A/N: There's a certain spell component in this chapter that I got from somewhere…thirty house points if you can identify it, where I got it, and what it is used for. Here you go.

Chapter Thirty-Four: I Know You Couldn't Disagree…

"Why the- where am-?"

Julie was dancing on the wire between consciousness and oblivion again. She had started to look ill and slur her speech at the cast party, making Draco and Chloe suspect intoxication, until the Weasley boys had guiltily shook their heads. Professor Malfoy had demanded to know just what they had given her, and when he found out it was Distancia Extract boiled with Lethe's Bramble, the word he used was unfit for any first-year's ears in the room. He then took forty points from Gryffindor and demanded to know where they'd got the drug. Draco would probably have given them detentions clipping a dragon's nails had Julie not collapsed in his arms just then.

Two hours of absolute hell later, she was waking up in his bed.

"Julie?" Draco was still in his Benedick costume, which included leather pants, a pair of boots, and a seventeenth-century Italian tunic complete with laces and sleeves that made him look silly in his own opinion. "Are you alright?"

Julie opened her eyes and looked at him as if he were crazy, backing away from him against the headboard and searching her corseted waist for her usual knife. It was plain from the way she looked at him that she either had no idea who he was or didn't realize that she had only been sleeping there.

"What art thou doing in my chambers? Get thee gone or I will call the watch!"

"Julie, what's wrong? You're-"

"Nothing is wrong save your presence here! And how dare you call me by that name?" For a moment Draco stood petrified, until Julie suddenly realized what was going on and shook her head as if yawning.

"Crimeny, how long have I been out like that?"

"Just a little over two hours. That potion Tim and Tom gave you did it. Can you remember what you were doing before you got sick?"

"We had finished the play, it was the cast party, I had just told Chloe I had arranged for her to come with us –did I tell you that? And then I saw Mitchie and Donaghan and talked to Mack for awhile, and then I saw you, and…" Julie tried to remember some more. "Yeah, that's it."

"Alright, good. What they gave you is essentially a drug designed to create semi-euphoria for combat use with an ingredient to reduce your memory of what you did under its influence."

"Wizard roofies."

"I have no idea what you mean."

"There are Muggle drugs that do that. They were trying to help me, though, not realizing I have no problem whatsoever with kissing you."

"I still took forty points from Gryffindor."

"Draco! You've really got to keep it in mind that I'm in the same house as them. It's not a happy feeling to know that I'm snogging you despite all the points you take off from us."

"So you'll still kiss me even though I did that?"

"If I really must." For a few seconds they were happily occupied. "Do Mum and Dad know where I am?"

"Cripes! I forgot to have someone let them know when you passed out! They were over with Judy and Ron; I'm such a git sometimes."

"That's alright, we can just race back and pretend we were rehearsing or having an argument." Julie stood up and almost as quickly sank back onto the bed, almost entirely exhausted.

"I don't think you're in any shape for that."

"Nonsense. How many people would you say saw us leave?"

"Just the little blond one –Chloe, right? -the two Weasleys, McPhersen, and the Yank, Tyler."

"Are you sure?"

"Pretty much. It was a party, after all."

"I still think we'd better go back. Merlin's ears, is this where you sleep, m'duck?"

Draco nodded.

"What gave me away, the snake cage or the Slytherin tapestry?"

"I was thinking these," Julie observed, indicating the velvet quilt, which depicted an M.C. Escher-esque pattern of serpents going in several different directions. "I had no idea geometry was one of the many loves of Slytherins."

"Geometry? What's that?"

"Never mind. It's a branch of Muggle mathematics, you draw pictures a lot. Let's go." Julie again tried to get up and wound up leaning heavily against the bed as she attempted walking. "Make yourself useful," she commanded in her best Dark Lady tone, and Draco obediently put one of her arms over his neck and began to help her out of his rooms.

"Now here's an idea! We can say you sprained your ankle! ...or something."

"I don't think Madam Pomfrey could be fooled that easily, and 'sprained brain' isn't going to work in her case."

"No, you're right. Maybe I should just let your dad know about what those boys gave you."

"Please don't! They'll never get out of detention for giving it to me and I'll never get out for taking it."

"How about I say someone spiked your drink?"

"That should do. What exactly was it they gave me?"

"Distancia Extract boiled with Lethe's Bramble."

