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55Chapter 27: ASTTWT 16: Darkly Dreaming Draco

And so the Tables Were Turned …, part sixteen: Darkly Dreaming Draco

Harry felt as if his heart stopped and froze to ice at that moment, and a terrible pain ran across his chest.

The one word echoed through his dumbstruck mind. No, no, no, no, no …

He had been so certain that Draco would throw himself around his neck and yell "Yes, yes, yes!" that he had been totally unprepared for this. During the past two or three months, Draco had given him small hints that he indeed wanted to marry Harry—that he wanted Harry to propose—despite all his scornful snorts and bitter comments. Even though he claimed not to need marriage to be happy, Harry could see in his eyes that he wanted it. And he wanted it bad.

So why say no?

The blonde must have seen the shock and the hurt in his face, because tears began to stream down his face. He was silently crying, and his grey eyes apologised for having hurt Harry. Slowly getting up from the floor, backing away from him, he squealed, "I can't. I'm sorry, but I can't."

Heart pounding savagely and head spinning dizzyingly, Harry got to his feet on unsteady legs and stumbled after Draco. "What do you mean 'you can't?'" he asked exasperatedly. "How can you just go and say you can't?! I love you and you love me … what is the bloody problem?!"

The blonde only cried more violently, and a wretched sob escaped him. "I just can't, Harry—I'll hurt you."

Harry raised his eyebrows in astonishment. "Hurt me? How could you ever hurt me if you become my husband?"

Draco sank down on the couch. He was shivering so bad his teeth were clattering against one another. "I-I'll hurt you … don't you see? I'm … doing things … I don't have any control over myself anymore … I can't marry you, Harry. I want to, I want to so bad, but I just can't because I'll hurt you and then I'll lose you and then I won't have you at all."

He was rambling, and Harry could sense just as well as see the panic rising inside of him.

Beautiful, glimmering silver eyes focused on Harry. "I'm losing time," he whispered in terror.

Harry blinked. "What? Losing time? What d'you mean?"

He sat down next to Draco and coaxed him into leaning his head against his shoulder.

Sobbing uncontrollably, Draco finally told him what had been bothering him for the past six months or so. Harry listened with growing dread and anxiety as the blonde told him all about the blackouts—his lost time.

"And I … I think I've done loads of things—bad things, really bad things," Draco whimpered. "I … I think you were right … I think I did have something to do with Slutty's death … and the night we were invited to the Weasleys … I lost forty-five bloody minutes that night, Harry. I remember congratulating Ron after Jonathan's proposal … and then it's just blank. All of a sudden I was standing in the library upstairs, and I have no idea how I got there, or why. And what is worse is … I think I'm responsible for Blaise's disappearance."

Harry pressed him closer. Shut his eyes. He could not tell Draco that he need not worry, because he had already dreaded this. He had already come to the conclusion that something was wrong with Draco, that something significant had changed about him some time ago. And he was afraid that Draco was right in thinking that he was responsible for Blaise's disappearance.

But if that was true … if the blonde really was 'losing time' … did that mean that he had somehow developed a second personality?

The past six months, the blonde had seemed really weird from time to time, and there had been a strange, cruel shine to his eyes. Almost as if …

Then it hit him. A mental picture of Malfoy Piper's vicious grin flashed before his inner eye. Piper had somehow managed to bring out her Malfoy self with a spell—could the same thing have happened to Draco? Only his 'Malfoy self' resided within him rather than existed as a separate person.

And if that were true … if Draco's old self was surfacing again …

They needed to take drastic measures to get him out of the blonde—for good. Piper was the only one capable of doing that.

Draco took a firmer grip of Harry's neck. "W-why aren't you saying anything?" he wondered worriedly. "Are you … Are you mad at me?"

Harry forced himself to laugh. "No, I'm not mad at you. If you're not ready to get married—that's fine. Really. But this business about the blackouts … don't you think that's a bit farfetched?"

He could sense the blonde's bewilderment.

Draco snivelled loudly. "What do you mean?"

"Well, if you don't want to, you should just tell me so instead of making up some lame excuse." God, he hated himself for doing this. But if Draco's old self did surface from time to time, it could be more than possible that the wrong Draco became aware of Harry's plan to keep a close watch on him around the clock from now on. He needed proof that his theory was correct, which meant that Draco's 'other half' could know nothing about it.

