Draco Malfoy loved a challenge. Pansy Parkinson was as hard as steel and as cold as ice. Only disdain was kept on the surface; trying to figure out what was beneath that disdain was like trying to smash a brick wall with your fist. It reminded Draco of his favorite person in the entire world: himself.

Which is why it was so disturbing to see Pansy crying like a Gryffindor girl. Few of the other Slytherins were crying, which was unsurprising because most of them had enchanted their tear ducts away. Still, their eyes were looking very swollen and their noses were looking very red. Pansy had never seen the need to be rid of her tear ducts. After all, her disdain was nearly impenetrable.

Draco was doing his best not to look at Pansy for two reasons. First, he knew how humiliating it must be for her to be crying at all, and he didn't care to make it worse. Second, at the moment he was thinking that maybe it wasn't such a good idea for him to have kept his own tear ducts. Mother always said I should get them taken care of before they started giving me trouble.

Professor Snape was missing. Snape, the one professor who was truly on the side of the Slytherins, the one professor who understood them, the one professor who insulted the Gryffindor students as often as Draco himself did. Snape, his role model and mentor, his friend and father figure, his source for advance information on tests.

The Yankee Invasion had started it. Snape had been forced to participate in a professor exchange program, trading places with a professor from Hogwarts, Massachusetts. Draco had soon realized that the Americans were only present as a result of dark magic. It was Draco who had thought of drawing plot holes to get rid of them. The plan had Americans were gone. Everything was back to normal. Almost. Professor Snape was missing.

The air inside of the Slytherin common room was thick and stale, like the air inside of a tomb that had remained undisturbed for millennia. This last shred of normality was all that stood between Draco In Control and Draco Unhinged. Pansy's sobs echoed thinly and faded away into silence. Draco could hear her rise from her seat in the corner and come toward the chairs around the fire, where he was sitting with Crabbe and Goyle, who both looked more dazed than usual.

"Move," Pansy said quietly to Goyle, who was sitting in the chair opposite Draco.

"Why?" he asked grumpily.

"I said move, oaf!" Pansy snarled.

Goyle looked at Draco, who nodded. He got up and went over to the couch, but Crabbe stretched out quickly. "No room," he said.

Goyle sat on the hearth.

"What are they doing about it?" Pansy asked Draco.

"Dumbledore says he's notified the Ministry of Magic and that he will be looking into it personally," said Draco, as if they were merely continuing a conversation.

"So nothing, then," said Pansy.

"What did you expect?" asked Draco. "The whole school up in arms? The houses united as they put aside their homework to concentrate on finding him? The Gryffindors"—he almost said "crying" but stopped himself just in time—"offering condolences?"

"Weasley said 'Snape's gone? Good riddance,'" said Crabbe. "I almost broke his leg."

"Almost?" said Goyle, disappointed. He didn't ask which Weasley. It didn't matter. They were all the same.

"He moved too fast," grunted Crabbe. "I kicked him, all right, I just didn't hear snapping."

Goyle frowned in sympathy.

Pansy stood abruptly. Goyle rushed to the chair, ready to resume his seat as soon as she left.

Draco and Pansy stared at each other for a moment, then Pansy's eyes narrowed and she nodded. Good girl. "Good night," said Pansy. Without waiting for a response, she headed for the stairs to the girls' dormitory.


A few days later, Draco was in the common room before anyone in the dormitory was awake. He hadn't slept at all. The narcoveracitas charm was a tricky one, and although extremely effective, it did take some time. Then there was the matter of sneaking around the halls of the school, but that was simple enough.

