Harry Potter 1. Prologue: The Flame of the Meteor

**Author's note: **This story was originally written in response to a request by kk bk, and posted on my main, "Qoheleth" account. After working at it for some time, though, I decided that kk bk's original vision and my writing style just didn't match very well, so I removed it from that profile. I still rather liked what I had, though, so I decided to post it here - and, if enough reviewers prove enthusiastic, I may even continue it here. (Don't get your hopes up, but we'll see.)

**Disclaimer:** Recipe for an AU: Take a universe by J. K. Rowling, an idea by kk bk, a title from the Book of Exodus, and a picture from NASA. Mix together and let simmer for 2 years, or until a philosophical analysis inserted in the center comes out clean. Serve when cool.

* * *

"I'm cold," Maia Cranston complained as she and her fellow third years trooped up the steps of the Astronomy Tower. "Why can't the greatest wizarding school in Britain be somewhere warm? Like Gibraltar. What's wrong with having it in Gibraltar?

"I don't think Gibraltar was part of Britain when Hogwarts was founded, Maia," said Felicia Park-Place with a small smile. "Remember, it was in the tenth century; the Normans hadn't even invaded England yet."

"Well, still, they didn't have to put it this far north," said Maia. "You've seen how high Polaris is every night; we must be at least north of the Pennines…"

"Very good, Miss Cranston," said Professor Sinistra, pausing and turning to smile at her from the head of the queue. "Five points to Ravenclaw for applied knowledge."

Maia blushed at being overheard, but there was a pleased smile on her face; though quite intelligent, she was not one of the more conspicuous students, and earning points was something of a novelty for her.

"Knowledge, moreover, that will come in useful tonight," Professor Sinistra added. "The cosmic event that you are all about to witness is occurring right near Polaris."

"Come on, Professor, kill the suspense," said Asclepius Wilson. "Why can't you just tell us what we're going to see?"

"I'll bet it's a nova," said Arachne Dentor. "That's the ultimate cosmic event, isn't it?"

"Or a comet," said Anthony Zeno. "Isn't there a comet that a couple of Americans discovered last year, and it's going to show up in the sky soon?"

"No, that won't get here till next year," said James-Helvidius Greggson. "And it wouldn't be a conjunction of planets, either, if it's in Ursa Minor. I'll bet Arachne's right about the nova."

"Course he would," Sabrina Barker whispered to Felicia. "He backs up everything Dentor says, the turncoat."

"They're friends," Felicia whispered back. "They've been friends since they were kids. What do you expect?"

"I expect a Ravenclaw to have proper house pride," said Sabrina loftily. "We're never going to win the Cup if our best Housemate spends all his time doting on some hemophilic Slytherin princess."

Felicia didn't bother to respond. She knew that Sabrina had been sweet on James-Helvidius ever since their first class together, and she knew the sound of jealousy when she heard it. Besides, they were getting close to the top of the Tower; any second now, Professor Sinistra would say…

"All right, ladies and gentlemen, time to switch off your chatterboxes," said Professor Sinistra. "Miss Lovegood, will you get the door, please?"

Luna Lovegood obligingly tugged on the rope above her head; the stairs tumbled down into place, and in a matter of seconds the assembled Ravenclaw and Slytherin fourth years stood atop the Astronomy Tower.

* * *

Several students shivered beneath their cloaks. It was a few days since the vernal equinox, but, at Hogwarts, there was still a distinctly wintry nip in the air, largely because the weather had been so damp lately. Indeed, that evening was the first time in nearly a fortnight that the sky had been free of clouds. Several students remarked on this.

"Rather convenient, isn't it, Professor?" said Asclepius. "The night of your big event, and all of a sudden everything clears up."

"Very convenient," said Professor Sinistra with a smile. "That was why I petitioned the Headmaster to do it."

Asclepius blinked. "You mean that you had Professor Dumbledore move the clouds aside?"

"Just for tonight," said Professor Sinistra. "One doesn't want to cause any serious disruption of the climate; the Ministry, you know, very much frowns on that sort of thing. But I don't think it will do the North Sea any harm to experience a few hours of unusually heavy rainfall."

Libby Sylvain whistled. "You really went all out, didn't you, Prof?" she said. "This must really be some cosmic event you've cooked up."

Professor Sinistra, who disapproved of slang, gave her a tight-lipped smile. "Well, of course it was nature, not I, that – ah – 'cooked it up'," she said. "But see for yourself. Miss Cranston, if you would be good enough to point out Ursa Minor for us?"

Maia turned obediently to the north, and raised her head to the region of sky where Polaris invariably twinkled over the ancient castle. Then her eyes widened, and it was some seconds before she could whisper, in a tone of wonder, "Professor, what is that?"

Her fellow students followed her gaze, and were likewise startled at what they saw. Lying between the Dippers, where nothing, assuredly, had been before the clouds had set in, was a brilliant green light, brighter than anything else in the sky except the moon; it was surrounded by a kind of veil that seemed to both soften and magnify its radiance, and, behind it, a luminous tail extended nearly a finger's length across the sky.

"Well, what do you know," said Sabrina. "Looks as though you were right after all, Anthony."

Anthony smirked. "Well," he said with a sidewise glance at James-Helvidius, "we're all right sometimes – and we're all wrong sometimes, loath though some of us may be to admit it."

James-Helvidius, who was frowning up at the comet with a look of intense puzzlement, gave no sign of having heard this barb. Arachne, however, had, and was goaded into attack. "I never mind admitting that you're wrong, Zeno," she said, in the tone of _arsenic sucré_ that was her particular specialty.

