"This is just awful," Hermione was saying, her lips turned down as she frowned.
Ron grunted even as his hand reached out to lightly pat her skirt-clad knee. "You can't convince me you're upset about a dead Slytherin!"
"I'm upset about Harry!" Hermione exclaimed, brushing his hand away. "What do you think this will do to him?"
"Yeah, well at least now we don't have to worry about him being around sodding Malfoy all the time--"
"Ron, you know what Harry's like! He's going to blame himself for this. He'll tell himself he should have stopped Malfoy from leaving Snape's rooms! Never mind that without magic he'd have no hope..."
"It's not Harry's fault Malfoy took himself up to the Owlery!" Ron spat back, vehement. "And what was Draco Malfoy doing up there, anyway? That's what I'd like to know! My guess is he went up there to betray Harry! And something went wrong!"
"That's beside the point." Hermione said, standing. She impatiently tapped a foot when Ron remained on the sofa. "Come on, we have to go see Harry, see if we can help."
Ron rose to his feet and caught Hermione's hand in his own. "Yeah, let's go. But don't get your hopes up, all right?"
Hermione swallowed so loudly that it was almost a gulp. "You're right. It didn't make much sense to me, but Harry was really getting along with Malfoy. I don't think anything we can say or do is going to cheer him..."
Ron lifted a derisive lip to admit, "Yeah. But that's not what I meant. It's just... I'm not even sure we can get in any longer. After this, I bet..." he hesitated ever so slightly before continuing, "Snape's put up a ton of extra wards."
"True, he won't be in a mood to trust anybody. And who could blame him? Well, all we can do is go down there and try to make him let us in."
Ron and Hermione turned as one toward the portrait hole and quietly stepped outside without a word to the others.
The dream ended, but this time as conscious thought returned, the pensieve didn't fill with fog. Instead, in the glimmering of an instant, Harry found himself back in his own bedroom, looking at himself sitting bolt upright in bed, horror and terror written across his face as he sought for breath and eyes wild, scanned Draco's bed...
With that, his father yanked him backwards out of the pensieve.
He ended up falling out of his chair and onto the hard floor.
"Oh God," Harry moaned, the horror of it fresh and crisp since of course he had no prior memory of having dreamt all that. Snape had warned him, or had tried to, anyway, but the impact of it was still so great that his hands were shaking like he had some horrible sort of palsy or something. Ashamed of how that looked, Harry staggered to his feet, weakly collapsed onto his father's bed, and slid his hands underneath his thighs as he sat.
Pulling over a chair, Snape sat down to face him. "And you assume that to be a seer dream because...?"
Harry stared rather blankly at his father, the question barely registering for a moment. "Oh. It follows the pattern. Past, whirling, future."
"And the past being true is the marker that proves it an authentic seer dream," Snape calmly confirmed, leaning forward.
"Yeah." Harry blinked again, hating the tight feeling in his throat, afraid it meant he was going to cry. He didn't want to, not in front of his father, even if he had bawled and blubbered all over him back in Devon.
"Then this is no seer dream," Snape pronounced, shaking his head. "That so-called 'past' is ludicrous. Lucius Malfoy popping 'round for a quick visit with a Mudblood and her husband? And what does he say, that they'd better pack quickly to avoid Voldemort? Be serious, Harry."
Harry flinched a bit from the open scorn in his father's voice.
Snape frowned. "What were you thinking of as you went to sleep tonight, Harry? Apart from my shampoo?"
"Oh, God," Harry moaned. "I was afraid of this. We shouldn't have been talking that way, Professor. I'm really, really sorry--"
"I do believe we've covered this ground," Snape impatiently put in. "Forget your discomfiture, Harry. Now, tell me. What were you thinking about as you fell asleep?"
"Well I can't remember, can I?" Harry asked. "You sucked it all out of my mind."
"Ah. True," Snape admitted. For the Potions Master to have overlooked that was so unlike him that Harry knew then and there he wasn't as blasÈ about the dream as he wished to appear. "Are you ready to have your memories restored, then? It shouldn't be quite the physical shock that removing them was, but..." He paused. "You can remember your dream now, but restoring it will make you aware of having lived through it. The experience can be... intense."
"It can't be any more intense than seeing that was," Harry sighed. He forgot about getting his memory back in place as the images of that forest churned through his mind. "That part about Lucius Malfoy... it just doesn't ring true, but... you... you don't suppose he could possibly have changed, do you? I mean, yeah, I know, it's ludicrous like you said but... well, look at Draco. He's not so bad, now. You know, Ron said I was going to say that. Funny..."
"Harry, wouldn't your dream indicate that Lucius Mafoy's conversation with the French family took place around noon on the thirteenth of February?" He waited until the boy nodded. "There is a Board of Governors meeting every month on the thirteenth, and for the past few, I have been present, the better to fend of Lucius' attempts to expel Draco from the school. Lucius was here at Hogwarts from early in the morning until well past noon on February thirteenth. He was not in France."
"Maybe I was seeing last February or the one before that. Lucius looked about the same age as at Samhain, so I don't guess it was decades ago, but maybe the scene was from before he was ever on the Board?"
"He's been on it since Draco was quite small," Snape asserted, shaking his head. "And he's always gone to every meeting."
Harry almost snorted. "We're talking Lucius Malfoy! He can't be that civic-minded."
"He's mad for power," Snape sneered. "I don't think you realize quite how much of that commodity the Board exercises over Hogwarts, not to mention that influencing the curricula here can potentially yield a dark wizard an entire army of young, malleable, minds! Use your head, Potter! Nothing but Azkaban would keep him away from those meetings! He certainly wouldn't miss one to run around the Pyrenees warning Muggleborns of their coming doom!"
"Okay, so he was with the Board of Governors like you said," Harry decided. "But still, he can Apparate all the way to France, I just bet he can. So maybe he slipped away for just a few minutes and went and talked to these people--"
"He was not out of my sight for one instant. Do you hear me? Not one instant, Harry. I wouldn't let him out of my sight for fear he might slip down here and attempt something foul."
"Uh..." Harry thought hard. "Maybe the person in the meeting with you was some other Death Eater on Polyjuice, right? So the real Lucius could be over in France--"
"I cannot believe that you are seriously arguing that the man who tortured you with needles has suddenly become determined to save Muggleborns from Voldemort's tender mercies!" Snape exclaimed. "Are you listening to yourself? This is like your other dream, Harry. It's about you, not the future. You know how Draco longs for his father to be redeemed, to achieve what I have and turn away from darkness. The casewitch even told you that he yearns for that, and then what did you do when you were upset about how horrid Lucius has been to him, but dream that very thing!"