As Draco was leaving his Potions exam at the end of third year, Professor Snape had slipped a note into his hand. "Potter has an invisibility cloak," it read. "Beware." Snape's always been a little cloak-and-dagger. For Draco, the note had been the key to persuading his parents to buy him an invisibility cloak of his very own, something he had been begging to have ever since he knew they existed. Under ordinary circumstances, his mother would pat him on the head rather condescendingly and say, "When you're older, love," and his father would launch into a forty-minute lecture on fiscal responsibility. One glance at the note, however, and the Malfoys were contacting all of their most dubious contacts in the wizarding world in the effort to find Draco's coveted rarity. They had to sell half the furniture in their house to purchase it, but since the Malfoys never entertained visitors (or even had visitors), no one was likely to find out.

"I like it," Narcissa Malfoy had said bravely, surveying the half-empty house. "It's—spartan."

"Anything to get even with a Potter," Lucius Malfoy had replied. It was really more of a comment than a reply, but then Lucius was not exceptionally gifted when it came to making small talk.

The use of the invisibility cloak was taken for granted for a raid like this. But the use of the narcoveracitas charm was, Draco thought modestly, a stroke of genius. The charm caused its subjects to talk in their sleep. Always a touch-and-go operation, since often what people thought about while sleeping was no more interesting than their waking thoughts, it had the benefit of being noninvasive and virtually untraceable. Draco had counted on one of the nosy Gryffindors knowing some information about Snape's disappearance, and probably plotting a way to make sure he stayed missing. Unfortunately, what seemed to be highest on Potter's mind was the next Quidditch match (Draco had taken notes on Gryffindor's secret plays, so the experiment wasn't a complete loss), and his sidekick Weasley seemed to be obsessing over Granger. Draco nearly had to abort the mission after performing the charm on Longbottom, who woke everyone up when he started squealing, "Not another Howler! I forgot! It was an honest mistake, Grandma! I just forgot! Oooo..." He had been forced to hide in the corner of the room until everyone went back to sleep. After such a close call, he had decided to move on to other rooms. Thomas and Finnegan were likely a complete waste of time, anyway.

Draco looked at the clock on the mantel. Where was she? If she'd lost it...

"Have you been up all night?" said a voice out of the stillness.

"Give it here," he said hungrily.

"I'm touched by your concern for my…..."

Draco leapt up and rushed at the voice. "Now!"

Pansy shimmered into view as she unwrapped herself from the light folds of the invisibility cloak. "Here you are, then," she said sullenly, tossing it to him.

Draco sat down again, holding the cloak tightly and enjoying the feel of the silken fabric beneath his fingers. "What did you find out?" he asked calmly.

"For starters, that the Fat Lady who guards Gryffindor's portrait hole is very used to people mucking about in invisibility cloaks," said Pansy, sinking into a chair opposite Draco and eyeing the cloak a bit jealously.

"I know," said Draco. "When I went through last night, she thought I was one of Potter's friends. Very confused, she was. But by my question I meant did you find out anything relevant?"

"You shouldn't stay up all night two whole nights in a row," said Pansy placidly. "It obviously puts you out of sorts."

Draco found his eyes drifting down to Pansy's neck. It was pale, slender, and fragile-looking. His gaze shifted to his hands. They were also pale, slender, and fragile-looking, but—he looked up at Pansy's neck again—yes, definitely large enough to circle around...

"I could take you in a fight and you know it, Draco Malfoy," Pansy said silkily.

Wouldn't you just like to try it? "Very well," said Draco. "Let's start this conversation over again. 'Hello, Pansy.' 'Hello, Draco.' 'Pleased to see you.' 'As I am pleased to see you, thanks.' 'What...did...you...find...out?'" He paused. "Now's your part."

Pansy rolled her eyes and sighed. Draco held perfectly still, but inside he was smirking a self-satisfied smirk. If you don't back down, sooner or later the other person will.

"Other than that Ginny Weasley is dying to have some boy (Potter, no doubt) tell her, 'You're my everything'?" asked Pansy, raising an eyebrow. "I learned absolutely nothing from the Gryffindor girls."

"'You're my everything'? Who says things like that?" scoffed Draco. "If that's the sort of thing you want to hear," he said to Pansy, "you can find yourself a nice Hufflepuff boy. I would never tell you you're 'my everything.' A) You're not, B) I don't believe in telling lies"—Pansy smirked—"that make me look like a fool," Draco finished, "and C) you'd know I was lying, anyway."

