Secrets:

It turned out that Peter didn't have much to miss in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Quirrell hardly said anything of substance to the class, and when he did, barely anyone understood him.

"H-he-he-hel—hello, c-class," was how he started.

In front of Peter, two Ravenclaw students were whispering to each other. One was a pureblood named Terry Boot, the other was an unfamiliar face.

"Is he trying to tell us something?" asked Terry.

"I think he is attempting to speak, but his stutter is causing him to fail miserably."

"Boys, he's clearly beatboxing," added another to their left. "My muggle father does it a lot."

Peter leaned forward and whispered to them. "I think he's trying to summon a dark magical creature."

A tough looking girl sitting in front turned her head towards them. He recognised her as Mandy Brocklehurst from the Sorting ceremony.

"I think he's telling you all to shut up," she hissed.

With that, Peter shifted his attention back to Quirrell. He was still struggling to continue on with his long sequence of stutters. Apparently, the best school in Britain had someone who couldn't talk to a group of first years to teach them how to fight evil. Peter was extremely underwhelmed.

The powerful smell of garlic emanating from his turban definitely wasn't something to be yearning for, either.

Regardless, Quirrell was the least of his worries at the moment. He was still a little unnerved about what happened during his detention with Snape. And now, he couldn't shake the feeling that some insidious force was hiding in the classroom with them.

Scanning the room for the source of the tingling sensation in his head, he caught sight of Harry and Ron looking at him suspiciously. He chose to ignore them, not wanting to attract any more attention for the day.

"Professor Quirrell?" Ron raised his hands out of the blue. "Since this class is about defence, don't you think we should learn by actually doing things?"

Quirrell stiffened, as if he was still processing the fact that a student just spoke to him.

"Why y-yes, of course." He frantically looked around and pushed his high desk aside to make some space at the front, causing a stack of books to fall over.

Howls of laughter filled the room as Quirrell struggled to put the books back in place. There were a clutter of empty vials and scattered parchment around the high desk, so after a while, he gave up and just shoved the books up against the cramped shelves. A red tome still managed to fall over and land back on the desk.

"A-alright, class," he announced as he turned to the class and dusted himself. "Why d-don't you all grab a partner and c-come here to the front. W-we'll take turns practising a s-s-simple dis-arming charm."

Forgetting about the Ravenclaws in front of him, Peter turned around aware that Hermione Granger was sitting behind him.

"Wanna be partners?" he asked, smiling cutely—or at least he thought so.

"Very well," she said, standing up. "Though, I should warn you: I haven't practised this particular spell last night since I had no one to do it with."

They walked to their spot on the newly emptied space on the floor.

"That's why you suddenly disappeared last night?" Peter asked in mirth. "You were practising?"

"I had to make a good impression for the professors, didn't I?" She stopped and faced him squarely, wand at hand. "I just didn't expect someone to bring this activity up today." She gave Ron a dirty look, but quickly stopped herself once Quirrell began speaking once again.

"T—the i-incantation is…" Quirrell pointed his wand at a Ravenclaw student and said: "Expelliarmus!"

The wand flew off the student's hands and into Quirrell's; a move Peter had seen his parents do to each other countless times whenever they got into an argument. It wasn't anything new.

"Fair enough," Peter said, "this should be easy."

Right as he turned his attention back to Hermione, she had already finished saying her incantation. His wand flew out of his hands and clattered to the floor next to her feet.

"Oh," he said in surprise. "Wow. First try. Very nice. Good job."

Hermione was beaming as he walked over to pick his wand back up for him.

"Thank you very much," she said with a curtsey. Peter politely snagged his wand away from her fingers.

"Alright, my turn." Peter bounced on his feet. "You ready?"

"Ready."

He pointed his wand at hers and yelled.

"Expelliarmus!"

Nothing happened.

"Expelliarmus!" Peter shook his wand and tried again. "Expelliarmus!"

