Author's Note: Sorry that updates have been kind of slow lately. I'm still trying to finish my thesis and website for school. I work on my HP story a little each evening, but I'm pretty brain-dead after writing on my thesis paper all day. Only a couple more weeks, and then I can be free to write my little Harry-Potterish heart out! Thank you for all your reviews and your patience.


Chapter Nineteen

"It's a bit complicated," My mirror told me. "The other bathroom mirrors I've spoken with seem a little confused. They've told me that the Mirror of Emit is here in the castle, and yet, not in the castle."

"What does that mean?" I asked it.

"I'm not sure. I'm going to have to speak with some of the older, more powerful mirrors to get a straight answer. It has something to do with wizards' use of space. Wizards are not confined to the same rules of space as Muggles are. There are other dimensions Muggles don't usually use, you know."

"Well, thanks for trying," I said, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice. "I guess Professor Dumbledore would have to do something really complicated to prevent the Ministry of Magic from finding the mirror."

"Don't worry, Dearie, I will get to the bottom of it all," My mirror said with determination in its voice. It was now a mirror with a mission.

I leaned back into my chair with a cup of tea and sighed. The flames from my fireplace felt warm and cozy. The dungeons were cooler than the rest of the castle, especially at night, and I often felt that it should be winter. I felt drained from the day, but I was relieved that I had finally managed to sort things out with Harry. I even received a note from him telling me that he and Hermione wanted to visit tomorrow after they were through with their Muggle Studies class.

I glanced over the latest issue of the Daily Prophet. The headline read, "Celebrity Wizard Recovers from Tragic Accident and Reaches Once Again for the Stars." Evidently, a famous wizard named Gilderoy Lockhart had partially recovered from a memory-loss accident at St. Mungo's. His newspaper photo smiled dashingly at me, and I could tell that he was a real babe. Because his memory had not been completely restored, the wizard couldn't return to his former career of fighting evil, but he had managed to launch a line of hair care potions. His latest product was a vanilla, sugar-plum scented conditioning potion for witches with ultra-long hair.

"Wow," I said to the photograph. "I have to try this stuff."

The gorgeous wizard in the picture winked at me.

I'm afraid I had become rather addicted to owl-order shopping in the short time I'd lived at Hogwarts. In New Orleans I hadn't had any extra spending money in quite a long time, and now I had an entire Gringott's account filled to the ceiling with Galleons. There were always such interesting items for sale in the Daily Prophet! You received your orders much more quickly here than in the Muggle world. I had just filled out the enclosed order form and sent it off by owl when I heard a voice from the direction of the fireplace.

"Miss Silverthorn, would you please come to Professor Dumbledore's office immediately?"

Startled, I looked up to see Professor McGonagall's head poking up out of the flames!

"I'm sorry to startle you. Please floo. It's very important." Her head disappeared.

I was in my nightgown, and hurried to get a robe on. I grabbed a handful of silvery powder from a bowl on the hearth and flung it into the flames a little nervously. "Professor Dumbledore's office," I said, and stepped through the emerald flames.

In the headmaster's office, I was quite surprised to find not only Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall, but Twinky. She stood there nervously, with several pieces of baggage. A miserable looking Draco was curled up in the chair in front of the headmaster's desk. The poor kid was crying. Professor Dumbledore had obviously been trying to comfort him, because the little boy was holding a stuffed dragon and a bag of lemon drops in his lap.

"Baby, what's wrong?" I picked him up and held him, finally sitting down in the chair myself as Draco sniffed into my shoulder.

"My mummy and daddy are leaving the castle," He hiccupped, "Tonight. And I can't go with them. I have to stay here."

"Leaving?" I looked up at the professors.

"It seems that Lucius suspects that his good standing with Voldemort is about to disintegrate," Professor Dumbledore told me. "He has received warnings from both you and Severus about recent events which make him...distrustful. After bringing his son here, he left in quite a hurry. He and Narcissa have decided to place Draco in your custody."

"My custody?" I looked at the little boy in my arms. "You mean, I'm responsible for him? I don't really know anything about taking care of little boys." It wasn't like I'd had any young relatives while growing up.

"His parents feel that Hogwarts is the safest place for him at this time," The headmaster said. "All of Narcissa's relatives are directly in contact with Voldemort. Minerva, if you don't mind, would you please escort Twinky and Draco to Miriel's quarters. Please add another room or two if you need to." He turned to me. "There's no point in frightening the poor boy any more tonight with what I'm about to discuss with you."

