The Pureblood Pretense

by murkybluematter

Harriett Potter dreams of going to Hogwarts, but in an AU where the school only accepts purebloods, the only way to reach her goal is to switch places with her pureblood cousin—the only problem? Her cousin is a boy. Alanna the Lioness take on HP.

20. Chapter 20

A/N: Warning: Lots of Malfoy. Also: I don't own Harry Potter or Alanna the Lioness.

A/N2: So this past chapter I had some of the most amazing reviews I've ever had. I hope I replied to each of you in a pm by this evening, but here's the list of people (or aliens, no judgment) I'd like to publicly thank: J.F.C., Vaughn Tyler, Giselle Pink, The Chaos Legionnaire, PrincessKitty25, zeichnerinaga, Frecklefreak, TearfullPixie, Neidan, jaz7, BaltaineShadow, xxGrAcExx, Katarinea, and Alkata. And to the anonymous reviewer: Nyctalops: thank you! I'm really glad the OC's work for you.

A/N3: Whew. Longest. Chapter. Ever. I thought about breaking this up, but I couldn't bear to leave you with another cliffhanger, so here it is, all rolled up into one (mostly) neat little package. Enjoy.

The Pureblood Pretense:

Chapter 20:

Rigel woke the next morning and spent an entire minute staring up at the delicate hangings above her four-poster bed, wondering why she felt so sick to her stomach, before she remembered what had happened the night before.

Draco is in Quarantine.

Rigel was sorely tempted to close her eyes once more and go back to sleep. If she wished last night had all been a dream hard enough, surely it would become true. Wasn't that how magic worked? Rolling her eyes at her own thoughts, Rigel got out of bed and slipped on her shoes, moving quietly as if she still had roommates left to disturb and determinately not looking around the empty dorm room as she left.

She went straight to Lab One and brewed for two hours. Then she stored the flasks of Snowhit Draught and Aurora's Breath in their respective crates and locked up the lab behind her. She hadn't strictly speaking needed to brew for two hours before breakfast. Rigel was ahead in her production levels and could afford to take a couple of hours off, but to be brutally honest she was avoiding Pansy. Their other best friend would be devastated that Draco had fallen ill, and with their Head of House gone ingredient hunting Rigel didn't know who would be responsible for telling Pansy what had happened. If it were up to her, she would avoid it as long as she could, but Pansy would find out sooner or later, and Rigel knew despite her unwillingness to cause Pansy any pain that it would be better coming from her.

Because Rigel hadn't had time for their morning walks in a long while, Pansy had taken to sleeping in until just before breakfast started. Without Millicent there to wake her up either, Pansy just barely got to breakfast on time now a days, so Rigel wasn't surprised to hear a sleepy voice answer when she knocked on Pansy's dorm room door.

"Yes? Who is it?" Pansy called drowsily. She sounded exhausted, and Rigel winced, thinking perhaps she should have let her blonde friend sleep a little longer. But no, better that Pansy know before breakfast, so she could brace herself for the flood of commiseration she would likely receive from her upperclassman acquaintances. Pansy had many friends that were not yet affected by the sickness spreading throughout the school, and everyone would want to at least appear sympathetic in the wake of the Malfoy scion falling prey to the sickness.

"It's me, Pan," Rigel said, pitching her voice softly through the door.

"Rigel?" shuffling noises came from behind the door before the knob turned and it cracked open slightly, allowing one bright blue eye to peer through the gap at her. The eye blinked, and Pansy said, "Give me just a moment, okay?"

"Certainly," Rigel said, hiding a smile at the glimpse of mussed blonde hair she'd caught before Pansy had hastily closed the door once more. Even after seven months of friendship, she had yet to see Pansy at any state less than total perfection, unless one counted the time Pansy had cried in her arms after the Lee Jordan incident, but even then her tears had been hidden in Rigel's robes and her hair a study in flawlessness. Rigel regretted that Pansy might never feel comfortable enough proprietarily speaking to just hang out in her pajamas like Rigel and Archie often did together, but she supposed it was only fair that she lose some degree of familiarity with her female friend in exchange for lying to said friend about her gender. She certainly made up for it with the familiarity she now had with her male roommates. Thankfully Draco wasn't the type of kid to lounge about with no shirt on, but Theo had no such qualms. Rigel was thoroughly disenchanted with the male form at this point, or at least the eleven-year-old version.

Rigel took a seat on a couch by one of the fires to wait, and soon enough Pansy came striding out of her dorm with fresh robes and a determined look on her recently washed face.

"What is it, Rigel?" Pansy asked briskly as she sat next to her, "You haven't had time to catch up for months, so if you're taking time to talk to me now, there must be something going on."

Rigel winced, and opened her mouth to apologize, but Pansy cut her off firmly.

"I don't blame you, Rigel. I know that whatever you are doing is important, or you wouldn't spend so much time and energy doing it. Draco and I simply worry about you, that's all," Pansy smiled in a way that was all too knowing, "You have a tendency to keep things all to yourself for one reason or another, and while as a Slytherin I respect you for that, as a friend it's hard to help you when you do that."

"You don't have to help me with anything," Rigel said automatically.

"It's not a matter of 'have to' or 'need to' Rigel," Pansy said, "But what did you need to talk to me about?"

Rigel swallowed, remembering her original purpose in seeking Pansy out with a clenching feeling in her gut. "Pan, it's Draco," she said, but her throat stuck on the next words and she shook her head mutely while Pansy closed her eyes with an expression that looked trapped.

"The sickness," Pansy said softly, resolutely, "We knew it was coming, though I admit I had thought it would get me first."

"Pan?" Rigel looked questioningly into her eyes as if she could see whether the sickness was lurking like a shadow behind them, but all she saw was the same determination that Pansy had already shown that morning.

"Rigel, you and Blaise and I are the only first years unaffected in the whole school," Pansy said gently, as if she were the one who had come to break the bad news, "That Gryffindor first-year Weasley was taken to Quarantine yesterday, and he was the last of the first years from other Houses. They cancelled first year classes days ago because there was just no one left to take them really, but I guess you haven't been to class in a while anyway…"

She trailed off and Rigel felt like a complete prat for missing so much of what was happening to her own year-mates. Next year would be different, she promised herself. She would pay more attention to her friends, and she would be there for them instead of the other way around, but Merlin please let her just get through this year with all of her friends in one piece.

"Draco fell ill late last night," Rigel said finally, thinking she owed Pansy at least that much of an explanation, "It was in our dorm room, and Flint helped get him to the Hospital Wing. He seemed fine before he…"

"They all do," Pansy said, patting Rigel's arm with no small amount of pity. Somehow this conversation had not gone as Rigel had expected it to, but she couldn't help but be grateful. She really really hadn't wanted to see Pansy upset. Perhaps that's why pureblooded women are so calm and collected all the time, Rigel mused thoughtfully, because they know that the rest of us couldn't handle their tears.

Rigel clasped Pansy's hand in a way that was more awkward than it was comforting, and Pansy smiled a bit ruefully at the gesture, but squeezed back nonetheless.

"Thanks, Rigel," she said seriously, "I would not have wanted to find this out over breakfast, no matter how prepared I believed myself to be."

"Of course," Rigel said, "I wish I could do more. I'm so sorry I haven't been there for you and Draco lately, Pan. I promise what I'm doing is important."

"You're brewing for Professor Snape, now that he's gone," she said knowingly, "Aren't you?"

Rigel fidgeted a bit, "I'm really not supposed to say, Pan."

"I understand," Pansy said gently, "Just like I understand that in your own way you're doing all you can for Draco, and for all those other kids too. When I get sick, I want you to promise me—"

"Pan, don't say—"

"Promise me," Pansy stressed resolutely, "That you won't stop what you're doing. Don't pause to worry about me and don't let it distract you from helping Professor Snape all you can."

"…I promise," Rigel said, meeting Pansy's resolute eyes with determination of her own, "But Pan, I might get sick before you do."

Pansy smiled in a way that seemed much too wise for her age, "Something tells me you won't, Rigel, though I don't know what. I guess I just can't imagine you sick."

"I couldn't imagine Draco sick yesterday," Rigel said, a bit morosely.

"Draco?" Pansy smiled, though it was somewhat strained, "You mean you can't see him laid up in a bed of silk, a damp Egyptian cotton towel across his aristocratic brow, dozens of servants attending to his every muffled moue of discontent? I certainly could."

Rigel felt a smile tug at her lips and nodded with slow agreement. She could sort of see Draco draped dramatically in a languid posture, like a desert queen wilting gently under the rays of the sun. Then she remembered the way he'd collapsed like a stringless puppet the night before and she stopped smiling. There was nothing delicate or romantic about the way Draco had fallen sick. It had been purely terrifying.

"Come on, Rigel," Pansy said, standing and tugging Rigel's arm up with her, "Let's get to breakfast. Everything seems better after a good pot of tea."

Rigel rose and moved her arm so that she was escorting Pansy more than she was being dragged along by her, and they headed up to breakfast alone.

When they got to the Slytherin table, they sat as close as they could to what was left of the second year students, so that the loss of their own year-mates was not felt quite so obviously. Halfway through Pansy's second cup of tea, the post arrived, and Pansy put down her teacup with a sigh upon receiving hers.

"Oh, she didn't," Pansy muttered darkly, and Rigel looked up from the letter Sirius had sent her to see what had her friend agitated, "That Skeeter woman doesn't know when to leave well enough alone." Pansy was staring at a copy of the Daily Prophet with an icy scowl, and Rigel slid closer to get a look at the headline.

MYSTERIOUS MAGICAL MALADY STRIKES HOGWARTS

Rigel felt like cursing, but settled for a deep frown instead. So the news was out. She supposed Dumbledore couldn't have kept it quiet forever, but Rigel dreaded the repercussions that would come with such publicity. If the Cow Party wanted bad press for Dumbledore's faction, they couldn't do better than Skeeter. Resigned, Rigel began reading over Pansy's right shoulder, which was stiff with distaste.

Rita Skeeter, special correspondent for the Daily Prophet, writes to inform the public of the dangerous secret currently being kept from concerned parents around the country. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry had been recently struck with an unknown and highly contagious magical disease, which has infiltrated the population and already infected upwards of 50 school children with its strange and baffling symptoms.

This disease, a here-to-fore unknown in the magical medical community, exhibits itself through the onset of a sudden and as far as this reporter has discovered irreversible magical coma. Despite the Quarantine that was reportedly enacted immediately following the outbreak of this epidemic, the disease continues to spread unchecked through the school, particularly affecting the youngest of Hogwarts' illustrious student body. The disease does not discriminate for House or family affiliation; scions of the light and dark both have been struck down by this viscous illness.

Just last night, Mr. Draco Malfoy fell to the sickness, an event that both shocked and disturbed the young scion's well-known parents, Mr. Lucius Malfoy and Mrs. Narcissa Malfoy-nee-Black. This reporter was graciously allowed a few moments of Mr. Malfoy's time, which she employed industriously on behalf of the deserving public, that her readers may know what exactly is going on at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

When asked whether or not Mr. Malfoy, as both a parent and a member of the Board of Governors was aware of this illness prior to his Heir's contracting of it, Mr. Malfoy replied, "I regret to say that Headmaster Dumbledore saw no need to appraise either the parents or the members of the Board of Trustees of the situation at Hogwarts. To find out that not only has my son taken ill to a potentially lethal disease, but that he was the not the first, the second, but the fiftieth student to succumb to the illness, was of course a cause of deep concern for my wife and I. I sincerely hope that Dumbledore knows just what it is he is doing, as it does not seem to involve adhering to basic protocol for dealing with epidemics of this proportion."

This reporter certainly agrees with Mr. Malfoy's keen insight into the situation. What exactly is going on at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? How is it possible that not until roughly 1/7 of the population lay in magical comas did the general public learn of such a risk to their children and Heirs? According to what this reporter has gleaned, Hogwarts has not even called for additional medical staff, though the Hospital Wing must have reached capacity some months ago. Is this truly the best environment to be entrusting the future of the magical world?

Well, it is too late to make that call, thanks to Headmaster Dumbledore. St. Mungo's has officially declared Hogwarts a general Quarantine Zone in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading to the rest of our world. What this means, dear readers, is that at this stage in the development of the epidemic, parents cannot pull their children out of school even if they want to.