"Okay, stop, stop, stop." Hermione held out her hands in front of her. "You're supposed to swish and thrust your wand."

"What?"

"Like this." Hermione demonstrated the wand movement and disarmed Peter again. He groaned as he ran for his wand once more.

"That's ridiculous," Peter whined. "Professor Quirrell didn't do that."

"Wand movements are only there for beginners like us to practice on," she said. "He doesn't need them anymore, since he's got the essence down. You, on the other hand, couldn't even levitate a feather."

"Couldn't even levitate a feather," he parroted in a high voice.

"Honestly," she said, crossing her arms. "I'm trying to help you out!"

"Fine," Peter snapped. "Let's get this over with."

They faced each other and got into a ready stance.

"Expelliarmus!" Peter said with a swish and thrust.

Hermione held on to her wand, and Peter's shoulders slumped.

"I did feel a little tug," she reassured him. When she didn't get a reply, she continued, saying: "Well, you're not the only one struggling."

She was right. As Peter looked around, almost every student in the room looked just as dejected as he felt. Of course, almost everyone except Harry Potter, who was grinning in triumph; his own wand in one hand and Ron's in the other.

Peter scoffed and snapped his head to face the other way, over to where Quirrell was trying to explain something to Neville. His head tingled harder, making him grab his hair with both hands.

A red tome on the high desk behind Quirrell instantly caught his attention. The longer he stared at it, the more he was convinced it was the source of his discomfort.

"Peter?" Hermione asked concernedly. "Are you okay?"

"What could be in it?" he wondered.

"In what?"

The clock tower bell rang, signalling the end of class.

"A-alright, everyone," Quirrell announced. "S-see you next c-c-class!"

Peter briskly shook his head and turned to Hermione.

"Thanks for the tips!" he said. "I'll work on them."

At once, he grabbed his knapsack and left the classroom.

He had no class for the rest of the day and no homework was assigned so far. He was free to do anything he wanted. With the red tome in mind, he decided to stay behind.

He sneaked behind an empty suit of armour and watched as the other students walk past him. As more students began to walk by too close to where he was hiding, he resorted to covering himself up completely and just listened for the footsteps to pass by.

"What are you doing?"

Peter jumped in shock and hissed. "Hermione! What are you doing here?"

"I just asked you the same question."

"Er," Peter looked around, then leaned in to whisper in her ears. "Okay, this is going to sound weird, but I think Professor Quirrell is hiding something."

Hermione furrowed her eyebrows. "Why would you think that?"

"Because… I can… I get these senses whenever I'm in danger, and it was practically screaming at me during the whole class."

Hermione looked dubious. "You can sense danger," she said slowly, "like how a horse can sense an oncoming storm?"

"No, no. It's more like…" He couldn't think of anything else. "Yeah, a horse before a storm."

The classroom door opened and out came a timid Quirrell. He was quietly blubbering like a scared child, almost as if he was talking to somebody—or himself.

Peter caught a glimpse of the red tome through the narrow door opening, still lying on the desk. He felt his senses tingling once again, and he hid deeper into the shadows, imagining himself shrinking smaller.

"Right," Hermione mused sarcastically. "So, you think Professor Quirrell is going to try and kill us."

Peter rolled his eyes. "Look, I'm going to sneak into his classroom to check on this book. It's this huge red one on his desk. I think there's something bad about it."

"Your horsey-sense told you?"

"Will you stop calling it that?" Peter peeked his head out to see Quirrell going down the stairs, presumably heading towards the Great Hall. "Are you coming?"

"No." Hermione said shrilly. "Snooping in on the teacher's stuff is against the rules and can possibly get you expelled. I'm not letting you go in there."

She blocked Peter from getting out.

"You won't tell on me, will you?"

"I will if I have to."

"Guess you won't, then," Peter said as he crawled up the wall over Hermione and dropped himself behind her, all in a matter of seconds. "Once you see this book, you'll know what I'm talking about and you'll be the one begging me not to tell on you."

