Author's Note: Harry Potter and all of its characters and settings belong to JK Rowling.

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"Brain deformities, eh?" Draco looked down at the girl who's head was resting on his chest.

"Yep," Hermione replied, "I was fairly certain there had to be some. I scanned myself for tumors. I even pretended I fell and hit my head so Madam Pomfrey would run a full brain diagnostic."

He smiled, imagining a thirteen year old version of Hermione pointing her wand at her own head, trying to figure out why he was in it.

"I think I understand it now," she mused, "Something in my subconscious knew what you were to me, what you were supposed to be, and needed to make it impossible for me to completely shut you out. Every time you sneered at me and said something deplorable there were flashes of you kissing me and telling me I belonged to you. It was like an internal defense mechanism against your mask."

Her face grew serious and he tensed, waiting for her to finally take him to task for all of those deplorable moments.

"So now I think I have a handle on pretty much everything. Your cover, the soul bond, and why I was dreaming of you but there's still one thing I really need you to explain to me."

"Anything."

"How in the name of Merlin's beard do you know who Darth Vader is?"

Draco laughed for the second time in as many days and took a moment to savor the fact that this time it didn't feel quite so foreign before delving into the answer.

"Every summer since I turned eleven I've been spending a month with Severus at his house. Ostensibly so he could mentor me in the Dark Arts. It's tradition in old pure blood families to choose godfathers based on who could offer the most knowledge. That was how my mother convinced my father to choose him over Nott Senior. Even then no one could argue that Severus was second only to Voldemort in that regard. And he did teach me quite a bit about the Dark Arts. I learned a few flashy spells to satisfy my father and a condensed lifetime of ways to defend myself against them. He taught me how to survive. But he also taught me how to live. That first summer while he was busy brewing and I was supposed to be asleep I went poking around the attic and found a dusty box full of movies. I had no idea what they were of course but it was clear from the cogs that they were supposed to connect to something so I used a compatibility spell and one of them went flying across the room to insert itself into what I later learned was a television. The damned thing turned on at full bloody volume and I thought Severus was going to murder me for touching his stuff but he just spent a minute looking from me to the television before he said, 'Well, you can't start with that one.' and proceeded to change out the tape, apparently I'd put in Return of the Jedi, and conjure a couch. We stayed up all night watching all three movies, and every summer after that we watched them again at least once, and eventually I made it through the rest of what was in the box. I got a fairly decent education in 80's movie culture. Star Wars will always be my favorite but Die Hard and The Princess Bride run really close."

Hermione was staring at him now as if she'd never seen him before.

"Who are you?" She tilted her head as if that would somehow change the view and then smiled playfully, "Seriously, you look like Draco Malfoy but-"

He silenced her with his mouth on hers and then there was no more talking for quite some time.

XXX

Severus Snape was... unsettled. There was something about that prophecy that was nagging at him. Something he thought he ought to know. He'd been racking his brain since last night, trying to figure out what was causing this feeling, to no avail. Whatever it was kept eluding him, circling just out of reach. He had taken the vial containing Narcissa's memory and watched it a hundred times and though no answer presented itself the feeling that he was missing something important would not let him go. He'd felt this particular brand of disquiet twice before. Once on the day of his graduation, and once on the day Lily died. He'd been unsuccessful in figuring out the cause of it on both of those occasions as well.

The day of his graduation he'd been overcome with the feeling that there was somewhere else he needed to be, something important he was supposed to be doing. He didn't sleep for days after. The strong feeling of loss, like nothing would ever be all right again now that he'd missed it, was almost crippling.

Adversely, on the day Lily died, when he by all rights should have felt a crippling sense of loss it did not come. There was sadness and anger but not to the extent one would expect. And there was something more. Some urgent need to search for something. As if Lily's death had reminded him how easily people could be taken from you and made him want to reach out for... someone. Which hadn't made any sense because there had never been anyone but Lily. They'd been friends half their lives and then sometime during their last year of school she'd become more to him. He didn't know exactly what had made him see her differently, he couldn't even pinpoint when it had started he just knew that what he felt was the stuff books were written of and songs were composed for. He remembered how shocked he'd been to discover that love was not an imaginary farce that the weak fell prey to and the smart used to their advantage. It was real and so strong it was almost tangible. He'd felt it wrapping around his soul in such a way as to change his entire world. He could still feel it now.

He blew out a frustrated breath as questions that had circled a thousand times beat at him. He doubted he would get any sleep tonight.