"I know it seems harsh," one anonymous Healer at St. Mungo's said, "But since the Quarantine within the school doesn't seem to be making a difference, the only option is to keep everyone who's in the school, well, in the school. Honestly, it's quite a surprise that it hasn't spread to the general population yet, and until we know how to cure the disease, we'd like to keep it that way."

This reporter asked the Healer if the reason there had been no progress made on curing the disease was due to the elaborate cover up at Hogwarts, which prevented Healers from knowing and therefore studying the disease for several months.

"Well, not really," the Healer answered, "True we just learned of the illness a few hours ago, but Madam Pomphrey is truly a credit to her profession. We've got all her notes, and the illness seems extremely straight forward, while at the same time giving no clues as to how to cure it. Days or months won't make much difference with a disease like this. You either know how to cure it or you don't, and studying it won't help. It's not like a puzzle, you know, with a right answer if you just think about it hard enough."

This reporter was not convinced, so she asked the Healer what was being done to prevent the disease from picking off helpless students one by one. The Healer shrugged, and said, "Until the disease gives us another clue, there isn't much we can do. Now don't look at me like that. It's not as though these children are in any real danger at the moment. Magical sleeps can be kept up pretty much indefinitely with the right potions, you know. All we can do at the moment is wait, and hope a solution presents itself soon."

While the parents and friends of all those bright young pureblooded children 'wait' for a solution, there are many who do not pass the time idly. Instead, they question: why is this sickness only coming to light now, months after the initial outbreak of the illness? What does this epidemic mean for the students at Hogwarts and their families? Will there be any lasting effects? Could The Hogwarts Malady have been prevented in some way or perhaps cured faster if there had been information available from the start? Where is Dumbledore leading the future of the Wizarding World, which has until now been left so trustingly in the bastion of the Light's wizened hands?

For more on the standard protocol for magical epidemics, see page 3

For more on the precedents for magical comas, including the famous cases of Snow White and Aurora aka Sleeping Beauty, see page 4

For information on where to send a letter of complaint concerning Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, see page 5

Rigel sighed as she moved away from the paper in favor of concentrating on her breakfast once more. She felt a bit sick to her stomach after reading Skeeter's article, but knew that her body needed food in order to fuel her magical core with enough energy to get through another day of brewing.

Pansy huffed indignantly as she shoved the paper away from her plate, "I can't believe she'd just splatter the news of Draco's illness all over the front page like that. As if the Malfoy's really want people knowing their son and Heir is sick. Just think of the repercussions for the families of the students at Hogwarts now. They'll seem weak, unable to protect their Heirs, and the Malfoy's especially will lose a lot of political clout for this; the Malfoy motto is 'blood before honor' for Merlin's sake. How will it look if people think they can't take care of their own?"

Pansy continued to mutter along in this vein for some time, and Rigel quietly let her rant. In truth, the Malfoy's probably would lose a bit of political power until it became clear that Draco would be fine, but after that Rigel thought they would return to their usual state of unofficial royalty in the wizarding world. Rigel also thought Mr. Malfoy's interview with Skeeter was rather obvious in the way it sought to undermine the Headmaster, but she supposed she shouldn't be too surprised. After all, Mr. Malfoy was high in the Cow Party, so if they were indeed responsible for the illness then it stood to reason that Mr. Malfoy was in on the plan, and had been ready to slip the information to Skeeter as soon as he got the chance—which meant he knew that his son would likely catch the illness and was therefore fairly confident in the essentially harmless nature of the sickness.

If anything, Rigel actually felt better after thinking about that. If Malfoy was confident enough to allow his son to be used in the political gambit, then surely the illness was not actually harming any of the students after it locked away their minds. Though the true Malfoy motto was something like 'purity always conquers' Pansy had been right to say that the motto everyone remembered the Malfoy's by was 'blood before honor' which basically amounted to blood before anything, as Malfoy's took honor very seriously. So if Mr. Malfoy let his own blood, his Heir, contract this sickness, then Rigel didn't need to worry about her friends too much in the long run. As long as she kept making Potions, nothing truly terrible would befall them.

Her heart more at ease than it had been in a long while, Rigel excused herself from the breakfast table and went to take the latest batch of Potions to the Hospital Wing.

The Hospital Wing was shielded from casual approach by line in the shape of a semi-circle gouged deep into the stone corridor in front of the big double door entrance to the Wing. It was much like an age line or any other kind of semi-permanent ward, but instead of keeping out people of a certain age, it kept out anyone not escorted in by a witch or wizard with a Healer's Badge. When Rigel approached the line, it flared blue in warning and she tapped her toe against the edge of the line, which hardened like a wall as she came into contact with it, and sent a faint bell-like tone reverberating down the corridor.

A few moments later, Pomphrey rushed out, looking harried, and said, "Mr. Black, good, good, just pass those through to me, won't you?" She held out her hand from her side of the Quarantine line, which allowed solid objects through if said objects were handed to a Badge-wearing medi-staff, but Rigel hesitated.

"I was actually hoping I could come in today, Madam Pomphrey," she said carefully.

The Healer sighed in a put upon way, "You can't, Mr. Black, no one can. You know that. Now give me the Potions, I've had a busy morning what with every Healer in the country trying to floo in and find out what's going on thanks to that Skeeter woman's article."

"Please, Madam Pomphrey," Rigel tried again, turning on the kicked puppy look for extra swaying power, "Draco's one of my best friends, so surely if the disease passes mind to mind I've already caught it and just haven't shown the symptoms yet. Our mental paths are too familiar for me to not have been infected by now. I just want to see him for a few minutes. I won't be in the way."

The nurse pursed her lips, saying, "Regardless of the likelihood that you are already at risk, I really don't think it's a good idea to let what is at present our only Potions maker into the Quarantine area, especially as your age puts you most at risk."

"I understand that, Madam Pomphrey," Rigel said earnestly, "But Professor Snape will be back soon to take over the Potion making, and we've already enough to last us more than two whole weeks even at the rate the sickness is spreading now, so it won't really cause too much trouble if I fall sick, especially since I'm bound to succumb soon anyway with my friends all sick."

Rigel chose not to mention that she really hadn't been spending enough time with her friends lately to be sure she'd been exposed to the illness. She knew it was selfish to put herself at risk to see Draco, but she had been working hard enough that if she fell sick before Snape returned the Hospital Wing would still be well-stocked.

"Still," Pomphrey said, frowning, "I'm not sure Professor Snape would agree…"

"It's just so difficult making all these potions without really seeing what they're for, ma'am," Rigel said, sighing slightly for effect, "I think if I could see my friends I would understand better, and it would seem more real to me, so that I know what I'm doing is important and I can continue with renewed determination in my heart."

Rigel knew she'd laid it on too thick when Pomphrey rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and sighed, "It's like Sirius Black all over again." Rigel opened her mouth to try another tact, but Madam Pomphrey held up a hand, "Fine, fine, I know how you Marauder boys can be, and if I don't let you in you'll likely find some extremely dangerous and irresponsible way to sneak your way in. Don't disturb any of the patients, and for Merlin's sake don't tell Severus about this." She reached through the Quarantine and pulled Rigel through by her shoulder, steering her through the big doors and into the Hospital Wing proper, which looked like it had been expanded five times over. The inside was a positively cavernous expanse of pristine white, with rows of beds filling up the elongated space industriously. There must have been about eighty beds lined up at least, though only a bit over half of them were occupied.

The eerie part was that the entire place was completely silent save for Madam Pomphrey's heels clicking against the white tiles and the potions in Rigel's arms clinking together gently as she carried the crates along after the Nurse. Though there were fifty children lying prone on beds throughout the room, none of them stirred as they passed. None of them even snored, though Rigel knew from listening to Zabini complain about it that either Crabbe or Goyle must have snored when sleeping naturally. Pomphrey stopped in front of a half-filled row of beds and took the potion crates from Rigel's arms.

"Mr. Malfoy is in the second to last occupied bed in this row," the nurse said briskly, "You have ten minutes, and then you should leave to reduce the risk of the sickness spreading to you."

"Thank you, Madam Pomphrey," Rigel said before moving quickly down the row of sleeping students. She recognized both Neville and Ron as she passed them, but she didn't pause until she reached the second to last student's bed. Rigel was somewhat ashamed to see that the last kid in the row was Blaise Zabini, who she had noticed vaguely was absent from breakfast, but whom she had not spared much thought on apart from that. She turned her eyes back to Draco, however, whose pale complexion looked washed out and sickly underneath the harsh infirmary light, and moved closer so that she could put her fingers to Draco's neck carefully.

The steady pulse beneath the pads of her fingers relaxed a knot of tension in her gut she hadn't realized was there until it was gone. Draco was fine, and he would remain so, she told herself, so the sourceless dark feeling she had obviously didn't mean anything. The proof was right beneath her fingers. She moved her hand up to brush back a bit of white-blonde hair from her friend's face, wondering morosely how long it would be before she was looking at Pansy in the same way. For whatever Rigel had told her other friend, she knew Pansy was probably right. Rigel was better protected thanks to her rudimentary Occlumency than Pansy was, and Pansy had spent more time with Draco, Blaise, Millicent, and Theo, all of whom had already fallen ill, than Rigel had in the past months.

"It's going to be okay," Rigel told Draco quietly, "Professor Snape and I won't let anything happen to you, and when you wake up I'll tease you something terrible for fainting on me. And you'll say 'Malfoy's don't faint' and Pansy will get that look on her face when she wants to roll her eyes but is too sophisticated to do so, and everything will be normal again. I promise."

At a stern look from Madam Pomphrey from across the room, Rigel patted Draco's head one last time and left the Hospital Wing to continue brewing.

Sometime in the afternoon, hours after Rigel had finished the lunch Binny brought her, one of the blank walls in Lab One shimmered for a distracting moment and then abruptly shifted until it held a modest fireplace. As Rigel asked her magic to put a Stasis Charm on her two caldrons, green flames sprung up in the fireplace and a chiming noise began echoing around the room. Rigel frowned for a moment, unsure how one went about answering a floo call in Snape's Labs. At Godric's Hollow, one just had to approach the fireplace, so Rigel stepped forward until she was bathed in the green light coming off the flames and sure enough the chiming stopped and a familiar head appeared in the fireplace.

"Hello, sir," Rigel said, crouching down so that she could meet his sharp gaze levelly.

"Mr. Black," Professor Snape said in his clipped voice, appearing to be just as larger than life as a floating head as he was in person, "Good. I don't have much time before I have to meet with the next potential merchant. Progress report?"

"Potions wise, the Hospital Wing is currently stocked three weeks in advance," Rigel said, "The Acai substitution is working well."

"Are you overtaxing yourself?" Snape asked, eyeing Rigel knowingly.

"No, sir," Rigel said, "The Acai requires a bit more magic be imbued than the Ginseng does, but it's nothing I can't handle. I saw Madam Pomphrey just this morning, and she had no complaints regarding my health."

"Very well," Snape said, "I have asked my London supplier to send more Acai to you, so expect the shipment tomorrow morning."

Rigel frowned. More Acai meant there was no Ginseng on the way. "No luck with foreign suppliers, Professor?" she asked.

"None," Snape said curtly, and Rigel could see the lines of frustration and a hint of some darker emotion playing about his face, "Apparently the European suppliers have all experienced an unexpected demand of Ginseng in the past month. They are to a one drained dry of the ingredient."

Rigel's eyes widened, "The sickness has spread to Europe? Why haven't we heard?"

"It hasn't," Snape said darkly, "None of the European suppliers knows why their Ginseng was bought up or even who did the purchasing."

"Someone is cornering the market?" Rigel said incredulously. What were the odds that the very ingredient they needed in both of the potions vital to the continued health of the students was inexplicably removed from public trade at that exact moment?

"So it would appear," Snape said, scowling, "Since no one seems able to contact this mysterious buyer, I must look elsewhere. I am going East to continue searching, and will likely be out of touch for the next week. The wizards in those parts use other means of travel, so the floo system is spotty at best. If an emergency arises, send me an owl, but don't expect a reply for a couple of days. If there is nothing else?"

He waited expectantly and Rigel hesitated. Draco was Snape's godson, so the Professor would likely want to know that he'd fallen ill, but on the other hand, did Rigel really want to distract the Professor with news he could do nothing about while Snape was already doing something so important?

"Nothing that will not keep," Rigel said, deciding it best to tell Snape about Draco when he returned.

