Black Sheep

Chapter Seventeen
In Which There Is Shameless Flirting

AS IT TURNED OUT, THE port had come via Merry, along with Draco's beloved magical decanter. Harry wondered if his own house elf was even still alive - he hadn't called on Kreacher once since Dumbledore had asked him to in sixth year and the nasty creature had hardly been spry even back then. He soon forgot to even wonder about it, though, after a couple of drinks from Draco's bottomless bottle. Draco had more than a few himself and long before Harry crawled into the broad, soft bed for the night, Draco had passed out on the sofa.

When Harry finally and unhappily woke again, head feeling a bit swollen from his drinks the night before, he found his face buried in a pillow. He was on his stomach. But he never slept on his stomach. And there was a strange weight on top of him. Still half-smothered by the pillow and mostly fuzzy from a couple too many drinks the night before, he gave a distressed, pitiful moan. He was answered by a familiar soft laugh, which certainly meant that Malfoy was nearby and probably that the man was laughing at his expense. Then Harry realised what the weight on top of him was. It was Malfoy. And the odd tickling feeling he hadn't really noticed before was surely Malfoy's damned pen yet again.

Harry shoved himself up from the bed, bucking Malfoy off his back. He turned to glare at the blond, who was grinning up at him unrepentantly from the floor. But then he saw Malfoy's face and couldn't help falling back to the bed, laughing raucously.

Draco's smile faded slightly and he looked quizzically at Harry. "Why are you so amused?" he asked suspiciously.

Harry couldn't entirely stifle his laughter as he said tearfully, "Clearly you haven't yet looked in the mirror this morning?"

Draco's face blanched and he ran to the bathroom. "What do you mean-" His urgent question broke off into silence as he noticed exactly what Harry had meant and he stalked back into the bedroom with a scowl, which only made Harry laugh harder. Draco snarled, "You little bitch."

"I warned you, Malfoy," Harry said, having to gasp the words out between laughing fits. "Payback." He looked up at the angry blond and managed to say, "You really shouldn't drink till you pass out when you know that someone has it in for you." Then he dissolved into desperate laughter again.

Eventually Harry managed to stop laughing long enough to get out of bed and go look in the mirror himself, to see what Malfoy had done to him this morning. Craning his head around to see his back's reflection, he found that Malfoy had apparently worked for quite a while on a caricature of Harry, looking like some ridiculous hero from the cover of a romance novel, complete with puffy-sleeved blousy shirt. The cartoon Harry was standing over a defeated Voldemort, with several busty young witches swooning around him. Fancy lettering ran like a title across his shoulder blades, reading Harry Potter and his Immense... Ego.

He didn't really mind at all today, though. For one thing, his front was already covered with the other man's handiwork. For another, it could (mostly) all be covered with clothing. Malfoy, on the other hand, could not hide what Harry had done. The best he could do was hope that no one would notice. Which clearly wasn't going to be the case because as soon as they met Hermione to go to breakfast, she looked at the blond for a long moment, as if trying to figure out what looked wrong about him, then asked in an incredulous voice, "Malfoy, what did you do to your eyebrows?"

Draco made a big show of being angry and put upon as he told her, "Your Saint Potter shaved them half off while I was sleeping!"

Harry was laughing again and Hermione asked in bewilderment, "Why just half?"

One arm slung around Draco's shoulders, Harry had to lean on the blond to support himself as he laughed hysterically. "It really isn't that funny," Draco told him in a withering tone.

"It's much better," Harry gasped, "to shave just half - because then he has to decide whether he wants to either leave them like that, and look like a fool, or shave them both and have no eyebrows, and look like a fool." He glanced up again at Draco's scornful face, inches from his own. "He chose the former."

