DISCLAIMER: In its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros., Bloomsbury Publishing, et cetera, this work is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work.

BETA READERS: Bex-chan, silverbluewords

CHAPTER FIVE: SPARKS & STARS

I could be well moved if I were as you. If I could pray to move, prayers would move me. But I am constant as the Northern Star, of whose true fixed and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament. The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks; they are all fire, and every one doth shine; but there's but one in all doth hold his place.

—William Shakespeare, (The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, 1623)

"AH! MALFOY!"

"FUCK! I swear to Salazar, we're doing this wrong… Hell, this is wrong…"

"NO, don't stop, YOU IDIOT! HARDER!"

"SHUT IT, woman! I'm trying!"

"Well, you need to try harder! AH! MORE, MALFOY, MORE! HARDER!"

"Harder? You want it HARDER? Bloody easy for you to say! I'm sweating cobs down here, no thanks to you! OI, quit grabbing me! Don't make this any feckin' harder than it already is! FUCK! Stay still! Shite, HOLD IT! Let me give it another go!"

"Merlin, you're not ready for this! I'm not ready for this! Godric, what was I thinking? We should've waited! We should've WAITED! Why didn't we WAIT?"

"What in the blazes would be the point in that? Merlin, I thought you were supposed to be the clever one—"

"Well, first off, we could've chosen a more suitable location!"

"Where the fuck would be a more suitable location? Say, you're a right peevish swot—would you rather go at it in the library?"

"Godric, why didn't I think of that before? GAH, it's too late now!"

"Indeed! This was all your brilliant idea! You insisted that the Great Hall had perfectly stable, flat surfaces that would do nicely—"

"Yes, I know, alright? What did you expect? Everyone's got to start somewhere, and you're not exactly the most patient bloke around! You're nowhere near ready for—for… more rugged territory! Godric, you're like a blundering Neanderthal, the way you brandish that thing about like some thick troll's club! Honestly, with the way you go on about yourself, I thought you would've at least tried this once or twice—"

"A bloody what?"

"A NEANDERTHAL, Malfoy! An underdeveloped human, driven solely by primitive instinct and incapable of rational thought—"

"Sounds an awful lot like you, Mudblood—"

"Really, Malfoy? REALLY? You're really going to call me that at a time like this? Once again, you fail to astonish me—"

"I'll call you anything I bloody want to, you filthy Mudblood! I don't owe you SHITE! You were the one who practically forced me into this!"

"I hardly call taking pity on you an act of force, inbreed, although I can scarcely imagine the trauma that Mummy surely must have inflicted upon you—"

"Trade places with me, then, if you're so bloody brilliant! Go on! I'll just lie back and enjoy the show, shall I? After all, I am an unwilling participant—"

"An unwilling participant? FINE! Stop it! Stop moving! Hold still, you useless lump of a wizard! 'Filthy Mudblood,' my hat! You don't even know the half of it, you arrogant swine—"

"What the fuck are you—BLOODY HELL! WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU LEARN HOW TO DO THAT?"

"Do I detect a tone of surprise, Malfoy? Well, don't mind me! This nasty Mudblood is through! That's right! Through! You and your defective wand can take your frustrations elsewhere!"

"BOLLOCKS! Do you honestly expect me to believe that now you're the resident expert on wandlore? What a load—"

"Who needs to be an expert, when any Tom, Dick, and Harry knows that the wand's only as good as the wizard?"

"OI, WHERE THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING? WE'RE NOT BLOODY FINISHED HERE! AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH MY FUCKING WAND, MUDBLOOD! NOTHING! HEY, MUD—oh, sod it! I'm practically dripping in mud by now—GRANGER, GET BACK HERE!"

"Honestly, Malfoy, was it that difficult to sound out two titchy syllables?"

"You're not exactly making things easier for me when you're screaming 'OH, GOD! MALFOY!' every two ticks—OH, GOD! GRANGER! That was feckin' mind-blowing! TEACH ME!"

"Merlin, I can't believe we're actually doing this… I can't believe I'm doing this… With you, of all people… Godric, you don't even know what you're doing… AH! I can't do this anymore! I just can't! This has got to be the worst—"

"Do you ever stop TALKING? For once in your blasted life, will you just shut up and quit analysing? Salazar almighty, this has got to be the wonkiest dream I've ever had… And I really don't want to think about the consequences right now… WAIT! Wait! Stop! I think I've gotten the hang of this! Granger, stay right there!"