"In that case I will see you when I return. Rest, eat, and for Merlin's sake try not to fall ill," Snape said.

Rigel barely had time to say, "Good luck, sir," before Snape's head had disappeared and the green flames had extinguished themselves.

Hp-*_*-Hp

[HpHpHp}

Hp-*_*-Hp

When Rigel returned to the Hospital Wing with another couple of crates that evening, it was to the sound of tense voices emanating though the Hospital Wing doors, which had not been closed all the way after whoever had last gone through them. Tapping her foot at the Quarantine ward, Rigel was surprised to see that her foot went through it instead of hitting against it. She tentatively stepped over the Quarantine line, realizing that it must still recognize her as someone admitted by a Healer and therefore allowed to be there. She made a mental note to look up how such a ward would work later, and used her shoulder to push the half-open door back enough to let her through.

None of the three people conversing on the other side of the Hospital Wing noticed her as she came in with her potion crates. Rigel, used to adults ignoring her by now and never one to pass up an opportunity for eavesdropping, carried the crates over to the staging tables in the middle of the infirmary and began unloading them quietly, Snowhit on one table and Aurora's Breath on the other. The voices carried over to her as she worked, and she realized after a moment that she recognized all three.

"…severe reaction to both of the necessary Potions. I didn't administer them until just a few hours ago, as it takes about half a day for the unconscious processes to stop working on their own after the sickness takes hold in a child, but only ten minutes later his body rejected both potions completely. As of yet, I have not determined what is causing this reaction, as there is nothing in his file that would indicate an allergy to one of the ingredients, let alone an ingredient in each of the potions." That one was Madam Pomphrey, and she sounded both defensive and very concerned.

The next voice took her a moment to place, only because she was not expecting to hear it there. "Of course there is nothing in his file, as my son is not allergic to anything in either of those potions. Clearly this reaction is a result of something else." It was Lucius Malfoy. Rigel turned her head to stare in alarm at the three adults, peering against the bright, almost blindingly white light in the Wing. Madam Pomphrey was speaking to Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, who were standing with stiff shoulders and even stiffer expressions in similarly undecorated dark grey robes. Rigel could hear her breathing grow louder in her ears as she realized that if Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy were there it meant that the boy they were talking about was Draco.

"What's wrong with Draco?" Rigel blurted, causing the three older witches and wizard to turn and stare at her with surprised affront at the unexpected interruption.

"Mr. Black," Lucius Malfoy spoke in a clipped tone that did nothing to hide his obvious ire. Rigel took in the hard lines around the elder Malfoy's mouth and thought he looked nothing like he'd come across in Skeeter's article that morning. This was not the face of a man who knew his son to be free from immediate danger. Malfoy looked like a father barely restraining his worry and anger, and Rigel found that she did not like the look on him at all, especially if it meant there really was something wrong with Draco.

"What brings you here, Mr. Black?" Narcissa asked with an expression that seemed cold and blank until Rigel caught the hint of fear that laced her eyes in their too-wide irises and erratically fluttering lashes.

"Just dropping off the latest batch of potions, Mrs. Malfoy," Rigel said, "Is Draco okay?"

"He reacted badly to both Snowhit and Aurora's Breath, the two potions necessary to sustain the coma harmlessly," Narcissa told her, as if she was repeating something she'd read in a textbook, "It has not yet been determined why."

"But Draco needs those Potions," Rigel said blankly, unable to fully process what she was hearing, "They're all that keeps his body running healthily while his mind is locked away."

"We are aware of that, Mr. Black," Malfoy Sr. bit out through gritted teeth. Rigel winced. Of course they were aware of it. But this was bad. If Draco didn't get those potions he wouldn't last a week in the magical coma.

"Yes, sir," Rigel said, trying to be respectful of their obvious worry for their son but at the same time too worried herself for her friend not to keep talking, "Can you give me a list of his allergies? I made the potions, so I know exactly what ingredients are in each. I could tell you what he might be allergic to in each one."

The Malfoy's looked at Rigel with something that might have been incredulity.

"You are the one brewing the potions for these students?" Mr. Malfoy asked, the tone of his voice suggesting without saying that perhaps her presence explained some things.

Insulted that Malfoy thought she had made a mistake with the potions and thereby caused Draco's bad reaction, Rigel bit back a hot retort. She took a breath, telling herself that Malfoy knew little to nothing of her potions skills and that he was just a man worried about his son, as anyone in his position would be.

"I am," Rigel said when her voice was even enough, "Professor Snape is currently out of the country, so I assumed responsibility for brewing Snowhit Draught and Aurora's Breath while the Professor is away."

Narcissa put a hand gently on her husband's arm and spoke before he could, "No one else has had such a reaction to the potions?" At Madam Pomphrey's nod of confirmation, Narcissa went on, "Then the problem is still in Draco's reaction to the potions specifically. If Mr. Black knows how the potions were made, then perhaps he can enlighten us as to the problem."

Madam Pomphrey thrust a piece of paper she'd pulled from a manila folder at Rigel, saying, "This is Draco Malfoy's allergy listing."

Rigel reached to take it, but Mr. Malfoy cut in. "Don't bother," he said, pulling out a different sheet of paper from inside his robes and handing that instead to Rigel, "That list is incomplete. Take this."

Madam Pomphrey looked ready to launch into a tirade about irresponsible parents who didn't list their children's allergies completely for the school's files, but Narcissa interjected gently, "Draco has a delicate constitution. He gets that from me," and here she looked so guilty and regretful that even Madam Pomphrey softened a bit, "We aren't sure ourselves what all he is allergic to, and we thought a complete list would be too much hassle for a school record."

Translation: we didn't want to so openly state all of our Heir's weaknesses in case anyone wanted to use that information to harm him, Rigel thought cynically. She could understand where they were coming from; the Malfoy's had a lot of enemies. Madam Pomphrey had a point too, however. It was hard to expect the Healers to anticipate your child's allergies if you hadn't informed the Healers of them.

"In any case," Malfoy Sr. said sternly, "All of Draco's allergies to ingredients or substances used in life-saving potions were included. Severus himself went over the list, and Draco is not allergic to anything in Snowhit or Aurora's Breath."

"Clearly he is allergic to something," Madam Pomphrey said waspishly, apparently at the end of her patience, "And until we figure out what it is, I can't administer those potions in good faith."

"Can't you just keep him under the charms?" Narcissa asked anxiously.

"Assisted living spells can only work for so long before the body needs to do the work itself," Pomphrey said tiredly, "I can keep Draco's lungs breathing and his heart pumping for three days at the most on those spells. After that, a wizard's magical core begins to reject the spells, sensing that the body itself is no longer active, and automatically detaching itself from the wizard's body to rejoin the wild magic of the earth. The potions are the only long-term solution we have at present, as they mimic the signals the brain would usually send to the body to continue performing natural processes. Even though we could keep him technically nourished intravenously, Draco's magic wouldn't recognize him as alive with the Charms doing the breathing and blood-pumping for him."

Three days. Rigel shook her head to clear out the fog that was rising up behind her eyes at that thought. No, she had to concentrate. All was not lost.

"We don't need three days," Rigel said firmly, breaking through the ominous atmosphere left in the wake of Pomphrey's words. "As soon as we know what Draco's reacting to, we can work around the ingredients." Rigel looked down at the sheet of paper in her hand. The list of allergies was extensive; Draco really did have a rather temperamental immune system. As she scanned the list, rejecting each allergy as she came to it as either not related to Snowhit or Aurora's Breath or else not existent in the final product in a large enough quantity to manifest a reaction, her eyes caught on one substance and she paled with dread.

Acai.

"Draco is allergic to Acai?" Rigel whispered hoarsely, her mouth suddenly dry as parchment.

"Yes," Narcissa frowned gently, "Forgive me, but I do not believe that is an ingredient in either—"

"Substituted," Rigel murmured, still staring at the four neatly scrawled letters with something very much like horror uncurling inside of her. When she remembered herself, she tore her gaze from the page to look up at the Malfoy's miserably, "We ran out of Ginseng, which is in both potions, so we had to substitute Acai."

Malfoy looked exasperated, "Then order more Ginseng and get my son his potions."

But Rigel was shaking her head back and forth even as he spoke, "We can't, there isn't any Ginseng anywhere. That's why Professor Snape isn't here; he went to look for Ginseng, but he hasn't found any yet."

"How can he have 'not found any'?" Malfoy snapped, "Severus knows suppliers all over the country. Surely someone can procure some for us. We don't need much, just enough for Draco to last the duration of this sickness." Rigel opened her mouth to explain, but he cut across her, speaking more quickly as he became more and more agitated, "Tell Severus to spare no expense. We will pay anything, just get the Ginseng to Hogwarts today."

"I can't," Rigel said, pleading with her eyes for them to understand, "There's no Ginseng anywhere in England or Europe. Snape's looked everywhere, but the market's been cornered in the last month or so, and whoever bought it all up isn't selling. The Professor went East to look for more, but he said he'd be gone another week, and he's off the floo grid. An owl will take days to reach him, and even if he gets it we'd have to hope he'd actually found Ginseng."

Rigel gripped at her hair in panicked frustration and tried in vain to calm herself down.

Meanwhile the Malfoy's were both as cold as ice, clamping down on their emotions so tightly that Rigel couldn't even guess at what they might be feeling anymore.

"Well," Madam Pomphrey said shakily, "Well, we have three days to come up with a solution."

Rigel nodded, turning her mind toward a specific course of action, "Madam Pomphrey, you're stocked up with both potions for at least another three weeks, so I'm going to focus all my attention on figuring out a way to make the potions without Acai, okay?" The nurse looked rather pityingly at Rigel, but Rigel just pressed, "Okay?"

"Alright, Mr. Black," the older woman said tiredly, "You may be excused for the next three days of brewing. I w—" Whatever she was going to say was cut off by a distracting beeping noise going off in all of their ears. "Oh, that's the Snowhit alarm. Excuse me, I need to administer the next dose to these children." The nurse bustled off to take care of her duties and Rigel and the Malfoy's stared at one another for a long moment.

"Until we can get a letter to Severus, it seems that our son is in your hands, Mr. Black," Narcissa said softly, "Severus speaks highly of you. I sincerely hope he was not mistaken."

Rigel set her chin under the purebloods' assessing gaze, "I will do everything I can to help Draco." I promised him it would be okay, she added silently. "Excuse me as well, Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy. I need to get to work. Is it alright if I keep this?" she gestured to the allergy list in her hand and Mr. Malfoy nodded jerkily, his eyes not on her, but across the room where his son lay still and pale as ice.

Rigel couldn't look at Draco, couldn't bear to see him under the yellow glow of the life-sustaining spells, so she bowed her head deeply to her friend's parents and left the Hospital Wing at a near run. She had work to do.

[HpHpHp]

By the next evening, Rigel was more tired than she'd ever been while brewing for Snape. She had poured over the notes Snape had given her on both potions, as well as consulted the large stack of potions journals Snape kept organized by date in one of the cupboards in Lab One, and she kept coming back to the same, horrible conclusion.

She couldn't substitute a substitution. Everything she read agreed that trying to substitute an ingredient for another ingredient that was already a substitution for the ideal ingredient caused the potion to become too unstable to enact the change it was designed for. At best the potion was useless, at worst highly poisonous. She couldn't use anything in place of the Acai in either potion unless it was the original Ginseng itself. In other words, she had wasted a day and ended where she'd started, with Draco no closer to help.

The worst part of the whole thing was that even if Rigel had miraculously found a perfect substitution for Acai and gotten Draco the potions he needed, Draco would still be sick! She was wracking her brains and running herself into the ground just to keep him in stasis, when what was really wrong with him was so far outside of her skill set that she couldn't even attempt to help him.

No, she corrected herself bitterly as she locked up the Lab and walked slowly to the Great Hall for dinner, The worst part is that it's all my fault.

Rigel was acutely aware of just how much the situation was her fault. Because Rigel was helping Snape brew, they'd brewed more potions faster and therefore run out of Ginseng faster than if Snape had been working alone. While that meant production would be less if she weren't helping, it also meant Snape wouldn't have had to leave Hogwarts for Ginseng for another few weeks, meaning he would have been at Hogwarts still when Draco fell ill. And if that weren't enough, it had been Rigel's decision not to tell Snape that his godson was ill. Only Snape, Madam Pomphrey and Rigel had known that Acai was substituted for Ginseng in the potions, and only Snape and the Malfoy's had known that Draco was allergic to Acai, so if anyone could have done something about the allergy before Draco had a bad reaction to the potions it was Snape, who knew both about the allergy and the Acai substitution. And Rigel hadn't told him. Now Snape was out of reach and Draco had three days before his magical core realized his body was not actually responsive and detached itself from him, and Rigel was left with the overwhelming and undeniable truth that she was to blame.

