Waking Dreams

Chapter 2 - Lost

Everything about her infuriated him. Not lightly, either - it wasn't a slight annoyance, but a burning rage within him when she spoke, when she moved, when she looked at someone.

When in a rational state of mind, it was easy for him to find the reason; some kinds of people just didn't work well together. Certain types could grate on your nerves with no effort whatsoever.

The awful thing about it, though, was that she knew she could do it.

Sometimes, just to annoy him, he could swear she would stop him in the halls and talk to him in that soft tone of voice, sending tremors of spite through his body. The woman was poison - and even if no one else could see it, he could. He had had much more experience with people hiding behind masks than any other person at the school, excepting perhaps Severus Snape. Unfortunately, Snape never seemed to bother coming out of his hole except for imperative meetings and events.

But despite anything Malfoy might have been expecting, the results of his work the night before were not readily apparent the next day in his first class. Things went on as normal - and students were still talking excitedly about their Divination classes the day prior.

Moving to survey a Hufflepuff's steaming cauldron, Malfoy found himself listening in on a conversation between two of his third years...

"That's right," Adrian Winters was saying in a hushed voice. "She said my year was going to be really good, as long as I put more effort in during Spring..."

How very astute, Malfoy thought with an inward snort. As long as he works hard right before exams...

"Well yours sounds pretty straightforward," his partner Drea said with a frown. "She told me I was going to have to watch out for bats. Has Hogsmeade had a problem with them or something?"

Malfoy shook his head, passing off the student's work with a short word of approval. Bats. What went on in that woman's mind was beyond him.

"...told me mine next, and I'm going to have an accident soon unless I pay attention to where I'm going..."

"Herbology's going to be good for me this unit..."

He sat back down at his desk and scowled down at the pile of graded papers on it. Nothing to get his mind off of the matter.

So she'd been telling fortunes their first day. Granted, he'd never heard of the hack Trelawny doing her whole class - she'd usually started the class straight into their work with nothing but a single prediction of doom.

...likely to backfire...

"She's trying to goad me," he murmured to himself. "Or maybe she's trying to keep me off with a little hocus pocus. Bitch."

In his second class for the day, filled with the fifth year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, he heard other things that made him smile in vindication.

"She said she'd lost her lesson plans today," one Ravenclaw snickered. "Do you ever get the feeling that she's rather... not all there?"

"I don't know," said another doubtfully. "She's a pretty good teacher... though it seems strange that she keeps misplacing things that are right in front of her."

The woman will be out of here in no time, Malfoy thought with a loosening to his chest.

"It's rather sad, don't you think?"

He frowned.

"Ten points from Ravenclaw," he barked from across the room.

The girl looked up, surprised and blinking. "What? But why?"

Malfoy tried to find a good reason. "Your mixture is bubbling, Miss Enders," he said curtly. "You should be paying attention to it, as it's currently a safety hazard."

Not a wonderful excuse, by any means, but it stopped her infernal talking.

They didn't know her in school, he reassured himself. Damn woman...

At dinner that night, though, he found himself tensely watching the door for her arrival.

"Where is that woman?" he asked Lupin tersely halfway through the meal, eyes darting about the hall uneasily.

Lupin raised an eyebrow. "Concerned, Mr. Mal- Draco? I wouldn't expect it of you."

Malfoy ignored the slip on his name - only his students and Dumbledore were really allowed to call him by his surname anymore - and curled his lip. "Hardly. I'm just wanting to know she's not conspiring to set your animals free or some such silly thing. She might think they've been infested with a plague of invisible African munbees."

Lupin regarded him with warm amusement. "I'm sure she'd let me know first," he said. But his face had taken on a peculiarly amused expression that Malfoy did not find reassuring at all. In fact, the man's eyes were looking past him, beyond him-

"Mr. Malfoy," Dumbledore's voice said pleasantly, "would you mind going to welcome our new teacher at the door? It's very wet outside, I'm sure they'd appreciate a hot cocoa."

Suspicion immediately reared its ugly head. Dumbledore had just hired one of his least favorite people. Who else might he have dredged up from his past?

"We don't need a new teacher," Malfoy said in a low, cautious voice. "What are they coming here to teach?"

