He'd like to say it was a mistake and, granted, a stupid one; but it wasn't. It was a plan and, yes, it was stupid. It was stupid, and he's stuck, and there's a very good chance that he'll be stuck long enough to figure out who exactly to pin this on. And that's saying an awful lot, see, because Draco knows with all certainty that it's no one's fault but his own.

His mother teases, sometimes, that he's a cat more than a dragon -- that curious. And he likes to picture sharp, gaping jaws and slicing feet, even if she says no (laughing) and calls him a kitten.

He's a cat up a tree, claws of steel or not, and he can't very well get down so he might as well move forward.

Except.

Moving forward here is like standing still, with dusky shadows rocking back and forth, like waves that are reminding him of the one boat he was dragged on, when father had special business, and he became terribly sick. Flickering on walls that aren't really there and -- it keeps coming back to that -- rocking, and it almost hurts, he's that queasy.

And he'd thought pensieves were like -- like answers, and answers are smooth. Rubbed down. Flat. Not like being caught in the center of a whirlwind.

He was looking for secrets, stupendously interesting secrets, and he found. Rooms -- like everyone else's. Like Hogwarts now, with the same robes and same lighting (except a bit foggier, and the edges of his sight are all blurred, but that's not the memories - that's what this is).

He finds a chandelier, and it seems to have come from nowhere. He didn't see it until he was right underneath, looking down at the stone floor and hearing the oddest glass tinkle. All the sounds are funny here, a bit off, like they were sucked through a straw and spit back out again, one drop at a time. It makes everything oddly stuttered, and his breathing a little stuttered, and his chest aches.

He tries not to think about it.

He looks up into the glints of rainbow and looks down into a young boy's eyes -- oddly familiar, with this laugh in them.

The boy blinks, and cocks his head to the right, in this slow languid movement, and Draco can't help but say, "You can see me?" in a squeak that would be absolutely appalling, if there were anyone of consequence about to hear him.

As it is, there's only this boy, and two guesses -- though never mind that, honestly, (only one) -- and Draco snaps, "Prefect, were you? Oh, that's revolting," sneering at the boy's badge, because it is, and he's simply incensed. Because it would be just like all of them.

The boy follows him, nimbly at his heels, and Draco peers into a room where people are dancing but not touching -- like something out of an old painting, like the beigeish ones in Malfoy Hall -- and then melts back with him as the room glimmers in white and shifts to empty, with a small child sobbing his lungs dry.

"Bet you got yourself a House Cup every year, and Quidditch Team Captain, and you make everyone else do detention for you," Draco snaps and adds, viciously, "Albus," and the child doesn't pause, but the boy at his side corrects him.

"Quidditch is too hard on my knees."

And that's. Interesting. But not at all the sort of secret he came looking for.

This conversation, this place is too hard on Draco's head, and he thinks cats should be given yarn or jungles or captives to disembowel and never tall, crumbling books titled Spells No Person Should Ever Attempt, No Matter What in fading, stenciled lettering.

"Well, thank Merlin for that," he drawls, and he really will have to patent this tone someday, because it feels simply delicious coming out of his mouth. Warm and self-satisfied, yet crisp (even after the strange air's muddling). Like he's back on his own two feet, like he has two feet and solid ground. "And I don't suppose you know a way out, do you?

"No," he corrects himself, "don't even know you're here, I'd wager."

"We aren't - none of us - I'd imagine," Dumbledore says. Except the name doesn't feel -- doesn't feel there on him. Slides right off, like melted sugar glaze on one of those pastries that Crabbe is forever clutching between his fingers. Slippery in that vexing, out to get you way.

"Er. right," Draco replies, and he's fairly sure that meant something to Mr. Headmaster Junior, but.

He's watching Draco, and it would be unnerving if Draco had any nerve at all to begin with; he has poise -- it's different. Watching, with intrigue battling detachment, and -- boy or man -- there's probably no other person in the universe to whom those two words can be applied at once.

Though. Maybe not a person, but this whole world -- it's been watching him like that too, breathing around him. Waiting patiently for nothing or something to happen.