"Course I would, pet," simpered Pansy. "No need to get in a snit about it."

"Don't reduce me to asking you to shut up," he said.

"Asking?" said Pansy.

He shot her a warning look. Women. More trouble than...well, more trouble than not.

"Despite the unhelpfulness of the sleeping Gryffindors," she said—and Draco was suddenly alert again— "I managed to gain—what would you call it—ah, yes—relevant information from Peeves."

"You cold-blooded tease," said Draco admiringly. "Go on."

"He seems to think that Snape is somewhere in the Forbidden Forest."

Draco almost shouted with triumph. Wait a minute. "Why didn't Peeves run off to Filch when he saw you?"

"He didn't see me, you twit," Pansy said. "I was wearing your precious cloak, remember? But he heard me moving. Fortunately, I do a fair impersonation of Heartless Helga."

"Come again?" said Draco.

"She's a ghost. She comes out after everyone is asleep and plays mind games with the ghosts of the masculine persuasion. And sometimes she comes into the girl's dormitories and starts rounds of a game she calls 'Who Would You Rather Date?' Amazing how long her attention span is... We have to pretend to fall asleep so she'll leave..." Pansy yawned.

"Never heard of her," said Draco suspiciously.

"Well, you know," said Pansy, suddenly sounding embarrassed. "Would you admit you had been playing 'Who Would You Rather Date?' with a ghost after curfew?"

"Ah," said Draco. "Point taken." Wonder how often my name comes up? Concentrate! That is NOT the matter at hand... "But why couldn't Peeves tell you weren't really Helga?"

"Poltergeists must be dimwitted," she shrugged.

"That's another thing," he said. "Why are the undead so fond of alliterations?"

"What's wrong with alliterations?" asked a perturbed Pansy Parkinson.

"Nothing," he said. "They are the veritable spice of life." You're babbling, Draco. And you're mentally referring to yourself in the third person. A sure sign of sleepiness. Agh! Alliterations!

"I'm going to sleep," said Pansy. "I'd recommend you do so, as well, if you don't want to turn into a slobbering imbecile."

"Speaking of which, I'd better make sure Crabbe and Goyle wake me up in time for our first class."

"Aren't they sleeping now?"

"I'll wake them up, threaten them into coming back for me after breakfast, and then go to sleep."

"You have that much faith in those two?" Pansy asked skeptically.

"I have that much faith in my threats," smirked Draco.


It was a well-placed faith. Thanks to his intimidated followers, Draco made it to class on time. And thanks to the same followers, only one professor took points from Slytherin due to Draco falling asleep in class. When Draco arrived in the Slytherin common room at the end of the day, his sides were deeply bruised from the prodding of Crabbe and Goyle's elbows. There were dark circles under his eyes and his reaction time was on a ten-second lag. He was in a foul mood.

"Hello, sunshine," Pansy said in a sing-songy voice.

She just spoke to you. In fact, she's mocking you. NOW's the time to respond. Say something intelligent and witty. Level her ego. Wipe that smirk off her face.

Draco growled.

"Are we on for tonight?"

What is she babbling about? On for what? What's tonight? What day is it? Process, Draco, process...

"You know," prompted Pansy, eyes intense.

Right, Pansy, that makes you so much easier to understand.

"Tonight?" She surveyed him dubiously. "Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?"

Draco was just about to roar "No" when his brain caught up with his ears, so instead he shouted, "Yes! Stop pestering me!"

"Get some rest," said Pansy sourly. "I'll wake you when the time comes."

"Don't tell me what to do," said Draco instinctively.

Before his brain was ready for his next move, Pansy's face was inches from his. "Get some rest," she hissed at him. "I'm not risking a detention because you want to be a bloody fool. We'd get stuck with Gryffindors, you know we would, and I won't be stuck with Hermione Granger for a whole Saturday, not even for you."