The blonde stiffened. "You … you think I'm just making it up?" he breathed in disbelief.

"To be honest, I don't know what to think, Dracums. Honestly."

The blonde was silent for a long, long while. Then he said, "Do you know what I did yesterday, Harry?"

Harry was taken aback. He had expected Draco to become angry with him. "Yesterday? No. I was at school all day yesterday, you know, taking my tests …"

Draco straightened up and looked him right into the eyes. He had a cold determination on his face. "I can't remember what I did yesterday, Harry. Not a thing. I went up in the morning and went out to the bathroom, but then … nothing. Not until I found myself back in our bedroom pulling on my pyjama bottoms. Now, let's hear you explain that based on your belief that I'm only making it up."

Harry started. "You … you don't remember anything?"

"No. Nothing. Not all day. I lost fourteen hours yesterday, Harry. Fourteen hours. They're getting longer. Soon I won't remember anything at all. I might not even be me anymore. I might not even be me."

Jonathan was massaging his shoulders and back in a very kinky fashion, and he loved it. His big hands ran over his hot, tense skin with experience, sending pleasant shivers through his body. They did not say anything, because they did not need to; words were unnecessary, superfluous.

Ron rose slightly, moaning encouragingly as if to tell him to go on, and the other man—his husband!—moved down to his lower back, taking all the tension out of his muscles. Then he bent down low and started to kiss Ron on the back. The redhead chuckled approvingly. Oooh, yeah … that was good … really good … He purred like a cat when Jonathan painted geometrical figures on his back with his tongue. Oooh, it was good to be married …

BRRRRIIIIIIIIIIINNNGGG!

Ron gave a start and almost fell out of the bed.

The alarm had gone off. Jonathan's stupid, annoying Muggle alarm with a stupid, annoying Muggle ring tone.

The brunette hit the button on the alarm without lifting his head off the pillow; then he went back to sleep.

"It was just a dreeeaaam?!" Ron moaned in exasperation, and tugged at his red hair. "But it was so good …" He pouted in childish protest.

Jonathan turned around and looked at him with one half-open eye. "What was just a dream?" he muttered with a bloody sexy I-just-woke-up hoarse voice.

"You were licking my back," Ron informed him, "and now your bloody alarm woke me up. I never got the rest of my massage. I blame you."

Jonathan chuckled sleepily. "In my dream I was going down on you," he said with amusement.

Ron raised his eyebrows in bafflement. "You dream of pleasuring me?" he asked, stunned. "Don't you dream of me pleasuring you?"

"No."

"Not ever?"

"No."

"But why ever not?"

"Because that's no fun! It's much more fun to see your screwed-up sex face."

Ron burst out laughing. "I have a sex face?!"

"Yeah. You always make the same face when we're making love. It's cute."

Feeling bold and mischievous, Ron snuggled up closer. "Wanna see it now?" he asked teasingly.

"Oooh, I'd love to, thanks," Jonathan joked, and pressed his lips to Ron's. He was still only half awake and very slow in his movements, but that was just sweet.

Ron pressed ever closer, basking in the warmth of Jonathan's body, moaning in delight at being touched by his husband's lazy hands. As they kissed, Jonathan seemed to come awake, though, and intent on living out both their dreams, he set about covering Ron's chest and belly with dry kisses. But when he prepared to orally please him, Ron firmly shook his head. "No. Come inside me instead. I want you there with me."

Jonathan shrugged and did as he was told. The moment they were joined, everything else around them faded away—it was as if they were floating in a fluffy blur of white-hot nothing. And it was lovely … just lovely …

He did not know how, but somehow Harry managed to both convince Draco that he believed him and remain sceptic and indifferent about it. Although he would not promise to help Draco find out what he did during these 'blackouts,' the blonde seemed content enough. Maybe just telling someone about it had been enough to calm his tumultuous soul.

Harry was glad that he became calmer, but he felt awful for putting up such an act. He wanted to tell Draco about his plans to 'spy' on him, but what if the wrong Draco intercepted the message? That could have dire consequences.

He told Draco he would be spending the day at the school library reading up on different cases in which Aurors had failed to convict the culprits they had caught in preparation for his next test, but instead he stayed home and out of sight, watching the blonde from a safe distance beneath his Invisibility Cloak.