"I'll be right there in just a minute, okay, Baby?" I said, setting Draco down. After the trio left the room, the headmaster's expression became quite grave.

"My dear, this is very important. If something should happen to Lucius- if Voldemort chooses a new leader among his ranks of Death Eaters, things could become very dangerous for you and Draco. It's best if neither of you leave the school grounds. It has been the custom of the Dark Lord to exterminate entire families, as a warning to those who would displease him. If he should choose a new leader from one of the Slytherins' parents, the Slytherins will no doubt turn against Draco. He has been a social leader at this school because of his father's standing with the Dark Lord."

"But he's just a little kid, now," I said incredulously. "He couldn't hurt anybody."

"Which may be for the best," Dumbledore said. "He's no longer a threat to anyone, and so doesn't have to fight his classmates to regain leadership or to save face. Being a child at this particular time may very well save his life. Severus tells me that the teenager has been practicing dueling and Muggle combat techniques this last year, but there is no way that he could have taken on his entire house."

"But, Professor, where will the Malfoys go? How can my uncle hide from the Dark Lord? I thought that with the Dark Mark on his arm, it was impossible. The Dark Lord will be able to track him down anywhere."

"Severus assures me that there are a couple of possibilities in which a Death Eater may temporarily avoid the effects of the Dark Mark," Professor Dumbledore told me. "If Lucius could manage to obtain it in time, the Polyjuice potion, for example, changes ones appearance. In theory, while under the influence of this potion, the wizard would have a new body that would no longer bear the Mark. There is also a new Animagus potion, which gives the wizard the temporary ability to transform into an animal. That one may not be very practical for Lucius, however."

"Can't the Ministry of Magic help him?" I asked.

"A secret department of the Ministry has begun to experiment with potions to remove the Dark Mark, hoping that if they are successful, that they could convince Death Eaters to defect and turn against Voldemort. As far as I know, however, they have not been successful."

I crossed my arms and bowed my head against the cold, heavy fear that seemed to fill my stomach. What would I do if my uncle was destroyed by the Dark Lord? Sometimes he was downright scary, but he was the only family I had. I knew he wasn't my father, but he was the closest thing that I would ever have to one. And then I suddenly realized that if anything happened to him, he couldn't use the Mirror of Emit to bring my mother back to me. All hopes of seeing her again would be gone.

"My dear Miriel," Professor Dumbledore stood beside me and patted my shoulder. "As I've said before, everything has a way of working out." I looked up. His blue eyes were deeply concerned, and I had that strange feeling that he knew exactly what I was thinking.

By the headmaster's expression, it seemed he wanted to tell me something terribly important, but changed his mind. "Why don't you see to your new charge? As admirable as house elves are, I think that Draco may need more comforting than Twinky can provide."

I decided to walk back to the dungeons in order to clear my head a bit. Before I left his office, I turned to Professor Dumbledore. "Professor, you can restore Draco to his original age, can't you? He won't be a little kid forever?"

"I am pleased to say that, at least, is under our control. That however, must remain our little secret." The headmaster winked at me, and I left.

I walked down the dungeon corridor to my quarters, lost in my own thoughts. I was so busy worrying about the situation with my uncle, that I didn't even notice when Professor Snape and the new Muggle Studies teacher turned the corner. I almost ran right into them.

"Watch where you're going, you clumsy girl." Professor Snape's voice was low and waspish.

My face burned with embarrassment that he would talk to me that way in front of Professor Lovelace. "Excuse me, Professor Grouchy-Butt." I don't know what possessed me to mutter that, except that I was tired, upset, and I was not in the mood to deal with his nastiness tonight. I was still mad over receiving detention for the whole ball-point pen episode, and unfortunately, I had probably just earned another one.

"Fifty points from Ravenclaw." Professor Snape said, with a snarl on his face.

"I don't care," I snapped at him furiously. "I have more important things to worry about than a stupid house cup. You might intimidate all the little kids around here, but I am an adult."

"You will address me with respect." The fury on his face became truly frightening. He lunged forward as though he was about to pounce on me, when the small witch grabbed his arm.

"Severus," She began, and there was a hint of warning in her voice.

To my surprise, he stopped in his tracks. "Detention," He spat at me. "Starting tomorrow night. 5:00 o'clock. Don't you dare be late." With that, he spun around and marched down the corridor, followed by Professor Lovelace. She smiled at me as she went by, and she seemed to find the entire thing rather amusing. I again had the strangest feeling that she somehow knew me.

