The Valley of the Shadow of Death

"That would be great," said Draco. "Thanks."

Lily's face broke into a grin. "All right, then! First thing's first - what memory have you been using?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "I think I've tried about 600, Mrs. Potter..." He cringed at the name as it came out of his mouth.

So did she. "Gahh. Lily. Please. Not Mrs. Potter. So, what was the most recent memory you tried?"

Draco opened his mouth to tell her, then thought better of it. "I don't think I want to tell you that..." he said with a smile, knowing instinctively that he could say that without her getting angry with him. And even if she was angry... what would she do about it?

She mock-cringed. "I take it, then, that it has something to do with my son?" she asked wryly. Draco's grin widened as he nodded.

She looked for a moment like she was torn between laughing and rebuking him. "I see..." she said finally. "So... when you remember this memory, would you more accurately describe your feeling as 'happy,' or 'satisfied'?"

"What's the difference?"

She stared at him. Draco was beginning to wonder what he'd said wrong, when she said, "you're serious." She sounded sad.

"What?"

She seemed to carefully consider her words. "Draco... the two emotions are... completely different. Satisfaction is... it's the sense that you've gotten your way about something. Happiness is much deeper than that - it's a feeling you get when you can barely trust yourself to speak or you might burst into tears, because things are just so wonderful. Satisfaction isn't enough to produce a Patronus - you need a happy memory."

Draco frowned at her, wondering what she was talking about. Barely trust yourself to speak or you might burst into tears, because things are just so wonderful? He couldn't remember ever feeling that way in his life.

Lily watched him for some time as he searched for a memory that would work, her expression getting more and more grave. After several minutes, she sighed and said, "I think I'm beginning to see why you have troubles with Charms."

"What? What do you mean? Why?"

"Well, I'd been wondering. I'd seen you doing so well at Transfiguration but having troubles with Charms for a couple years now - "

"You were watching me in Transfiguration and Charms?" He didn't have either Charms or Transfiguration with the Gryffindors - why would she watch his class if she was following Potter around?

Anticipating his question, she explained with a rueful smile, "in your second year, you had Charms, and last year, you had Transfiguration, while Harry had History of Magic. Which class would you rather watch?"

He chuckled. "Ah."

"Class periods aren't long enough," she continued, "to warrant going outside of Hogwarts, so I usually just visit other classes whenever Harry's in a class I was almost too bored to endure when I actually went to school here. I usually go elsewhere when Harry's in Herbology, too. Anyway, Charms and Transfiguration really aren't that different, so I always wondered why you would do well in one but not the other. But there is one big difference - how well you do in Transfiguration, depends mostly on talent, concentration, and intelligence. How well you do in Charms depends mostly on talent, concentration, and what I call your 'Center.'" Seeing him about to ask, she explained, "That's just what I call it. It's - oh, how should I explain this? Your Center is... it's like a pool. It's fed by your connections to other people, especially positive, strong connections. It feeds your passions and good, strong feelings. It gives you strength. Charms are linked to it, because Charms are directly linked to the source of magic, which the Center is a huge part of. It seems..." she stopped for a moment, as if unsure how to continue. "It seems as if yours is... sort of empty."

Draco stared at her, wondering just how he was supposed to react to this. After a moment, he decided to be honest and admit that he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. "What?"

She sighed again, as if at a loss. Then she visibly had an idea. "Come with me," she said, suddenly floating up to a standing position.

"Where are we going?" he asked, getting up. "You realize I'm never talking to you if any people are around..."

Lily smiled wryly. "Of course," she said. "And we're going... up."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Up," he echoed. They were in one of the lowest dungeons, several floors below ground-level, so just about anyplace would be 'up.'

"Up," she repeated, then grinned insouciantly and nodded at him, as if she thought this were as much explanation as he needed. Draco rolled his eyes and shook his head, but followed after taking a moment to remove the Silencing Charm and wards from the room.

He followed her silently up three floors, until they were back to ground level. Then, after noting that there was nobody around (it was now about 6:30; everybody was probably in the Great Hall eating dinner), he spoke up. "You're not taking me to the Gryffindor rooms, are you?"

"No," she smiled.

"Where are the Gryffindor rooms, anyway?" he asked, just curious to see what her reaction would be, since he definitely was not supposed to know the answer to that question.

"Oh, they're about two corridors and three floors up... that way," she told him offhandedly. Draco masked his shock. Lily hadn't struck him as being particularly gullible before.

She continued. "You just go through the right-hand corridor, and take the second staircase on the right. You go up two floors, then take a right, and go down the corridor, until you see the second corridor on the left. Then you take a right and look for a door on your left - "

Wait a second...

" - with a sign that says, 'Argus Filch, Caretaker.'"

Draco stopped dead in his tracks and stared at her for a moment, torn between amusement and annoyance at being had.