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Ron Weasley was... unsettled. His view of the world had been shaken, quite violently, and he found himself seeing things he'd never noticed before and now could not ignore. Things like the bitter resignation hiding beneath the anger in some of the Slytherins' eyes when they were provoked into a conflict. Like they knew the role life had handed them and there was nothing they could do but play it. He'd seen it time and again over the past week. There were those like Nott who did everything in their power to incite anger and violence but there were plenty who were just minding their own business when they were set upon. Gryffindors in particular seemed to go out of their way to trip them, jostle them, or throw jinxes from around corners, not giving a thought to which Slytherin they hit as long as they got one. What did it matter when they were all evil, right? It made his guts churn to think that he would have gleefully joined in only a week ago. Now he found himself doing what he could to prevent it.

He knew without a doubt that no Slytherin would take any sort of open protection well so, while his first instinct was to shout at the perpetrators, he was trying to do it surreptitiously. He wasn't exactly the master of subtle but luckily for him neither were most of his classmates. He could tell from a mile off when one of them was planning something and it was easy enough to distract or redirect them. Pansy had said he couldn't fathom what it was like being the child of a Death Eater and she was right, but the glimpse of it she'd given him had branded his soul. He needed to do something to try to atone for the pain he'd added to people who were already buried in it. For the pain he'd caused her.

If unsettled described the way he was dealing with his new world view then bloody fucking unhinged was a good way to describe how he was dealing with the fact that he'd caught himself staring at Pansy Parkinson a good dozen times too many over the last few days. He shook himself, unwilling to delve into the reasons why he knew the exact shade of her eyes and that she had seven freckles scattered across her nose, and decided to head out to the lake. Some air would do him good, and if it didn't there was a bottle of firewhisky under his bed that might.

He turned a corner and surreptitious fell by the wayside.

Seamus Finnigan had Daphne Greengrass pressed up against the wall by her throat and his wand pointed at her temple.

"Seamus, what the bloody fuck are you doing?"

XXX

Pansy had been watching the confrontation between Finnigan and Daphne for a few minutes, having come upon it on her way out of the castle, wondering what the hell her friend was doing, and getting ready to put Finnigan down as for some unknown reason it seemed Daphne wasn't going to do it herself when Ron came around the corner. She steeled herself for what she thought was going to turn into a fight because for all his overgrown puppy clumsiness she'd seen him duel and he wasn't to be taken lightly.

"Seamus what the bloody fuck are you doing?"

She stopped, wand frozen in the midst of being raised, and melted back into the alcove behind her.

"Nothing that concerns you, Weasley, so just move along." Finnigan was seething.

"I would love to, just as soon as you let her go." Ron's words were pleasant enough but there was steel threaded through his tone. He wasn't going to back down.

"No! She's going to tell me where he is."

"What are you talking about?"

"They took my brother!" Finnigan's wand started shaking. "Last night there was an attack. A group of Death Eaters killed six muggles in his village and when my brother fought back they took him. And one of those Death Eaters was identified as her fucking father so she's going to tell me what they did to him!"

"Merlin, Seamus, how would she possibly know that?"

"She knows! They all fucking know!"

"Oh and I suppose you know exactly where your father was last night then?"

'That's different."

"It's not," Ron shook his head sadly, "The only reason you think it is is because you're angry. Look at her Seamus, really look. She's not the enemy. Not unless you make her one."

Finnigan's jaw set in the way of a person who hears what you're saying but doesn't want to listen.

"Seamus," Ron's voice had gone steely again, "We've been mates for six years but I will do what I have to the stop this. As much for your sake as for hers. Let her go."

Finnigan glared for another moment and then released his hold on Daphne, turning sharply on his heel and storming away without another word.

Ron looked after him, an almost weary expression on his face, and then turned to Daphne.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. Thank you."

Ron nodded in acknowledgment and then continued on his way out of the castle. Pansy watched him walk away, feeling like a foundation point of her existence had just crumbled beneath her.

She stepped out of the shadows just as Daphne approached her hiding place.

"What the hell was that, Daph?" She took a bit of satisfaction from the way her friend jumped. Apparently she hadn't lost her touch. "You could have taken Finnigan out in at least a dozen ways."

"Yes, but that would have defeated the whole point of letting him catch me in the first place."

"Which was?"

"I wanted to see what he'd do."

"You didn't have to let him catch you for that, Daph. Anyone within range to see his eyes could tell he planned to hurt you."

"Not Finnigan. Weasley."

Pansy started at that. "What?"

"I've been hearing some interesting things this week. Things about a certain Gryffindor intervening on our behalf. Apparently he thinks he's being subtle and I suppose for a Gryffindor he's a regular ninja but Slytherins have noticed. I wanted to see if it was true. Finnigan's been after me all day so I decided to give him a shot at me while Weasley was nearby. I don't know what happened to him but whatever it was seems to have tilted his axis quite dramatically."

Pansy was silent for a long moment, trying to wrap her head around the fact that she was what had happened to him. For some reason that effected her more than she cared to think about.

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