"Healing," Lupin responded promptly from his other side. At Malfoy's sudden seething look in his direction (He knew? The bastard knew about this?) the Care of Magical Creatures teacher shrugged and began to explain. "Many of your students expressed interest in taking the NEWT level healing course last year, if you remember. Enough of them did so that Dumbledore and I talked about restarting the course."

"Any number of things could have gone wrong," Dumbledore said with a strange twinkle in his eyes, "so naturally, I did not inform anyone of the possibility until it was certain."

"Until the teacher's almost at the front door?" Malfoy demanded, forgetting for the moment his immense respect for the headmaster.

"Precisely," Dumbledore agreed affably. He paused, then looked beyond him, as though seeing something in the distance. "Perhaps you should get that cocoa now, Mr. Malfoy."

Malfoy thought briefly of refusing, or of trying to shove the job off onto Lupin. But one look at Dumbledore's deceptively pleasant face convinced him he was doomed to the task anyway.

"Fine," he muttered, rising from his seat and turning to order a house elf to meet him at the door with some cocoa.

Lupin's eyes followed him curiously on the way out.

------

Malfoy, as usual, found he was regretting his easy acquiescence to Dumbledore's wishes just moments later.

He pulled his cloak more tightly about him, squinting his eyes against the rain that blew into the overhang in front of the door.

Damn Dumbledore. Damn Lupin. And damn Luna, just because he could.

His dark thoughts inevitably took a turn for the worse as he sipped the rapidly cooling hot chocolate he might or might not have been ordered to give to the new teacher.

Fuck this.

Malfoy swirled about to move back into the castle, closing the door behind him. He could go back to his quarters and pretend to have waited for a while, maybe read up on his curriculum for the next day...

Thud. Thud, thud.

Someone was knocking on the door.

Malfoy felt keenly and immediately the irony of the situation.

He turned about after only a moment's hesitation, banishing the cup and saucer back to the kitchens and pulling back open the large oaken door.

He saw...

Red.

A woman slightly younger, blazing, sopping hair dripping into sullen eyes. Skin that had once borne freckles now smoothed into ashen paleness. A ghost from the past.

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

Ginny Weasley looked up at him with the eyes of someone having a nightmare.

He didn't doubt that he was in her nightmares. Anyone who'd lived at Hogwarts then had nightmares, saw their friends and enemies, both, dying in a macabre parody of history repeating itself...

But when was the last time he'd dreamt of her death? Not recently. He'd forgotten her well until now.

Ginny didn't answer him immediately. In point of fact, she didn't answer him at all - merely stared at him incredulously, with haunted eyes. She had the appearance of someone who was well taken care of by others but refused to take care of themselves.

After a few awkward moments, he decided to turn about and begin walking, anger beginning to simmer at the realization of what Dumbledore and Lupin had done to him.

If she felt like following him, she would.

------

Dinner. If you could call it that anymore.

Luna was back, taking her meal. Almost as though she'd come down just to see Ginny and annoy Draco, though no one other than Dumbledore and Lupin were supposed to know she was coming.

And now, Dumbledore was talking loudly of her achievements, trying to bolster her confidence, no doubt. The old man didn't look at him, but Malfoy knew he was amused at the turn of events. Dumbledore always found a humor in torturing him, he was certain.

He tuned in and out of the speech, attempting to find the perfect pause to get up and leave.

Head girl her seventh year? Now that was strange. He didn't remember hearing about that one.

Of course, he didn't remember much of anything after his own seventh year. Someone might even have told him at some point, though he highly doubted it as very few people had actually taken the time to come see him.

He realized dimly that Dumbledore had stopped talking and that Remus and Luna had converged on Ginny.

"You can show me what you've done with the Divination room," Ginny was saying in a low, vaguely excited voice. "I've been wanting to see it -"

Malfoy choked, but thought he'd successfully managed to cover it. Luna had better not have changed the damn room.

"Do try to be careful this month," Luna told her dreamily. "The planets are in conflict with your sign... any unplanned activities could be dangerous. And try to watch out for unfriendly acquaintances." Malfoy tried very hard not to snort at the obviousness of it all.

"But there's always a smidgen of good luck in every fortune... I think there's a nice little surprise in yours."

