Mirror of Paths

by AtherisHiss

5th yr - Sirius has died. Harry's learned the truth of the prophecy. The weight of his destiny is heavy on his shoulders. Regret over years of wasted chances to learn and better himself plague his mind as he's faced with an opportunity to gain the knowledge of a more studious version of himself. But what price does that knowledge come with? Drarry mentor!Voldemort grey!harry slash

4. Chapter 4

Harry quickly jogged down the stairs, straight through the common room, and right back out through the portrait hole before anyone had the chance to ask him where he was going.

He rushed through the corridor towards the stretch of hallway where the Room of Requirement was located and pulled out the map to check for Draco's name. It was still standing out front of the Room of Requirement along with the name Vincent Crabbe, but as Harry neared their location, they began to move, so Harry hastened his pace.

He came upon them a moment later as he rounded a bend. What he found there was mildly confusing at first as he saw Malfoy as expected, but instead of Vincent he saw what looked like a female first-year. Harry blinked at the girl for a moment before looking back at the map to confirm what he'd seen earlier.

Vincent Crabbe.

Harry glanced back at the girl, who was staring at Harry with wide-open eyes and parted lips. Draco was gaping at him as well, but that quickly vanished to be replaced with a haughty scowl.

Polyjuice, probably, Harry's mind supplied him as he looked at 'Crabbe'. 'She' was holding a set of metal scales, and Harry imagined they'd make quite a racket it dropped.

Whatever Draco is doing in the Room, he must be having Vince stand watch outside…

Harry shook his head, not honestly caring what they were up to. He stuffed the map into his pocket and began to jog down the stretch of hallway that still separated him and Draco.

Draco, predictably, drew his wand defensively. "What do you want, Potter?" he spat.

Harry slowed and stopped only a few feet from Draco and kept his focus trained on the blond, ignoring the 'girl' beside him.

"I need to talk to you," Harry said, somewhat breathlessly, as he had run the whole way there.

"Talk?" Draco exclaimed somewhat incredulously.

"Yes… please," Harry said, and the desperation in his voice wasn't even remotely concealed.

"Fuck off, Potter. I don't owe you anything, least of all my time," Draco drawled and made to start walking but Harry quickly side-stepped into his path.

"Wait. You're right. You don't owe me anything. But I owe you. It's my fault that your father is in Azkaban right now. At least partially, anyway. I mean, he did what he had to do, and I did what I had to do, and he got the raw end of the deal and now he's stuck in prison, and it's partially because of me. —Because of what I did that night, which is honestly something I regret more than I could possibly convey right now." Harry trailed off weakly and squeezed his eyes shut against the swell of emotions that once again threatened to crash over him.

Draco's eyes were wide but his brow was furrowed with disbelief and surprise. "So if you owe me, what exactly do you think you can do to make up for it?" Draco asked acerbically, obviously expecting that Harry would have nothing to offer up of any value.

"Anything," Harry said softly, opening his eyes once again and staring into Draco's face.

Draco seemed confused by what he saw there, but his expression quickly clouded over with suspicion and doubt. "Anything?" he scoffed.

"If you'll just… if you'll listen to what I need to say, I'll give you whatever you want."

Draco guffawed. "Yeah, right Potter. As if you could give me something I want."

"Name anything, and I'll try."

Draco scrutinized Harry for a silent moment before the corner of his mouth turned up. "Okay then Potter. Tell me the Prophecy. The one that cost me my father."

"Fine," Harry said instantly with a nod of his head.

Draco seemed to falter, obviously not having expected that.

"Fine? I mean it Potter."

"And I mean it too. I'll tell you want it says and you can take that to Voldemort or do whatever you want with it. It's the least I owe you, and maybe it could help your family get back into His graces. Maybe it'll even get him to let you off the hook for whatever impossible mission he's sent you on."

Draco's eyes widened and a flash of shock and fear seared through them before it was masked over with suspicion.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Draco spat.

Harry heaved a tired sigh and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "Fine, whatever. Just… Please let me talk. I need to talk to someone, and you're the only person I can even think of to do it with… your the only person that I want to tell… I need you. Please."

Draco looked both bewildered and conflicted as he stared Harry down for another long pause. Finally he narrowed his eyes suspiciously and spoke. "Okay, talk."

"Not here," Harry said, shaking his head. "Alone."

Draco scoffed loudly. "Do you think I'm stupid?"

"No, I don't, I just can't do it somewhere so insecure, and you're the only person I want to know this stuff right now. No one else. I swear I'm not up to something, and I'm not trying to trick you."

Draco scrutinized him. "How long will this take?" he asked.

Harry made a rather helpless shrugging gesture. "Honestly, I have no idea. It might be a while. There's… there's kind of a lot to cover."

Once again curiosity seemed to flash through Draco's eyes and Harry could tell he was honestly considering it. "It's almost curfew," Malfoy said pointedly.

"Then we might be getting in a bit late," Harry huffed.

Draco's eyes narrowed. "Are you trying to set me up for a detention?" he snapped accusingly.

"Hey, I'd be getting detention too, if we were caught out after curfew! Look, if we end up being really late, I promise I'll help you get back to the dungeons without getting caught by Filch or anyone else."

Draco scoffed. "Oh really? And you can make a guarantee like that, can you?"

"I can. I've got an invisibility cloak. We can hide under it together till you get to the dungeons, then I'll take it up to Gryffindor Tower."

Draco's eyes widened to the size of galleons and his lips silently mouthed the word 'invisibility cloak'.

"Please… I'll try not to take too long. I just need… I need to talk to someone."

"And that someone has to be me?" Draco said incredulously.

"Yes," Harry said emphatically.

Draco eyed him a bit longer before heaving out an annoyed sigh and nodding. "Fine."

Harry let out a huge sigh of relief and felt the grateful smile spread across his face. His chest felt lighter in that moment than it had in ages.

Draco turned to look at the 'girl' and jerked his head down the hall. "You go on ahead."

"You sure?" the girl-Crabbe asked.

"Yes," Draco said, rolling his eyes dramatically. "So where do you want to do this?" he asked, turning back to Harry.

"Uh - well, we're here, so lets just use the Room of Requirement. It guarantees privacy."

Draco squawked. "It guarantees that if you curse me or whatever you could leave me in that room and no one would ever be able to get back in unless you told them exactly what room to summon!"

Harry rolled his eyes this time. "Then you summon the room! Just… just someplace simple and secure where we can talk without the risk of anyone eavesdropping. Then you can tell Crabbe what to summon to guarantee that he can come back and find you later if you mysteriously vanish and don't come back."

Draco did a double-take, glancing at the 'girl' and back to Harry. "How'd —"

Harry waved his hand dismissively. "It doesn't matter, but I can tell you later if you really care that badly. Just summon the room."

Draco glared at him through narrowed eyes for another annoyingly long beat before huffing out a rough breath and walking over to the stretch of wall and going back and forth three times before a door appeared. He looked back at the polyjuiced Crabbe and called out. "A private, secure room, where we can talk. That's all."

Crabbe nodded and finally began to make 'his' way down the hall towards the grand staircase.

Draco pulled the door open and make a mockingly sweeping gesture inside. Harry quickly rushed past him and into the room, followed a moment later by Draco who closed the door behind them. Draco didn't go much further than that, though, opting instead to stand just inside the door of the plain empty room with his arms crossed over his chest impatiently.

Harry, in contrast, began pacing erratically back and forth in the small room, running a nervous hand through his hair several times and pulling in a deep breath. Draco cocked a single unamused brow and glared at Harry contemptuously.

Finally Harry came to a stop and looked somewhat sideways towards Draco, feeling somewhat incapable of making eye contact, with as worked up as he felt.

"It's so weird, being here with you…" Harry said softly, letting out a rather pitiful sounding laugh.

"You said this was important," Draco drawled in annoyance.

"And it is, I promise" Harry said, nodding his head, but still looking anywhere but at Draco. "I've had a pretty insane month… er… well, I imagine you've definitely had more than your fair share of crap too, so I'm not looking for sympathy or anything like that."

Draco's eyes narrowed even further and the annoyance only seemed to be growing. "Potter," he said warningly.

"Right, right," Harry said, huffing out a breath and running another nervous hand through his hair. "Okay… right. So have you ever heard of the multiple universes theory?"

"The what?" Draco said curling his lip somewhat and looking at Harry incredulously.

"Well, the idea is that for every moment where our destinies could take different paths, each of the possibilities spawns a parallel universe. Like, there was a moment where you made the final decision to go to Hogwarts, instead of Durmstrang, but at that moment another parallel reality spawned where you decided to go to Durmstrang instead. But in this context, the best example is house sorting. So at the moment when each of us were sorted, four different universes split into existence. One for each of the four houses that we could have been sorted into."

"You're suggesting that there's a reality out there where I was sorted into Hufflepuff?" Draco guffawed loudly, looking absolutely incredulous. "What insanity are you going on about, Potter? What does this have to do with anything?"