"That doesn't even make sense—Wait." Hermione's face became pale white. "How did you—?"

"Duty calls. Questions later." Peter crept across the hall and pressed his back against the wall beside the classroom door. Quirrell forgot to close it, so all he had to do was slip in. Hermione followed frantically.

"You were on the wall! I've never read about any wizard doing that."

"Not all magic can be found in books, Hermione," Peter said offhandedly, still checking whether anyone is watching them. "And I happen to be a very powerful wizard."

"Are you some sort of spider-human hybrid?"

Peter ignored her and sneaked through the entrance.

"Peter!" She hissed. "Stop this, right now!" She made a grab for his arms, but he immediately pulled away.

"Be quiet!" he said under his breath. "If I get caught, you're getting in trouble with me."

Keeping his back to the wall, he edged towards the high desk where the red tome was situated.

Hermione stayed under the doorway, frozen in fear.

"We should go," she said in a wavering voice.

"Starting to believe my horsey-sense now, are you?" Peter gave a slight chuckle. "You know, my brother and I used to sometimes sneak out of the Manor in the middle of the night to do whatever. We'd race on our brooms, play Purebloods and Muggles, chase down some unicorns...

"And every time there's a monster nearby, I can sense them right away, and we're able to get out safely before they come any closer. All in one piece." He gave Hermione a brief yet confident look. "As long as you're with me, you'll be safe."

"But we're not allowed here," she whispered loudly. "This is illegal."

"We're in a classroom, Hermione." Peter finally reached the desk and made close inspections around the book. "Students like us come and go here all the time."

"Not when there's no supervisor!" Once she realised Peter wasn't going to stop, she stomped her way to the desk. "Not when—when we're alone with a dangerous book on dark magic!"

"Who said it's on dark magic? Maybe it's about..." Peter discreetly opened the red tome to examine its contents. "... vampires... and werewolves."

Hermione looked over Peter's shoulder and grabbed the book from him to take a look at it.

"This is what you've been worried about?" she scoffed.

"I don't get it. I just realised my senses aren't tingling anymore."

"Not anymore, huh? Well, that's just convenient." Hermione huffed.

"I'm serious!"

"Honestly, if he really was hiding something, don't you think he would have locked the door? Or at least kept the book hidden?" she stated, shaking the red tome in the air to emphasize her point.

Peter groaned exasperatedly.

"Ugh!" Hermione dropped the red tome back onto the desk loudly. "I can't believe I let you pull me into this!"

"Let's just go," Peter said as he ran his hands through his hair. He walked towards the door.

"Oh no, you're not just going to walk away from this." Hermione was hot on his heels.

"What are you gonna do? Tell on me?"

Hermione's red face made it clear that she understood why she couldn't tell anyone about this. She was now a clear accomplice, considering she was holding the book herself. Peter continued walking.

"No, but I won't tell you my secrets to casting spells."

That made Peter stop on his tracks. Given his struggles throughout the whole day in all his classes, the deal seemed promising. Slowly, he turned to face her. "You have secrets?"

"Oh, yes I do," she said, crossing her arms. "And it seems like you could really use some of them."

"What do you even want from me?"

"A fifth to a gram."

"A what?" he asked incredulously.

"I was working on the equation for the potion you told us about earlier in Potions."

Blood drained from Peter's face. "And?"

"And I've concluded that a gram of wormwood to five grams of powdered root of asphodel is what you need to make the potion stronger. Am I correct?"

"Erm, no," Peter said, relieved yet surprised she would even bring it up. "That'll make the reaction stronger because it's the least balanced mixture, but it's not going to make the potion more potent."

"What could it possibly be then?" Hermione moaned. "There's no way you can make something more potent just by changing its proportions. You must've added some other ingredient."

"Nope." Peter smirked; he didn't blame her for being curious. "There's a way."

"What is it, then?"

