BAD DREAMS: A Snape/Draco Romance

Madam Pince stared to see Slytherins come into the library while everyone else was still at dinner. If she had any dinner of her own, it wasn’t visible on her desk. Pansy didn’t waste time speaking with the librarian; she just went straight to the shelf she remembered. Holding her head at an angle and running her thumb over the spines of the books as she read their titles, she pulled out half a dozen of them, thrusting each one at Millicent. Then Pansy led the other two girls to a library table, while Millicent carried the stack of books. Pansy plopped into a chair, plunked ESCAPE! in front of her, and started flipping through the pages. Millicent and Regina were standing there looking blank, so Pansy directed them: "Sit down and start looking in those other books. Tell me if you see anything that looks helpful."

The first couple of dozen pages of ESCAPE! left Pansy feeling less hopeful. In front of her was a complicated diagram of the Charm to untie the knot when your hands were tied together behind your back, but it (and everything she’d seen so far) required the caster to be able to at least touch his wand with his hand. It would be really stupid of an enemy to tie your hands and then tuck your wand in with them! She went on flipping pages. Pages and pages and pages. There was a note about Apparating your feet and legs out of a rope binding them: "Be careful not to detach your lower limbs from the rest of your body." Why not just Apparate yourself to a safe place with friendly people to untie you, if you can Apparate at all? She went on flipping pages. Dinner must have ended, as some Ravenclaws came into the library. More pages.

"Houdini Potion!" said Regina. "Look at this!" She shoved a book at Pansy, who grabbed it with only the most habitual murmur of thanks, and started reading. She found altogether too much verbiage about how the author had invented this potion for a Muggle named Erich Weiss, who had used it to become a great celebrity as an ‘escape artist’. The stupid Muggle audiences, unable to grasp that magic was involved, vied with each other to invent ever more implausible ‘tricks’ and ‘gimmicks’ to explain how Weiss, calling himself Harry Houdini, freed himself from all those traps. In reality, the potion gave the drinker, for a brief time, the bodily flexibility of an invertebrate, with the ability to stretch any body part long and thin enough to slip under any door, or compress it to nothing more than a couple extra pounds on the torso. Pansy had heard anecdotes of octopodes’ ability to escape from sealed and locked aquaria through even invisibly small holes, and wondered momentarily if this potion turned the drinker into an air breathing octopus. Those octopus tentacles would be handy for untying knots! This stuff wasn’t named Octopus Potion, but it worked without a wand, for both wizards and Muggles.

Nowhere did this annoying author give a recipe, although he chuckled over the comedic burden of brewing a year’s supply at a time, thus revealing that it had to be cooked for thirty-six days starting at the Autumnal Equinox. Well, no new batch of this stuff would be brewed in time to solve this problem! Oh, wait, here’s an anecdote about the Muggle having run out of potion before his new supply was ready. Here’s an actual recipe for how the wizard made a blend with the same effect by mixing other potions that he happened to have in his workroom, some of this and a little of that and a couple of drops of this other one. So why had he even bothered with the long and complicated brew? Oh, he says this rough and ready mixture is likely to explode if the proportions of the ingredient potions are even a little off. So why had he stated them so approximately?

Pansy read to the end of the chapter without finding any else helpful, then turned to the front to check this author’s name. "Teller Storyman. I’ve never heard of him. Regina, look him up in Notable Magical Names of Our Time, and Millicent, look him up in Notable Magical Names – Nineteenth Century." She herself went to the appropriate shelf for books about contortionists.

She had moved on to the octopus shelf without having found anything that seemed useful when Regina rushed up to tell her that the book said that Houdini was indeed one of the Muggles that Storyman had associated with, and Millicent rushed up to tell her that the other book said that Storyman had never been proved to be a liar. "Wonderful," said Pansy ungratefully. "It looks like our best chance is to make some of this potion. Which is gambling on whether Storyman is telling the truth, and if he is, it’s gambling on whether the stuff will explode. And the ingredients include Skele-Gro and MotoSavvy Potion, which are prescription potions, and Veritaserum, which is mostly illegal."

"Madam Pomfrey has Skele-Gro and MotoSavvy, in the rack of shelves in her office, all very neatly labeled," said Millicent. "I’m pretty sure I can take a couple of ounces if someone can get her out of the room. I’m big enough that she can’t see around me to see for sure what I’m doing, if she comes back in too soon."

"Pomfrey’ll come along as chaperone if Pansy goes to visit Snape," said Regina. "You know how she is."