I sighed. "So much for my love-life," I muttered. "Professor Lovelace can have the jerk." Why couldn't I fall for someone charming and handsome, like Gilderoy Lockhart? Maybe Mr. Malfoy's idea about inflicting the stone- imps on Professor Snape hadn't been such a bad idea after all. Maybe if I was lucky, Draco would make a lot of noise in the dungeons and drive the potions master up the wall. I could get a bunch of the other little, wizard kids and we could all have a big party...

Twinky must have wasted little time unpacking Draco's things, because my quarters looked like a wizard preschool. The place was full of toy cauldrons, play-potions sets, magical coloring books and little wizard action-figures that were already beginning to crawl around on the furniture. Did the Malfoys actually buy him all this stuff since he had been involved in the potions accident?

"Thanks a lot, Professor," I told Professor McGonagall, when I saw that she had transfigured two new rooms to the place. All of this junk was going to go in one of them. Strangely enough, I noticed that there was no logical way that the rooms could have fit into my quarters. Yet there they were.

"You're certainly going to have your hands full, Miss Silverthorn." The witch looked at me with something like pity in her eyes. "The poor wee lad is in his room, crying his eyes out. I'm afraid I was never very good with children."

"It's going to be okay, Baby." I walked into Draco's room, and found him on his bed. A huge, emerald-encrusted toad hopped around at the foot of it. I sat next to the little boy and put my arm around him. "You'll have fun here. You can help me plant Star-Flowers in the unicorn corral. Hagrid got me some plants that grow in the Forbidden forest, the kinds that Amalthea will like to eat."

At the mention of the unicorn, Draco seemed to cheer up a little. "Really? I thought that only house elves did the gardening."

"Well it's more fun when you do it yourself," I told him. "Why don't you get your jammies on, and I'll read you a story." Luckily, Professor McGonagall had enlarged the clothes closet, and I found an entire section of silk pajamas. Honestly, how many clothes did one little kid need? Mr. Malfoy had obviously planned for Draco to stay here for quite a while.

As Draco got ready for bed, I searched through the book titles on my bookshelves. "What kind of stories do you like?" I asked. "My mama used to read these to me. Some of them even belonged to her when she was a little girl."

"I want one with giant spiders in it," The little boy told me, climbing into bed. He had set Ambrosius on the pillow next to him so he could hear the story, too. It really was a huge toad. Personally, I didn't think he looked too impressed.

"Baby, don't you think your toad would be happier outside?"

Draco shook his head. "No, he's afraid of Dobby and the bad men. He heard my mummy and daddy talking about it."

"Well, there are no bad men here at Hogwarts," I assured him. "Everybody is safe here. What if he messes on your pillow?"

"He's house-broken. See?" Draco pointed to the floor, where a small area was covered with issues of the Daily Prophet.

I rolled my eyes. Now I'd heard of everything.

"I think it's a good idea to read something cheerful tonight," I told him. "Without giant spiders. Let's see, there's 'The Hobbit.' That has a dragon in it. There's 'The Unicorn With Silver Shoes,' 'Finn Family Moomintroll,' 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe..."

"I like dragons," He announced.

"The Hobbit it is, then." I took the book off the shelf and nearly broke my neck tripping over a toy cauldron.

Later on, I was finally falling asleep when I felt Draco slip into my bed. I kept my eyes closed, but I felt something big, scratchy and squishy all at the same time wriggle under the covers and brush up against my leg.

"Gah!" I sat up. "That toad is not sleeping in my bed!"

"Ambrosius is afraid of sleeping alone," Draco told me. "He's afraid of the Orcs and the Goblins."

"Baby, Goblins aren't real," I said, before realizing that in the wizarding world, they did exist. Gringott's was full of them. "I mean, no Orcs or Goblins can come here." I sighed. "Ambrosius can sleep on top of the covers, but if he squirms around too much, he's going on the floor." I was really going to have to work at not being such a pushover.


So far, we had been planting for almost three hours. Actually, I had been planting. Draco had been playing in the dirt, looking at bugs, attempting to eat the flowers, and running around playing with the foal. The kid had unlimited energy. I got tired out just watching him, but at least he was happy and not thinking about his parents.

"Is he bothering you, Baby?" I asked Amalthea.

