Rosemary Like Weeds

2.

Terrible things had happened to Severus Snape since the end of Harry's fifth year at Hogwarts. Specifically, they'd happened to his face. Rumor had it the trouble had begun shortly after O.W.L.s results came out. Only three students – Hermione Granger and two Ravenclaws – had managed 'O's' in Potions, and a week later Professor McGonagall had fairly paraded into his office and handed him a scroll of parchment with a mysteriously smug air. The parchment read, "By order of the Ministry of Magic's (Reformed) Department of Education and Magical Tutelage, in cooperation with Albus Dumbledore, Hogwarts Headmaster and Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress of the same, considering the limited number of outstanding Potions marks achieved by students undertaking O.W.L.s at the end of the previous academic year and in light of the likely prospect of imminent war against Dark Forces, not forgetting that advanced knowledge of Potions is essential in the field of Medical Magic…" The short of it was that Snape would no longer be permitted to limit his N.E.W.T.-level class to O-attaining students. A faint twitch had started around his left eye as he read the notice. Things had only gotten worse as the beginning of classes neared. By the time Harry and Ron slunk into the dungeon laboratory for their first N.E.W.T.-level lesson, the Potions Master looked as if he was ever-ready to bite someone and stalked about with perpetually half-bared teeth and a tension in his jaw that must have been causing him severe skele-muscular damage. A month into term, the twitch had developed into a constant tremble that added a petrifying new aspect of insanity to the professor's already legendary sneers and glowers. Add to that the fact that he'd made the lessons harder rather than easier for the larger, less selective class, and it was an understatement to say his popularity with his students had not increased.

"Well, mate, we always knew he wanted us dead; now he's just getting sneaky about it. Hoping we'll kill ourselves, I know it. Giving us impossible potions bound to explode if you even breathe funny. He's sabotaging us! I mean, what's this one even supposed to do? I couldn't start to figure it out with him running on with all that 'most complex operation of your pitiful magical careers' rubbish!"

Harry shook his head ruefully in response to his friend's rant. "Yeah, I'd say the goldfish have got a better chance of getting this one right than we do." There was a snort of laughter, and Harry grinned at Ron…only to find the redhead eying him quizzically. Harry didn't understand the look he was getting – it was an old joke, and someone had laughed."The goldfish, you know?" The puzzled look only got more intense.Something was off, and Potions wasn't the place to sort out what, so Harry gave up. "Um, there was a footnote about goldfish in the reading for today."

"You did the reading?" A sudden note of hope chimed in Ron's voice.

"Some of it," Harry glanced away evasively, and that was when he noticed Malfoy glowering at him like absolute murder, much the way he'd glowered when Harry had magicked his bedroom full of three feet of water. Right, that was why Ron didn't understand the joke…

It happened when he was staying with Draco over the fourth year winter holidays. They were amusing themselves browsing through the most advanced spell books they could find in the Malfoys' library when Draco slid his book over top of Harry's and announced, "We've got to try this." The open pages read 'Brewing the Midas Touch.'

"Neither of us needs more gold, Draco."

"Is that the point? I don't think it is."

They collected the necessary ingredients from the cavernous storeroom on the first level of the Manor's basements, the one above the dungeons, and locked themselves in Draco's room. After following the (ridiculously complicated) instructions to the best of their fourth-year ability, they each downed a cup of potion…and discovered that anything they touched was now instantly transformed not into gold but a goldfish. Draco tried touching his bed only to find it flopping at his feet, and Harry touched the desk on which they'd been working; all their supplies came crashing down, the cauldron upending and trapping the wriggling desk.

It was lucky the book had warned them to hold onto their wands while drinking, as they'd be unable to pick them up afterwards. Less fortunately, Finite Incantatum did nothing to end the bollocksed spell.

Harry immediately flooded the room waist deep with a Delugio charm.

"What the hell was that for?"

"Well, we can't let them die while we figure out what to do."

"They're fish, Harry."

