape. You act like he was your best friend in the world. You were worrying about him already last autumn, and after Christmas, you told me that you'd spoken with Mrs. Nott about him during the holiday."

"Right!" Draco's memory having been jogged awake, he pulled his face away from Pansy's shoulder and sat up, with only one arm around her . "Last autumn, that was before the potion!" Did I give Branford my secrets unnecessarily?

"Before what potion?"

"Oh, Pansy doll, everything is so messed up… I — please believe me, flower-face, that I have two best friends in the world, which are you and Severus. Yeah, first names. And Branford said he's being eaten up by a conflict between a Dark Memory Charm that was cast on him years ago and another spell he didn't recognize, and I'm sure it's the potion that I've been brewing for him —"

"He's the Potions Master, and you're brewing the potion? If it has to be brewed by a virgin, you don't qualify. I know! It has to be brewed by a non-virgin, and he doesn't qualify!"

Draco snorted in amusement at how much Pansy didn't know. "It was nightmares. His problems last term. That's why I planned to research nightmares for him, and call it an x-c essay. But I'm sure the nightmares were leakage from the Memory Charm, and the nightmares started back before the, oh, the potion for nightmares."

They thought in silence together for a while, then Pansy spoke: "We did a potion to recall unpleasant memories last term. Maybe that kind of potion would have bad results from interacting with a Memory Charm. Maybe he took some of it for some reason. But surely he would have told BranfordÂ…"

"He didn't tell Branford anything, because he was unconscious the whole time. I don't think he took any memory potion on purpose, but maybe someone sneaked it on him for a joke. Shouldn't Branford have recognized it, as it's in the curriculum?"

"Maybe Branford isn't as good as advertised, or maybe no one's ever used that potion since it was invented. Or maybe I'm all wrong and the memory potion has nothing to do with anything. What has he done about removing one of the conflicting spells?"

"He says it's too dangerous to try to lift the Dark Memory Charm in case it's booby-trapped, and he's studying how to lift the other spell — maybe I should owl him about that bad memory potion?"

"Maybe he's finding out who cast the Memory Charm, so the person who cast it can remove it?"

"I kind of think it was my father, and he wouldn't — I don't want to tell him anything about it!"

Pansy looked at Draco as if she was reading words written on his eyes. "Are you fucking him?"

"My father?!"

"No, silly, Snape. Severus."

"That'd be a good way for him to lose his job, right?"

"Yes. That's why you're so careful to keep it secret. Do any potions ever get researched when you're in that lab? No, don't tell me, I'm not jealous. I think I'm not jealousÂ…"

While Pansy was busy with Draco, Puppy had had to settle for crouching at her feet, on a lower step, but now he heard distress in her voice and responded. Puppy stood up and growled threateningly at Draco. The sight of a dog only six inches tall bristling ferociously made him laugh. "Silly, you don't need to defend your mistress against me. I love her just as much as you do."

Draco's gamble on Pansy's sense of humor paid off. She laughed at the way Draco was talking to the dog, so he kissed her and Puppy jumped up on them and tried to lick both their faces.

* * *

Draco lay in his bed, thinking that he surely had gone mad, being so tired that he'd fallen asleep while kissing Pansy (who had called for Vinnie and Greg to carry him to bed, which they did so ungently that he woke right up), but so worried that he couldn't fall asleep in his bed.

"Draco Malfoy?" said an eerie but familiar voice. Draco sat up and pulled the bed curtains a little bit open. As he expected, there was the Bloody Baron. "Come along. I intend to show you something."

Draco got out of bed (lying there awake wasn't exactly fun), put on his slippers and dressing gown, and followed the Baron. "Can we go to the owlery? I want to owl Branford."

"That can wait until morning." T he Baron led Draco upstairs, southerly, and to a part of the castle that Draco had never seen before. He put a transparent silver hand on a solid stone wall and it gaped open, and he led Draco into a room that was almost entirely filled with dusty stacks of boxes. Some tall and oddly shaped object was draped with cloths and Anti-Dust charms. "Unwrap the mirror and look into it."

Draco obeyed. He recognised the inscription on the top, Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi, from cramming for a History of Magic exam. "Eriséd, Eris'd, erased, Eris said," Blaise had mused. "Eris tossed the apple that said To the fairest, and all the goddesses desired it, and that resulted in the Trojan War, by which Troy and the entire Bronze Age were erased, not to mention Agamemnon and his sick-o family."

