Be Careful
54: What You Remember
By Anne B. Walsh
"Many years ago," Mum said over breakfast, "near the time our Troubles were ending, I dreamed one night of a man who resembled Lord Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts. He asked me to tell him about myself, and I did so, giving him my name, my family, some few details of my life, and my profession—a Healer of the heart and mind. He smiled to hear it, and told me it was for precisely this reason he had sought me out."
Draco served himself another sausage, speared it with his fork, and bit the end off it. Luna was listening intently, stirring her eggs about on her plate.
"He was Albus Dumbledore, he told me, but an Albus Dumbledore from a world far away from mine. And in that world, there lived a young man who was near-mortally wounded by the death of his love, the death he considered—with some justice—to be his own fault. Dumbledore asked me if I would be willing to befriend this man, to meet with him in a dreamworld that we could share, to let him think me nothing more than a dream, and to help him heal, as best I could. And when I saw a picture of the young man, I agreed."
"Why?" Draco asked, putting the sausage down on his plate. "Was he someone you recognized?"
"He was. And for that reason, I thought I had invented the dream myself." Mum blew on her tea, smiling sadly. "You see, I had fallen in love with my world’s version of that young man. But he loved another and had no time for me. So I believed that my unrequited desires had coincided with my healing abilities and given me a dream version of that young man who would have reason to care for me, and in time to love me."
Draco was starting to have a nasty suspicion. "And how long did you dream about him?"
Mum smiled. "I still dream about him, Draco. My latest dream was just last night, which makes it more than sixteen years. But until this past summer, I had no suspicion that they might be anything more than dreams. Now, I am fairly sure that they are."
"Are you in love with Headmaster Snape, then?" Luna asked, as Draco was temporarily unable to speak.
"Yes, I believe I am." Mum took a sip of her tea. "And if I am not greatly mistaken, he loves me in return, as much as a man may love one he believes unreal. He calls me his greatest comfort, and says that I keep him sane in an insane world."
"No wonder you did so well with me," Draco muttered. "You’d had practice."
"You, Draco, are entirely real to me, and were from the first moment I touched you," Mum said with a trace of a snap in her tone. "I am still attempting to comprehend that Severus, my Severus, might be real in that same way. Do not feel your place threatened, for it is certainly not."
"Sorry." Draco stared into his plate. "It’s just—"
"That Severus Snape killed Albus Dumbledore in front of your eyes?" Mum suggested. "That you see in him a faithful servant of the same Dark Lord you are desperate to escape?"
"That’s part of it."
"Then let me assure you that he is not."
"No, I’d thought not," said Luna, helping herself to a piece of toast as a fresh rack appeared and piling her mutilated eggs on top of it. "He was far too nice when he found us with the sword. I’d worried a bit that he might have used our blood to control his Slicker infestation, but instead he just sent us out to the Forest with Hagrid."
Draco had a feeling he might regret asking, but anything had to be better than trying to assimilate the idea of Snape as not only good but his mum’s... friend, Draco, stick with friend, anything else is going to drive you mad. "Slicker infestation?" he said to Luna.
"Oh, Slickers are terrible. They look just like black rain jackets at first, but when you put them on, they cling to your head and never let go, and make it look as if you never wash your hair, no matter how often you really do. And the only way to get them free is to sprinkle them with blood from a male and a female virgin." Luna took a bite of her eggs on toast. "I’d qualify," she said indistinctly through it. "So would Neville, I’m pretty sure. I don’t know about Ginny, but I think so. Harry’s a nice boy."
Draco pushed his plate away and put his head down on the table. "Add that to the list of things I didn’t need to know," he mumbled. "The various experience levels of Gryffindors. And one Ravenclaw," he added at Luna’s indignant noise.
"How do they compare to Slytherins?" Mum asked, a wicked smile audible in her tone.
Draco squeezed his eyes shut as a flood of the nastier things he’d been unable to avoid seeing in six and a half years in the dungeons deluged him. "Let’s just say only the younger half of the House would routinely qualify and leave it at that, shall we?"
"If you insist." Mum was almost purring.
She’s never going to let me forget this, is she?
After breakfast was over and Luna and Draco had told their own story from the day before, Draco excused himself to bring the journal he was keeping about his new life up to date. Luna stayed, looking intently at the witch Draco called his mum.