Peter pursed his lips. "I'm not telling anyone. Not you, not Snape. No one." He was sure even Draco didn't have a clue what it was. "If you figure it out, fine, but I won't be a part of it."

"Give me a hint and I'll show you this secret chamber I found under our common room. It'll be great for practising."

"When did you find this?" Peter asked, one eyebrow raised.

"Last night when everyone was asleep."

"Isn't that against the rules?"

"Not if you don't get caught," she said indignantly. She looked down and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Besides, I couldn't sleep."

He sighed and laughed silently. A secret chamber under the Gryffindor Common Room. Who would've thought?

"Fine, I'll give you a hint, and you show me this chamber." He leaned into her ear and whispered, "Rational numbers can go over one."

Hermione's eyes widened as she watched him walk out.

-oOo-

Madame Pomfrey furtively pushed the trolley of medical potions back to the storage room, trying to make the least amount of noise so as to not wake Severus up. He had been bedbound for two days now after initially waking up with slurred speech and a serious case of internal bleeding in the brain.

It was a miracle that she was able to treat him so swiftly. Acting any second later may have been detrimental for him. Now, he needed as much rest as he could get if he wants a proper recovery.

As she stashed the vials into their respective cupboards, she frequently glanced in his direction to make sure he remained unharmed. Whoever did this to him was dangerous, yet they still brought him to her. A conscientious culprit. She couldn't help but wonder who it was.

A shifting of bedsheets broke her train of thought, and she turned her head back to catch Snape struggling to get out of bed. She hastily put down the vials she was holding and staggered towards Snape's bed.

"Stay down, Severus!" she practically screamed. "You have a concussion!"

"Where is Albus?" he asked bluntly.

"If you would just stay down and let me check on your condition first." She pushed Snape down to the bed and ran some diagnostic charms. "You're a lot better now but you still need to stay stationary for a while."

"I need water."

"Of course." Pomfrey conjured a cup filled with water and handed it to Snape. "Do you remember who did this to you?"

"No." Snape began to slowly lift the cup to his lips, but he instantly dropped it as soon as he tried to open his jaw. He groaned in pain, "Just get me Albus."

"Be careful, your jaw is badly injured and your teeth just finished regrowing." With a flick of her wand, the spilt water returned to Snape's cup.

She immediately went straight to the fireplace and called for Albus. His face emerged in green flame.

"Albus!" she shouted, "Severus is awake and is asking for you. He says he doesn't remember what happened."

"Thank you, Poppy," Dumbledore said, "I'll be there in a second."

The face in the green flame disappeared, and Pomfrey stood up and turned around to see Snape massaging his jaw.

"My mouth tastes like socks," he said.

-oOo-

"Tell me, Severus. What do you really remember?"

Dumbledore watched Snape's lips purse, the dim light of his office making the young professor look aged and worn. He seemed more conflicted than Dumbledore had ever seen him, and he'd had a very complicated life.

"Do you have something to tell me?"

"Peter Malfoy," Snape replied. "He is dangerous. Not just to the students here at Hogwarts, but possibly to all of Wizarding Britain."

Dumbledore looked grim. "Why?"

"I've looked into his mind. The things I saw…and heard..." Snape grimaced, and Dumbledore was certain it wasn't from the round of palliative potions Madame Pomfrey made him drink earlier.

"There is this one memory I saw before I became unconscious," Snape said sotto voce, "It frightens me."

"What did you see?"

Snape took a deep breath and looked around the office.

"The Pensieve," he said, pointing to it. "Can I?"

Dumbledore gestured him towards it. "Show me everything you saw."

Snape pressed his wand to his forehead pulled out a string of white light. He walked over to the Pensieve and stirred the memory into it. He made eye contact with the headmaster and without a word, they entered his memory of the boy's mind.

The Pensieve transported them to a large untidy bedroom filled with open books scattered along the floor. There were folded parchments stacked at the foot of a dishevelled bed and Grodzisk Goblins posters hanging across the walls. A house-elf was picking up robes dispersed throughout every corner of the room.