Lily continued floating ahead, apparently not noticing. "Then you use Alohamora to unlock that door and go into the room. If you hear anything that sounds like alarm bells, just ignore it - that's just to mislead members of other houses. Wait there for a bit - a rather grisly man should appear fairly quickly. You'll know it's the right one if he has a scrawny cat with him. He may seem grumpy, but that's just a façade - if you ask him to direct you the rest of the way to the Gryffindor rooms, he should be happy to help you."

She turned back to him, smiling angelically. Amusement won out, and Draco snorted and moved to catch up with her. "Serves me right for asking?" he asked ruefully.

Lily grinned and nodded. "Serves you right for asking," she confirmed. Draco shook his head, suppressing a smile.

He followed her the rest of the way in silence, in case he ran into any people. He needn't have bothered - they went up two more staircases and through three more corridors without running into a single person. A single live person, at least - he saw about twelve ghosts along the way, none of which Lily could apparently see. Naturally - ghosts on other planes couldn't see each other, unless they happened to be on the same plane - the odds against which were astronomical.

Lily finally stopped before a door Draco would never have noticed if she hadn't pointed it out to him.

"Locking charms and inconspicuousness charms tend to cancel each other out, so it shouldn't be locked," she said before disappearing through the door.

It wasn't. Inside was a very dusty room. Draco immediately shut the door and set up another Silencing charm, just in case Lily was going to need to talk to him. After he was finished, he coughed from the dust and asked Lily, "ok, why am I here?"

"You followed me." At his look, she continued without missing a beat, "I wanted to show you this. Take a look." She indicated a large lat object standing upright, and covered with a sheet.

Draco went up to it and removed the sheet, revealing a mirror. It was really quite a spectacular mirror, if a little too ornate for his tastes. Guessing it was probably magical, he looked to Lily. "Is it safe?"

"Depends. It won't transport you to anyplace or kill you or anything, unless you look in it for so long you forget yourself, which shouldn't happen with me here. Harry's first year, he looked into it for several hours every night for several nights, and he survived."

"And this is supposed to be reassuring?" Draco asked ironically, crossing his arms in front of him. "Lily, you do realize that just because your son survives a situation, that doesn't say much about whether anyone else could..."

She sighed and looked off to the side, looking very much like her aforementioned son for a moment. "Draco... never mind. I'm not going to say that the mirror's not dangerous, because it can be. However, I don't think you will be in much danger, not with me here to yell at you if you start to lose yourself in it. And it is the reason I brought you all the way up here..." she added pointedly.

"Really? I thought it was for the wonderful scenery and ambiance of this room," he muttered sarcastically as he stepped before the mirror.

At first, he saw only himself. Then, suddenly, his father appeared behind him. Draco jumped in shock and wheeled around. Nobody behind him. He wheeled back around and looked into the mirror again, confused. There his father was, looking extremely solid and real. It was kind of frightening.

And then... his father smiled at him.

Draco blinked, not sure what to make of this. His father never looked at him like that.

But... he was. Still. Smiling. At Draco. Looking... proud? No, that wasn't quite right - there was something more to it, but Draco couldn't figure out what it was.

Draco's breath caught, and he stared at the image of his father, confusion sending his mind reeling. His father was smiling at him. Draco felt the sudden, incomprehensible urge to apologize for something.

As if reading his thoughts, his father shook his head, still smiling, as if to say, "you have nothing to apologize for, Draco," and placed his hand on Draco's shoulder. Tears suddenly came unbidden to Draco's eyes, to his horror, and he watched with a strange fascination as his father wiped them away, mouthing the words, "it's all right."

He was starting to feel more than a little lightheaded, and a strange choking sound escaped his throat. His mind still refused to clear, and suddenly needing to look somewhere else - anywhere else until he could think again, he looked up.

Along the top of the mirror was the inscription, Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.

Erised. This was the Mirror of Erised. Draco knew about the mirror, of course, his father had mentioned it several times when he was growing up, and there had been an entire History of Magic chapter devoted to it during Fourth year. This was the mirror that showed the deepest desire of the person's heart, without regard to reality.

It wasn't real. He glanced back down from the inscription, back to his smiling father.

Not real.

Suddenly furious, he turned to Lily, pointing a shaking finger at the mirror. "This is the Mirror of Erised," he said, his voice shaking from anger and hoarse from... everything else he'd been feeling.

"Yes," she said simply.

"You brought me to the Mirror of Erised," he repeated, fighting to keep calm.

"Yes."

"WHY???"

She jumped slightly, apparently startled by his vehemence. At length, while Draco tried to regain his breath, she said, "It was the only way I could think to show you what I meant about emptiness. I'm sorry, Draco, I didn't realize it would affect you quite this much..."

He jerked back to the mirror, grabbing the sheet to cover it again while wiping his eyes. Once it was safely covered, he stared at it for a moment, a little calmer. "I still don't get it," he said at length.