Harry let out another weak laugh that sounded much more pathetic than amused, before heaving another sigh. "I'm talking about the insanity that turned my entire world upside down… Have you by any chance ever heard about the Hogwarts Headmistress Eoessa Sakndenberg?"

Draco twisted up his face slightly. "I've heard the name."

"She was the first Headmaster to make a stink about the house system at Hogwarts. She thought that the house you were sorted into had too great an effect on how the students life developed or whatever. To demonstrate just how big of an effect house sorting had on people, she created this enchanted mirror. It has the power to link two versions of yourself from different houses, to show you just how different a person you became, just because of the seemingly arbitrary choice of a magical hat at age eleven. With this mirror you could see the version of you that got sorted into a different house, but since looking in a mirror and seeing a version of you in different colored robes doesn't really tell you anything about that person, the mirror goes much further. It makes it so you can share all of your knowledge and experiences between two of these parallel worlds."

"I read about the mirror near the start of term, and the impression I got was that if I found it, I would be able to gain all of the knowledge that a version of me that was, say - sorted into Ravenclaw instead - had learned over the last five years. Through the mirror, I could get a copy of all of that knowledge. At the time I was kind of in panic mode over learning about the prophecy. I realized that I was utterly unprepared for any of this craziness that's been dropped on me, so I was desperate for any help I could get, and this mirror sounded perfect."

Draco's face which had been mostly impassive and skeptical, lit up with renewed interest at the mention of the prophecy.

"I managed to stumble across the opportunity to find out where the mirror was and jumped on it. I found it - it's hidden here in the school, but I can't seem to find it again, so it seems like there's some charms in place to stop me from getting to it again… anyway, I found it and when I stood in front of it, I heard Headmistress Sakndenberg's voice start to explain things. I had thought that I might get to pick which house my counterpart was from, but that wasn't the case - instead it connected me to the parallel universe that was most likely to have happened, if I hadn't been sorted into Gryffindor. And that was Slytherin."

Draco coughed out an incredulous laugh. "You? In Slytherin? Don't make me laugh, Potter."

"No joke. That really is where the hat wanted to put me," Harry said tired sigh. "I begged the hat to put me anywhere else. Just, not Slytherin. I repeated that over and over in my head until the Hat agreed to put me in Gryffindor instead."

Draco scoffed out 'P'sha' sounding noise, and sneered at Harry as if he held even less respect for him now than he had before. "You begged the hat to put you in Gryffindor," he said flatly.

"No, I begged it to not put me in Slytherin. I honestly didn't care where I went other than that. I mean, I didn't really know anything about the houses to be perfectly honest. All I knew was that I'd been told on the train and back when Hagrid delivered my letter, that Slytherin was a house full of Dark Wizards, and I was terrified of being stuck with the same sort of label."

Draco rolled his eyes dramatically.

"But I was supposed to be in Slytherin. There's a very specific reason why, actually, but that's besides the point right now. So when I stood in front of the mirror, looking back at me was another version of me, but in green and silver robes and a snooty attitude that reminded me a lot of you, actually…"

Draco arched one brow, but remained otherwise unimpressed.

"So the voice of Sakndenberg told us that we both had to agree to the memory copy - it wouldn't just be me getting a copy of his knowledge, it went both ways. And what's more, it wasn't just knowledge, it was memories and experiences too. But she kind of glossed over that. She made it sound like we'd only get bits of contextual memories to make the knowledge make more sense.

"The Slytherin-me was far from impressed by the Gryffindor-me, which… well, I'm sure you can get that. He wasn't too keen on the idea of doing the memory copy thing until he found out that Gryffindor-me knew the prophecy. To be honest, Gryffindor-me really should have seen that as a red-flag, but at the time I didn't exactly think it would matter what this other-world version of me was like or what his life had been like outside of the fact that he was a lot more studious than the Gryffindor-me had ever been. In the end, we both agreed and followed Sakndenberg's instructions.

"Next thing I know I'm knocked unconscious and waking up some time later on the floor and the mirror is gone. All that was left was this little hand-mirror, but I never managed to get anything to happen with it… but I did keep it. Anyway, at first I honestly didn't notice any changes at all and wondered if I'd imagined the whole thing. But by the next day it started to become obvious that something had happened, as I suddenly knew all this stuff that I'd never known before. Except that I couldn't tell. I honestly didn't realize that I'd changed at all. The knowledge, and the memories that had shown up already at that point, all felt like they were mine. Nothing ever felt foreign or borrowed. And ever since then more and more knowledge and memories have sort of been seeping in, messing with my head. Messing with how I see the whole bloody world. Because it's so much more than just knowledge. I'm not just getting little snippets of contextual memories so things make more sense. I'm getting all of it. His whole life these last five years have been filling my head, taking up the same space as the memories of what actually happened in this world. Except these memories are fresher. They're sharper. In a lot of cases, they feel more real than my real memories."

"Wait - wait," Draco held up his hand, halting Harry's story. "You're really serious about this? This is all for real?"

Harry sighed and nodded. "Absolutely serious. Although there have certainly been times over the last month where I'd wished it had really just been a dream."

"So this is why you're suddenly performing so well in classes? —Why you're doing such amazing work in Potions?"

Harry flushed, feeling a rush of pleasure knowing that Draco had been impressed with his work, though he knew he was being stupid for feeling so.

"Yeah, I er… had a much better work ethic when I was sorted into Slytherin. No Ron to drag me down, I guess." Harry felt bad as soon as the words had left his mouth and grimaced.

Draco snorted, having apparently found that statement amusing.

"Plus, I had a mentor…" Harry said so softly, it was practically a whisper.

"Mentor?"

Harry cracked a weak crooked smile. "Yeah. He took me in the summer after third year. Taught me all sorts of things. Taught me about curses and dueling… I'd been trying to do decent work in classes before that, of course. I wanted to keep up pace with you, and with Blaise, but after… after He took me in, I had a new reason to try hard. I had someone to impress. Sort of like how you tried so hard because you wanted your father to be proud of you. You didn't want to disappoint him. And I didn't want to disappoint…" Harry trailed off and closed his eyes tightly, swallowing the thick lump that had formed in his throat.

Draco's lips were parted and his brow was furrowed with a look of stunned disbelief.

"You're really serious about all this. You… you remember some version of reality where you were sorted into Slytherin instead of Gryffindor?"

Harry let out a weak, forced laugh. "I remember sharing a dorm with you, Vince, Greg, Blaise, and Theo. I remember that first month back in our first year how Greg's snoring drive Blaise so crazy that he spent a whole weekend during the second month of school, in the library finding and then weeks teaching himself to cast this audio ward that would last all night.

All this just so he could keep the area around his bed quiet. And I remember how angry Snape got when he found out, pointing out that if Blaise was trapped in a bubble of silence and there was some sort of emergency, Blaise wouldn't hear any of the warning sirens or bells…"

Draco's eyes had slowly widened and his lips parted in obvious shock. "How could you know about that?" he half-whispered.

Harry let out a small humorless laugh. "Because a version of me was there with you guys. Just not in this world." Harry turned and looked at Draco with longing sadness in his eyes, and by the startled flinch he saw Draco make, the blond had obviously seen the intensity Harry felt. "You were my best mate. My best friend. And in the last year… even more. We were together all the time. The summer after second year you invited me to stay at the manor, so I wouldn't have to go back to the filthy muggle bastards I have the misfortune of calling family. Your father bought me my first broom that summer, even though I didn't give a shit about Quidditch, just because you wanted someone to practice with.

"Didn't give a shit about Quidditch!?" Draco exclaimed, looking both affronted and disbelieving.

Harry laughed and nodded. "I associated it with my father. The big, famous, Quidditch Captain," Harry drawled, rolling his eyes and sneering, before flinching and grimacing at his own behavior. "I remember hating being compared to my father… I didn't want to do anything that he was famous for, so I wanted nothing to do with Quidditch, even though I did enjoy flying."

"What made this other-you hate your father?" Draco asked, honestly bewildered.

"Because I thought he was a fool," Harry whispered. "A fool for falling in with Dumbledore's manipulations. —For blindly following the man who got them killed…"

"Uhh…" Draco said, looking hesitantly dubious of Harry's apparent logic.

Harry smiled sadly and sighed. "My mum and dad died because they were members of the Order of the Phoenix and they trusted everything Dumbledore told them or promised them. He promised them he could protect them from Voldemort, but the only reason Voldemort was even after them in the first place was because Dumbledore set us up. We were his bait. I was his bait…"

Draco's eyes widened and his brows raised into his forehead with intrigue.

"But… I thought it was because of the prophecy?" Draco said hesitantly.

"Slytherin-me was convinced the prophecy was faked," Harry said with a defeated shrug. "Of course he was never able to hear the whole thing, so it was just an educated guess. Honestly… I think even this-me might agree, and I know what it says. Things just don't quite add up in some areas. I mean, first off, Trelawney is a hack. She's a fake and there's no arguing that fact. So this one time, during a bloody job interview, she miraculously makes a real prophecy?" Harry scoffed and rolled his eyes.