What caught Dumbledore's attention was the work table being illuminated by the afternoon sunlight shining through the massive window next to it. It was full of scrolls containing several series of various characters and symbols.

"This is the memory of him coming up with a stronger variant of the Draught of Sleep," Snape said.

"Extraordinary." Dumbledore looked down on the long list of calculations, some crossed out, some ending with totals that carried over to other equations.

It was Muggle Mathematics combined with Arithmancy, two things he had always considered mixing together but was never able to do so in a coherent manner. His eyes trailed along one of the parchments that eventually lead to an encircled solution.

"a = 99.8495?" He tried to figure out how that worked, to make sense of it, but he found himself puzzled on the Muggle parts.

Distantly, he heard the inaudible shouting of two children, presumably Peter and Draco Malfoy. The door to the room suddenly swung open.

"Fine, I'll do it myself!" A younger Peter entered the room holding a box full of powdered roots of asphodel on one hand and a bottled infusion of wormwood on the other. He angrily stormed his way to his work table and dropped the ingredients.

He tensed up when he caught sight of the house-elf in his room. "Dobby, I already told you I don't want you cleaning my room!"

"Oh, I'm so very sorry, Master Peter Malfoy, sir. I just needed to get your laundry, and I didn't want to disturb you." Dobby started banging his head against the floor.

"Will you stop doing that?" Peter picked him up and set him on his feet. "Just ask me next time, all right? I don't mind."

"Yes, sir. Thank you very much." The house-elf held on to Peter's dirty clothes and disapparated.

Draco continued shouting from outside the room, and it seemed that he was now getting closer.

"Shut up!" Peter stomped over to the door and slammed it shut.

The door pounded from behind, followed by a muffled: "Wait until father hears about this!"

"What's he gonna do," younger Peter mumbled to himself, "ground me even more?"

He walked back to his work table and started scribbling rapidly on a new piece of parchment. He stopped just as Dumbledore began to peek over what was being written. He sat back on his chair and let out a disappointed groan, staring at his calculations.

Suddenly, his head perked up and he grabbed a new piece of parchment. He was writing rapidly again. Dumbledore watched in fascination until Peter straightened up in his seat, looked back and forth between two parchments on each hand, and breathed a long: "Yesss!"

He stood up, walked backwards, fell to the floor, got up, and began cheering and jumping in glee. He ran to the door and screamed: "It worked! Draco, I figured it out!"

As the scene began to fade, Dumbledore inspected the two parchments to see what the young Peter was celebrating about. Circled on both sheets were the exact same results, the one he saw from earlier, and the one he just wrote on that proved it: "a = 99.8495."

The scene shifted and they were now in a living room. Young Peter held a vial of black potion out to young Draco.

"A single drop of this can kill anyone?" Draco asked in awe as he took it from Peter.

"Well, in theory, it should put you into a sleep you can never wake up from, so technically, yeah."

"Let's test it, then."

"We can't." Peter grabbed the vial away from Draco. "Not if we don't want to kill anyone."

Draco pointedly looked at the white cat sleeping on the couch. "How about Felicia?"

"No!" Peter said in horror.

"Come on, it's just a cat." Draco tugged at the vial from Peter's hand, but Peter refused to let go. They held eye contact for a while.

Draco looked down and sighed. "Besides, maybe your little numbers are wrong. How are you supposed to prove your hypnotamus if you don't even confirm your conclusion or whatever?"

"It's hypothesis."

Draco step back and held his hands in front of him. "You're the genius." He then crossed his arms. "Come on. What was the point of all this if you're not even going to use it. If anything, I'd say it's your duty to carry out this task, since you're the one who made it."

"I'm not obligated to do anything."

"Remember what father always says?" Draco added. He cleared his throat and spoke in a deep voice. "Duty, Honour, Purity! These three words dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be."

Peter rolled his eyes.

"Come on!" Draco pressed. He pulled out a bezoar and held it to him. "Here, just in case."

