Chapter 7
Draco half thought an answer would come to him in his dreams. But that night, his sleep was conspicuously dreamless. He did wake to find the spectre of Potter's mum watching him from the foot of his bed, though, but it had been a few days since he'd seen her last, so she was almost a welcome sight.
Almost. See, instead of fading out of existence as she was previously wont to do, Lily was now haunting him 24/7.
She watched him curse as he burned his toast, and Draco swore he saw her smile when he did. She cooed silently at Martin, while Draco refilled his bowl with his expensive kneazle treats and got scratched at in return. She watched as Draco fumbled through meetings, one eye on her as she drifted in and out of his office at inopportune moments. She silently watched him order his lunch in the cafeteria, and he was almost certain she was judging his choice to get extra pudding. She definitely laughed, a soft tinkling sound, when he ran into the one living Potter in the lifts after work one day, and made a swift exit as soon as the doors opened. Or, at least he tried to make a swift exit, and instead walked right into the doors as they were opening causing him to stumble back into Potter, flush brightly, and run away all before Potter could ask if he was alright.
But he'd choose the laughter over the lingering look of yearning on Lily's face after seeing her son any day.
After that, Lily just took to staring at Draco beseechingly, the unspoken request loud and clear. Save him. Would that Draco bloody knew how.
By Friday morning, he'd had enough.
"The pressures of the job finally got to you then?" Granger remarked, strolling into their office at her usual time. Draco had been there since first light, and wasted no time getting right to work. His side of the shared space was in complete disarray, research papers and potions equipment spilling out of boxes and opened drawers.
"Actually, I've taken a secondment," he said, continuing to pack his career into boxes.
"Oh," Granger stared, taken aback. "With who? I mean, not that you're not qualified for a great deal of things..." she bit her lip. "I just meant, where will you be working?"
"Dreams!" Draco offered with a deranged grin. It had been days since he'd had a proper night's sleep. Granger frowned. "Dreams? As in Jonathan Parker and the Dream Team's department of Dreams?" She asked skeptically.
"The very same," Draco confirmed, wrapping up the last of his things. She gave him a look. "If you don't want to tell me, you could just say that you know. I won't be offended," Granger huffed, sounding offended.
"See you in six months, Granger," Draco replied, exiting their office with a flourish, his boxes floating in a neat queue behind him and Lily's ghost trailing after them. "Wait!" Granger called. Draco had no intention to do any such thing but Lily's ghost brushed past Draco's arm getting his attention. She looked back at Granger with a raised eyebrow. "Oh, don't you start on me now, too," he muttered. But he dutifully stopped to face Granger, who was looking increasingly concerned.
"Draco, are you sure you're alright? I know we're not exactly close...but I do consider us friends, and you can tell me if you're in trouble. You know that, right?" Draco had not known that, but tried to keep the surprise off his face.
"Of course," he said with a weak smile. "I'm fine, Granger, really." She clearly didn't buy it, but to his relief, didn't push him any further. "Alright, well, say hello to Luna for me," she said sounding unconvinced.
**
"Granger says hello," Draco said rudely, barging into the Dreams library where Luna was reading a book upside down. "Where should I set up my things?"
"Draco," Luna smiled brightly. "I'm so glad you're here. But what changed your mind?"
"You said something about dreams spilling into reality," he said, looking apprehensively at Lily's ghost who was poring over the bookshelves with interest. "When I came in on Monday, the first thing you said was something cryptic about how funny it is that dreams so often become real. Well, what if I don't want them to be? How do I put them back?" he asked desperately. Luna smiled knowingly, following Draco's gaze to Lily.
"Come with me," she said.
After showing him to the office he'd occupy for the next several months and allowing him to settle in, Luna gave him a detailed tour of the Dreams division.
The space was much larger than Draco's side of level nine, which was the only place in mysteries that dealt in more general magic, made up of various unspeakables with specialised talents who could be on-call to assist where needed and were able to spend the rest of their time on research projects. He hadn't realised just how vast the rest of the department truly was until he entered a room on the tour that looked into a different dimension. It all looked much more fascinating than anything they'd had Draco work on with them in the past, and he felt a little foolish for writing the entire unit off so quickly.
The tour ended back in the observation room he saw earlier that week. "So, do I finally get the down low on just what's being done here?" he asked, familiarising himself with the lab.
"Draco, I'm afraid I haven't been totally honest with you."
Draco rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, I know that silly story about the deathly hallows was complete rubbish. So what's the real reason you're exploring a dream potion?"
Luna looked puzzled. "It wasn't a story Draco, Yesena Unwirklich really did invent dreamwalking, and she really did use it to uncover the location of the resurrection stone. What I wasn't honest about was why we need you to help us do it again."
Draco looked up from the test tube full of pink sand he had been inspecting and narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"
Luna sighed. "This would be easier to explain in a dream, you know." Draco snorted. "You're dreaming if you think I'm going anywhere near that potion again before doing some serious tests on its properties."