This time, he had to turn his head about completely to hide his snide smile.

"Trelawny would have disagreed with you," Ginny commented quietly. She was already sounding much less detached than she'd been when he'd first seen her.

At this point, Malfoy tuned them out and rose quietly from his seat, unnoticed. He felt like a quiet room, a warm fire, and a book; the whole damn situation could be forgotten for now.

But then, once he sat down heavily in a soft chair, wet hair almost dried by now, his teeth clenched. A thought had just occurred to him.

He couldn't touch Ginevra Weasley. Not if he wanted her brother to be quiet on a few important matters.

Things were not going well, these days.

His hands slipped uncomfortably into his pockets - one encountered a small, round, plastic-wrapped object that he knew to be the mini-boggart. The hands came back out immediately, and he grabbed a book to steady himself. The thing had the same effects, was the same horrible creature. It only had a time limit.

He thought of its intended recipient with a hard scowl. He didn't care to think of her tonight.

Which was why he found himself deserting his chair by the fire and going down to the Divination room again.

-----

As he entered, he saw immediately that Luna Lovegood, in all of her golden, half-waking splendour, was upset.

And this, in itself, was a real, true sign that she was acting now. Because he had never seen her upset.

To clarify, Luna Lovegood had never shown anything but calm to him - going all the way back to a certain time he'd locked her legs together for fun (second year) when she had simply smiled at him and remarked that she'd have to hop to class. Other times had proceeded that - culminating in the time he had held her and her friends hostage in his fifth year, and she had simply looked at him dreamily as Ginny Weasley bat-bogie'd him.

And now, her face was stricken, unhappy; her mouth was turned downward in a pained grimace as she searched vainly about her newly restored room for something she was unable to find.

"Oh," she said in a far-off voice. "Malfoy."

He found himself gritting his teeth at the name. "Draco," he emphasized. She had no right to call him by his last name. Not many did, anymore.

"I'm sorry," she said promptly, not seeming to realize she'd irritated him. "Draco. I was just- just looking for something. I've been looking for things all day, it seems. I'd rather hoped I left all this behind during school..."

School is still here, he thought to himself. And so am I.

"But I- I can't seem to find it," she was saying with large, distressed eyes.

Look away, you fool, Malfoy thought furiously to himself. Granger's turned you soft, the stupid bint- why couldn't she have gone and grieved elsewhere or given her stupid Christmas present to someone else-

"What can't you find?" he asked casually, inwardly gritting his teeth as he realized she was playing him perfectly.

"Oh," she said vaguely, "My parents' wedding photo. I- I've had it for years, you see, and I was certain I'd just set it on the table over here..."

Malfoy eyed her critically, silently, for a moment. It was just a photo, then. Nothing to be incredibly worried over, and once the Misplacement Bug wore off in a week or so, she'd find it in short order.

"Were you wanting to come down to dinner?" he said in a politely schooled voice, masking a mouth of venom.

"No, I- I think I'll look a bit more," she said. "Thank you, though, for coming up - it's very nice of you."

Malfoy ignored her and ventured down the ladder once more.

-----

"-lost the teacups today, someone had to find them for her-"

"But did you hear, Erin said she really did hear from her sister, you remember Loony said for her to watch for news from new family-"

"Her sister's not exactly new, though, is she?"

"Well yeah, but see this - her sister's having a kid soon!"

"No kidding?"

Malfoy frowned yet again. His muscles were beginning to tire.

"Yates, Bettles, would you please focus on your poison!"

The Gryffindor boy looked up at him and blinked. "No offense, Sir, but what's been bugging you lately?"

Malfoy gritted his teeth. "Nothing has been 'bugging me', Yates. Now focus on your fucking poison before I dock you points."

He shrugged, while Sarah beside him shot him a reproving look for his language. Malfoy restrained the urge to laugh aloud at the idea of a sixth year girl telling him off for saying a 'bad word' and snapped his attention back to a few particularly badly written essays. They would require some legibility charms, certainly...

"A nice one, though, isn't she?" said a Slytherin girl thoughtfully. "For all that she's loony."

Fucking woman's going to give me a tension headache and she's not even here, Malfoy thought darkly, wincing as the tip of his quill snapped. But damnit, she should just go back to her tabloid.