"Draco said he’s out cold," said Pansy. "It’ll be a short visit unless he’s come to since then. " I hope he has, thought Pansy. I could just ask him for the Veritaserum – I could just turn this whole problem over to him. Draco got himself in trouble for Snape; let Snape get him out of it.

They went back to their dorm room to pick up flasks for Millicent. Pansy was inspired to pick up some homework in case she ended up sitting with Snape in Draco’s place. Then she had another idea and went back to the common room to speak to a first-year whom she knew had an expensive toy Spyscope. As a toy, it put white nightshirts over the image of any undressed person it showed, and it changed all images of writing to mere squiggles, but the little boy felt amazingly honored that Pansy Parkinson, the prefect, smiled at him and asked to borrow his Spyscope, and he rushed to fetch it for her.

On the way to hospital wing, Pansy thought to herself that if only she had an Invisibility Cloak, she would put it on Millicent. Then she and Millicent could go into Madam Pomfrey’s office together and Millicent could stay behind when Pansy exited with Pomfrey. Being visible, Millicent would have had to make some kind of excuse if she wanted to stay behind in Pomfrey’s office, and Pomfrey might have seen through the excuse. Even if deceived, Pomfrey might have politely hurried back to Millicent, not leaving her enough time to steal both potions. Better for Millicent to wait out in the hall and enter when she saw Pomfrey leave (by using the Spyscope, she could see from the hall across the waiting room into the office), even though that risked Pomfrey locking the door behind her, or having an alarm notify her when someone came into the waiting room.

Pansy went into Pomfrey’s office, smiled charmingly at her, and said: "I’m here to ask after Professor Snape. Is he doing any better? Is he up to having visitors?"

Pomfrey glared disbelievingly at her and asked: "Where is your friend Malfoy? He was underfoot here all day yesterday, and not a sign of him today."

"He’s searching for a cure," said Pansy, proud that she could tell the truth while revealing nothing. "He’s crackers, but he’s busy, so I thought he would like it if I visited in his place. I know he sat with the Professor for hours yesterday, and I’m sure he would want me to do the same if it would help the Professor."

Pomfrey sniffed eloquently, but the story was plausible. "Mr. Snape is still unconscious, but you can look in for a moment."

Snape looked like he was asleep (although, Pansy reminded herself, she had little idea of what unconscious people are supposed to look like) and not sleeping restfully, either. He was sweating, and his hands and face were kind of twitching, as Pansy’s little Puppy did when dreaming that he was begging for tidbits or playing ‘catch’. Pansy’s first thought was that Snape looked even more hideous than ever, downright disgusting in fact.

Then she noticed Pomfrey looking disapprovingly at him, her contrariness kicked in, and she knelt beside the bed and gently took his hand in her two hands. He might not be as out of it as all that: after another twitch, his hand clutched her left hand: reaction to external stimulus. When his fingers brushed against her ring, he clutched the ring (and the finger in it), and seemed to stop twitching. Interesting, thought Pansy. Unless his disease craves gold or star ruby, he must be feeling traces of Draco in the ring. Pansy knew the ring wasn’t a magic artifact, that wasn’t why Snape was affected by it, but she had thought that Draco had put nothing but money and a little thoughtful shopping into that ring when he gave it to her for her sixteenth birthday last summer. She had worn it every day since then, without regard for whether it went with her outfit.

When Draco had given her the ring, she had unwrapped it, squealed in spontaneous delight, and hugged Draco. Then she read the inscription scrolling around the inside: You are the star for which all evenings wait. Draco Malfoy + Pansy Parkinson 4-7-96 and hugged him again. Then she was inspired to ask: "This beautiful ring, does it mean ‘engaged to be engaged’?" Pansy had known Draco’s face well enough to have been sure that he was trying not to show that he was thinking fast, and she almost felt sorry for him. Surely he had never given the matter even the least thought before, but his pride was pressing him to answer quickly and never admit that there was anything he hadn’t prepared in advance. "You figured it out," Draco said in a voice of mock disappointment. "I thought maybe you’d just put it on, and I could say ‘Ha! That means you belong to me!’"

Millicent must have made a noise, back in the office, even though Pansy, lost in her pleasant memory, hadn’t heard anything – Pomfrey blurted a sudden ‘Excuse me’ and walked to her office as fast as if she had been running. Pansy looked at Snape’s hand wrapped around her finger and suddenly understood that there was a reason she’d brought quill and parchment. If she put her quill in Snape’s hand, and guided the hand to write a note giving her permission to enter his lab, then the door would have to recognize it as having been written by his own hand!