It felt shady and corny, not to mention shameful and distrustful, but he had to do it. For Draco's sake. For their family's sake. They could not allow these blackouts to go on.

When the blonde was in the bath, he went to the Sakanoues' wing. To be allowed to stay at the Manor, Piper had had to promise her brother that she would seal off the west wing of the second floor entirely. Her family could live there if they kept away from Draco's part of the house.

Harry thought it was awfully silly of the blonde, because Piper and Yousuke had only been given twenty rooms out of one hundred and five! But Piper was a good sister and never claimed to have been discriminated against for being blond and stupid.

And Harry kind of saw why.

He urgently knocked on the door that said PIPER AND YO-WO-WO-KUN beneath a series of complex signs that meant nothing to Harry. But he guessed it was their names written in Japanese and some sort of greeting.

Yousuke opened the door and lit up at the sight of him. "Ah! Harii-kun! Come in, come in! We having tea party! You will join, yes?"

Harry squirmed uncomfortably. "Er … no, sorry, I'm busy. I just needed a word with Piper—"

"Ah! Saatanrii, saatanrii! Do walk in! Me will get." He bowed and backed out of the little room that had been remodelled as an entrance hall.

Harry shook his head in amused resignation. Yousuke still did not know how to pronounce the word 'Certainly'—he still pronounced it the Japanese way: 'Saatanrii.'

Piper bounced into the hall seconds later, an enormous smile on her made-up lips. "Harryyyy!" she exclaimed with her arms outstretched, ready to hug the crap out of him.

Harry backed away in fright. "Shhhh! Not so loud! I'm not supposed to be here!" he reproached.

She blinked in bewilderment. "Whatchu mean?"

"I told Draco I'd be at the library at Auror School all day," Harry said, and explained everything to her. She listened intently without interrupting, and when he asked her if she would make the potion she simply nodded solemnly.

"I'll start right away," she promised. "An anti-Malfoy potion, you say? That ought to be easy enough. I already have a few different basic formulae to start from. It'll be ready in a jiffy."

Harry frowned suspiciously. "And exactly how long is a 'jiffy?'" he prodded.

"Silly! A jiffy is a jiffy! Jiffy-jiff! That means it'll be ready right away! Haven't you read your dictionaries properly, Mr Potter?"

"Shut up. I don't like you when you're being mocking and condescending."

Piper laughed. "Do you ever like me, Harry?"

"You know … you have a point there. Just concoct that potion quickly, all right? I have a feeling we don't have much time. He's already losing whole days."

Harry stole back up the stairs to the third floor and soundlessly crept up to the bathroom door, which was now ajar. He stopped just outside the foot-wide opening and listened intently.

Which Draco was in the bathroom?

Something clattered in there. "Shit." He could not see the blonde, but he guessed that he had accidentally hurt himself in some way and dropped whatever he had been holding.

Harry edged closer.

Someone tutted. "That was real clumsy of you," Draco's voice said, but judging from the childish tone it was probably the magical mirror talking back at him.

"Shut up!" Draco hissed. "I fucking hate magical mirrors. Can't you ever just keep your mouth shut?!"

"No," the mirror said in a mocking tone.

A bang. Draco had thrown something at the mirror.

"Fuck." There was a five seconds long silence. "It didn't work. She's still alive, and she's showing no sign of the Masamadie. Why didn't it work?"

"You only gave it one hour out of three to work, silly," the mirror pointed out shrewdly.

"Didn't I tell you to shut up?! It's not my fault it didn't get enough time to work. That bloody Potter came to pick me up for delivery."

There was no doubt which Draco it was in there. His Dracums would never call him Potter, and certainly not in that disgusted, scornful, sarcastic tone.

But what was he talking about? What was a 'masamadie?'

It shocked him that this second personality of Draco's had tried to kill Joz while she was still inside him. Thank God he had not succeeded!

"Fuck. Now I have to kill six people instead of five. How the Hell am I gonna pull that off without any of them raising suspicion against me? Blaise was hard enough."

Harry stumbled backwards in shock.

No. It could not be. It was not true. He had not just heard him say that. Suddenly, he felt a strong need to get away from the blonde and tried to back up the hallway, but his foot caught on the rim of the Invisibility Cloak and he fell. He landed on the floor with a thud.