"Whoa, wait - are you saying that The Prophecy - the one my father is in prison for trying to get - was made by Professor Trelawney!?" Draco exclaimed both in horror and outrage.

Harry snorted derisively and nodded. "The one and only. What's more, not only did she do it during a job interview, but the job interview in question was held out at the Hog's Head! Who the hell holds a job interview for a Professor in a pub!? And if you're going to do it in a pub for whatever reason, why that pub? The place is a dump! So why the Hog's Head? Well, it just so happens that the Hog's Head is owned by Dumbledore's brother. Do you know why Snape wasn't able to hear the whole prophecy? Because at just the right time, Aberforth Dumbledore came up behind him and kicked him out. How convenient," he drawled sarcastically.

"Snape?! What?"

Harry faltered. "Snape was the one who heard the original prophecy - or rather, heard the first few lines of the prophecy - and took what he'd heard to the Dark Lord, and that's what started the whole thing."

Draco silently mouthed the word 'Severus?' obviously surprised by this news.

"So… you're saying that you think Trelawney making a prophecy was setup with the intention of a Death Eater overhearing it?" Draco asked a moment later. "You think that Dumbledore arranged it with his brother to have it interrupted? But why would he do that? Why leak a prophecy that would paint a giant 'kill me' target on the backs of some of his most loyal fighters?"

"The prophecy itself served as an extremely successful diversion for Voldemort for more than a year and a half. The Ministry was on the brink of total collapse when that 'prophecy' conveniently happened. But once the Dark Lord found out about it, other operations began to slow, and once I was born, he stopped all major operations entirely and focused on trying to track me and my parents down. All of the big missions after that were focused on trying to get to, and kill, me. It completely derailed the momentum the Death Eaters had going at the time and gave the Ministry and the Order of the Phoenix time to regroup and recover."

Draco's lips were once again parted and a light of stunned understanding filled his eyes.

"And as for me and my parents, Dumbledore was actually really effective at keeping us safe for as long as he needed to keep the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters distracted. For more than a year, we were apparently moved from one safe-house to the next, always one step ahead of Voldemort - turns out Dumbledore had a spy feeding him information and feeding the Dark Lord false information… that's another story though. But suddenly Dumbledore up and suggests the idea of putting the Fidelius up around my Dad's family home and letting us stay in one place for a while. This also just happened to be around the same time that Pettigrew defected and joined the Death Eaters.

"I think that Dumbledore had a plan of some sort. A trap. He knew that Pettigrew had turned traitor and used him as a way to leak me and my parent's location, just when the time was right for Dumbledore's plan to be put into motion. Whatever it was that happened that night that saved me from the killing curse - I don't believe the bull about it being because of my mum's sacrifice protecting me. I mean, how many mum's have willingly given their lives in hopes of protecting their children from someone's killing curse? At the height of the attacks in the 70's I'm sure there were loads. But for some reason only I survive? Why? What made my situation special?

"I think Dumbledore had arranged some sort of special ritual or spell or something in hopes of finally destroying the Dark Lord. He probably told my parents it was a protective spell for me, but in reality it was something that was supposed to break through whatever protections the Dark Lord had in place and kill Voldemort once and for all. But something went wrong, probably related to the methods that Voldemort had used to secure his immortality and the fact that he was planning on using my death as the catalyst for another one of his little safety nets and had already prepped some rituals before hand. I think it all mixed together and threw everything out of whack."

"Do you have any evidence for any of this?" Draco asked, both skeptically and curiously.

Harry sighed, "The Slytherin-me had some. But lots of it was hearsay, and piecing together bits and pieces of conjecture. And I'm sure that the old Gryffindor-me would balk at how circumstantial some of it is, and make excuses for this, or that, but now… I can't help but…" Harry ground out a frustrated sound and rubbed roughly at his face before heaving a heavy sigh and letting his hands fall to his sides. "I believe it," he whispered. "I really do believe it. That Dumbledore was behind it all. That I was just bait. Just a pawn in his game of chess with the Dark Lord. We were sacrificed for the greater good, but the moves didn't play out like he'd expected.

"Things went all pear-shaped and he had to change his strategy. But even after that, he wasn't done with me. I survived, and he saw that I was still useful. All these years, the Gryffindor-me has trusted him. I honestly believed that he was on my side. But it was all a lie. He's been lying to me… all this time," Harry's voice broke with a whisper and he had to squeeze his eyes shut again, against the hot sting of threatening tears. "The betrayal is what hurts the most… it wasn't as bad when I was a Slytherin. I never got close to him there. Never trusted him like the Gryffindor-me did. But now I know. I know the truth, and tonight I sat there and watched as he lied, right to my face. Lied to me… and he's been lying and intends to keep lying. And I'm just disgusted. Disgusted with him, and disgusted with myself for being so naive and so trusting…"

Harry let his head fall forward, his shaggy hair falling down in front of his face. He reached up and smoothed his palm over his face and a long tired groan escaped his lips. "It took me until tonight before all of this really came to a head. I think my mind has been suppressing a huge chunk of the memories to try and protect me from having to face the brunt of this cluster-fuck. But Dumbledore had me go to his office tonight for -a lesson," Harry said, drawling the last two words in the most derisive sing-song tone possible.

"Lesson?"

Harry snorted and sneered at nothing in particular. "Over the summer he told me that he wanted to start giving me lessons. I got all excited and optimistic thinking that he was going to start teaching me dueling, or special magic lessons or something." Harry scoffed. "Turns out that the lessons are nothing more than trips through pensieve-land, complete with modified memories designed to manipulate the evidence to support the narrative he's presenting. The lessons are nothing more than another method to manipulate me into becoming his perfect little martyr."

"Merlin, I feel like I'm the one whose stepped into an alternate reality," Draco said, looking at Harry with wide, stunned eyes. "I mean… who the hell are you and what have you done with Harry Bloody Potter?"

Harry let out a humorless laugh before sighing, moving over to the nearest wall and leaning his back against it and slowly sliding down to sit on the ground. He sat there with his legs bend up and his arms came to lazily wrap around them while his head fell down and rested on his knees.

"A lot of things have been different between this world and the other one," Harry started, speaking softly as he slowly looked up and off to the left. "But there were other things that were the same. Dumbledore brought the Philosopher's Stone to Hogwarts our first year, just like he did here, and Voldemort was possessing Quirrell in that world too, just like this one… Even with me being sorted into Slytherin, I think that Dumbledore was still hoping he might manage to maneuver me into the places he wanted me with the right manipulations here and there. It was fairly successful that first year too. He still gave me back my father's invisibility cloak - though he didn't do it anonymously in that world, there's no way that you lot would have let me trust an anonymous gift like that - but anyway, he also still managed to lure me into seeing the Mirror of Erised over Christmas break, which also happened here in this world."

"The mirror of what?"

"It was this thing he used to try and protect the Philosopher's Stone at the end of that pathetic series of 'traps' he had the teachers put in place… it doesn't matter. The point of it was to make sure I knew what the mirror was and how it worked so that I'd be able to protect the stone from Voldemort in the end. It was a test as much as it was training. I'm convinced the entire Philosopher's Stone thing was a setup to test me. The protections he had guarding it were a joke that I was able to get past as a first year, even as a Gryffindor. The only reason it took Quirrell and Voldemort till the end of the year to get down there was because they expected the protections to be more serious than they really were and only realized at the end that there was nothing to really fear there. The only real challenge was the Mirror at the end, and I was supposed to figure that out and still protect it. The thing was that I didn't. I… I gave it to him," Harry finished this with a whisper.

Draco's brows raised into his forehead with surprise and intrigue.

"I let him leave with it, and pretended that he'd managed to trick me into handing it over or something. Dumbledore didn't really believe me and I could tell, even back then before I knew what Legilimency was, or had any idea that he was reading my mind practically every damn time we spoke.

"I didn't hear from Voldemort for a long time after that, and he didn't contact any of his Death Eaters either, since he still had to work out how to use the Stone and the Elixir to create himself a new body. So a lot of things about second year started out similar to this world. Your father still slipped the Diary into Ginny Weasley's cauldron in hopes that it would serve a double-purpose of discrediting Dumbledore when he was unable to protect the students from the attacks, and discrediting Arthur Weasley when it was revealed that it was his daughter perpetrating the attacks. Nothing else was really the same though, of course, what with me being a Slytherin. And I wasn't stupid enough to let it get out that I was a parselmouth, so no one ever accused me of being Slytherin's heir." Harry paused and snorted as a small amused grin managed to curl the corner of his lips.

"What's so funny about that?" Draco asked curiously.

"It's just that in a way… I am."

"You are…? What?" Draco asked in confusion.

"I'm part Voldemort," Harry whispered. "It happened the night he tried to kill me. The night that Dumbledore had probably cast some spell on me designed to destroy Voldemort if he tried to attack me. I think that all of the magic mixed together. The ritual prep Voldemort had undergone before - Dumbledore's spell, whatever it was - the type of protections that Voldemort had in place to protect his mortality - and the killing curse. It all came together like a crazy messed up knot, with me stuck in the middle. A piece of Voldemort was broken off and got lodged in me. I've grown up with it as a part of me. It's the reason that I'm a parselmouth, and why I sometimes have dreams and visions from Voldemort's perspective. Why I can sometimes see through his eyes…"

Draco was openly gaping at him now and his jaw had practically fallen to the floor he looked so stunned.

