Day 3
Draco groaned and growled into his pillow the next morning when he awoke with another pounding headache. As he got ready for class, he didn't take his usual time carefully getting dressed or styling his hair. He flew out of his room and up to the infirmary, expletives running on a repeat cycle in his mind. If Madam Pomfrey was not in the hospital wing this morning, he planned to raid her supply closet for the cure he needed. He could not stand another day, another moment, with this stupid headache.
Alas, when he arrived at the hospital wing, it was just as he'd feared: the matron was nowhere to be seen. He looked around the dividing curtains to see if any patients were hiding out of sight and then opened the door to the room he'd seen Madam Pomfrey enter just the day before. As he'd guessed, it was a large storage closet lined with shelving. He eyed the labels on the vials of potion shelved nearest to him, but he didn't need Pepper-Up potion or Dreamless Sleep.
He wasn't sure how the shelves were organized, as the vials weren't labeled alphabetically, so it took him a few minutes to find anything that looked promising. He spotted the headache cure on the bottommost shelf in the far left corner of the closet, but when Draco reached down to take one of the potions, the door swung closed behind him. Startled, he spun around, cure in hand, and tried the door handle, but it wouldn't open.
“Awww, dammit,” he cursed, yanking on the handle once again. The slab of wood didn't budge. He pulled out his wand and tried all the spells in his arsenal that could open locked doors, reveal hidden passages, and move solid objects, but the door remained firmly locked, and Draco knew that he would be in deep trouble when Madam Pomfrey discovered him in her stores.
Ah, well. He might as well take the headache potion if he was going to be punished for stealing it. He chugged the contents of the vial down and then replaced the empty container on the shelf, hidden behind the other vials.
There was nothing else to do but wait, so he took a seat and tried not to think of the breakfast he was missing. His watch ticked loudly in the silence as the minutes passed, and nearly an hour later, he heard the sound of the door handle turning. Draco scrambled to his feet and put on a contrite face, hoping it would be enough to save him from detention, or worse.
Madam Pomfrey stared at him for a moment, shocked to find a student in her supply closet, but then she recovered, sighed, and said, “Mr. Malfoy, what are you doing here?”
Draco thought about lying, telling her that he had waited for her with another student, who had then cruelly and unexpectedly shoved him in the storage closet and left him there to rot, but there was nothing for him to say, because he could tell by the look on her face that she was not going to accept any excuse from him.
“Detention, then?” he asked in a tone that would have sounded resigned to her, but was actually a bit sneering.
“Tonight. I'll see you here right after dinner.”
He decided to skip Transfiguration, since he was late anyway, and instead went to the kitchens to get something to eat. House-elves swarmed around him as soon as the portrait of the bowl of fruit opened, and he spent the next twenty minutes being served different foods and enjoying every minute of it. Draco regretted having to leave for Charms, and as soon as the lesson began, he knew he shouldn't have shown up to that class either.
“Today we'll be studying Protean Charms. Does anyone happen to be familiar with this charm?” Flitwick asked for the third day in a row, and Draco, shocked beyond belief at the man's memory and lack of planning with his lessons, didn't bother to raise his hand.
This time, Granger was alone in her knowledge of Protean Charms, so Professor Flitwick called on her for a demonstration.
“Excellent! Miss Granger, why don't you show us how it's done, then?”
Draco felt a surreal sense of déjà vu, even though this class was going differently than it did the previous two days. Since he hadn't gone to Transfiguration, his nose was the same size it always was, so Flitwick didn't fall off his stool laughing at Draco when it grew back to size in the middle of the lesson. This time, class progressed as usual. Granger showed off her skill by showing everyone how to cast a Protean Charm. Flitwick awarded her House points, nearly wetting himself in excitement that she knew the charm so well. Then the class as a whole practiced the incantation and the wand movements, moving on to put the charm to practical application.
He didn't know why, but Draco did not feel like he was a part of the class. He felt outside of it—like a stranger looking in. He recalled Weasley's words in the hospital wing from the day before.
No one else has noticed that it's the same. It's just us. Just us.
