'Heaven sure looks fuzzy', Draco thought to himself as he looked around the room. He wasn't foolish, it must be an illusion of some kind because obviously heaven wasn't a room at Hogwarts. 'Although it would be pretty hilarious if it was', Draco giggled. Damn he was closer to sober. When Draco drank he went in stages, he started at sober, he turned to fuzzy, which was a content happy feeling, then he descended to tipsy, and weirdly his vision would clear, but everything he saw would be hilarious and he'd be a giggling mess. Then in the mid-point between drunk and tipsy he became very uncoordinated, tripping over nothing, hitting himself in the face with his flailing limbs and so forth. Finally he became startlingly sober. Sober to the realities of life, not to the alcohol, and his thoughts would turn dark, he'd sink into a depression, and if he'd been a girl he would've had the weepies. And then as he began to sober up he went back the way he came, through the various stages in reverse, clumsiness, giddiness, and then fuzziness.

At the moment he was in the giddiness stage, because while the room was fuzzy, he was clear that it was the only fuzzy thing, and he had not become quite that sober yet.

He looked around a bit more. There really wasn't much too see; just white light and fuzziness, like drifting among the clouds. Not all that interesting, and he had no idea why Potter had come to this room when there was nothing in it. He shrugged, he wasn't really in the mood to ponder Potter's antics, and what he really wanted to do was to get back to the last stage of drunkenness and wallow in self-pity for a few more hours. For that he would need Fire Whiskey, so he turned to leave and return to his rooms, only to find that the door had disappeared. Draco giggled, even though he knew that nothing about this was funny. He was stuck in ridiculous land. Except it wasn't a land, it was a room. The Ridiculous Room. The Room of Ridiculousness. Yeah Draco liked that one.

"While ridiculous things have happened in this room throughout the history of Hogwarts, this room is actually named the Room of Requirement." A voice echoed all around him, surprising him and making him fall on his ass. That wasn't funny, but Draco laughed anyways.

"Yes, we'll get nothing done if you insist on being so… giggly. Sober up now." The voice commanded.

Well it wasn't that easy, thought Draco as he scowled. If he could sober up upon anyone's command he would have gotten drunk more often. Well probably not, but… strange, he didn't feel drunk anymore. He was sober. Wow he'd have to get drunk and come here more often! Maybe that's what Potter had been doing, wandering around mumbling to himself drunk, and then he came here to become sober!

"No, this is the Room of Requirement, and he does not require what you do. Actually to be honest this land isn't really part of the Room of Requirement in the first place, but I had to speak to you, and the magic in this room allows me to connect your dimension to mine." This time the voice was behind Draco and he turned around to see a fuzzy man shaped haze.

"Hello Draco, I'm Prongs."

Silence.

Then Draco snorted. "A ridiculous name for the Room of Ridiculousness." Draco sneered as he walked around the hazy figure.

"It's a nickname. No parent in their right mind would name their child Prongs or anything equally ridiculous" The haze said matter-of-factly.

"Well I don't know about that, what of Dumbledore? Dumbledore is a ridiculous name," Draco took a seat next to Prongs, and Prongs sat down next to him. Weirdly the fuzzy cloud stuff wasn't actually all that soft to sit upon.

"Dumbledore is a last name," Prongs drawled, "Albus is his real name."

"My point stands."

Prongs snorted. "Alright, you have a point. Albus' parents weren't being too kind when the thought up that one."

"Dedalus."

"Point."

"Pansy."

"Pansy is a legit name!" Prongs protested.

"It's a flower." Draco drawled out disdainfully.

"Alright, point. But come on, 'Draco'? What kind of name is that?"

Draco turned to glare at the haze, attempting to stare it down. However since he couldn't see Prongs' eyes it was a fruitless exercise. Draco sighed heavily, "Point." Truthfully he didn't know what his parents were thinking, but the girls seemed to like it at least.

"It seems we are way off topic," Prongs sighed.

"We had a topic?"

"Well we were going to until you got us off on this inane tangent. So may I get to it?"

"By all means."

"Currently you are dying. Well, not exactly dying, but soon you will die. No, not even die… it's more like..."

"Eloquent," Draco sneered. Prongs turned towards him and was silent. "Are you glaring at me? You do know you're a featureless haze right?"

Prongs sighed, "I think this is going to be a long conversation. Where should we start?"

"How about we start with where we are right now." Draco said as he leaned back to lay on the ground.