"You… you've got a piece of the Dark Lord, in you? What does that even mean? How long have you known this?" Draco asked incredulously.

"I didn't know. Not till an hour ago when all these memories got unlocked. I've had this piece of the Dark Lord in me, basically my entire life, and never had any idea. But Dumbledore knew," Harry said, his voice going low and bitter.

"Does… does the Dark Lord know any of this?" Draco asked incredulously.

"Not a bit," Harry said with a humorless chuckle. "Dumbledore couldn't possibly risk him finding out. If Voldemort knew I was walking around with a piece of him inside me, he would stop trying to kill me, and Dumbledore needs Voldemort to kill me," he drawled bitterly.

"Dumbledore, what?"

"It's his plan that I die," Harry said in a flat, and now totally unamused tone. "And that's not the other world that I'm talking about. That's this one. All this time, he's led me to believe that as long as things fall into place, just right, that I'll be able to walk away from this mess, as long as Voldemort can be defeated." Harry scoffed bitterly. "But that's never been true. Voldemort can't die as long as I live. He'll never be destroyed until after I'm dead. But Dumbledore is too much of a coward to just get it over with and kill me himself, so he's waiting for the right time to let Voldemort do it for him. That's why he's never made any effort to teach me any special skills, and why he's never encouraged me academically. In fact the only encouragement he's ever given me was when I risked my life.

"How many times has he thrown some entirely unreasonable number of house points at me, in reward for nearly getting myself killed? He was showing me just how much he secretly approved of my reckless bravery so that I'd keep doing it. Maybe eventually I'd stick my neck out too far and get it chopped off. Nice and simple solution to one of his most bothersome problems. He's not responsible for my death if it happens like that."

"Bloody hell," Draco whispered, looking totally stunned.

Draco actually walked over at this point and after a moment's hesitation, he crouched down and then lowered himself to sitting cross-legged on the floor a couple feet in front of Harry.

"So you just realized all of this recently? Because of the memories?" Draco asked, sounding honestly curious. "You said it happened tonight?"

"Yeah, that's right. It all came rushing in tonight," Harry said tiredly. "Like I said, I think my mind was suppressing anything that would lead me to realizing my connections to Voldemort, which honestly, was a lot, but something I saw tonight in Dumbledore's office triggered a memory that kind of unlocked the rest. It was like a cascade started and suddenly they all started to fall into place and I couldn't ignore any of it anymore."

"And you came to me?" Draco asked incredulously.

Harry chuckled weakly. "Well, I couldn't exactly go to Voldemort for advice. He's completely out of his mind in this world."

Draco got a funny look on his face at this. "Are you suggesting that he's different in the other one?"

"The Elixir of Life from the Philosopher's Stone had a strange effect on him. It healed the damage he'd done to his soul, but only temporarily. If he took the Elixir every day, he was totally restored, but if he went a few days without any, he would start to deteriorate again. It was enough of a contrast that he had to admit that something was wrong with him and start to figure out how to fix it for real. He didn't want to be totally dependent on the Elixir to remain sane and rational."

Draco's eyes went wide as galleons. "A sane and rational Dark Lord?" he whispered sounding both amazed a desperate. He seemed to register what he'd insinuated a moment later because he flushed and ducked his head a bit.

"Yeah… it was while he was working out what was wrong with him and how to fix it that he detected that I was holding a piece of his soul in me. You see, he split his soul into a bunch of different pieces with each one hidden inside an object. Each of these objects acts like an anchor, holding him in this world. That way, even if his body is destroyed, his soul can't float off and move on because it's tied to all of the other pieces of his soul and they're stuffed inside these other anchor-objects."

"Stuffing pieces of his soul into objects?" Draco muttered in incredulous horror.

"Yup," Harry said, popping the 'p' at the end.

"This is… this is mental."

Harry snorted.

"So… this other version of you sided with the Dark Lord? Is that what you're saying?" Draco asked, sounding utterly astonished by this notion.

"Well, yeah. I'm not exactly keen on the idea of dying for Dumbledore's cause, especially when it's looking more and more like the only reason my parents died in the first place was because Dumbledore set us up. And after all that went down, he went and left me on the doorstep of the most atrocious and obnoxious muggles imaginable, where I was treated worse than a house elf, lied to, denied any knowledge of magic, and practically starved for ten years. Why the fuck would I want to help that lying sack of dragon dung with anything?"

Draco stared at Harry in silent shock for all of five seconds before bursting into a rather stunned-sounding laugh.

"Bloody hell! This is insane!" Draco exclaimed, looking more alive than Harry had seen him all term. His mirth died down and he paused to look at Harry as if he were seeing him for the first time anew. "You're really serious about all of this? You're… wait, are you switching sides?! Harry Bloody Potter, the Chosen One, is switching sides?!"

Harry let out a frustrated grown and leaned back against the wall again. "I have absolutely no idea what the hell I'm doing. This is the first time I've even said any of this out loud. Hell, I'd hardly let myself even think over all this until I came in here. But I just… I needed to get it out. I think talking about it is starting to help me piece it all together better, too… But the truth is that I… I can't join Voldemort's side, as he is right now. He's completely out of his mind! He's a homicidal psychopath, dead set on genocide. I can't get behind that, no matter how much I think I hate Dumbledore right now."

"Well what are you going to do, then?" Draco asked, frowning slightly.

"I don't know," Harry groaned. "If only there was some way I could restore his soul like he did in the other world…"

"Well, do you know how he did it before?"

"Vaguely, but he did most of the restoration while I was at Hogwarts during our third year. I was only there for one of the rituals because he didn't do it until the following summer. He had me grab one of the last of the horcruxes - er, that's the name of the vessels that hold pieces of souls - he had me grab one of them that was actually hidden here in the school, and bring it to him. That's the only one that I got to witness him re-incorporate."

"He actually let you watch?" Draco whispered in amazement.

"I lived with him that summer," Harry whispered softly, almost terrified to admit it.

Draco's eyes went round as galleons. "You lived with the Dark Lord for the summer after third year?"

"And every year since then," Harry said, nodding.

"Great Merlin…"

"That mentor I mentioned earlier? That's him. That was Voldemort."

Draco gaped at him for several long beats before a suspicious glare grew in his eyes. "If that were true, there's no way you'd still being saying His name like that. It's disrespectful and there's no way the Dark Lord would tolerate anyone saying it as much as you do."

Harry rolled his eyes slightly and huffed out a breath. "Honestly, that's a hold-over from the Gryffindor-me. That me has always hating the whole 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named' rubbish, and that part of me is still freaking out that part of me feels inclined to call him The Dark Lord. But even Slytherin-me didn't call him The Dark Lord all the time - not after I'd moved in with him."

"Then what did you call him?" Draco asked in a guarded tone.

"Marvolo," Harry said with a sigh.

Draco blinked, silent for a beat. "Marvolo?"

"It's his middle name. It got weird constantly using the whole 'My Lord' thing, for both of us actually. And mind you, he'd recovered at this point, he was nothing like he is here in this world. I was walking around with a piece of his soul in me, and he wanted to treat me differently than just another one of his followers. He took me in, and he promised to look after me. He… he became something of a father figure to me…" Harry finished with weak, reluctant voice.

"Bloody, fucking, hell," Draco said in slow, clipped words, looking at Harry with stunned eyes.

Harry let out a weak laugh before heaving a long sigh.

"Well, that's just completely insane. So what about the soul piece that's in you? Did he ever try to re-incorporate that one?"

Harry shook his head. "No, he couldn't. It had bonded to my soul, mostly because it had been tiny when it first entered me, but as I grew, it grew too. So my soul and his soul are kind of like… braided together, or something. If it was removed forcibly, it would have caused tremendous trauma, and most likely killed me in the process."

"Okay, so the one in you is out, but the rest could still be put back in him, right?"

"The problem is that two of them have already been destroyed," Harry said. "And not just any two, but the two largest ones."

"They're different sizes?"

"Yes, actually. Okay, so Horcruxes are super-taboo. It's damn near impossible to find anything written about them, anywhere. And what is written is usually really vague. He first decided to do this back when he was our age. He made his first horcrux when he was only fifteen, and a lot of it was improvised because he couldn't find a lot of detail on it in any books. He said that at the time he was really proud of himself since he'd managed to work out this incredibly complex form of magic that few others were even willing to attempt, going off of nearly no concrete texts. Plus no one else had ever done it more than once, which he attributed to them being too cowardly.

"He didn't realize that there was a very valid reason for not making more than one horcrux. He thought that each time he made one it was only breaking off a small piece of his soul, but in reality the ritual literally broke the soul in half. One half was left in the main body while the other half got crammed into whatever vessel was chosen. So the first horcrux - the diary - had half of his soul. The second horcrux, a ring that belonged to his uncle, contained one quarter of his soul. And those two are the horcruxes that have been destroyed. So three-quarters of his soul has potentially been lost."