Anthony reddened. "Listen, Princess Romanov," he said, "we don't need to hear from…"

"Right there, for instance," said Arachne, triumph gleaming in her eye. "I don't have the least compunction about pointing out that the feminine form is Romanova."

A murderous look passed over Anthony's face. "You know, you're pretty brave for someone who goes to the hospital wing every time she stubs her toe," he spat. "Why don't the two of us step outside after class, and I can introduce you to a few tricks my uncle taught me to keep little inbred pure-blood tight-arses in…"

"Eh-_hem!_"

Anthony blinked, and seemed to suddenly remember where he was. He glanced up sheepishly at Professor Sinistra's icy glare, and murmured a vague apology.

The Astronomy mistress was far from appeased. "Remember this moment the next time someone implies that our House has a monopoly on boorishness, ladies and gentlemen," she said, glancing toward the Slytherin side of the class. "Now, then, let's come to practical measures. Twenty-five points from Ravenclaw for threatening a fellow student's well-being; fifteen more for taking verbal advantage of another's misfortunes; ten for the use of language unbecoming a Hogwarts student; ten from Slytherin for provoking him, Miss Dentor; and," she added, turning to James-Helvidius, "five to Ravenclaw for demonstrating how a civilised human being responds to detraction, Mr Greggson."

James-Helvidius blinked, and seemed to come out of a trance. "Oh, sorry, Professor," he said. "Did you ask a question?"

Professor Sinistra smiled ever so faintly. "No, Mr Greggson," she said. "I did not."

"Oh," said James-Helvidius. "Well, sorry, anyway. I guess I just got a bit lost in my thoughts. I could have sworn that Hale-Bopp wasn't due until next year."

"It isn't."

James-Helvidius blinked. "Then what's that?" he said, with a nod toward Ursa Minor.

"That," said Professor Sinistra, "is C/1996 B2, otherwise known as Comet Hyakutake. It was discovered not quite two months ago by a former photoengraver named Hyakutake Yuji. I'm a bit surprised that none of you knew of it, actually; there was a small but quite noticeable piece about it in the _Daily Prophet_ last month."

"I don't take in the _Prophet_," said James-Helvidius. His face was glowing with excitement (in contrast to Anthony's, which had gone even redder than before at this unexpected vindication of James-Helvidius's expertise). "So there will be _two_ comets passing through the inner Solar System between now and next spring?"

"So it seems," said Professor Sinistra. "Hopefully, the sky will be a bit clearer for C/1995 O1's approach; I doubt that Professor Dumbledore will be inclined to permit a second weather-witching for this purpose. But let's not worry about that now. Mr Wilson, Miss Barker, could you help me set up the telescopes on this side, please?"

* * *

In a few minutes, everything was set up, and the class got down to the serious business of observing and analysing Hyakutake's discovery. For the remainder of the class time, no words were spoken aloud except by Emily Kingdomtide (who had a habit of murmuring her notes to herself as she took them).

But, though nothing was said, a great deal was thought. Some of it concerned the comet; some of it concerned the recent altercation; some of it concerned other matters entirely.

_"Heaven bless you, Albus Dumbledore. You hire centaurs, but you don't let their inexplicable aversions to sky-clearings keep you from doing an old colleague a favour. That's what I call the rational, well-balanced mind."_

_"'Princess Romanov', honestly. You'd think even a Ravenclaw could come up with something better than that."_

_"I can't believe that Mancunian guttersnipe just lost us forty-five points. Someone needs to do something about him."_

_"So this is what the Destiny Star looks like. Dad will be so pleased to know that I got to see it… but I mustn't ask it for anything. We promised Metron we wouldn't."_

_"Proud celestial prodigy, sailing in a starry sea…"_

_"Oh, drat. That's the third time I've dropped my quill over the wall this term. Good thing I brought a spare this time."_

_"Just try it again, Dentor. Sometime when Sinistra's not around. Just try."_

But none of the thoughts that passed through their minds – or, indeed, the minds of anyone at Hogwarts on the evening of 25 March, 1996 – concerned the radical alteration that was about to be made to the very fabric of history, both past and future. Of all the souls at Hogwarts, only one so much as imagined that such a thing was possible, and no-one – not even the two fifth years who would set it in motion, and who would be more transformed by it than anyone else – had any notion of the form it would take.

This is the story of that alteration. This is the story of Hydra Malfoy.


	2. The Newness of the Dawn

On the morning of 26 March 1996, a certain Slytherin fifth year woke from a fitful sleep to find himself strangely disoriented; it took him a few seconds to remember where he was, and why, and certain other basic facts about his life. He was… somebody important, let's see, it began with an M… yes, there it was. He was Draco Malfoy, sole scion of his father's ancient family (and of his mother's, too, if you excluded half-bloods and convicts). He was a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he had an unofficial position as the leader of the anti-Dumbledore student faction. Just now he was in his bed in the Slytherin boys' dormitory – from which it was high time to get up, as he was feeling hungry enough to eat a whole dragon.

He shook his head, and rolled his eyes. "Morning amnesia," he muttered. He wasn't usually susceptible to it himself, but he'd heard Daphne Greengrass talk about how hard it was for her to place herself in the cosmos until she'd sat up in bed for a few minutes. Clearly, he'd spent too much time at her family's house that summer.

He yawned, stretched, and parted the curtains of his bed. The only visible body belonged to Crabbe, who was in the process of donning his school robes – a fact that startled Draco somewhat: he must really have overslept, if he was waking up as late as Crabbe. No wonder he was hungry.