The bell rang, then, and he rose to his feet. "Freezing charms on the cauldrons," he instructed the students. "Before you leave, if you please, or you'll be losing points."

Every single student complied. They'd long ago learned not to disobey him when he was in one of his so-called 'hissy fits'. Malfoy decided with a growl that the first person he heard referring to this current one as such would get detention with Filch.

His next period was free, thankfully. He really needed a break.

He spent it reverse locking the Divination room's door.

-----

Dinner. Again, the resident insane woman refused to show up. More luckily, Ginny Weasley stayed in her part of the school as well, to organize her affairs. Or perhaps she really was afraid of him. Good.

"You look stressed," Lupin said calmly from his side. "Perhaps you should go see Poppy for a soothing potion?"

Malfoy muttered something to him that might have been construed as a 'fuck off'. It wasn't his fault if the esteemed professor heard it as such.

"You know," Lupin said pleasantly, "You usually begin using that word rather more frequently when you're truly unhappy about something. I would suggest a nice cup of tea, but you're in your stage of 'take no advice' so I won't." He paused. "I know you don't particularly like Luna Lovegood, but please try not to let her bother you too much. If things go on like this, you won't even have to see her except in staff meetings."

Malfoy decided not to comment, and instead dug into his steak violently. But his mouth ignored his brain a few moments later and said, "Why Ginny Weasley?"

Lupin sighed. "Because she's a good healer," he said quietly. "But, to a lesser extent, because she lost almost as much as you did."

Weasley, came the sudden thought, unbidden. Ron Weasley. Dead.

Malfoy shuddered, feeling, for some unknown reason, that Ginny Weasley would not be such a problem after all. She could sit on the other side of the table - she could stay away from his classes - and he wouldn't be voluntarily stepping a foot in her room anyway... wherever it was.

"That's the spirit," Lupin murmured wryly as he took in Malfoy's sudden chill.

For what had to be the fifteenth time that night, Malfoy wondered where Looney Luna was.

-----

"You know, I really think something awful's happened," Elizabeth Baker was saying, about three days later.

"I know what you mean," Judith Chauncery affirmed as she stirred the cauldron idly. "Professor Lovegood looks so dreadful..."

Malfoy twitched.

"D'you..." Elizabeth lowered her voice. "D'you think someone's died?"

"Maybe," Judith said sadly. "But I would suppose that's really her business, isn't it?"

He wasn't certain whether he ought to be relieved or impatient that he wasn't getting more information.

"You know what's sort of funny, now that I think about it?" Drea said to Adrian as Malfoy stalked past their cauldron. "Snape caught me in the hall the other night... you remember Professor Lovegood said I ought to watch for bats?" She laughed at her own joke, but Malfoy interrupted her.

"Your potion is looking thin, Miss Adams, Mr. Winters," he said sharply. "Steep some more darkroot in it until it's a better consistency."

"Yes sir," they chorused, turning back to their work.

Stupid woman. Stupid woman.

-----

The problem, he reflected later, was not that he had a reluctantly good heart (as Lupin loved to put it - he personally thought the man was overly optimistic).

No, the problem was that whenever he did something particularly nasty, people noticed.

"You've done something," was the first thing out of Lupin's mouth as he crossed the threshold of the cheerfully sunlit Defense Against the Dark Arts room, his face looking a bit more cloudy than the room itself.

"What makes you say that?" Malfoy asked nonchalantly, scratching a big fat "P" on a particularly bad piece of homework.

"Luna is looking harried," his former teacher said shortly - his wand flicked once, and a chair flew before his desk with a 'bang!'. The man sat down with a dark face. "What's more, you've been to visit her most every night this week-"

"Only two or three times," Malfoy interrupted, but it went unheard.

"-and George is looking guilty."

Both men paused for a moment as the reality of this statement sunk in.

"George has not, in all the years since I have known him, ever looked guilty about anything," Lupin said. "Should I care to guess or will you enlighten me as to your methods?"

Malfoy scowled at him. "I haven't done anything," he replied easily - but his face was much too tight, he knew, for it to be convincing.