"Who's there?" came the blonde's voice from inside the bathroom.

Harry noticed that his right leg was protruding from beneath the Cloak, and mouthing a curse he hurried to pull it back inside the oily silver fabric.

Draco appeared in the doorway only a fraction of a second later. He peered out into the hall with knitted eyebrows, and his grey eyes were cold and vicious.

Harry tried his best not to make a single sound. His heart was pounding in his chest and his breathing was fast and shallow. Fear had frozen him. They were only three feet from each other. If the blonde decided to go out and search the corridor he would step right on Harry, and Harry would not be able to move away fast enough.

Evidently, Draco decided that he had only imagined the sound, because he shrugged and walked back into the bathroom.

Harry hurried up to his feet again and moved some thirty feet up the hallway, coming to a rest outside the nursery. He peered around the corner. James was not there. Thank God. He did not want to think about what could have happened if the blonde had found the boy in his current state of mind. And Joz. Where was Joz? Asleep in her cradle?

Oh my God …, he thought, and he felt something sharp stab his heart.

The blonde was emerging from the bathroom, and with swift strides he stalked past Harry with his black cloak billowing in his wake. He took the stairs at a run. Harry only hesitated a second before following him as close behind as he dared.

He was quite surprised when Draco went left and turned into the south wing. Neither of them ever went to the south wing because there was nothing there. Draco had said so only months after they decided to stay at the Manor rather than move to an apartment in London. And that was more than three years ago. Why would he want to go to the south wing now?

The blonde came to a stop in front of a huge tapestry of Lucius Malfoy.

Harry stared at it in astonishment. Draco had never told him there was a tapestry of his father hanging in a corridor. Why would he keep something as trivial as that from him?

He watched the blonde take out his wand and firmly tap the second button from the top on his father's deep green travelling cloak. In an instant, the tapestry came alive. "Welcome back, son," Lucius said with a cold sneer. The tapestry swung aside and revealed a hidden room that Harry had had no idea existed. He glimpsed what looked like a ladder in there—a ladder going down. As soon as the blonde had gone inside, the tapestry swung back into place.

Harry waited for a few minutes, hesitating. Should he follow him? Or was it too dangerous? There was no telling what the blonde might do if he discovered that he was being followed, and Harry certainly did not want to have to fight him. He did not want to hurt Draco.

Eventually, he decided to trust his instincts and go on. He stepped up to the tapestry and took out his own wand. He tapped the button just like Draco had done.

"Ah … Mr Potter. Finally learnt of the secret passageway, have you?" Lucius drawled, delighted.

Harry jerked. "You can see me?" he said, and immediately felt a blush of embarrassment. He had just asked a bloody tapestry if it could see him!

Lucius laughed demonically. "Why, of course I can, Mr Potter. Did you take me for a fool? I see everything. And let me tell you, you won't be able to fool my son either. He'll outwit you. All too easily."

Harry ignored him and stepped inside the room. The ladder he had glimpsed was the only item in the room. Silently sneaking up to it, he tried to see if Draco was still climbing down it. It appeared to be empty down there, so he took a deep breath and began his descent.

He stared dumbstruck at the stone tunnel and the old dungeons at the bottom of the ladder. There seemed to be just as many rooms and chambers beneath the house as the ones he was aware of inside the house! Wondering where the blonde had gone, he peered up and down the tunnel. Small torches were burning on the walls, but the light in the tunnel was dim and did not make much out.

Listening to a little voice inside himself, he went right and followed the tunnel as fast as he dared, careful not to make any sounds that might travel up to the blonde.

As he passed one of the smallest chambers, he detected an odd shape in his periphery and swirled around. His heart seemed to stop when he came face to face with the lost Blaise at last. Pain and sorrow in his heart now, he had to admit to himself that what he had heard the blonde say upstairs was right. No longer worried that the blonde would hear him, he walked up to the boy hanging on the wall in the chamber, tears silently streaming down his cheeks.

Blaise was dead. No doubt about it. He had been pinned to the wall with three-inch-thick metal poles in wrists, ankles, crotch, and neck—a mockery of the Muggle crucifix. His eyes had been torn out. His gut cut open. Intestines were hanging out of him, lightly touching the cold, damp stone floor.