"And without those pieces, you can't restore his soul," Draco concluded in a disappointed voice.

"I certainly wouldn't be able to restore it enough to make a very big difference," Harry said shaking his head sadly.

"But… okay, you said that the vessels were destroyed, but does that actually mean the pieces of soul that were in them were destroyed too? Maybe they were just set free and not destroyed," Draco said.

"But if they were released, wouldn't they go back to the main soul? If they'd returned to him, it'd be a lot more noticeable, so that obviously hasn't happened."

"Maybe, but maybe not. Just because they're not anchored to an object anymore doesn't mean that the pieces of soul would be drawn back to the main body. Maybe they're just free-floating or something."

"I suppose I could hope for something like that, but it's not something I know how to find out, and even if I could find out if that were the case, I still wouldn't know how to get those pieces of soul back in him."

Draco heaved a sigh and leaned back, extending his arms behind him to prop up his weight while he looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. "Who would know anything about that sort of magic? That's got to be some seriously dark stuff… maybe Severus cou—"

"NO," Harry said sharply.

Draco rolled his eyes dramatically and huffed out an irritated breath. "Bloody hell, Potter. Even with these memories from this considerably-better-counterpart's life, you still hold a grudge against Professor Snape?"

"Even the Slytherin-me hated him," Harry said, glaring. "He's a spy and a traitor, and he stabbed me in the back - er, in the other world, anyway. I thought I could trust him, and I was wrong. He went straight to Dumbledore and everything went to shit after that."

Draco sat up straighter, his brow furrowed in disbelief. "Wait, what?"

"He's Dumbledore's man, through and through," Harry said bitterly. "The funny thing is that the Gryffindor-me hated him partially because I was convinced he was really a secret Death Eater, and the Slytherin-me hates him because I know he's really not."

"Severus is a Death Eater," Draco said in a tone one would use when explaining something to a small child.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Yes, I know. But he's actually spying on the Death Eaters for Dumbledore. I get that everything seems to think that he's a double-agent for their side, and yet everyone is still suspicious as to whether or not his loyalties just might lie elsewhere, but no one is ever really sure. The thing is that I am sure. He had to show his true colors at one point and in the end there was no question that when push came to shove and he had to pick between loyalty to Dumbledore or loyalty to the Dark Lord, he picked Dumbledore."

"Are you sure he wasn't just picking 'not-you'? His loathing for you seems to run pretty deep."

Harry shook his head. "No, I'm sure. He can't be trusted. Apparently he was in love with my mum. That's probably the biggest reason he hated my dad, actually. My dad 'got the girl' and I'm the evil spawn of that unholy union. Anyway, you know how I mentioned that Dumbledore had a man on the inside of the Death Eaters that made it possible for him to stay one step ahead of the Dark Lord and keep me and my parents safe? That was Snape."

Draco's eyes widened and his face slackened minutely before he shifted to thoughtful. "Huh… okay, not Severus then. So who else? I'd ask my father, except that's not an option, is it?" Draco sneered, glowering in Harry's direction.

Harry paled, and then ducked his head and hunched his shoulders, sort of sinking in on himself. "Gods, Draco… I really am so sorry for that," Harry whispered horsely.

Draco obviously hadn't expected a reaction quite that strong because he shifted uncomfortably for a moment before scowling at himself. "Well you should be sorry," he spat a moment later.

"I am," Harry whispered as he wrapped his arms around his bent knees and buried his face in them. "Gods, Dray, I hate myself so much when I think about this stuff. The mess I've made because I was so naive and trusting. Because of me, your father is in Azkaban, and you mum is having to play hostess to this utterly insane version of the Dark Lord, and you've been Marked by him. And who knows what ridiculous task he's set you to, just so he has an excuse to kill you when you fail. All just so he can punish your father from afar for failing to kill me. Well — failing to get the prophecy, mostly, but both, really."

"How the hell did —" Draco began but stopped himself an instant later. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he said.

Harry raised his head up just enough so he could peer over the tops of his knees. "But I'm right though, aren't I? He's marked you and given you some impossible task. I've been watching you for the last month… bloody hell, I've been worried sick about you, even before I understood why I would be worried about you. Ron thought I'd lost my mind."

Draco's expression slipped into a mixture of bewilderment and disbelief before he masked it with a scowl. "You were worried about me? Fuck off Potter, I don't need your pity."

"It's not pity," Harry whispered. "It's guilt. This is all my fault. I mean, things probably would have been so much easier if I'd gone on being ignorant and let this whole ridiculous path play out and ended up dead in the end - at least then there wouldn't be this hiccup in the middle where I suddenly realize I'm on the wrong side and everything has gone to shit."

Draco sniffed airily, tipping his chin up. "Yes, I suppose for Gryffindors ignorance is bliss. Thats how you lot go around all day - just running off into idiotic situations without knowing what the hell you're even doing first. Like you doing this whole mirror thing without even understanding how it worked."

Harry cracked a shaky smile and chuckled. "Yeah. Bloody idiot, I am." Harry reached up and rubbed at his face before heaving another heavy sigh. "There's this war going on in my head. One part of me will freak out and feel awful because I'm having all of these thoughts of switching sides, and I'll realize that if I do that, it means I'm betraying everyone that I've ever cared about in this world - the Weasleys, Hermione, Tonks and Lupin and everyone… but then another part of me will think about what my actions have done to the people I cared about in the other world, and I hate myself all over again.

"And then I think about how all the people that were important to me as a Slytherin hate me now. I've got all these memories in my head of hanging out with you and the guys, and Pansy dragging me shopping, and helping Greg cram for his OWLs last spring… and those summers with Marvolo… they were some of the best times of my life. I mean, the Gryffindor me sort of felt the same way about Sirius. The idea, after third year, that he could take me in and look after me. The thing is that Sirius couldn't actually do it. He was on the run. I only got to stay with him for a portion of the summer after fourth year, and the winter break during fifth… that was it. We wrote as many letters as we could, but we always had to keep it cryptic and brief.

"And I loved Sirius. He meant the world to me. But Marvolo? He was there for me. He took me in, and he taught me things, and he cared when things happened. Sirius was a laugh, but Marvolo really took responsibility for me in the way you might expect a parent to do. He even came to the school in disguise when I got injured. That was insane! Talk about sneaking into the lions den!"

Harry paused and sighed. "I love him like a father. I still love him. I still think of that man like…" Harry twisted up his face in a pained expression. "But he's gone. He's gone. It's almost worse than Sirius dying. It's like Marvolo has suddenly been ripped away from me, and he's gone.

"It's bad enough knowing that all of the other Slytherin's hate me… but at least they're all still here. And you? Merlin, that's been ripping me up inside for the last month, thinking that I can feel like this about you, and my whole damn outlook on us has changed, but you still see me the way I was, and you still hate me, and deservingly so! I mean, I gave as good as I got - we have both been shits to each other over the years, but I can't look back and see that anymore. I still remember it, it's not like the Slytherin memories overwrote the Gryffindor ones, but there's so many more of the Slytherin ones. You and me fighting happened here and there, but you and me being close was every day. You… you became so important to me. And the thought of losing that is so… so painful. Losing you. Losing Marvolo… I hate it. I feel like I've lost the two most important people in the world to me. At least you're still here, even if you do hate the very air I breath. But Marvolo? Marvolo never even existed, as I knew him, at all. It feels like he's lost to me forever…"

Draco stared at Harry with an unreadable expression for several silent moments before he seemed to shake his head in an incredulous manner. "I was one of the most important people to you?" he asked, his voice small and bewildered.

Harry let out a small humorless laugh. "You still are," he whispered hoarsely. "I can't make these feelings and notions go away. They're part of me now. I guess with time…" he sighed and leaned back letting his head thud heavily against the wall behind him. "But I kept telling myself that when this started. Maybe with time, I'd get used to it and things would go back to normal… But I don't think it's actually going to be that easy. I'm not even sure that there's any part left of me that wants things to go back to the way they were when I was just a Gryffindor."

"But I mean… me? Just because we were friends?" Draco pressed, disbelievingly.

Harry let his head lull to the side, avoiding Draco's intense, confused gaze. "We started dating," he whispered. "Last year…" He glanced sideways, terrified of what he might find on Draco's face.

Draco seemed to sway somewhat in his seated position, as if he'd just lost his balance and had a momentary dizzy spell. He gaped openly at Harry, but his expression was one of shock, rather than horror or disgust as Harry had more immediately expected.

"Dating," Draco echoed numbly.

Harry nodded silently.

"Us? You and me?" Draco said, his voice cracking.

