Dumbledore was in his study the next morning when Pomfrey's face appeared in his fireplace. He knew immediately from the look on her face that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
"Poppy, what is it?" he asked.
Her face was replaced in the fireplace by Snape's, and Dumbledore saw just how serious the situation was.
"Albus...we were mistaken. Please join us here..."
But Dumbledore was already gone.
As he entered the little room, he saw Pomfrey and Snape gathered around a sleeping Jimmy. The three of them exited the room and went over to Pomfrey's desk.
"I was checking him as I do every morning," Pomfrey said. "Severus saw..."
"The boy has very high levels of activity in ... the area of interest," Snape broke in. "Unusually high. He has the makings of a very powerful wizard, which is no surprise."
Albus waited patiently.
"What is a surprise is how integrated the activity is with the rest of his brain."
"We're not going to be able to separate the tissue without ... severe damage to the non-magical brain areas," Pomfrey said.
Dumbledore looked from one to the other, aghast.
"You mean..."
"We can extract the tissue," Snape said slowly, "but it will kill him."
Dumbledore sat in one of the almost-full-size chairs in Jimmy's room. Jimmy sat in the other chair, elbows on knees, head in hands. They did not speak for some time.
Jimmy lifted his head after a while, and stared out of the single window in the room that overlooked the courtyard below, where students were walking and running between classes. Their laughter and yelling carried through the window into the little room.
Finally, Jimmy inhaled sharply, and sat back in his chair.
"That's it, then."
"Yes."
"No chance of..."
"It doesn't seem so."
They sat in silence.
"Please...leave me alone."
Dumbledore stood and left the room.
He wasn't very surprised when Lupin rushed into his office a few hours later, breathless, babbling that Jimmy had disappeared from the hospital wing.
"Don't worry about him," Dumbledore said. "He'll be back."
Draco Malfoy was in the girls' bathroom. Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, to be exact, which was why he'd been able to stay in there for ... however long it had been. He'd lost track after he gave into his frustration and anger and slid to the floor of the fifth stall on the right, sobbing and pounding the walls. Myrtle had splashed down into the plumbing a while back after she found him uninteresting, and he'd been left alone. He knew he had as long as he needed; even if the bathroom hadn't been declared off-limits since the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets had been found in there at the end of his second year, Myrtle's whining was enough to make people avoid the place like the plague.
Now, he sat on the floor, exhausted and beyond emotion. Just a few more minutes to collect himself...it must be near lunchtime. Tweedledee and Tweedledumber will be looking for leadership again...they can't even eat by themselves...useless...Weasley might be a dirt-poor dolt and Granger a goody-goody Mudblood, but at least Potter has useful friends...
He froze as someone hurried into the room, footsteps echoing on the stone tiles. The feet ran past the enormous fountain-like sink that led to the Chamber of Secrets (so long ago, it seemed...) and he saw a figure dart into...the stall across from him! Damn! Busted! He silently cursed and slid further back into the deep stall.
It turned out that he needn't have worried. Whoever was opposite him was far too upset to notice him, and started showing Draco just what he'd probably looked like fifteen minutes before. He felt a twinge of embarrassment at being so privy to the other person's pain (a boy, from the sounds of his howling), but he couldn't move without revealing himself. Who knows, he thought, it might be useful ammunition for some tormenting later. If he was up to it...these days, it wasn't as fun as it used to be.
Eventually, the other boy slumped to the floor, legs spread straight out. His head fell back, into the dim light entering through the stall door, and Draco caught his breath. He knew that hair. The other boy heard the sharp intake of air, and sat up immediately.
"Who's there?"
A beat, then:
"Potter? That you?"
"Malfoy..."
The two boys slowly stood and exited their stalls, and faced each other. Faces were swollen from tears, and throats were raw from shouting. Both were drained to the point of exhaustion. Still, they tried...
"Crying in the bathroom, Potter? The girls' bathroom? My, my, what would dear old Dumbledore say?"
"He'd probably ask you why you were doing the same thing."
"You? What could Dumbledore's Golden Boy, the savior of the wizarding world, The Boy Who Lived, have to cry about? Little Mister Perfect?"
"None of your business, Malfoy. Anyway, why are you here? Mister Richer-Than-Thou, whose father can buy him anything his heart desires? Who lives to make my life a living hell?"
