Chapter 5
Draco left the manor library several hours later equipped with stacks of books covering everything to do with ghosts, the afterlife, hauntings and just to be thorough, psychosis.
But after a weekend of poring through every single tome twice-over from The Art of Summoning and A Novice’s Guide to Communing with Spirits to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Magical Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition , he was no closer to finding answers than before.
In all that time, Lily Potter’s ghost made herself scarce, only appearing to Draco at times when he felt himself slipping into sleep.
Making a mental note to replenish his stock of Wideye potion, Draco set off for work on Monday morning feeling more hopeless than he’d felt in a long time.
He entered his office groggily, giving Granger a polite nod in greeting.
“Feeling better?” Granger asked casually, not looking up from the viscous black fluid moving eerily in a glass beaker on the corner of her desk.
“Pardon?” he asked, changing into his white robes.
Granger gave him a questioning glance.
“You were ill on Friday? I thought maybe it had something to do with the pub–”
“Ah, yes! I’m quite well, thank you, Granger,” Draco cut her off, heading towards the lab.
She made a disbelieving sound and then called after him.
“You’re in Dreams today, by the way!”
Draco stopped and turned on his heel, looking his colleague in the face properly for the first time that morning. The smirk he saw there was most disturbing.
“I see,” he said walking back to their shared office. “And Parker…”
“Is still with us. And waiting for you in 12B."
"Great," Draco said with a sigh. "Thanks."
Like many divisions of the DoM, the "Dream Team" as they were fond of calling themselves, was made up of a bunch of anoraks with an overinflated sense of importance.
The worst of them was Jonathan Parker, who had been head of the Dream Lab practically since its inception, back in the dark ages.
Alright, perhaps that was an exaggeration, but Draco was certain the batty old man was at least 40 years past the age of retirement and had no plans to leave the department anytime soon.
What's worse is that every time Draco was pulled in to consult on a research project, Parker spent the entire time trying to recruit him. It was mad.
"Draco!" The old man wheezed enthusiastically when Draco reached the lab. "Welcome back to the Dream Realm! I'm so glad you're able to join us today-"
"Actually, I'm really quite busy, Jonathan, I was away on Friday you see so there's quite a bit of work waiting for me-"
"Nonsense! Nothing is more important than the study of dreams, my boy! They make up every part of our lives. I'm sure your work can wait. In fact, today's project might even prove helpful to you," he said with a gleam in his eye.
Draco doubted that. Most of the work done in Dreams overlapped with Prophecies and Death and Time. Sure, potions masters got pulled in to collaborate on research now and then, and while Draco had to admit it wasn't completely useless (he was a proponent of Dreamless Sleep after all), more often than not it ended up being a waste of his time.
"Come, come," Parker beckoned, leading Draco into one of the smaller experiment rooms. "The lovely miss Luna will fill you in."
Well, that was a relief, Draco thought. The only good that came from visiting the lab was seeing Luna Lovegood. Surprisingly, he struck up a friendly correspondence with her after the war, she being one of the few people to respond to his apology letters.
Draco took a look around the room while he waited for Luna to arrive. Unlike the potions lab where he was usually relegated, the room had no windows or work tables.
Instead, a small bed was positioned in the corner of the room, with an armchair next to it. Draco noticed the telltale signs of an observation room from the two-way mirror on the wall opposite the bed.
The walls themselves were covered in a pale green wallpaper with illustrations of white sheep dancing along it, and the only lighting came from stars on the ceiling charmed to look like the night sky.
“This must be where the magic happens,” Draco muttered wryly to himself.
”Well some of it yes,” Luna said from the doorway, startling Draco.
“Luna!” he greeted her happily.
"Sorry for the wait. I was away with the fairies," she said. (For all he knew, she meant that literally).
“Not at all,” he said following her into the observation room where she was preparing some kind of potion on a lab bench.
“What can I help you with today?”
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” She answered with an absentminded smile. “How dreams can so often leak into reality?”
“You mean how reality can so often show up in our dreams,” Draco clarified.
He watched with interest as Luna poured a vial of purple liquid into a steaming cup of tea.
“Not at all,” she said seriously.