Harry fell to his knees. "No," he whispered. "No …" This was sick. Beyond sick. What had Draco been turned into?

He remembered the fear on the blonde's face when he had given voice to his worst fears.

I think I'm responsible for Blaise's disappearance.

He had said nothing about the possibility that he might have killed him, but now Harry understood that Draco had feared just that. That he had killed his best friend again. But this time, it had been in cold blood; this time it had been in a psychotic rage.

Shaken by his discovery, he hardly noticed when the blonde passed him out in the tunnel on his way back to the ladder. Only five minutes later did he realise that he was alone down there.

And Draco had come from the right, the direction in which Harry instinctively had been going. He therefore came to the conclusion that he could trust his gut feeling and set out again. He followed the tunnel to the very end and was utterly surprised by his discovery. This was the largest chamber he had seen yet, and it sported several long wooden tables and everything you might need to concoct the darkest of potions.

Suddenly, he recalled what Blaise had said to him the last time he had seen him. Draco, I saw Harry emerging from the Potion Chamber. Did you know that he knew about it?

Back then, Harry had not reflected much over Zabini's choice of words, but now the truth hit him with the force of a sledge hammer.

Blaise had seen something he was not supposed to see, and the other Draco had got rid of him to cover up his tracks. And what he had seen must be inside this chamber.

Harry walked up to one of the tables. There was a half-empty cauldron standing on it, and it looked recently used. One sniff of the potion inside of it told him that it was something you should not drink if you wanted to see the next full moon.

Could this be the 'masamadie' that Draco had been talking about?

Yes, there was a ripped-out page from an old book on the table featuring the ingredients for and instructions on how to make a potion called Masamadie. But it was written in Latin, so Harry did not understand a word of it. Without hesitation, he pocketed the yellowed parchment, and next he took a small bottle from a shelf behind him and poured a sample of the Masamadie into it with the intention of showing them both to Professor Snape. If anyone knew what the effects of that potion might be, it was him.

Then he left the Potion Chamber and intended never to go back. The place gave him the creeps.

He stopped at the chamber holding Blaise's dead body again to quietly pay his respects to his dead friend before ascending the stairs and climbing out of the tapestry again.

Cho came for another unexpected visit to the Manor that afternoon, but she did not intend to actually announce her presence. No, she hoped to be able to 'work her magic' without getting seen by anyone. She used the fireplace in the den, because she knew that the lads seldom used it themselves. And yes, the little room was deserted.

She sneaked up to the parlour archway and peered inside to make sure that no-one was there.

She could not see anyone. Giggling girlishly to herself, she went inside and was just about to continue out into the hallway when she heard a loud sigh behind herself.

Frightened, she swirled around.

Draco was fast asleep on the couch.

"Perfect!" she said to herself, and clapped her hands together in childish delight. Since the Malfoy-potion was not working fast and efficiently enough for her taste, she wanted to try something else. And this time it was sure to break them apart … for ever.

"Potion's ready!"

Piper came running down the stairs with a test-tube of steaming lilac-blue-black liquid that bubbled slightly on the surface. It had only taken her three hours to concoct it, and Harry was very glad to see her. He took the test-tube and held it up to the light. "Does this taste bad?" he asked.

Piper blinked at him. "No. Why? You're not the one who's going to drink it."

"No, and that is precisely the problem. Draco would never drink anything made by you, and if he detected even the slightest trace of a bitter taste in the tea I'm going to bring him he would get suspicious. And he needs to drink the whole thing in order for it to work, doesn't he?"

"Yeees …"

"That's why I needed to know about the taste. Now, if you excuse me …"

He went out to the kitchen and made a kettle of tea for them. When it was ready, he took the kettle off the fire and poured three cups, because Piper would probably want to stick around and watch the results of her potion. If Draco's face turned purple for a second after he drank it, it would mean that the potion had worked and that he had been successfully stripped of his second personality.

Harry brought the tea in on a tray, which he carefully put down on the coffee table in front of Draco. Then he gently shook him awake. "Hey, baby," he said with a faint smile, because as soon as the blonde had opened his eyes he knew that this was his Draco, not the other. "Sleep well?"