Resigned, Peter took it. He walked over to sit on the couch where the cat was sleeping and stroked her back. "Hey there, girl. Look, I have something for you."

The cat slowly opened her eyes to look at Peter, yawning as he rubbed her belly. She stood up to stretch and snuggled her head against Peter's hands. "Atta girl, Felicia."

Draco smiled warmly and knelt beside them. "Good afternoon, sleepyhead." He stroked Felicia's neck and nodded to Peter.

With a heavy exhale of breath, Peter poured the potion straight into the cat's mouth. Slowly, Felicia laid down and closed her eyes once again. Her breathing noticeably became weaker and slower by the second.

Eyes wide open, Dumbledore slowly shook his head in disbelief. He turned to look at Snape, whose attention remained glued to the scene.

"She's—" Peter felt for a pulse in her neck, then pressed his ear to her chest to listen for a heartbeat. "It's still beating."

"Uh-huh?"

Peter tried to wake her up again, but she didn't respond this time.

"Try the bezoar, Pete!"

Peter clumsily broke the bezoar into pieces and fed them to their unconscious cat.

"It-it's not working—Felicia!" He was now holding both sides of her face. "No, no, no, no, please wake up."

"I took no part in this," Draco said, face completely white.

Everyone present in the room remained motionless for a long period of time.

They stayed like that until somewhere in the house, a grandfather clock began chiming.

"I'm so sorry," Peter whispered to the sleeping cat before placing her gently back onto the couch. Shaking, he stood up and grabbed the parchments of calculations from his room. He crumpled them and threw them into the open fireplace, along with the empty vial.

"I'm never experimenting with potions again."

The scene changed once again, but this time, it was all black. The atmosphere was pregnant with suspense, making the littlest of sounds crystal clear, but absolutely no light came from anywhere.

"This is the memory that... unnerved me." Snape said in a low voice.

"That previous one wasn't it?" Dumbledore asked, fully alert.

Sounds of footsteps emerged, and they listened carefully.

"We cannot…yet…" said a soft, familiar voice, "…not before we take his body…"

"… Master…" said a deeper voice, "we must…before it overpowers…"

"On with it, Baron…" the soft voice hissed impatiently.

A strange foreign sound filled Dumbledore's ears. It was a long and soft mixture of a harmonica and the hoot of several owls. It went on for ages; high and almost musical.

Then, a new set of footsteps appeared and another man's voice called, "Who's…there?"

Dumbledore hears a door slam open, followed by a loud gasp. It was quiet for a few seconds until the new voice angrily shouted, "What…my son…calling the police …"

Next came the sound of a hard thud, followed by a woman's scream.

"Richard!" she called, then whimpered.

"We need to hurry…Mast…" said the deep voice. "We don't…much time…spare…"

"Bring her…then," ordered the soft voice.

The sound of whimpering got louder until the woman began to cry.

BANG! BANG! BANG! What Dumbledore assumed to be a gun had been fired off.

The soft voice yelled. "Go…Baron!"

"Peter!" the woman screamed. "What have…done to my boy...?"

"Silence, woman…!" the soft voice became a shrill hiss.

The woman's screams got louder, only to stop abruptly.

A wet sound followed for several seconds.

"Mary? Pet...?" called the old voice. "You bastard—!"

"Diffindo," ordered the soft voice.

Silence filled the dark room until the deep voice began chanting a long incantation.

"…spiritus…orporis meus…res…tenetur…terra…usque…finem."

"Avada Kedavra!"

"Imp—!"

The Pensieve abruptly returned them to Dumbledore's office, both of their eyes wide and their heartbeats racing.

"Voldemort."

A/N - I realised that the Draught of Living Death requires other ingredients other than the two mentioned in the first book so I decided to just make the Draught of Sleep as an alternative potion. They are basically the same except the alternative puts more emphasis on sleeping.

Also, thanks to Number1Penguin for beta reading this chapter!