"Draco, do you remember how you felt before I brought you up here?"

"Of course." Before she'd brought him up here, Draco had felt normal. Calm, collected...

"Compare how you were feeling then to the way you feel now."

He looked at Lily in confusion. There really was no comparison. Before, he hadn't been feeling much of anything. Now, he felt... well, he felt angry, and confused, and pained, and lightheaded, and... a little more filled than before. Like there had been a void before that he'd never noticed until it wasn't there anymore.

Oh. So that was what she meant. Draco scowled. "I think I preferred the way it was before, thanks," he told her coldly.

"Because right now, it hurts," she finished for him, solemnly. He glared at her, determined to let her know just who he blamed for this. Noticing this, but apparently deciding not to comment on it, she continued, "but Draco, at least now you're feeling something. Something real. I was worried you might not be able to anymore; I figured you'd probably stopped right around the age of five..."

"What do you know about it?" he snapped, suddenly unable to look at her.

"I've seen you, Draco. Of course. All the time, including several times when you were growing up."

"What? When? Why??"

"Well, there were a lot of instances where I felt I had to get out of my sister's house before I turned into an angry spirit and forced my way back to the mortal plane just so I could destroy her precious little gardens or write on her pristine little walls in bright red ink that would never come off, or at the very least, yell at her and that husband of hers every time they tried to go to sleep until they stopped treating my son like a - " she cut off abruptly, noticing that Draco had not only calmed down, but had completely forgotten his anger at her and was now listening with bemused interest. "But... never mind that..." she said slowly.

"No, go on..."

"I don't think so, Draco," she said, chuckling. "Anyway, there were a lot of times while Harry was growing up when I left the house to see other people. A lot of other people, including Narcissa sometimes, and of course when I saw her, I saw you too."

"You were friends with my mother?"

"More like friendly acquaintances. She was a year ahead of me, and in Ravenclaw, so..."

"Mother was in Slytherin."

Lily looked at him strangely. "No... I was there... I'm pretty sure she was in Ravenclaw..."

"All my family have always been in Slytherin."

"Maybe that's true of your father's side - I really wouldn't know - but Narcissa was quite definitely in Ravenclaw. Check the yearbooks in the library if you don't believe me - I graduated in '77, so she would have graduated in '76."

Draco frowned, wondering if this was true. It seemed strange that he wouldn't know this about his own mother, but then, nobody had ever said anything. Aloud, he just asked, "Did you know my father, too?"

"Not too well. He was in Slytherin, and more importantly, he was three years ahead of me, so we hardly ever saw each other." She grimaced. "Actually, I pretty much only remember Lucius tripping me in the hallways once and calling me a Mudblood..." She looked off to the side, a rather fixed smile on her face. "Incidentally, thank you for not doing that..."

Mudblood. Right, Draco knew that. That was common knowledge - he just hadn't registered it until Lily said it. He briefly panicked at the realization that he'd been talking with a Mudblood for over an hour and largely enjoying it, before he remembered. Outwardly, he just shrugged and said, "You're dead. It doesn't matter anymore."

She stared at him for a moment, annoyance giving way to amusement as she realized he was completely serious. Turning to an imaginary person to his left, she wryly asked, "Should I point out to him the many logical errors in that argument, or not?"

"What?" he asked, annoyed. "You're dead. It's safe to talk to you now... well, except in public, of course."

She turned back to Draco, a rueful twist to her mouth. "Safe? Because I was so much more dangerous when I was alive?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean."

"No, actually, I don't think I do. Please explain it to me. If I was alive, why would it not be 'safe' to talk to me?"

He sighed. As if it wasn't obvious. "Because then someone might find out."

"Who?"

Draco gaped at her. "Anyone, Lily! Are you being deliberately thick? Because you didn't strike me as that thick before."

"No, Draco, I'm not being deliberately thick. But your reasoning is only obvious to you, and I just want to be sure I understand it. So, if I was alive and you associated with me, and someone found out, why would that not be safe?"

"Because it wouldn't." He shook his head at her, incredulous. "You know what? Forget it. I think I've had enough Charms tutoring for one night. I'm sick, I'm tired - I'm going back to my dorm." He wheeled around and started for the door.

"All right," she surprised him by saying.

He stopped in his tracks and turned back to face her. "All right?" He'd been expecting her to try to force him to stay and argue. He wanted to stay and argue. She was the only person he'd ever met who'd ever just talked with him about things like this, without trying to tell him what to think. He couldn't just leave with her not understanding him. She wasn't supposed to just calmly let him leave!