For a moment, he wondered if this is what she had meant, this feeling of déjà vu, of feeling apart from everyone else, but he shook his head, pushing the strange thoughts away.
Draco decided to spend his study break in the library today, and he was not surprised to see Blaise Zabini there, sitting at the table they usually reserved for themselves during this period. As he sat down, Draco realized that he didn't know what homework he had to do. His essay for Potions about jumping beans? But he had been sent out of class the last two days in a row, and the assignment should have been turned in the day before yesterday.
“What are you working on?” he asked Zabini, nodding to the pile of books in a stack next to the other Slytherin.
“Potions essay,” he replied tersely, not bothering to look away from his reading.
“The one comparing the usages of Mexican and Chilean Jumping Beans?”
“That would be the one,” Zabini said drily.
“But wasn't that due Tuesday?”
Zabini sighed in exasperation, obviously annoyed by Draco's interruptions.
“It still is due Tuesday. You know, today? Next period?”
“No, it isn't.”
“What?”
“It can't be Tuesday. It's Thursday,” Draco said.
“You've gone bonkers! It's not Thursday. Today is Tuesday!”
“I'm not mad!”
Madam Pince took that moment to appear from an aisle and noisily berated Draco for his loud voice. Instead of listening, he grabbed his bag again and left the library at a speed that could almost be called running, except for the fact that Malfoys did not do such undignified things as run.
He wasn't sure where he was going, only that he needed to find a copy of today's Daily Prophet. If he had gone to breakfast that morning, he would have seen...
There was a flash of bright red hair ahead of him, turning to go up a staircase, and his heart jumped. Weasley! She'd known about this. Surely that's what she had meant—today? The day before yester-today? Two cycles previously?—two days ago?
No one else has noticed that it's the same. It's just us. Just us.
But as he got closer, he realized that it wasn't the female Weasley at all taking the stairs to the next floor, but her oaf of a brother. Draco stopped at a corner and waited for him to leave, looking to avoid another encounter with him, since they seemed to always turn out badly.
Then he wandered the corridor, looking for the Weasley girl, and when he found no sign of her, he went to the next floor up and searched that one. It was only when he looked at his watch and realized it was almost time for Potions that he remembered where she would be at this moment. Her Potions class was the period before his. He managed, on his way down to the dungeons, to convince himself that he didn't need to talk to her at all. That he was being foolish in even considering...
He stopped in his tracks. What was he considering, exactly? That time had stopped? That he had repeated Tuesday two days in a row? That only he and Griselda Weasley were aware of what was happening?
Draco snorted and continued down the stairs. What an absurd thought! He was just confused. Of course it was Tuesday, and the strange sense of déjà vu he had felt earlier only seemed strange because that was the nature of déjà vu. He must have had a vivid dream that he had forgotten and had been reminded of it during Charms. That explained it.
In the dungeons, on his way to Potions, he saw Weasley hurrying down the corridor to Snape's office carrying a small steaming cauldron. Even though she was in a rush, he could tell that she was trying to be careful, just like she'd been the day before, just like she hadn't been the day before that.
He stopped, their eyes meeting, and suddenly, without evidence, without being told, he knew that the absurd notion that had popped into his mind less than ten minutes ago had to be true. That's why Flitwick had introduced Protean Charms as if the class had never done them before for the past two days. Even though Draco knew now, he couldn't actually be sure. He wanted the proof, because this was just... impossible. Unreal. How did this happen?
Weasley seemed to see the realization in his eyes, because as she passed him, he heard her mutter, “Meet me in the library after dinner.”
“I have detention,” he replied automatically.
“I suppose it really doesn't matter,” she said to herself. “After your detention, then. Meet me in the seventh floor corridor, in front of the tapestry of the trolls in tutus.”
“I'm probably mad to agree to meet you,” he said as he backed away.
“You already think you're mad, don't you?” she asked, her head cocked to the side and her eyes knowing.
“I'm not mad.”
“No, you're not. And I can prove it to you.”
“Tonight, then,” he said.