Leaving hospital wing, Millicent was more upset about having failed than about the lost points, the detention, or the threat that when Professor Snape had recovered, he would be informed that she had been caught breaking the laws about restricted potions. She had gotten the MotoSavvy Potion, and Pansy didn’t ask where Millicent had hidden it so well that Pomfrey hadn’t found it while searching Millicent’s pockets after catching her measuring out the Skele-Gro.

"Never mind," Pansy told her consolingly. "I think there’s some in Snape’s locked cabinet." Pansy waved the note across Millicent’s field of vision. "Damned if I know what he has it for," Pansy added. "Maybe he plans to discover the formula and get rich manufacturing a cheaper version. Anyway, go back to the dorm and get Regina, meet me in the corridor outside his lab." Regina’s assignment had been to read up on Explosions, How to Prevent.

* * *

Draco had run though his recitation of spells without finding anything he could do without moving his wand, and he was feeling tired, hungry, sore, and maybe a little bit despairing, when Caesarion flapped in carrying a package untidily wrapped in a pink bandanna. "I know from whom that comes," Draco told the owl. "Only Pansy would have a pink bandanna." The owl landed on Draco’s head again and hooted in a dignified way.

Better and better. Pansy had tied it with a clever knot that only had to be pulled on one tempting loose end to come untied, and reveal that the bandanna had been turned into a container for two small stoppered bottles of an ugly yellow liquid and one long note. Draco read the note, which explained Houdini Potion, Teller Storyman who had not been proved to be a liar, danger of explosion, and all the rest of it, and he felt a mixture of admiration for the unexpected things that Pansy could think up and annoyance at the way she went on and on about it. "I can’t be any worse off, even if it kills me," he told Caesarion, not thinking that he would be worse off if it killed him just as slowly and even more painfully, and wiggled one of the bottles into his mouth. If she’d thought to put it in a wax capsule instead of a glass bottle, he could have just bitten through it instead of struggling around to get the cork out.

Draco swallowed the potion and counted to thirteen, as directed. He suddenly felt that he was on fire, and even screamed a little bit – it was quite a surprise as well as being unbelievably painful, infinitely worse than having a bad sunburn over his entire body. Draco certainly had never screamed if he got his hand into a candle flame or such, but that was only one body part at a time, not everything. Biting his tongue didn’t feel like anything, by comparison, let alone distract him from the other pain. He took a deep, agonizing breath and force-marched his mind into calming concentration. Then he noticed that he could move his hands and feet! The giant marshmallow was no longer holding him still. The excitement broke his concentration and the agony rushed back in.

When he was able to regain his concentration and finally turn off his sense of pain for an instant, he realized that not only had he become clumsy, but also he was moving against a resistance like being in a very thick liquid. Maybe the marshmallow had melted from the heat. Anyway, being able to move his wand hand meant he could try to self-levitate. Swish and flick correctly, even though in slow motion. Maybe that would lift him above the stickiness.

It did! Caesarion, startled that his perch had suddenly moved, hooted in annoyance and flapped, then settled back down on Draco’s head. Draco was not only hanging safely five foot above the grubby stone floor, he was no longer burning up. Giddy with relief, he threw Reducio! at the marshmallow, then Apparecium! What appeared on the floor was a tangle of knotted string. He Summoned it and put it in his pocket, just in case. He cast a few Good Grooming Charms on himself in the unstated hope that looking like he was in control of the situation would make him actually be in control of the situation.

Draco felt a little more comfortable, but Summoning his father’s books had no result. He tried forms of Ostendo! – Find Hidden Object, Detect Disguise, Find Escape Route – but they did nothing either. At least he was no longer in pain. Detect Trap. The whole place glowed green. That wasn’t exactly a surprise. Detect Illusion. Suddenly he was falling again. He reflexively bent his knees and threw his arms in front of his face to cushion his impact on the stone floor, while Caesarion squawked and flew up. By the time that Draco had noticed all this, he had fallen farther than five feet without hitting the floor. He went on falling and falling, surrounded by total darkness. Even Lumos! didn’t work, or maybe he had gone blind.

* * *

The sun grew low in the sky and Severus looked down on a landscape with long shadows. It was a green and summery landscape, not the snow and slush surrounding Hogwarts. He noticed that trees look a lot shorter when viewed from above. The sun touched the horizon, and red and orange and pink and gold and purple spread over half the sky, while the other half shaded from sky blue directly overhead to deep midnight blue at the eastern horizon. Severus told himself to be pleased that he had an unobstructed view of such a lovely sunset, but his true feeling was disappointment that the sky was just as far away when he was flying as when he was walking. Well, his other true feeling was relief that he didn’t hurt from all this unaccustomed horse flying. The sunset faded faster than he liked (as they always did) and gradually stars became visible while the earth below became invisible.