"I'd tell you to think how cute they are, if I didn't know it'd work better to ask whether you think a dead fish can be turned back into your bed."

Draco humphed, levitated the spell book out of the water, and cast a strong drying charm. He magically flipped pages until he reached the 'Antidotes and Counterdraughts' section.

It was sheer hell trying to brew the antidote without touching anything – transfiguring a new desk to work on, summoning ingredients from the storeroom, chopping them with severing charms, adding them to the cauldron with Mobilius, and stirring with Agitor. They ended up starting over four times. Twice they forgot and touched an ingredient. After that they tried standing out of reach of the desk, but the spells were hard to control from a distance, and Agitorsent the cauldron flying toward Draco's head. It just missed; he slumped against his wardrobe in relief, and toppled into the water when he ended up slumping against a goldfish. Harry's mood improved immensely after that. The fourth attempt turned lilac-spotted instead of green for no known reason. Finally, just after Draco wailed, "The fish have got a better chance of getting this right than we do!" antidote number five turned out splendidly.

"I wanted to make gold," Draco sulked when they were seated tiredly on his restored and dried out bed.

"Well, we were close. Everything we touched ended up gill-ded."

Draco gaped at Harry in horror. "Never, never try to be funny again, Potter. If I still could I'd turn you into a fish and fillet you for that."

"I know. That's why I said it."

Fortunately, the potion Snape had set them for that period really was so complex that no one got it right. It looked like Hermione had come close, only to have the mere proximity of so many spectacular failures disturb whatever delicate reaction had been taking place in her cauldron. It hardly mattered that Ron had been confused from the start or that Harry had not only done no reading, with or without footnotes, but had spent the entire class distracted by the knowledge that Malfoy had gotten the goldfish joke. The same thing that had happened to him when the Pensieve broke had happened to Malfoy. He knew now.

Snape was for once completely unable to single anyone out of the class – no Gryffindor to berate, no Slytherin to praise. And he actually seemed a bit tickled that Hermione had been proved fallible at last. He dismissed the class with a peremptory, all-encompassing sneer.

Harry took it as a kind of sign – not being held back after Potions wasn't something that happened to him every day. He lagged a few moments as the Gryffindors rushed from the lab, then followed the Slytherin crowd through the door. "Malfoy!" he called.

The blond boy whipped around, and the whole crowd of Slytherins turned with him. "What in the hottest fires of hell do you want, Potter?" he snarled.

Harry was surprised – that was over-venomous, even for Malfoy. But the bigger problem was realizing suddenly that he didn't quite know what he wanted, that he had only just enough of a vague idea to blunder on. "We need to talk."

"We have got absolutely, bloody nothing to talk about."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm fucking positive. If I hear you mention anything you even think we have to talk about in front of anyone again, there's going to be a duel."

"Oh, I know how you are about duels," Harry retorted acidly and stiffened. His eyes unfocused for a second; there was an image inside his head, the memory of waiting at midnight for an opponent who never showed superimposed by…some sort of game…Dueling Tag. He stared hard at Malfoy. Did he see it, too? It was impossible for the other boy to go any paler, but maybe his lips had thinned?

"No, this duel would actually happen, Potter." Godsdamn it, which one was he saying didn't happen? "Now would even be good." Malfoy reached for his wand.

They were in the corridor immediately outside the Potions lab. Their entire class was clustered around them, the Slytherins backing Malfoy and the Gryffindors gathered behind Harry where they'd clumped as soon as the fight had begun. All probably wondering how something this vicious had sprung out of apparently nowhere. So many witnesses. "I don't want…"

"Are you really that fucking soft?" Two eleven-year-old boys playing tag in his head. He'd meant the witnesses… One of the boys had Malfoy's face. Hadn't he meant that? Damn it, what did Malfoy mean?

Harry stepped up chest to chest with the Slytherin. "I don't want to bring wands into it," he hissed into the other boy's face.

"We'll have it rough then?" A smile, the cold, cruel one – the only one – curled Malfoy's lips.