Draco looked at the Mirror of Erised and recognized instantly that he was seeing people in the archaic and rarely used Great Hall of Malfoy Manor, with the Malfoy arms carved all over the wall pillars and famous Malfoys depicted on the tapestries. The people were a wizard past the middle of life, very well but conservatively dressed, sitting in a very impressive chair, and his family surrounding him as if they all were posing for a formal family portrait. The wizard in the mirror was older than Lucius, but Draco recognised that it was himself, and felt a tinge of horror at the prospect of someday getting old. Draco-in-the-mirror had his left arm around Pansy, who was looking mature, even matronly, but still beautiful, and proudly showing off their children: a boy carrying the Quidditch Cup and wearing his Head Boy badge, a girl carrying a report card showing that she was top in her year and wearing her Head Girl badge.

And his right arm around Severus, whose hair was very streaked with grey, but otherwise looked no older, although he did look happier. And there were two or three more wives and their children clustered behind Draco-in-the-mirror, the women resting their hands affectionately on his shoulders. Draco stifled an embarrassingly high-pitched laugh that had escaped him at the thought that last week's off-hand joke (about being a faithful husband if he married the right girls not girl: "I'm not greedy. I don't need a thousand wives and porcupines like King Solomon. I just need one blonde, one redhead, one brunette, and one brown girl," and then he'd smirked at blonde Pansy, copper-haired Morag, dark Amanita, and darker Regina) was now turning up as his heart's alleged deep desire. He didn't have time to count the women before all those people broke off their formal pose and started moving around and chatting with each other, and Draco saw that Draco-in-the-mirror had friends as well as family with him — maybe 'followers' was a better word than 'friends', as he recognized Vinnie and Greg and Millicent and their not-so-little Crabbe-Goyles.

"Well?" The Baron distracted Draco by putting a hand like a freezing wind on his shoulder, and demanded "See anything about power there?"

"Enough power to protect the people who are under my protection," Draco insisted resentfully. He didn't like being proved wrong, like this stupid mirror telling him that what he really wanted was his rightful place as lord of the manor (and lots of sex), not to be the power behind His Satanic Majesty's throne, nor to kill Muggles for sport. Although, all else being equal, it would be nice to live to adulthood.

The Baron was now speaking in French, in order to make some stupid pun on voir (to see) and pouvoir (to be able). Draco scowled at him: "I suppose you see Miss Candida in that mirror."

A humorless grin spread on the Baron's gaunt face. The thin lips pulled back to show far too much of the roots of his teeth, and being all silver and transparent didn't keep it from looking disgusting. "I assure you that she was Madam Snape, Magistra of Artis Magia, when she had her clothes on."

The grin went away. "I killed her, you know."

"A Dark witch arose, a very powerful sorceress. She called herself The Eternal Flame. Flame was accurate enough, but Eternal wasn't. In your day, there's no one but a few specialist historians who have even heard of her. She wanted to rule all wizards and Muggles, and be Queen of England and France and Spain and maybe Pope as well, and I thought it would be a fine thing to be the chief minister of the new Caesar, play Ptolemy and Seleucus to the female Alexander. She started well enough with the Muggles, a few disguises and assassinations in the royal family, and she was crowned Queen of England beside a particularly stupid royal cousin. But quite a few Muggles chose to be loyal to some other cousin, whom they claimed was a closer relative, and she was unable to get close enough to him to curse him, because he had wizards guarding him.

"Several attempts to overcome those wizards by subtlety failed, so we used force. A grand pitched battle between wizarding armies. The Eternal Flame on one side and the Wizards' Council on the other. I among the attackers and Candida one of the strongest of the defenders. Snow in July, hailstones as big as houses, lightning that flashed up from the ground and set flesh on fire that could not be extinguished. And they sent a flood of water fifty feet tall and fifty miles wide against us, and those who tried to Banish it, or Evaporate it, had their wands turn to water in their hands. By mighty effort, I Shrank it to fit in a drinking horn, but it would have burst forth again if I had pointed my wand away from it. Even if I had known that Candida had put so much of her energy into that spell that destroying it would kill her, it was war, and we burnt the water in one of our Mistress's fires.

"Go back to bed. You have material for thought."