"But couldn't you just Occlude?"
"Great intuitive grasp doesn't mean great innate power, you know," Draco sharply admitted. "I might have gotten over your awful snub on the train a lot sooner if you hadn't turned out to be so hideously magical. A Malfoy being out-flown by a Muggle-raised half-blood who'd never so much as touched a broom before." He sighed. "And it just got worse and worse. Every time I turned around you were talking to snakes or mastering charms grown wizards can't do or throwing off Unforgivables. You made it very easy to hate you."
"You're a fine one to claim that," Harry protested. "And I didn't snub you on the train. You snubbed Ron and I was sticking up for him. And as for that very first flying lesson... well, all right, I had touched a broom before, all right? Hagrid lent me one and I flew the whole summer before first year--"
"Really?"
"Now who's the gullible one?" Harry lightly gibed.
"There's your Slytherin side," Draco approved. "Remember that when you visit the common room or eat with them, all right? We like to verbally cut each other to ribbons...but you're catching on all right, I think. Anyway, they'll never think you're one of us if you can't join right in..."
Draco yawned then, and fell silent, and shortly after that Harry drifted off as well.
The images in the pensieve shifted, becoming tinged with gray, then dissolving into a vast pool of fog that slowly rolled across the scene to drown every image. Harry glanced at Snape, who even inside the pensieve was still holding his hands. Thank goodness the man didn't look angry, but Harry supposed the comments about hair care didn't mean much compared to all that had followed. He felt a bit chilled just hearing those things about Draco's childhood, even if the Slytherin had exaggerated a bit.
"You're asleep now," his father explained, gesturing at the mist all around. "But you aren't dreaming yet. Wait."
How long, that was what Harry wanted to ask. But he didn't bother, as he knew the answer already. They would wait as long as it took, it was as simple as that. And then they'd see the seer dream... the one Harry knew about already in one sense, though in another it was about to unfold anew before him...
The fog parted onto a forest thick with pine trees, the ground underfoot layered with their needles, the bright noon sun beating down on them though the air itself was sharp with winter chill.
Harry looked about, a little bit confused as to what this scene could have to do with Draco dying. Then he remembered. Seer dream, right, so this must be the past, something that had already happened. His first thought after that was of the forest where he'd been tortured, but no, this was another place. There was no clearing here...
But there was a sense of menace, all the same. Of someone coming...
Lucius Malfoy strode forward, his long-legged gait self-assured to the point of arrogance as he stalked through the forest as though he owned it. His footsteps took him toward a little house with a thatched roof, and an imperious knock had the rough-hewn door swinging open as an owl hooted once on its perch, then flew away.
A woman peered out, a scarf covering her hair, her dark gaze studying Malfoy closely before flicking to either side of him as though to ascertain that he was alone. A man joined her at the door as she spoke a hesitant, "Oui?"
Malfoy glared down at her as though to intimidate by the sheer strength of his presence. "You are in danger, both of you," he quickly rapped out, one hand flashing through the air in a commanding gesture. "The Dark Lord intends to attack this house. You must leave and never return."
"Ze Dark Lord?" the woman gasped, a hand at her throat at the dreadful title.
"But we have done nothing," the man protested, shaking his head.
Malfoy was resolute, his own eyes narrowed in grim determination. "You are a half-blood, Monsieur," he sneered, clearly filled with disdain to so much as speak with such a one. "And your wife worse, filthy Mudblood scum. The Dark Lord needs no more reason than that to seek your deaths. You must leave here and never return."
Inside the pensieve, Harry gaped at Snape, but the Potions Master ignored him, intent on watching the scene unfold.
"But always we live here," the man lamented in broken English. "Where to go?"
Malfoy raised his upper lip in a distinct sneer, one Harry had seen before, and swept an arm free from his robes, shoving his sleeve up to display his left forearm. "Do you want one such as I to know your whereabouts, truly?"
The woman cowered back, actually crossing herself as she shrank from the Dark Mark clearly on display. The man paled, but stood his ground. "Why come here to warn us, Monsieur, if already you are his?"
Malfoy shrugged, the gesture careless and contemptuous all at once. "I grow weary of these pointless attacks. By the fifteenth of February at the very latest, the Dark Lord will burn your house to the ground and torture to death anyone he finds within."
"Zat is ze day after tomorrow!" the woman gasped, stepping back yet again.
"The attack may come yet sooner," Malfoy impatiently grated. "Have you and this Mudblood no sense at all? You must leave at once! Take only what you need, do not use a Floo until you are well away from France."
As though disgusted with the pair of them, then, Malfoy stepped back, fastidiously wiping his hands on a monogrammed handkerchief which he then dropped and burned to ashes with a quick Incendio spell. Then he was Apparating away, leaving the couple at the door staring out in shock at the nothingness which the moment before had contained the Dark Lord's greatest supporter, come to warn and protect them...
Harry turned to Snape to say something, but before a sound could leave his mouth, the whole world all around them began spinning. Brown lurched into green as the trees stretched, elongating as they whirled, and then the two of them were flung straight out of the forest and into another place, one with rich red rugs underfoot and gray stone walls worm smooth by countless generations of students leaning up against them.
"Thrown from the Owlery," Parvati was saying, her tones hushed with horror.
"Thrown from the Owlery," Ginny answered back, nodding as she spoke. "I always thought if something like that happened, they'd go for one of us. A Gryffindor. Not one of their own..."
"Yeah, but remember that day in Potions?" Parvati shook her head, her dark ponytail swaying, the motion was so emphatic. "It was pretty clear something like this would happen eventually. The threat was made right there in the open, right in front of the professor, for Merlin's sake!"
A hushed voice from behind them chimed in, "I heard the funeral has to be closed-casket since the body's just.... a mess."
"Slytherins are a mess dead or alive," came a hard reply from Seamus Finnegan.
Harry felt his hand let go as Snape began to walk around the common room, examining the scene from all angles, his dark eyes analyzing every gesture, every nuance of expression as the Gryffindors gossiped amongst themselves. Harry stood up too, then, and motioned that his father should listen to Ron and Hermione, who were sitting close together on the sofa that faced the fireplace.