Severus had been flying (actually, being carried by the horse) through the night for rather a long time when he saw blue and red lights moving around in mid-air in front of him, and wondered casually what they might be. Muggles up to something? If the horse continued heading toward them, he would find out.

As he grew closer, first he saw that it looked like a Quidditch match with glowing players. Lighted uniforms? But the players seemed somehow misshapen… Coming closer, he saw that they were misshapen indeed, being ugly demons who were holding their broomsticks like Beaters’ clubs rather than flying on them. There were flames dancing upwards from the red ones and small lightning flashes revealed icicles hanging from the blue ones. That didn’t look like a Bludger or a Quaffle that they were hitting around with their broomsticks – it looked like a person, especially as its movement seemed to come only from gravity and broomstick blows. In the light from the flames and lightning of demons closing in on their target, it looked rather like Draco … With knees and voice, Severus urged the horse closer to the match that he was straining to see.

It was Draco! That would not do at all! Severus acted entirely on reflex, dropping the reins to hold the lance in both hands, and pushing the horse toward the action with his knees and the leaning of his body. The horse understood and doubled his flight speed while slightly altering his course, aiming just below where Draco was. Two red and one blue demon were closing in on him with broomsticks lifted to thwack. Still acting on reflex, Severus pulled one of the apples out of his pocket and threw it at the nearest demon, not even aware that he had aimed somewhat upward, to compensate for gravity, and then returned his hand to the lance.

The red demon exploded like a skyrocket when the apple hit it, sending many-colored sparks across the sky with a loud boom. The other red demon had come into hitting distance of Draco and its broomstick was about to start its down stroke. But Severus was close enough – another reflex thrust the lance through the demon, and Severus shouted "Ha!" as this demon also went off like a skyrocket.

But Draco was falling. The horse turned downward in pursuit. Severus had a quick thought that if the horse didn’t catch up, he would have to hope that one of the remaining demons struck Draco, however painfully, in time to break his fall. Relatively close to Draco – not close enough to catch him – reach out with the lance – reach out with the butt end of the lance, not to hurt the boy, and hold the point end himself. With some flailing of arms, Draco caught hold of the lance. The sudden jolt almost pulled Severus off the saddle, or the lance out of Severus’s hands. He clutched the lance more tightly, while trying to get the horse to turn around and go back the way they had come. Draco, looking much healthier than one would expect of a person who had spent quite a while being beaten by demons, was climbing hand over hand up the lance. "You swooped in on a flying horse and rescued me!" Draco shouted with a grin.

"Sixth year student, twelve OWLs, and you allowed yourself to be captured by sportive demons, and could not escape them on your own. And topped it off by proclaiming the obvious." Severus’s voice was disapproving, but edges of his mouth were turning up and his eyes were soft.

Draco had reached the point where his hands were level with Severus’s foot in the stirrup. He tucked his head against the side of the horse to avoid being bashed by the wing as it stroked back. The loud, hard rush of wind from the moving wing knocked the nearest blue demon (who had just caught up with them) tumbling away head over heels (if that was a head, if those were heels). The wing swept forward again and Draco pulled himself up so that his feet were at his hand level. He put his left foot on Severus’s foot, put his left hand on Severus’s thigh, and said: "Thanks for holding that stick on the left." Then the horse’s wing stroked back again and Draco again pressed himself against the horse’s side and Severus’s leg to avoid it. Severus tried to suppress thoughts that were only a distraction from being pursued by demons. "It makes this easier," Draco said, and threw himself up (so that momentarily his entire weight was on Severus’s foot) and his right leg over the horse, and shifted his weight so that he was sitting behind Severus.

Severus was surprised to feel familiar but unexpected arms moving to encircle him. It did feel more pleasant than he wanted to admit, but it was also alarming: this was definitely not the place or time for lovemaking! Then he told himself, with some thought of girls riding on motorcycles behind their boyfriends, that Draco simply needed to hang on so as not to fall off the horse. But he was wrong: he felt Draco’s arms tighten around him, Draco’s body pressing against him, a touch on the back of his neck that he recognized as Draco’s kiss…. It was just a quick hug; Severus felt relief and regret as Draco released him, even taking those lovely arms away.

"Where are we going?"

"To be truthful, I don’t know."

"Where did you get this horse?"

"On a mountaintop, but I don’t and didn’t know where that mountaintop was."

"When did you get out of hospital wing?"

"I don’t recall having been in hospital wing recently."