She would have been, if he’d been born in this world. But his dad’s counterpart is someone very different. Someone important. The whole house around her, in fact, seemed to resonate with "different" and "important". She liked that.
But the question at hand was more important.
"What should I call you, please?" she asked.
"A good question." The older witch pleated the edge of her napkin into folds. "Most of the children call me Aunt Cecy, though the only one I’m truly an aunt to is Dora—you’d know her as Tonks, I believe she’s just married your world’s Remus..."
Luna nodded, recalling Ginny’s excited revelations about the marriage and the coming baby. I must remember to ask Lord and Lady Beauvoi—Moony and Danger, Draco says they like to be called—about those particular spells to send to her. She’ll like them.
"So Aunt Cecy would be perfectly fine. But there is another possibility." The witch returned Luna’s gaze, her own blue eyes just as intense as Luna’s blue-gray. "What do you intend towards my son?"
"I want to marry him," Luna said without hesitation. "If it’s what he wants too, because I would never want him to be unhappy."
"And you don’t think it’s too early to say that, that you’ve only just met, that you don’t truly know him yet."
Luna shook her head. "Daddy knew right away when he met Mummy," she said. "A lot of people thought he was too old for her, that he should have let my Uncle Gerald marry her instead—he wanted to, you know. And he did here. He’s the other Luna’s father."
"He is. But that’s partly because Xenophilius died in the Troubles, saving Anita and Gerald if I’m not mistaken."
"Just like Uncle Gerald got so badly hurt in the first war, and had to go away to America to recover among the Sand People of the Sonora Desert." Luna smiled. She seldom found people who understood her so well. "A lot of things went one way in my world and another way in this one. It’s very interesting."
"Yes, we think so too." The witch chuckled. "And if Draco goes through with his plan with those journals of his, scholars will be considering it interesting long after all of us are dead. But back to our original topic of conversation. You definitely intend to marry my Draco, you said? I know you’re close with your father—will he understand if you vanish permanently into another world that way?"
"Will I be able to visit him in dreams?"
"I... don’t see any reason why not," the witch said slowly. "As long as he knows how to make, or where to buy, the potion that will put him into a receptive state. Or has some other way to achieve it. Yes, I think travel to a shared dreamworld will still be possible even after the physical way closes."
"Then he won’t mind at all." Luna nodded with certainty. "As long as he knows I’m happy, and we have a way to see each other sometimes."
"I know people who could learn from your family," the witch remarked. "But as I was saying. If you are sure you want to marry Draco, and you want him to know about it, there is something you could call me that would give him that impression quite unmistakably..."
Luna giggled. "I will," she said. "But... I think not quite yet. It’s rather like hunting some of the shyer creatures—you have to be careful how much noise you make, because they’ll run away from you. So I’ll say Aunt Cecy for now."
"Very well." Aunt Cecy smiled. "And when you’re sure of how he feels, and you’re ready to drop a few hints to him... go ahead and switch to the other one."
"I will." Luna glanced down at the table, then back up shyly. "Mum."
A moment later, she was being ruthlessly embraced.
It’s no wonder Draco changed, she thought dizzily. Not with hugs like this.
Dobby, when asked, produced a vast store of girls’ robes from the attics—Hermione, as befitted the eldest of a large family, had kept all her old ones to pass down the line, and the blue and silver which set off her brunette coloring also complimented Luna’s blondeness. The proposed shopping trip could therefore be postponed, though not abandoned.
Heck, it’s probably grown, now that Luna’s seen what’s in fashion around here...
Thus relieved from the necessity of going out, Draco and Luna spent the rest of the day wandering Fidelus Manor, poking their noses into every room with an open door, meeting the house-elves in unexpected places—Dobby, his daughter Echo, and Echo’s half-grown elflets Elrond and Virginia made up the Manor’s full complement—and trading stories about the various growing-up experiences of the son of a proper pureblood house and the daughter of a rather unusual wizarding family. As the afternoon drew on, they returned to Draco’s room, where he showed Luna the first few scrolls of his journal. She immediately sat down at his desk, opened one of the drawers, and pulled out a bright new set of drawing pencils.
"Where did those come from?" Draco demanded.
"I asked Echo if she could find me some earlier," Luna said calmly, opening the first scroll and scanning down it. "May I see your wand, please?"
"Don’t mess that up," Draco warned, tossing his wand over to her. "It’s the only copy."
