A/N: Not too bad a wait this time, I hope! I tried to write quickly, but I just had finals, soooo... But now, finals are over, and I can devote a bit more time to this! yay!

Today, I have decided to do some REVIEW RESPONSES to thank you all for your kind support! Here they are!

Silverone3 -- I still think 'that guy' is a Slytherin. Look at it this way- he's too cool to care about schoolwork, but still manages to do well at everything. That just screams "Slytherin!" at me. But, whatever! And yes, Ron probably will freak out, if only because it will be so much fun to write:P

Cithara -- Er... question answered, I guess! Read on!

ValerieCameo003 -- Thanks for the brownie! I'm afraid to say that you'll have to wait a bit to find out about Blaise, though. I can't give away all my secrets! #though I get tempted to, and have to stop myself#

shinomiko -- Thanks for the nice (and long!) review! I'm glad you like the direction of the plot. Like I may have said earlier (or not, I forget...), I started writing this story because I wanted to read one of those Draco-on-Harry's-doorstep fics that went somewhere other than immediately to: "I've just realized I've always been hot for you! Let's go make wild monkey-love!" It was getting kind of annoying. So, I just decided to write it myself. I'm glad people like it! I was really worried at first! Thank you, too, for your kind words about my depiction of Harry (and Draco, too). It's hard to come up with your own interpretation of two characters who have been so widely discussed and 'fan-written', so I'm happy that you like my version! Gah, I keep rambling and saying the same things over and over, so I'll just stop here.

Siiarrei -- Thank you, as well, for the nice (long!) review! I'll try not to ramble on this one. I did say they could choose some classes, but (as I discovered while doing some research for this fic) Astronomy is a required class for all 7 years. Taking into account that some classes are (apparently) always required, add in the fact that the required classes are usually the most boring, obnoxious, non-useful classes a school can provide. Voila! HoM is a required class! (Though Hermione would probably take it anyway...)

juniper -- Your "update dance" has been answered! #see? these things do work!#

Well, that's all we have time for today, folks! Now, on to the ficcage!

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Chapter XXIII -- An Interrupted Night's Dream

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Harry caught himself yawning as he made his way up to the Gryffindor boys' dormitory after a rather boring Astronomy class, trailing a few steps behind Ron and the others. He felt more tired than usual; but then again, he had gotten up much earlier than usual that morning. Not that he was complaining, really. As far as ways to wake up went, it hadn't been that bad. Certainly a lot better than Dean's sodding football alarm clock, anyway.

Dressing in his pajamas as quickly as he could (it was late, and cold), Harry idly noticed that a pair of pajama pants and one of his older t-shirts were still missing. He smiled a little to himself, his stomach twisting a bit oddly at the image of the blond wearing his clothes. Draco, in those red-plaid pj pants -- that used to be flannel but had most of the fuzziness worn off them -- and the old, graying t-shirt which Harry had managed to shrink down in the wash, with his hair all mussed up like it always was in the mornings before he raced off to the bathroom to fix it... The image was... soft, and warm, and more than a bit adorable; though Harry knew that Draco would find a suitably painful method of death for him if he ever dared to describe him as "adorable" to his face.

Harry fell asleep smiling.

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Draco was having an odd dream.

The first odd thing about it was, naturally, that he realized he was having it. The next, though, was equally obvious- he would not be caught running around the castle at night in his pajamas. Never mind that he had done it just that morning. Or that they weren't his pajamas at all, but the ones he had sto- borrowed from Harry.

He growled a terse "shut up!" at himself and continued his seemingly pointless wandering around the dream-Hogwarts he found himself in. All the portraits seemed to be asleep, he hadn't seen any of the ghosts; for that matter, he hadn't seen Filch or Mrs. Norris, either. And that was suspicious, if nothing else was. Then again, it was a dream. He had to keep reminding himself of that point, it kept slipping away from him. The dream-castle was so identical to the real one, down to the slightly-raised section of floor that he nearly always tripped over. He barely avoided the raised tile, reaching out to catch his balance.

Draco caught himself on the doors of the Great Hall. This came as a bit of a surprise to him, as he was fairly certain that he had been wandering around near library only seconds before.

'Dream,' he reminded himself. 'It's just a dream. You may as well deal with it.' With that, he pushed open one of the doors to the Hall and entered. It was at that point that he first wondered whether this was a dream at all, or if he had simply gone insane without his knowledge.

At the front of the Hall (which suddenly seemed much closer, though he couldn't remember moving at all) Harry was sitting cross-legged on the end of one of the House tables, apparently chatting with that infuriating flickering woman; 'Professor Kedemon,' his brain supplied, for no apparent reason. The woman- who wasn't flickering anymore, much to Draco's dismay- looked up at him and smiled.

"Welcome!" Her slightly raised voice suddenly filled up the Hall, and seemed in the quiet to be tantamount to yelling. Harry twisted around, apparently startled.