"I can see we have a lot to catch each other up on. Is there a version of Ostendo to get a map overlay on the view?"

Severus smiled, knowing that no one could see his face. Under the circumstances, Draco’s conversation was almost as impressive as his ability to perch securely and confidently on a flying horse using neither stirrups nor hands. The boy was keeping his head in a crisis. Surely a son, that is, a student, to be proud of. But Severus’s smile faded from his discomfort with even the word ‘student’, under the circumstances.

"The rest of the demons are coming after us," remarked Draco.

Severus reflexively reached into his pocket for another apple, then realized he couldn’t turn to aim at the demons because Draco was in the way. He instructed Draco: "There are two apples in my pocket. Take one and throw it at the demons. Try to hit one hard."

This apple, as it approached the demons, inflated to the size of a twenty pound pumpkin, sprouted wings, and fluttered about like a giant Snitch. It teasingly circled the head of one demon, who tried to thwack it with his broomstick, but missed, hitting his own head (if that was a head) instead. Soon, the Apple Snitch, flirting with all the demons as they became more and more frustrated, had led them all away from Severus and Draco.

"You take the reins, and I’ll cast the spells," said Severus.

"A wise division of labor," Draco agreed, and reached his left hand around Severus toward the reins, which Severus put into his hand with a feeling of relief. Severus pointed his wand and cast a spell, quite consciously showing off by using no incantation and only minimum wand motion. Patterns of lights glowing like yellow Muggle streetlights appeared below them.

"It isn’t quite a map overlay," Severus said with false modesty, "but that square perimeter with the avenue leading to it should be a good place to land."

Draco guided the horse with a quiet word, a small motion of the rein hand, and even smaller motions of his feet. The horse, far more intelligent than the wingless kind, understood that he could now ignore whatever uncomfortable thunks came from the first rider, the one in the saddle. Draco smiled to notice that the horse’s body language made it quite clear that he was happy to now have a competent rider.

When they had landed at the chosen spot, Severus raised his wand for Lumos! Draco had been going to dismount before doing anything else, but noticed that Severus was looking before he leapt, and so he waited so that he wouldn’t be criticized by Severus for recklessness. The pleasant warmth of the summer night, perfumed by night-blooming flowers, was already obvious.

The light from the wand showed that the horse was standing on grass, between a tree and a horse trough. Draco stood up, put all his weight on his left foot, which was standing on Severus’s left foot, swung his right leg over the horse (over the back end of the horse, despite a momentary temptation to show off by swinging it around the other direction, over Severus’s head), and jumped off backwards, all in one continuous movement. Severus dismounted more slowly and awkwardly while Draco turned a cartwheel or two.

Severus slid, with firm hands on the horse’s back and saddle, rather than jumping down. When his feet reached the ground, he let go the horse so as to stand on his own feet, and immediately staggered, so badly that he almost fell before he caught himself, from unexpected pain and weakness in his legs. By sheer willpower, and using the lance as a walking stick, he walked stiffly but straight to a safe distance from the horse before he sat on the grass. The damn sword was getting in his way, so he took it off his belt and threw it down beside the lance. One more damn chore: he grasped his wand firmly and concentrated on a whispered incantation, creating magical alarms to alert him if anyone else approached this small mountain top. He made sure the alarms were firmly in place before he stretched out his poor sore legs and began rubbing them.

When Severus looked around again, Draco was tending the horse. He’d led it to the horse-trough to drink, taken off the saddle and bridle and other gear that Severus didn’t recognize, and hung the tack neatly in mid-air. He was running his hands over the horse’s cat-soft fur that covered strong muscles – no, he wasn’t, he had conjured up a brush in one hand and a cloth in the other, and he was grooming the horse. His white-gold hair shone like a light against the black background of his clothing, the black horse, and the night.

Severus watched appreciatively as Draco finished his task, banished away the brush and cloth, stepped over to the horse-trough to wash his hands – then noticed that Severus was watching him, and smiled back. Draco was too far from the wand-light for Severus to see his face clearly, but the body language was unmistakable. The way he moved showed plainly that he was proudly conscious of being watched as he conjured up a cup, dipped it in the horse-trough, drank from it, refilled it, carried it to Severus, and easily sat down without spilling a drop before offering the cup to Severus, who said: "How do you know it’s safe to drink?"

"I checked," Draco said with a complacent smile. "Before I let the horse drink. There’s a form of Ostendo for checking whether food and drink is wholesome. Flitwick hasn’t gotten to it yet, but I read ahead." Draco offered the water again. Severus accepted it with a grunt of thanks, and surprised himself by draining it in one long swallow. He hadn’t realized he was thirsty.