Just when she thought her heart couldn't sink any lower, Rigel sat down at the Slytherin table and realized that she was alone in the unofficial first-year section of the benches. Completely alone. She fisted her hands under the table tightly, and turned her head to scan the rest of the table, looking for one particular shade of blonde hair to prove her dreadful suspicion wrong. The look on Rookwood's face as she caught his eye was all she needed to know. Feeling as though she was choking on her own heart, which had suddenly risen from the pit of her stomach to her throat, Rigel pushed away from the table roughly, ignoring Rosier as he made an aborted gesture to stand and follow her—aborted because Rookwood pressed a firm hand on the other Slytherin's arm and shook his head resolutely.

Rigel ran out of the Hall and didn't stop until she was outside of the Hospital Wing. She paused, hesitating for only a moment, not sure if she wanted to see Pansy laid up like a limp little doll in the too-bright hospital light, but a second later she passed unchallenged through the Quarantine wards and pushed open the doors to the Wing.

It was silent, more so than just the rows of eerily quiet sleeping children could account for, and after a quick glance Rigel realized Madam Pomphrey wasn't anywhere in the expanded room. The nurse must have been in her office, perhaps eating dinner. Rigel was grateful for the privacy as she crossed the ward to walk along the half-filled row that held the most recent patients. At the very end of the row lay Pansy, next to a Hufflepuff third year who must have fallen ill after Blaise.

Pansy looked like an angel, serene and innocent, with her halo of blonde hair spread out beneath her head, except that no angel should ever be so still. There were bare signs of life, a slow, almost inaudible breath here and the slight flush of fever there, but what struck Rigel most of all was how young Pansy looked in her enchanted sleep. She'd always seemed to Rigel like a mini-grown up, just a smaller version of Narcissa Black, but in sleep Pansy truly looked her eleven years, and Rigel was reminded how much bigger this sickness was than them, no matter how much it felt like she, Pansy, and Draco were in the center of the maelstrom. This sickness wasn't about them, wasn't really about any of the children who had succumbed to it. They were just chips to be gambled in a political bluff by the S.O.W. Party (at least that's who Rigel thought must be behind the sickness). And yet, for all the first-years' insignificance to the big players in the game, it was they who would be most affected by this mess.

Draco had two days before the life-sustaining spells could no longer disguise his body's unresponsiveness, and if the worst were to happen…Pansy would take it hard, and Rigel had to admit that she would too. Not to mention Draco's parents and—Rigel's gut clenched—Snape, if Draco were to pass before his godfather returned and even discovered he was ill. Because Draco would die, if his magical core separated itself from his body. The shock to his major systems would surely kill someone so young, especially without his mind aware enough to override his body's reaction to the sudden loss of magic in his system.

Rigel left Pansy's bedside and went to stand by Draco's. Did he look a bit thinner already? No, of course not. Madam Pomphrey would keep him manually hydrated and nourished for as long as she could. He did look a bit feverish though. It was a strange sort of fever. Draco didn't toss and turn or mutter as patients normally did under the influence of a fever. It was purely a fever of the body, and the mind remained untouched. Or perhaps a better explanation was that whatever was happening in Draco's mind was causing the fever, but not caught in the fever itself. Either way, the result was that though Draco's temperature was continually trying to rise, and he had to be fed Sweat Inducers to cool his body down as much as possible, he remained perfectly still, seemingly unaffected by the discomfort the fever must have been causing his body.

Rigel gazed down at her friend and felt something that was probably a pale comparison to what Archie must have felt watching Aunt Diana slowly fade away before his eyes. She felt defeated by this sickness. So many promises were going to be left unfulfilled in its wake. She'd told Pansy she would keep helping Snape as much as she could, but here she stood, not helping anyone at all, drained and weary. Snape would be disappointed in her too, and probably angry when he realized she'd deliberately held back information from him, as if she were in a position to decide what her Professor could or could not handle being told. What a joke her best efforts were turning out to be. But letting down Pansy and Snape was nothing compared to letting down Draco. She had promised everything would be okay, that he would be okay, and she'd promised his parents to do everything she could to help their son.

But what can I do? Rigel gritted her teeth with frustration, I can't invent a new potion in three days, and I can't substitute a substitution, and even if I could Draco would still be sick.

It was a very rare moment in her life when Rigel didn't know what to do. Things that would be stone walls to other people—Hogwarts' pureblood-only policy, a broken wrist—were just obstacles to her, and every minute of her life was spent moving forward, always forward toward one goal or another. Here she was well and truly stonewalled. A sickness like this was not an enemy to be fought, a spell to be figured out, or an upperclassman to be bargained with. Rigel could understand completely Archie's desire to be a Healer if only it meant she would never feel so helpless against something again.

Rigel was about to go in search of a chair, so that she could sit by her friend's side a bit longer, when she felt it.

It was a tickling sensation that niggled her awareness, a creeping that she felt with one of her senses she didn't use in the physical world. Something was brushing against her mind. She fell into meditation mode automatically, turning her consciousness inward to view her mindscape. She was certain that's where the uncomfortably foreign feeling was coming from. If she hadn't been so familiar with her own mind after so many meditation sessions, she likely wouldn't have even noticed anything, let alone been able to do anything about it. As it was, she swept through the fog in her mind cautiously, searching through the gloom for the intruder she knew had to be there.

She reached the great white mountain without seeing anything unusual, but when she stopped there and turned her inner eye around, her physical body inhaled sharply with what she saw. The foggy mists around the peripheral of one part of her mind, usually while or at most a light grey, were infected with black tendrils of…something that was steadily creeping through the air toward her mountain like a great insidious black weed. She shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the chilly mindscape and backed away toward the mountain, moving down its face and slowly heading for the illusion of an ice wall that protected the inner sanctum of her mind. She could not tell if the black stuff had any way of sensing its surroundings, or if it simply moved forward on magic-bred instinct, but she moved as stealthily as possible through the ice wall so that she wouldn't draw its attention just in case. She felt the warmth of the cavernous potions lab behind the ice illusion just as she saw the black tendrils reach the peak of her mountain fortress. Her physical body shivered as the black thing felt about the tip of the mountain, clinging to it and slowly spreading further down the face, but when she entered the underground cavern fully she could feel her physical body no more, and instead she had a second awareness of what was happening at every level of her mind, from the Foggy Mists to the Space Room.

Using this awareness, she kept track of the inky black substance that was slowly taking hold of more and more of her mountain side while her avatar that represented her consciousness moved through the decoy potions lab and to the trap door beneath the great rug that lay before the fireplace. She dropped down into the tunnels beneath the lab and mentally willed the trapdoor to close behind her and the rug to return to its place. By the green crystals embedded in the walls' light, she moved confidently thorough the web of tunnels that branched from the third path from the right and a few minutes (in mental time) later arrived at the door that sealed off her Space Room. The door was a new addition, from her last meditation session. It had no discernable handle or latch and fit smoothly into the rough rock surrounding it. It only opened to a password, and that password relied on knowledge that only people she trusted would have. It was fitting, she thought, to guard her memories and secrets with a door that could only be opened if one already knew the most closely guarded of her secrets.

She cupped her hand around her mouth and whispered to the door, "My name is Harry Potter, and I am not a boy."

The door slid sideways into the carved stone wall, and Harry stepped through into the infinite impossibility that was her Space Room. The door closed behind her as she pushed herself off of the ground and floated lightly around various memories, which were all trapped and focused into little stars and planets. The memories didn't orbit the sun in the center of the great space, and instead drifted freely in any direction they pleased. Harry did the same, floating aimlessly as she concentrated on her sense of the other portions of her mind to check on the black creeping invader.

It had settled like a cloak over most of her mountain, and Harry felt a bit ill as the sensation of tar-like sludge rolled over her mindscape. It would not be long before the black tendrils found their way past her ice wall illusion, for the thing seemed to be relying on touch more than sight, and the illusion wouldn't hold up against direct contact. When she had designed her mindscape, it was with the assumption that any intruders would be at least humanoid if not wizards themselves, and would be using eyes as their primary source of information about surroundings, and Harry was only now realizing how much of a liability that was.

She knew what the black thing was, or at least had a pretty good guess. It was the sickness, finally come for her. Just as Snape had postulated, it spread mind to mind, and Rigel suspected that the other kids affected by it hadn't had any mental awareness of it until it had completely taken over their mindscape and wrested control from them. Since she had experience with her mind through meditation and rudimentary Occlumency training, she had been alerted when the sickness first targeted her, though now that she was aware she wasn't sure what she could do about it. Harry would have to rely on the safeguards she had already put in place, having no idea how to fight a mental enemy head on yet. That, she assured herself, would be the next thing she studied when she got out of there.

If she got out of there. Harry was keenly aware that in retreating from the black sickness, she had well and truly trapped herself in her own mind. She had never built another exit from her mind, and wasn't sure it was even possible, especially now that so large a part of her mind was under the control of the creeping blackness. The only way she knew to get out of her mind was to go back out of the mountain and leave through the mists, and with the mountain and mists now swallowed by the sickness, that really wasn't about to happen. She didn't want to know what would result from her consciousness coming into contact with the black stuff.

She could feel the black stuff sliding through the illusion now and into the bright, cheery cavern that held her decoy sanctum. It didn't seem to be in a hurry, and it didn't seem to notice that the scrolls of potions recipes it was smothering with its black feelers weren't her real memories, but mere mental constructs. In fact, the sickness didn't appear to be terribly clever, and Harry wondered if that was because it wasn't a part of a being with a real consciousness or if it had simply engineered to be that way because it was meant to target children. After all, it wouldn't suit the S.O.W. Party's purposes if the sickness really did become an epidemic and infected adults as well as children. A wizarding world in chaos did no one any good. So it must be that the sickness was only supposed to be effective against children, who hadn't come into the full mental awareness that came with growing up and really learning and knowing themselves.

If that was the case, Harry thought hopefully, then the sickness wasn't invincible—it wasn't bred to be. She just had to figure out a way to beat it. Not in herself, no. Harry frowned determinately; she had to find a way to beat the sickness in Draco. He was the one really in danger, because even if it meant her secret came out, Harry could be kept alive at least with Snowhit and Aurora's Breath until the sickness lifted. Draco would die if the sickness kept its chokehold on his mind for very much longer, and nothing, not even her deepest secrets, was worth a friend's life.

But how was she going to help Draco while she was trapped in her own mind? Should she fight off the sickness in her mind first, and then try to help Draco after that? No, her avatar shook her head, sending her long black hair floating weightlessly about her, she didn't know how much time was passing in the physical world. Her mental time could be moving faster or slower, and there was no way to get a good read on her physical body unless she was out in the first layer of her mind, on the mountainside. Here she was too deep in her mindscape, and didn't even know if she was still standing, frozen by Draco's bed or if she'd collapsed on the Hospital Wing floor.

So she somehow had to get to Draco, or more specifically to Draco's mind, from within her own mind. She didn't know Legilimency, and was pretty sure it wouldn't work if you were already in your own mind, and besides that Snape had said that the sickness made Legilimency on its victims impossible.

Harry drifted close to her sun and basked a little in the warmth it gave off. She really did like how her magic felt in her mind. It was fiery and strong, but reassuring in a dependable kind of a way. Like the sun. Here in her mind she felt connected to her magic in a way that she didn't while dealing directly with her magical core.

Wait. Harry stopped drifting and spun midair to stare thoughtfully into the sun at the center of the Space Room. Connected. Connections. That's it!

Harry let a crazy smile bloom across her face as the plan came to her in a rush of insight. She didn't have to get to Draco's mind from the outside. She just had to forge a connection from the inside.

Pausing a moment to assess the situation in her own mind, Harry nodded in satisfaction. The sickness was still lumbering about in the main cavern, and even if it discovered the trapdoor and the caverns beneath it, she had fleshed out the tunnels in the last few meditation sessions. It would take a long time for it to fill up all of those tunnels, and it was unlikely that it would sense the Space Room by touch alone. Even if it did, there was no way an entity without a consciousness could get through the door that protected it. If nothing else, her memories and magic were safe.

