Chapter 28) Fox

Selected Listening: Trade Mistakes- Panic! At the Disco

A week later, the gray clouds rolled in as the sun set, and a heavy rain broke out in the dusk. Lightning streaked along charcoal clouds as the last of the vibrant crimsons and violets faded behind the horizon. Anastasia slipped out of the common room and snuck down to Minerva's office.

"There you are." The professor met her at the door with a proud smile and handed her the vial. They walked together through the empty corridors to the main entrance. Anastasia felt her hands jittering, her heartbeat hard against her ribs.

Minerva stopped at the entrance.

"You should go alone," she said. "This is not something I can help you with."

Anastasia nodded.

"Will you wait right here for me?" she asked nervously. Minerva nodded and stepped back. Anastasia turned toward the door.

"Anastasia—" Minerva stopped her. Anastasia turned over her shoulder. "Remember, you must succeed this time…there's no going back."

Potion in hand, the little princess took a deep breath and exited the castle, into the storming night. Cold rain beat against her skin as she walked into the open field. She avoided the main gravel path. That way, if any professors or gamekeepers or criminals were wandering the dark, she wouldn't bump into them.

She found what thought she was a suitable spot next to the Black Lake. Though clouds had blocked the moon, the lake still sparkled from the faint light filtering through the Slytherin common room windows below.

Under the boughs of the willow by the shore, she uncorked the potion, drank it down, and placed the wand tip on her heart.

"Amato animo animato animagus, Amato amino animato animagus," she chanted as she had every morning and night for the past week. Now, every time she said it, her voice grew in power, and the words resounded through her every limb.

A second heartbeat stirred in her chest…maybe a third. A warmth radiated through her.

But as she chanted, she noticed a drop in temperature, and the grass trailing towards her turned to ice under black cloak-like tendrils. She saw the flash of her father's bloodied face.

No. She thought. She had to complete the spell.

Draco lay in his dormitory, throwing an apple up to the ceiling of his four-post and letting it fall back into his hands on his chest. He intended to practice his occlumency that evening but found his mind wandering. His mind dwelled over the events of the last quidditch game.

"Why'd you do that?" Draco demanded of Montague as he pushed him.

"Do what?"

"Crash into Dumblebrat!"

"I was doing what I was supposed to be doing—keeping them from scoring more points!"

"She already scored! It was distracting!"

"Distracting? I was on the other side of the field from you!"

Draco couldn't explain the lifeline to the brute, how his boneheaded move had inadvertently cost them the game and the cup.

If Montague hadn't done that, he would have won. He would have been the school hero that day instead of Potter. Anastasia would have been bummed, but she would have gotten over it…maybe even enough to find him later and congratulate him…

What a rut of a year it had been.

"Ey, mate, want to come place some exploding snap?" Blaise asked, peaking his head in from the hall.

Draco had stopped talking to Blaise after the Easter incident. He was furious with him for plotting the closet ordeal with Goyle behind his back, which they admitted to only at wandpoint. Draco had already told Blaise that his father wouldn't allow him to see Anastasia, much less date her, but Blaise kept pushing him to talk to her anyway. Now he had to attend occlumency club to keep his father from infiltrating his thoughts.

It's a crush. Draco tried to tell himself. I'll eventually stop liking her and like someone else instead.

But he couldn't convince himself completely. Not with the lifeline. Not when last month in the library, when Anastasia grabbed him around the waist and told him to trust her. The butterflies he pounded into dust revived themselves, undeterred. He snapped back to the present, neck flushed, and sat up, put his feet on the ground, and faced Blaise.

"No, mate, I really don't," he said to Blaise. Zabini rolled his eyes dramatically.

"You can't still be mad. What was I supposed to do after you wrote me so many letters about her? Now you're just going to give up because daddy says so—"

Draco snapped.

"Just because you don't know who your father is, doesn't mean other people don't respect theirs!" He intended it to hurt…he wanted to be alone as quickly as possible to continue wallowing in the lost game and the lost girl.

Blaise froze, jaw open, recovered, licked his lips, and nodded sternly.

"Fine, if that's the way you're going to be. Keep listening to whatever your father says, miss out on your life. Whatever. It's not my problem."

And he left the room. Thunder raged outside, and lightening crashed. Draco felt an odd sensation of warmth in his chest…a familiar hitch of his lungs.

Draco sucked in as much air as he could, although it pained him, preparing for the worst. He ran to his bedframe and grabbed the inhaler from one of the small drawers. It had been months since he had even a hint of an asthma attack.

He could feel the cool darkness of the dementors' presence seep into him.

Anastasia.

Draco dashed down the stairs as fast as he could, ignoring the prefects calls to stop as he left the common room after curfew. His chest pounded, almost triple what he normally felt. Two beats overlapping…or maybe three.

What was Anastasia doing outside at this hour? Why was she outside?

Could he even reach her fast enough?

There was only one whom he could trust to help. Someone who understood the situation.

"Professor!" Draco fell into Snape's office doorway, clutching his chest. "Dementors…Anastasia…"

Snape put down his papers, abandoned his desk, and grabbed Draco's arm.