Hermione simply shook her head at the two of them and headed to breakfast without them, leaving them to continue to bicker as they got ready to go. By the time they made it to breakfast, there were only two empty seats left at the Head Table - one at the far end, next to Hermione, and one between Professor Vector and Marianthi. Draco hurried and took the far seat with Hermione, forcing Harry to reluctantly drop down next to the Divination professor. Smirking at the other man, who was obviously trying to fend off Marianthi's attention, Draco didn't half mind the strange looks he was receiving from those close enough to notice that he seemed to be missing half his eyebrows. He couldn't quite ignore the witch next to him, though, when she asked pointedly, "You're planning on sitting here with me?"

"Well, clearly," he answered smoothly, "since I have done."

She could hardly tell him to switch with Harry, who she had obviously meant to take the seat next to her. Draco nodded down the table, to where Marianthi appeared to be buttering a croissant for a painfully embarrassed Harry, and suggested, "Isn't it much more entertaining this way?"

Hermione looked down towards Harry and the Divination professor, who several of the students were now watching as well, and she looked back at Draco with a slightly perplexed expression. "You mean it was serious - when Harry said that you were trying to make him date Marianthi?"

"Of course."

"But why?"

Draco calmly sipped his tea. "Because it's entertaining."

"You mean that you don't-" Hermione began to ask in a puzzled voice, but Draco cut her off before she could finish.

"If you want to talk about Potter and his whole host of problems," the man said, "how about the apparent way that he was spelled into hiding?"

Hermione's face dropped. She began shredding the pastry in her hands, leaving a pile of sugary flakes on her plate, and she admitted, "I haven't forgot what you said." Her voice was diplomatically neutral as she asked, "Can you tell me what you know about it? Or what you think you know about it?"

Draco shrugged, as if he didn't want to appear too helpful, but he answered all the same. "The way that neither you nor anyone else from the press, the government or the greater Wizarding world could find Potter suggests of course that he has been kept from sight through, well, supernatural means." He looked at her with mangled eyebrows raised. "I'm sure that you must have tried every possible kind of tracking or locating spell. And I'm sure others probably tried even less scrupled methods."

Hermione said in a small voice, "Even we became quite unscrupulous after a couple of years without any leads."

Draco had no reaction but to say reasonably, "And too right you would. There was no normal way that he should have remained lost even after all that. I'm sure you tried charms like the Vevicus Veritas?"

With a slight wince, Hermione agreed to having tried the Dark charm and Draco said, "Then you knew that he was alive and yet still you couldn't find him." He poured sugar into the cup of tea in front of him and began to stir it. "I lived in the same county as him and probably never would have known it if we hadn't run into each other by complete chance."

"You said that you were in an... accident?"

"That's right," Draco said, still stirring his tea. "I was out on my bike, just taking a drive on a nice day. Who knows what Potter was doing, but he was out in his car. We were screwing around, racing, but when he realised just who I was," Draco paused and grinned ferally, "he drove into a bloody hillside." Then his face screwed up ruefully and he added, "Of course, then I turned around to see what had happened and I lost control as well.

"Anyway, the point of the story was that I wasn't looking for him and didn't even know who he was at the time. If I had barged into that town and asked for Harry Potter by name, I'd guess that I wouldn't find anything. Same if I tried to apparate to his home, if I could even do so. I know where he lives only because he let me in."

Looking past Hermione, Draco eyed the man at the other end of the table, who was still trying pathetically to fend off Marianthi's desperate wiles. "You could never find him," he said coolly, "but I could, since he took me in himself. If it really is something like the Fidelius charm, then only the Secret Keeper could let me see the house. But even Potter didn't seem to realise if he was the Secret Keeper. Which would have to mean that someone else had performed the charm, without him knowing about it. And his only other visitor - who he claims to have never told where he lives - was the young Weasley brat, which makes her the prime suspect. How could she know where to find him, unless she had something to do with the spell herself?"

Hermione couldn't deny it any more now than she could when she'd first heard the theory from Malfoy in his rented room above the Green Dragon. She sighed. "I suppose I'd better at least ask Ginny to come to Hogwarts, to ask her some questions. She should be dying to come anyway, now that even she must have heard about Harry's appearance here."