"We'll have it clean." Because someone always cheated and won every time… Harry's body was tense – not tense in any coiled-to-spring way but brittle-tense, ready to shatter. And only a total fury, only really wanting to hit Harry, could make Malfoy, who was such a perfect wizard, agree to fight without a wand. Harry could feel the muscles taut in his face. They were giving him the impression he might be wearing a cold, cruel smile of his own.

Suddenly he felt a weight dragging on his arm. A voice cried, "That's enough, Harry!"

"You stay the fuck out of this," he spat back at the voice…and realized he'd just sworn straight into Hermione's very startled face. Mortified, he fell back a step.

"Can't see it through, Potter? That's so much more pathetic than I even expected." Malfoy's voice might have been more disappointed than victorious. And it wasn't that Harry didn't still desperately want to pummel the sneering git; it was that he'd shocked himself by losing control enough to lash out at one of his best friends. And he felt terrible about it.

"You can absolutely go fuck yourself," he stated clearly to Malfoy as he let Hermione drag him away.

Back in Gryffindor Tower, he apologized to her at least three times.

"It's all right, really. He got me so mad I hit him once. No one gets under a person's skin like Malfoy."

Harry was immensely thankful that what with the heat of the argument everyone had apparently missed or forgotten that he'd 'started' it by asking to talk. He felt too unsettled to make up any excuses right now. He dropped his head back onto the backrest of the common room sofa where he was sitting and closed his eyes. It would be good just to quietly unwind for a while. Ron and Hermione seemed to agree; they sat there with him peacefully. The fire crackled. All very cozy.

After a long while Ron spoke as if the conversation had never waned. "But you know, Hermione, you should have let Harry hit him."

"That would not have been the best thing to do."

"Well not morally or whatever, but it would have been brilliant – then the prat could have bled all over his ugly Slytherin robes, and their nasty common room, and his stupid, rich-boy satin sheets…"

"He doesn't sleep on satin sheets."

"Huh?"

And he was right back to making excuses. Harry felt like clawing his eyes out. Right, he should act like that wasn't the worst possible thing he could have said. "It's just I heard Parkinson complaining about it one time. She said she wished he did sleep on satin sheets, but he doesn't."

"Ewww," Ron grimaced.

"Harlot," Hermione pronounced.

Harry was in the library alone, and it was a strange feeling. He almost wished now that he'd mentioned the broken Pensieve to his friends as soon as it happened. Hermione would probably have had all this research done days ago; at the very least she and Ron would be helping him do it now. He shoved Objects of Enchantment: Magical Tools and Equipment away and pulled The Spellcaster's Encyclopedia off the top of his unread stack.

Of course, he could still tell them – he probably should, and if it were any normal sort of crisis in his life, he'd go do it right now. The problem was, this wouldn't merely worry Ron and Hermione; in fact, it would worry them a lot less than telling him his scar was hurting would, and he'd done that often enough. No, if he told his best friends that Malfoy of all the horrible people in the world had wormed his way into the part of Harry's head that was theirs – the part for good memories, the part for his friends – it would hurt them, no matter how artificial it was. And if he told them that sometimes he had trouble telling the difference between all the wonderful real things he had with them and these damned illusions with Malfoy… Perhaps he could leave out one or two hugely important details. But they were so smart – Hermione all the time and Ron when he wanted to be – they'd figure it out. Harry just needed it to stop being a problem. He would not hurt his friends, and he couldn't afford more slipups. Not to mention that he refused to be known as an expert on Draco Malfoy's bed sheets.