"Looking natty, Crabbe," he said aloud. "Just brush your teeth and swell your head a bit, and you could pass for Gilderoy Lockhart."

"You mind your business, Malfoy, and I'll mind mine," said Crabbe, scowling at the clasps of his cloak.

If he had taken out a Muggle revolver and shot Draco in the leg, he could hardly have shocked the young aristocrat more. Draco had known Crabbe and Goyle since the three of them had been babes in arms, and neither of them had ever so much as looked at him cross-eyed; the mystique of his family's money and Dark connections had given them a reverence for him bordering on the canine. Yet here was Crabbe responding to his chaffing with… not defiance, which Draco might have understood, but with almost casual disdain.

For some moments, he was unable to speak; then, in his most coldly menacing tone, he said, "Excuse me?"

"You heard me," said Crabbe, still fiddling with his clasps. "You may be Snape's golden boy, but he's not here now, is he? So don't get smart with me."

It was exactly the tone, minus a few cutting witticisms, that Draco himself had used a hundred times towards Potter and Weasley. It was the tone that Potter and Weasley had in turn used towards him. But that Crabbe, of all people, should use it towards him – that was utterly contrary to reason. It was unprecedented, unheard of.

Except that it wasn't, quite – and that was the most baffling thing of all. Even as Draco tried to collect his wits in order to put Crabbe properly in his place, he realised that part of him was already prepared for this confrontation, and had been from the moment he had seen Crabbe standing there. It was as though, while half of him knew perfectly well that Crabbe and Goyle were the staunchest of his allies, the other half was as convinced that tension had been simmering between him and them ever since their first meeting on the Hogwarts Express. He even seemed to vaguely remember a confrontation in the common room: him standing on one of the chairs and pointing his wand down at Crabbe, and his voice shaking with rage as he said, "If you even think that about her ever again, Crabbe, you're dead. Dead as Merlin, so help me God."

Before he could sort out who the "her" referred to, or what Crabbe had been thinking about her, or where that absurd image had even come from, Crabbe had forced his clasps into compliance, and had lumbered from the dormitory, completely oblivious to the turmoil he had stirred up in Draco's mind.

* * *

Draco waited until Crabbe's footsteps could no longer be heard outside, and then rose from his bed himself. It was high time he got moving; besides, he didn't much fancy the notion of being alone in the dormitory. If the world was going mad, he wanted to be someplace friendlier than the underground chambers of Salazar Slytherin – not that those chambers didn't have many excellent qualities (being peaceful, secure, and surprisingly comfortable), but there was nothing reassuring about them, any more than there was about the house Draco had grown up in.

He froze in the act of putting on a stocking. There it was, happening again. What was so un-reassuring about Malfoy Manor? He had always been perfectly satisfied with the living conditions in his ancestral home; why did he now, suddenly, have an image of it as a cold, loveless place, filled with all the materials of good living, but empty of its essence?

He shook his head and thrust his foot fiercely into the stocking. He needed to get to the Great Hall, no question about it. He needed sunlight, and fresh air, and something in his stomach. Clearly, last night's walk had affected him more than he had thought; the moonlight must have unbalanced his brain, or something.

As he thought of the previous night, another memory tickled at the edge of his mind, but he thrust it firmly away without looking at it, and addressed himself resolutely to his toilet. In less than a minute – something of a record for him – he had donned his school robes, combed out his hair, and emerged from the solemn majesty of the dormitory into the equally solemn majesty of the Slytherin common room.

And, as he did so, a girl who was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace raised her head to him, and an exasperated smile crossed her face. "Well, it's about time, Draco!" she said. "I was starting to think that Hagrid had snuck in and eaten you!"

Draco turned to give her a withering look, and the abyss opened up before him.

He was looking at a smallish young witch – just under five feet, probably, if she had been standing up – with long, blond hair and a prominent Greek nose. Her eyes were grey, like Draco's own, but no-one could have called them cold or steely; on the contrary, they glowed with a lively attentiveness that was almost discomfiting. She had an air of restlessness about her that one rarely saw in the Slytherin chambers, but it was tempered by the cool grace natural to pure-bloods of good family (which she clearly was). There was a smudge of soot on her right cheek, a small emerald pendant hanging from her neck, and – oddly enough – a grass snake coiled up on the floor next to her.

But none of these details mattered to Draco. It wasn't this or that attribute of her that was causing his mind to reel and almost shut down; the issue was that seeing her at all had brought him to the point of ultimate contradiction. That Crabbe should be both his friend and his enemy, or that Malfoy Manor should be a place where he found both great comfort and no comfort at all – those were merely peripheral incoherencies, and Draco could ignore them without utterly unmaking himself. But what could you do when you looked into a person's eyes and knew, first, that you'd never seen her before in your life, and, second, that she'd been the closest person to you for as long as you could remember?

"I know it's your O.W.L. year, and you need all the rest you can get," the girl continued, rising to her knees and brushing the dust off her robes, "but I do think you might have picked some other morning to out-sleep the Troll Brothers. I told you what Lleu Llaw Gyffes said about there being Belgian-waffle materials in the kitchens last night, and you know how I feel about…"

She trailed off, and her brow wrinkled with concern. "Something wrong, Draco?" she said.

If a tenth of his internal agony was showing on his face, it seemed to Draco that she had good reason to ask. His heart was beating rapidly, and his head was somehow managing to ache and swim at the same time; only the fact that he was near enough the wall to brace himself against it kept him from falling to the floor in a heap.