"GAH, what is it now, you gormless git—wait, Malfoy, what are you—NO, GET THAT THING AWAY FROM ME, YOU SICK—MALFOY, STOP! STOP! I've never—there's no way—AH, MALFOY! YOU'VE GOT IT ALL WRONG! Faster, you idiot! FASTER!"

"FUCKING HELL, GRANGER! LIKE THIS?"

"YES, MALFOY, YES! OH, YES! GODRIC, FINALLY!"

"FUCK, I'M SO CLOSE—"

—but yet so far. His conjured roses wilted after lasting almost ten minutes in the glory of pristine perfection. Granger groaned in exasperation once again, and even he couldn't help the sinking cloud of disappointment that descended upon him.

BUGGERING HELL! He'd thought, for dead certain, that he'd finally gotten it right this time. But then again, Granger didn't exactly win any awards for her renowned teaching methods. He swore that if the same situation had unfolded itself in reality, he would've gone deaf by now from all of her screeching. She screamed at him for every single, blasted little detail, from his wand-waving technique to his pronunciation of the incantation, for swishing too slow or too fast, for stressing that syllable too much or that one too little, for his posture, for the angle he held his wand at—Merlin, she infuriated him to the very brink of insanity!

Honestly, they spent more time bickering than actually attempting the spell, but he had to admit that he fared slightly better under her guidance. Besides, she didn't really exist anyway, so he wouldn't die of infection from the close proximity, societal shame, or anything horrid like that. He desperately needed this chance to practise. Better Granger than any other toffee-nosed fruitcake.

Once he figured out how to perform this pissing spell in the dream world, he had no doubt that he could pull it off in real life. But for some pesky reason, his flowers never seemed to look right.

Throughout their improvised mini-lesson, Granger had deftly transfigured the debris he'd littered across the floor, sprouting sunflowers by the dozens. He would never tell her outright, but in the safety of his own mind, he admitted that her miniature army of sunshine brightened the Hall and ignited the melancholy embers with its radiance.

He, on the other hand, had tried to play it safe for the past however many feckin' hours by sticking with roses, but it didn't matter. He'd barely made any progress.

"I never really liked roses anyway," she suddenly confessed, as they gloomily beheld the sixth hundred and fifty-second rose that had withered away into the dusty embrace of its brethren.

"What?" He gaped at her incredulously. "What kind of a girl are you? There's no bloody such thing as a wench that doesn't get all weepy-eyed over a few freshly hacked sprigs of indigenous plant life—with thorns, I might add—"

She snorted. "Oh, am I a girl now? Funny, I reckon that just might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me. At least someone's cottoned on by now, even if that someone happens to be a foul-mouthed moron like you. Most days, I don't even think that Harry and Ron can tell the difference—"

Yes, unfortunately, because of her, he had cottoned on by now, and it made him want to wring her by her scrawny neck that much more. At the mere suggestion of her more… feminine… attributes, a strange quivering sensation crawled its way into his stomach, twisting and trickling through his gut until the scalding acid sloshed up his throat and threatened to splatter across the ashen canvas.

He barely managed to suppress the first shuddering surge of bile. Already, the sickness recoiled in the pit of his bowels, preparing to slither its way back up. He had to stop it. He had to stop her. Hastily, he hacked off her mindless blathering.

"Spit it out," he snapped.

"Spit what out?" she snapped back. "Godric, why do you have to make everything sound so vulgar?"

"Can't help it, Mudblood," he sneered. "Your filth has seeped into even the most obscure crevices of this Hall, and it's only a matter of time before I too succumb to the viral disease. So, tell me, what's your paltry excuse for being a freak this time?"

"You think I'm a freak? That's rich! Has it ever occurred to you lot that you're the freaks? I mean, come on! Roses? Please! They're so overrated," she huffed, crossing her arms.

He could practically hear the steam whistling out of her ears as her overloaded brain debated whether or not to answer his query in greater detail. After a moment or two of crackling deliberation, her glower of distaste softened unexpectedly. She averted her eyes, clearly avoiding him the same way he'd tried to avoid her earlier that evening. Despite his morbid curiosity with the logic of her inferior mind, he didn't say a word. Not one word. Because he knew that Granger could never keep quiet for long. And sure enough, she finally spoke.