"Have it your way," Luna said. "But you might want to take a seat," she advised. And then, as casual as anything, "oh, and you can tell your guest to settle in as well."
Draco dropped the glass beaker he was holding.
"My guest?" He repeated softly.
"Yes. Lily Potter, isn't it?" Draco could hear his heart hammering loudly in his chest as he looked back up at Luna's placid expression. "Luna," he began, not quite sure what to ask first.
"Don't worry, I can't see her, Draco. But I know she's here."
"How?" he asked, feeling unsteady on his feet and falling gratefully into the chair Luna offered. "I told you, it came to me in a dream."
**
What she really meant it turned out, was that ProfessorSnape came to her in a dream, after she found his notes on the dreamwalking potion back at Hogwarts last summer and tried her hand at it.
He'd been trying to master a potion to speak to the dead for years — it was meant to be the crowning achievement of his career — but his gruesome death cut his work short and he never quite got the potion right.
Then Luna came along with her experience in Dreams and managed to improve Snape's attempt, actually allowing her to communicate with him in her own dream— which is how she learned everything she was telling Draco now.
This was where Draco found things took a turn for the strange. According to Luna, even though Snape didn't make the potion intending to find the resurrection stone, he just so happened to have access to it in the years leading up to his death.
And the bastard used it to summon who else but Lily Evans Potter - who, oh yeah, he was madly in love with. Draco was livid.
"I don't understand," he said pacing the length of the observation room. "What in hell possessed him to do something so stupid?" Draco asked, pulling at his hair. "And more importantly, actually," he said rounding on Lily's ghost who was looking at him worriedly, "why is she still here?!"
Luna answered that too.
“Snape didn't truly believe his attempt to call Lily back would work, but when it did he took advantage of the time they had together,” she began to explain.
“Oh, yuck,” Draco interjected. Luna tutted at him.
“Fine, he spent the remainder of his life mending fences with Potter’s mum, I got it. What happened after he died?” Draco was getting impatient.
“She left the earthly realm with him,” Luna said simply. Draco took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers.
”Um, Luna?” He chuckled, glancing at Lily’s ghost who was now hovering directly behind his shoulder, doing a poor job of dropping eaves. He shivered involuntarily.
“Hate to point out the obvious, but–”
”And then came back again,” Luna continued over Draco’s sounds of disbelief.
”Who on earth would call her back here again?” He demanded with all the righteous indignation of someone about to rally a mob.
“Why, Harry, of course,” Luna said matter of factly.
“Oh, Harry, well that’s alright then! Why wouldn’t he come upon a rare magical artifact known only as myth and use it to summon his dead mother? How very ignorant of me!”
Luna raised her brows at Draco calmly in a way that very nearly (but not quite) made him feel ashamed for his outburst.
He sighed loudly. “Why did Potter use the stone, Luna?”
When Luna told him, Draco paled. By this point in the story, Lily’s ghost had wandered off into the bedroom, staring blankly at the constellations reflecting down on her from the ceiling. It made an eerie sight.
“Okay,” Draco said after regaining his composure. “Okay, so then why didn’t she leave with Potter the same way she did with Snape?” He asked, working through the idea logically.
“The others, his father and Lupin, Black. They all went back to the…beyond or wherever…didn’t they? So why didn’t Lily?”
“The stone was one of Voldemort’s horcruxes, Draco. And magic always leaves traces,” Luna replied.
Draco’s eyes widened in understanding. “It trapped her here.”
”Yes,” Luna confirmed. “She had stronger ties to the world of the living than any of the others who passed on and were called back through the stone. And the longer she stays trapped, the less chance she has of being freed.”
“I suppose that explains her signs of ageing,” Draco suggested. “If part of her soul has been bound to the mortal plane this long, I imagine her human form is taking on earthly qualities.”
”Fascinating,” Luna said. “How old does she look?”
”Early 40s?” Draco guessed. Luna nodded. “She would have been around that age if she were still alive.”
While feeling much more knowledgeable about the situation than he did even an hour ago, Draco still had questions. The topmost being: “So, what does this have to do with me?”
“Professor Snape tasked me with freeing Lily’s soul. And I need your help to do it.”
“Let it be known that even death cannot stop that man from handing out impossible assignments,” Draco griped.
“What did I tell you about the impossible in Dreams?” Luna quipped, much too cheerfully for Draco’s liking.
“Well I’m sorry, Luna but this is shaping up to be much more of a nightmare than anything. Perhaps the department ought to rebrand,” he retorted.
“And besides, you still haven’t actually explained my role in all of this. If Snape asked you to do it, why am I the only one who can see Lily’s ghost?”
“Oh, well I thought that was rather obvious,” Luna said, giving Draco a funny look.
“You’re the master of the elder wand.”