Inflecto

"Shit." Sitting up in his small, shabbily-covered twin bed, Draco put a hand to his chest, breathing hard. He was still shaking from the dream; a dream of a memory.

"Mummy?"

Crack!

It wasn't until he covered his face in his hands did Draco realize he had been crying. The dream made him cry last time, too. He rubbed at his eyes hastily and sniffed to cease the drip from his nose. It was hard to hide anything in this house.

It wasn't his house, by the way. Had it been, Draco would have been sleeping in his enormous mahogany four-poster, on expensive silk sheets his mother had special-ordered just for him. Here, he slept on some cheap spring-coil mattress, with stained (though clean, he grudgingly admitted) sheets and an old quilt. If he hadn't known better, he'd assume the flowery, grandmother-looking thing was knitted by his caretaker.

The rest of the room looked normal enough, though threadbare. The only window was tiny, broken, and so filthy that no light could penetrate it, which was all the better to keep out nosy neighbors (though Draco knew there were none). There was on old chipped dresser in the corner with a cracked mirror hanging overhead, and most of Draco's belongings were in there. The rest of the room was bare, with creaky wooden floorboards and graying walls that had quite possibly once been white. The whole place smelled like mothballs, and Draco hated it.

Still unable to get the dream out of his head, Draco sighed and was about to fall back onto his pillows when his caretaker arrived.

Severus Snape had one hand on the doorknob while the other held a tarnished candle-holder. The candle atop it was half-melted, but it gave enough light so Draco could make out most of Snape's face. He wore a long, striped nightshirt, showing off his skinny legs, and looked thoroughly annoyed at being awake at such an hour.

Draco would have laughed had the circumstances been any different.

"What happened here, boy?" Snape asked, his long, greasy hair swiveling from side to side as he looked about the room as if there were an attacker hiding in the shadows.

"Nothing," Draco answered quickly. "I just woke up and forgot where I was."

Snape eyed him suspiciously, and Draco had to look away. He forced himself to think about anything but the dream--puppies, Quidditch, Lord Voldemort--no, not that one--

Snape cleared his throat. "Then try not to scream next time, Mister Malfoy," he replied, his voice oozing over Draco like hot butter. "Must I remind you that we are here for a reason?" he asked, and actually waited for an answer.

Draco was speechless. Snape was far from stupid, and an accomplished Legimens at that. Even if Draco had concealed the dream from Snape's prying mind, his caretaker was still well aware that he was lying. "Now I will advise you to get some rest, because we have things to do in the morning."

"But I thought you said I could stop at home!" Draco protested loudly, despising how childish he sounded but angry all the same. He had slowly been collecting items of value from Malfoy Manor and placing them into spots he had carefully selected to keep them in, planning to retrieve them at a later date, though even he wasn't sure when that would be. The job was hard both because he was on the run and because his father and mother were, too, meaning the house was under some sort of Ministry security. It was nothing he couldn't handle, but still quite difficult. Snape had already agreed to let him go that morning; it would have been his third trip, but now that had changed!

"There are more important things than a rich man's playthings," Snape reminded him scathingly, and Draco could have screamed in frustration. "You will come with me this morning. Everything else will have to wait." With a swish and a click of the door, Snape retired to his own quarters.

Draco's hands curled into fists. He had to go back! He didn't want to, but since he had found his father's pensieve on that first raid, three nights ago... He shouldn't have looked inside it, shouldn't have touched the weird, silvery substance within...

Curiosity kills the cat. Ah, but the cat is too smart for all of that nonsense, Lucius had always countered. The cat is cunning and graceful. The cat is king, leaving the mouse to play pawn for him.

Not this time. Finding himself pitched into the pensieve and several years into the past, Draco had seen his father commit murder. It wasn't as if Draco had thought Lucius walked a straight line--hell, they were Malfoys. And darker still, he knew his father had killed.

But he hadn't seen it, and he supposed that was what had always kept him so detached. That, and the fact that he hated his father, so he hadn't given a damn about what Lucius did. The father he strayed from his father the better.

That was a long time ago, though. Things were different now. And the last thing he had expected was to find the memory of Lucius blowing up that poor woman's lab, attempting to not only kill her but her child as well.

The child had survived, Draco knew; her mother had sacrificed herself to save her daughter, having time to cast only one spell, a powerful shield that protected her daughter from the blast but left her in the midst of the wreckage.

But why? Why had his father killed Luna Lovegood's mother six years ago? She had something Lucius wanted, something very important, Draco could tell that much. But what?

This was why he had returned to Malfoy Manor, to uncover the truth. His father had a plan of some kind back then, and Draco was all too keen to find out what it was, and why it was so important. On his second trip he had found more silvery memories stashed in crystal containers in one of the hidden vaults, but Draco had yet to break the wards that kept them safe. He wasn't ready yet, totally unprepared to see what other evil deeds Lucius may have done...

Draco didn't want to go back to sleep, afraid he'd have the dream again, but he knew that Snape would not be pleased if he looked and acted like groggy shit in the morning, and, depending on where they were going, neither would the Dark Lord.

The door creaked open again, revealing a long slice of Snape's silhouette. The candle he held had been extinguished.

"Dreams are just that, only dreams, fabrications that your subconscious conjures while you conscious mind is at rest," Snape explained, his words biting yet calm. "It is what occurs while you are awake, Mister Malfoy, that matters."

Then Snape was gone, and Draco was left to ponder his words in the dark.