"Typical, Potter. Self-centered as always. Not everything is about you, you know."
"Nor about you."
They stared each other down for a few moments, then the smaller boy sighed.
"Mal...Draco...this is stupid."
"Don't call me that."
"I don't have any reason to hate you. And you don't have any reason to hate me. So let's drop the tough-guy acts."
"What are you talking about? You have plenty of reason to hate me."
"Not me. I don't know you."
"Have you gone mental, Potter?"
"No," and Jimmy stared Draco straight in the eye. "You know what's going on...if you didn't, you would have asked me why I look twelve when I'm supposed to be seventeen."
Draco nodded.
"So, what is your name, anyway? Not Harry, presumably."
"No. I'm Jimmy."
"Of course."
"And so, you're Draco."
"Yeah, ok. Fair enough."
They stood for a moment, sizing each other up. Then, the smaller boy spoke.
"We've both got a problem."
"Right. I can't tell anybody about this without being found out, and the same goes for you."
"But I have no idea why you're in here, and you can probably guess why I am."
"Yeah," Draco said. They had wandered over to the windows by the huge sinks, and sat down on a bench along the wall. "You're dead in a few weeks."
He immediately regretted his bluntness, but Jimmy just shrugged.
"Worse than that. A few days."
Draco stared. "Why? From what Granger and Weasley said..."
Jimmy's head snapped around. "What did they tell you?"
"Nothing. I overheard them in the hallway shortly after you were ... born, I guess."
"So you know what is going to happen to me?"
"I think so."
"Did you know that it's going to kill me?"
Draco's eyes grew wide.
"No, I didn't know..."
"I have two more days after this."
Draco didn't know what to say. And, this was getting interesting. So he sat quietly.
"I didn't sign up for this!" Jimmy smashed his fist into the wooden bench. Draco jumped.
He stood up and started circling the sinks. Draco watched him.
"I don't...I don't want...I don't know how to say it. It's just too much. I'm tired of it...so tired." He stopped for a moment. "I wonder if he is, too. I don't know how he feels about this...just how he used to feel. I don't even always know if these are his feelings or mine. I'm him and I'm me...whatever that is."
He stopped and gripped the nearby sink edge with both hands, leaning over it. He turned to face Draco, and his eyes were wild.
I hope he isn't going to be sick, Draco thought.
"I just want to not be him any more. I'm not even supposed to exist without him. You're not supposed to know that I exist." He stood up, and his fingers traced the tap in front of him. Draco realized that it was the same one that had opened the Chamber of Secrets. "He's Harry Potter. What about me? What would they call me? The Boy Who Died for the Boy Who Lived? Well, nobody's going to call me anything, not ever, since I will just disappear and nobody will ever know I was here."
He sat down again.
"This whole thing...it's not my problem. It's his. But it's my job to fix it for him so he can go save the world. Again."
"Yeah. He does that a lot," Draco agreed.
The two boys sat, wrung out, on the bench.
"You know, Malfoy, you're not all bad. You haven't gotten snarky once."
"Same to you."
"Thanks," Jimmy said.
"Potter," Draco said slowly, "I'll remember you. So will Gr...Hermione, and Ron, and Dumbledore and Snape and Lupin and Pomfrey..."
"For what I was to Harry."
"No," Draco said, "for what you were to them. Face it, you fatuous ass...they do care about you, and not just as some tissue farm."
"How do you know that?"
Draco laughed. "That's just how they are. Even Snape. I know because I've known you for all of ten minutes and I like you, and if I can like you, then anybody can. Too bad you're not..."
"Not what?"
"A Slytherin."
"I'm not anything." Jimmy suddenly looked very young.
"That's not true. You're Jimmy."
"I don't know what that means."
"You've got some time left to find out."
Jimmy looked at the older boy, and smiled tiredly.
"Why are you here, anyway?"
Draco hesitated, then said, "Obligations, Jimmy. Hate 'em." He saw the inquisitive look in Jimmy's eyes. There were some things he couldn't tell him, even if he was going to be dead in a few days. Draco shrugged.
"Everybody's got problems when they're seventeen."
"Albus? He's back, safe and sound."
"Of course he is."