"Alright, at this moment we are in the Room of Requirement. Well sort of. This is the Room of Requirement, but at the same time we are suspended between two completely different dimensions. The magic of the room and some magic that we have worked over on this side allows for us to speak to each other. Of course it's not a completely balanced connection. We are physically in your dimension, but what you see is of mine. Except for the whole haziness thing. I assume that's just a lack of connection on your part, or maybe this is what those of my dimension look like to those of yours. You are, to me, completely solid."

"Whereas you, and your world are completely hazy to me." Draco nodded, it seemed to make sense. It probably shouldn't have made sense considering he was talking to a being of another dimension, but funnily enough it did. Sort of. "You said that you worked magic to be able to come here, why did you do that?"

"Your dimension, and my dimension are linked. Here in the Room of Requirement is a temporary link, one created so that I may talk to you, but the very nature of both our dimensions is connectedness. I used to be a member of your dimension, in fact most if not all of those in this dimension were members of your dimension."

"Were? What do you mean?" Draco asked, even though he had a sneaking suspicion about what Prongs was talking about.

"Yes, we're those that have passed on. Died, gone to heaven, fallen through the veil and whatnot."

"So what you're saying is that you are talking to me from the afterlife. Is… is my father there?" Draco asked tentatively, "can anyone speak from the afterlife?"

"Your father is not here. And no, I have special permission to speak with you. Generally communication between dimensions is one way. Those of yours speak to those of ours, and rarely are we allowed to reply. Nor do many of us want to reply. Sometimes when you come here you move on and forget about those left behind, and sometimes you remain attached."

"What do you mean 'move on'?"

"This is where you come when you 'die', it is a place of contemplation. From this point you can move forward, or you can move back. Or you can stay exactly where you are. It depends on what you want to do."

"Yes but what exactly do you mean 'move on'? The afterlife is not the end? There's more?"

"Ah, one of the mysteries of life. You know through educated guess that there is an afterlife, ghosts exists, messages from the afterlife are sent, 'angels' have appeared and devils. Yes you know there is something after. But while living in your dimension you know that your death is not the endpoint, but maybe the next one is. What is life, after your life? For many of those in your dimension death for them does not lead them here. One of three things can happen, but the most common one is reincarnation. You haven't learnt all the lessons you need to learn to come here, so automatically you are put back into the recycling and brought back in for another round. So many of you are caught there, stuck."

"So we live more than one life then."

"Oh yes thousands and thousands of lives. As different people, as different species, on different planets. So many lives are needed to learn everything that you can learn from there. And then there comes a certain point where there are no more lessons to learn, and your soul knows that there are no more lessons to learn. You were in a field and you covered every inch of it learning everything, and nothing more to discover. But that doesn't make sense, knowledge doesn't stop, you don't stop, everything is infinite. And it's at that point that you know there is more. In the very fiber of your being you know that life doesn't stop there, and it doesn't stop at death. There is a road to follow, more land to cover, and to think that before this revelation you didn't even know there was a road!"

"As insightful as this all is, why have you come to speak to me? I'm going to die, and so what you're trying to tell me that I'm going to move on? Or be recycled? Have you come to reassure me or something?"

"Unfortunately Draco, you fall into the third category of what happens when you die. The third option is sometimes known, in your dimension, as hell. A place of unending pain and suffering, the place of the sinners and condemned. However that's just the myth. Many of your religions would send the Buddhists to hell because they do not believe in their God, or they would have those of magic abilities sent there because they are unnatural, or so they think. But really it's because in the early beginnings of their religion, and even now, people have caught glimpses of this alternate dimension, of this 'hell', and what they see when they look in there is the sufferings of criminals, and magical beings, and innocents. They see the suffering and they named it hell, and they decided that anyone who gets sent there must have deserved it, there were criminals there, were there not? So magical beings were condemned. The only thing that didn't make sense were the innocents, so they made up other sins, and those that committed those were 'sent to hell'. But that was only because they didn't have a reasonable explanation for their being there. But you don't get sent to hell for sinning, you don't even actually get sent to hell. It's just an unfortunate circumstance. Just like yours Draco."

"What do you mean? Why are you telling me that I'm going to be sent to eternity in pain and suffering!" Draco screamed enraged and frightened, getting up off the ground and hovering angrily over Prongs.