“Tonight,” she repeated.
He entered the Potions classroom once again feeling that surreal sense of being outside of the experience somehow. It was all in his head, of course, but there seemed to be a barrier between him and his classmates—and Professor Snape, even—as he took his seat. He noticed Ron Weasley's disapproving look, Blaise Zabini's glare of dislike, Snape's frown of discontent, but they had no effect on him. The moment passed and class continued as normal, no one else any wiser that Draco Malfoy was indeed going mad.
After a demeaning detention of cleaning bedpans in the infirmary, Draco wandered up to the seventh floor, using his Prefect duties as an excuse to be out of bed past curfew. Weasley was already waiting in front of the tapestry she had mentioned, pacing back and forth and muttering to herself all the while. A door appeared in the wall across from the tapestry, and Draco remembered this place as the one where Potter and his friends had held Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons two years ago. He and the Inquisitorial Squad had raided the place on Umbridge's orders.
Weasley entered the door without a word to Draco, so he followed her in, taking in the small, well-furnished room and deeming it worthy and comfortable enough for him. Two green plush chairs sat in front of a fireplace on the far left wall and a table covered in all sorts of food took up the area in front of the door. Paintings that looked vaguely familiar to Draco hung on the wall, as well as Slytherin and Gryffindor banners.
Weasley made a face at the décor, but Draco quite liked it. He helped himself to a sandwich and some fruit from the table before joining her in the chairs.
They sat without speaking for several minutes, only the crackling of the fire and the sound of Draco's chewing filling the void. Finally, his patience ran out and he said, “You can tell me what's going on?”
“Not really,” she replied, turning her face away from the flames to look at him. It was a strange thought, but it seemed to Draco that her eyes had collected some of the fire as she had stared at it, and now they glowed with the same heat.
At his scowl, she corrected herself.
“I don't know what's going on. All I can tell you is that this day has repeated itself twice. At breakfast... on the second day, the first time it repeated, I noticed the newspaper when Hermione received it. Tuesday, February the seventeenth. The same date as the day before. She didn't seem to notice anything odd about it. No one did. And when I went to my classes, they were all the same. The same lessons. The same lecture. The same mistakes and the same successes.
“The only thing that was different about it was you. You weren't in the hospital wing the day before, when I'd had to take Henry there. I thought that maybe it was the same for you. It is, isn't it?”
She looked at him with wide eyes that were uncertain, just as Draco was uncertain. Maybe they had gone mad. Maybe they were both sharing the same delusion.
“No. I don't know,” he replied, looking back down at his sandwich before taking a large bite. She waited as he stalled, chewing slowly and deliberately, thinking through his options. He swallowed and saw her still staring at him, and sighed before replying. “Some things are... similar. But many things are not. How am I supposed to know if... if... your theory is true?”
Weasley straightened up at that, moving close to the edge of her seat as if ready to jump up if the need arose.
“Do something that you can check the next day. Write yourself a note tonight, and when you wake up in the morning, see if it's still there. Destroy your dormitory. Cut all your hair off. Insult a teacher. Get points taken away.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Draco interrupted, his eyebrows slanted together in thought and anger. “You're just trying to get me in trouble!”
Her head was already shaking before he finished speaking, and the frown on her face told him that she was becoming impatient with him.
“Fine, then! Don't do those things! But do something, Malfoy! This is serious. I am serious. This isn't a dream come true for me, you know. Repeat one horrid day over and over again, and the only person who might have any idea what is going on, the only person who might be experiencing the same thing, is you? Color me delighted!”
“Of all people, why would I get stuck in this with you?” he snarled, knocking his plate of food to the floor as he stood from the chair.
She stood up as well, her hair and eyes both glinting a bright orange in the light of the fire. “That's my question exactly! I thought we could be civilized about this, just so that we could get through it, but it's obvious to me now that we can't!”
She stormed out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her, and with her went the fire. Draco sat back down, huffing in frustration as he looked into the empty grate, watching as smoke rose from the hot ashes.
He fell asleep in that chair sometime later, his body shivering in the cold.