The research wasn't so hard. He had tons of practice and Hermione's good example to guide him, after all. There were plenty of books that mentioned Pensieves – invention of the Pensieve, theory behind the Pensieve, use of a Pensieve, cross-references to devices related to or designed as accessories for a Pensieve. And right there it had gotten harder – there wasn't all that much to be found about broken Pensieves. That could mean a number things, Harry mused. One, it just didn't happen enough to be worth mentioning. Two, Hogwarts didn't think its students would ever care about the topic and didn't stock the books. Three, there was something sinister about a broken Pensieve, and the book he needed was in the Restricted section. Four, he wasn't looking hard enough. Harry sighed and got up to collect another stack of books. He really hoped option four won out over option three. He hoped too that before much longer Madame Pince would stop glaring at him as if he was befouling her sanctuary just by bringing his Quidditch-playing, non-Ravenclaw presence into it.

In the end, the only things he found that were of any use were a couple slim manuals on the maintenance of magical objects. Both of them declared that a Pensieve was a very sturdy, very easy to care for tool. Both repeated that comment Malfoy had made on the night of the detention – that Pensieves were like human minds – and one elaborated that, as such, they should not be kept in depressing surroundings, particularly rooms with yellow wallpaper, for extended periods of time. Harry pictured the filthy storeroom and thought that might at least explain something. Maybe their (gods, their as in his and Malfoy's together) Pensieve had been depressed and suicidal. The slightly more helpful manual went on to say that in the unlikely event that a Pensieve became damaged it would release a considerable quantity of magic (well, yeah) in the form a silver cloud. The few documented cases of this happening showed that loosed Pensieve magic dispensed memories whereas contained Pensieve magic received them; thus, the cloud would create new memories in anyone it contacted. That sounded exactly right, and it proved all over again that Malfoy was sharing this curse. The new memories would always involve all and only the people caught in the cloud. Harry thought about that – it explained why he didn't remember Colin ever using the camera he and Malfoy had jinxed or who'd been in Honeydukes when their owls raced. So far, so good. Though the prospect of having new memories inserted into one's head might sound alarming, the Pensieve user was advised to bear in mind that, not only was this extremely unlikely to happen (Harry smacked the manual, and Madame Pince glared at him icily.), but that Pensieves were constructed using entirely benevolent magic and had never been known to create memories that any mind present found discomfiting (Harry strongly considered writing to the publisher so the information could be updated.). A broken Pensieve was no cause for excessive concern (Ahhgg!), but as it did involve the release of uncontrolled mental magic, the user was advised to contact the proper authorities.

Which Harry was certain was very good advice. He should most definitely do that. Except he was the bloody Boy Who Lived, and everything he did outside of breathe and go to class was news. And he had such a lovely relationship with the press; he could imagine what a short leap they'd find it between 'magical memories' and 'delusions.' Yes, the headline "Harry Potter Suffers Delusions of Friendship with Death Eater's Son" would move an awful lot of papers. And it didn't matter if he was generally in the public's good graces at the moment; the powers behind the Prophet could fire off a big seller like that and run "Boy Who Lived Rescues Kitten from Tree" the next day if they felt so inclined. The proper authorities were not going to be alerted.

This left him with absolutely no plan of action other than to keep covering everything up, and that wasn't good enough. He needed to be doing something about it. He was starting to think that doing something might almost be more important than fixing the problem. Trying to ignore it was driving him slowly insane. And that scene outside the Potions lab yesterday – he'd been completely wrong to think Malfoy was any less frayed. If they were both that close to snapping it was dangerous going on like this. So…doing something. Practically anything.

The only thing he could think of was talking to Malfoy, which was exactly what he'd been forbidden to do on pain of dueling. There were Obliviate charms. But those were horribly complicated and, when done wrong, ugly. He thought of Gilderoy Lockhart and winced; he didn't want the rest of his life to revolve around relearning how to write joined-up letters. Even if he found someone skilled enough to remove just the right memories – Hermione, maybe, but then he'd have to tell her – it wouldn't really fix things unless Malfoy agreed to get them erased as well. So that option brought him back to talking to Malfoy. There were other reasons too. Making sure the Slytherin wasn't thinking of going to the 'proper authorities' himself – Harry was certain he wasn't, but it would be something to tell Malfoy. Plotting out somekind of coping system. Finding out whether Malfoy had come up with any better ideas than, well, nothing.