Draco hummed consideringly. He wasn't so sure that she'd be on the first train to Hogwarts. Then he said what Hermione had been trying not to think: "If she really did have something to do with it, why was she hiding it all these years and still pretending to be searching with you? You said that she was always the most eager to find Potter. If she knew all along just where he was, then why the act?"

"Well," Hermione said briskly, squashing down her niggling feelings of doubt, "we can't really make any assumptions before we talk to her. Perhaps I ought to be off to try to owl her this morning, even."

She made as if to stand up and leave, and Draco stopped her with a light touch on her wrist. "Two things before you go," he said, and as always he seemed to be telling her, not asking her. "Can Potter and I get into this vault of yours today? And why did you tell McGonagall to put me in charge of the history classes?"

Her dark brown eyes brightened for a moment at the mention of the elusive vault of Hogwarts' treasures. She explained, "Yes, you should be able to get in today. I think it would be best if I took you, so would you like to wait until lunch?" Draco nodded noncommittally but still looked at her expectantly, and she slumped slightly back into her chair, realising that he wouldn't forget wanting an answer to his second question. "I recommended you because I saw the way that you spoke with that student in the library yesterday. And because the students will be scared spitless of you, and might actually be frightened back into shape. And... oh, I don't know why. We had no one to fill the spot and there you appeared. I just proposed it to the Headmistress, really - I didn't expect that she would actually talk to you about it."

Draco said wryly, "Clearly she has." But he didn't press for any more information just yet. Hermione made to stand up again and Draco asked, a subtle jibe, "Shall I ask McGonagall about getting into the vault if we don't wish to wait for your convenience?"

It was enough to make Hermione bite her lip and say quickly, "No, no, that's all right. You can... go on without me." It was clear the words pained her. "Just ask Madame Pince. And I could just meet you down there later, maybe." In her mind, she silently cursed her classes - and she normally liked her classes - but at the moment they were standing between her and the greatest treasures that Hogwarts had to offer. She suggested, her desire transparent, "Why don't I meet you at lunch anyway, and I can help you sort through all the texts and records."

Draco eyed her in a way that made her feel sure that he could see right through her, but he nodded agreeably, saying blandly, "Of course. Such a great help." She frowned, unable to tell if he was complimenting or ridiculing her, and hurried away from the Head Table. Draco quickly finished his own breakfast and threw his napkin on the table, ready to make for the infamous vaults. As he stood up to go, though, McGonagall caught his eye and then cleared her throat significantly. He went to stand next to her centre chair and she handed him a small roll of parchment, with only the brief explanation: "Your timetable, Mr Malfoy. Good luck."

His roguish grin quickly returned and he assured her, "I won't need any luck. My natural... charm is more than enough."

Smiling grimly, McGonagall said, "I'm not sure even your particular abilities are enough for our hopeless students."

"Care to make a wager on it?" Draco suggested with a cocked brow and a dimple.

McGonagall blinked at him. She was willing to ignore whatever he had done to his face, but she'd never imagined that a Malfoy could dimple. Or wager on his own pride. "Show me what you can do, Mr Malfoy."

Smiling to himself, Draco continued down the line of the Head Table. When he passed behind Harry, he flicked the dark-haired man in the back of the neck. Harry slapped a hand to his neck in annoyed pain and when he turned to glare, Draco mouthed, "Library." Eager for the excuse to get away from Marianthi, who had clearly been encouraged by his 'choosing' to sit next to her, Harry jumped up to join him.




The two men arrived in the History classroom just ten minutes before the first class was due to start. They looked around the empty room, both remembering sitting in the desks that ranged in a half-circle, scaling the room in auditorium seating. On the other side of the room, the side on which they now belonged, was a large blackboard in a creaky wooden frame, set on wheels that looked as if they hadn't turned in a hundred years or more. There was also a wide table in the centre of the room, empty at the moment but previously home to various teachers' effects. Draco pulled himself up to sit on top of the table and look at Harry expectantly. "Don't you think you should summon up a desk or something, to sit in the corner and read?"