"When you give someone roses, that person's either dead, ill, or the recipient of false promises," she whispered to the stone beneath her feet. "That's why sunflowers are my favourite. They're plain, and their meaning is simple. All you want is for the other person to smile and be happy, and that's all there is to it. No fancy tripe. No need to prove anything to the world—because it's not perfect, and it's certainly no fairy tale, but it's good enough. And in the end, that's really all that matters, isn't it?"

Right… As if he knew how to respond to that.

Mental, that one. Absolutely mental.

"Holy cricket," she muttered, anxiously biting her lip and tensing all of a sudden. "I've never told anyone that." Hastily, she swatted at her face with the sleeves of her robes and fearlessly stared him down with a defiant, watery glare, as if daring him to voice that last thought in his head out loud. "Go ahead and laugh, Malfoy, but you asked, so there you have it!"

Indeed. Still, for some odd reason he couldn't place, he didn't feel right about attacking her when she had her guard down like this, especially since she hadn't rubbed his own fleeting moment of vulnerability in his face. She could have. But she didn't. She didn't, and for now, that swayed him enough not to stomp her into the dirt.

"Honestly, it's not that funny when you have to overanalyse every sodding little thing. It's pathetic, really," he scoffed, inwardly hoping that she would perceive that as a neutral enough response. Well, as neutral as it got coming from him. If he pushed her too far, she would topple over the edge—beyond his reach, and beyond the point of no return. She would lose the will to fight back, and that terrified him more than anything. He didn't have the foggiest idea what he'd do, and he'd rather not know.

The mere notion of the Golden Trio's beacon flickering out and dying—just dying—reminded him too much of that summer: the summer of the 422nd Quidditch World Cup, when his father had lead a band of Death Eaters in terrorising the campsite and committing public torture of Muggles and Mudbloods alike. He would probably have taken Granger too if Draco hadn't sneered at Pothead and Weaselbee to hold her big, bushy head down…

At long last, she laughed, the ire dissipating from her eyes and rekindled by that familiar, fiery spirit he had almost come to take for granted. "Pathetic, Malfoy? Not nearly as pathetic as your wandwork."

"I beg to differ, Granger," he shot back, lips curling with contempt. "Even that rank tip over there is more pleasing to the eye than your soggy, puffed-up face. Like the back end of the Knight Bus, the way it—"

That seemed to do the trick. She recovered quickly, and before long, had reverted back to screaming at him for his shoddy flower arrangements. By then, he couldn't help noticing that most of the heat had left her incessant rants. Eventually, she decided that she'd had enough of his backchat—either that, or she'd simply screamed herself hoarse—and balefully settled for silent scrutiny, which he found much more unsettling than her shrill nagging.

Surely, she must have known his reasons for trying so desperately to master this spell. After all, the real Granger had already spotted him in the Owlery that afternoon, but she hadn't pried or interrogated him for more information. He'd made a mistake, and he needed to pay for it. Not with his parents' money, but with himself. Some essence of himself… Some piece of his broken soul that had already shattered, yet remained untainted… Before he had none left.

And even though she knew, she said nothing, and for the most part, left him to the privacy of his brooding. It unnerved him, considering his previous experience with her bitchy, know-it-all ways, but somehow, she seemed content with giving him his space for the moment. As for himself, he too kept his distance, despite any hostile inclinations he might have harboured, and refrained from sneering or openly antagonising her for her brief emotional outburst with the roses. Like the best truces, it passed unspoken between the two of them.

For the longest time, silence prevailed.

Once or twice, however, he could've sworn he'd caught a spark of amusement in her eyes, not to mention the occasional, light cough, which he strongly suspected concealed a fit of giggles. He narrowed his eyes. He didn't know how much of Granger's impudence he could take before he finally snapped. Whipping around to snarl at the bint for even daring to mock him, he froze, horror-struck, as the words fell right out of his mouth.

Her eyes practically glittered with poorly suppressed mirth and her lips twitched playfully at the corners. He'd made Granger laugh. He'd made her smile. Not out of derision, but delight. And that deeply disturbed him. Some odd feeling had begun to worm its way inside of him, yet another parasite wriggling through his innards, and it made him feel extremely uncomfortable. He suddenly found himself eager to escape back to reality as soon as possible.

"Fuck this," he muttered, recklessly slashing a crude formation through the air that didn't even remotely resemble a circle, ignoring Granger's horrified squeaks of alarm.