Fueled by that assurance, Harry dove into the sun.

Connections, connections were the key. She couldn't believe she'd almost missed the most obvious one. Hadn't Snape told her when he'd explained about magical cores that usually a magical core was spherical? Each one was different, but the secondary level of the magical core, the true core, was what represented that person's magical power most appropriately for who they were. Her primary layer was coils, ropes and tendrils and twisting bits of magic all wrapped up around the center, but she'd never looked close enough to discern what her true core was. Yet it was so obvious.

If magic made events in the mind real, then it stood to reason that what was true about magic in the mind had some connection with what was true of the same magic in the 'real' world. Hadn't she created the Space Room specifically because she'd found the sun already burning at the center of her mindscape? If she didn't make her magic take the form of the sun, then it was a natural form for her magic to take, which meant that her true magical core must be something like a miniature sun. And that wasn't all. How did she use the energy of the sun to enact changes to her mental landscape if the sun in her mind wasn't somehow connected to the sun in her magical core? She couldn't. Every time she'd used magic before, the magic had traveled from her magical core to her hands to either the wand or the stirring rod she was using to conduct the magical energy. It didn't just manifest in the wand itself or in the air around her, though she supposed theoretically one could pull magic from the wild magic sources in the world like the ancient druids…she pulled herself back on focus, feeling the warmth of her own personal sun singing along through her consciousness as she delved deeper and deeper into the ball of magical energy, following the heat and pushing through what felt like tangles of energy until—

Yes! She emerged, breathless (though of course as a product of her own consciousness she didn't strictly speaking need to breathe), on the other side and found herself staring at the outside of a very familiar coil-covered magical core. She'd been right. Magic couldn't be transmitted without a pathway, and if there was a magical core in one place and the exact same magical core in another 'place' then it only made sense if those two magical cores were in fact one, connected and simply manifesting in different ways and spaces, one physical and one mental. It made perfect sense…if she didn't think about it too hard.

Harry flexed her senses once more—magical, mental, and physical, as since she was no longer in the inner recesses of her mind she was peripherally aware of her physical body as well—and took stock of the situation. She was out of her mind, and that realization alone made her glow with success. She could still feel the blackness creeping about in her mind, but it was a distant sort of revulsion and her more immediate senses were concentrated on 'where' her consciousness was and what her physical body was doing. She was at the nexus of her magical core, like she'd been the day Snape had taught her how to perceive a magical core, and she could feel the warmth of the core on her consciousness the same way she could feel cool tile beneath her cheek with her physical senses. Turning her awareness outwards, she tried to perceive what was going on in the real world without breaking her own meditative trance. It was difficult. Using her five regular senses made her automatically tend towards operating on the conscious level, so she had to hold on to her mental and magical senses while at the same time focusing on her physical senses. The process was distracting, but what she heard when she concentrated on listening in the physical sense caught her immediate attention and made focusing much easier.

She was no longer alone in the Hospital Wing.

"Don't touch him," a voice said sharply. Harry recognized it as Madam Pomphrey, and wondered who she was talking about until she remembered that while she was completely herself in her conscious manifestation, in the real world most people thought her a boy named Rigel. She had separated the two parts of her life so completely that it was a bit jarring to witness from the outside while being aware of both parts. Like watching a movie.

"But surely he must be moved," that voice was Narcissa Malfoy, "The boy is obviously uncomfortable, particularly if he's been sitting there since dinner, and if he's succumbed to the sickness—"

"He hasn't," Pomphrey said briskly, her tone brooking no argument, "If he had, he would be in a magical sleep like the others, but he is not asleep. He is not even truly unconscious."

"Then what exactly is he doing on the floor?" Mr. Malfoy's drawl was too distinctive to mistake.

"He appears to be meditating," Pomphrey said, and Harry could almost see her lips pursing, though she couldn't open her eyes without snapping herself out of meditation completely.

"On the ground?" Narcissa asked dubiously.

"I doubt he was expecting it," the nurse said, "No doubt he was struck by the sickness rather suddenly."

"You just said he wasn't—"

"Oh, he hasn't succumbed," Pomphrey said, and Harry wondered if Malfoy's eyebrow twitched when he was interrupted like Draco's sometimes did, "I wondered why Mr. Black hadn't fallen ill before now, considering how many friends he has in other Houses, but I chalked it up to his having so little time to spend with his friends once he began brewing with Snape for the students falling ill. It appears he must have some rudimentary training in Occlumency."

"Occlumency?" Mr. Malfoy's voice sounded tight, and Harry silently grumbled at having one of her most carefully cultivated skills revealed so carelessly. She knew nurses were trouble for people with secrets.

"Hmm, yes," Pomphrey said, "The sickness is spread mind to mind, on the loose mental pathways that are constructed through close acquaintance, and to an experienced Occlumens the sickness would pose no threat, as it preys on unprotected minds, preferably the open minds of children. Since Mr. Black is neither an experienced Occlumens nor completely unprotected mentally speaking, he likely fell into meditation immediately upon detecting the threat the sickness represented in his mind."

"Will he be able to fight off the sickness?" Narcissa asked, "Now that he is aware of its presence, I mean."

"Impossible to tell," Madam Pomphrey said, in what was probably her lecturing voice, "From what we can tell, the sickness usually takes the mind unaware, clamping down once it has the mind under its own control and snapping up a barrier to prevent any communication into or out of the mind, so that the mind can't send signals to the body and can't be reached through the use of Legilimency. Once the child's consciousness is trapped within its mind by the sickness, the child might choose to fight back, which is what we believe causes the fever we see in some of the children. As to whether catching the sickness before it has complete control will give Mr. Black a fighting chance, well, it depends on how good his Occlumency is, frankly."

"Either way, he will be of no further help with Draco for the foreseeable future," Mr. Malfoy said coldly.

Narcissa spoke softly, but firmly, "Come now, Lucius. Neither of us really expected the child to be able to help. Letting him try and come up with a solution was more for his peace of mind than for ours. We must hope that Severus receives our message in time."

Harry curled her consciousness closer to her magical core, seeking reassurance from the warm sun rays coming off of it. Was she really so useless that her best didn't even merit the benefit of the doubt? She shook off that thought impatiently. She would help Draco. She promised she would, and she had a plan now. She just needed to know how much time she had.

As she turned her attention back to what was going on outside of her, she heard Narcissa say, "Can't we at least transfer Mr. Black to one of the beds? If he does wake from this fight on his own, he should not be rewarded with a stiff neck."

"We will have to move him very carefully," Pomphrey said, stressing her words to emphasize that she didn't think moving her the best course of action, "If he is distracted physically, it could upset the meditation."

Harry silently agreed; if she hadn't known it was coming, the sudden, though gentle, feeling of disorientation as her physical senses registered a change in surrounding that was not self-orchestrated would likely have pulled her consciousness back. As it was, she braced her consciousness by focusing hard on the mental and magical senses and ignoring the weird sensations coming from her physical senses as her body was picked up by unfamiliar hands and moved sideways toward the row of empty beds. Belatedly, she realized that being moved too far away from Draco would make the next part of her plan much harder, and she desperately clung to her non-physical senses even as she willed her vocal cords to vibrate and her mouth to say "Draco." It was difficult, and came out more like 'Drayo,' which she thought had something to do with a good portion of her mind being infiltrated by the black sickness, though she didn't know exactly which parts of her mind controlled her body. She hadn't designated a portion of her mind to her physical body, though now that she understood how connected the two were she would remedy that, so she guessed motor control and communication in general between her mind and body would be tied generally to her consciousness, but still affected by the sickness to some extent.

She felt her body stop moving in the real world, and split her concentration as much as she dared between getting the words she needed out and remaining within the meditative state that was keeping her consciousness out of the sickness' reach. She knew instinctively that if she let her mental avatar dissipate and came back to her body, the sickness would have full control over her mind and body, though it wouldn't get to her memories or magic, which were protected in the Space Room even without her there. She felt her lips form the words, though she didn't know how much was her actually getting her body to do what she wanted and how much was her magic helping to make her will manifest. Magic and willpower were funny things, and Harry didn't pretend to understand them very well.

"Stay. Drayo. Help. Drayo." There. That made sense. Or at least it was the best she could do, so hopefully they understood. She didn't have any more time to waste, as she still didn't know how much time had passed while she was meditating. She had been naïve to think one of them would conveniently mention the time of day, though she gathered it was still the same night. That meant she had less than two days to get into Draco's mind and help him get the sickness out of it. Harry vaguely felt her real-world body being moved closer to Draco's once more, and was grateful that they weren't making her task harder, but she didn't have energy left to waste on the real world at that point. Instead, she pushed her physical awareness back to the part of her consciousness that held her mental awareness and turned her attention to her magical senses. The next part of her plan was all theoretical, and she was relying a lot on sheer willpower to make it work, but it had to be done.

Harry asked her magical core for its cooperation in what she was about to do, and it thrummed happily, sending little pulses of warmth at her that she took for a wordless yes. Trying to remember how Snape had done it several weeks before, Harry coaxed one of the coils around her magical core into unwrapping itself while she extended her magical awareness in the same way she extended it when she needed to imbue a potion. Except she wasn't searching for the placid, passive receptor for magic that an unimbued potion was. She was looking for the active magical core belonging to Draco Malfoy.

There were four magical cores in close proximity to her, and other magical cores just a bit further away, but Harry zeroed in on the closest and smallest magical core, which had to be Draco's. She flung the coil of magic that had unwrapped from around her true core out toward the foreign magical core, willing it to forge a connection. She felt it latch on to the other magical core, like a jigsaw piece fitting into place or perhaps more appropriately like the sear of flame hitting dry ice, and she sent out a pulse of magic like Snape had taught her to feel out another's magical core, ignoring the guilty feeling that reminded her she was supposed to ask permission before establishing this kind of magical pathway. The magical echolocation pulse returned to her and she digested the information it had recovered for a moment. The core she'd forged a connection to was definitely Draco's. It felt like him, in a way that only made sense to her magical perception. Draco's core, however, was nothing like her core. Quite the contrary. Where her core was coils of magic around a brightly burning sun, Draco's core felt like a little ball of ice. Her magic stung a bit where it met his and it was constant work to keep the connection up.

Harry steeled herself once she was sure it was Draco's core she was connected to. Then, instead of sending another magical pulse down the connection, she sent herself down the magical pathway. There was no time for doubts as her consciousness sped along the current connecting her core to Draco's, but Harry was fairly confident this would work. After all, if she could project her consciousness inwardly to both her mindscape and her magical core, and travel between the two using innate magical pathways, and she could send magic outwards to create more magical pathways, there was no reason she couldn't project her consciousness along those magical pathways as well, as long as the pathways all stayed connected. And if that logic failed, then if she had learned nothing else her first year at Hogwarts, it was that magic was good at breaking rules.

She felt strange, the links to her own mental and physical senses stretched thin and largely indecipherable to her as she moved closer to Draco's magical core, and she hoped her mental defenses would hold, as she imagined the only thing worse than being trapped in her mind by the sickness would be being trapped out of her own mind by it.

She could see Draco's core up ahead of her now, and she slowed until she was approaching it cautiously. It was one thing to poke at Snape's core while Snape was aware and in control of both his magic and the connection. It was another to blindly send her consciousness careening into another person's magical core while that person had no awareness of it. She didn't want to provoke an instinctive and likely defensive reaction from Draco's magic by appearing overly hostile.

His core looked like just how it had felt. It was a ball of blue ice, significantly smaller than Harry's was. Was this how big most first-years' magical cores were? Or was Draco's simply more condensed than hers was? She thought his core looked unnaturally still, but on the other hand she was used to thinking of magic as semi-independent moving energy, as her sun-core reflected. The more she thought about it, the more the ice core seemed to sort of suit Draco. His magic never did anything unexpected, after all. He used it for spells and the rest of the time it lay pretty dormant as far as Harry could tell. Perhaps his core reflected that. It certainly looked dormant.