"Tell me who you are," he said hoarsely.

The girl stared at him, and didn't seem to know whether to laugh or to call for help. "You're joking, right?" she said.

"Maybe," said Draco, not feeling inclined to argue. "But tell me anyway."

The girl rose the rest of the way to her feet, stepped forward, and took hold of his hand. "Draco," she said, her voice steady but pregnant with fear, "it's me, Hydra. Your sister. Remember?"


	3. From Syracuse to Ephesus

Yes, Draco remembered. How could he not, when every memory he had was of a life that took her presence for granted? From his earliest toddlerhood onward, the two of them had been inseparable – and naturally so. After all, their mother had died giving birth to Hydra, and their father had always been a figure apart, immersed in his own strange and sinister activities; as far as the two siblings had been concerned, the only human contact available, in all the silent vastness of Malfoy Manor, was what they could find in each other. They had grown up, under the watchful eyes of their old house-elf nurse, like two interlacing vines of ivy; every thought and feeling was shared between them, and, dissimilar though their temperaments were, each had, in some degree, helped to shape the heart of the other. Yes, Draco remembered.

But even as part of his mind remembered all this, another part was demanding to know why he was thinking all this nonsense. He knew perfectly well that he was an only child – that his mother was still alive – that he had certainly never permitted anyone his own age to shape his heart. Not that it was an entirely unappealing picture that the mad half of his brain was painting; indeed, just the previous night, he had… But he forced his mind away from these reflections. It was _not true_; that was what he had to hold onto.

But how could it not be true, when the girl was standing right in front of him and clinging to his hand? If he remembered both realities, shouldn't the one that seemed to actually exist be the true one? –But then, why did the false one feel so much older, so much more like the original from which the true one was derived?

He realised that Hydra had tightened her grip on his hand. He shook her loose, and waved the hand in an attempt at airiness. "Sorry, Hydra," he said. "I was just…" He trailed off, realising that he had no plausible lie ready, and he couldn't possibly explain the truth.

Hydra's eyes narrowed. "You didn't let Umbridge slip something in your food last night, did you?" she said. "I thought it was suspicious, the way she was lurking around our table…"

"No," said Draco firmly. Whatever had happened, he was quite sure that Professor Umbridge had nothing to do with it. Why, Professor Umbridge doted on him; she would never…

But then he remembered a certain scene outside of the Defence classroom: Professor Umbridge insinuating that she was looking for trustworthy students to help her "enforce Ministry regulations within the school"; him politely but firmly declining to be involved, and the faintest of frowns crossing her lips: _Dear me, Mr Malfoy. I had hoped that a young man of such good family would have more of a social conscience than this. _And then Hydra, when she'd heard about it, approving his decision, but seeming nervous about the consequences: _You know she's dangerous, don't you?_

While he was coping with this latest revelation of this topsy-turvy new world, Hydra suddenly glanced down; the grass snake had slithered forward, and was sitting beside her foot, its eyes raised towards her with something like concern. She reached down, picked it up, and stroked its head with her right index fingernail; as she did so, a cacophony of sibilants emerged from her mouth, so weird and inhuman that Draco very nearly jumped. He had never expected to hear anything like that outside of a nightmare – and, with that thought, a sudden hope awoke in his breast. Perhaps this whole scene was merely a nightmare, and he would soon jerk upright in his bed and find the world just as he had left it the previous night.

But that hope was dashed when Hydra looked up at him again, and grinned. "You see?" she said. "You're even worrying Lleu Llaw Gyffes. He just asked me why we weren't acting like proper mammals and scurrying off to the feeding area as soon as we got the chance."

One last datum clicked inside Draco's head. Of course, Hydra was a Parselmouth; they'd known that since she was three, ever since she'd caused that commotion at the Magical Menagerie. And of course that was what his half-remembered threat to Crabbe had been about; Hydra's first year had been a bad one to be a Parselmouth at Hogwarts, and it had taken him a dozen confrontations and about a month's total detention to shut up everyone who wanted to cast her as the Heir of Slytherin. (Never mind that he distinctly remembered supporting the Heir of Slytherin. In the Hydraic version of his life, it seemed, the opening of the Chamber of Secrets had been nothing to him but an excuse that some hooligans had used to harass his sister.)

But none of that seemed as important, suddenly, as that one word _feeding_. In all his inner turmoil, he had completely forgotten how hungry he was – and, for that matter, how full his bladder felt. Now, these animal needs suddenly leapt to the forefront of his consciousness, and his weary reason surrendered the place to them with an almost audible sigh of relief.

"Well, that doesn't sound like a bad idea," he said. "You go ahead and head up to the Great Hall. I'll meet you as soon as I've used the toilet."

Hydra smiled. "Now, that's the Draco I know," she said, and raised herself on tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. Then, dropping Lleu Llaw Gyffes onto her shoulder, she turned and hurried out of the common room.

* * *

Draco stared after her for a moment, his hand slowly rising to the place on his cheek where her kiss had landed. Even the mad part of him knew that that was something special: Hydra, for all her fieriness of spirit, was a true Malfoy, and would never have showed her affection so overtly if she hadn't been seriously concerned about him. But, to the sane part of him (if it was, in fact, the sane part), it was more than merely touching; it was a revelation. Whatever this experience was, it was no dream; you can't dream what you could never imagine, and this quiet, familiar tenderness was something utterly outside his previous experience. Even his mother, in her most doting moments, had never shown it to him; there had always been something about her solicitude that suggested the discharging of an obligation, as though she approached motherhood much as she might approach the duties of a hostess. He didn't doubt that she had loved him as well as she could, but he saw now that she hadn't had the true gift for loving – and Hydra, it seemed, did.