The blonde rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "Harry?" he said in surprise. "You're home already? I thought you were going to study all day …"

"Yeah, so I thought," Harry lied with ease, "but Madam Bookworm, the librarian, kicked me out at two. Said they were doing some sort of inventory this afternoon …"

"Oh." Draco sat up. He seemed somewhat confused. Harry guessed that he wondered how he had wound up on the couch. Then he spotted the tray. "Oh, you made me tea? That is so sweet … Thank you."

Harry could not believe that anyone would do something so vicious and malicious to this wonderful, compassionate young man. Who the Hell would turn him into such a monster?!

When I find him …, Harry thought, and unconsciously clenched his hands.

Draco took a sip of his tea. "Oh, this is delicious," he said, and took another sip. "New blend?"

"Er … yeah. I think so. I was kind of in a hurry last time I went to Diagon Alley, so I just picked something."

"It's lovely," the blonde said, and swallowed the rest in three deep swigs. "Man, I didn't realise I was that thirsty! What have I been up to all morning to make me so thirsty?" He chuckled stiffly, trying to make his question sound more casual than it was.

When he put the cup down, he burped and made a wry face. For a second, his face flashed a dark purple, and Harry's heart skipped a beat in relief.

"It worked!" he exclaimed in over-excitement and threw himself around the blonde's neck.

Then he told Draco about everything. The part about finding Blaise was the hardest, but he knew that he had to tell his lover sooner or later. Together with the news of the mysterious Masamadie potion, Blaise's second death made Draco extremely depressed and plagued by guilt.

Harry tried his best to make him see that it was not his fault, but the blonde would not listen. He shut himself in an inner room of pain again.

Two hours later, Harry went to see Professor Snape at Hogwarts. He Apparated to Hogsmeade and walked up to the castle from there. Once he stood outside Snape's office in the dungeons, he hesitated. But then he knocked on the door.

"Come in," the harsh voice said from inside the office.

Harry opened the door and stepped inside. Shut it behind himself.

Snape seemed utterly surprised to see him, but soon his usual sneer returned to his sallow face. "To what do I owe the honour?" he asked without rising from his desk.

Harry took a seat opposite him. "I need a favour," he said very reluctantly.

The sneer on Snape's face deepened. "A favour, you say? Famous, arrogant, do-it-yourself Potter wants a favour?"

"Yes, and it is very important that you don't let our mutual hatred cloud your vision," Harry warned unpleasantly. He turned out his pocket and gave his old professor the small bottle of Masamadie potion and the ripped-out page with the instructions. "Do you recognise this?" he asked solemnly.

Snape inspected the yellowed parchment closely. A note of anxiety came to his jet-black eyes. When he looked up at Harry, he seemed to have forgotten all about their differences. "Where did you find this?" he demanded.

Harry did not like the urgency in the professor's drawling voice. Cold shivers travelling down his spine, he told Snape all about the Potion Chamber and Draco's blackouts. The professor listened intensely with steadily growing concern. When Harry fell silent, he urged him to give him the bottle.

He looked at it with dread. "This is a highly deadly potion, Potter," he said, and sounded almost fascinated. "But only for foetuses, of course …"

Harry knitted his brows. "Foetuses? You mean …"

"That is exactly what I mean," Snape said, and fixated Harry's gaze with his own. "The Masamadie potion kills the foetus without hurting the mother—or, in Draco's case, the father. But it needs three hours inside the body to work properly."

"Yeah, I heard the other Draco mentioning something about three hours … But the bathroom mirror said he'd only given it one hour."

A muscle twitched near Snape's left eye. "The bathroom mirror?" he echoed sceptically.

"He was having a conversation with his reflection in the magical mirror," Harry explained.

"I see …" The professor studied the potion in the little bottle. "I will need to examine this further. I will also need a blood sample from the baby to determine what the potion might have done to her."

Harry rose from the chair.

"Oh, and Potter," Snape said as he was about to shut the door behind himself again. "You need to be prepared for bad news. The Masamadie is a very strong potion, and it has probably caused major damage to your daughter's DNA. There is a chance that the damage is minor since she wasn't subjected to the full power of the potion, of course, but don't get your hopes up, all right?"

Harry could not hide his astonishment at Snape's concern. "Sir … you care for me, sir?"

