Be Careful
15: What You Try To Say
By Anne B. Walsh
Draco—
Don’t fall asleep tonight without Dreamless Sleep or something else like it. The Manor’s full of dementors and you’d never get out in time. If you can come back to Hogwarts, that’s where we’re all staying for the time being—and I do mean all. There’s a few families hoping to keep their heads down and ride this out at home, but a lot more are packing up and moving into the castle until somebody finds a way to set stronger wards. I think we’d better get used to being crowded.
If you can’t make it to Hogwarts, Ray’s and my coming of age is Friday next. It has to be at the Manor because of magical issues, so I’m sure all our friends will help us clean house for just that one day. We’ll do the same for Harry’s at the Lion’s Den the Wednesday after. Hope to see you there.
Aunt Cecy and Abby would send love if they knew we were doing this, and everyone else would say hi, so just assume they did. I’d tell you how to send a message back like this, but I’m not sure it’s even going to work once. If this parchment lasts past you finishing reading this, you can clean it off with "Evanescum scribum" and write on it by saying "Inscriptus", then your message. It should pick up your voice like a DictaQuill, and we’ll be able to read it on our end.
Take care of yourself. We’ll see you soon.
—Hermione
Draco rested his fingers on the name signed at the bottom. "Could’ve guessed that if I’d tried. It sounds like her."
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a piece of him was hysterical over what this meant, what it proved, but he was focused for the moment on the instructions in the last paragraph. It sounds like this is an unstable spell, like it might come apart any second. If I want to get a message back, I need to hurry. But first…
He pointed his wand over his shoulder at the bed. "Accio." His quill soared into his hand, and the scroll and inkpot he’d been using followed. Quickly, he scribbled down the dates and names—Ray and Neenie, Friday 26 July; Harry, Wednesday 31—then set the real parchment aside and pointed his wand at the magical one, which was starting to look a bit tattered around the edges. "Evanescum scribum."
As promised, the words vanished, leaving Draco with not only a clear writing surface but also a dilemma.
What do I say? "I’m sorry I mistook your world for a dream"? "I’d come back in an instant if I could but I’m under house arrest so I can’t"?
Simple and factual, he decided. He could decide what, if anything, soppy to say when he’d told them what was going on with him.
And why I won’t be able to go to their coming of age parties, or probably anything else there ever again.
Draco cleared his throat, which had become unaccountably choked. "Inscriptus." The parchment flashed silver, and a small picture of a quill appeared on it in the top left corner.
"What’s that for?" he wondered aloud.
What’s that for? the quill wrote in flashingly quick letters.
"Oh."
Oh.
Draco smiled at the thought of the faces on whoever was reading this, then began to speak. If this was going to be his last time talking to the people he’d come to care about, he wanted to make it count.
Abby had fallen asleep on Remus’ lap by the time the parchment finally went blank and began to fill with new writing. Rather than disturb her, Remus tapped Danger’s vision to watch the words form. Cecy was leaning forward eagerly, her hands stretching out as though she could reach through the parchment to touch Draco again.
My mother and father weren’t too happy with my disappearing from the manor, the tiny quill scribed in Draco’s handwriting underneath the two ‘test lines’. They think I was sleepwalking. I’m not so sure, but I didn’t say so. I did mouth off to them, though, so they’ve locked me in my room and put me onto Dreamless Sleep until further notice—which, with dear old Lucius, might as well mean forever. Mother, Narcissa to you, seems to think she might be able to talk him around. I’m not holding my breath.
Cecy’s own breath caught at this, and she grasped at the hand Danger held out to her as though it were a lifeline.
Instead I’m missing everyone. And thinking. I suppose I could just be having a load of dreams that set off my magic, so that I walk around and conjure myself new robes in my sleep. I might even have been able to Floo to Hogwarts in my sleep without anyone noticing me. What I don’t think I could have done on my own is change. And I have changed.
A long pause, as the quill hovered at the left edge of the parchment. Remus held Abby closer as she shifted restlessly.
If your world is real, the quill finally wrote, if you’re all real, then it changes everything I ever thought I knew. About life, about other people, about me. Part of me doesn’t want you to be real, because if you’re only dreams then I haven’t lost anything by losing you. But another part, a part I wasn’t even sure I had, does want you to be real. Because if I do have to lose you, I want to know I really had you, if only for a little while.
Cecy’s face, usually so calm, was anguished. For the first time since Remus had known her, she looked every year of her age and more.
I want to know it’s possible for real people to care about me, and vice versa. And I never wanted that before. Which is what makes me think you might be real after all. A moment’s pause. Well, that and the magic parchment. I have no idea how I’d even start this complex a spell, so score one for the Real Team. Unless I fell asleep while I was working and I’m dreaming all this just like I dreamed you. But I don’t think so.