"Wait, Malfoy! Stop!" she yelped, but he paid her screeches no heed.

"ORCHIDEOUS!" he bellowed, forging straight ahead.

"MALFOY, WATCH OUT!" she shrieked.

A thundering swarm of flowers erupted from the ground and slammed straight into him, engulfing his limbs in a tangle of rain-scented petals, sandpapered leaves, and prickling thorns. Then, everything flew apart, crumbling into a shower of death that suffocated his senses and drowned him in its putrid remains. At long last, he finally succumbed to the darkness that awaited him on the other side.

When he awoke the next morning, he abandoned all hope of salvaging the lost hours of sleep. Tormented by an unspeakable compulsion, he wandered back up to the Owlery, visions of his latest subconscious excursion taunting him every step of the way.

He and Granger had gone off on one of their usual rows, but for the first time in his life, someone had made him feel as if his efforts might have actually accomplished something. Something he could take pride in. Something good. Something right. And it didn't really matter if he failed, because he could always try again. As long as he had the right intentions, his ultimate goal made it all worth it in the end.

But he had chosen to come back to reality, and in this world, such a preposterous ideal would only ever exist in his dreams.

He didn't completely understand what had happened last night, or the strange, tacit agreement that had transpired between him and Granger, but he didn't feel prepared to face the truth. The unnatural sensations plagued him in writhing tendrils, etching jagged runes into his skull that hissed in demonic tongues and bled him dry—numbing him to the point where none of it even seemed sick or wrong anymore, but different. Just different. Foreign.

No. He couldn't—wouldn't—go back there again. Not until he'd had some time to mull this shite over in his fucked-up head.

Even now, the residual imagery continued to haunt him. The sight of her mud-stained eyes, shining at him as they transformed into gold. Gold like the sun, rising over a dark world—illuminating the gloom, yet at the same time, casting ominous shadows of doubt. The sound of her muffled, ill-disguised chirps at his pitiful attempts to appease the gods of transfiguration. Chirps of merriment, not malice. The taste of ash upon his tongue, bitter and saturated with regret. Ashes… Ashes… They all fell down…

By the time he'd reached the Owlery, he'd made it just in time to catch the first glimpses of sunrise, marking the end of a long, cold night. He watched its timid ascension in silence, as it shyly peeked over the firmament and kissed the grey sky, painting the dull horizon with effervescent splotches of scarlet and gold.

What had he missed, all this time? What did his magic lack? What had his subconscious tried so desperately to tell him? Sure, he could always try asking it directly, but he had a feeling that things didn't quite work that way. His subconscious clearly fancied a challenge, given its sadistic choice of manifestation. He'd gotten the message wrong once before, but this time, he honestly didn't know. He couldn't understand any of it. He still had no idea what to do, and for every second that he wasted, faltering in his task, his family would pay for it in tenfold.

One last chance, he told himself. One last chance. If it didn't work this time, he would walk out that door and never look back. In less than sixteen years, he had already accumulated a lifetime of regrets. Adding yet another one to the list wouldn't make a difference in the end, for he would surely have many more.

Nodding tersely to his eagle owl, Draco briefly explained to it that he had to make an anonymous delivery to St. Mungo's, and therefore had no need of its services at the moment. His owl hooted in acknowledgement, turned its beak up disdainfully at the randomly selected barn owl, which Draco had beckoned over from the school's dreary assortment, and haughtily soared back up into the topmost rafters.

Carefully, Draco took his wand out from the pocket of his robes, and pointed it at the ground at the exact same angle that Granger had wrenched his arm into about a million times. He carved a perfect circle in the air, following her advice and counting quietly under his breath to set a smooth, consistent pace. Over and over, he repeated the words in his head. According to theory, he had succeeded. He had done everything right. But he knew that reality had a way of complicating things.

In his mind, he envisioned his intended creation, as if he could sustain its life through the sheer force of his will. Yet, unbidden, thoughts of her intruded upon his concentration—nothing more than transient flashes of blind compassion, overbearing brilliance, and a beaming face. Frantically, he staunched the overflow, but at this point, it no longer mattered. It had already bled through. It had already left its stain.

Without uttering a single word, he conjured the brightest, most beautiful, golden sunflower he had ever seen. And this time, it stayed golden, its petals bursting with rapturous light, long after it faded away into the shimmering rays of the rising sun.

TO BE CONTINUED