An eerie smile curved the older man's lips. "Certainly, Potter. After all, you are my nephew's partner."

"Ne … Nephew, sir?"

"Oh, hasn't Draco told you? Lucius and I had the same father. We were half-brothers."

What? Snotty, unpleasant, sallow-skinned Severus Snape—a bastard son? That was actually quite funny and made the old snake seem less intimidating. He wondered why Draco had never told him about that? It was hilarious!

But he did not get any chance to ask the blonde about his amazing discovery, because when he found Draco in their bedroom he totally lost his train of thought. The blonde was standing in front of the full-length mirror next to the wardrobe and appeared to be pulling on a pair of black nylons.

Harry stopped and stared.

Draco froze in the middle of a movement as he spotted Harry in the doorway. He was half dressed in female clothing. Harry could not believe it. He was wearing a skirt, for crying out loud!

"What the Hell are you doing?!" he asked indignantly.

The blonde blinked. Then he smiled pleasantly. "I'm playing house with the children," he told him. "I'm the mother, James is the father and Joz is the baby."

"You need to dress up as an old librarian for that?" Harry asked sceptically.

"I do not look like an old librarian!" Draco objected in offense. "I look cute!"

Harry snorted. "You look bloody ridiculous. Now take those off." He left the room and went downstairs to have some coffee. Man, something always had to happen, did it not? Once they had straightened one thing up, something else turned up and messed life up for them. Was it not enough that Joz was probably in mortal danger?!

At least he's bright and shining again, Harry thought with a deep sigh of defeat.

A few hours later, when it was time to have dinner, though, Draco turned up dressed in an extremely tight, super-short and revealing red dress, and Harry noticed that he was even wearing fake breasts. With this ensemble, he wore the same black nylons that Harry had seen him about to put on only a couple of hours earlier, red leather boots with high heels, a pearl necklace with matching pearl earrings and make-up! To top it all off, he had styled his hair in a very feminine fashion.

He smiled broadly at them all and waved foolishly. "Hiii!"

They gaped at him.

"Draco, what the fuck are you doing?!" Harry exclaimed. "Why are you wearing that?"

Not even Piper could find anything more suitable to say—and that was saying something!

The blonde just smiled even broader and giggled girlishly. Then he clapped his hands together. "I have an announcement to make!" he informed them, and gave them all an expectant look. "I am going to become a woman!" He squealed excitedly as if that was the most amazing news in the world.

They just stared at him with goggling eyes.

"What?" Harry could hardly even get that one word out of his mouth.

"Yeah! I'm gonna go through morpho-medicine tomorrow! I used my influence to move my name up to the top of the list, and I'm up at five pm! Isn't it wonderful?"

Suddenly, Harry felt rage flowing through his veins. He swiftly rose from the dinner table and violently took Draco by the arm. Furthermore, he forced him out of the room and up the stairs to their bedroom. There, he magically tied him to the bed to make sure that he did not wander off anywhere.

When he got back downstairs, the others were watching him with wide eyes. Especially Magami, because she did not seem to understand what had happened at all. Maybe she had not even recognised Draco under all that make-up. Yousuke apparently tried to explain the incident to her.

Piper watched him intently as he approached the table.

"Make a potion," he demanded.

"Already on it!" she promised, and bounced up and away.

He sank down at the table and buried his face in his hands. How could this have happened?

"You okay, Harii-san?" Yousuke asked in concern.

"Yeah … yeah, I'm all right," he mumbled. "It's just that … it never seems to end. Why does everything have to happen to us?"

"Because you are Harii Pottaa and Dorako Marufoi. Everybody want you out of games."

Harry jerked. Suddenly he knew exactly how it must be.

He quickly shot up from the table and hurried out of the dining room.

He could hear Yousuke muttering behind him. "I something of wrong say?"

Harry ran up the stairs to their bedroom and found the blonde impatiently tapping the wall with his index finger. "How long were you planning on keeping me waiting, hon?" he asked irritably. "I have an important appointment tomorrow."

"No you don't," Harry said firmly. "Draco, listen … has anyone … done something to you lately? Has anyone said anything threatening or implied that they might've tampered with you in any way?"

The blonde frowned. "What do you mean? Are you saying that someone's deliberately messing with my mind?"