Twenty-four hours before, he would have shrugged off such an observation. What was love, after all? A strength in some ways, a weakness in most others; a pleasant enough thing to have, but scarcely a necessity of living. But now he wasn't sure. It seemed to him very important that Hydra knew how to love – and it seemed even more important, not to say vital, that he should know how to love her in return.

He sighed, and shook his head. These weren't thoughts to be having on a full bladder and an empty stomach. He heard his father's voice echoing in his mind – from which set of memories, he wasn't sure: _The reason why sound people always seem to be wealthy is because wealth allows one to eat regularly. Half-starved people like the Weasleys can never think clearly; that's why they cause so much trouble in this world._

The great ascetics might have disputed this line of reasoning, but it seemed perfectly sensible to Draco. With a sudden, brisk toss of his head, he strode from the common room and headed for that place where even the Archimage must go on foot.


	4. Draco Depressus

There were, Draco decided as he emerged from the first-floor toilet stall, not nearly enough poems on the subject of relieving oneself. Wine, women, fresh mountain air – all those bodily delights had been celebrated in wizarding verse; why not this one? To cast a useless and corrupting substance from your body; to feel the burden lifting from off your innards as it flowed out of you; to rise up refreshed, purified, and ready to face the world again – it was a small and fleeting satisfaction, perhaps, but there was no denying its reality.

He only wished that he could disgorge his mental burden so easily. The two contradictory sets of memories still oppressed his mind, tainting all his thoughts and perceptions with a growing sense of unreality; not only was he unsure what he had really been doing yesterday, but he was becoming unsure of what he was really doing now, from moment to moment. Was it really him, turning the tap of the sink faucet? Was it really him, listening idly to those two third years at the other sink talk about Potter's mysterious disappearance? Was it really…

…wait a minute; Potter's _what?_

His ears pricked up, and he began to focus seriously on the boys' conversation. "There's nothing to worry about, Lyle," he heard one of them say. "This is the sort of mystery that Professor Dumbledore solves six times before breakfast. He'll find Potter, you see if he doesn't."

Lyle seemed dubious. "I don't know, Cadmus," he said. "You weren't as close to the Headmaster as I was. He actually looked frightened when Granger told him."

"'Course he was frightened," said Cadmus easily. "For a moment, anyway. He's the smartest wizard in the world, so he knows lots more things than we do to be frightened about. But the point is, he also knows how to handle them."

"Well, of course, I know that," said Lyle, "but still… I mean, it has to be You-Know-Who, doesn't it?" The last few words came out almost like a squeak.

"Don't go there, Lyle," said Cadmus sternly.

"But who else could make Harry Potter vanish in the middle of the night, without even disturbing his bedclothes?" Lyle demanded. "And who else would want Harry Potter to vanish, anyway?"

"I said, don't go there," said Cadmus. "You know what happens these days if you talk about You-Know-Who too loudly. You want Umbridge sending you to give the giant squid a tentacle massage?"

"But… but…"

"Besides," Cadmus added brightly, as the two of them finished drying their hands and headed for the door, "even if You-Know-Who is brewing up some dastardly plan to bring down the wizarding world, he probably won't attack Hogwarts itself until at least noon. And in the meantime Dumbledore's cancelled all the morning classes, so what's the point of wasting our liberty brooding? Come on, last one to the Quidditch pitch is a rotten mandrake."

* * *

The two boys' voices faded down the corridor, and Draco leaned back and took a deep breath. Potter missing: now, that was a twist. He searched both sets of his memories, but neither suggested any connection between the disappearance of the Boy Who Lived and the bifurcation of his own past.

_Maybe it's compensation,_ he thought wryly. _Maybe whoever did this to me felt guilty about it afterward, so he tried to make up for it by ensuring that Potter would never meddle in our affairs again._

This was a thought (apart from the "our") in which both halves of his mind could concur, and it satisfied him somewhat. He almost smiled as he finished washing his hands, reached for a towel, and wiped them dry – not with the genteel strokes that he would ordinarily have used, but roughly and vigorously. After all, he didn't have much time; it couldn't be much earlier than eight-thirty, and he still had breakfast to eat before his first class at nine…

Then he paused, and shook his head. Hadn't he been listening just now? All the morning classes were cancelled; probably Dumbledore wanted all the professors on call while he searched for his precious mascot. There was nothing stopping Draco from taking the next hour over breakfast, if he wanted to.

Oddly enough, this newfound liberty made Draco feel rather more dismal than otherwise. He had been looking forward to the hectic morning round of O.W.L. classes, as a means of distracting him from the unnatural situation inside his head. Now the morning suddenly stretched before him, uncharted, filled with opportunity, and beckoning him to decide what to with it – when decisions were precisely what he was in no condition to make.

He leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the mirror with a groan. He needed help, that was plain. He needed someone older, wiser, someone who might know what was happening to him and be able to deal with it.