Draco groaned and growled into his pillow the next morning when he awoke with another pounding headache. As he got ready for class, he didn't take his usual time carefully getting dressed or styling his hair. He flew out of his room and up to the infirmary, expletives running on a repeat cycle in his mind. If Madam Pomfrey was not in the hospital wing this morning, he planned to raid her supply closet for the cure he needed. He could not stand another day, another moment, with this stupid headache.
Alas, when he arrived at the hospital wing, it was just as he'd feared: the matron was nowhere to be seen. He looked around the dividing curtains to see if any patients were hiding out of sight and then opened the door to the room he'd seen Madam Pomfrey enter just the day before. As he'd guessed, it was a large storage closet lined with shelving. He eyed the labels on the vials of potion shelved nearest to him, but he didn't need Pepper-Up potion or Dreamless Sleep.
He wasn't sure how the shelves were organized, as the vials weren't labeled alphabetically, so it took him a few minutes to find anything that looked promising. He spotted the headache cure on the bottommost shelf in the far left corner of the closet, but when Draco reached down to take one of the potions, the door swung closed behind him. Startled, he spun around, cure in hand, and tried the door handle, but it wouldn't open.
“Awww, dammit,” he cursed, yanking on the handle once again. The slab of wood didn't budge. He pulled out his wand and tried all the spells in his arsenal that could open locked doors, reveal hidden passages, and move solid objects, but the door remained firmly locked, and Draco knew that he would be in deep trouble when Madam Pomfrey discovered him in her stores.
Ah, well. He might as well take the headache potion if he was going to be punished for stealing it. He chugged the contents of the vial down and then replaced the empty container on the shelf, hidden behind the other vials.
There was nothing else to do but wait, so he took a seat and tried not to think of the breakfast he was missing. His watch ticked loudly in the silence as the minutes passed, and nearly an hour later, he heard the sound of the door handle turning. Draco scrambled to his feet and put on a contrite face, hoping it would be enough to save him from detention, or worse.
Madam Pomfrey stared at him for a moment, shocked to find a student in her supply closet, but then she recovered, sighed, and said, “Mr. Malfoy, what are you doing here?”
Draco thought about lying, telling her that he had waited for her with another student, who had then cruelly and unexpectedly shoved him in the storage closet and left him there to rot, but there was nothing for him to say, because he could tell by the look on her face that she was not going to accept any excuse from him.
“Detention, then?” he asked in a tone that would have sounded resigned to her, but was actually a bit sneering.
“Tonight. I'll see you here right after dinner.”
He decided to skip Transfiguration, since he was late anyway, and instead went to the kitchens to get something to eat. House-elves swarmed around him as soon as the portrait of the bowl of fruit opened, and he spent the next twenty minutes being served different foods and enjoying every minute of it. Draco regretted having to leave for Charms, and as soon as the lesson began, he knew he shouldn't have shown up to that class either.
“Today we'll be studying Protean Charms. Does anyone happen to be familiar with this charm?” Flitwick asked for the third day in a row, and Draco, shocked beyond belief at the man's memory and lack of planning with his lessons, didn't bother to raise his hand.
This time, Granger was alone in her knowledge of Protean Charms, so Professor Flitwick called on her for a demonstration.
“Excellent! Miss Granger, why don't you show us how it's done, then?”
Draco felt a surreal sense of déjà vu, even though this class was going differently than it did the previous two days. Since he hadn't gone to Transfiguration, his nose was the same size it always was, so Flitwick didn't fall off his stool laughing at Draco when it grew back to size in the middle of the lesson. This time, class progressed as usual. Granger showed off her skill by showing everyone how to cast a Protean Charm. Flitwick awarded her House points, nearly wetting himself in excitement that she knew the charm so well. Then the class as a whole practiced the incantation and the wand movements, moving on to put the charm to practical application.
He didn't know why, but Draco did not feel like he was a part of the class. He felt outside of it—like a stranger looking in. He recalled Weasley's words in the hospital wing from the day before.
No one else has noticed that it's the same. It's just us. Just us.