Harry thought it lucky that he managed to find Malfoy alone the very next day. It was late afternoon, between classes and dinner, and the blond boy was sitting out on the grounds, right on the brink of the cliff above the lake, in fact, dangling his feet over the edge. The weather was as bad as November ought to be – the sky was such a solid grey it was impossible to see just how low the sun was, and the air was cold but still – which was lucky for Malfoy since one good gust would probably have sent him right off his perch and into space. Harry felt a sudden longing for wind. There was a disgusting wetness in the air that couldn't quite decide whether to be rain or mist. Malfoy was clearly very stupid, even stupider, it seemed, than Crabbe and Goyle, who must have been inside at the moment. He was dropping stones over the side of the cliff.

"You are going to talk to me." Harry dropped the words as if they too were stone.

"What did I tell you last time?" Malfoy's voice was hard but calm, and he'd asked the one question Harry had been hoping he would.

"You said I wasn't to mention anything in front of anyone, and I'd like to point out that we're completely alone right now."

Malfoy twisted around and regarded Harry pityingly. "And you think that's very clever, do you?"

"Clever enough."

"Enough for what?"

"For us to have this talk. Because we can either get it over with now, or we can have that duel and talk after I've petrified you from the neck down."

"Typical Gryffindor, wants to solve everything by force."

"Typical Slytherin's a bloody hypocrite. I'd rather skip the duel."

"Talk then."

And the agreement was so sudden Harry couldn't stop himself. "What?"

Malfoy swiveled about completely, clasped his hands around one knee, and leaned back – quite alarmingly over the edge of the cliff – in a mockery of comfortable attention. "Go on and make your little speech; I'm sure you've got one all worked out. A brilliant work of rhetoric…"

"No."

"Not brilliant? Well, a best effort then."

"No."

"Not even a best effort, Potter, I'm insulted."

Harry gritted his teeth. "No speech. Just talking."

"Just talking, really? And this after I told you we've got nothing to talk about."

"We've got the Pensieve." There. He'd said it despite all Malfoy's dancing around.

"Well, no, not really; we've got tiny bits of the Pensieve, and I've simply no idea what we'd have to say about them."

"I read about it."

"Did you now? I'm so impressed. I'd give you a sweetie, but I just don't have any with me."

"This will go a lot faster if you cooperate," Harry growled at last.

Malfoy's eyes locked onto his as he stood up and stepped toward Harry. Harry realized it was the first time their eyes had met during all the minutes they'd been talking. "Then you'd better make it fucking quick," the blond said in an entirely new tone of voice.

"I didn't find much when I was reading."

"Neither did I."

"So you looked as well?"

"Yes."

"Did you see this?" Harry held up the more detailed of the maintenance manuals he'd found.

"Yes."

"Anything better?"

"No."

"So this…"

"Is a worthless book. I think there's something in the Manor library. I'm going to check over the Christmas holidays."

"And you think that will be better?"

"It won't say to contact the proper authorities. Pathetic. None of the Manor's books say to contact the proper authorities."

Harry bit back a sarcastic 'I'm sure they don't' in favor of, "Then why wait for the holidays? Write for the damn book now."

"The title of the book, Potter, is Methods for the Counteraction and Containment of Magical Damage. If I write home for that it's a blatant admission that something's gone wrong. And that would not be…well tolerated."

"Your mother's that terrifying?"

"My mother is not the issue."

"Well, other than that, your father's in Azkaban."

Malfoy seized the front of Harry's robes and shoved back so hard Harry fell to one knee. No blows followed; instead of pressing the attack, Malfoy stood rooted in place, looming, glaring, and quaking slightly. "Thank you," he spat, "thank you so bloody fucking much, you piece of pus, for bringing that up. My parents are not the only ones who know what goes on in the Manor, and I will not be providing any details on that that you can go carrying to Dumbledore."

Harry picked himself up and shook himself a little, a cursory check for damage. "So we

just have to get through until Christmas then," he said carefully.