"Faster!" the stern professor forcibly dragged Draco down the hall and up the stairs. "Outside. NOW!"

"I'm going, I'm going." Draco moved his feet as fast as he could alongside his teacher, and then broke into a run out of necessity. His sternum felt as if a knife were pressed through it.

They found Minerva in the entry way, staring out the open door into the thunderstorm, squinting into the darkness.

"Why are you standing there?!" asked Snape frantically.

"Well, she—she's…" the elder professor stuttered.

"Dementors!" Draco shouted.

The three ran into darkness.

"Stay close." Snape told Draco, but he was already running ahead, screaming. He felt a shift in his body, as if a light had been flicked off and then back on again. The second and third heartbeat vanished.

"Anastasia! ANASTASIA!" he yelled, following the draft of cold and the trail of wet grass turning to ice and rain turning to hail as it hit the ground. The professors followed him. A dog barked in the distance.

Then he saw her on the banks of the lake, flat on the grass, seizing as the dementors leered over her face. The visions returned. He could see his parents arguing through the crack of the study door.

"There!" he shouted.

Minerva drew her arm back and yelled a spell into the air. A white light exploded from her wand and a four-legged feline launched itself amidst the crowd of dementors. The dementors swept away quickly.

"Get back, you parasites!" Minerva screeched, running to the girl's side as soon as the last dementor dispersed.

Draco fell onto his knees beside the girl. All the while, the memories played in his head. But he realized as he saw Anastasia's face, that he could stay there forever. He felt the warmth of the patronus, and it warded off the monster he couldn't fight with his two hands. He swayed slowly, watching the light of Anastasia's soul hover outside her body.

He fell alongside her, his lungs collapsing.

Snape caught up to them and stood by Draco's limp form. Draco gasped in air as he looked up and saw a light fall into Anastasia's chest.

Draco blacked out alongside her.

Anastasia woke in the middle of the night to a clash of thunder. She found herself in the hospital wing, rain trailing down the windowpanes, heartbeat rapid in her chest.

Draco awakened on his own cot beside her. He sat up but did not turn his face toward her. Damp strands of hair hung around his ears and eyes.

"What the hell were you doing out there?" he demanded. "You nearly killed us."

The night reeled back to her in flashes. The light, the dementors, the multiple heartbeats in her chest. Draco calling for her. Minerva's spell. A cold, a warmth, and then nothing. He had saved her life…their lives.

"It's um…what I've been working on...a plan," she realized how ridiculous it seemed, even after all the work she invested.

"The one you told me to trust you on?" he asked, the pain in his lungs tripping his voice into a strained pitch.

"Yes," she said softly, realizing she hadn't been that trustworthy. She knotted bedsheet in her fingers and waited for him to lash out in his usual sardonic way.

But he didn't.

"Can I trust that it doesn't include anymore dementor encounters?" he asked warily.

She gave a half-smile in the dark.

"Shouldn't…but it might include skipping finals."

There was a long pause where he seemed to be turning things over.

"Alight, but what is it?" he asked. "What's this plan you're willing to risk so much on? I don't know about you, but my parents will kill me if I bail on exams."

Anastasia tried to summon the bravery from her house's namesake and bring forth the words she'd been careful not to speak of over the previous month and a half. The thought of putting her plan into action made her queasy. She cared for many people at Hogwarts. She didn't want to leave them all, but she didn't have a better solution for her lack of legal guardianship.

"Meet me in the forest on Friday evening at 4:30 pm. Bring any belongings you can carry," she said.

There was another silence as Draco directed his body towards her. He saw the faint outline of his face in the moonlight, but he kept his gaze on the stone tiles of the floor.

"Are you proposing we run away?" he whispered. "How is this supposed to help—"

"We need to go. We need to leave all the adults who are trying to manipulate us while we can. I don't want a new guardian, and you deserve to get away from your father," she said solemnly.

"We can't, I've been working on something—"

"Do you trust me or not?" she asked. He blinked, thinking, mouth hanging slightly open.

"Fine…" he said, "If you're sure. I'll see you then."

She heard the creak of the cot and rustle of sheets as he burrowed back into the bed.

Anastasia watched the moonlight filter through the window onto the floor. Out of all the flashes of memory returning to her, one feeling, the feeling of shifting one way and then back again, remained clearest…

She brought the memory to the forefront of her mind. Her body lurched forward, arms catching the front of her torso on small paws as her head shrank and straightened. Her legs shifted her forward into a lunge as they shrunk, and a full coat of fur emerged as she transformed into a four-legged creature with a tail that swished. She trotted out into the beam of moonlight, seeing her reflection in the aluminum tin of a basin that had been left on the floor.

Amber eyes flashed back at her. Black tips peaked over her wide, pointed ears. Her whiskers matched the usual pattern of freckles across her cheeks. Save for the vanilla patch of fur on her chest, traversing into her crimson jawline and mirroring the scar she received three years prior, her vulpine features proved unremarkable.

And that was exactly what they needed...