"No, he's just a foal," She said, "He's funny." She bent her head down and began eating the flowers that I was trying to plant.

"Stop that," I said, trying to push her nose away. "Don't you think you should save some for later? You're not a unicorn, you're a pig." I was quite startled when I heard a deep voice recite behind me:

"They fed it, not with corn,

But only with the possibility of being.

And that was able to confer such strength,

Its brow put forth a horn. One horn.

Whitely it stole up to a maid- to be Within the Silver mirror and in her."

"Bad man!" Amalthea reared, and in a flash, she was gone. She was so fast, I didn't even see her leave, but I knew she must have run into the stable.

"Wait!" Draco ran after her.

I looked behind me, and my mouth fell open. "Professor Snape? Was that, um, wizard poetry?"

"Yes. Rainer Maria Rilke, to be exact. I thought that it was interesting that he included a silver mirror in the last line." Professor Snape's voice seemed more subdued than usual. The man leaned against the fence, blinking against the bright sunlight. His face was very pale. He clearly needed to get out of the dungeons more often. Now that I saw him outside, I noticed how tired he looked, and his face was heavily lined as though he hadn't been sleeping much.

"For some reason, you don't seem much like the poetry type." I stood and brushed the dirt off my jeans. "Can I help you with something, Professor? Or are you just out on a nature walk?"

"I have come to request something from you." I could tell from the look on his face that he loathed asking it.

I raised my eyebrows. "Oh, really?"

"Professor Lovelace is assisting me in a potions experiment," He said. "Which includes your stone-imps. A critical ingredient for the project is unicorn's blood. It is quite convenient that your uncle obtained such a creature for you."

"But I thought that unicorn's blood was only used in dark magic," I said. "Or to make mirrors." I tried not to think about the poor, little stone- imps giving up their lives for one of Professor Snapes potions. I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.

"It is important that the blood be given freely by the donor. Otherwise, it is cursed, and defiles any spell or potion."

"I don't think I can help you, Professor." I said cooly. "Not unless you apologize for being so rude last night. You didn't need to get nasty, especially in front of your...friend."

The Professor gave me a long, evaluating look. "Petty jealousy does not become you, Miss Silverthorn. You are being childish. This experiment is important, and it could save lives. It could ultimately win the war against Voldemort."

"Then I guess you won't mind apologizing," I told him, crossing my arms. "Or at least taking off my detentions."

"Actually, there will be no detention tonight," The professor said quietly. "I am expecting to be summoned by the Dark Lord." His facial expression didn't change, but I sensed his dread.

"Oh." I immediately felt ashamed of myself. He would be reporting to Voldemort on what I supposedly was finding out about Harry Potter, while I remained safe at Hogwarts. I wondered what he would find out about my uncle. "What do you want me to do? I don't think that Amalthea will let you touch her. She's kind of funny like that."

Professor Snape held out his hand, and there was the same kind of Muggle syringe that he had used on me in the classroom.

"Ugh! You have got to be joking!" I told him. "I can't do that!"


Many thanks to my reviewers! Even the ones who are lurking out there and reviewing only in their heads (You know who you are!) ;-)

Escaped: Thanx for your support. Yeah, the whole potions accident really came as a shock to me, too! Dumbledore is so sneaky, he's even been surprising me. You know, I thought about killing off Lucius, but I just couldn't do that. I love the guy too much (sniff!) He and I could have had something good going if he only existed in real life...

Hannah: Thank you so much. Me wants a unicorn, too! Yeah, under all that cuteness, I think Dobby is really an evil little terror. Kind of like those Gremlins in the cheesy movie.

Shadowstar21: I can't wait to find out what happens, either! I am constantly surprised by this story. My characters won't behave and do what I tell them to.

Rycca Wolfbane: I loved "The Last Unicorn," too. Wow- that's a heavy book to read when you're seven years old! When I had Peter Beagle as a writing instructor in California, it was after he had written his screenplay for the animated LOTR movie. He whined about how much it sucked, and how much he wanted to throw the script in the trash. It's somehow comforting to know that even professional writers can be too hard on themselves.

Arsinoe de Blassenville: Thank you so much for your reviews- they are always so insightful, and they give me good ideas. Since you like history so much, perhaps you can write a crossover story. Hermione has an accident with her time-turner, and goes back in time to the American Revolution only to fall in love with Colonel Tavington. YAAAY! Oh well, just a thought...Sigh.