Be Careful
16: What Shape You Wear
By Anne B. Walsh
Cecy freed a hand to rub at her left shoulder, which had chilled for a moment. I am overreacting, she told herself sternly. I must stop. It is self-indulgent and it helps nothing.
Some part of her obviously disagreed, or she wouldn’t still be crying her eyes blind while Danger held her and tried to comfort her.
If any night could make me run mad, this might be the one. Joy and sorrow in alternation, and all over the same subject…
The chill returned, sweeping down Cecy’s arm to her hand, where it lingered.
Of course, it would be the left hand. The hand that, according to the old tales, had a nerve which ran directly to the heart.
Danger shifted in her chair, as though she had found something uncomfortable where she was. "Do you feel that?" she asked quietly. "The one cold spot, where everything else in the room is warm?"
"I do." Cecy found her handkerchief and began to blot her face, sitting back in her chair. The chill on her hand moved with her, and when she tucked away the handkerchief and began to scrub her hands together to warm them, both of them grew cold instead. "Strange."
"More than strange." Danger had her eyes closed and her head tipped back, an expression of concentration on her face. "It reminds me of the feeling I get when I accidentally brush through a ghost. But if there were a ghost here, we would be able to see him, unless he were being invisible on purpose…"
"And most of the Hogwarts ghosts would not be so rude." Cecy kept dry-washing her hands, focusing on the simple repetitive action to keep herself from thinking about what Danger was saying, and what she was not. "Whereas if it were Peeves, we would both be wearing inkwells at this moment."
"At the very least." Danger opened her eyes. "So I think we can rule out its being anything native. However, if it were, let’s say, a currently living person somehow transported out of his body…"
"Such spirits are not visible and can affect the physical world little if at all." Reciting simple facts, things she had known since her second year of schooling, helped to calm her. She had learned these basic qualitative differences among classes of spirits, how to tell which sort one was dealing with and if it had either the capability or the desire to harm one, from the same man who had taught Danger, as well as Danger’s children and Cecy’s niece and cousins.
And who may yet teach someone else.
"Maybe we can’t see them, but we can feel them. Involuntary low-level energy theft." Danger laid her hand on Cecy’s and watched as the fine hairs on the back of her fingers rose in response to the drop in temperature. "Which our bodies perceive as cold."
Cecy grasped Danger’s hand in both her own, holding it tightly to stay her rising hope. "Then you think…"
"I may. Let’s test." Danger held up her free hand to one side. "If there is someone else present, would you mind touching me here?" she asked the empty air, wiggling her fingers to be sure the ‘here’ was properly understood. "Long enough for me to be sure of it, please, there’s no point in wondering."
The chill lifted from their linked hands. Cecy swiftly released her grip and placed her own left palm against Danger’s upheld right—
Just as cold blossomed around them both.
It seems this night is not through with me yet.
"You’re good," Draco said admiringly, his hand passing through those of the two women. "You are very good."
And I should be a lot more shaken up by this than I am, but I’m too happy to be back here and in communication with somebody. Give it an hour or two; I should be used to it enough by then to do some screaming.
"Draco?" Mum moved her hand away from Danger’s. "Touch me alone if it is you."
"It’s me." Draco intercepted her hand with his other one. "I know you can’t hear me, but I’m here. Somehow. Maybe the potion wasn’t made strong enough…"
"It is, isn’t it?" Danger asked, returning Mum’s incredulous smile. "I thought it would take more than a potion to separate you two at this point. What matters is, he’s come back, despite measures to the contrary—you did take the potion before sleeping, Draco?" She held out her hand towards him, and Draco moved his own through it. "I thought so. So as long as you can reproduce whatever else you did, you can come back in this form as often as you like. I know it’s hardly ideal…"
"Better than nothing," Draco said, just as Mum said, "It is far better than nothing at all."
Draco jerked back, breaking their contact, as Mum turned to stare in his direction. "Love?"
"What is it?" Danger asked.
"I thought I heard his voice." Mum stood up. "Draco, try overlapping your spirit self with my body." A wicked smile lit her face momentarily. "Consider me Jocasta if it helps you."
"That’s disgusting." Draco moved forward a pace or two, as if to hug his mum, then took a deep breath and plunged in, taking up the same space she did. "I don’t go for older women," he muttered, trying to sort out the sensations. His skin felt uncomfortably warm, buzzing at every point they crossed, but at the same time he could sense a shaken serenity, a rising sense of joy and wonder, that he didn’t think was his own.