"I don't care," sighed Lupin suddenly, deflating. "I don't. I'm tired of trying to keep you on cordial terms with everyone when you seem so intent on mucking it all up. You're a good person Mal- Draco, but you're still a child where it counts."

A tiny shudder went through him, unbidden, at these words. Malfoy stared at him.

Screaming at the pouring sky in front of a grave that wasn't real.

"I wasn't there!"

Lupin stood up abruptly, watching him carefully. "I know you've done something," he said. "I just hope you have the decency to fix it before I have to do something."

Lupin paused, his silvered hair glinting in the golden sunlight.

"You know," he said, slowly and ominously, "that I can do something about it. I'm still in contact with Hermione - and Sirius."

Malfoy pushed away his prior thoughts and very carefully tried not to shudder at the thought of his black-haired cousin bearing down on him. It had happened before; it was an experience he was not apt to repeat.

"I'm certain," he drawled easily, "that if I were doing something, I would have stopped at this point, dear Professor Lupin. You needn't worry about me."

"Good," Lupin said. "Now what I'm really here for is to pick up a few things for Miss Weasley's class - it's scheduled to start next week, and there are some ingredients that we won't be able to get in by that time. Would you consider lending out some of your potions ingredients until we can get replacements?"

Malfoy carefully avoided his eyes and looked down at a paper.

"Take what you need," he muttered, sounding as ill-natured as possible. "Just as long as you're the one that gives it to her."

Lupin scrutinized him for a moment. Then, his mouth twitched unexpectedly, and Malfoy got the uncomfortable feeling that Lupin knew the old animosity had mostly faded. The man was pleased with him, despite everything else.

How awful.

"Don't get any bright ideas about the wormwood," Malfoy snapped defensively. "I need it for next class."

"That's perfectly fine," Lupin said, moving toward the door of the closet of stores.

A few minutes passed wherein neither said a word. The clinking of glass and the careful scratch of a quill filled the silence - and soon, Lupin left quietly with his small load of ingredients.

Malfoy breathed out all at once and put his head down on the desk.

He was left, unmercifully, to the thoughts that Lupin's visit had stirred.

-----

He'd come again.

God damnit, why had he come again?

It wasn't his fault. He'd said before it wasn't his fault, and everyone that counted had agreed it wasn't his fault.

He never went to Harry Potter's grave - likewise, he never visited Ron Weasley. But he always, always came to visit the empty grave of Sirius Black.

He didn't know why. He'd never even known the man, past the tales his family told or the wanted posters with a madman staring out at him and laughing. Perhaps it was because he'd taken the road Malfoy had inevitably followed, only much earlier. Perhaps it was because Sirius Black had died a hero's death while he'd lingered on. Or maybe it was the simple fact that he had been tied to him by blood.

Tonight was the rain. He wondered as he trudged if it might be able to wash him off at all. But it merely dripped off of his black soul like water over oily tar. Names never came off. His mark, his sins, couldn't be washed off by a bit of rain.

The letters stared out from chiseled obsidian, like eyes from the dark of night. They pierced into his soul, uncovering things he never set free on his own.

You killed them, they seemed to say. You stood by and did nothing.

"I didn't kill anyone," he hissed. "And I saved your precious mudblood too, didn't I?"

You did it for your peace of mind. Even in saving others, you're selfish.

"So what?" he demanded. "So what if I am? What's it matter, since everything's over and gone? I am what I am, and I'm not the dead one!"

I died well. You'll die in ignominy. I took the blood traitor's path and I will be better known for it.

Malfoy felt a rage rise within him at the staring black letters. What was he supposed to have done? What could he possibly have done, other than what he had? He'd been in grieving, alone, friendless! What right did this piece of his own soul have to accuse him?

He looked up into the black sky, felt the rain drops hit his face.

"I wasn't there!" he screamed at it in a rage. "I didn't hold the wand, I didn't cast the spell, I didn't even go with them! THE DARK LORD KILLED THEM, NOT ME!"

Nothing. The dark nothing of a pitch black night in a silent graveyard.

The stone stood without recrimation.

But the voice of Sirius Black had never been real. It had always been his own.

"Would I have?" he whispered hoarsely, staring at the name. "Would I have gone, if they had asked me?"

There was no response.