A shimmering cloud of purple smoke rose steadily from the cup as the liquids mixed, releasing a pleasing floral aroma. What was that? Draco was sure he knew that smell.
“Tea?” Luna offered Draco the cup, gently nudging it forward on the coffee table that separated them.
“Oh, no thank you,” he answered from the colourful armchair he always sat in when he visited Luna at her cottage. It wasn’t especially comfortable but it smelled of lavender and that was comforting to Draco.
A loud crowing wail startled Draco out of his reverie. A wooden peacock sprung out of a clock on the wall behind him, notifying Draco it was well past teatime.
“Well I suppose I’ll be off then,” he said, standing to leave. “Lovely to see you as always, Luna.”
A snort coming from the hallway leading to the cottage door stopped Draco on his way out.
“I told you he’d be slow on the uptake,” Professor Snape’s portrait said derisively.
Luna laughed warmly and Draco turned back to find her seated at a desk in the Potions classroom. Her Ravenclaw tie was braided through her hair meticulously but her robes were nowhere in sight.
Draco blinked trying to clear his head and a moment later found himself sitting next to Luna at his own desk, his own Slytherin robes draped behind his chair and the sleeves of his blue cashmere jumper rolled up to his elbows.
“Please professor, give him a moment to adjust,” Luna said, not looking up from her notes in front of her. A steaming cup of tea sat next to them, enticingly.
Draco shook his head trying to make sense of things. He was sure he never shared a class with Luna at Hogwarts. She was a year below him. So why was she in the dungeons?
He turned back to ask her that very question only to find himself back in the DoM observation room he had followed her into what felt like hours ago.
“Oh, good,” he sighed in relief. “There must have been something in that tea, Luna because for a moment I thought…” Draco trailed off as a loud hissing sound interrupted his thoughts.
“But you never drank the tea, Draco,” a warbled voice called out as though from a far off place.
Draco looked around and noticed he was alone. He moved to the glass window looking into the experiment room but instead of a bed and stars and tacky wallpaper, he was faced with a terrifying sight.
Luna sat calmly on the cold stone floors of the Malfoy dungeons, her hands chained to the walls and her white robes tattered and dirty.
Nagini loomed overhead, poised to attack.
“Luna, look out!” Draco screamed, rushing to help her. But the door he had entered through was gone, replaced by a red brick wall.
Draco pulled his wand out of his white potions robes but instead of the trusty Vine wand he relied on since the war ended, his hand grasped his old Hawthorn wand.
”What-Luna! What’s happening? Please,” he called out in desperation, as he cast spell after spell at the brick wall to no avail.
”This is impossible!” Draco yelled, terrified for his colleague turned friend’s life.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Draco,” Luna’s melodic voice instructed from beyond the glass and brick.
”Ridiculous?!” Draco shouted.
Sparks shot out of the tip of his wand, hitting Nagini through the glass.
Draco watched frozen as the long black head of the snake slowly transformed into a white horn, the rest of her body filling out into a fleshy grey beast.
“Nothing‘s impossible Draco,” Luna said. “Not in dreams. Let’s talk about the erumpent in the room shall we?”
The creature sneezed, and the brick wall exploded in front of Draco.
He covered his mouth and nose with his robes to avoid breathing in the dust. When it cleared, the door was back in place of the wall and the glass of the observation window was intact.
Everything in the room was back to normal, except one thing — instead of an empty bed, Draco saw himself lying between the sheets, dozing softly. On the small bedside table next to him sat a cup of tea.
Luna was back beside Draco in the observation room, looking serene.
“Luna.” He said with all the calm he could muster.
“Am I dreaming?”
She smiled. “Drink the tea Draco.”
Draco took a sip and woke with a start, back in the bed, coughing. His head was pounding.
The sheep on the wallpaper danced mockingly at him as he rubbed his eyes.
“Easy now, Draco,” Luna’s voice instructed through the sonorus.
Draco turned his attention to the mirror where he knew the observation room to be. It became transparent and he saw Luna sitting at a desk with muggle monitors, a chalkboard filled with equations behind her, and a much more sophisticated potions set up filling the rest of the space.
“Luna,” Draco croaked, his throat dry. “What the fuck was that?”
She grinned at him through the glass.
“What do you know about dream walking?”