"I've never heard of it, not that that's saying much for it's obscurity. I know that Lethe was a famous nymph in Greek mythology."

"The idea of nymphs and dryads always bothered me. I prefer my women to be all human, none of those part-veela the French take so seriously."

"That's why Chloe's coming, by the way. She's going to cast the Standard Attraction Spell her mum taught her, and we'll keep everyone convinced she's all-veela and my henchwoman. Isn't that clever?"

"Excepting the fact that she's such a little veela, I think it may work."

They waved goodbye to Bodrick the Unmusical, who was trying to restring his bloodstained guitar with blistered fingers. Julie winced a little and Malfoy gave her an odd look.

"I tried to play the guitar once –it did not go well and I can sympathize."

"Oh."

"Did you ever try to play any instruments?"

"My mother taught me how to play the violin."

"Cool. Can you still do it?"

"I haven't picked one up in years, but I suppose I could. What went wrong with the guitar?"

"I split this finger open and needed five stitches." Julie showed him a little scar. "For some reason I didn't like it much afterward."

Draco smiled and held her a little closer as they walked. Julie leaned up and gave him a little kiss on the cheek. He was about to kiss her back 'properly' but noticed her raised eyebrow just in time.

"Thanks for helping me, Professor. It'll be a cold day in hell before I take a potion from them again."

"It's nothing, Miss Snape, just try to know what's in any drink anyone gives you, -especially the Weasley boys." Malfoy indicated his long hair with a wry smile, wondering all the time why Julie had suddenly gone into 'we're being watched' mode.

"Really, when I get ahold of those damn- ACCIO!"

Julie suddenly held something diaphanous and silky in her free hand, whilst Tim and Tom Weasley were guiltily crouched near a suit of armor. Draco realized what she had done and burst into laughter as she just grinned evilly.

"I suggest you think twice before spying on me again,"she observed in a voice as silken and horrific as her father's. "Sir Timorus's suit of armor rattles like a gong."

The fact that Draco had heard anything only impressed him more.

"Are you okay, Julie?" Tom asked in abject horror.

"Aside from feeling as if I had swallowed a Bludger, great. What the hell did that tripe you gave me do?"

"It was supposed to make you not hate Prof-" Tim stopped cold.

"Well, I've still got weird side effects coming out my ears! Are you certain you even did it right?"

"Miss Snape, you shouldn't get excited," Draco warned. "The toxins are still in your system and they can hurt you badly."

"Alright, Malfoy, considering I need you to help me walk around, I won't tick you off." Julie's arm suddenly felt just a little slack. "I'll see you guys back in the common room."

Still stunned, Tim and Tom took their Invisibility Cloak and scampered off. Malfoy snorted with Slytherinish laughter for a moment after they were gone, but when he looked back to Julie he was surprised to see she still looked genuinely ill.

"Are you alright?"

"Uh, I d'know, I just feel kind of dizzy now."

"Alright, listen to me! The important thing is for you not to fall asleep. This is a common reaction to the Distancia. Just don't fall asleep, do you hear me?"

"Sure."

Draco picked Julie up deftly and began almost to run toward the Hospital Wing. Several times he caught her with her eyes shut and shook her gently, trying to keep her awake. What he did not tell her was if she did fall asleep, the Distancia Potion could completely erase her memory for even years back. He wasn't sure how much she had gotten, but as enough of it could set a full-grown soldier back to his toddler days, he felt desperate to ensure she got to the antidote.

"Draco, what is it?" Madam Pomfrey asked.

"Distancia Potion with Lethe's Bramble…I don't know how much. Julie, are you awake?" He put her down on a convenient bed and tapped her shoulder.

"Yeah, don't yell at me."

Madam Pomfrey pulled two small vials out of a cupboard and deftly applied a Sonorus charm to Julie's heart, as wizards did not use stethoscopes. She then mixed the entire contents of the two vials in another and took out an eyedropper.

"Hold still," she instructed, pointing her wand at Julie's arm.

The Seeker felt a brief sting in the middle of her wrist, and then slow burning as Madam Pomfrey put the acidic antidote directly into her blood drop by tiny drop. Next the mediwitch handed Draco what looked like a pocketwatch and instructed him to keep track of her heart rate.

"Tell me when she gets to seventy-five per minute."

Next, Draco was calling out numbers, all in the high hundred-forties, then in the hundred-twenties, then the nineties, the eighties…

"Seventy-five!"

"Good."