The ice was unmoving, unyielding. She took a moment to consider it, seeing that she would have to modify her approach somewhat. Her theory was that if her mind was connected to her magical core naturally, then other people's cores must be connected to their minds in the same way. Even though Draco's mind was shut from the outside by the sickness' Occlumency-like barriers, his magical core was still connected to his mind from the inside. It had to be, because if that connection had been disrupted, his magical core would have immediately detached itself from Draco's body and dissipated. Since according to Pomphrey it would take his magical core three days to realize that Draco's body was only responding as living due to artificial magical influence, that realization was probably being delayed by the continued existence of the connection to Draco's mind. So her plan was to take the projection of her consciousness along magical pathways one step further, and send herself through Draco's magical core, and into his mind that way.

The idea was to do the same thing Legilimency did, which was to send one person's consciousness into another person's mindscape, except she would send her consciousness into Draco's mind by establishing and traveling along magical pathways instead of mental pathways. Several things could go wrong with this plan, and Harry was excruciatingly aware of all of them. She could be mistaken about how far one could extend their consciousness from their body before it snapped back. She could be wrong about the connection between the magical core and the manifestation of that core in Draco's mind being still connected. It could also turn out that while traveling through her own magical pathways was possible, traveling through someone else's would do something unspeakably horrible to her.

It didn't help that Draco's magical core was made of ice. Harry's magic didn't like it one bit. Still, needs must.

Before proceeding, Harry asked her magic to please make her avatar look more like Rigel did in the real world. She felt the magic tingle across her eyes and assumed it had turned them grey once more, but her hair remained stubbornly long. She shrugged, thinking that her consciousness was probably too deeply embedded for her to change her manifestation of herself very much, and figured that long hair wasn't too unusual for a boy. Archie Black used to have long hair anyway, anyone who knew him could support that.

Harry moved forward to lay a hand on the outside of Draco's magical core. The ice shivered a bit, but didn't budge. Sorry, Draco's core, but I'm afraid I'll have to insist. She pushed a bit more firmly, asking her magic to help her. The ice sizzled and melted around her hand and Rigel felt a strange rush of energy as she slowly melted a hole in the ice big enough for her to squeeze through. The ice was thick, and even when she'd gotten her whole body into the tunnel she was digging, she still couldn't see Draco's true core. She noticed the ice re-solidifying behind her and began to move faster, using both hands to push and mold the ice away from her. Strangely enough, she wasn't getting tired at all. If anything she felt more energized than she had before. All of a sudden, her hand burst through the ice and hit something on the other side that was definitely not air.

It was water. Harry took an automatic gulp of air before the tunnel flooded with water, and then she realized that she didn't need to breathe, and shook her head at her own foolishness. She swam the rest of the way out, looking back to see the water in the tunnel already turning to solid and smooth ice once more. She looked around curiously as she swam deeper into Draco's true core. It was like being in a swimming pool, in that there was no vegetation growing along the edges and no fish swimming around in the core, just pure, light blue water all around, trapped by a thick layer of ice.

At the center of the true core there was a whirlpool. It spun too fast for Harry to see beyond it, but she could only assume that this was the wellspring of Draco's magic. Indeed, it seemed to be pushing water out of it instead of sucking water in, so she concluded that this was where Draco's body regenerated magic when it was used. It was also the connection between Draco's magic and his mind, if she was right. She began to swim toward it, but the current suddenly whipped up around her and pushed her back once more. She tried again, with no better results.

She growled with frustration. "Let me in!" Bubbles came out of her mouth and dispersed like a starburst in different directions, sticking to the underside of the ice layer and slowly absorbing into it. The whirlpool seemed to slow, or maybe it was just her imagination. "Please," she tried reasoning with it, "Draco needs help. I want to help him, but I need to get through here to do so." The whirlpool was definitely slowing down now. The lip of the swirling water seemed to tip toward her invitingly, and Harry gave it a dubious look, but shrugged, thinking, Here goes nothing.

She propelled herself into the whirlpool, and the world became a dizzying mess of rushing water before her vision went black.

-Hp-*_*-Hp-

[HpHpHp]

-Hp-*_*-Hp-

Draco POV:

Draco was cold. Well, okay, not really, he admitted to himself as he idly tossed the ball of snow he'd been playing with for the last…how long had he been in here? Ah, well. The point is he should have been cold, considering his surroundings, but he really wasn't. He was sitting on a small iceberg, afloat in a little pond of ice-blue water. If this was real life, his legs would have been numb in the first few hours, but Draco didn't think he was in real life anymore. He didn't think he was dreaming, either. For one thing, he had never had such a boring dream before, even though it had been a little exciting at first, when the black octopus has chased him onto this iceberg. Or maybe it hadn't been chasing him. It hadn't seemed too concerned when Draco had escaped from it, swimming out into the pond, which seemed to be the only thing untouched by the black tar-monster. Lucky this iceberg was here, really. Or had it been?

Draco hadn't seen the iceberg when he started swimming. It was only after he'd gotten tired of treading water and looked for a place to rest that the iceberg had appeared. He thought maybe he'd made the ice appear, because he could sometimes make other things happen in this place if he tried hard enough. That's how he'd gotten his snowball to play with when the boredom had become too much. There were things he couldn't do, though, no matter how hard he tried. He couldn't wish the black stuff away.

Draco tossed the snowball once more and pretended it was a very fat and lazy snitch. He had given up figuring out a way to leave, and he was having doubts as to where exactly he was, in any case. He remembered talking to Rigel, and being particularly fed up with the boy's workaholic tendencies. His friend was nearly as bad as his father when it came to work, and that was saying something. He remembered telling Rigel to take it easy, and then Rigel telling him he couldn't, and then…had Rigel cursed him? No, Draco didn't think so. Rigel never got mad at anyone, much less used magic on them. The boy actually seemed to avoid using magic whenever he could, though he'd stopped making strange things happen by accident, so maybe his magic was settling down after all. Rigel was probably just a late bloomer, with a little accidental magic left over from his childhood that was working itself out.

If Rigel didn't curse him, though, how did he end up here? His vision had gone black, and the vertigo he remembered made him think he'd fallen unconscious somehow. The most obvious answer that he really didn't want to think about but probably should was that the sickness had gotten him. Everyone at Hogwarts knew by now that the sickness had no symptoms until the kid collapsed, so if he had blacked out without warning it was probably because he was sick now, too. If that was the case, then maybe he was dreaming, since he'd heard rumors that the sickness made kids sleep for eternity.

He had a momentary flash of panic where he nearly missed catching his ball as it came back down. Would he be stuck in this place forever? He brushed that thought aside impatiently. No, of course not. Someone would get him out of here. If not him specifically, they would at least cure the sickness eventually and then he would get out of this boring dream by default. Not that he really thought it was a dream.

Draco sighed. He had a pretty good suspicion as to what was really happening to him, but he didn't like to acknowledge it. It was too horrible. His father had sent him a letter a few weeks ago that was very cryptic, even more so than usual. Draco could still remember the exact words his father had written at the bottom of the page.

Your mind is your greatest advantage. Keep your thoughts close, son, and your friends at a distance.

Draco scowled even now just thinking about them. At the time, the words had made no sense. As if thoughts could be anything but close. And Draco knew that although he wasn't an idiot like some of his less fortunate classmates, his mind wasn't his greatest asset. If anything, that would be his Malfoy good looks. He chuckled, and it echoed weirdly across the water. Seriously though, he was much better at doing magic than thinking about it. Pansy was better at theoretical problems. And distance himself from his friends? Draco had thought his father approved of Rigel, and he knew his father liked Pansy.

In retrospect, and in light of the sickness, it all made much better sense. He was to keep away from his friends because the sickness spread from friend to friend. That much was clear just by observing the pattern of the kids who fell ill. Draco hoped Pansy and Rigel hadn't fallen ill because of him. Keeping his thoughts close sort of made sense, if it meant keeping his mouth shut about the things he thought, but Draco had a feeling it meant more than that. It had to do with his mind being a great advantage—not asset, but advantage, his father had said. If he thought about the sickness in light of his father's warnings about his mind, things began falling into a discomforting picture.

The sickness made a kid's body go to sleep, but Draco didn't feel asleep, even though he knew he must have contracted the sickness. That meant that it looked to the outside that the kids were asleep, but on the inside they weren't. So his body was asleep, but his mind was not, and if he wasn't asleep, then he must be in the only part of him that wasn't asleep: his mind. From that conclusion, it was easy to guess that the sickness affected the mind, and that keeping his thoughts close was some sort of vague reference to protecting his mind, like Uncle Severus did. But how could a mind be an advantage when that was the vulnerable point the sickness attacked?

Maybe it's an advantage because it's my mind, Draco speculated, Like a home-pitch advantage. That suggested that he had some kind of advantage over the sickness within his own mind, which also supported the conclusion that Draco was, in fact, trapped in his own mind.

The downside to figuring all this out, Draco realized morosely, was that there was now no hiding from the fact that there was something slimy running around in his mind. Draco hadn't ever been told so exactly, but he was pretty sure Malfoy's did not let boorish black octopi run amok in their mental landscape. It was entirely too uncouth. As soon as he got out of there he would demand that Uncle Severus teach him the mind arts during summer break. The black sickness-monster covered almost everything as far as he could see, and though he had never seen the inside of his mind before, he didn't have to be a Master at Occlumency to know instinctively that it wasn't supposed to be there.

At least the pond was safe. Draco relaxed against the iceberg he floated on and once again noted how strange it was to not feel cold, even though he was dressed in the summer clothes he wore to play Quidditch when he was home at the manor. And he was barefoot. Draco guiltily hoped his father would never find out about that, but he couldn't bring himself to wish for shoes. He loved going barefoot, even if Malfoy's were not really supposed to.

He sat up and wriggled his toes off the edge of the iceberg, watching the ripples he made in the pond, and was surprised to see the water begin to tremble. A moment later, it was churning and roiling and Draco snatched his toes back from the liquid as a whirlpool began to form in the center of the pond, just a few feet from where his iceberg rode out the waves calmly, much more stable than a normal iceberg should be.

The whirlpool began to swirl faster and faster, and Draco thought he saw a black hole forming in the middle, but the next moment something was projected out of the whirlpool's center like a cannon ball and hurled, spluttering, straight onto Draco's iceberg. Draco backed up quickly until he was on the very edge of the iceberg and stared, disbelieving, at the soaking wet person who had just been spectacularly spat out of his pond. Whoever it was wore dark robes that looked like the ones Uncle Severus used when he brewed. The person had long hair like Severus did, too, but they were too, well, small to be Severus.

The new addition to Draco's island groaned and rolled over, muttering something about people with unnaturally wet magical cores. He thought he heard the name Malfoy somewhere in the litany of complaints, but before he could question the new comer the person turned over, sat up, and caught sight of him.

"Draco!" the dark-haired person said happily, scrambling across the ice to fling themselves at Draco and squeeze the life out of him.

Draco just sat there, completely shocked by the fact that there was someone else in his mind with him. Someone hugging him, no less. Very few people hugged Draco Malfoy, and none of them had long, dark hair, excepting Uncle Severus, and he had already ruled him out.

"You're getting me wet," Draco said mildly, really not sure if this other person was a figment of his imagination or not. He didn't know why he would imagine someone glomping him, but he couldn't think of a different explanation for the presence of another in his mind. Though with the sick black thing roaming around…Draco supposed anything was possible at this point.

"Sorry, Draco," whoever it was laughed. "It's your fault for having a lake of water for a true core anyway."

"I don't know who you are, and I certainly don't know what you're talking about," Draco put on his best derogatory sneer that he mostly reserved for people who insulted his parents and Weasley's, "But if you don't tell me what you're doing in my mind this instant I'll kick you out of it."

Draco didn't know that he could actually do that, but it did seem to have some effect on the person currently dripping water all over him. It wasn't making him cold or really all that uncomfortable, but it was the principle of the thing. The new comer sat back and stared at Draco with wide, blank eyes that seemed really familiar.

"Dray? It's me," the other person said, and Draco blinked to show he still didn't understand. The other kid raised an eyebrow, saying, "Well, that'll teach me to help out a friend in need. I come all the way here to get you, and you don't even recognize one of your best friends."

Best—? Draco narrowed his eyes at the other kid and looked more closely at them. The eyes were just a shade darker than his own grey, and they were widened in a falsely earnest expression he really should have recognized instantly.

"Rigel?" Draco frowned into the now-familiar face, "Why do you have long hair? I didn't recognize you at all."

