Author's Note: Sorry it's a bit… short. My climaxes always go wrong somehow. Gahh and other incoherent interjections of frustration.

Incidentally, HOLY BEJESUS, 200 REVIEWS. A round of hugs on me, bartender.

Chapter Eighteen

Death of a Bookshelf

Draco felt like shit.

Well, he wasn't really sure what shit felt like. He didn't have any personal experience. And he wasn't quite sure that shit felt anything at all, given that it wasn't exactly alive.

Maybe he should amend that statement. He felt really, really terrible.

He had upchucked just about everything there was to upchuck, and there was a sharp, insistent ache in his chest as a result. It was like being stabbed. Repeatedly. With a rusty knife.

In other words, lame.

Draco would have heaved a deep and heartfelt sigh, but that would have hurt like Hell on fire with brimstone.

Hermione brought him some water, and he drank cautiously, trying to quiet the demands of his empty stomach with his wary logic, which knew full well that he was simply giving himself something else to expel if he wasn't careful.

Just the thought made his stomach twist, and he choked and sprayed water everywhere.

"Ow," he said.

"Eew," Hermione said. He'd just spat water all over her.

"Sorry," he managed.

"You're morbidly ill," she sighed. "All is forgiven." She smiled down at him, somewhat sadly. "I guess it wouldn't be very wise of us to share the bed, would it?"

When have I ever done what is wise? part of Draco inquired pointedly.

You're damn well going to now, another part growled.

The inquiring part covered its head and crept away, and the growling part folded its arms firmly and nodded its approval. That's right, bitch, it remarked.

"I would rather die than contaminate you," he announced to Hermione. Perhaps not strictly true, but it sure sounded exciting.

A bit of a tingle went through Draco's body at the very thought that there were, in fact, things that he would rather die than do to Hermione Granger, whether or not contaminating her was one of them.

Unnecessarily, Hermione tucked the blanket in around him a little. "If there's anything else you need," she told him, "just yell for me. I'd better go to bed if I want to last through the day tomorrow." She bent down, eyes closed, lips pursed.

"Wait!" he cried.

She opened her eyes and drew back, looking… hurt.

The pain that jolted through him then was worse than any prompted by upchucking. He could have upchucked for a thousand years without so much as a potty break and felt less miserable than he did looking at that hurt in Hermione's eyes.

"It'll taste like puke," he explained weakly.

Hermione smiled, and Draco was free again—free to feel the more mundane kind of aching in his chest. Hermione, for her part, settled with kissing him on the forehead, a safe distance from his germy breath.

"Goodnight," she whispered.

"'Night," he replied.

She smiled at him one last time from the doorway before she flicked off the lights.

So if you didn't count the utter and undeniable lameness of the profuse upchucking, everything was just about all right.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

As the night began, the dreams were feverish, weird and wild and deeply wrong, full to bursting of things that didn't exist, couldn't exist, and shouldn't for the sake of the collective sanity of mankind—creatures and demons and a thousand kinds of madness crammed much too tightly into his reeling mind. Draco twisted and kicked, but if they didn't dart out of the way like shadows, they were as intangible as wraiths; his fists and his feet slipped right through them, and the creatures didn't pause. There was a searing pain as a black mark burned into existence on his left forearm, flaring red, scorching his fragile skin. The snake coiled within it writhed and rose, tearing free of its two-dimensional bonds on his arm and lifting a swaying head level with his. Green eyes set deep in its triangular head burned brightly, lit from within with an unrelenting, unnatural fire, gouging their way down into Draco's very soul. He couldn't escape, couldn't run, couldn't move, couldn't scream—

And then something changed. Draco didn't know whether it was a real or a dream; he couldn't distinguish between them anymore; was there really any difference? But something changed, then, and he saw the woman with the thick brown hair and the deep, dark eyes—eyes that sparked like stone against steel when she was angry but could be softer than dove's down. They were soft now. She bent over him, and she kissed the mark away.