The corner of Harry's mouth turned up despite himself and he nodded again before the momentary mirth left him and he sighed. "I get that the idea is probably pretty horrific to you. I mean… you hate me. From your point of view, you and I have been awful to each other for five solid years. There's nothing in there to earn me even one iota of positive feelings from you. And… I know there's nothing I could possibly do to change the way you feel about me enough to even consider friendship, let alone something more than that… I… I don't even know what I'm saying. I'm just so damn tired, and I don't know what to do anymore. There's no one I can turn to. I can't go to Marvolo for advice because he's basically non-existent, I can't go to Sirius because he's dead. I can't turn to Ron or Hermione because they'd both be horrified if they knew about any of this. Ron would just freak out, and Hermione would probably insist I go talk to Dumbledore to get things straightened out, and there's no way in hell I'm going to him about this…"

"But you came to me," Draco said in an emotionless voice.

Harry bent his head forward wrapping one hand over top of it while the other continued to wrap around his bent knees. He squeezed his eyes tight shut, but no matter how hard he fought it, he could feel the warm sting of tears leaking between the cracks and down his cheeks. "I don't know what to do, Drake… I feel so damn lost," he said in a hoarse voice. "I miss you so fucking much…" his chest and shoulders shook with tremors against his will as a hiccough forced its way out between his lips.

His shoulders shook several more times in the dead silence of the room while Harry sat there, quietly crying. Draco said nothing; just sat and waited until Harry had managed to regain some semblance of control. He sniffed several times and reluctantly pulled back from his knees in order to take his tear-spattered glasses off of his face and fumble with his robes to clean them. He rubbed roughly in embarrassment with the back of his forearm across his face, looking anywhere except for Draco, terrified of what he'd see there.

"God, I'm sorry. I must look so pathetic to you," Harry muttered finally, putting the glasses back on his face.

"Kiss me," Draco said suddenly.

Harry's head jerked up in shock. "Huh?"

"Prove to me you're not lying about all this."

"By kissing you?" Harry asked with stunned bewilderment.

Draco rolled his eyes, though the annoyance he put on display was muddled with embarrassment. "If you're telling the truth about all of this, you shouldn't have any problem with kissing me. You should even want to. But if this is some sort of bizarre concocted story, you could have said it all with the expectation that I'd never call you on it, because I'd never want to engage in that sort of activity with you, so you'd never have to follow through on it.

"Wha…" Harry began, trailing off and feeling rather speechless he was so confused.

Draco made another dramatic gesture of annoyance and almost looked as if he were about to stand up.

Harry's stunned stupor snapped back and before he even had the time to process anything, Harry sprung forward, moving from his seated position, forward and onto his knees in the blink of an eye. Before Draco had the chance to actually move much at all, Harry was kneeling in front of him, his face less than an inch from Draco's.

"Do you really mean it?" he asked breathlessly.

Draco, to his credit, only jerked back a small bit in surprise at Harry's sudden movement.

"I never say anything I don't mean," Draco said haughtily.

Harry smiled and chuckled. "Bollocks." Without another moment's hesitation, he pushed forward, pressing his lips against Draco's.

Draco made a slightly startled sound but it was instantly muffled as Harry tilted his head and pressed forward. He parted his lips slightly, tracing the cupid's bow of Draco's lips with his tongue before pulling it between his lips again. The kiss was slow and sensual and finally Harry pulled back, sitting on his feet and letting out a slow quiet sigh.

"Thank you… for letting me do that," Harry whispered.

Draco, managed to look only mildly stunned. He wobbled, off-balance, for a second before seeming to gather himself.

"Yes, well…" Draco said in a breathless voice, though he didn't seem to know where to go from there and his voice trailed off instead.

"Why?" Harry asked, finally looking up and staring into Draco's pale eyes.

"Why what?" Draco said in a tone that was supposed to sound snooty and confident, but was too shaky to actually pull it off.

"Why let me do that? Why kiss me?"

"I told you - so I could tell if you were making it all up —"

Harry shook his head, smiling slightly. "No, I mean it. Draco… please? Why? You hate me… I don't get…" Harry trailed off somewhat helplessly.

Draco shifted uncomfortably and now it was his turn to have difficulty making eye contact. "I… may have… fancied you… for a while," he mumbled.

Harry's jaw dropped and he stared at Draco in astonished disbelief. "Are you serious?"

Draco looked up, scowling at Harry now, "Don't make me repeat it."

"But — I mean… you fancy… me?"

"Did I not just say that?" Draco said bitingly as an embarrassed flush covered his cheeks.

Harry put his hands up defensively. "I.. really?"

"Potter," Draco said warningly.

Harry's face broke into an elated smile and a startled laugh escaped his lips. "Oh my god… this is amazing."

Draco rolled his eyes at Harry's dramatics. "I'm not making any promises, Potter."

"I know," Harry said quickly, still smiling. "But there's a chance now… I mean… a chance of us at least… at least not hating each other," Harry said appeasingly. "There's hope. That's all I need."

Draco looked uncomfortable, and his cheeks were pinked with a reluctant blush that Harry couldn't help but smile at even more.

"I never could have even dreamt of this being possible," Harry said softly a moment later. "You… you fancy me back."

Draco scowled in embarrassment, glancing off to the side and opting not to say anything back.

"For how long?" Harry asked, unable to help himself and earning a mile glare from Draco in return.

Finally the blond huffed out an annoyed breath and folded his arms over his chest. "Since last year," he muttered.

"Last year? When you were on the Inquisitorial Squad?"

Draco's face twisted up in a rather disgusted sneer, causing Harry some degree of surprise. "I hated that bloody woman…"

"Umbridge?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "Yes, Umbridge. I knew better than to get on her bad side and agitate her at every turn, like you did, but that didn't mean I actually enjoyed kissing that toads arse."

A small almost-relieved laugh escaped Harry's parted lips. "This is so amazing…"

Draco's face flushed again, and a war seemed to be raging between embarrassment, and reluctant pleasure.

Harry moved forward, getting up on his knees again and shuffling forward enough that their knees were now pressed against each other. Draco's eyes widened in surprise, though he said nothing and made no movement to back away.

"I want to get to know this you. I want to get to know the Draco that grew up without me around. I know the one from the other world, but that's not you. I want to know what your life has been like… what things matter to you… everything. Can… can that happen?"

Awe seemed to flash behind Draco's eyes for a beat before they clouded over again and he looked off to the side. "I don't exactly have the luxury to be spending time with you, Potter."

"Yeah, you do seem pretty busy… I'm guessing you've been working on something for the Dark Lord… Oh! Wait, that's perfect! I can help!"

Draco let out a short incredulous cough. "Help?" he laughed.

"Yeah! I mean, you're in here all the damn time doing whatever it is that you're up to. I can join you. Then we get the opportunity to, you know… get to know each other better. But in private. And I can help you with whatever this thing is he's making you do. Er… unless the assignment he's given you to kill me. If that's the case then… yeah, I'm not exactly going to help with that… but —"

"No, Potter… I"m not supposed to kill you."

Harry watched him worriedly for a moment before speaking. "But he does want you to kill someone?"

Draco heaved a defeated sigh and slumped back a bit from where he'd been sitting. "I can't believe I'm considering telling you this…"

"I think you've got enough dirt on me to blackmail me to hell in back if I threatened to tell anyone whatever you've got to tell me."

Draco snorted and made a one-shouldered shrug. "I suppose…"

"Please, Draco… let me help you."

Draco let out a forced breath and nodded slightly. "Fine. Yes, you're right in that the Dark Lord has given me a rather… impossible task. And you're probably right about why he did it. He wants to punish father, but he's not willing to break him out of Azkaban yet. He wants him to stew for a while. So he demanded that I take the mark to make up for my father's failure."

"Can I see?"

Draco looked startled and confused for a moment, but Harry reached out a hand and gently rest it on Draco's left wrist. Draco flinched slightly and pulled his arm into his chest almost defensively.

"Does it hurt?" Harry asked in a whispered voice.

Draco grimaced. "It's not that bad…"

"I can fix that, you know."

"Fix what?"

"It hurting. I know how to make it so it doesn't hurt."

Draco looked dubiously at him and hesitated for several beats before reluctantly stretching his arm outward. He pulled his sleeve back slowly with his right hand, and then undid the button on his shirt cuff so he could pull it back as well until his whole left forearm was exposed. There, on the pale flesh of Draco's arm was the Dark Mark.

"Oh Draco…" Harry said almost sadly as he gently traced his fingers along the outside of Draco's arm, just beyond the mark itself. Draco still flinched at the touch.

Before Draco had a chance to ask him what he was doing, Harry leaned forward until his face was but a few inches from Draco's arm. Harry began to hiss out a long string of words in parseltongue.

"What — ?" Draco began, startled, but then a gasp left his lips instead. The mark upon his arm was animating with the snake coming from the skulls mouth slithering about, uncoiling itself and moving backwards, up into the skull until only the snake's head and about half an inch of neck was left coming out of the skull's open mouth. The Mark faded as well until it was only the lightest bit of tint against his flesh.

Harry pulled back, sitting on his feet again as he knelt in front of Draco.

Draco stared at his arm in shock and reached out to run the fingers of his right hand against his arm.

"How'd you do that?" he asked.

"Marvolo taught me all about the Mark and how it worked," Harry said with a shrug. "Does it hurt less?"