"That's alright," Rigel said, shrugging a bit, "I think the manifestation of my consciousness still sees itself as having long hair, even though I cut mine eight months ago. Look at you, you're not in Hogwarts robes."

Draco looked down at his summer outfit once more and nodded. It made sense that the way people saw themselves was not always the same as the way others saw them.

"Well, how did you get in here?" Draco asked, a bit more excited now that he knew just who had invaded his mental space, "And what did you mean you came to get me?"

"It's sort of a long story," Rigel said, "I'll tell you all about it later, but right now we need to get you out of here, or get the sickness out of here, as soon as we can. It's very important."

Draco studied his friend carefully, and Rigel gazed back at Draco just as blankly as he always did, as if there was nothing whatsoever going on behind his flat, grey eyes. Draco knew better though, and so he said, "Why are you here, Rigel? I'm glad you are," he assured the other boy, "But why you? Why not Pomphrey or Snape or even my father?" Draco guiltily clenched his bare toes again, but held Rigel's eyes steadily as he waited for an answer. He'd noticed that whenever Rigel said something that Draco thought was probably a lie, Rigel's eyes flickered with pained regret for just a moment before he steeled himself and said whatever it was he wanted Draco to believe. Draco had never mentioned this to Rigel, not least because it was useful to be able to tell the difference, and Draco didn't even really mind that Rigel lied to him sometimes. He'd as good as said he would, after all, the night he agreed to be Draco's friend. Draco just wanted to see if Rigel was lying this time.

The other boy took his time in answering, but Draco saw no unease or regret flash through Rigel's eyes before he spoke, "You're sick, Draco. More sick than the others. We need to get the sickness out of you before it's too late."

Draco sucked in a breath slowly, digesting that information for a moment. "What's wrong with me?" he finally asked, feeling strange asking such a question about himself, "And it still doesn't explain why you."

"So many kids got sick," Rigel said, and Draco was thankful that his friend's voice was so calm and even. It made him feel like nothing could go wrong as long as he was there to help, "We ran out of Ginseng to put into the Snowhit and the Aurora's Breath. We had to start using Acai to substitute, because there was no Ginseng left anywhere in the country."

"I'm allergic to Acai," Draco spoke his thoughts out loud, "Oh. I see." And he did see. Without those potions, his body would waste away the longer he was in a coma. He'd already been there for…how long? A day? Two? "I'm dying," Draco tested the words, grimacing at the taste of them on his tongue. They tasted like failure, like weakness, and he wanted to spit, but he couldn't bring himself to in front of Rigel.

"You're not," Rigel said firmly, and Draco dragged his gaze, which had been wandering over the blackened landscape beyond his pond, back to his friend's face, "That's why I'm here. To make sure you don't." Rigel put his hand on Draco's shoulder, and it felt like a fire was burning under Rigel's skin. Though Draco hadn't been cold before, he was suddenly warm and feeling very calm and sure. Rigel looked very seriously at him, "Draco, I know you didn't hear me before, because you were already asleep, but I promised you everything was going to be okay. Maybe it wouldn't have been if things just kept on as they were, but we're not going to just let the world do whatever it wants, are we?"

Draco shook his head mutely.

"Good," Rigel nodded firmly, "We'll make sure everything turns out okay then. First we have to get you better, though."

"How?" Draco asked, wondering where on earth Rigel got his confidence from.

"Well, I'm not sure," Rigel said, and Draco looked incredulously at him.

"You somehow got into my mind, but you didn't have a plan for what you would do when you got here?" Draco shook his head, "Leave it to a Black."

"Hey!" Rigel said, mock affronted. It almost felt like they were back in their dorm, just joking around, except for the iceberg beneath their feet, "It's your mind, Draco, but if you want my opinion, I think we should try and use this pond to get rid of it somehow."

Rigel stood on the iceberg to get a better look around. Draco stood as well and surveyed the blackened wasteland his mind had become. The pond stretched about fifty feet across, and his iceberg was about five by five, though it wasn't really all that square. The shores the water lapped against seemed like they might be made of solid ice, but they couldn't see much of the actual terrain because the black tar from the sickness clung to absolutely everything. Draco couldn't see the edges of his mind either, though he thought he could make out black mists on the horizon in every direction he turned. Mostly his mind seemed to be a flat expanse of black-covered ice, with the light-blue pond in the middle, inexplicably untouched by the blackness.

"What are we supposed to do?" Draco turned to Rigel, frowning, "I don't think we have enough water here to cover the whole space, even if we could somehow just wash the black stuff away."

Rigel shrugged, "Your pond should re-fill itself, though slowly, and I can use some of my own magic to help I think." The other boy seemed to concentrate for a moment, then a ball of fire burst into life in his hand. Rigel grinned, "Between the two of us, we'll be able to get rid of it eventually. From what I've seen, it's not very aggressive." He frowned again, "The only problem is time. It's always hard to tell how much time is passing outside while you're in your mind, so we'll have to work fast."

Draco stared at the little ball of flame that was dancing in Rigel's palm. How did he do that? Draco cut his eyes to the snowball he'd been playing with earlier, which lay abandoned and smushed on one side of the iceberg now. He concentrated, willing the ball of snow to condense once more and watched as it slowly became more rounded. Draco held out a hand and demanded the ball come to his hand. It flew upwards, and he caught it easily, noting with satisfaction that with a little extra effort he could make it harden into ice. He looked up at Rigel, who was smiling a little as he watched Draco control his snowball. Draco said, "I can make this happen because this is my mind we're in, but how can you control anything?"

Rigel blinked, and shrugged, "It's not really your mind that's making it happen. It's you consciousness willing your magic to effect changes in the mental landscape. Your magical core is water surrounded by ice, and it manifests itself here as a lake, with icebergs like this I guess." Rigel tapped a foot onto the ice they stood on and went on, "My magical core isn't water, it's more like fire, and even though I'm not in my mind anymore, my consciousness is still connected to my magical core even here. So I can effect changes on the mental landscape too, just like the sickness can, and I suppose like anyone else who broke into your mind could." Rigel looked embarrassed suddenly, "Uh, sorry about breaking into your mind uninvited, Draco."

Draco blinked. Rigel went off on the most unnecessary tangents sometimes. "No problem. Just keep the breaking and entering to emergency situations like this one, and I think I'll manage to forgive you."

Rigel nodded, "Well then, let's get started."

They turned as one toward the bank closest to their little ice raft. Draco swallowed at the sight of all that awful blackness, but then steeled his nerve. They had a long way to go, but Draco wasn't going to stop until his mind was completely his own again.

-Hp-*_*-HP-

[HpHpHp]

-Hp*_*-Hp-

Normal POV:

Harry glanced over at Draco's determined expression and smiled. It was good to see her friend was just as he always was, even here in his own mind. Though she had definitely noticed the bare feet, it seemed that mostly with Draco Malfoy what you saw was what you got. That will probably change in a few years, she thought, One day I'll look over and I won't recognize this boy. She shook her head to clear the melancholy thoughts away. Time enough for that stuff later. Now it was time to do some serious spring-cleaning in Draco's mind.

"Can you make the ice berg move closer to the shore?" she asked Draco. He nodded and furrowed his brow in concentration, and their raft began to glide easily toward the blackened bank. When they were close enough, Rigel nodded to Draco and the raft stopped. "Don't let it touch you," Harry said softly, "I'm not sure what will happen."

Draco smirked at her, "Worry about yourself, Rigel. This can't be nearly as bad as one of Flint's early morning workouts."

Harry grinned back, "After you then, Dray."

Draco paused for a moment, then shrugged and stuck his hand out over the side of the raft and held it there, rigid, until a column of water began to rise from the lake toward his down-turned palm. "It's so weird trying to do stuff without a wand or a spell," he commented, then he jerked his arm forward and the column of water flew toward the shore, crashing against it and splattering in all directions. They watched as the water hit the blackness coating the shoreline. The inky stuff seemed to hiss, and then it was dissolving wherever the water touched it. Draco grinned broadly, "This is going to be like Quidditch without bludgers. Too easy."

Harry rolled her eyes, but agreed, "It's not even fighting back. I feel silly for running from it now."

Draco glanced sideways at her, "Running from it?" His eyes widened, "Rigel, it's in your mind, too?"

"Yeah," Harry said sheepishly, "I just sort of left it there so I'd have time to come and get you before the two days was up."

"Well after we're done with my mind, we can do yours next," Draco said.

"Fine with me," Harry shrugged, "But I won't die if I stay in a coma, so let's get rid of this stuff as fast as we can, okay?"

"Right," Draco turned back and lifted another stream of water from the lake, sending it toward the shore.

Harry contemplated her own fireball. Fire was more destructive than water. Would she end up scorching Draco's landscape if she threw her magic around in it? She concentrated on what she wanted her magic to do, then moved the fire to the edge of their iceberg to test it. Nothing happened. Harry smiled. Magic really was all about intention. She didn't want the fire to melt any of Draco's ice, so it didn't. Now to see if her magic would word on the sickness like Draco's did.

She lobbed the fireball at the right side of the shore, since Draco was working on the left. It struck the black terrain and instead of dissolving the black stuff like Draco's had, it set it on fire. The sickness writhed where the fire burned it and Harry could see it melting away slowly under the flames. Though it was not as instantly effective as Draco's had been, the fire stayed and spread to the surrounding blackness, so that Harry only had to throw a few more fire balls and then wait while the fire did its work. When they had enough space, Draco directed the iceberg to land and they climbed off onto the mainland, which actually was made entirely of ice as far as they could tell. Harry was glad to note that none of the ice on the right side of their little semi-circle of cleared mental space looked scorched or melted. The mind was truly an impressive thing, Harry decided, surveying their work. She doubted anything like this would work in the real world, but here in Draco's mind, which was likely so flexible and open because of his age, there were very few rules that a pair of determined Slytherins with adept imagination couldn't bend or break completely.

They worked steadily, gradually moving further from one another as they each worked on their own flank, meeting in the middle and then moving further away once more over and over again as they pushed the sickness back with water and flame. The black thing wasn't fighting back—at all. Harry expected at least some resistance, but it seemed to not even notice that parts of it were being dissolved and melted away. It did seem to have an expanding instinct that kept it pushing back against them, but they worked much faster than the blackness could creep, so they moved forward inexorably, step by step, until a good portion of Draco's mind was plain, flat ice, unblemished by the sickness' sludge.

When they met in the middle once more, Harry tossed a grin at Draco over her shoulder and said, "Really gives a whole new meaning to the term 'brain-washing' doesn't it?" She gestured at Draco's water, which he was currently wielding like a whip to keep the black feelers at bay while his other hand directed a wave of water to crash down in front of him.

Draco laughed, a fierce sound that was really closer to a battle cry than a laugh, "I don't know why I didn't try this sooner! To think I was bored when I could have been doing this. Though," he paused to stretch his arm muscles, "It's really exhausting."

Harry nodded in agreement. Though her magical reserves had been up because she hadn't brewed anything for a day or so before the sickness invaded her mind, the constant use of magic was taking its toll on her as well.

They parted again to work on their own sides, and soon they had nearly a third of the visible mindscape clear of sickness. Harry didn't know what they would do when they reached the blackened mists, and she also couldn't tell how much time had passed. She called out to Draco to get his attention, "Hey Draco, can you feel anything from your physical body yet?"

Draco turned a quizzical look at Harry, "What do you mean? Can I do that?"

"You'll be able to whenever we clear the section of your mind that relates to control and communication with your physical self," Harry said, checking on the edges of the on-fire black goo with the corner of her eye while she spoke, "I'm not sure when that will be, though, since it won't be clearly marked or anything. You'll just have to keep checking I guess."

Draco nodded thoughtfully, absent-mindedly coaxing another load of water from the pond. "If I concentrate on the idea of my physical body, I can feel…something. It's weird. I can feel myself laying down, even though I know I'm standing up right here."

"It takes a while to get used to the dual senses," Harry agreed, "Try moving your hand."

Draco waved his hand in a nonplussed kind of a way.

"Not that hand," Harry said.

"I know," Draco frowned, "But whenever I try waving my hand, it just waves." He waved his hand again and Harry had to laugh at how silly he looked standing there in summer clothes, no shoes, and a pointlessly waving hand in the middle of a background that looked like Antarctica.

"Try concentrating on moving your hand, but also think specifically about not moving that hand," Harry suggested.

"How can you think about two things as once?" Draco asked incredulously.