"I am sure the older women thank you for that," said Mum, her voice trembling with more than cold. "Oh, my little love, I thought I had lost you forever…"
"You can hear me?" Draco shut his eyes quickly, fighting the contrasting urges to cry with relief and get away from her before she could tell how weak he’d become. She knows it already, he reminded himself. She’s seen me worse off than this. She wants to help.
Still, the instincts of a lifetime couldn’t be overridden easily.
But I’m not an animal. I can’t change what I feel, but I can help what I do about it.
"Crossing bodies. I almost forgot about that." Danger was sitting up in her chair, her hands massaging the small of her back. "Why don’t I leave you two alone? It’s getting late."
"Danger, thank you." Mum went to hug her friend. Draco stayed put, having no desire to find out what would happen if he accidentally crossed himself with two people at once.
Though come to think of it, I did that a minute ago, and nothing happened. Maybe I have to be with just one person to get the link I need to talk to them. Or maybe it’s only strong enough with Mum because I…
He stalled on the word. It had been all right to say it, or start to say it, when he’d thought it was the last chance he’d have to say anything to her at all. But now that he knew he could come back, if not quite the same way he’d been able to before, it was harder to get it out.
Which makes no sense at all.
Mum watched until Danger turned a corner beyond the bookshelves, then returned to her chair. "Come sit," she said, patting her knee. "If I remember right, the chair should be solid to you as it is to me."
"Let’s find out." Draco laid a hand on the chair’s back. It did not pass through. "Good memory, Mum." After a moment of readying himself, he sat down with her, wincing at her semi-controlled shudder. "Sorry."
"Do not apologize for what you cannot help." Mum wrapped her arms around herself. "This will have to take the place of a hug for the moment."
"Thanks." He couldn’t feel her arms, but her joy swept around him like a warm and shimmering wind, and it was almost as good—better, in some ways, because this couldn’t be faked.
I never had this. I tried to pretend it didn’t matter, that I didn’t need it, that the people who did were weak. And then I turned out to be the weak one, and I broke.
Maybe I can put myself back together now.
"I love you, Draco," Mum said quietly.
There, she said it first. I’m allowed to answer.
Draco snorted a laugh at the nonsensical workings of his mind. "Love you too," he said, and found it surprisingly easy to mean.
Not that big a surprise, not when I can feel how much she means it.
Along with a few other things.
"You’re tired," he said aloud. "You should go to bed."
"I thought I was the mother here," Mum said in a mock-scolding tone. "But you are right. I am tired, more than I want to admit. Forgive me for leaving you so soon?"
"I’m the one telling you to go. Besides, I’ll be back." As long as this wasn’t just a fluke. "I wonder why the potion didn’t work?"
The swirl of emotions in his mind darkened. "I have a confession, Draco," said Mum, letting go of her grip of her shoulders to rub her hands along her thighs. "I deliberately allowed you to continue thinking this world was only a dream, rather than telling you at the first that it was real."
Draco almost jumped out of the chair. "What?"
"Hear me out." Mum held up a hand, as though she were facing him and conversing normally. "It was my hope that you would accept us more fully if you thought you had invented us, that you would have less fear and grow closer to us so that we could help you to heal. Now that you know the truth, there is no more point in dissembling. Though your body cannot travel between our two worlds without entering its dream state, which the potion you took prevents, your soul’s desire to be here was so strong that you broke free… or so I believe. I might be wrong." She turned her head to stare at the tabletop. "You may be angry with me for this. I might well in your place. Please believe that I did it for what I thought were the best of reasons, at the time."
Angry? Oh, maybe just a little. Draco stood up, pulling away from her. "So you lied to me," he said, knowing she wouldn’t hear him. "You lied and made me act like a fool in front of real people, all of whom now think…"
He cast about for a good ending to the sentence, only to discover that there wasn’t one.
They don’t think anything bad about me. They’ve never treated me any worse than they do everyone else. Much better than anyone I know would have treated some strange boy who showed up out of nowhere in a little girl’s bedroom.
And the first thing I thought when I found out this world was real wasn’t how stupid I’d looked. It was how much I wanted to come back.
Well, now I am back. Maybe only like this—he scowled at his translucent self—but the alternative is not being here at all. Spending my life alone, or with people who think a lot worse of me than anyone here.
I think I know which one I prefer.