He remembered Cadmus's comment about Dumbledore's mystery-solving skills, but rejected that notion with scorn. People overrated Dumbledore; they always had. He might have been a decent wizard in the '40s (though it surprised Draco that he was willing to be so generous), but he'd been past his prime for decades – witness his inability to defeat He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Why, Dumbledore had professors underneath him who were worth three of him any day: Snape, for instance…

Snape… now there was an idea. In both Draco's pasts, Severus Snape stood out as a wizard to be relied upon; his judgment was sound, his knowledge immense, and his dedication to the students of his House notorious. Moreover, it seemed that the Potions master served, in this new (?) reality, as something of a protector to the Malfoy siblings, intervening on their behalf even at the expense of the other Slytherins. That, presumably, was what Crabbe had meant about Draco being "Snape's golden boy".

Draco hesitated only for a moment. He felt a twinge of guilt about slipping off downstairs when Hydra was waiting for him in the Great Hall – but half his mind felt no great loyalty to Hydra, and the other half had no difficulty in thinking of justifications. After all, they had the entire morning; he wouldn't be fit company in any case until he got this dealt with; and she had Lleu Llaw Gyffes there, so she would hardly get lonely.

Still, it wasn't just the desire to get his head straightened out as quickly as possible that made him, as he left the restroom, head toward the dungeons almost at a run. He had an obscure sense that, whatever was going on, Hydra was a part of it, and the only part that was definitely on his side. If she wasn't beside him when it ended, the ending wouldn't be a happy one for him; therefore, it was unwise to risk alienating her, even in such a small way as not showing up on time for breakfast.

And, besides, she was his sister.

* * *

He reached Snape's office in record time, and rapped plaintively on the door. His teacher's voice bade him enter, and he eased the door open and stepped inside.

Professor Snape was reclining behind his desk, perusing what appeared to be a massive volume of seashell lore. As Draco stepped in, he glanced up and arched an eyebrow. "Ah, Mr Malfoy," he said. "Have a seat." He waved a hand toward the chair in front of his desk, and Draco pulled it out and sat down.

"And what brings you down here?" said Snape, returning his gaze to his book. "Another difficulty with one of your classmates? Anxiety over the mysterious fate of Mr Potter? Or did you just develop a longing to hear your Head of House recite the thaumaturgic properties of the _Frenulina_ lamp-shell?"

Draco swallowed. "Sir…" he began.

Continuing proved to be less easy than he had expected. How, after all, did one ask the question he wanted to ask without sounding like an utter fool? It took him an agonising ten seconds to swallow his pride and get it out: "Did I have a sister yesterday?"

Snape froze in the act of turning a page. He raised his head slowly, and stared at a nearby bat's skeleton while repeating Draco's words several times under his breath. Then, at length, he turned back to Draco, his face unreadable. "Yes, Mr Malfoy," he said. "You had a sister yesterday. You have had a sister since June of 1981. Unless you have come here to report a second disappearance, it is quite certain that you have a sister now."

"Mm-hmm," said Draco. (Or words to that effect; the strangled sound that had emerged from him was, at any rate, intended to convey casual assent.) "So you don't remember me ever being an only child?"

"Certainly I do," said Snape. "When you were born, and for roughly a year thereafter."

"No, but I don't mean that," said Draco. "I mean, was there ever a student here who didn't have any siblings, but was very popular with the other Slytherins – Parkinson doted on him, and when he said jump, Crabbe and Goyle asked how high – and who was, um, me?"

It was clear from Snape's expression that he remembered no-one who answered to that description. For the first time, a hint of emotion began to show in his face – though whether it was concern, exasperation, or (just possibly) fear, Draco wasn't sure.

"Mr Malfoy," he said softly, "just what is it that you are trying to tell me?"

Draco shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and said, more simply and plaintively than he had thought himself capable, "Professor, I think I'm losing my mind."


	5. Mental Hygiene

Severus Snape, on the morning of 26 March 1996, was not in the most pleasant of moods. In the first place, he hadn't slept well; during Harry Potter's Occlumency lesson (if one could call it that) of the previous evening, he had caught a flash of Lily Evans smiling out from the Mirror of Erised, and the night, in consequence, had been a restless one for him. Then, at breakfast, first the house-elves had forgotten to prepare his Belgian waffle without blueberries, and then Hermione Granger had arrived with the news that Potter had mysteriously vanished from mortal ken – which, in different circumstances, would have been to Snape a cause of much rejoicing, but, as it was, even he could see that the thing reeked too much of the Dark Lord to be in any way gratifying.

Not, of course, that anyone at the staff table had actually mentioned the Dark Lord, either by name, title, or euphemism. With Umbridge sitting right there, daintily nibbling on strawberries and waiting for another name to put on her Inquisitor's list, it was hardly politic to do so. But the figure of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Referred-To had nonetheless hovered over the great hall, inspiring several professors and more than a few students to cast suspicious glances in Snape's direction. It would hardly have made for a pleasant morning's repast, even if he had been fully rested – and even if his waffle hadn't been a soggy mess by the time he had finished removing all the unwanted fruit.

Then, of course, once the meal was concluded, Dumbledore had asked to have a word alone with him, and had proceeded to spend the next half-hour extracting everything that his Potions master remembered about the previous night's Occlumency lesson, as well as anything the Dark Lord might have recently said or done that had any hope of casting some light on Potter's disappearance. It had proved a futile business, and both wizards had gone away frustrated: Dumbledore because he had gotten no information, and Snape because, on some obscure level, it annoyed him when he couldn't be of use to Dumbledore.

And now, to top everything off, just as he was finally beginning to relax for the first time in over twelve hours, along came Draco Malfoy with some preposterous story about his sister not having existed before that morning.

