Waking Dreams

Chapter 1 - Reintroduction

The older man regarded him seriously from behind the counter of the shop, red hair blazing like a vengeful flame of vengeance. Or else Malfoy was just feeling particularly vindictive and poetic all at the same time.

"You do realize I knew her in school," George Weasley said, though his voice was merely curious and not reprimanding.

Malfoy shrugged, leaning back into the wall. "And this matters why? You never had any problems with pranking me-"

George snorted. "That was completely different and you know it."

Draco shifted then, raising an eyebrow. "Then you never had a problem with McGonagall. Or Ernie MacMillian. Or, dare I say, Hermione Granger, very recently-"

"Fine, fine," George sighed, raising his hands in surrender. "Goodness knows, I thought we had that far behind us."

The former Slytherin shrugged. "Whatever I can use," he answered not-so-cryptically. "We both know McGonagall would have your ears for getting her drunk - and we both know your being a grown man wouldn't do much to deter her from taking appropriate revenge."

George scowled now. "Just tell me what you want and promise you'll never cash in on that favor again. Because I know a certain man who once held the Potions master position before you who'd really like to know who set off that explosion seventh year-"

Malfoy thought he kept his composure rather well, all things considered. He kept his face carefully schooled and decided to get this over with quickly, for all that he and George had found themselves on... cordial terms, at the least, during the time he'd taught at Hogwarts.

"I need a very temporary delayed reaction love potion," he responded smartly. "And it's going to have to be sweet tasting, or at least bland." Then, after ticking this off his hand, he continued. "I know that'll take a while to whip up with those specifications, so I want a Misplacement Bug and a Shrieking Sticky and a Mini-Boggart."

George eyed him unhappily, probably imagining those specific products coming into contact with poor, daft Luna Lovegood.

"Is that all, your highness?" he muttered, pulling the requested items brutally from beneath the desk, where extra stores were kept. "You do realize that the Mini-Boggart is highly unadvised for those with a dark history and/or suicidal tendencies or pregnant women-"

"Yes," Malfoy said, rolling his eyes. "I do. I release you from all liability and blah, blah, blah." He eyed the shelves around him speculatively. "Oh, and add in a Reverse Key. Those things are rather versatile, if I do say so myself."

George added his request to the bag and handed it to him. There was a hint of a smile playing about his lips, though. "Don't be too cruel, Malfoy," he said. "And... if she comes in here asking for a few choice items to get her revenge... well..." He smiled. "Business is business."

Malfoy, being Malfoy, shrugged. "I understand completely, Weasel." At this last point of conversation, he grabbed his bag and pivoted on his foot, walking outside the glass door and into the rainstorm...

George smirked to himself, mentally counting down the seconds until the Shrieking Sticky activated. One was usually supposed to activate it by licking it and sticking it somewhere, but any kind of moisture worked just as well...

The screeching started exactly three seconds later, from some place on the other side of the street.

George hummed to himself as he opened the register to count up the money and mark it down for the day.

-----

Luna Lovegood was still a very strange person.

It hadn't changed, not in the years he'd not seen her. She still had that discomfortingly dreamy expression, those large crystal blue eyes that blinked seldomly and always made you uneasy when they did so. She was quite a bit like Trelawny, he realized, except for the undeniable fact that she seemed more genuinely out of it, and not quite so much a posturing beetle.

Malfoy did have to admit, reluctantly, that she was somewhat pretty, in a serene, glaze-eyed, far-off kind of way. Her dirty blonde hair had the tendency to glimmer gold in the torchlight of Hogwarts, and her skin was a shockingly white cream color - much the same as his had been described, on occasion.

He hated her utterly and immediately.

"It should be nice working with everyone," she said with a vague smile as she greeted the students during the feast, standing up to be introduced by Dumbledore. "We should have a good year in Divination - as long as the Nargles in the mistletoe behave this year, that is."

A few students laughed, but most of them knew, at least by reputation, that Luna was the editor of the Quibbler wizard-tabloid, and that she probably believed there were Nargles in the mistletoe. Luckily, they wouldn't have to deal with this particular problem until Christmas-time, when said plant would be taken out to decorate the school.

She sat down at this and smiled serenely, moving to pick at her food in a strangely dignified way.

"It's good to see you again, Miss Lovegood," Lupin said from her other side, attempting to start conversation, most likely. "How have things been since the last time I saw you? It must have been - er - well, nineteen years, mustn't it?"

Nineteen, came the unbidden thought. He didn't see her when it all came crashing down, then... a pleasure reserved explicitly for me, I must assume.

The thought sent a strange kind of vindictive pleasure through him.

Lupin's gentle attempt at a conversation starter would have flopped rather badly with anyone else, but Luna Lovegood took him up eagerly. "Oh, it's been wonderful - did you know they confirmed a sighting of a crumple-horned snorkack in Sweden that summer? My father and I didn't get to see it, but the witch who did told us it had brown horns, and no one had ever been close enough to see that before..."