Harry looked unenthusiastically at the books in his hands, which were all about translating and decoding spells. He'd been disappointed to find out that Draco wasn't heading immediately for the vault this morning, but instead insisted that Harry would need to study the spells necessary to tackle the books they would find within it. "Why should I sit in the corner and read?" he asked in a prickly tone. Though they were in Binns' old classroom, Draco's tone brought back memories of another classroom, deep in the dungeons and smelling of unpleasant potions ingredients.

"Would you rather sit in front of the class with me," Draco asked mildly, "and be subjected to all the students' questions about your life and 'accomplishments'?" He rolled his eyes at the last word, clearly still not impressed with anything Harry had managed to do in his life.

"I'll take the corner."

Harry said no more, but pulled out his wand and conjured up a small desk to sit in a dark corner behind the door. The only windows in the room were high in the wall behind him, which left the sunlight to fall on the students in their desks and leave him mostly in the shadows. Draco sat in the middle of it all, on top of his empty desk.

Harry set his books in front of him, as he took a seat in his conjured chair. "So what class is this?"

Draco consulted the piece of parchment that he had folded flat and put in his back pocket. "A pack of damned Gryffindorks. Third years."

Harry grinned vindictively and said, "What a way to start - with your favourite house. And I'm not sure you should refer to your dear students like that."

Shrugging, Draco said, "My dear students can bugger off if they're expecting another easy scare." And he was certainly beyond anything they could expect. Draco and Harry were both still dressed in blatantly Muggle clothing, all of it from Draco's imported closet, and looked nothing like any professor who had ever come through the doors at Hogwarts. Even the professor who taught Muggle Studies wore robes every day. And he was not nearly as young or attractive as either of the two men who watched the young witches and wizards file into the room.

As the classroom filled, Harry watched secretively from over the top of the book that he held open in front of him. Draco continued to sit easily on top of the teacher's table, his hands planted behind him and his feet swinging idly. When all the class had assembled, they shuffled about uselessly, some pulling out textbooks or parchment, others continuing their conversations and gossip as they examined the blond man in front of them. The whispers and comments continued as Draco watched them all silently in return. Several minutes passed, and still he said nothing, nor did he make any attempt to bring the class to order. The students began nudging each other and laughing nervously. But still Draco said nothing, and simply sat watching them with his inscrutable grey eyes and slowly swinging his legs.

The conversations slowly faded. Even the constant hiss of whispers disappeared. The students, silenced into curiosity, stared at their new lecturer to see what he would do. But still Draco did nothing, other than perhaps smirk the tiniest bit.

He stared easily out at the young faces, taking note of family resemblances and guessing at identities. He broke his relentless grey stare for a moment to turn back towards Harry and wink. This brought the students' attention to Harry, who they hadn't noticed sitting in the corner, and a new wave of whispers began. But even it could not last long under Draco's steady eyes. Silence stretched again and finally, a full fifteen minutes after the class had been set to start, one young boy called tauntingly, "Aren't you going to do anything, then?"

Draco focussed on the boy and said easily, "I can't answer questions if I don't know who I'm talking to."

This threw the student for a moment and one of his neighbours elbowed him, hissing, "Your name, you git."

"Oh." The boy belatedly replied, "Brown. I'm Geoffrey Brown."

Draco wrinkled his nose slightly. "Related to Lavender Brown, I suppose?"

The boy called Geoffrey started and muttered, "I have an aunt called Lavender."

"And your question, Mr Brown?"

Sounding less confident this time, the lad asked again, "Only aren't you going to do anything?"

"What would you, Mr Brown, suggest that I should be doing?" Draco asked in his deceptively mild tone. Even the young Gryffindor seemed to pick up on the danger that swam beneath it. He looked as if he wanted to be away from Draco's focus now, but he couldn't do anything more than fidget.