For a moment, he wondered if this is what she had meant, this feeling of déjà vu, of feeling apart from everyone else, but he shook his head, pushing the strange thoughts away.
Draco decided to spend his study break in the library today, and he was not surprised to see Blaise Zabini there, sitting at the table they usually reserved for themselves during this period. As he sat down, Draco realized that he didn't know what homework he had to do. His essay for Potions about jumping beans? But he had been sent out of class the last two days in a row, and the assignment should have been turned in the day before yesterday.
“What are you working on?” he asked Zabini, nodding to the pile of books in a stack next to the other Slytherin.
“Potions essay,” he replied tersely, not bothering to look away from his reading.
“The one comparing the usages of Mexican and Chilean Jumping Beans?”
“That would be the one,” Zabini said drily.
“But wasn't that due Tuesday?”
Zabini sighed in exasperation, obviously annoyed by Draco's interruptions.
“It still is due Tuesday. You know, today? Next period?”
“No, it isn't.”
“What?”
“It can't be Tuesday. It's Thursday,” Draco said.
“You've gone bonkers! It's not Thursday. Today is Tuesday!”
“I'm not mad!”
Madam Pince took that moment to appear from an aisle and noisily berated Draco for his loud voice. Instead of listening, he grabbed his bag again and left the library at a speed that could almost be called running, except for the fact that Malfoys did not do such undignified things as run.
He wasn't sure where he was going, only that he needed to find a copy of today's Daily Prophet. If he had gone to breakfast that morning, he would have seen...
There was a flash of bright red hair ahead of him, turning to go up a staircase, and his heart jumped. Weasley! She'd known about this. Surely that's what she had meant—today? The day before yester-today? Two cycles previously?—two days ago?
No one else has noticed that it's the same. It's just us. Just us.
But as he got closer, he realized that it wasn't the female Weasley at all taking the stairs to the next floor, but her oaf of a brother. Draco stopped at a corner and waited for him to leave, looking to avoid another encounter with him, since they seemed to always turn out badly.
Then he wandered the corridor, looking for the Weasley girl, and when he found no sign of her, he went to the next floor up and searched that one. It was only when he looked at his watch and realized it was almost time for Potions that he remembered where she would be at this moment. Her Potions class was the period before his. He managed, on his way down to the dungeons, to convince himself that he didn't need to talk to her at all. That he was being foolish in even considering...
He stopped in his tracks. What was he considering, exactly? That time had stopped? That he had repeated Tuesday two days in a row? That only he and Griselda Weasley were aware of what was happening?
Draco snorted and continued down the stairs. What an absurd thought! He was just confused. Of course it was Tuesday, and the strange sense of déjà vu he had felt earlier only seemed strange because that was the nature of déjà vu. He must have had a vivid dream that he had forgotten and had been reminded of it during Charms. That explained it.
In the dungeons, on his way to Potions, he saw Weasley hurrying down the corridor to Snape's office carrying a small steaming cauldron. Even though she was in a rush, he could tell that she was trying to be careful, just like she'd been the day before, just like she hadn't been the day before that.
He stopped, their eyes meeting, and suddenly, without evidence, without being told, he knew that the absurd notion that had popped into his mind less than ten minutes ago had to be true. That's why Flitwick had introduced Protean Charms as if the class had never done them before for the past two days. Even though Draco knew now, he couldn't actually be sure. He wanted the proof, because this was just... impossible. Unreal. How did this happen?
Weasley seemed to see the realization in his eyes, because as she passed him, he heard her mutter, “Meet me in the library after dinner.”
“I have detention,” he replied automatically.
“I suppose it really doesn't matter,” she said to herself. “After your detention, then. Meet me in the seventh floor corridor, in front of the tapestry of the trolls in tutus.”
“I'm probably mad to agree to meet you,” he said as he backed away.
“You already think you're mad, don't you?” she asked, her head cocked to the side and her eyes knowing.
“I'm not mad.”
“No, you're not. And I can prove it to you.”
“Tonight, then,” he said.