Lupin looked slightly distressed at the witch's enthusiastic response to his question, but of course the old werewolf would never do anything less than polite - like asking her to shut her mouth, for example. Malfoy decided graciously that he would do it for him.

"Do you ever shut up about your insane imaginings?" he demanded from two people over, keeping his face as coolly degrading as possible.

Luna turned to regard him with her usual smile. "Oh, you're teaching here, then, Malfoy? I'd heard, but I wasn't sure... oh, I've wanted to ask for the longest time, but did you ever get back to Lebanon to fix up that mess-"

"No," he stated shortly, unhappy that his barb had served only to draw her attention to him, across Sinistra and Vector's seats. "And I never lived there, you idiot - you went to school with me, don't you remember?"

She smiled. "Oh yes, I remember. But there are all sorts of ways to set up aliases..."

Malfoy decided to tune her out, then, and spent the remainder of the meal stabbing viciously at his steak, wondering what he'd done in the past year that was bad enough to make Dumbledore torture him so.

Oh yes. He'd insulted Granger and her dead friends. And he'd tried to curse a newly resurrected Sirius Black. And he'd let slip to the ex-convict that the bushy-haired woman had Avada Kedavra'd Bellatrix.

Well, he thought moodily as he stared at the mutilated meat, at least he knew why he was being degraded so.

Though he would remedy it very, very shortly.

-----

The Misplacement Bug was going to take some planning, he decided as he set his Sixth years to work on a particularly nasty batch of pseudo-poison. Lovegood wasn't likely to just give him an opening to stick it somewhere lasting, and any close behavior with her would immediately alert Lupin to his intentions.

It wasn't that he particularly disliked Lupin - the man was impossible to dislike, after all - he just knew the man too well. He would interfere with anything he tried. And, perhaps, if he let himself admit it, he didn't want to see the man's disappointment in him at such a childish bout of tricks.

"Bacon!" Malfoy snapped suddenly, catching the Hufflepuff's mistake out of the corner of his eye, "It's two lacewings, not the whole damn bottle!"

The boy blinked, then shook his head with a bit of silent laughter and set the bottle down to carefully take two of the delicately veined objects from the top. Malfoy frowned. Was it too much to ask for them to fear him half as much as Snape?

Well... yes, he supposed it was. Mostly because none of them thought he meant it when he threatened them with bodily harm.

His eyes turned to the other side of the room, where the Gryffindors were working together. Surprisingly, he hadn't had nearly as much trouble with them during his many years of teaching as he'd once have suspected. In fact, the Gryffindors usually obeyed him a bit better than the Slytherins, which irritated him sometimes.

"Yates!" Malfoy said loudly, as though trying to make up for his unwitting acceptance of the house. "What color is that potion supposed to be?"

The black-haired pest looked up at him cheekily and grinned. "Yellow, sir!" he called back, sounding amused at his own mistake.

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "And what color is it?" he asked impatiently.

"Yellow, sir!" the boy replied easily.

The student next to him raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

"It's got blue in it as well, I suppose," he admitted, still grinning.

"That would make it green, wouldn't it?" Malfoy said, exasperated. "They ever send you to primary school, you cheeky bastard, or do you just pretend to be this dumb?"

The boy's grin widened. "I'd wager it's a little of both - the school wasn't too keen on art appreciation, you see."

The Potions Master snorted, and rose to walk to the sixth-year's cauldron. He shook his head as he reached it. "You can still salvage this, but you'll have to add more nightshade. And don't forget the neutralizing ingredient either or I'll make you drink it yourself!"

Yates chuckled, and did as he was told. "I'd hate to throw up all over Sarah's Charms homework too," he chortled. The girl, who had been sitting beside him, edged away uneasily as she watched the potion slowly turn back to a more healthy yellow color.

Malfoy sat back down and, instead of grading more potions, began to imagine a school free of the strange heavy air that had suddenly suffused it. To his mind, the time before Luna Lovegood was already looking more perfect, more pristine, and more unattainable by the moment.

-----

"You been to Loony's class yet?" a student was whispering excitedly.

"No, but I've heard..."

"Yeah, you heard right, I bet. Darnedest thing I've ever seen..."

Malfoy frowned at his students talking. "I'd pay attention," he told the two Slytherins sharply. "You're in seventh year, start acting like it or you'll get yourselves into some true pain."

One looked up at him with another snarky grin. Funny how those were much more annoying when coming from his own house. "I'm sure I can scrape something together," the boy said.

He felt his eye twitch.

"There are much worse things than being poisoned," Malfoy said silkily, remembering a little of the way Snape had taught his class in his time. "You're going to be working on memory-altering potions this year, for example... wouldn't want something necessary missing, would we? Like, for example, your name. Or your first year."

As the smile faded slowly from the Slytherin's face, Malfoy felt his annoyance fade to a kind of sadistic pleasure. He began to understand where Snape got it from. "Be interesting, a seventh year with the eleven year olds, relearning his basic spells," Malfoy said, leaning back again. "But I suppose if you don't mind, I don't either..."