"Just sit down Draco, I'm trying to get to it. Sit down… good, try to stay calm while I finish this conversation. Ok. Those who get sent to hell are sent there deliberately by wizards, by accident, or by pure sadness and suffering. The reason there are so many magical beings in hell is because back in times where those of magical powers weren't interbred with humans, it was mostly magic that sustained them. Flesh and blood they may have had, but a lot of their composition was magic, and a being of pure magic, or mostly magic can fade if it loses the willingness to live. And willingness is what's needed to move on or come back. Suicidal humans, for the most part, when they kill themselves they still have the willingness to keep going. So where do they go when they don't have the will to keep going? They find themselves in that other dimension, the hell. They were the first inhabitants of hell, and their thoughts, and magic, gone haywire with grief and anger and sadness created the unending pain and suffering of that dimension.

Secondly the reason you see criminals there is because of one being who has the power to send anyone to that dimension. And that being is a dementor. They kiss out your soul, and suck it into hell. Dementors were born out of hell, the magic gone wrong created them and sent them here to torment others who were still alive, and bring more to their dimension. The criminals are from the jailhouses. From Azkaban and other prisons. You see human criminals in there because unbeknownst to humans, the ministries of magic send dementors into their prisons to get certain criminals who are deemed much too evil to stay alive. They don't know they're sending them to hell, and I doubt that they'd care, but the humans don't notice because once the criminal's soul is gone, they're not dead, they're just… an empty shell. They assume they've gone mad.

And then thirdly, the innocents are there only because they've run across the rogue dementor, or they've run across nasty spells, like that of the Lord Voldemort. You are once again of the third category.

But your case, and ones like it are special. You have a chance to make it."

"So you're saying I have a chance now?"

"…Uhh yes, I do believe that that's exactly what I just said."

"YES! I'm going to live!" Draco yelled as he sprung to his feet and started doing a mini-celebration dance that involved a lot of hip thrusting and pointing in the air.

"Yeah, please don't hurt yourself. And I'm sorry to say this, but your chances are very, very slim." Prongs informed Draco who hadn't stopped dancing yet.

"How slim are we talking here?" Draco asked with just a little hip shake.

"Well considering how all the inhabitants in hell are… quite numerous, and how only one man has made it throughout the history of hell, I'd say that your chances are close to zero."

Draco stopped dancing

"You made me get sober for that? Do you at least know how that one man did it?! Or are you just absolutely fucking useless?!" Draco screamed furiously into Prong's face.

"I'm sorry Draco, I'm just trying to explain things. But the fact remains that if one man could do it you can too. However I doubt we can follow his exact method as your cases while somewhat similar are actually hugely different. Tell me Draco, do you believe in God?"

"I can believe in God if that'll save me."

"Yeah, that won't work. Nor would it have worked if you did believe in God. The other man's circumstances were extraordinary. You see, the other man was Jesus of Nazareth."

"Well fuck." Draco said his face crumpled in despair as he collapsed back onto the ground.

"Indeed. But the point remains, if one man could do it, you can too. We'll just need to figure out how."

"Do we have a contingency plan?" Draco asked, lifting his head to look at Prongs.

"Uhhh, have a rockin' good time before you die?"

"Well I suppose that's something."

"Indeed, but first we have more to discuss. Like how Jesus had managed to go to and escape hell and the Universe in general."

"Why the universe?"

"Because the very nature of the universe holds hope for you. In a very long-term sort of way."

As much as Draco wanted to live, all of that sounded just a bit boring. "Do we have to discuss this now? I have a hot date planned."

"Getting trashed on fire whiskey isn't a date." Prongs said sternly.

"Ugh! Fine, the short version."

"Right we'll start with Jesus. Theory number one, a dark wizard came upon Jesus in the desert and placed a spell on him, sort of the same thirty day spell that you have on you. Jesus knew his time was coming, according to the prophecies about him, and he believed in the whole 'he will rise on the third day' bit that he willed himself out of hell. Potentially usable, the whole 'willing oneself out of hell' thing. Theory number two, Jesus had so much faith that God that his life did not belong to him anymore, and he knew that he would die so he let go of the will for life and 'gave his soul to god', thus when he was killed his soul went to hell. Yet once again he had faith in that he would rise on the third day, and his complete faith in this brought back his will to return and amazingly he did."

"So you're saying that complete faith that I will return will save me?"

"I suppose I could be saying that. But how much faith do you put on your own capacity for faith? Jesus knew he would return with ever fiber of his being, you could only hazard at the likelihood of your return. Therefore you might be able to will yourself back, or you might not. Somehow we must find an alternate way of keeping you here without having you actually go to hell."