Had it been any other student of his House, Snape would have sent him back to the common room to sleep it off, and perhaps docked a few points for good measure. (Contrary to popular belief, Snape was not averse to docking points from his House; he just didn't like to do it in the presence of members of other Houses. A man had his pride.) But the Malfoy children were a special case. Snape had maintained his association with the Malfoy family after Lucius had been acquitted, and both that association and his later status as their Head of House had given him plenty of opportunities to conclude that Draco and Hydra were not your average Death-Eater offspring.

He remembered how it had been when Narcissa had died. The effect on Lucius had been devastating; in his own twisted way, the man had genuinely loved his wife, and losing her had left him nearly witless with grief. In his distraction, he had flung himself even more deeply into the service of the Dark Lord, who, of course, held out the conquest of death as the ultimate prize for his minions. Then, when Halloween had rolled around and there had ceased to be a Dark Lord for Lucius to serve, he had changed tack and begun delving into other methods of defying the grave. (Snape vividly remembered one afternoon at the Manor when Lucius had spent an entire tea-time telling him about a certain immortal sage who dwelt, according to legend, in a cave at the end of a bear's path, high in the Omei Mountains.)

In all of this, it was plain, there was little room for Draco and Hydra. Lucius fed and sheltered them dutifully, of course, and even showed them off to guests – what old-school pure-blood wouldn't show off a firstborn son and a Parselmouth daughter? – but anyone who cared to could see that they were of little consequence to their father, and knew it. (Snape sometimes wondered whether Lucius actually resented them on some level; it was due to Hydra, after all, that his wife was dead, and, in any event, both she and Draco resembled Narcissa strongly enough that someone haunted by Narcissa's face might well choose to avoid them.)

So they had grown up fatherless as well as motherless – orphans, as it were, in their own home. But, then again, not quite orphans, since there had always been Grumey. Snape had met a great many house-elves in his life, but the Malfoys' late nurse-elf had been something special; long-lived even by the standards of her race, she had seen five generations of her family grow up under her care, and had served them all with a curious mixture of dog-like zeal and serpentine shrewdness. Nothing in her manner but had been in perfect accord with all the canons of house-elf subservience, but beneath that demure exterior had lain a mind as clear as diamond, and a firmness of will to match. She had also known more old witches' tales than most old witches; indeed, her brain had evidently been something of a library of ancient and obscure wizarding lore, most of it largely forgotten by wizards themselves. Knowing her had been like knowing a mediæval peasant witch: superstitious and practical, reverent and realistic, fastidiously virtuous and roguishly knowing, all at once.

It was she who had, to all intents and purposes, raised Lucius's children – and that, Snape suspected, was what had made them into such remarkably human specimens of the pure-blood type. Had they been raised as most members of their class were – taken from their nurses at a preposterously early age, on the theory that dependence on a non-human is a weakness that should be rectified as soon as possible – he felt certain that Draco would have grown up as arrogant and callous as any young rajah, and that Hydra's zeal for those she loved would have been perverted into a blind, paranoid loyalty to a misbegotten ideology. Instead of which, they had grown into clear-thinking, morally healthy youths – not perfect by any stretch of the imagination (they could both have stood to be a bit less anti-social, for instance), but good enough for Snape to desire with particular urgency that their further growth not be impeded. That was why he had done what he could, over the years, to protect them from their Housemates' occasional hostility; that was why they had earned a reputation as the Potions master's particular darlings.

And that was why, now, he did not peremptorily dismiss Draco Malfoy from his office, but put his book aside, folded his hands, and said, "Explain, Mr Malfoy."

* * *

Draco's explanation was a somewhat indirect one; there is no straightforward way of saying the sort of thing that he wanted to say, and, even if there had been, Draco Malfoy was not the sort of person who was likely to find it. It was some time before Snape had gathered enough data from the young aristocrat's vague descriptions and complicated similes to form a rough conception of his predicament. "You mean to say, Mr Malfoy," he said, "that, when you think, for instance, of the Sorting ceremony of four years ago, you find yourself remembering two different sets of events – one in which your sister was Sorted into Slytherin, and one in which she was not present at all?"

Draco nodded.

"And both sets of memories seem to you to be equally authentic?"

Draco nodded again.

Snape leaned back in his chair, and considered. It was some moments before he spoke again. "Mr Malfoy," he said, "would you reach into the cabinet directly to your left and take out the stone basin on the top shelf?"

Draco blinked at this unexpected response, but hastened to comply. The object in question was rather heavy for one of his slight build, but he got it down without upsetting anything important.

"Place it here, on my desk," said Snape, brushing things aside to clear a space for it.

"What is this?" said Draco, staring down at the curiously engraved basin.

"A Pensieve," said Snape. "One of the minor perks of teaching at this school. It enables one to store memories in such a way that they can be studied more or less objectively, without consuming the whole of one's consciousness." (He did not mention the other use of the object, the one that he had been putting it to every Monday for the past few months. There was no need for a student to know that his teacher even had unpleasant memories, much less that placing them in a Pensieve rendered them less likely to be exposed during an Occlumentic backlash.)

Draco paled. "You mean… you're going to take my memory out of my head and put it in here?" he said. "What will that do to me?"

"Nothing," said Snape. "In the first place, I have no intention of placing _all_ your memories in the Pensieve, only a selection of them. In the second place, the memories in the Pensieve will only be copies; you will retain the ability to recall their originals, should you choose to do so."

Draco still looked uncertain. He eyed the basin in his hands nervously, as though it were liable, at any moment, to turn into a gulon and lunge for his neck.