Harry shrugged. It was just something you did; she didn't know how to explain it to Draco. It was how a potion brewer had to think, in order to correctly count the 28 stirs counterclockwise while also adding the exact number of Affilla Beans to a Winter's Luck Potion, for instance.

Draco sighed, "Watch this side for me." He frowned down at the ice to concentrate and Harry dutifully went to his side to keep the black stuff back while Draco was distracted. It took a few moments to catch because the edges of the black tar were still a bit wet from Draco's magic, but soon there was a slow fire burning on that side as well and Harry took a break to watch Draco try and connect with his physical body. The blonde boy had a tendency to scowl at things when he was thinking very hard about something, even when he wasn't at all angry or upset. She wondered if he'd always done that, and had a sudden image of a little blonde five-year-old scowling darkly at his first toy broom as he tried to figure out how to make it work. She barely contained an amused snort.

Draco looked up suddenly, "I think I did it."

"Really?"

"Well I felt my hand move, but my hand didn't move, if that makes sense," Draco said, looking rather cheerful despite the backdrop of burning tar and soggy ice.

"That's great!" Harry said, "If you can move your body around enough, maybe you can get someone's attention. Madam Pomphrey should be checking on you, and your parents were around when I went under too, I think. That way if the three days you had under the sustaining spells, well, two since I went into meditation, run out, they can take you off of the spells before your magical core realizes something is wrong. By then you should have enough of your mind away from the sickness that your body will breathe and pump blood on its own once more."

Draco nodded, "I'll try moving it again a few times, and then we can get rid of some more of this stuff."

Harry was about to reply when a new voice cut across the icy landscape, making the two first-years jump in surprise.

"There won't be any need for that."

They turned toward the source of the voice and gaped at the sight of Professor Snape gliding across the ice toward them, an unreadable expression on his face.

"Professor!"

"Uncle Severus!"

Draco and Harry exchanged a look of relief mixed with sheer disbelief.

"How did you get in here, sir?"

"Are you here to save me, Uncle Severus?"

Snape raised an eyebrow sardonically. Harry noticed that his mental avatar looked very much like his usual physical self. Same robes, same hair, same attitude. It seemed that Severus Snape was a man who saw himself just as clearly as he saw everything else, "Only the two of you would manage to do something so impressive without even realizing you'd done it."

Draco sent Harry a blank look, which Harry returned with a look just as uncomprehending.

Snape looked about two seconds away from rolling his eyes, "You destabilized the mental barrier that was preventing any Legilimency from accessing Draco's mind from without."

"How did we do that?" Draco blinked.

Harry turned her eyes toward the landscape with sudden understanding. There was only one entrance and exit from the outside of a mind. Sure enough, the fire they had left unchecked had burned a clear patch in the mists, which must have been what held the Occlumency-like barrier that protected the sickness from Legilimency.

Snape nodded as he saw where Harry was looking, "Indeed, Mr. Black. Even the tiniest flaw in a barrier is enough to allow a Master of the Mental Arts entrance to a mind. Once that part of the mists was purified, I could have come in at any time, but I didn't realize Draco's condition had changed until Narcissa noticed his hand move."

"See? I knew it worked!" Draco smiled triumphantly at Harry, who grinned back.

"So are you going to help us, Professor Snape?" Harry asked curiously, "We've gotten rid of a good chunk of the black stuff, but it's slow going. How much time does Draco have left on the sustainment spells?"

"It is currently Saturday at 6:43 am," Snape said in his emotionless drawl, "I am told that Draco fell ill Tuesday evening," here he shot Harry a look that made her wince, "Which means he was first administered the Aurora's Breath and Snowhit Wednesday around midday when his unconscious processes began to fail, and has consequently been on life sustaining spells for approximately two days and 19 hours."

Harry mentally calculated. If it had taken her a day and a half to make it this far, would they have enough time to eradicate the rest of the illness? Granted, she didn't know how much time had been spent just getting through Draco's magical core, but still…it was going to be close. "With the Professor here to help, surely we can get rid of it in time," Harry said to Draco, trying to sound confident.

Draco frowned, obviously doing some calculations of his own, and looked worried.

Snape snorted. "Stand back boys, and watch a real Occlumens at work."

Harry blinked, but took a step away from Snape as Draco hurriedly did the same. The Potions Master raised an arm out in front of him, hand flexed as if it were gripping something fiercely. The air around them seemed to hum for a moment, perhaps with anticipation, and then Snape clenched his fist and exhaled sharply, glaring at the blackness still covering two-thirds of Draco's mindscape.

To Harry's utter shock, the blackness twisted and writhed like a sea of inky worms, and then it was flung back from the ice it had settled on like it was tumbleweed and Snape had conjured up a tornado. If the black thing had a voice, it would surely have been screaming as it was hurled into the mists, and then, without so much as a shadow left behind, it was gone.

Harry felt supremely inferior, and realized just how ineffectual she and Draco's efforts had been compared to Snape's. Of course, it had seemed that they were accomplishing something really difficult, because Harry had very little real experience with Occlumency and Draco had none, but Harry now understood that the sickness truly was aimed at infecting and subduing children and children only, if this was the power of an adult Occlumens.

Snape smirked at the look of utter amazement both Harry and Draco were wearing.

"How did you—?" Draco couldn't even finish the question.

"You two did an admirable job," Snape said, and Harry could feel the smugness the older Slytherin was too reserved to show, "But I have had many years of experience in the mind arts, and that with wizards whose Legilimency makes this sickness look completely harmless. While the sickness created an impenetrable defense from the outside, it was nothing more than an irksome fly once its barrier was breached."

Harry nodded thoughtfully, "Because it wasn't designed to actually do damage to the mind it possessed, it is easily defeated from within once its occupant knows how to go about it. The problem is that children's minds are the ones susceptible to it, and most children aren't taught mind magics at such a young age, so they don't know what to do once they're trapped in it."

Harry didn't miss the sharp look Snape sent her at the way she described the illness as being designed for a purpose, but she ignored it with the excuse of paying attention to Draco.

"But you knew about the stuff I could do with mind magic," her friend pointed out, "And you still haven't explained how you even got in my mind, since even Uncle Severus couldn't get in until we broke the barrier from within."

"I would very much like to understand that as well," Snape put in, frowning at her.

Harry glanced between the two of them, "Well, can full explanations wait? We need to get Draco to wake up, though that shouldn't be hard now that the sickness doesn't have hold of his mind anymore. And I have to get the sickness out of my own mind after this too. I'm not sure how far its progressed at this point, so for all I know I could wake up only to fall right back into a coma."

Draco frowned, "I guess I can't help you with your mind, since I don't know enough mind magic to move between minds. Sorry, Rigel."

"That's alright," Harry said, "Now that we know the trick, I'll just clear a path to the mists and disrupt the mental barrier the sickness has around my mind so that Professor Snape can get in to help me get rid of it. It shouldn't take much time at all, really."

Snape nodded reluctantly, "Very well. I will return to the physical world and explain the situation to Madam Pomphrey and Mr. Malfoy's parents. Mr. Black, you will return to your own mind…however you plan on doing that." Harry nodded easily. "As you will not be clearing enough of your mind to regain the physical control necessary to signal to me, I will simply attempt to breach your mind repeatedly until I am able to. Mr. Malfoy will wait until we have both exited his mind, and then attempt to wake himself up."

Draco and Harry both nodded to show they understood, and Snape nodded back. He strode on his heel back toward the mists and soon was gone from Draco's mind completely.

"Well, see you in real life then," Draco said cheerfully.

Harry gazed seriously at her friend. "I'm really glad you're going to be okay," she said, "I was so worried when I heard you—" she broke off, shaking her head. "I'm just so relieved, Dray. And you were amazing, picking up the mind magic so quickly like that."

"Only thanks to your help," Draco said, looking embarrassed. He glanced askance at her as he added, "Besides, what are you so relieved for? You promised everything would be okay, didn't you? Maybe you weren't so sure, but I never doubted you."

Harry didn't know what to say, so she just moved her gaze to the icy terrain that had been unveiled when the sickness left. "You should build something, Dray." Draco looked at her strangely, but she went on, "Not now, of course, but after you learn mediation and all that, you should do something with all this space."

"Maybe I will," Draco said thoughtfully, "Did you build something in your mind?"

"Yeah," Harry said, frowning as she wondered what sort of state she'd find her mind in when she returned, "Maybe one day you'll get to see it."

"I definitely look forward to it," Draco said, "But right now you need to get out of my mind and go clean up your own so Severus can make you better. I am not going to sit by myself at dinner this evening, and I'll just bet everyone else went and fell ill on us."

Harry laughed at how offended Draco seemed at the thought of eating alone and waved a hand as she turned and headed toward Draco's pond, "I can see when I'm not wanted. See you soon, Draco."

"See you, Rigel."

Harry took a deep, unnecessary breath at the edge of Draco's pond and silently asked his magical core to let her back out of Draco's mind, putting all of her will behind the request. A whirlpool began to turn at the center of the pond, faster and faster, and when Harry caught sight of the black hole forming in the middle she jumped straight into the center and let the confusing rush of water sweep her away once more.

She was spat out rather violently on the other side of Draco's magical core, and only saved herself from being smashed against the inside of Draco's primary core level by hurriedly bringing magic to her outstretched hands and blasting fire through the thick layer of ice to melt it out of the way as she hurled through it. Once out of Draco's core completely, she sought out the connection between Draco's core and hers and thrust herself along it, speeding toward the familiar feeling of her own magical core.

When she arrived back at the ball of restless coils of magical energy that was her core, she asked her magic to sever the connection between she and Draco and began digging among the coils to reach the secondary layer. The coils of magic snaked around her playfully, tugging her this way and that until she sighed and asked her magic to please let her through to the true core. The coils parted and she caught a glimpse of the shining sun that lay beneath. Harry wriggled her way through the primary coils and let herself fall right through the center of her molten true core.

Her mental senses returned to her all at once, and Harry had to pause for a moment to digest all the information streaming into her consciousness as she emerged from the sun in her Space Room. The sickness now covered everything outside of the Space Room. The mountain, the mists, the false lab and every branch of the many confusing tunnels was coated in a layer of black. Harry drifted toward the door to the Space Room. The hardest part would be getting out of the Space Room without letting any of the black stuff in.

Using the energy from her sun-core, which Harry noticed guiltily was burning a bit dimmer than it usually did, Harry decided to stand as close as she could to the door, and then create a barrier behind her that would seal off the Space Room completely, as if she'd created an antechamber between the door and the actual room. It would serve as a buffer zone in case any sickness leaked through when she opened the door.

With that precaution in place, Harry opened the door quickly and sent a burst of fire from her hands into the tunnel beyond. All she could see at first was blackness, but soon the flames were eating away at the creeping goop, melting it until it disintegrated. She stepped into the tunnel, closing the Space Room door firmly behind her after making sure no sickness had gotten through, and started flaming the blackness out of her way once more. It was slow work, but she cleared a path through the tunnel and out of the trap door, through the decoy Lab, which looked like a thick layer of soot had settled over everything in it, and out of the ice illusion to the mountainside beyond. Harry aimed for the closest patch of mist, and eventually made her way over to it.

She took a moment to re-gather her energy. Her magic was definitely not in top form. It felt like she'd been brewing Snowhit for hours or maybe days. She summoned another fireball with effort and hurled it just a bit vindictively into the blackened mists before her. The sickness seemed to evaporate from the air, and Harry sighed with relief. She sat down to wait, but it wasn't more than a few minutes later that Snape appeared out of the mists next to her. She could feel when he did so. It felt a lot like when the sickness had first entered into her mind, like a niggling pressure that felt foreign and unnatural, but the feeling faded once she had identified the intruder as Snape and classified him mentally as not an immediate threat.

"Hello, Professor," Harry said, somewhat cheekily, "Welcome to my mind."

*_*_*Hp

*_*Hp

*Hp

[end of chapter twenty].

A/N: What's that? 21,800 words? Why yes, yes it is. You guys rock, so thanks for reading, even though it was a lot of exposition to try and explain exactly what was going on. Please let me know if something didn't make sense to you, because some of the things in this chapter I had to think through several times to make sure there weren't any glaring holes in the logic. Thanks again. Lots of love. I'll be updating again soon because it's officially summer! I'm home, and I'm ready to write my fingers off! Yay!