And the nightmares ceased, and all was well.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The sound of the door being forced open shook Draco from a new dream, a wonderful and extremely detailed one about—well, best not to go there. Groggily he sat partway up, and it was then that he saw Giles Helicane standing just inside the room, panting but triumphant.

"Wh—" Draco began.

Helicane smiled nastily. "Time," he said, "for your little 'London Suburbs Murderer' to strike again." He raised his wand and, with a confidence born of certainty, angled it directly at Draco. "Avada—"

Draco would have said his prayers. If he had had any. If he had even really been awake.

"Ked—AUGH!"

Sparky had sat back on his haunches and, with his one good forepaw, scratched right through Giles Helicane's slacks to make some sizeable gashes in the man's pale, fatty leg.

Arturo Leonine burst through the battered door and glared around with forest green eyes harder and colder than granite. Untamed golden-brown hair shot with gray brushed his shoulders as he turned his head angrily, seeking his quarry.

But Draco had already nipped up his wand and dived behind the couch. He poked his head up and aimed his wand at Helicane. "Rictusempra!" he managed to yelp out around the fear closing his throat, squeezing his heart, suffocating him—this was it, this was the end, he was trapped like a fly in a jar, like a rabbit in its den, like a wizard in an apartment, and they had him at last—

"Protego," Helicane said calmly, and Draco's pathetic charm was quite summarily absorbed into a crackling blue shield.

Even as Draco's brain whirred, trying to come up with a way to react, Leonine moved, and Draco turned to see him mere steps away.

Leonine's arm rose. "Avada," he said quietly, "kedavra."

Draco watched in mute horror as at the tip of Leonine's wand there gathered a glowing orb of an eerie green. He was going to die. He was going to die, and he'd never even been thrown on the floor and ravished. How could life be so unfair?

Then Hermione barreled into Leonine's shoulder.

A jet of vibrant green shot through the room like emerald lightning and slammed into the bookshelf at the back left corner. Like horrendous decay in fast-motion, the wood withered and blackened until it looked like the wasted remains of a charred corpse, balanced precariously in place. The grotesquerie held for a moment, and then the tortured wood crumbled to ash. Unsuspended books tumbled from the air and landed wedged in the pile of dust that had once been sturdy shelving.

Draco's mouth, he discovered, was very, very dry.

He tore his eyes from the results of his quick dance with death and looked to the other occupants of the room.

Helicane was staring at the remains of the bookshelf. His rounded jaw had dropped.

Draco said, "Petrificus totalus," and the rounded rest of Helicane also dropped—to the floor.

An infuriated grunt brought his attention to Leonine. Hermione had thrown both arms around his neck from behind and looked to be in the process of attempting to strangle him. Uttering a growl that started low in his chest, Leonine thrashed and kicked and clawed at her with both hands, but even when his nails drew blood, Hermione held on.

He had to slam his heel down on her foot before she cried out and yielded her grip.

In the work of an instant, Leonine shoved his way free of her and Apparated. With an ear-splitting crack, he winked out of sight, as if he'd never been.

Draco moved immediately to Hermione, raising his hands to touch the bloody scratches on her cheeks as gently as he could possibly manage.

"You were amazing," he told her, unable to keep a smile of pure relief off of his face. He drew his fingertips away wet. "Though we should disinfect those. We probably don't want to know where Leonine's fingernails have been." He paused and looked at her. "Where's your wand?" he asked.

Hermione blushed. "Nightstand," she mumbled. Draco laughed and leaned forward to kiss her, his angel, his savior, his fondest dream incarnate—

There was a sudden pressure against his shin, and he froze. Terror mounting in his chest, he looked down.

Sparky rubbed his head harder against Draco's ankle and purred.

Grinning, Draco leaned down and picked him up. "Can I marry your cat?" he asked Hermione.

She grinned right back. "I don't think that's legal."

A/N: Some of you, as became clear in the reviews, were far too intelligent for this fic. Sigh. I did my best. Hopefully the (shall we say) plot twist was enjoyable, even if it wasn't quite as subtle as I seemed to think… Did I drop too many hints, or was it just transparent from the start?