"Smart boy," Danger said absently, her attention still on the moving quill, now approaching the end of the sheet.
That looks like all I have room to say. Except goodbye. Which isn’t fair. I know I did some stupid things, but does that mean I only get a week of anything good before it’s taken away from me? And now I’m whinging, so I’ll stop. Tell everyone I’ll miss them and I’d come to the parties if I could. Who knows—maybe Lucius will change his mind after all. It’s been known to happen.
The quill paused at the bottom of the parchment, which was beginning to flake away around the edges.
Mum, it scribbled rapidly, if you’re there, I l—
The piece the quill had moved onto broke away from the main body of the sheet. An instant later, the entire parchment disintegrated, the pieces breaking into smaller and smaller bits until a fine white dust covered the surface of the library table.
"No," Cecy whispered, her fingers scrabbling uselessly in the dust. "No—no—no…"
Danger pulled her close as she began to cry, the wrenching sobs of a mother who had seen her last link to her child destroyed beyond recall.
"Mum," Draco said quickly, before he lost his nerve, "if you’re there, I lo—"
The parchment fractured, then crumbled, melting before his eyes like the first snow of the season. All that remained was a powder that could have been sugar left over from a pastry, lightly sprinkled across his desk.
"Damn it!" Draco slammed his fist down, then stood up so hard his chair kited across the floor and crashed into the opposite wall. "Goddamned bloody useless thing! Couldn’t have lasted one more second, could you?"
He swore again, stalking about the room, matching his strides to his words, aware he was putting off the moment when he’d have to think about what had just happened. One, two, three, four, five paces and turn, one, two, three, four, five and turn again, one, two, three, four, fi—
His toe hit the wall hard as he swung his foot too far. He snarled, half in pain, half in rage.
This is not. Bloody. Fair. If I’m going to be under Dreamless Sleep, why bother locking me up? I won’t be going anywhere as long as I’m drugged…
"But that’s not the point, is it?" Draco went to one knee and rubbed the top of the stubbed toe through his shoe. "The point of locking me up is to keep me here when I’m awake. To ‘teach you a lesson, boy’." He imitated his father as he might have to an appreciative audience in his dreams—
No. Not dreams. I can’t hide from the truth anymore.
I may get there through dreams, but the world is real. It has to be. Either that or I’ve completely lost my mind, and the end result is the same as far as I’m concerned, so I don’t care.
He sat down, planting his back against the wall, drawing up his knees until they touched his chest and he could rest his chin on them.
"They’re real," he whispered, rubbing the cuff of the dress robes he was still wearing from Luna’s ball. "They’re all real. I never made them up—they’re as real as I am—"
And I’ll never see them again.
The knowledge squeezed his chest tight and coated his mouth with bitterness. For all his fine words earlier, a part of him wished he could have gone on thinking it had all been a dream.
It would have been so much easier that way.
Draco pressed his face against his arms and shivered, giving in to the first shuddering wave of homesickness as the knowledge crashed down on him of exactly what he’d lost.
Abby stirred at the sound of Cecy’s weeping, and Remus quickly stood, settling her into a carrying position on his shoulder. I’ll find Andy, he sent to Danger. You stay with her.
I can hardly do anything else, Danger said silently, as her lips were occupied murmuring soothing nonsense to her friend. Hurry, please? I’m no Healer, but I think she may need some professional attention after this one. Now get Abby out of here before she wakes up.
On my way. Remus started back between the bookshelves towards the main door of the library.
"Daddy?" Abby mumbled against his neck. "Did Draco write back?"
"Yes, Joy, he did." Remus hissed at the door, which opened obediently. Being an Heir of one of Hogwarts’ Founders occasionally had its perks. "But it doesn’t look as if he’ll be able to come back and see us again any time soon. He might not ever come back at all."
"Yes, he will," Abby contradicted sleepily. "He has to. He’s the one in the prophecy. If he doesn’t come back, the dementors can’t get sent away, and then they’ll eat us all up and take over the world."
Remus smiled at Abby’s fairy-tale interpretation of the ever-present peril in her life. "I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily all up to Draco," he said, starting up the stairs towards Gryffindor Tower. "We keep learning new magic, better magic, to keep dementors away. If you’d been born back when I was little, you probably wouldn’t have all the brothers and sisters you do, because we didn’t know then how to make our wards as strong as we can make them now. Dementors could send enough of their darkness through to steal the life from the littlest people around."