The drops stopped coming. Julie felt her wrist go numb and then back to it's normal self, and instantly she felt better than she had in days.

"Is that all?" she asked, trying to get off the bed.

"No, don't!" Draco caught her by the shoulders and made her lie back down. "It's only the euphoria, you're not okay! If you don't hold still you could have a heart attack, so sit down and try not to talk too much."

"Okay, Draco," Julie agreed quietly. A second passed and then her eyebrows went up in shock, realizing Madam Pomfrey must have heard her use his name. Fortunately Malfoy was able to cover it.

"Just don't mess up and call me that in class sometime. Your 'Uncle Harry' isn't half as strict as I can be."

"You've really found yourself in quite the odd family, haven't you?" Madam Pomfrey smiled kindly, as Julie nodded rather frantically. "I suppose I should have expected this when we found out your parents had gone and eloped. A better example of opposites attracting I've never seen, and it's always the children who wind up having fun from it." The friendly mediwitch sighed and Summoned chairs for herself and Malfoy then. "Take your friend Chloe Davies, her mother was brilliant, cultured, foreign; meanwhile her father played Quidditch and thought of little else. I shudder to imagine what her parents' friends are like when they're put into one room. And then there's Viktor and Svetlana Krum, and of course the Weasley twins…"

Julie relaxed. Madam Pomfrey would be good for another hour of anecdotes, most of them funny, and it was more than likely she could steal a glance at Draco without her noticing. As it happened, Madam Pomfrey was in rare form, enlightening both Seekers with a very funny but mildly innapropriate tale of April Fool's Day six years ago. At that time, Draco had been on assignment to Belgium, so he too had missed Julie's parents having their clothes slowly and systematically switched as they ate dinner by Professors Flitwick and Sinistra until Severus stood up and personally encountered underwires and a skirt.

"I don't suppose he'd teach he how to do that spell," Julie wondered aloud. "I think Tim and Tom with the Blodgett twins could be nice."

"No," Draco drawled, a grin lighting up his face. "I think their mothers would be better, wouldn't you say, Jules?"

His endearment went right over Madam Pomfrey's head.

"I've said too much!"

"What's going on in here?" a rather pale Professor Snape asked, appearing at the door. "Sir Cadogan said Draco carried Julie here."

"Yeah, he did, the great ferret, it's a good thing, though."

"She accidentally got dosed with Distancia and Lethe's Bramble. Allergic, I expect."

"I'll flay those boys!"

"Daddy, he never said it was Tim and Tom!"

"It was, though, wasn't it?" Snape gave her a look.

"No, I did it myself, because of act two, scene five, you know?"

"Merlin's earwax, you're getting almost as bad at lying as your mother is. Detention tomorrow at eight to practice it some more."

"Lying, Severus?" Madam Pomfrey asked. "I hardly think that's something a child needs to do often."

"Why don't I teach her, Severus?" Draco offered. "After all, I had practice with the best."

"Take note of this, Julie, that's flattery," Severus agreed, pointing to Draco as Hagrid might to a big manticore. "I think that would be a good move, Draco."

"Honestly!" Madam Pomfrey exclaimed. "Hermione is going to be rather put out with you."

"Not if I'm tutoring her as well," Severus pointed out. "No offense to your mother, Julie, but she's one of the worst liars I've ever met. She can't even say a red pen is green convincingly."

"I know! It's almost funny when she tries to keep a secret from me sometimes."

"Speaking of, where were you when this potion took effect? According to the American, you left with Draco almost three hours ago." Severus raised an eyebrow at his daughter and ex-pupil.

"I wanted to chase down the Weasley boys, but Draco told me not to and we had a pretty terrific fight, and I was just getting tired when they came up and tried to spy on us under Uncle Harry's cloak."

"Much better!" her father observed with a wry smile. "Poppy, can she leave yet?"

"I suppose," Madam Pomfrey conceded wih a look of displeasure at the idea of having her audience taken away. "I don't think she should walk around too much, though. It's only been about forty minutes since we gave her the antidote."

"Tripe, what time is it?" Julie wondered looking at her watch. It read eleven-thirty-one. "Oh, I thought it was much earlier."

"Tired?"

"Not really. I had jaggers with Mitchie before the show."

"Dare I even ask?"

"It's an American thing, sort of like butterbeer except it's really different."

"Yanks," the elder Snape observed ironically.

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