Draco aimed his wand and his eyes at the horse tack. Murmuring incantations while looking even more pleased with himself, he Charmed the tack clean and back on the horse. Then he turned back to Severus.

"Shall I rub your legs for you?"

"No!" Severus tried not to sound as shocked as he felt at what sounded like an indecent suggestion, out here in public and all.

Draco found the lance lying in the grass beside Severus, and picked it up to look at it. "Where did you get this? If it actually is a staff of healing, made in imitation of Apollo’s lance, why haven’t you tried it for your, ah, hippalgia? And if it isn’t, why did all my bruises and broken bones go away when I touched it?"

"An empty suit of armor riding a bronze statue of a horse attacked me with it." Severus answered unhelpfully as he reached for the lance. Draco handed it to him. Looking at the lance with much the same expression on his face as when he looked at Gryffindor students, or their bungled messes of potions, he gingerly touched its butt end to his knees.

It worked: Severus felt the pain shrinking. He experimentally lifted the lance away, and the pain remained at its reduced level. Scowling even more, he re-applied the lance, and pain diminished some more.

The light from Severus’s wand was enough for Draco to see his face, and Draco knew Severus well enough (after nights spent with minds even more entwined than bodies) to have a pretty fair idea what he was scowling about : Severus was forcing himself to act on his perceived duty to be as fit as possible for working or fighting, but really would have rather remained in pain than to have had Draco’s suggestion prove right; he felt that it made him look a fool for anyone to suggest a good idea that he hadn’t thought of first. And that he looked even more a fool sitting on the ground holding a long, pointed stick to his knees. He was right about the latter, but Draco reckoned that only bad would result from telling him so. It would be better to soothe him.

In two motions, Draco was kneeling behind Severus with his hands on his lover’s shoulders. His fingers started the rough tapping movements that start the blood flowing, so that it isn’t sitting in stagnant pools inside the muscles when the backrub proper starts. Severus hadn’t even noticed how sore his shoulders were until Draco’s agile fingers started erasing the soreness. Then he didn’t want them to stop. Dear Draco. Whatever nonsense was going on here, Draco had been happy to see him, and counted on him to rescue them both. He needed whatever information Draco could give him. Oh, those hands felt good. It was very pleasant to be friends with this clever and charming young man, to relax in his company and treat him as an equal with no need to stand on dignity…

"Draco, what were you saying about bruises and broken bones?"

"I had ‘em. From those demons beating on me."

"How did you get yourself into that situation?"

"I fell through a stone floor. And my wand didn’t work, not even Lumos. I fell for a long time. I couldn’t see anything until I felt a sudden blow strike me." Draco had paused after each short sentence to check whether Severus wanted him to continue. "It was those demons. I tried Banishing, Levitating, Disarming, a few things, but none worked…. How did you know where to rescue me?"

"I didn’t. I found the horse saddled and bridled, so I climbed aboard and it flew away with me. It flew for hours, and then I saw you. This mountaintop looks like the place where I found the horse; if the knot with which the horse was tied is still hanging on the horse-trough, then it is the same place. That would be annoyingly irrational, to travel west so long and return east so quickly."

"Maybe it flew west all the way around the Earth, plus a little bit," Draco suggested. Humor had returned to his drawl. "Because I did see a rope looped around the horse-trough, and tied in a fancy knot." The hands stopped what they were doing, so that the arms could slide around Severus. He was being hugged again, and kissed on the ear this time. He wondered whether he should tell Draco to stop that.

Draco switched from kissing to murmuring in that ear: "You would fly off on an unknown horse only if there were someplace that you intended to go, and you reckoned that the horse would be the best way to get there."

Severus felt sufficiently embarrassed by his failure to live up to that very reasonable ideal that he stopped worrying about the embrace. "Alas, no. I didn’t know where I was, didn’t know how I had come to be there, didn’t know what, if anything, would happen next, and saw no way to leave except the horse. It put me in mind of Sartre’s play No Exit."

Having gotten away with something, Draco was trying something more. He was wrapping himself around Severus in a distinctly amorous way, which somehow resulted in Severus’s arm being draped over him. There was yet more laughter in his voice. "This can’t be Hell. It’s Paradise."

"You must have a very low standard of Paradise."

"No, look. We don’t have wine, but we have clean spring water to drink. Tasty, too. We don’t have bread, but apples are better. And we have each other. ‘Ah, Wilderness is Paradise enow.’" Embarrassed by how mushy his joke about the Rubaiyat had come out, Draco hastily summarized: "Food, drink, sex. What more could anyone want?"