"Which hasn't been done."

"No."

"Well what if I killed myself first?"

"It's already been tried. The result was reincarnation ensued, and then after the thirty days were up the young child's soul was sucked into hell. The spell isn't attached to a body, it's attached to a soul."

"Alright, but what about those who go to that 'moving on' place? The place where you are now? Do they get sucked back?"

"Well that's the thing, it's never actually happened. So far those who have been affected have reincarnated. With the exception of Jesus."

"So you're saying that that might be a way."

"The only problem is, there are two ways to get here. One, you die. Or two you have finished all your lessons and you come here through 'ascension'. Those who have ascended, and there have been quite a few, have never been in your circumstance. They don't have a tracking device on their soul, therefore we don't know if you would stay put or not. And we also must remember that perhaps you haven't evolved enough, so killing you could be disastrous. You might reincarnate, and then as a baby nothing would help, you wouldn't know what to do at all."

"Well how close do you think I am to learning all the lessons?"

"Considering how you're a nasty wretch…"

"Yeah yeah, ok so not very evolved."

"Actually I was just trying to poke fun at you, for all we know you learnt all the 'good' lessons early. Meaning you're just going through a nasty phase, which everyone has to do eventually. All lessons must be learned. However it hardly ever happens that there's a backwards approach. Most people make their mistakes first. So we can conclude that you're far off."

"So, even though we might have found a viable way to save me… I'm not Harry Potter enough to use it."

"Harry Potter is an exceptional case. It was his mother's will that he live that kept him alive. Perhaps that's an avenue we could consider. Do you know of anyone willing to die for you?"

"Uhh… no. And wouldn't that defeat the purpose of my living? If someone has to die, especially someone who cares a lot about me, so that I can live, I'd rather just die."

"Yeah, but it's not like they're going to go to hell. They'll reincarnate, or come here."

"You can take that attitude because you're already dead."

"That's true. I remember how I never wanted to die when I was alive, but truly it's not all that bad."

"Yeah the answer is no. Plus there's no one to die for me anyways."

"So you wouldn't sacrifice someone else's life for your own. Pretty basic lesson, but you've learned it so we're probably further along the lesson chain then we may have anticipated. Ok this plan could work."

"So how do I go about learning all these lessons?"

"Well true learning comes with experience. You have to experience all the lessons. And they can't be forced by yourself, they just have to come around. Which is inconvenient, but it's not like we can dictate how the universe works."

"So basically our plan is such that we can't form a plan or know if it's working or not?"

"Essentially yes. There will be signs, but they wont be conclusive."

"Such as?"

"You will seem to be a complete person."

"Complete."

"Yes."

"That's our only sign."

"…Yes."

"I just don't see how it's going to work. If we can't influence anything then it's all up to chance, and the chances are apparently extremely slim!" Draco threw his hands in the air.

"Well you can't influence anything. What did you think I contacted you so that I can give you all this dire knowledge and then disappear? No, we've got our ways of helping out."

"We? As in you and me we? Or as in you and someone else we?"

"My friends and I."

"I see."

"In any case there is a long-term contingency plan. Basically we wait for the Universe to contract and then expand once again. Which could take a few billion years, but it'll happen eventually. And when that happens hell will be destroyed and the souls trapped there and in the reincarnation cycle will get another go with a new universe. So I mean if you do go to hell, at least you'll have some hope."

"Yeah, hanging out in hell for several billion years. That sounds just peachy." Draco snarled through his teeth.

Prongs stood up and appeared to dust himself off before he said, "well at least it's not for all eternity."

Draco sighed. He supposed that Prongs was right. So if they failed it wouldn't be an everlasting disaster. Yay. "I guess this means I have to kick my drinking habit."

"Well who knows, knowing your overall chances maybe you could stumble your way through your life lessons completely smashed." Prongs chuckled.

"That's encouraging. So no more drinking it is." Draco drawled.

"It's probably for the best."

"Now what?" Draco asked, not sure what came next since their plan involved no actual planning, and he was pretty sure they had covered the basics of the situation.

"Well, I mean I didn't really want to do this, but to be honest… it has to be done." Prongs said sadly.

"What? What has to be done?"

"See you in a few days Draco." Prongs then touched Draco's forehead and pushed hard blinding Draco with pain.

Screaming loudly Draco cursed Prongs before he passed out into a deep and painless sleep.

A/N: Hopefully that made some sense.