"Ummmm..." Smooth, Draco.

Pansy straightened quickly. "Sleep well," she said. "See you tonight."

Draco waited for what he considered was an appropriate amount of time before he sidled off to his room.

You're not afraid of a girl, are you?

Of course not. But you weren't much help back there.

I'm tired.

So she said.

What does she know?

Exactly.

So why are you getting into bed?

Because when I start having mental conversations with myself, I know I've been awake too long.

Oh. Sleep well, then.

Shut up and go away.


Something was tickling his face. Something was touching him. Someone was going to get seriously cursed. Draco's eyes snapped open and made contact with Pansy's, dark and derisive. She held her hands up in mock surrender.

"Seemed like a better idea than whispering sweet nothings in your ear," she sneered.

Draco scowled.

"You are really not much of a morning person, are you?" Pansy snickered.

He decided to ignore her. Rising from his bed, he crept stealthily to Crabbe, and then to Goyle, shaking each of them in turn.

"Where are we going?" Goyle mumbled into his pillow.

"Wherever I tell you to," said Draco, willing himself to be alert. Not going to go spacy in front of Pansy again. Gives her too much of an opening.

Goyle and Crabbe raised their heads and looked blearily at Draco and Pansy. "Okay," they said groggily after a moment. Neither of them questioned Pansy's presence in the boys' dormitory. She was, after all, a Slytherin, which mean that she followed the rules when it suited her and forgot them when it was convenient. Like Gryffindors. No! We are not like Gryffindors. We are completely different. If Father heard me say something like that...

The four Slytherins huddled under the invisibility cloak and began moving slowly toward the portrait hole. Not for the last time, Draco was grateful that invisibility cloaks were one-size-fits-all, instead of sized like normal wizard cloaks, which would logically fit around only one person and would not accommodate him and all his friends at once. Not for the last time, he wished the cloaks came with a silencing charm, because Crabbe and Goyle's boots most certainly did not. It was only by a supreme act of willpower that Draco made no exclamation when those same boots kicked him repeatedly as they walked along the corridors. Once they were out on the grounds, halfway between the school building and Hagrid's hut, he allowed himself the luxury of walloping both of them on the head. He considered having them move to the front, so that he would be the one doing the kicking, but he didn't trust them to lead. There is a down side to being the charismatic one of the group.

"Will you two try shuffling or something?" Pansy asked. "I'm this close to hexing your feet off."

"How close?" Crabbe asked dully. Draco had to restrain Pansy's wand arm.

They quieted down again as they slunk past Hagrid's hut, which was oddly silent. Draco had expected Hagrid to be the snoring type, and it must be past the gamekeeper's bedtime. Maybe he's been eaten by one of his latest "projects." Draco smiled sinisterly.

The Forbidden Forest was upon them. They moved silently into it, or as silently as it is possible for a group of four people huddled together to move. Draco was trying not to hyperventilate. He hadn't been in the Forbidden Forest since his first year at Hogwarts, and that had been a nightmare. It's different now. I'm with friends, not Potter. My friends, unlike Potter, would not desert me at the first sign of trouble. He cast a suspicious glance at the other three and did not feel an overwhelming sense of ease and comfort.

Draco paused, and Crabbe and Goyle plowed into him. Ignoring them, Draco looked at Pansy and pointed. There was a light shining in the forest. An unnatural light. They snuck toward it, hiding behind a bush when they heard the voices.

"The sun is in the seventh house," said a voice, "and Jupiter is aligning with Mars."

"But Mercury is in retrograde," said another voice.

"True," said the first voice. "In that case—three cards."

Draco and Pansy exchanged puzzled looks.

"That's one, two, three cards for you, Firenze," said a more familiar voice. It was Hagrid.

"Dobby is still so new at this game," said an even more familiar voice. "Dobby will take—two cards, please, Mr. Hagrid, sir."

