Save The Date (A Drarry FanFiction)

Chapter Ten (IV)

IV

"Oi, Your Highness," the dog barked. He'd apparently been trying to get Draco's attention whilst he'd been lost in thought. "What door did your little friend go through?"

"Um," said Draco, frowning in concentration. It hadn't been clear at all until Harry had started waving his wand about. The dog had said magic exacerbated the portals between veils, but the fact that he'd cast a Lux charm had helped too.

"There were several doors," he began.

"Yeah," said the dog patiently. "But which one opened?"

Draco scowled at him. "Okay, there was a heart – I guess that would be for Valentine's Day?"

"No?" drawled the dog. "You think?"

Draco huffed and let the remark slide. He wondered briefly what Valentine's Land might look like, but when he immediately pictured a sickly sweet place, all pink and full of cherubs and everything made of chocolate, he decided he was probably thankful to have been sent to Halloween Land.

"Alright, I think there was an Easter Egg too, and a bonfire for Guy Fawkes. Oh!" Of course, it was the most obvious holiday of them all. "I think Harry was standing by a Christmas tree."

"Ah," the dog said happily. "Well, then, I guess he'd be in Christmas Land."

"But why?" Draco asked, not nearly as comforted as the dog seemed to think he would be. "Why have we been taken to these places, given new memories, forgetting who we are? And for that matter, why is there a Halloween Land, and a Christmas Land?"

The dog scoffed. He seemed very good at that for a dog. "Where do you think holidays come from?" he said, but the question was clearly rhetorical, and he ploughed right on. "Look, round here, things are sort of timeless. People don't age, they just...be. And they don't, you know, have babies or anything. So they repopulate in different kinds of ways – snatching people through the portals is one of the more sinister ways, but when people don't know, and forget, no one's around to protest it."

"Except you?" Draco said, raising a dubious eyebrow.

"Yup," the dog replied, full of himself as he wiggled his bum. "I see through all that, I'm special me."

"How?"

"No idea. Just am. How are you a wizard?"

Draco nodded at the logic. "I don't know," he admitted. "Just am." He huffed out a breath and ran his fingers through his hair. "But don't people get angry when they do remember?" he asked. Out of all the beings that could have had an inkling as to what was going on, it seemed extremely odd that it happened to be a talking French Bulldog. But seeing as he did seem to have some answers, Draco decided he wasn't going to get snobbish about it. "Why aren't there riots, demanding they get sent back?"

The dog yawned, showing off his crooked teeth. "Because they don't know. It's long time since I spotted a newcomer, and I can't be in more than one place at a time, it's a big old world. Unless someone tells them, after their first day they just forget all together, like their other life never happened."

Draco's blood ran cold. "That's not much better than murder," he growled. The dog shrugged.

"Couldn't agree more my friend, but right now, we're probably the only ones who know about it. This lot," he jerked his head back towards the witch's house, where his pee was still a dark little stream on the pathway. "Are blissfully ignorant. But it's not too late for you."

"Or Harry?" Draco quickly added. "My friend, in Christmas Land?" He knew he should probably be more indignant about everyone else; Harry would have been, he was sure of it. But if there was really nothing that could be done, he wasn't going to waste any tears over changing something he had no power over. He would focus on him and Harry bloody Potter. As usual. "How long have we got – you said a day, right?"

"Midnight," the dog said decisively. "After that, your memories will be gone forever, and you'll be stuck here with the rest of us."

Draco paused, his excitement at escaping momentarily dimming. "You're stuck here too, aren't you?" He really shouldn't care, it was just a dog after all. But this particular dog was being pretty generous to him, and that wasn't something that had happened much to him over the past year or two.

The dog shrugged nonchalantly. "I rather like it here, truth be told. But I appreciate it ain't for everyone. Now, how about we get you back home, before it's too late?"

Draco regarded him for a moment, then shook himself. The dog said he was fine, then fine. "Okay, how do we get home?"

The dog shook his head. "First, we gotta rescue your mate don't we? Follow me."

"Um, thank you..." Draco said uncertainly as her strode alongside the dog.

"Call me Bones," he replied with a wag of his tail. "And don't mention it."

Draco pulled at the frilly cravat around his neck, undoing it and discarding it to the ground. Next went the tailcoat and top hat. It wasn't cold enough to absolutely necessitate keeping them on, and he felt ridiculous dressed up to the nines. "Okay Bones," he said, smoothing down his waistcoat and shirt. It wasn't all that dissimilar to the kind of thing he would normally wear. "Now, not that I'm not grateful, but why are you helping me? What's in it for you?"

"It's the right thing to do," Bones said a little too quickly, and not fooling Draco one bit, a fact he illustrated with a withering look pointed down at his new companion. "Oh aright," Bones said with a grin, a rather sinister gesture on a dog thanks to the pointed canine teeth it displayed. "You know the town is run by the Mayor?" he asked. Draco did; his basic overall Halloween memories were helpfully still intact. "Well let's just say he encourages the kidnapping of innocent living fellows, and by sending you home, I'd annoy him significantly."

"And, you want to annoy him?" Draco asked, unsure.

"Oh," Bones replied mischievously. "Yeah."