"I’m not going to mess it up." Luna traced a small square on the right side of the parchment, then tapped the wand’s tip in its center. The words—Draco stood up to see—migrated to the left of the sheet, shrinking as they went, until it looked as though he’d deliberately left that space blank.
"What are you doing, then?" he asked as Luna set his wand aside. Need to get her one of her own again—maybe tomorrow, if Ollivander’s is open so close to Christmas...
"Improving it." Luna pulled a brown pencil from the box, then looked up at him. "Go away for a little while. Take your wand if you need it, I’m done with it for right now. I want this first one to be a surprise."
You, my very dear, could give my mother bossy lessons. But if you insist. "Yes, my lady." Draco scooped up his wand and tucked it away, dropping a kiss on the back of a blonde head as he passed. "I’ll be downstairs if you need me."
"Mmm," said Luna absently.
So. Draco meandered down the hall, touching a carving here, a table there. Mum and Snape. My Snape, for lack of a better term.
With the knowledge that Snape was on the side of the Light, that he had in fact killed Dumbledore at Dumbledore’s express request, Draco could consider the man instead in terms of six years spent as his student and a member of his House.
Of course, I don’t think now the same way I did then. But my memories are still useful... if often embarrassing as all hell. He snorted. In any case, I know Snape favors the Slytherins so much because he feels they get a raw deal from the other teachers. If things were a little fairer overall, the way they are here, he might not do it so much. And of course he picked on Potter for reasons which have already been established, and likely on Longbottom because he knew what Longbottom’d be capable of if he gave himself half a chance.
"He doesn’t like teaching the lower levels," Draco murmured to himself, running his hand along the balcony rail as he looked down into the main hall. "Stupid mistakes drive him mad. He’d do better here, only taking the advanced classes. And he never really liked being Head of House, either, with all the little squabbles he had to arbitrate. But there are a couple other Slytherin teachers here, so he wouldn’t even have to take over when Professor Riddle becomes Headmaster..."
And why I’m talking as if he’s going to show up on the doorstep the way I did, I have no idea.
"Draco!" Luna called from down the hall. "I’m ready!"
"Coming," Draco called back, abandoning his thoughts of Snape gladly. He’s for another day. This is Christmas, the first real Christmas of my life, and I’m not about to spend it thinking about a greasy-haired git without the sense to realize someone as great as Mum must be real!
He swung around the doorframe into his room. "Here I am. What’ve you got?"
Luna pushed the scroll towards him. The square she had emptied of writing now held a neat drawing in colored pencil. A pale-blond young man with a pointed face, his black robes rumpled and stained, leaned shakily against a wall, his gray eyes hopeless.
"God," Draco breathed, stretching out a hand without conscious effort to touch the picture, to make sure it was only pencil on parchment. For one instant, seeing it, he had been there again, felt again the heart-squeezing certainty that his life was over, that he would probably die before he was eighteen, that even if he survived he would be miserable forever, that he had no options left to him, no way out, nothing...
He shook off the moment and looked over at Luna. "You’re good," he said.
"Daddy thinks so too," Luna said, sliding her pencils back into their box. "But I haven’t had a chance to show many other people my drawing. So thank you."
"Do you want to do some for the rest of them? I know there’s a lot of scrolls, but if you’re going to come back and forth with me, we get each day twice, and there’s not much to do back at Malfoy Manor..." Draco let his words fade away as Luna continued putting away her pencils. You shouldn’t have asked, she did this one just as a favor, or because she couldn’t get it out of her head any other way, she’s not about to sit here and cramp up her fingers drawing all your stupid escapades...
"I’d love to," Luna said, closing the lid of the pencil box and putting it away in the drawer she’d taken it from. "But I think we should do it later. There are about to be people here."
"About to be—"
The unmistakable sound of doors being flung open. "We’re home!" shouted four or five voices in chorus.
"People," Luna said, turning and treating him to her sweet smile. "Will you introduce me?"
"I would be delighted." Draco offered her his arm, and they left the room together.
Unseen on the scroll behind them, the Draco in Luna’s drawing seemed to acquire a gleam in his penciled eyes, as though, at this lowest moment of his life, he were allowing himself thoughts he’d never had before.
Author Notes:
And thus we reach the end of what I have already written. Rest assured that more will very, very shortly be forthcoming...