"That's my old house-elf," Draco mouthed to Pansy.

"Now, lad, I've told you before," boomed Hagrid. "You can leave off the 'Mr.' and the 'sir' both when ye're talkin' to me."

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Hagrid, sir," squeaked Dobby. "Mr. Hagrid is so kind."

Hagrid grunted in a resigned sort of way. "Two cards for you, and dealer takes two as well. Ronan?"

"Orion shows himself at last," said Ronan in a faraway tone. "And the North Star..."

"Ah, come off it, Ronan," said a very familiar voice. "You're just stalling for time and we all know it."

Draco swallowed slowly. It couldn't be.

"Severus, please," said Firenze. "Ronan is merely trying to keep up appearances for the sake of the four young children hiding in the bushes."

"Potter!" Snape snapped.

"No, Malfoy!" Draco called out, standing and throwing back the invisibility cloak. He gestured vaguely at his companions. "And Crabbe, and Goyle, and Parkinson... And I'm not a young child! I'm fifteen!"

"I'm 94," said Firenze solemnly.

"All right, then," said Draco. "Okay."

"What are you doing here?" Snape sputtered. "I thought this was called the Forbidden Forest for a reason."

"We came to...to rescue you," said Draco. "We heard you were missing."

"Missing? Why would..." Snape glared at Hagrid. "Hagrid," he said coldly. "What time is it?"

Hagrid pulled a large watch out of his jacket pocket. "6:30 Monday evening," he said.

"The same as it was last time I asked you?" asked Snape.

Hagrid looked from Snape to his watch. He shook it carefully and held it to his ear, then he let out a great laugh. "Why, bless me, it's stopped!" he said. "I should have known."

"It's 1:30 a.m. on Thursday," said Draco pointedly.

"Time flies when you're having fun," muttered Snape, tossing his cards angrily on the table.

Hagrid stopped laughing. "I'd better get back to feed the creatures!" He jumped up and ran off toward his hut.

Dobby squeaked. "Dobby must get back to his kitchen duties! Winky will be so worried about Dobby!" He started to beat his head on the table, but managed to restrain himself.

Firenze and Ronan looked at each other. "It appears the game is over," said Firenze. "Everyone claim your winnings and pay your debts."

"Same time next week?" asked Ronan.

"I'll bring the timepiece," said Snape with a dark glance after Hagrid. He caught sight of Hagrid's winnings pile and discreetly pushed it into his bag. "As for you," he said, turning on Draco, "follow me. And you can hand that invisibility cloak over," he added disapprovingly. "Potter's, isn't it?"

"Mine," said Draco, gathering up the cloak and holding it possessively.

"Really?" Snape said, sounding both impressed and disappointed. Draco suspected that Snape would have loved to confiscate Potter's cloak.

Draco nodded. Pansy rolled her eyes. "What is it with you men and invisibility cloaks?"


As it turned out, Snape got his wish. They met Potter and his gang on the way back to the castle. They were out looking for Hagrid and Dobby, but Weasley tripped over a tree root, ran into Granger, and caused their whole party to fall into a tangled heap just as the Slytherin group arrived on the scene. Snape confiscated Potter's invisibility cloak ("for as long as Dumbledore and McGonagall let me keep it," as he said to Draco later) and deducted 60 points from Gryffindor.

"But Malfoy is out after curfew, too!" protested Weasley.

"Serving detention with me," said Snape. "Would you like to join us?"

Weasley didn't answer.

"Just be grateful I'm feeling lenient," said Snape, and sent the Gryffindors back to their house.

They had found Snape. They had gotten Potter in trouble. Snape had gotten a healing salve for Draco's ankles. Pansy had cursed Crabbe and Goyle's feet to shuffle for the next week. Draco's heart felt ready to burst from the sheer gloriousness of it all.

When he was safely in bed, with the lights off and the sounds of Crabbe and Goyle's snores echoing off the walls, Draco allowed himself one tear.

It was a special occasion.