"And that’s why I have a lot of cousins but not so many aunts and uncles." Abby turned her head so that her other cheek rested on Remus’ shoulder. "Because a lot of the babies who would have been aunts and uncles to me died before they got born, or a little bit after. And everybody still wants to have lots of babies because they feel like some of them will die, but all of them live now that the wards are strong, and the more people who live and be happy, the stronger the wards are…"
"That’s right." Remus stepped onto the seventh floor landing and set off down the hall. "Which is why the most important thing we can do with our lives is?"
"Be happy." Abby squirmed her elbow out of direct contact with Remus’ collarbone. "Because the happier we are, the stronger the wards are wherever we live, because they collect from us just like the dementors try to do. Except that means the dementors eat the wards instead, whenever they can get enough of them together to push past the evil-go-away spells, and then the wards fall down like ours did." She yawned. "Are we going to live at Hogwarts forever?"
"Not forever. Just until we figure out how to keep the dementors from eating our wards." Remus chuckled at the turn of phrase. "Maybe we need to paint them with a bitter taste, like we’re going to do with Nicki’s thumb if she doesn’t stop sucking it soon."
There was no reply from Abby, unless it was to become twice as heavy as she had been a moment before. Asleep again. Good.
"Betelgeuse," Remus said to the Fat Lady as he approached her.
"And a nice loaf of bug bread to go with it." The Fat Lady giggled at her own humor and swung her portrait open.
Remus shook his head and hissed a command at the portrait hole. Obediently, it grew larger and lowered itself towards the floor, and he stepped through it easily.
Put my little Joy in her bed, send a Patronus to find Andy and get her on her way to the library, and then I need to sleep myself. The sooner I let my mind work on this ‘bitter wards’ idea without the encumbrance of actual thinking, the better…
Draco shoved the tears away again with a burst of anger, but he knew they couldn’t be denied for much longer. His eyes, flitting around the room in search of something to glare at, fell on the flask of violet potion waiting innocently on the tray by the door.
At least if I was asleep I could stop hurting—
Wait. Nothing says I have to sleep at night. I could drink it now and put myself out until midnight, then get up and see if I can’t wear myself out enough to sleep again before I have to take my next dose—
Except it isn’t safe to do that here. Not until next week. Maybe I could turn myself around in that time, though. It’s worth a try.
Draco scooted himself over to the tray and picked up the flask, staring at the potion within. "I’m going to get around you," he muttered to it. "Wait and see. You can’t beat me that easily."
The potion remained a potion.
Great, now I really am losing it.
Draco stood up, set the flask on his bedside table, and transferred the heap of random items back to his desk. "I swear they multiply when I’m not looking," he said, dropping three quills into the holder. "There was only one a minute ago."
You’re stalling, his mum’s imagined voice chided. Get on with it.
"Yes, Mother." Grinning a little at his own playacting, Draco lay down on the bed, then got up again and pulled off his robes. He hadn’t bathed since yesterday, and he was starting to feel grimy.
It won’t hurt anything to clean up before I try this. Now as long as that pitcher is self-renewing…
The pitcher proved to be exactly that. The water within warmed by wand-heat to just above blood temperature, it made a satisfactory shower when set on a stand Draco conjured in one corner of the room. Said stand was wobbly, but it didn’t have to last more than a few minutes, nor did the tub he’d created to hold the excess water. A few moments’ intense thought about the linen closet on the first floor, where he had often hidden from his father in a bad mood, produced a bar of soap from the box there, and refocusing his concentration six inches down and to the left netted him a towel.
Fifteen minutes later, having Vanished tub, water, and stand, he was clean and dressed again, his hair still damp but drying quickly.
Now I can sleep.
Draco lifted the flask high. "Here’s to you, Lucius," he toasted. "Shove it up your own damned arse."
He drank the potion off quickly, before he could think twice about it.
There was barely time to set the flask aside and lie down flat before the darkness swirled over him, reminding him nastily of his last run-in with dementors, of the rage that had shot through him at seeing who was being threatened…
"Mum," he whispered with his last waking breath.
Darkness gave way to streaks of light all around and a high-pitched shriek as though the universe itself were outraged by what had happened to him—Draco caught his toe and stumbled forward—
He stood in the Hogwarts library, not three feet from a pair of witches, the blonder of whom was sobbing on the brunette’s shoulder.
Disbelieving hope flared to life in Draco’s chest. I think Lucius may need to fire whoever made that potion for him.
He started forward. "Mum, it’s all right, look, I’m back—"
His hand passed through her shoulder as if he were made of smoke.
On second thoughts, maybe not.
Draco held up his arm in front of his face. Through it he could see the vague outlines of the bookshelves beyond, and his skin and robes retained only traces of their proper color.
Just when I think I’ve got it figured out, someone goes and changes the rules on me…