The other student muttered something, and his friend turned his gaze unflinchingly to the board, where instructions had been written. They weren't starting the potions today, obviously - they were just reading on the theory. But the theory was every bit as important, as they should have well known, having managed some semblance of a good grade on their OWLs...

Their commentary on 'Loony's' class, though, disturbed him slightly. He'd have to find out the next day from his other students' conversations what that was all about. The lower years would have had her by then.

-----

That night, he went to dinner feeling just a little weary. First days always were, though he could wish otherwise.

Loony Luna was not at the table.

He frowned. This was when he had been anticipating his attack.

"Where's the nut-case?" he asked as he sat down next to Lupin instead of taking his usual spot. Flitwick had no backbone, he'd just move somewhere else anyway.

Lupin raised an eyebrow but said nothing about his new seat. "She's taking her meals in her room for a while until she gets settled in. I think she's unpacking a little at the moment." The man regarded him curiously. "Are you asking because you're genuinely concerned or because you were hoping she'd left?"

Malfoy crossed his arms over his chest and decided not to answer.

But he ate his dinner rather quickly for those that watched (it included most of the hall, at one point or another), and got up from his chair very early. Early enough to visit the Divination room.

"Have fun helping unpack," Lupin told him cheerfully.

Malfoy decided not to dignify him with a glare.

...

"Do come in," came an awfully familiar dreamy voice from inside. Malfoy scowled - he had purposely refused to knock politely and slipped in silently. The woman was nowhere in sight, but she already seemed entirely too aware of her surroundings for his liking.

"Don't mind if I do," he muttered darkly, critically taking in the starry forest scene, which now contrasted sharply with stacks of boxes in various states of unpackaging.

At first, he didn't see her - but then, a small golden head popped up from behind one particularly high stack of boxes. Luna waved cheerily, her hair pulled back with a blue-swirled bandana as she rummaged through the top box.

Malfoy stepped over a few boxes carefully, a few blades of grass crunching beneath his feet. Although he wouldn't readily admit it, he had very much enjoyed having the centaur for a Divination teacher - he'd spent the occasional time underneath the magically created canopy of stars, lounging beneath an oak and relaxing. It was unlikely he would return to do any such thing with Luna Lovegood as the new instructor. The idea made his mouth twist into a deep frown as he kicked surreptuously at one of the boxes.

"How interesting," she said with a smile, her head tilted slightly to the side. "So you're the dragon in the crystal ball."

He snorted as he caught sight of a box of what looked to be tea leaves, inwardly thinking that the 'dragon' had probably been more the product of her overly active imagination than any real talent in the area of Divination. If indeed anyone had talent in it other than the centaurs.

Malfoy forced himself to be polite, knowing his subsequent success hinged on it. "I thought I'd come up and see how you're adjusting," he said with eyes cast to the ground. You idiotic, dreamy-eyed imbecile, added a tempting voice in his head.

"Oh how thoughtful," Luna beamed, moving out from behind her boxes and reaching out to pull one down. On inspiration, Malfoy moved forward to grab it for her, his other hand darting out with his ill-gotten prank item and brushing the top of her head on its way.

Success, he thought with a private smile.

With exaggerated care, he placed the box into her hands and nodded his head. Luna didn't seem to notice anything strange in this behavior, for she simply smiled again and put the box on the ground.

"Would you like some tea?" she asked him pleasantly.

Malfoy thought first of declining, but then decided to see just how well his newly-acquired prize worked. "Certainly," he said graciously, brushing the hair out of his eyes.

"Oh wonderful," she said, "I'll go find a tea set, in that case..."

The woman moved to a table at the back of the rather large room, where a small cabinet sat. She opened it silently - then blinked at the empty inside.

"I suppose I haven't unpacked the tea set yet," she said with an apologetic look at him. "Although I was certain..."

"Perfectly fine," he cut in smoothly, his smile quite genuine now. "I'll just go and get some from the house elves before I go to bed." Malfoy moved toward the door, stepping back over the boxes he'd kicked at and opening the trapdoor. "I should probably get going - I have some homework to grade. Let me know how your classes behave."

He made to leave before she could respond, but somehow, a delicately pale hand had stopped on his shoulder. He stopped, a strange and all-consuming rage roaring up within his mind.

How dare she touch me, the filthy woman, the incompetent bitch-

Malfoy restrained himself to look up into two slightly concerned blue eyes.

"Do be careful," Luna said in a soft voice, unknowingly grating over his sensitive nerves. "If I remember correctly, your birthday was near the winter solstice... any actions in bad faith are likely to backfire."

Malfoy caught his breath. Had she guessed? Was this her way of warning him she knew what he was trying to do?

No. No, that was impossible. She was just being her loony old self.

"I'll keep it in mind," he said, then wondered whether he ought to have sounded a bit less dry.

Malfoy continued walked out brusquely and, without looking back, closed the door behind him with a snap.