"Um, start the lesson?" he mumbled, his classmates sniggering at him.

Draco continued to swing his legs easily and he said, "I was given the impression that you lot weren't interested in history lessons." He finally pulled his merciless eyes from the young boy and turned on a girl in the second row. "You there," he called to her, "yes, you. Your name?"

"Flora MacDonald," the girl said defiantly, a Scots accent not quite educated out of her voice.

Draco looked at her critically. "MacDonald? There is no pureblood family by the name of MacDonald. Muggleborn, are you?"

Her face tinged pink, she nodded shortly. Draco continued to ask, "And, Ms MacDonald, do you agree with your classmate, Mr Brown, in suggesting that I should start a history lesson?"

She nodded tightly again, her stubborn little face already twisted with defiant dislike. Draco then stopped swinging his legs and asked, "Then what would you like to know, Ms MacDonald?"

She floundered for a moment. "You're the teacher!" she finally exclaimed.

"Yes," Draco said in a bored tone, "and it's your class and your mind which I am trying to improve. Do you not want any input or control over what goes into your own mind?"

"Well, I won't know what I want to know until I learn it!" she protested, looking around at her friends for confirmation that the new teacher was a new breed of insane.

Draco turned the question on the whole classroom of Gryffindors. "Doesn't anyone have any idea what he or she wants to know?"

There was another unsure silence, as the students looked at one another self-consciously. Someone in the back called out provocatively, "I want to know what happened to your face!"

There was a round of sniggering and Draco raised his mangled eyebrows, before stating simply, "I have a bastard for a roommate." Then he resumed his wait and silence spread through the students again. Most of them looked down at their desktops, unable to meet Draco's demanding gaze for long.

Finally one dared say what was on most of their minds: "Tell us about the war."

"Which one?"

"The war."

"Which one?" Draco looked out across the third-years. "There have been many wars in history - more than you can even imagine."

The brave student spoke up again. "Well then, the last one. We want to know about the war against You-Know-Who?"

Draco turned to grimace at Harry, and grumble, "Good god, are they still teaching kids to call him that?"

Harry looked disparagingly at Draco but still didn't speak up in front of the students. Draco turned back to the little buggers, who were now perking up with interest. "So," he said, "you want to know about the war against Voldemort?" There was a quiet chorus of gasps. "And I bet you want to know all about me being a Death Eater and Potter saving the world?"

The same outspoken student interrupted. "So it's true? You were a - a Death Eater?"

"The last free Death Eater," Draco exclaimed, spreading his arms dramatically, though the gesture looked less impressive since he was still sitting upon a beat-up old desk. "And I will teach you all about Voldemort and his war. But before you can understand the war, you have to understand what led to it - to understand how a Head Boy at Hogwarts became the monster you call 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.'" More curious murmurs. "And to do that you have to go all the way back to the beginning, and understand why Wizardingkind and Muggles came to hate and fear one another and why having pure blood become so important - important enough to kill over."

Deciding that he'd said enough for the day, Draco gave them their assignment. "I want several of you to research the original split between the Wizarding and the Muggle worlds. Madame Pince will be able to point you in the right direction, but I personally recommend Flannigan's A People Divided, Hilstijn's The New Direction, and Wigglesworth's A History of History. I will expect you to be able to explain what you learned to your fellow students next week."

He said nothing more but waved the students off. They stared back at him in confusion. "But who's supposed to do it?" one asked belligerently.

Draco shrugged. "I don't care. Whoever is interested."

"What?" The students began to protest. "But that's-"

Cutting them off, Draco explained flatly, "Look. It's not my job to make you learn. You're students - it's your job to learn. All I have to do is show you how. I've done that. Now it's up to you." He waved his hands at them again. "Now get lost."