"Wha-?" the brunet began intelligently, then seemed to discover his wits buried somewhere about his person. "What are you doing here?" The question seemed to address Draco, but it was directed more at the petite woman perched on the High Table. Intrigued, Draco moved to sit next to Harry, who moved over slightly to give him more space.

The new professor shrugged lightly. "If he's going to help, he should at least be made aware that his services are required." She sighed at the look Harry was giving her. "Alright, alright. You win, but only this once. We simply didn't have the energy necessary to bring both of you together onto this plane, before. At the time, you were the most important piece in this game of ours, and so we chose to approach you first. Now it has become possible to contact you both, together, and so we have. Really, he should have been here from the beginning.

"Now then," she turned to Draco, giving him a quick grin that did little to assuage his sudden bout of nerves, "I would like to welcome you, and explain anything you have questions about. However, that may take some time, so I'll just let Harry explain what he knows a bit later. I have to be moving on to the real reason your presences are required in the first place. At this point, I will simply stick to the basics. We'll fill in the details as it becomes necessary for you to know them."

Draco wasn't certain, but he thought he could sense Harry beginning to seethe. How he could tell Harry was seething, he wasn't entirely certain. There was little change in the other boy's posture; perhaps his shoulders were a little tighter than they had been, but...

"Once upon a time, in a land far, far away-" Kedemon stopped as the two boys gave her sharp looks, alternating between annoyance and intense confusion. She sighed. "And here I thought you might have a sense of humor. Fine, have it your way then.

"A long time ago- I wasn't joking about that part- people lived quite a bit longer than they do now. So much so, in fact, that as the number of people in the world increased, it became a problem, and not just in terms of population, either. There were many factors that wove together to create quite a conundrum for us. One that we had to solve, and quickly. And no, I'm not telling you who 'we' refers to. Just know that it was myself and several other very important... people. Anyway, we came up with a solution.

"We created an object from the extra life-force, the energy, that was allowing people to live so long. As you may imagine, this object became incredibly powerful, as it continues to this day to absorb any extra life energy it finds floating around. After a while, some other... people... found out about it, and tried to use its energy for themselves. They caused us quite a few headaches, as you may imagine. After we cleaned up that incident, we decided that the best thing to do would be to entrust it to someone who would never, ever have the need or desire to use it. That we did. However, it seems that someone has now found out where the object was hidden away, and is trying to claim it for their own use. This simply cannot be allowed. Not since that first incident has this been a problem, and we had hoped the object had finally been forgotten. To have someone take an interest in it now, especially this particular someone, could be disastrous."

"Voldemort." Harry filled in, in a tone that was half resignation, half annoyance. Kedemon nodded silently.

Draco carefully assimilated all this information. Several questions came to mind, only one of which he actually voiced.

"This 'object' of yours, what is it exactly?" His eyes narrowed slightly as he focused on the issue at hand. The professor sighed heavily.

"That's the problem, you see. There just aren't adequate terms in your speech to describe exactly what the object is. Unfortunately, the closest description we've been able to come up with is also the reason that it attracted so much attention originally."

Draco glared. He didn't like it when people dodged his questions. "And that description is...?" He prodded, not-so-gently.

She sighed again.

"The Cloak of Immortality."

There was a pause.

"Oh, fuck." Harry swore quietly, glaring angrily off to one side of the hall.

Needless to say, Draco whole-heartedly agreed.

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A/N-- This chapter is a bit short, I know. The next will be longer, I promise. However, I do want to explain a bit, just to cut off some of the questions that I'm sure are going to come up about this (not that you can't review anyway, even to tell me thanks for answering your question... #HINT!#). Here we go!

First, the Cloak is something I sort of picked up from a movie about Santa Claus that was on TV one time, like, several years ago. My version bears little resemblance to their version, but that's where the name came from. The 'people lived longer' thing I pulled straight from the bible (to use in a slash fic... oh, I'm going to hell, I just know it... at least I get HPDM smut to read on the way down!), but the idea that it caused problems I made up myself. Also the "solution" is mine. Unless it was someone else's first... But I don't think it was... Eh, whatever. Sort it out yourselves! Buncha lazy- #is smacked by muse# -WONDERFUL reviewers! a-hem...

Anyway, the backstory on the cloak is sorta important (maybe), but if it really is, it'll be recapped later. Just get the main points, don't worry about my half-assed storytelling... The whole thing will probably get changed around later anyway, if I see a need for the backstory to be useful.

Second- yes, the boys do get more information than just this. But, it was just such a good stopping place, don't you think? I did, so I went for drama over plot development. Don't worry, all the information they learned will be given to you in the next couple of chapters. Probably in chapter 25, actually, looking at how 24 is headed. Have no fear! You'll find it all out eventually.

Please Review! I just LOVE reading reviews! It makes me want to write more! #hint! BIG hint!#