“Tonight,” she repeated.
He entered the Potions classroom once again feeling that surreal sense of being outside of the experience somehow. It was all in his head, of course, but there seemed to be a barrier between him and his classmates—and Professor Snape, even—as he took his seat. He noticed Ron Weasley's disapproving look, Blaise Zabini's glare of dislike, Snape's frown of discontent, but they had no effect on him. The moment passed and class continued as normal, no one else any wiser that Draco Malfoy was indeed going mad.
After a demeaning detention of cleaning bedpans in the infirmary, Draco wandered up to the seventh floor, using his Prefect duties as an excuse to be out of bed past curfew. Weasley was already waiting in front of the tapestry she had mentioned, pacing back and forth and muttering to herself all the while. A door appeared in the wall across from the tapestry, and Draco remembered this place as the one where Potter and his friends had held Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons two years ago. He and the Inquisitorial Squad had raided the place on Umbridge's orders.
Weasley entered the door without a word to Draco, so he followed her in, taking in the small, well-furnished room and deeming it worthy and comfortable enough for him. Two green plush chairs sat in front of a fireplace on the far left wall and a table covered in all sorts of food took up the area in front of the door. Paintings that looked vaguely familiar to Draco hung on the wall, as well as Slytherin and Gryffindor banners.
Weasley made a face at the décor, but Draco quite liked it. He helped himself to a sandwich and some fruit from the table before joining her in the chairs.
They sat without speaking for several minutes, only the crackling of the fire and the sound of Draco's chewing filling the void. Finally, his patience ran out and he said, “You can tell me what's going on?”
“Not really,” she replied, turning her face away from the flames to look at him. It was a strange thought, but it seemed to Draco that her eyes had collected some of the fire as she had stared at it, and now they glowed with the same heat.
At his scowl, she corrected herself.
“I don't know what's going on. All I can tell you is that this day has repeated itself twice. At breakfast... on the second day, the first time it repeated, I noticed the newspaper when Hermione received it. Tuesday, February the seventeenth. The same date as the day before. She didn't seem to notice anything odd about it. No one did. And when I went to my classes, they were all the same. The same lessons. The same lecture. The same mistakes and the same successes.
“The only thing that was different about it was you. You weren't in the hospital wing the day before, when I'd had to take Henry there. I thought that maybe it was the same for you. It is, isn't it?”
She looked at him with wide eyes that were uncertain, just as Draco was uncertain. Maybe they had gone mad. Maybe they were both sharing the same delusion.
“No. I don't know,” he replied, looking back down at his sandwich before taking a large bite. She waited as he stalled, chewing slowly and deliberately, thinking through his options. He swallowed and saw her still staring at him, and sighed before replying. “Some things are... similar. But many things are not. How am I supposed to know if... if... your theory is true?”
Weasley straightened up at that, moving close to the edge of her seat as if ready to jump up if the need arose.
“Do something that you can check the next day. Write yourself a note tonight, and when you wake up in the morning, see if it's still there. Destroy your dormitory. Cut all your hair off. Insult a teacher. Get points taken away.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Draco interrupted, his eyebrows slanted together in thought and anger. “You're just trying to get me in trouble!”
Her head was already shaking before he finished speaking, and the frown on her face told him that she was becoming impatient with him.
“Fine, then! Don't do those things! But do something, Malfoy! This is serious. I am serious. This isn't a dream come true for me, you know. Repeat one horrid day over and over again, and the only person who might have any idea what is going on, the only person who might be experiencing the same thing, is you? Color me delighted!”
“Of all people, why would I get stuck in this with you?” he snarled, knocking his plate of food to the floor as he stood from the chair.
She stood up as well, her hair and eyes both glinting a bright orange in the light of the fire. “That's my question exactly! I thought we could be civilized about this, just so that we could get through it, but it's obvious to me now that we can't!”
She stormed out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her, and with her went the fire. Draco sat back down, huffing in frustration as he looked into the empty grate, watching as smoke rose from the hot ashes.
He fell asleep in that chair sometime later, his body shivering in the cold.
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