Wondering, maybe, what the hell he means, meant to be doing. And if only he was completely certain of that himself.

He doesn't always plan things out and he tries very hard not to learn from his lessons.

"I was searching for something clever," Draco offers, conversationally, and presses his palms against a mirror that looks like a sheet of crushed opals. He doesn't fall through, and he can piece together flashes of his forehead and chin, if he squints. "Thought perhaps I'd come across you snogging a badger."

He'd heard the password, and chances like that are a right, a duty, and he came back with the book tucked tightly under his arm. Pushed the door open gingerly with his shoulder.

Ended up with the smidgen of a smile that he bets Potter gets, when things are shut and it's only their lion and them.  "Those are tricky beasts," the boy says. "We'd have a time catching one."

He appears to be very serious, but then doesn't he always, and it's always been bullshit.

It's when he wants something.

Which is also always -- because Draco is on the outside, his own side, and he thinks that maybe he doesn't have the special smiles but he sees things that others can't.

A breeze is blowing leaves in front of his toes and there is a garden on his left. The branches are shivering, as if they're cold, but the rest doesn't feel like winter and Draco starts to wondering what he's changed. He sort hopes he doesn't find out.

He starts to thinking wild and desperate thoughts -- like how close memories are to the past and if they can touch you now, mix things up.  If he's created any ripples they won't be able to stop.

He breathes deep and thinks: stupid.

And Draco's doing perfectly fine, thank you very much. At least, when he's not stuck in a bowl with a raving loony.

And the words just come crashing out, bitten between his teeth and with too much spit, "You're such a fucking freak," and it feels fantastic to say it. Funny because it's true, because, "And I always thought you were just old."

The boy laces his fingers through Draco's, and pulls him towards a line of bronze swings. "Maybe I am." Mischievous.

Silken, moth-wing fingers that flutter against his palm and make him want to squash them and their thin wrists and thin arms and everything like the headmaster he doesn't really know, but smaller and just less. Too pale, almost sickly, and skinny like Potter but worse.

He doesn't let go because there's a pile of clouds, and they're low. They might be able to touch him.

The swings are the sort his father had elves build inside the manor walls when he was five, to pacify children who want, fiercely, what's still too dangerous -- to fly.  His were gold, but. It's close.  It's like they're his memories too, when he rubs his thumb down a chain, pinned like dead butterflies but not nearly as morbid; just cold.

He stumbles and he honestly didn't mean to.  He's almost sure of it.

The boy's settled shoulders under his palms, and that silent patient face. Watching. He has to say, "You don't talk much."

In his mouth is the taste of flat and stale facet water, but he keeps it open against the boy's open mouth for thirty lung burning seconds, until it's black and red behind his eyelids.

--

He wakes with his fingers tangled in thick rug and rubs a damp hand over his face. Opens his eyes to a long white beard.

"I trust your journey was," and Dumbledore smiles the smile that's never made for Draco, except when it is. "Fruitful."

Too many candles, with the light more orange than he thinks it should be. It was dark when he crept in, with a rustle of feathers and rectangle objects to bump against and bruise himself on. It had been empty (he thought, he thought), and no one had been expected.

"How long have you been here?" and he doesn't intend it, exactly, to be an accusation, but then. It's become clear, hasn't it, how much his mouth has a mind of its own.

The words settle between them, swabbing up some of moisture in the air. Leaving his throat tight.

"I was not able to intervene. Strong magicks bound you there." 

It's the kind of explanation that isn't one, and yes, this is why he's never even tried, and why he wonders what's so sly about Slytherins, that they'd write about that, not this, in their authorized, notarized books.

"Oh, and you'd be so terribly sad to see me rot?"

"I am not your enemy, Draco," Dumbledore says seriously, gravely, "You have enough of those, whom you call friends."

"You're not my fucking boyfriend either," Draco says, and doesn't look back -- not at the wax and flame gleam, not at the glossy circle of memories, not at the softened, drooping man with his softened, drooping hat.

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