"For pity's sake, Mr Malfoy," said Snape sharply, "do you want this matter rectified, or don't you? I can't help you unless I know what's going on inside your mind, and this is the simplest and least hasardous way of showing that to me that you could ask for. Now put it down on my desk before I cease to be amused."

With visible reluctance, Draco did so.

"That's better," said Snape. "Now, I want you to sit back down and make yourself as comfortable as possible; it will make the process easier. As you are doing that, think to yourself about the moment when you first recognised Hydra this morning."

Draco seemed to feel that these two imperatives stood in direct conflict with each other, but he did his best to obey. He closed his eyes and gripped the arms of the chair, and his face assumed a look of intense concentration. As he did so, Snape quietly rose, went over to the cabinet from which Draco had taken the Pensieve, and removed a small bottle of powdered Calming Draught; then he lit a small brazier and poured the powder onto the flame. Within moments, the office was filled with a deliciously soothing aroma; Snape, as he breathed it in, felt all the burdens of the morning dissipating from his heart, and, as he returned to his seat, he noted with satisfaction that Draco's muscles were far less tense than they had been before.

"Ready, Mr Malfoy?" he said.

Draco nodded.

"All right," said Snape. "Lean forward, and turn your ear toward me – it doesn't matter which one."

Draco complied, and Snape withdrew his wand and touched the tip of it to Draco's concha. "_Zakhor,_" he whispered.

A silver-white filament slithered out of Draco's auditory canal and latched itself onto the end of Snape's wand. Snape smiled grimly, and began to draw the queer substance into the Pensieve. This was a delicate process; if any of the fluid escaped, strange things might begin to happen in the castle. Snape vividly remembered the occasion, during his first year at Hogwarts, when a loose memory of Charity Burbage's had found its way into Caleb Darksome's mind as he slept; by the end of the year, the poor man had taken to wearing feminine robes and lecturing his bemused Defence against the Dark Arts students on how the Concorde worked.

Draco's voice broke in on his concentration. "Is that what a memory looks like?" said the boy, who had evidently opened his eyes.

"In this form," said Snape curtly. "Now, please, Mr Malfoy, keep quiet. I must…"

But, at that moment, something unexpected happened. The mnemonic æther, which had already nearly filled the Pensieve, suddenly began to change its quality; instead of being silvery-white, it shone with an extremely pale gleam of gold, and the consistency, though still cloud-like, began to resemble the feathery texture of a cirrus cloud rather than the shapeless stratus of a normal memory. It was as though someone had put the memory in a box and mailed it across the Atlantic, and it had suffered some bizarre damage in transit.

What alarmed Snape, though, was that this new filament refused to mingle with the other, more conventional memories already in the Pensieve. Despite his best efforts, it insisted on forming a slippery, feathery glob on top of the basin – one that skittered now this way, now that, as frantically and unpredictably as one of Robert Brown's pollen grains, and that threatened, at any moment, to spill completely over the brim of the Pensieve.

With an abrupt flick of his wrist, Snape released the filament from Draco's ear, and the boy stood up, aghast. "Professor, what in Ilmatar's name…"

"Never mind," said Snape, his face taut with concentration as he batted the memory away from the Pensieve's edges again and again. "Mr Malfoy, do you know where Professor Vector's office is?"

"Um…"

"Left out of the entrance hall, second corridor to the left, third door to the right. Tell her that I need to borrow her Pensieve. _Quickly!_"

His tone brooked no argument. Draco nearly sprinted out the door, and returned barely four minutes later, gasping for breath, but cradling a second stone basin, identical in every respect to Snape's, in his arms. He hurried forward and dropped it onto the desk; with a quick thrust of his wand, Snape sent the golden glob of memory skittering into the alternate Pensieve, where, to his intense relief, it settled quietly after some initial rippling.

With almost identical weary sighs, Snape and Draco sank back in their seats, and a momentary silence descended upon the room as they let their stamina rebuild. Draco, with the vigour of youth, was the first to speak. "So what now?" he said.

"Now," said Snape, removing a ragged handkerchief from his robes and wiping his brow, "you return to the Great Hall and join your sister for breakfast. I may be some time examining these, and I shouldn't like Hydra to feel neglected. And it seems," he added with a thin smile, as Draco's stomach made itself heard with a perfectly timed growl, "that you yourself will be the better for it, as well."

Draco laughed; now that the conflicting memories had been dampened by Pensieve replication, he already seemed to be feeling more himself. "Well, I'll give you that, anyway, Professor," he said. "Should I come back here after I've finished?"

"No, no," said Snape. "If need be, I'll fetch you. In the meantime, don't worry about it."

Draco, who was not temperamentally prone to worry about much of anything, had no difficulty in acceding to this instruction. With an almost jaunty sweep of his robes, he rose and left the office once again, leaving Snape staring down thoughtfully at the two Pensieves in front of him.

It was certainly a most extraordinary thing. In all his study and experience, he'd never come across the like. Two sets of memories from the same mind, simply refusing to interact with one another. And one of them strangely distorted…

He decided to leave that one for the moment, and drew his own Pensieve toward him. He tapped the material inside with his wand; it began to swirl and clear, and soon an overhead view of the Malfoy Manor nursery was shining up from the depths of the basin. Snape smiled to himself; he had hoped that the crucial memories went that far back. It would be a pleasure to have sight of Grumey again.

"Well, Mr Malfoy," he said aloud, "let's see what this half of you has to tell me."

He lowered his face to the surface of the basin, and surrendered himself to his pupil's past.


End file.

Harry Potter, Drama, Family