Not sudden, that unhelpful part of his mind chimed as Harry strode back toward the bedroom. Draco was awful to Dubby. Given half a chance, he would have killed the elf. Severus said it took Dark Arts, but Draco's a Malfoy, so I bet he knows how. Of course he felt he had cause to kill Dubby... a score to settle. Maybe he felt the same way about Pansy. Maybe he realized that she was lying, that she hadn't gone sweet on him again...
By then, Harry was at the enchanted picture frame again. One part of his mind was vaguely aware that he shouldn't be attempting this, that his father had quite strictly ordered him to perform no untested wanded spells without supervision, but Harry was too concerned about Draco to pay heed to that.
Leaning fully on the frame with one hand, the boy used the other to touch his wand to the gilded surface, and glanced down at his crest. It was all there, in beautiful stitched embroidery. Gryffindor and Slytherin, equal, standing together as friends. As brothers. Harry let concern for Draco flow through him, and pushed the horror of the murder away. He loved Draco, no matter what, and he had to know that Draco was all right, he just had to.
"Show me Draco!" he hissed, putting all his need, all his desire, into the simple incantation.
The frame beneath his hand abruptly melted away, becoming air, and he felt his palm smack against the cold stone wall. And then that was dissolving too, so suddenly that he nearly fell through the wall and into his father's potions lab. Stumbling, Harry managed to rear back from the wall -- or what used to be the wall.
Now, from one end to the other of his bedroom, it was a vista of green grass blowing slightly in a breeze.
For the first instant, Harry couldn't do much more than stare. It was as if the wall had transformed itself into a movie theatre screen... only this screen was as insubstantial as vapour. He could reach his arm straight through it and grab something from the potions lab, if he cared to.... If he squinted hard, he could even see the lab through the expanse of rolling grass.
But where was Draco? He'd said, show me Draco, damn it, so where was he? There was nothing on display except the grounds, except...
Oh, God. A pair of boots. Draco's black dragon-hide boots, that was all that was left of him. Soles facing the castle --which Harry could make out in the distance if he squinted-- toes pointed toward the sky... What had happened out there? Where was Draco, and why had he left his boots behind?
But that was idiotic, of course; Harry realized as much almost at once. He was seeing Draco, but the boy was under the invisibility cloak. The question was, if Draco was trying to hide, why would he let his feet stick out?
And the answer: he wouldn't.
Draco wasn't huddled under the cloak in an effort to conceal himself; he had somehow collapsed while running away. He'd fainted, perhaps. Could being under Imperius for too long do that to you? No, Darswaithe had been under the curse the whole way in on the Hogwarts Express. Then again, maybe the casewizard was used to being under Imperius...
Could it be that despite how it had looked on the map, Pansy had hexed Draco up in the Owlery, debilitating him? No wonder Draco had been so slow to leave the Owlery, to descend the stairs! If he'd been struggling for consciousness all along...
"Get up, Draco, get up!" Harry implored, but the boots remained stock still.
Frustrated, the boy tried to reach out and give his brother a shake, but all he accomplished was to lurch partway into the potions lab. He drew back, wishing he could do something more than just watch and wait.
Watch and wait... Now he knew, didn't he, the smallest part of what Samhain must have been like for Severus to endure?
Thankfully, Harry didn't have to wait long. As if his last thought had somehow called the man forth, Snape suddenly stepped into view, his black robes blowing in the breeze, his stride long and measured. Not panicked, not hurried.
If anyone was watching from the castle proper, Snape would merely look like he was taking some exercise that evening.
The map was in his hand, though tightly folded to conceal its existence. Snape glanced at it surreptitiously from time to time as he stepped across the grassy earth.
He was heading straight towards Draco.
Harry shouted, "Over there, right there!" and pointed for good measure, but the man quite obviously could not hear a thing from the dungeons.
It's a viewing plane only, Harry remembered the Potions Master explaining.
The restriction went both ways; he couldn't hear Snape either, not even when the man reached Draco and dropped to his knees, his position shielding Draco's boots from view of the castle. Harry saw Snape pick up a stick and prod lightly at the boots, but there was no answering response from Draco. In fact, those boots hadn't once moved, not one twitch, in all the time Harry had been watching.
Snape began speaking then, but even as his lips parted, his fingers began sifting through the grass as though he were collecting something for a potion. More misdirection, Snape doing his best to let no one watching realize he had come onto the grounds to fetch Draco back in, even though his back was to the castle... for once, though, Harry was profoundly grateful for his father's paranoia. This was too important. They couldn't let Draco end up in Azkaban, especially not now. Harry didn't know if Draco had just been acting in self-defence, or he'd been under some sort of mind control, but the most important thing was that he was innocent. Innocent.
He hadn't pushed Pansy at all! Harry gulped as it came to him that he'd been only too quick to assume that Draco had. He'd thought his own brother a cold-blooded murderer, and on practically no evidence at all! Of course there was the map, but it wouldn't tell you if someone was under Imperius, would it? And it wasn't that detailed... certainly not detailed enough for Harry to have straight away believed it couldn't possibly have been self-defence.
Draco's condition now, though, not to mention his strange run out onto the ground... that was proof positive that there was more going on than met the eye.
And oh God, what if Draco did end up in Azkaban... for a crime he hadn't even committed! It would be like Sirius all over again. Awful, absolutely awful... and Draco couldn't resort to an Animagus form to help keep himself sane, could he?
His expression firming into a mask of resolution, it suddenly occurred to Harry to wonder just what his Patronus charm would be like now.... if he used his wand, that was. Instead of just repelling Dementors, would it kill them? He could wipe them clean out of Azkaban to free Draco... except, he couldn't. The Light would still need a place to imprison the Death Eaters.
With a huge force of will, cut off that line of thought and simply watched his father on the magic wall. What on earth was Snape saying to the boy? The Potions Master's expression was cast in rigid, controlled lines, no emotion whatsoever on his features. Was he talking to Draco even though the boy couldn't hear? No, Snape wouldn't waste time like that. So he must be uttering incantations, trying to break the hex.... No wand was in evidence, but that meant little; Harry had seen his father do wandless magic before... although not much, that was for certain...