Lily blinked, and said, "If you want to leave, I can't very well stop you, and there's no reason I should." Then, almost as if she could sense Draco's need to find closure on this argument, she continued, calmly and quietly, "but I will say this - in general, if you can't explain to me your reasoning on something, then more often than not, that means there is no reasoning - just a set of blind assumptions." As he opened his mouth indignantly, she cut him off. "So prove this isn't one of those times. Explain it to me. Why is it not 'safe' to associate with Muggle-borns?"

There was a long pause as he sighed and tried to figure out how to explain this. "Because I'm a Malfoy," he said finally.

"Ok..." she said slowly. When nothing more seemed forthcoming after several moments, she prompted, "It would not be 'safe' to associate with Muggle-borns because you're a Malfoy. Implying that it would be safe for somebody else, but not for a Malfoy. Why is that?"

He sighed again. "How can you not get this?" he asked, frustrated.

She raised an eyebrow. "Let's try a slightly different tack. Hypothetical situation. Tomorrow, on your way to the library, you run into Hermione, by herself, also on her way to the library, of course. Literally, you run into her, spilling both your books and her books all over the place. You apologize to her - "

"That would never happen," Draco interjected before she got any further.

"Why not?" She didn't look angry, just mildly curious, and Draco was reminded, for about the fifteenth time during this conversation, of Mr. Werewolf.

"It just wouldn't. I can't apologize to a Mudblood."

"Can't? Why not?"

"I'm a Malfoy."

"Yes, Draco, I think we've established that," she commented dryly, and Draco could see she was starting to lose patience.

She wasn't the only one. He sighed, exasperated. "And a Malfoy never apologizes to a person beneath his station. If the situation warrants, you always apologize to people above your station. You may or may not apologize to people at your station. You never apologize to people below your station," he concluded, unconsciously echoing an older man's voice inside his head.

She nodded, comprehension apparently dawning at last. Or maybe she understood the entire time, and just wanted to force him to say it. "So... you can't apologize to Muggle-borns, because... that would be against the rules?"

He blinked. He'd never thought of it that way before. That almost made it sound... capricious. And it wasn't - there were reasons for those rules. "It's beneath the dignity of a Malfoy. If you apologize to people below your station, that's dishonorable."

From the look she gave him, Draco got the definite impression she really wanted to debate this point with him, but was determined not to. He lifted his chin at her, silently daring her to try to change his mind. Instead, she apparently decided to let it slide, and changed the subject slightly. "Do the same rules apply towards associating at all with people 'beneath your station?'"

"Of course."

"Just out of curiosity - is that always your primary concern when you choose your friends? Whether their station equals or is greater than your own?"

"What?" What did she mean, 'primary concern?' What other concern was there?

"Because most people's primary concern when choosing a friend is whether they actually like the person," she continued, still very calmly, with just a trace of her sarcasm from earlier.

Oh. That. He scowled. Yes, he was actually well aware of this fact. He didn't particularly feel like going into this, though. So he just shrugged dismissively, and said, "Most people are lucky in that way."

Most people get choices. He silenced the traitorous thought with the ease of long practice. It just wasn't true. He had choices. Just not the same choices as other people. Or as many. But that just came with being who he was, along with the status, money, and power. He really was quite fortunate to have been born into such a prestigious family.

Now he really did want to leave. He didn't like the turn this conversation was taking at all.

"Lucky?" Lily prompted.

He looked her straight in the eyes. It was a rather uncanny feeling - except for the colorlessness and lack of glasses, her eyes were exactly like Potter's. "I'm going back to my dorm," he said, hoping she would take the not-so-subtle hint and drop the subject.

She paused, then nodded. "Should we arrange a time for, well, some actual tutoring, or are you angry with me?"

He snorted at the reminder that this was supposed to be a tutoring session. And no, he wasn't angry (rather surprisingly, actually - he'd be angry at anybody else if they'd done the things Lily had done, but he just couldn't seem to work up much anger for her anymore. Perhaps because the encounter with the mirror had left him completely exhausted). "I'll be in the classroom downstairs Sunday at two; you can tutor me then," he said.

Lily gazed at him for a moment, then started to laugh quietly. "I'm sure there was a request in there, somewhere." Before he could open his mouth to say... something (apologize? Tell her off?), she added, "I'll be there."

He gave her a satisfied smile. "Good." He turned to go, when a rather horrifying thought occurred to him. "And Lily," he called back. She paused on her way through the eastern wall and turned back to look at him. "You realize that you are not to distract me in public, ever, and especially not in the Quidditch match tomorrow. Stay out of it. Understood?"

She nodded, looking slightly affronted. "Of course. I would never dream of interfering in a match."

"Good," he said, and had turned towards the door when she spoke again behind him.

"After all, Harry doesn't need my help on the Quidditch field."

He stopped dead in his tracks and turned back to her, smirking. "You think not?"

"Of course I think not. Harry is more than capable of winning a match on his own, without my help." And with that, she grinned at him cheekily, gave him a little wave, and left, completely depriving him of the chance to get in the last word.