"Yeah, how else do you explain all these weird changes you've been going through? I'm certain that someone's trying to break us up by using magic. But I don't think it's Pywercaseley. He wouldn't be this subtle. Percy's always loved to bask in his own glory. You have any suggestions?"

Draco pondered it a while. Then, he said, "The only one I can think of is Cho. When I got back home from the hospital after I was poisoned, she said she'd hoped that I'd be dead now. Yes. It has to be her."

"Cho?" Harry said, and laughed. "No way! It can't be her. She's way too innocent to do anything like that!"

The blonde glared at him for a few eerie moments, and then he slowly shook his head in disappointment. "Now I definitely know she's done something to us," he said gloomily, "because you don't believe me. You always believe me, Harry. You never question me. But you don't believe me now? You even defend her? She's trying to break us up, Harry! Think about it. When did all this start? When she showed up and forced herself into your life again! And remember how she tried to grope me in the dark when she thought I was you? I bet that's when she poisoned me—and she probably gave you some kind of Influence Potion to make sure that you always took her side in case I ever accused her of anything. And it worked, didn't it? You're taking her side now."

Harry stared at him with offense and indignation. "I am not taking her side! I'm merely saying that she's an innocent, compassionate, and friendly girl! She didn't do any of this! I know you don't like me spending time with her, but that's not any reason to accuse her of trying to kill you."

"All right. Forget it. I never said anything about it, okay? Forget it. Please, do go ahead and spend time with your ex-girlfriend and refuse to believe your boyfriend when he's telling you the truth. I don't care. I really don't. Spend as much time with her as you like. But don't expect me to be all friendly with her, because I can see through her."

Harry was just about to protest when Piper entered the room with another test-tube of steaming potion. After some persuasion, he managed to make Draco drink it. The blonde became quite embarrassed when he realised what he had been about to do. To him, the prospect of leading the rest of his life as a woman was worse than the nightmare about the forest.

Life at the Manor finally seemed to settle into some kind of routine and quiet. It was soon confirmed that the other Draco indeed was gone for good, and the blonde was incredibly relieved that he was not suffering any more blackouts. But he still had to take the consequences of his other personality's actions.

They gave Blaise a proper funeral this time and said a tearful goodbye. As for little Joz … Snape determined that the Masamadie in fact had damaged her genetic structure in a severe way. Although the potion had only been churning through her veins for one hour out of three needed to kill her, there was still evidence of it to study in the blood sample. Apparently some kind of genetic mutation had given her abnormal powers, and her mind had been damaged. It was too soon to tell, but Snape had a theory that she might get severely mentally disturbed in the future and that she might use those powers to do awful things.

It was a hard fact to take for Harry and Draco. Even though Joz was only six months old, they had to give her up. For everyone's sake, she was signed into St Mungo's Psychiatric Ward for Children and would probably have to spend the rest of her life there. They were only allowed to visit three to four hours each weekend, and that hurt. Their own child …

But the Healers assured them that it was for the best. She needed special attention and care, things they, as her parents, could not give her with everything else they needed to handle.

In September 2007, Piper had a daughter of her own. At first, Yousuke and her could not agree on a name for their baby girl, but after two weeks of unnecessary quarrelling about it they decided to call her Shizuka. Yousuke explained to them that it meant 'silence' and that it suited the girl perfectly since she never cried. She was always a very calm and nice little girl. Sometimes, her parents called her Shizukana, which meant 'silent' or 'still.'

Their arrangement actually worked out just fine, and Draco was never bothered by having his sister's family at the Manor. The only time he saw them was during dinner and on birthdays. But one day, his attitude changed, though …

They were all sitting in the parlour for once, chatting casually and having tea, and at least Harry thought they were having a very nice time. Until Piper flew out of her armchair and began to jump up and down with excitement. "Oh, oh, oh! Now I've got it!" she said. "Now I remember what I said when you guys switched bodies! It was—"

"Oh, no, no—don't say it!" both Harry and Draco expelled, waving their arms in front of them in a panic.

But there was no stopping her.

"I said 'Wabbafunktany!'" she exclaimed, happy with herself that she had actually remembered.

Then she seemed to realise what she had just done and clapped her hands to her mouth. "Oh no! I didn't mean it!"

But it was already too late: The little ball of light had already appeared and exploded in their faces.