"That's right." Immediately, Malfoy was normal again, if a word like 'normal' could ever be connected with him.

"Can you do it?"

"What do you mean, can I do it?"

"We've got six weeks. And a Quidditch match," Harry added, remembering. "And you lost it outside of Potions the other day."

"You asked to talk to me in front of everyone, you fucking idiot. You mentioned the goldfish out loud."

And now Malfoy had mentioned the goldfish. Out loud. And Harry had remembered what the blond looked like laughing. It was weird and so very, very confusing – the picture in his mind and the reality in front of him and the way they almost matched up, even to the water droplets clinging to Malfoy's pale face. A droplet was a droplet; you couldn't tell by looking whether it came from sloshing about in a bed chamber-cum-aquarium or from snarling and snapping on a cliff top in a cold fog of rain. Harry deeply wished Malfoy were still refusing to talk to him. 'Then you'd better make it fucking quick,' he'd said, and Harry hadn't realized what good advice it was until just now; you didn't want to give something like this the chance to start. He squeezed his eyes shut, which only made the false memory clearer. How to make it go away? It wouldn't. How did you talk to someone and the person they weren't at the same time? What should you say? Nothing, nothing… "Do we have all the same ones?" he whispered, and he hadn't meant to say it.

"Shut up!"

Harry's eyes snapped open. "I don't want to talk about it!"

"No, you just wanted to talk."

"Because we're both losing it! And now we have to keep going 'til Christmas."

"Or longer. If the book has something in it, I'll let you know. If not, it doesn't change anything."

"Obviously, but what doesn't it change?" Harry's shoulders jerked with frustration. He wanted to pound a wall, kick a chair, but the cliff top was so empty. The only thing there to hit was Malfoy, and that was exactly what he was trying to avoid. "What are we doing to get through this?" They were plotting together; it was rather like…

Malfoy had shut his eyes now. He just managed to speak through a strained throat. "You are staying completely the fuck away from me."

"We both live in this school, Malfoy."

"No more of your mistakes."

"Or yours."

"True," his voice so tight he must have been hurting himself. Deep breath. "No one can know, and furthermore…"

"Furthermore?" It had gone on too long; it wasn't that their guards had fallen so much as been battered thin and ragged.

Malfoy clamped his lips shut.

"You mean especially." It came to Harry as an inspiration. "No one can know; Ron and Hermione especially can't know. Who?" he demanded.

"There are things I told – didn't tell – you that I've never told anyone but Pansy. If you haven't found that memory, you will not look for it. If you let on in any way, with any sort of hint…"

"Do you think I want Ron finding out about the spiders? You can be just as careful with the hints."

"At least that never happened."

"Oh, it happened. Not with you there."

Malfoy gaped at that. "With the Weasel?"

"I don't know anyone named Weasel."

"That's not the point, you insane fucker. Twelve is too early for a death wish."

That had just not sounded hateful enough, it was almost…'Idiot Muggle-raised sod,' with a grin on his face… "My death wishes are my own business!" Harry didn't care that he sounded panicked.

Draco – Malfoy – gave a just noticeable start before clenching his hands into fists. "Stay away from me," he gritted out. Harry nodded jerkily, spun on his heel, and hurried back toward the castle, slipping a little on the wet grass.

And it was better, avoiding Malfoy completely. The Slytherin couldn't jog any of the horrible memories if he wasn't around; at meals or in double classes if they didn't look in one another's direction or speak loudly enough for the other to hear it was like not being in the same room. If something else reminded Harry, he was getting a little better at thinking before he spoke and really good at making swift excuses. He was getting good at that very disturbingly quickly. And the unbelievably stupid impulses – speaking to Malfoy, cracking some joke or another to Malfoy – he couldn't even begin to act on them if the other boy wasn't around. So much avoidance didn't give him any new reasons to hate Ferret Boy, but he had plenty of those already. Yes, for a few days, it was much better. Then it just got bloody unfair.