"Mum." Draco sat down again, sliding back into superimposition. "Mum, it’s all right. I understand. I… I forgive you." He wasn’t sure the phrase was quite right, but she’d know what he meant.
"Thank you, love," Mum whispered, embracing herself and him once more. "Thank you."
Voices sounded at the other end of the library, and Mum looked up. "Go and explore the castle if you like," she said, getting to her feet. "Some of your friends may still be awake." An impish smile lit her face. "You could tease them if you wanted, as they do not yet know you are here in this form. Though I do seem to recall…"
She frowned in concentration, and Draco jumped in surprise as her body twisted downwards into that of a long-legged, light-furred deer. One blue eye fixed on him, and the doe pranced in place, her hooves clattering on the wooden floor.
"Cecy? Is that you?" Aunt Andy came between the bookshelves, followed by her fair-haired husband. "What are you doing in form? Is something wrong?"
Mum shook her head, then grew once more into her human self. "Change for yourself and tell me what you see," she said, smiling at her sister, then at her brother-in-law. "Hello, Ted, I barely had a chance to see you at the ball—how are you?"
"Been better," Ted Tonks said, leaning against a bookshelf. "None too happy with what’s going on, but we all got out alive, didn’t we?"
Draco tuned this out and turned in time to see Aunt Andy shrink into a brown squirrel. He laughed aloud, and the squirrel looked sharply at him. A moment later, Aunt Andy was regarding the same spot. "It almost looks like… Cecy, nothing’s happened to him, has it?"
"It is a long story, Andy, and I have no doubt you are as tired as I am. More, since you and Ted stayed behind to fight. I will explain if you will walk with me back to my suite."
"Of course."
Mum blew Draco a kiss, and the adults left the library, Mum beginning her explanation.
Alone, Draco sank down on the chair Mum had been using. "So they’re Animagi, too," he said. "Makes sense—I know dementors don’t pay as much attention to animals, it was how Black got out of Azkaban…"
A deer seemed like the right form for his mum with her gentle and quiet ways, and a squirrel fit his aunt’s quick movements and chattering habits better than she probably liked to admit.
So what would I be, I wonder? I should probably start looking into it, if I’m going to come back here for real at some point…
Anything but a ferret. Please. Just let it be anything but that.
The thought made him laugh, and he got to his feet and started for the door.
I can research that tomorrow, when I wake up. Right now, I have to be a good boy and do what my mummy told me. Draco assumed a virtuous expression. She said to explore, so I’m exploring. And she also said to tease, so I’ll do that.
Assuming anyone’s still awake at this hour.
He located Ray and Neenie in the hospital wing, their beds pushed side by side so that they could hold hands in their sleep. "Thanks," he told them. "You saved my life tonight."
Ray grunted and shifted his head on the pillow. Draco took that as ‘you’re welcome’.
He visited the Slytherin dorms next. Most of the beds were full.
No surprise. Slytherins are too smart to stay home when there’s a possibility it could lead to getting your soul sucked out of your body.
Marcus Black was snoring quietly in the fourth years’ dorm, and when Draco cautiously slipped into the forbidden territory of the girls’ side (apparently spirits didn’t set off the impassable curtain of water which turned back interloping males), he had a surprise—Lyssa Potter lay sprawled on a cushioned bit of floor among her fellow fifth years.
Harry Potter’s little sister, sorted into Slytherin. And it’s not a dream.
I wish I could tell him. My world’s him. Just to see the look on his face. He’d probably curse me into very small pieces the next second, but it might be worth it…
Crossing back over, Draco decided to have a look at the seventh years’ dorm.
Just to see who I get to room with around here.
Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott, or boys who bore a remarkable resemblance to them, occupied two of the six beds. Two more held boys Draco didn’t know. The last two were empty. The whole room had an air of having been recently rearranged, and one of the empty beds had a freshly-polished look to it, as though it had just come out of storage and been shined up by a house-elf.
One of these has to be for Ray. But who’s the other one, the new one, for?
The answer came to him in the moment of forming the question. "That… would be for me."
And there’s more proof that this isn’t a thing like home—they’d have thrown me into Azkaban if I showed up there like I did here, not practically adopted me and got ready to send me off to school…
"I will get here and use it." Draco laid his hand on the post of the bed as though he were swearing a sacred vow. "I don’t care what it takes." He grimaced. "I’ll even apologize to Lucius if I have to. But I am going back to school."
And maybe I’ll learn how I can stay here. For good.