"I don't even feel it anymore," Draco said, shaking his head and looking at it almost incredulously.

Harry smiled. "Brilliant."

"Er… thank you."

Harry felt his smile grow and a warmth seem to spread through his chest.

Draco flushed and looked uncomfortable, ducking his head somewhat awkwardly for a moment. "So… erm… right. Where were we… Ah, yes, so the Dark Lord… he assigned me the task of — of killing Dumbledore."

Harry blinked. "Dumbledore?"

Draco grimaced and looked as if he were feeling rather ill.

"Bloody hell, he wasn't even subtle about it. There isn't even any pretense about him expecting you to be able to do this."

"There was pretense," Draco said, defensively, apparently offended by Harry's insinuation.

"Oh come on. If there were any real expectation about you being able to pull this off, Voldemort would be admitting that he believed you could do something that even he hasn't been able to accomplish."

Draco scowled for a moment but then sighed and nodded. "It's impossible."

"Was that cursed necklace intended for Dumbledore?" Harry asked gently.

Draco flinched and looked back up, meeting Harry's eyes. "How the bloody hell do you know all this? You worked out that the girl in the hall was Crabbe, you figured out I was marked, and guessed the Dark Lord's motivations for doing so…" Draco shook his head looking baffled. "I mean, it's not like stuff from this alternate reality of yours could tell you all that?"

"I just… worked it out," Harry said, shrugging. "I've always had a keen intuition on things, I'm just better at observing stuff now, I suppose. And as for Crabbe, I've got this map that tells me the names and locations of everyone in the school, and when I looked on the map to try and find you, it said you were standing out there with Crabbe."

"A map that… are you serious?! Where did you get something like that!?"

"My father and his friends made it when they were students at Hogwarts. Honestly, I get the impression that Remus Lupin was responsible for most of it, by my father contributed quite a lot as well. I rather doubt Sirius did much more than goof off and lend moral support. And fuck Wormtail. I don't give a shit if he helped at all, but I doubt it."

"Can I see it?"

"The map? Sure," Harry said and dug into his inner robe pocket, pulling out the map - which was presently nothing more than a blank piece of parchment - and flattening it down on the floor between them. Harry pulled his wand out, tapped it to the map and said "I solemnly swear I am up to no good." A moment later the map appeared along with the standard message from Moony, Padfoot, Prongs, and Wormtail. The halls of the map were mostly still except for a few sets of moving footprints and floating names in the various common rooms and a few halls.

"Crikey…" Draco whispered as he ran his fingers over the surface of the parchment, examining it. "Great Merlin, what I could do if I had something like this…"

"I could probably let you use it for anything that's really important," Harry said gently.

"Really?"

Harry nodded.

Draco looked back down at the map with an expression of awe. "This is really brilliant. Who knew that pathetic old Professor Lupin could pull off something like this."

"And when he was only sixteen years old, too."

"I don't suppose there's any chance that he'd know anything about soul magics then? He is a Dark creature…" Draco said, skeptically.

Harry snorted and shook his head. "No, I really rather doubt that. He's specialized in defense against the dark arts, but I don't think that extends to things quite as forbidden as horcruxes." Harry heaved a sigh and shook his head. "The messed up thing is that my mind keeps offering up the one person I know could help… except that he can't."

"Who?"

"Marvolo," Harry grumbled and shifted so he was in a more natural sitting position, rather than kneeling.

Draco frowned but looked thoughtful for a moment. "You said something about there being a small mirror left behind after you woke up from this whole memory transfer thing, didn't you?"

"Yeah. But no matter what I did with it, it was never anything but a mirror."

Draco rolled his eyes dramatically. "I thought you were supposed to be more clever now. Honestly, Potter. What possible reason would there be for such an advanced enchanted artifact as this Mirror of Paths to leave behind a worthless hand mirror for you to keep? The only reason something like that would have remained behind at all is if it served some purpose."

"Well, yeah, that makes sense," Harry conceded reluctantly. "It doesn't change the fact that I couldn't get the damn thing to do anything."

"Perhaps you were trying too soon, or didn't try the right thing," Draco suggested. "In any case, I think it's reasonable to expect something like that to allow you to either contact your counterpart, or at the least, contact this enchanted mirror's magical version of the headmistress that created it. If it's the former, then you have a potential access to this Dark Lord from the other world. If it's the later, then maybe contacting the main mirror will provide you with answers or options for contacting your other-world counterpart. In either case, it's worth investigating at least."

Harry shrugged. "Well, I suppose it's one option more than I had before."

"Where is this mirror now?"

"It's —" Harry began but trailed off for a moment before his eyes lit up. "Crikey, I think it's here, actually!"

"In the Room of Requirement?"

"In my rucksack!" Harry scooted and shifted until he could reach his discarded rucksack that lay several feet from his current location and pulled it over to where he'd previously sat. He reached inside and pulled out his wadded up invisibility cloak which he quickly un-wadded to reveal the small hand mirror he'd claimed from the floor of the room behind the statue, all those weeks ago.

"Is that your invisibility cloak?" Draco asked, his eyes transfixed on the translucent silvery fabric that was now partially obscuring Harry's lap.

"Yeah, I'll show you it later," Harry said, grabbing it and stuffing it back into his bag. "This is the mirror." He offered it up and Draco reached out and took it from him. He held it by it's silver handle, and examined it and his reflection in it for a moment before setting it down on the floor in front of him and pulling out his wand.

He performed a couple diagnostic spells on it that didn't seem to turn up anything obvious. If anything, the most suspicious part was that some of the diagnostic spells just turned up nothing at all.

Draco frowned and glared at it speculatively for several moments before holding it up in his hand with his arm outstretched in front of him at a distance, and just stared into it for several long moments. Finally he made a rather disappointed grunt and was about to set it back down when Harry saw him suddenly freeze. He squinted his eyes, pulling the mirror closer to his face and Harry found himself scooting around so that he could look over Draco's shoulder. What he saw there instantly caught his interest as instead of Draco's reflection, the mirror now shows swirling mist and darkness.

"What'd you do?" Harry asked.

"I… nothing, honestly," Draco admitted. "I just just held it out and looked into it."

"I tired that," Harry insisted. "I stared into the damn thing for ten minutes straight at one point, but nothing ha—" but Harry cut his own words off as the mist began to swirl and something began to materialize out of the darkness.

"Bloody hell," Draco muttered as his eyes widened with surprise.

"What the—" another Draco said back from the mirror. The stunned looking Draco in the mirror seemed to turn and look over his shoulder and called out as if he were talking to someone beyond their sight. "Bloody hell, Harry! I'm seeing another me in this thing!"

"—at? What the hell! What are you doing with that blasted thing! I told you not to touch it!" a familiar voice came from the mirror, more muted and distant, but still audible. And then another Harry was suddenly visible in the mist just beyond the Draco's shoulder. He squinted suspiciously at the Draco on Harry's side, seeming to observe him keenly for a moment.

"You're a Slytherin?" the alternate-world Harry asked, sounding surprised.

Draco sneered. "Of course I am!"

Harry scooted in closer so he was within the view better. "In my world Draco's still Slytherin," Harry explained, drawing the instant attention of his alternate-world counterpart, who scowled at him.

"You! Damn it, Draco - this is why I said not to touch the damn thing! I don't want to talk to him!"

"But I felt something! It was like it was —"

"Calling to you, yeah, I know. I've felt it too, but I ignored the damn urge and left the cursed thing under the mattress where it belonged."

"Wait!" Gryffindor-Harry called out, as it appeared that his Slytherin counterpart was about to pull the mirror from his Draco's grasp. "Please! I need your help!"

The Slytherin-Harry paused, eyeing Harry with deep suspicion and, honestly, loathing, before his eyes drifted over to Draco.

"What the hell are you doing there? You hate him," Slytherin-Harry asked Draco.

"Potter came to me, asking for my help," Draco admitted hesitantly, as if he weren't sure if he even wanted to admit he was willing to agree to help in the first place.

Slytherin-Harry looked back at Harry, mildly surprised. "You asked him for… help? Help with what exactly? Aren't you convinced he's just a filthy Death Eater?" he sneered.

Harry heaved a huge sigh and roughly ran his hand through his hair, looking away for a moment. "I've… I've remembered it all now. Well, the bulk of it, I guess."

"Remembered what, exactly?" Slytherin-Harry asked cautiously.

"Your life," Harry groaned. "Everything. The horcruxes, the false prophecy, Marvolo. All of it. I can see… I can see Dumbledore's lies now. I feel like a complete bloody idiot, and I'm just… I'm stuck. I can't keep going down the path I've been on, but I can't just up and join Voldemort here either because he's —"

"Completely bleeding mad. Yeah," the Slytherin-Harry finished.

"So you remember my end of things too?" Harry asked.

His Slytherin-counterpart instantly shifted to a hateful glare. "Yeah, I remember," he growled. "Do you have any idea how completely you've fucked me up? I feel like my brain got scrambled! It's like I've forgotten how to be me."

"Uggh! I know!" Harry exclaimed. "Same here! It's like I don't even know who I am anymore."