"But class isn't over yet-"

One more sharp glance from Draco and the students began picking up their bags and making their way out of the room, still muttering about the new teacher. Most looked more than a little confounded. They'd never seen a teacher act like this before and weren't sure if it was terrible or great.

Once the door had swung shut after the last student, Draco turned back to Harry. "So have you figured out those translation spells?"

"What?" Harry said absently. He glanced at the book in front of him. He hadn't read a single page but had been inconspicuously watching Draco and the students for the whole of the short class. "Um, not quite. But I'll have them done before we get down to researching." He pushed the books away from himself and asked, "So do you have any sort of plan? Or are you just making this up as you go along?"

Draco grinned. "What, the classes? I'd probably lean more towards 'making it up as I go along.'"

"Do you really think any of them will do the work?"

Shrugging, Draco tugged on his hair, trying to pull it down to cover his lacking eyebrows. "Don't know. Probably. Aren't kids naturally curious? Besides, they really want to hear about you and me - they might do the assignment just for that."

Draco started swinging his legs again and asked sweetly, "So how was breakfast with Marianthi this morning?"

Harry shot him a deathly glare and the two spent the rest of their free time mock-fighting over Harry's 'relationship' with the Astronomy professor until the next class began to arrive. Then they shut up and Draco swung back around to face a new set of third years, this time Hufflepuffs, with his face schooled into bland patience. The game began again.




By mid-afternoon they had made it through all of the third-year classes, each time with Harry sitting silently in the corner and Draco baiting his new students. Luckily there were no advanced classes that day, so Draco didn't have to contend with any NEWT students, at least. Still, the third year students were more than proficient enough to start rumours and gossip flying about the Death Eater who had taken over their history classes.

Stretching tiredly, though he had spent most of the day just sitting on top of a desk and staring unrelentingly at students, Draco walked over to the small desk where Harry was seated. "So, figured it all out, have you? That was supposed to be the deal."

Harry snapped his book shut with a final-sounding thwack. He glared up at Draco, as if disappointed that the other man was doubting him. "Of course I've figured it all out. Translating charms. No big deal, right?"

"You have no idea, do you?"

"Not a single fucking clue."

Draco laughed at his research partner and dragged him out of his seat. As he propelled them out the door and towards the library, he said, "Well, at least Hermione should be able to handle any translating. She'll be happy to do anything as long as we bring her into that vault with us."

And indeed she was already waiting for them in the library. She must have run all the way there, because her last DADA class ended at the same time as the last history class. She was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet and as soon as she saw the two men enter the library, she hustled over to Madame Pince's desk, without even waiting for them to catch up with her.

As they drew closer, she was waving them over to the librarian's desk eagerly. "Come on," she hissed, "we're ready to go."

The men shared a look, mixed up of amusement and scorn. But they followed her, as she followed Madame Pince, behind the librarian's desk and into a room that none of them had ever been allowed into as students. It was mostly just full of more sorting tables and books waiting to be repaired, but at the far end was a rather out-of-place door. The rest of the room was the regular smooth, grey stonework of the castle, lit by magical lamps, but the door - the door was hardly a door but rather just a huge rock, like you might imagine standing in a stone circle. It was at least ten feet tall and looked to be several feet thick. It must have weighed tonnes, and Harry guessed that even the most powerful levitation spell wouldn't lift it an inch. Protective charms seemed to ooze off it with a palpable aura of magic.

Either ignorant of this heavy feeling of magic, or simply ignoring it, Madame Pince walked up to the door and put her bare hands on the rough stone. All three of her visitors gasped when she swung the stone aside, shifting the several tonnes of rock aside with as much ease as swinging open a regular door. The old woman explained sourly, "I will close the door after you. Only I can open it. When you wish to come out again, pull on the cord you'll find just inside the door and it will ring a bell on my desk."