"A book of verse?"

"I’ll worry about that later," Draco said, and kissed his mouth.

Severus pushed him away. "Draco! What do you think you’re doing?!"

"Kissing you."

"No, tell me how you fell through a stone floor. Was it at Hogwarts?"

"Can’t we do both?"

"Here, in public, where anyone could see?"

Draco forbore to mention that there was no one there to see them except the horse. "Turn your wand-light off, and no one will be able to see anything." Severus didn’t act fast enough to suit him, so he reached over and took Severus’s wand himself: "Nox!" The moonless night with no lights except the very small and infinitely distant stars glittering overhead was so dark that, at first, they couldn’t even see other. With eyes closed, kissing by touch and taste and smell and sound in the warm, perfumed night seemed perfectly normal.

Draco’s hands stayed busy even when his mouth reluctantly pulled away. "I was so fucking worried about you. Well, you’d collapsed in your lab and been taken unconscious to hospital wing and Dr. Simon Branford said you were suffering from a conflict between an old Dark Memory Charm and a spell he couldn’t recognize that was rooted in both Dream and Memory, so I jumped to the conclusion that it was the Sourdamours Porte d’Ivoire potion, so I gave him information about it."

"Gave him information!"

"I didn’t tell him we were lovers, and Dumbledore sort of told him not to ask about it, and I’d rather have you alive than scandal-free." Their eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness that Severus could see Draco, but too faintly to be sure that he was blinking back tears. Severus reflected that Draco would be ashamed of showing such a childish weakness, but tears were no more usual behavior for him than admitting (twice!) how much he cared about his lover.

"I also fell through a stone floor. In my own bedchamber. I landed in a vulgarly gaudy Great Hall constructed of many colors of marble, and was attacked by a bronze equestrian statue. I should perhaps mention that my previous recollection is awakening in my own bed, and rising to study a chess match, nothing about my lab."

Draco recognized that Severus had apologized to him by volunteering information, and reciprocated by telling truth that he felt so defensive about that his voice sounded forced and distant. "Branford said it would be too dangerous to try to remove the Memory Charm because it was probably booby-trapped. I know you don’t agree with my ideas, but I thought that the information to remove that Charm would be in my father’s journal. I went to Malfoy Manor and to the place where he hides his journal in a dimensional pocket. Somehow I fell into the pocket when I tried to pull out the journal. I cast some Charms to prevent smashing into the stone floor below. I didn’t smash, but I was stuck in something invisible." Draco paused to bury his face against Severus’s shoulder.

Severus had been thinking so hard about what Draco was saying that he hadn’t noticed that somehow he still had his arms about Draco, and Draco had his arms around him, clinging more like a child than like a lover. Draco had taken many crazy risks (with a disgraceful lack of planning and preparation, to judge from his discomfort in admitting it), but had taken those risks for him. Had risked his own life for Severus. Severus noticed the top of Draco’s head in the vicinity of his mouth, and kissed there. Making his voice very gentle, he asked: "Am I to assume that the stone floor into which you did not ‘smash’ was the same through which you fell?"

Draco told of being stuck and unable to use his wand, being owled by Pansy and drinking the Houdini Potion, casting Ostendo and falling through the floor. "And I already told you how I met the demons."

Severus was rather horrified by what he heard. What a bloody stupid way to do a secret reconnaissance. And drinking Houdini Potion: that was more than merely stupid, more than merely taking crazy risks. Makeshift Houdini Potion mixed from other, stolen potions at that. Hadn’t Draco known he was more likely to explode than not, and likely to be poisoned by it if he didn’t explode? He could have gotten himself killed. Severus automatically held Draco a little tighter at that thought, while his mind kept working: the young idiot / brave beloved could have gotten himself killed; maybe he had gotten himself killed…

Severus made his voice even more gentle: "Draco, it seems possible that we both are dead. I’ve never speculated on the afterlife, nor asked the ghosts to describe the sensation of the moment of death, but perhaps it is perceived as falling through a floor into an unknown place."

It had not previously occurred to Draco that he might have died, but it was a persuasively plausible idea. It would explain why Caesarion was no longer with him: the owl was still alive. And it would explain why it was summer here, with the normal constellations of the summer sky overhead, even though it had been winter back in real life. And it would explain why his wand hadn’t worked against the demons: they were his appointed punishment for his sins, not just any old magical beings. He wanted to shout: It’s not fair! I don’t want to be dead. It will be boring. I’ll miss Pansy. What about my future, growing up and being an important wizard and having children and being Malfoy of the Manor? But he bit back the words when he realized how much they would hurt Severus’s feelings. He opened his mouth to ask a question, and closed it quickly when he noticed that the first word in line was "Professor." He tried again.