"And who's fault is that? Hmm?" Slytherin-Harry asked accusingly. "You were the one who initiated this whole fiasco in the first place! I was perfectly fine with my life before you up and threw a wrench in the whole thing."

"What could I have screwed up for you?" Harry asked, honestly bewildered. "It's not like you're suddenly going to start trusting Dumbledore. You know better."

"You do realize that we're basically at war with the Order over here, right?" the Slytherin-Harry said, rolling his eyes dramatically. "Or have you not remembered that far, yet?"

Harry hesitated before frowning and nodded his head slowly. "Yeah… yeah, I know. Marvolo has control over the school right now… right? But Dumbledore is still alive, and he and the Order have been working on some plan to retake it… I think…"

"Yeah, well they already started to move on that, and I had to go up against some of those blasted people, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't… I couldn't fight them," Slytherin-Harry ground out with obvious frustration. "I just kept remembering all this shit from you about… about caring about them. Details about their lives and their families, and things we'd done together, except that wasn't me! And it nearly screwed everything over. I hesitated, at the worst possible time and…" he trailed off, before pulling in a deep breath and letting it back out slowly, closing his eyes and obviously making an effort to calm himself back down.

"People were hurt," he said finally, opening his eyes and glaring at Harry. "People that actually matter to me, not just people who actually matter to you."

"I'm sorry," Harry said solemnly. And he meant it too.

Some of the anger seemed to deflate out of the Slytherin-Harry and he sank back in whatever he was sitting in. The alternate-world Draco, who still appeared to be the one holding the mirror adjusted it to keep him in view.

"You said you needed help," the Slytherin-Harry said in a flat, barely interested tone.

"I… I was hoping to ask Marvolo's opinion on something."

Slytherin-Harry's eyebrow arched and a look of mild curiosity worked its way onto his face. "Oh?"

"Over here, the Diary and the Ring have both been destroyed —"

"The ring too!?" Slytherin-Harry exclaimed, sitting up straighter.

Harry grumbled and nodded. "Do you remember Dumbledore's blackened hand?"

His Slytherin-counterpart frowned, looking thoughtful for a moment before a light seemed to flash in his eyes. "He was wearing the ring! Wasn't he? Wait…" his eyes grew even more wide and his mouth hung agape as he sat forward in his seat. "He was cursed! That's what was up with the hand. He put the bloody thing on before disarming the curse! Bloody hell! You're Dumbledore is dying!"

"Wait, what?" Draco exclaimed, looking over at Harry questioningly.

"Have you noticed Dumbledore's hand this year?" Harry asked Draco, focusing on him, rather than the mirror.

"Yeah… I mean, I'd wondered what the hell happened but… are you saying that it's a curse that's still active? I figured it had to have been dark curse damage and that's why he couldn't have it healed properly, but —"

"It's just sealed temporarily," Harry said with a nod. "There wasn't any way to really counter the curse. It was one of Mar— er, the Dark Lord's most powerful curses. He invented the thing. It's a miracle that Dumbledore managed to post-pone his death as much as he has. But there's no way he's going to last past the end of the school year."

"So… so I don't even have to do anything, and he's just gonna drop-dead before the end of the year!?" Draco exclaimed.

Harry's eyes widened with dawning understanding. "Oh! Bloody hell, that's right!"

"What am I missing?" Slytherin-Harry asked, drawing the attention back to the mirror.

"Draco's been marked here," Harry explained.

"What?" the alternate-world Draco exclaimed, turning the mirror more back towards himself and looking stunned.

"Father was given a task and… it didn't go well," Draco explained, haltingly.

"Right, my Harry told me about the Ministry debacle that happened over there and how father had ended up in Azkaban," the alternate-Draco said.

"Well, as punishment, he demanded I take the Mark and then he gave me a rather… difficult assignment. Basically he ordered me to kill Dumbledore before the end of the year."

"So he basically gave him an impossible task so the Dark Lord would feel justified in punishing Draco after he failed," Harry explained tiredly.

The alternate-world Draco's eyes widened and his lips formed an 'O'.

"Well, then it looks like you're ass has been saved," the Slytherin-Harry said with a small laugh. "You can do nothing, and your task will still be fulfilled."

"Yeah…" Draco said with a slowly dawning sense of relief.

"Anyway," Harry said, waving his hands a little, as if trying to clear the air of their little distraction tangent. "So, with the diary and the ring both gone here, that's three-quarters of Marvolo's soul. If they're really gone then… well, I'm fucked. There's no turning my Voldemort into anything resembling your Marvolo, and there's no way I can turn to him as he is right now. The Philosopher's Stone is gone, so I can't even fall back on the Elixir of Life."

"So what you're wanting to know is if there's any chance that those pieces of his soul can be salvaged?" the Slytherin-Harry asked.

"Yeah. Or anything else Marvolo can think of that might give me a chance of helping my Marvolo to recover his senses. He's… he's awful here. And it hurts to remember Marvolo from your world and to know that he's just… gone. Or that he never existed here to begin with. I… I know this probably sounds stupid, but I miss him. It's totally messing with me."

Slytherin-Harry nodded his head, looking honestly thoughtful and not at all mocking as Harry had almost expected.

"I'll speak with him. He's aware of the situation already, and… well, to be honest, he did look a bit put-out when I mentioned that the Dark Lord in your world never got his sanity back, and was basically running around so manically obsessed with you and the prophecy that he was getting nothing worthwhile accomplished. I think the idea kind of irked him."

Harry felt a sudden sense of hope swelling in him. It was as if his mind had only just registered that he was actually speaking with his counterpart from the other world and that counterpart had access to Marvolo. He couldn't go to Marvolo himself, but he did still have a connection to him. He still had a way to ask him for help. He wasn't as terminally detached from Marvolo as he had felt before. It was like a shower of relief had just rained down over him and he could breath.

"Thank you," Harry whispered, feeling his emotions suddenly build up in his chest, causing a tight hot knot to materialize there. "I… if there's anything he can think of… I'm just so grateful that I even have the opportunity to seek his help. So… thank you for asking for me."

Slytherin-Harry eyed Harry for several long beats before nodding his head, knowingly. "I'll ask. We can plan to meet via the mirror again in one week. How does that sound?"

"So next Monday night?" Harry asked.

"Right."

Harry pulled in a deep breath and heaved a sigh, nodding his head. "Okay. I can do that. Just knowing that he's going to look into it is a relief. Eight o'clock alright? We've got to worry a bit more about curfew here."

The time was agreed upon and the conversation was drawn to a close with the two figures dissolving into the swirling mist, that was then replaced by nothing more than Harry and Draco's actual reflections.

"Merlin, this is completely blowing my mind," Draco said after the pair had sat in silence for several more moments.

Harry coughed out a humorless laugh. "How do you think I feel?"

"But at least we've already made some real progress, right?" Draco offered, and Harry was caught by surprise at Draco's use of 'we'. He couldn't help the smile that spread across his face as he turned and looked over at the blond.

"Yeah. Yeah, we have. Thank you for that. I mean, I guess I would have tried the mirror again at some point, but you were probably what made the real difference here. I think that my other-self was intentionally ignoring whatever summons the mirror uses to establish the connection, just to sort of spite me."

Draco smirked. "I can't imagine why," he drawled sarcastically.

Harry chuckled somewhat weakly, but he did feel his spirits lightening.

"Merlin, what a turn-around," he said with a smile. "For weeks, I've been dreading what I knew was coming. I didn't know what it was, but it was like there was this big terrifying darkness in the distance that I was both searching for, and desperately trying to avoid. And then the memories all rushed in tonight, and it was like the whole world had turned pitch black, and there was no hope. I felt so… doomed. And now…" Harry stared deeply into Draco's eyes feeling a swelling of relief and gratitude. "Now, you're here, and I feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Like… well, if I can't solve the Marvolo problem, at least there's a glimmer of something else I can try to hold on to."

Draco's brows raised a bit into his forehead before a slight flush tinted his high sharp cheekbones and he seemed to be dueling between the instincts to smile or scowl.

Giving in to the sudden impulse, and deciding that some of his Gryffindor tendencies were still of some value, Harry leaned forward and reached up with one hand, cupping the side of Draco's face while gently pressing his lips against the other's.

Draco sucked in a brief shocked gasp before a humming sound replaced it. One that came off far more pleased than simply surprised.

Harry pulled back slowly after a moment of slow kissing and felt as if his heart were racing faster than a humming bird's. "I've been dreaming of doing that for weeks," he half-whispered.

"I… I think I may have been dreaming of it a bit longer than that," Draco admitted rather reluctantly. "And believe me — I hated myself for it. But… now…"

Harry couldn't help but smile that broke out across his face. "God, things are looking up. I feel a thousand times better than I did an hour ago. I am so glad I came to you."

Draco ducked his head almost bashfully, which Harry realized he found as much adorable as it was odd. Draco seemed to fight off the action quickly enough though, because he looked back up at Harry, his sharp grey eyes drilling into Harry's. "Me too."