Then she stood aside and waited for them to walk into the darkness behind the door. Harry looked at Hermione a bit suspiciously. This had better be worth it. But he led the way, lighting his wand with a quick Lumos spell and stepping into the dark shadow. He was surprised to find himself standing at the top of a set of very roughly formed stairs - so rough that he wasn't sure if they were natural or man-made. One hand on the stone wall to brace himself, he started down into the natural cavern that lay deep within the castle. Draco followed after him, depending on Harry's wandlight, and Hermione took up the rear.

They all jumped when they heard the stone slam shut behind them and, now that Madame Pince was out of earshot, Draco asked the cave in general, "So does anyone else have a new-found respect and curiosity about Pince? To be given control over all of Hogwarts' resources - places that even the Headmaster or Headmistress can't freely go..."

"I guess I never really thought of her before," Harry said, a bit embarrassed.

"She doesn't ever join the rest of the staff," came Hermione's voice from behind them. Neither man dared turn around on the uneven steps. "I don't know anything about her, really - now that I think of it. She doesn't seem to talk to anyone."

Draco's grin could be heard in his voice as he suggested, "I'll bet you ten quid that she's not even human. After all, she hasn't seemed to age at all since we started here, what, twelve years ago?"

Harry and Draco came up with more and more wild theories about what kind of creature the librarian could be, Hermione pointing out why each was impossible, as they continued carefully down the steps. Unexpectedly, Harry stepped down and found that he'd reach the last step. He stumbled slightly on the sudden ground and Draco fell into him, grabbing him from behind and pushing him out of the way. Hermione stepped around the two of them.

They seemed to be in a larger space, though nothing could be seen from the little light their wands produced. Harry held his wand higher and cried, "Lumos maximus!" Bright white light exploded from his wand tip and filled the cavernous space, which looked exactly like that: a cavern. The cave walls stretched out in craggy formations, but roughly formed a long oval room. "Er," he asked stupidly, "where are all the books?"

This time Hermione stepped forward, wand in hand. With an easy flick, she muttered a strange bit of Latin and suddenly a surprisingly uncavelike room popped into existence around them. Hermione smirked at the two men and explained, "Madame Pince gave us a temporary password - she told me all about it before you two finally arrived. She'll change the password each time we leave, so we always have to ask her permission to come down." She frowned and sounded slightly disappointed as she said, "Apparently the room and its contents are stowed away in a non-space - rather like the Room of Requirement - and without the correct password, you could walk every inch of this cave, using every spell you knew, and be no closer to it."

Harry nodded, which didn't mean that he understood what Hermione said so much as he just didn't care to hear any more about it. He knew she'd probably be happy to launch into a lecture about 'non-space,' whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. He glanced at Draco and found that the blond was looking around with a carefully schooled face, which was too blank to actually be blank. It was full of a harshly suppressed something.

The room that they were in still had the rough stone walls and ceilings, but was lined with bookshelves, much like those in the library above their heads, only these were shuttered in with glass doors and, Harry was willing to bet, a good number of protective and preservative spells. There was a long central table running through the room, lined with comfortable-looking armchairs that must have also required some preservative magic, and between several of the shelves were glass cases - rather like those you saw in fancy shops - which were filled with glinting artefacts of various forms, all with little hand-labelled tags hanging off of them.

Draco moved toward the first row of shelves on his right and said, "Now we're going to have to be more careful and thorough this time. We won't depend on searching spells, but will check each book by hand. Potter and Granger, you will start with any texts that need translating, since I can't do so much of that. My Latin is rusty and my Old English is almost none-existent."

Under his breath, Harry muttered mockingly, "Oh, my Latin is rusty. And my Phoenician terrible. Hieroglyphics? Oh, well, you know, all part of a proper education..."

Draco shot him a barely tolerating look. He had already pulled out several books which would need translating and he pushed them into Harry's hands. Hermione ignored them and pulled off several titles to translate as well, and then Draco picked out a couple which were in either Early Modern English or Middle English, which he should be able to stumble through. They took seats in the strangely not-musty armchairs and carefully opened the fragile parchment pages in front of them.