"Do you think I died – was killed – by impacting that floor?"

"Falling from a height of five feet? You’ve never given me reason to believe you quite that fragile. I was more worried by your account of Houdini Potion. That’s nasty stuff, even when brewed by a master potion-maker. If a schoolgirl brewed it successfully … she should be expected to earn Honors on her Potions NEWT."

Thoughts chased through Draco’s head. Was Pansy that good at Potions? Was an hour or so of being beaten by demons really all the punishment he had earned, or was something worse waiting for him? Why didn’t Severus remember having been in his lab – had old Arsenius lied about that?

"You’re not dead. You’re in hospital wing, unconscious but alive. I was there. I watched Branford examining you. I would have noticed if you were dead. So I’m not dead either. Unless you died since this morning… you don’t remember being dismissed from hospital wing and going back to your own room?"

Severus noticed the irony that, just when he had drifted into thoughts that being dead washed away distinctions of teacher and student, age and youth, as well as risks of scandal, losing employment, being killed, failing in a mission against the Dark Side, disappointing Dumbledore… just when it had occurred to him that being dead meant there was no reason not to kiss the beautiful darling in his arms… just then, Draco had lost interest in caresses. Now he wanted to analyze the situation! It was ironic, but it was probably Draco’s way of trying to conceal his fear: the poor kid was probably terrified of death. His own death, not anyone else’s.

"Well, how did you go from that marble hall to this mountaintop?"

"Draco, do you really believe that I am able to think about such distant things while you are sitting on my lap?"

Draco laughed, which was good, and stood up, which was not. He lit his own wand: Lumos!

Severus’s mind was working at its usual speed. His first impulse, to grab Draco and pull him back, faded instantly as he saw that Draco was standing just barely too far away to grab without an ungraceful lunge. With the speed of reflex, he grabbed up his own wand: Accio Draco!

Maybe speaking the incantation aloud put too much force into the spell, because it did not gently lift Draco, waft him over, and deposit him neatly in Severus’s lap. Instead, it suddenly, powerfully, pulled Draco’s feet out from under him, backwards, so that he fell flat on his face … or would have, except that he landed on Severus, bowling him over as well. Surprised though he was by this sudden blow that left them both lying on the ground in a great big pile, Severus looked up at Draco sprawled over him and laughed to realize that, although he hadn’t planned on both of them having the breath knocked out of them and picking up a few bruises, the result was just what he had intended.

Draco took an instant longer to realize what had happened, and he had not yet put words to his anger at being Accio’ed like some inanimate object (what an insult!) when Severus laughed. A happy laugh, not a mocking one. Draco looked curiously down at Severus’s face. And Severus reached up and kissed him.

Familiar embrace, beloved lips, sweet summer night, pounding pulse, racing breath, warmth of flesh on flesh and mind on mind… Draco was trying not to notice that he was aroused by Severus’s assertive behavior, just as he had been careful all these few sweet months of shared dreams not to notice his disappointment that, in their lovemaking, Severus was always as gentle with him as with some precious and fragile trinket. Draco was quite willing to know, altho’ too busy to think about it just now, that he had first (years ago, in waking life, in public, entirely what is called "innocently") fallen in love with Severus – Professor Snape – because of the Professor’s air of power and confidence, the scorn with which he gazed at all things, and the haste with which everyone obeyed his commands. Little first-year Draco hadn’t needed to discover Severus’s brilliant mind, strong magic, scathing wit, and wide, deep knowledge to boast that Slytherin House’s Master was the best of all the House Masters. That had been a good way to start fights with Gryffindors, altho’ Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs had been more likely to say "De gustibus non disputandum est" or "How nice for you" (respectively) than to fight about it.

Severus was very happily surprised to perceive that the action that he had taken spontaneously actually was the correct action (correct under the circumstances, correct to achieve the desired goal): Draco was breathing hard and kissing him, no longer glaring at him. Well, if what Draco wanted was a lover who refused to take "no" for an answer, Severus was in the mood to provide that. One arm held his darling firmly in the embrace, unable to escape from the kiss even if he had wanted to; the other hand was at the neckline of Draco’s robe, casting the Charm for the garment to just slip off. He was determined to make sure that Draco had something more interesting to think about than reminiscences of first year, something that would make him feel grateful for having gone on to the next adventure, something that would (incidentally) transmute Severus’s own ardor into ambrosial fulfillment. Ah, wilderness were Paradise enow.